She took me to the Street of the Gods, and we strolled down the middle of the Street, giving all the churches and temples, their Beings and their supporters, plenty of room. There was a light rain of fish, a brief outbreak of spontaneous combustion among the gargoyles, and ball-lightning rolled down the street like tumble-weeds. Typical weather for the Street of the Gods. An evicted god sat miserably on the pavement outside what used to be his church, clutching at his few possessions. The laws of the Street are strict; if you can’t raise enough worshippers, make way for a Being who can. So the grey little man with the flickering halo would now have to make his own way in the world, as something else. A god no more. A lot of his kind end up doing the rounds on chat shows, selling their sob stories. And even more end up sleeping in cardboard boxes in Rats’ Alley, begging for spare change on street-corners. And it’s a wise man who’ll stop to drop a little something into their outstretched hand, because the wheel of karma turns for us all, and cosmic payback can be a real bitch.
“I don’t recognise him,” said Polly, as we walked past. “I don’t even know his name. Isn’t that sad?”
“Half the Beings on this Street are celestial con men, fakes, and posers,” I said, with youthful certainty and arrogance. “There’s more preying than praying here.”
“They can’t all be deceivers,” said Polly. “Some of them must be the real thing.”
“Those are the ones you give plenty of room. Just in case.”
She laughed. “Am I to take it that you’re not in any way religious?”
“I deal in facts, not faith,” I said. “I hunt for treasure, not miracles. There’s enough in this world to keep me interested without bothering about the next. Where are we going, exactly?”
“Egyptian royalty had themselves buried in pyramids, to be sure their remains would be protected and revered for all the years to come,” Polly said briskly. “We all know how that worked out. But one particular Pharaoh went that little bit further, and used ancient Egyptian magic to send his Tomb through Space and Time, to a place where it would be safe for all eternity. It ended up here, on the Street of the Gods, its original protections boosted sky-high by centuries of accumulated faith from all those who worshipped the God within the Pyramid. This being the Nightside, a lot of people have tried to break in, down the centuries, including a few Beings who fancied its preferred position on the Street. No-one has ever found a way in.”
“Hold it,” I said. “What has all this to do with an elven wand?”
She looked at me pityingly.
“Where do you think the Pharaoh found a magic powerful enough to do all this? The elves got around, in the old days.”
“Cool,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to meet a mummy. And rob it of everything but its underwear.”
“The Tomb stands alone these days, unworshipped and uncared for, almost forgotten. Taken for granted, as one of the sights. Tourists take photos, and then move on to more interesting things. And no-one has noticed that the Tomb’s magical protections have slowly faded away, along with the worship. We can get in now, provided we’re very, very careful.”
“How do you know all this?” I said bluntly.
“You’re not the only one who likes to do research in libraries. I found this information while looking for something else, which is often the way. And then I found a Looking Glass in Strange Harald’s Junkshop.” She gestured fluidly, and the Looking Glass was suddenly in her hand. It looked like an ordinary everyday magnifying glass, but I had enough sense not to say that. Polly favoured me with a brilliant smile for my tact, and continued. “He didn’t know what this was, or he’d never have let it go so cheaply. This is an ancient Egyptian artefact, and it can lead us right to the centre of the Tomb.”
“How are we supposed to get in?” I said. “Just walk up and knock?”
“There’s a side-door,” said Polly. “And I know where it is.”
“Of course you do,” I said.
The Tomb of the forgotten Pharaoh turned out to be a surprisingly modest affair, barely twenty feet tall and ten wide. The pyramid’s orange-red bricks were dull and shabby, even crumbling away in places, and yet ... there was something about it. Set between an ornate church in the old Viking Orthodox style, and a Mother Earth Temple covered in twitching ivy, the pyramid still had its own dark and brooding presence. It wasn’t there to be liked or appreciated; it was a stark, functional thing of simple style and brutal lines. It had a job to do, and it was still doing it after thousands of years, while any number of neighbouring churches had been ground to dust under the heels of history. The Tomb had been constructed to outlast Eternity; and powered by the magic of an elven weapon, it just might.
I stood before thousands of years of history and felt very small and insignificant in its shadow. But, of course, I couldn’t let Polly Perkins see that. So I looked it over and sniffed loudly, as though I’d seen better before and hadn’t been impressed then.
“Bit small,” I said. “Maybe it’s a bonsai pyramid.”
“Don’t show your ignorance,” Polly said kindly. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the pyramid descends under the Street, so far down that no-one’s ever been able to see the bottom of it.”
“Then there’d better be an elevator,” I said. “I hate stairs.” Polly ignored me, studying the pyramid carefully through her Looking Glass. She smiled suddenly, and passed the Glass to me. I took it carefully, and held the lens up to my eye. Through it I saw a huge and intricate labyrinth of narrow stone tunnels, criss-crossing the whole structure of the pyramid, going down and down and down. The pattern was so complex it made my head hurt, and I quickly handed the Glass back to Polly. She made it disappear with another sharp gesture, and I looked after her thoughtfully as I followed her round the side of the pyramid. It was finally dawning on me that there was a lot more to Polly Perkins than met the eye.
She led me along the side of the pyramid, down a dingy alleyway half-full of garbage, some of which was still moving. Stepping carefully around and over things, we finally stopped before a section of the pyramid wall that seemed no different from anywhere else. Polly leaned forward and counted off the levels before pushing a series of bricks in swift succession, in a pattern too complicated to be easily grasped. I looked at her sharply, but she only had eyes for the small section of wall swinging slowly back before her. A side-door, indeed. Beyond the opening there was only darkness, and silence.
“Hang about,” I said. “I’ve got a torch here somewhere.”
“Boys and their toys,” Polly said airily. “Look and learn.”
The Looking Glass was back in her hand again. She held it up before her, and a beam of dazzling bright light blasted out, pushing back the darkness like a spotlight. Polly followed the beam of light into the Tomb, and I moved quickly in behind her. We hadn’t managed three steps down the narrow stone tunnel before the side-door closed behind us, with only the faintest of grinding noises.
Polly held the Glass up high, but even its light couldn’t penetrate far into the heavy dark before us. She still strode confidently forward, taking left and right turns with breath-taking confidence, according to what the Glass showed her. Hopefully it was also warning her about the inevitable booby-traps and deadfalls. The ancient Egyptians were notorious for their appalling sense of humour in that regard.
The tunnels gave me the creeps. I’d been in worse places as a treasure-hunter, nastier and slimier and even more dangerous places, waded thigh-deep in mud and crawled through earth tunnels barely big enough to take me; but this was different. This was a place of the dead. The air was dry and dusty, and I had to breathe in deeply to get enough oxygen out of it. The ceiling was so low I walked slightly stooped, and the walls to either side of me were covered with lines and lines of hieroglyphics, none of which I could read. I had never bothered to learn, never expecting to end up in a genuine Egyptian pyramid. Well, you don’t.