What sort of dark do you have to worry about? I reckon mine is a Bumbling Dark…
Summary
Vimes, Sir Reynold, and Sybil head into the Ramkin family attics and find Sybil’s replica of The Battle of Koom Valley. As they’re looking over it, Vimes realizes that the deep-down dwarfs believe that the painting is a map that will lead them to something important. He decides he’s going to Koom Valley and Sybil insists on coming along with Young Sam despite his protestations. Vimes tells Vetinari that he’s doing this with a crew of officers and Bashfullsson, and cannot be dissuaded. He secretly meets with Ridcully and asks if there’s anything the wizards can do to help his party get to Koom Valley faster since they’re a day behind the dwarfs. Ridcully agrees that he can do something to their coaches and that they obviously never had this conversation. Vimes wakes in the morning and Carrot informs him that the wizards have altered the carriages so that they weigh literally nothing, even with passengers. The horses have also been given some help with special harnesses. Detritus gets permission to take Brick along. The coaches set off, and when the harnesses for the horses kick into gear, the carriages lift off the ground and manage to hit sixty miles per hour.
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After going at that pace for a short burst, Vimes manages to stop the carriages and get them back to a normal speed, but Willikins points out that they could get to Koom Valley that day if they kept it up and that the dwarfs likely had brooms or some other fast mode of transit. They make it to twenty miles outside, but Sybil insists that they go the rest of the way normally so everyone can get rest in town and be fresh the following day. They stay with an old friend of Sybil’s named Bunty. She doesn’t consider trolls to be people of any sort, though Detritus takes this in stride. Angua and Sally are asked to bunk together and Sally leaves in the middle of the night. The next day the group head into the valley with the sketch of the painting, but Vimes is having a hard time matching up the landscape until he accidentally sits on the real painting. He finds a cave entrance and knows that this is where the cube was found. He also knows that there’s a tunnel below and decides to investigate before everyone else catches up to him, dropping into water below. He comes to on a dark beach in the cave and knows he must press on, despite the fact that he’d only come this far because of the voice in his head that told him to jump down into the cave.
Vimes is having a near death experience (which Death shows up for) as Sybil assures her friend that he will be home to read to Young Sam soon. The Gooseberry tells Vimes that he only has a few minutes to get back, and Vimes latches onto that to keep going. He comes upon a mine with dwarfs and is no longer himself, but a creature demanding of the dwarfs: Where’s my cow? Far away, Young Sam can hear him. He hones in on his target as the dwarfs scrabble to stop him and Sally arrives to help. Eventually, Vimes reaches his target… and stops. Inside Vimes, the Summoning Dark meets Vimes’ inner Watchman, and he tells the Summoning Dark to beat it. He comes to having been tackled by Angua, and surrounded by the Low King’s dwarfs. The deep-downers had been destroying this site where trolls and dwarfs had died side by side. Bashfullson explains that Vimes was possessed by the Summoning Dark, but he managed to beat it. Vimes goes to see his officers and tells the Low King’s captain that Detritus and Brick are to be better treated. The captain agrees to this when he sees the Summoning Dark symbol etched on Vimes as a scar. King Rhys arrives and learns that his men haven’t found the cube. Vimes has a hunch and tells Nobby to hand it over.
Rhys wants the cube, but balks when Vimes tells him to take it. He figures out the opening word (the dwarf word for “say” that sounds like “Awk!”), and the cube begins by speaking Things Tak Wrote… only the ending is different and suggests that dwarfs created the trolls and found them very good indeed. Then the voice of B’hrian Bloodaxe tells the tale: The cave was flooded and they won’t make it out, but dwarfs and trolls came here to make peace, and then someone shouted ambush and a fight broke out. They want the world to know that they brokered that treaty and dwarf and troll died side by side. Ardent is furious and insists it’s a hoax, and goes to fight Bashfullsson for lies; he’s quickly dispatched. Trolls have arrived to parley, and Rhys agrees to see them. Trolls and dwarfs work quickly to preserve the scene, then plan to seal it up. Vimes takes Sally aside and confronts her about being a spy for Rhys, but insists on keeping her. Sybil takes Vimes for their family portrait, finally: She has Otto take their picture. Carrot shows Vetinari the mines under the city, which now belong to Ankh-Morpork. Nobby decides to break up with Tawneee, Brick has a new watchman job, and Vimes reads his book to Young Sam.
