The Anubis Gates
Tim Powers
BOOK ONE—The Face Under the Fur
PROLOGUE: FEBRUARY 2,1802
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
From between two trees at the crest of the hill a very old man watched, with a nostalgic longing he thought he’d lost all capacity for, as the last group of picnickers packed up their baskets, mounted their horses, and rode away south—they moved a little hastily, for it was a good six miles back to London, and the red sun was already silhouetting the branches of the trees along the River Brent, two miles to the west.
When they’d gone the old man turned around to watch the sun’s slow descent.
He had to walk carefully, for his Japanese clogs were awkward on the uneven dirt and grass.
Fires were already lit among the tents and wagons, and a weaving of wild odors whirled up to him on the cool evening breeze: a sharp, earthy reek from the tethered donkeys, wood smoke, and the aroma of roasting hedgehog, a dish his people particularly relished. Faintly, too, he thought he caught a whiff of stale breath from the crate that had arrived that afternoon—a musty fetor, as of perverse spices meant to elicit aversion rather than appetite, almost shockingly incongruous when carried on the clean breezes of Hampstead Heath. As he approached the cluster of tents he was met by a couple of the camp dogs; as always, they backed away from him when they recognized him, and one turned around and loped purposefully to the nearest tent; the other, with evident reluctance, escorted Amenophis Fikee into the camp.
Responding to the dog’s summons, a dark man in a striped corduroy coat stepped out of the tent and strode across the grass toward Fikee. Like the dogs, he halted well short of the old man. “Good evening, rya,” he said. “Will you eat some dinner? They’ve got a hotchewitchi on the fire, smells very kushto.”
“As kushto as hotchewitchi ever does smell, I suppose,” Fikee muttered absently. “But no, thank you. You all help yourselves.”
“Not I, rya—my Bessie always loved cooked hotchewitchi; so since she mullered I don’t eat it anymore.”
Fikee nodded, though he obviously hadn’t been listening. “Very well, Richard.” He paused as though hoping for an interruption, but none came. “When the sun is all the way down, have some of the chals carry that crate down the bank to the tent of Doctor Romany.”
The gypsy scratched his oiled moustache and shifted doubtfully. “The crate that the sailor chal brought today?”
“Which crate did you think I meant, Richard? Yes, that one.”
“The chals don’t like it, rya. They say there’s something in it mullo dusta beshes, dead many years.”
Amenophis Fikee frowned and pulled his cloak closer about himself. He had left the last rays of sunlight behind him at the top of the hill, and among these shadows his craggy face seemed to possess no more vitality than a stone or tree trunk. At last he spoke: “Well, what’s in it has seen dusta beshes, certainly—many many years.” He gave the timorous gypsy a smile that was like a section of hillside falling away to expose old white stone. “But it’s not mullo, I’m… I hope. Not quite mullo.”
This did nothing to reassure the gypsy, who opened his mouth to voice another respectful objection; but Fikee had turned away and was stalking through the clearing toward the riverbank, his cloak flapping behind him in the wind like the wing-case of some gigantic insect.
The gypsy sighed and slouched away toward one of the tents, practicing a limp that would, he hoped, earn him a dispensation from actually having to help carry the dreadful crate.
Fikee slowly picked his way along the darkening riverbank toward Doctor Romany’s tent. Except for the hoarse sighing of the breeze the evening was oddly silent. The gypsies seemed to realize that something momentous was in the wind tonight, and were slinking about as silently as their dogs, and even the lizards had stopped hopping and splashing among the riverside reeds.
The tent stood in a clearing, at the focus of enough lines and rigging—slung from every nearby tree—for a good-sized ship. The angling ropes, assisted by a dozen upright poles, supported the flapping, bulging, many- layered randomness of Romany’s tent. It looked, thought Fikee, like some huge nun in a particularly cold-weather habit, crouched beside the river in obscure devotion.
Ducking under a couple of ropes, he made his way to the entrance and lifted aside the curtain, and stepped through into the central room, blinking in the brightness that the dozen lamps cast on the draped carpets which formed the walls, floor and ceiling.
Doctor Romany stood up from a table, and Fikee felt a wave of hopeless envy. Why, Fikee asked venomously, hadn’t it been Romanelli who picked that short straw in Cairo last September? Fikee pulled off his drab cloak and hat and flung them in a corner. His bald head gleamed like imperfectly polished ivory in the lamplight.
Romany crossed the room, bobbing grotesquely on his high, spring-soled shoes, and gripped him by the hand. “It’s a great thing we—you—attempt tonight,” he said in a deep muted voice. “I only wish I could be here with you in person.”