Commentary
If I’m not mistaken, this is the first time Pratchett has created a mystical entity and admitted to what it was before the main character was properly introduced. Usually it’s all “the thing/being/creature did such-and-so” for every passage until the relevant person comes into direct contact with it. But in this instance, once Vetinari insists that Ridcully thinks that Summoning Dark is a real entity, it’s named in the next section from its vantage point. Almost as though either the Chancellor or the Patrician’s vote of confidence is enough to tell the reader, yeah, that’s definitely what it is, we’re going with that.
Sam Vimes is running on fumes as always, but this time he’s possessed by the Summoning Dark, and mad with grief at the thought of not being able to read to his son at six. The setup on that climax is admittedly flawless, and so much more interesting than your usual rampage sequence all because they’ve managed to fuel Vimes’ rage with something that truly does matter more than anything in the world—his love for his son.
Which is interesting because it means that you can’t really write this particular story until Vimes is a father. His relationship with Sybil wouldn’t have this hold; Sam Vimes loves his wife, but he’s very practical about that love. Young Sam is the one he’s pinned all his expectations onto. Sybil loves him in turn for all of his mess, but with his child, there’s an ideal that he needs to live up to.
It’s telling that for Vimes, the last two books have basically been about the same thing—they’re marking out that line where his morality lives and asking if a cop can stay above corruption. I’d argue that the need for this conversation springs directly from Vimes’ actions in The Fifth Elephant, and proceeds in a straight line. And the answer is roughly the same on both tales: most of the time. The difference is that this book makes that ability to watch himself a manner of superpower… which is cool from a storytelling perspective, but maybe less impressive from a realism standpoint. The idea of other people keeping an eye on Sam Vimes is still important, no matter what line he’s holding for himself. He needs Sybil and Carrot and Angua and Vetinari for that.
I do love that it’s not difficult for Vimes to write off the Summoning Dark at all. People believe what they want to, even—or maybe especially—when they’re being possessed by ancient supernatural entities.
The other part of the tale is zeroed in on how far people will go to perpetuate their prejudices and cultural givens. And again, it’s made a point of (more than once) how horribly Detritus (and Brick by extension) is treated and how much of that treatment he takes on the chin. The hunting trophies at the embassy in Bonk are sprung on everyone in The Fifth Elephant, but here we have a school pal of Sybil’s essentially treat Detritus like an animal. He’s the one who defuses the situation, and by doing so, prevents Vimes and Sybil from having to say anything on his behalf. In many ways this almost reads like both a self-own and sharp audience check on Pratchett’s part—we get this far along in the series and he turns around and points out that the reader probably has some notions about troll ability and intelligence based on the way he’s written them.
And with all that said and done, it’s time for another story. Possibly a long nap, too.
Asides and little thoughts:
- About Sybil’s family attics: “Maybe that was the reason for their wealth: they had bought things that were built to last, and now they seldom had to buy anything at all.” I’ve talked a bit about this before, but as an addendum to Vimes’ Boots Theory, this is completely accurate to how “old money” thinking works: If you’ve got quality and space to keep it, you are likely to always have what you need indefinitely. Unfortunately, “new money” seems to have largely embraced the capitalist consumerism message of “just buy more stuff and throw away the old stuff.”
- Look, I really love the phrase “mad as a spoon” because it inevitably forces me to consider what makes the spoon mad, and I wind up thinking things like “it’s having a bowl, isn’t it,” which is exactly the sort of thought I want to be having about phrases like “mad as a spoon.”
- There’s also a description of a rocking horse that’s “all teeth and mad glass eyes” and I know exactly the one he means.
Pratchettisms:
Difficult reading, too, because a lot of them were half-burned, and in any case Rascal’s handwriting was what might have been achieved by a spider on a trampoline during an earthquake.
And that was his life: one huge oblong of canvas. Methodia Rascal: born, painted famous picture, thought he was a chicken, died.
He heard a brief scream as the rear coach tore past and swerved into a field full of cauliflowers where, eventually, it squelched to a flatulent halt.
With that, Sam Vimes walked back to the milestone, sat down next to it, put his arms around it, and held on tight until he felt better.
His ribs were carrying the melody of pain, but knees, elbows, and head were all adding trills and arpeggios.
He shuffled on, aching and bleeding, while the dark curled its tail around him.
HAS IT NEVER STRUCK YOU THAT THE CONCEPT OF THE WRITTEN NARRATIVE IS SOMEWHAT STRANGE? said Death.
Vimes thought that was a bit too pat, but nature can be like that. Sometimes you got sunsets so pink that they had no style at all.
We’re gonna pause for the next two weeks, and then we’re back with Wintersmith! We’ll read Chapters 1-4.
What?! No readthrough of Where’s My Cow? It even won an Ook!, the Ankh-Morpork Librarians Award.
@0 – I agree, Pratchett’s Where’s My Cow? Book should be next, especially since it has a cameo in Wintersmithwhich will not make any sense if the book club hasn’t read it.
Thoughts
I wonder if we ever see A. E. Pessimal again. I’m disappointed we didn’t see his report.
Who is Mavis Trouncer? L-space speculates that it’s the unnamed woman who, according to Fred Colon in Guards Guards, “brung him low” and gave him the nudge over the brink into outright alcoholism.
We finally see the significance of Where’s My Cow. The moment he decides that he has to read to Young Sam he breaks the Summoning Dark’s hold over him and it “was no longer blackness but merely gloom.”
After all the controversy over Nobbs and Tawneee, it is Nobbs who rejects her, because she couldn’t cook, but they remain friends because Tawneee wants a shoulder to cry on and Nobbs still makes her laugh. Angua’s and Sally’s nasty machinations had nothing to do with it.
Pratchettisms
“I don’t gallivant! I’ve never gallivanted. I don’t know how to vant! I don’t even have a galli!” (Vimes)
I don’t use magic, thought Vimes, walking through the rain toward Unseen University. But sometimes, I tell lies.
“You can’t ask questions, it’s magic. It doesn’t explain anything, it’s magic. You don’t know where it comes from, it’s magic. That’s what I don’t like about magic. It does everything by magic!” (Vimes)
‘Could be? What sort of answer is that?” said Vimes. A VERY ACCURATE ONE. YOU SEE, YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE, WHICH INESCAPABLY MEANS THAT I MUST UNDERGO A NEAR VIMES EXPERIENCE. DON’T MIND ME. CARRY ON WITH WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK.
“I did see a striding, screaming, vengeful maniac, sir. But in a good way,” she added. (Angua)
He had a simple job to do, and suddenly it was filled with politics. Been there, done that, bought the singlet, thought Vimes. [singlet is a British term for t-shirt]
It was all mystic, that’s what it was. Oh, it might all be true, but how could you ever tell? (Vimes)
Vimes’s heart leapt in his chest. Nobby’s face was an open book, albeit the kind that got banned in some countries.
Dwarf scholars had, with delicacy and care and the blunting of fifteen saw blades, removed a tiny slice of it. Miraculously, it had turned out still to be as inedible now as the day it was baked.
Shoutbacks
Sir Reynold is a pinhead. “See a pin and pick it up, and all day long –”
I guess it’s official. Vimes is consistently referred to as ‘going postal’ instead of ‘going spare’ as in the past.
The transparent fifth horse’s description hearkens back to Tiffany’s necklace.
Yep, Death’s Near-Vimes Experience is one of the absolute highlights of the whole series. Death always shows up, at some point and in some capacity; having him literalize that as being drawn to manifestation near a Vimes berserking all over the limits of human endurance is a great opportunity to showcase both characters. Plus, since Vimes is already waaay past the point of separating thought from reality, it can get extra meta without directly affecting the course of the story.
I wonder if we ever see A. E. Pessimal again.
We do. Further, deponent sayeth not.
I didn’t want to say this until the book was done, but the description of both the immigrant experience (and especially the assimilated former immigrant experience) in Thud! makes it a highlight for me. I remember reading it the first time, as a fully Americanized (New York, even) Jew, and getting to the part about the dwarfs lining up to see the grags:
Please come and say the death words over my father…please advise me on the sale of my shop…please guide me in my business…I am a long way from the bones of my grandfathers, please help me stay a dwarf…
…and having what we in the business call All of the Feels.
I also was confident that every Muslim in London, especially every younger one born here instead of there, reading those words had those same All, and that likely Pratchett was more explicitly thinking of them. (Pratchett’s dwarfs frequently work as stand-ins for both Jews–when the golems aren’t available–and Muslims–especially London and England immigrants, as I understand–and he does a good job of commenting on every ethno-racial-religious-cultural memory that gets brought to the New Place without making either side so clearly a stand-in for one specific group that you can say he’s favoring, say, the Indian/Hindu population over the Pakistanis/Muslims, or the other I/P that is probably way too sensitive to get into right now…)
Likewise, the description of Koom Valley. Bloody, bloody Koom Valley…Koom Valley wasn’t really a place now, not anymore. It was a state of mind.
Smaller notes: the continuation of a classic vampire trope, the anagram/backwardsing of name (see Carmilla/Millarca/Mircalla and also Dracula’s son Alucard) with Sally’s pseudonym; the mines under Ankh-Morpork, along with the Device that could power a whole mine, and the symbol for a mine being a circle with a horizontal line through it (what we here would recognize as the logo for the London Underground) that turn Ankh-Morpork even more into Fantasy London (the Undertaking, as it’ll later be called); and I’m almost surprised you left out the name Vimes’s inner Watchman gives itself, the Guarding Dark…which, of course, isn’t there to keep the darkness out, but (in keeping with how Pratchett viewed, or at least wrote, cops) to keep Vimes’s dark in.
Doesn’t the “who guards the guards?” question in pratchett go all the way back to Dark side of the sun where the security chief answered by saying that he had set a team on himself
@5
well said.
Thud! Probably remains my favorite Discworld book (with stout competition from at least 5 others, off the top of my head). The people helping Vimes’ watchman watch him include Sally and her buddies in Bonk. Sam’s status as a model copper means he knows that lots of others are always watching him for a lead on how to do their work. Angua has a very nice role in shaping the ending, too.
@1-@2: how much of Where’s My Cow? hasn’t already been seen at one part or another of this book? Did Pratchett add more animals?
one Pratchettism that hasn’t already been cited: Sally and Angua had regained their amour propre in their proper armor.
@5: Pratchett was probably personally familiar more with the issues of South Asian immigrants (and possibly African(*) — cf some points in Aaronovitch’s work), but aspects of what we see here probably apply much more broadly. One of these years I will get to the reunion of my mother’s widespread Pennsylvania “Dutch” family name; I know many of my ancestors’ graves in the US are in cemeteries where all the stones are in German, but never heard stories of what it was like to have come 4000 miles from home (at least partly in hope of escaping the frequent wars of 19th-century Europe). Someday I’ll dig up a copy of …And Prairie Dogs Weren’t Kosher, which talks about Jewish experiences on the US prairie. (There’s a stereotype of Jewish immigrants settling in cities; an exhibit at the Minnesota historical museum made clear that they were known to have settled all over Minnesota and the Dakotas.)
(*) including by way of the western hemisphere — the BBC has had occasional articles recently about the mistreatment of “Windrush” immigrants after World War II, although the bulk of the uproar over this happened after Pratchett’s death.
@8 – from the description:
Sam can’t help but think that there should be a more useful book for boy who lives in a big city. So Sam starts adapting the story. A story with dark streets, not sunny fields. A book with rogues and criminals. A tale about the place where he’ll grow up—a city that his father must protect every day.
In which there is a contender for Discworld’s Weirdest Crowning Moment of Awesome.
I don’t mind Nobby breaking up with Tawneee because he doesn’t want a partner who can’t cook, though I don’t like that he’s thinking of going back to harassing Verity. I don’t think I would have objected if Tawneee had broken up with Nobby because she wanted to try dating other people — though if she’s so beautiful that only “jerks” who don’t care what she thinks of them will dare to ask her out, she’ll have to do more to show interest in someone, which apparently leads to fiery bar fights — but I would still hate the garbage “logic” of the Jerk Syndrome notion that prompted Sally and Angua’s interference in their relationship. I interpreted some harmful-to-me messages about attractiveness and relationships from this book when I first read it, and if Tawneee found positive empowerment in them instead, perhaps she’s wiser than me.
It’s nice that the Unseen University wizards did something genuinely beneficial to the world at large, for once. It’s unfortunate that their enchantment of the coaches evidently ran on the life-force of living things in the vicinity, or something of that sort, destroying vast quantities of vegetables and at least one cow en route to Koom Valley.
I want a smartphone as resilient as a Gooseberry. Surviving the long underwater submersion and severe buffeting that half-killed its human…impressive.
‘Time fell in shards around them’ is a nice way to describe the disintegration of cave-rock formations.
Thud! was a 2006 Locus Award nominee.
Pratchettisms:
‘Home was where you had to feel safe. If you didn’t feel safe, it wasn’t home.’ [Bolded for emphasis’]
‘Eric believed very firmly that The Land Belonged To The People, and that he was more The People than anyone else was.’
Looking back:
‘Vimes recollected that [Detritus’s] marriage to Ruby was happy but childless.’ Ruby hasn’t appeared after Moving Pictures, and I don’t think she’s been mentioned since Men at Arms when Detritus said he had joined the Watch because she would only marry him if he got a steady job.
“Do you remember when we last went on holiday, Sam?”
“That wasn’t really a holiday, dear.”
“Well, it was very interesting all the same.”
“Yes, dear. Werewolves tried to eat me.”
“Historically, anyone subject to the Summoning Dark dies insane.” Like the Hiver. And Vimes, like Tiffany, survived it in a state of general sanity.
Mr. Pony of the Artificers Guild, last seen getting subdued by Reacher Guilt, gets a happier cameo of explaining the vital technomancy in the dwarf diggings.
Looking ahead:
Those dwarf diggings will go on to be the start of a major municipal project.
Vimes and the Summoning Dark are not finished with each other.
@10 – For me, I am glad that Nobbs and Tawneee made the choices themselves. Nobbs wants a girlfriend who can cook. Tawneee wants a friend whose shoulder she can cry on and who makes her laugh. Perfect.
All this despite Angua’s and Sally’s body shaming (in front of Cherry, who is body shamed constantly by her fellow dwarfs, no less). Their belief that beautiful people need to marry beautiful people is totally nasty and skirts very close to too many Roundworld examples which are even nastier.
@3 “singlet is a British term for t-shirt”
Erm, not to this Brit! Nor here:-
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/singlet
@12 – You’re correct. A singlet is technically a tank top in American parlance. I used the term t-shirt because the longstanding American phrase is – “Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.”
I have no idea if Pratchett’s phrase or souvenir singlets are common in Britain but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the one who “translated” t-shirt to singlet for the British audience.
@12: Are singlets commonly printed as souvenirs and worn as outerwear? If not, what’s the English English for t-shirt? I know the latter exist; the year before Thud! came out, I found an assortment of t-shirts on sale at the Great British Beer Festival. OTOH, all of them were rude (except for a couple that were just strange, e.g. Salvador Dalek) rather than what I’d call souvenirs; is there no tradition of memorabilious t-shirts?
The theme of suppressing inconvenient ~text also shows up in Simak’s Time and Again; the viewpoint character spends the story dodging people who want to make sure that his all-beings-are-kin text is outmoded by one sewn with codicils explaining that he really meant just homo sapiens. There are interesting personal parallels — both were well-liked, country-oriented people with newspaper backgrounds — but as far as I know they never met: Simak didn’t travel much and died before what I’m guessing was Pratchett’s first trip to the US (1989 World Fantasy Convention, where he and Gaiman were roommates and outlined the Good Omens sequel(*) ).
(*) According to Gaiman’s recent report (IIRC on tor.com?), after decades of denying that a sequel was possible….
That can’t be right; Good Omens didn’t come out until 1990, they definitely can’t have been discussing a sequel for decades at that point.
@14 @15 – Good Omens
I think it likely that Pratchett and Gaiman discussed and wrote notes on the sequel. ISTM that Good Omens 2 is basically a placeholder whose major purpose is to lead into Good Omens 3 – The Second Coming. This is the only thing that makes sense as a sequel when Pratchett and Gaiman were still collaborating.
@16
It’s a timeline thing; they did discuss a sequel, but they can’t have been discussing a sequel for decades as of 1989.
@17 – You’re right. I focused on the wrong thing in your comments.
“Decades” applied to the denial, not the discussion. Sorry if the words tangled.
@3, @12, @13: Dignified men’s upper body wear in Europe in the 15th-17th century was a doublet, says Wikipedia, which will explain further.
A joke of doublet vs. singlet was made in very British 1950s comedy revue by Michael Flanders (words) and Donald Swann (music). There was an audio album (LP), and I think they did at least some of it on television. I think I don’t know for a fact that Terry Pratchett had heard this sketch. But if it did, it might stick.
…Britain has T-shirts. Wikipedia thinks that wearing them without a proper shirt anywhere is a 20th century thing, and that putting words or pictures on them is from the 1960s. Before T-shirts, there were singlets. I note that in the dictionary link already given, in Australia a “singlet” is “often with no sleeves”, which implies that a similar garment with sleeves also could be called a “singlet” – in Australia. I don’t want to claim that Australian English has a special purity, but I propose that the nearest that the Discworld has at this time to a T-shirt is called a singlet, with sleeves or not.
If not already suggested, clothes in “Soul Music” for the Music With Rocks In fans would have included a T-shirt analogue, if anything before now did. I think the Dean of Unseen U. did put the words “Born to Rune” somewhere on his clothes, but hardly on a T-shirt?!
@21 et al – Forget dictionaries. I went to a primary source – Amazon.
Searching Amazon UK for “souvenir singlet” there were 766 results and the only one close to a souvenir was for Golds Gym.
Searching Amazon US and UK for “souvenir tshirt” both had over 10000 results results.
IMHO Pratchett didn’t think tshirt sounded exotic enough and used singlet which sort of a tshirt and which the English audience would understand.
As far as the Dean, I believe he used studs to spell out Born to Rune on his robe.
One of my favorite things is the way that a children’s book becomes the most terrifying battle cry in the history of the world.
I don’t think the Guarding Dark so much a super power as an anthropomorphic manifestation (like Death) of the reality of Vimes life long habit of owning his darkness and choosing not to succumb to it.
It’s the same lesson of Granny Weatherwax.
And Solzhenitzyn.
There aren’t “good people” and “bad people” just people who moment to moment choose to do good or bad things.
The power to choose the good must be exercised like a muscle when its easy if you are going to draw on it when things are hard
And every goof gym rat knows workout buddies are a big help.
Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving despite too many vegetables and not enough bacon with BCBs.
“Been there, done that, bought the singlet” is a Discworld version of a Roundworld saying – just like Vimes being described as a “loose… siege weapon” in “Men at Arms”. Britain, like America, does have t-shirts, including souvenir t-shirts, and does call them t-shirts.
clothes in “Soul Music” for the Music With Rocks In fans would have included a T-shirt analogue, if anything before now did
Yes, they did – sold by, well, no prizes for guessing…
@20
A doublet was made of two layers of cloth, a singlet is made of a single layer of cloth. The former term referred particularly to an overgarment derived from quilted padding worn under armour, the latter originally referred to any kind of light single-layer garment, including what are now often called t-shirts, tank tops/singlets, and sun dresses.
I missed this post until just now. It wasn’t added to the “New in Series” sidebar on the website, nor was it added to https://www.tor.com/series/terry-pratchett-book-club/
I assumed it was late. Glad I finally found it, at least. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it.
@27 – Fixed, thanks!
<i>A doublet was made of two layers of cloth, a singlet is made of a single layer of cloth. The former term referred particularly to an overgarment derived from quilted padding worn under armour</i>
And still, along with the traditional gown and wig, being used by lawyers and judges in UK courts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_doublet
@29
Same root, different word. Doublet is a doublet of doublet.
Since wearing armour is still forbidden in the House of Commons, any protective clothing for the torso would qualify as an illegal doublet.
I did not love the ending of this book. We find out something new about history that changes how people behave today is a common trope in fantasy that I have never cared for. I don’t know any instance where something like that has happened in real life, atleast not in a short time frame. Maybe the genetic studies about the common origin of humanity in Africa has helped reduce racism over time, but it didn’t directly change anyone’s mind. If something like was found, Ardent’s group would instantly shift to talking about how it didn’t matter considering all the other times trolls had killed dwarfs and continue fighting. And somewhere along the line someone should have said that fighting interferes with making money which is their goal in Ankh. I don’t know, it was just too much – a small step like the king giving Deterius a sack of gold at the end of fifth elephant worked better for me.