remarkably human display of dismayed panic, run out the open front door.
Though the purple fireballs had started a small fire or two among the tossed and scattered kindling, the chandeliers had subsided to their normal radiance and the acrid smoke had largely dissipated. “He’s on the premises somewhere,” Burghard gasped. “Let’s try the kitchen—and stay together.” He started forward.
“Wait,” came a chorus of flat voices, followed by a shuffling and knocking as Boaz and a dozen of his luckless patrons were drawn erect by the ectoplasmic umbilicus attached to their heads. Several of them drew swords and daggers, and the rest—including a couple of matronly ladies—picked up heavy, club-length pieces of lumber.
Doyle looked up at the intersection of all the white funnels, and saw that the lump that had grown on the ceiling there was now formed into a huge eyeless face, and the puppet-string tentacles all trailed out of its gaping, flap-lipped mouth.
“Doyle,” said all of the people in weird unison, “gather the remnants of your men and try to find a retreat so obscure that my wrath can’t follow.”
“Right, Burghard,” said Doyle, trying hard to keep hysteria from shrilling his voice, “a wizard in a hurry would head for the kitchen—where there’d be fire and boiling water and whatnot all just waiting for him.”
Doyle, Burghard, Longwell and the other remaining member, a short, stocky fellow, made a dash for the kitchen, but were instantly blocked by the innkeeper and diners.
Doyle ducked under a fat lady’s swing and managed to rap the board out of her hands with his sword pommel a moment before parrying a sword point that was rushing at his chest. His body automatically lunged forward in a riposte, and only at the last possible instant did he override the reflex and turn his sword to drive the knuckle guard, rather than the lethal point, into the belly of his puppet attacker.
The old lady had danced around behind him, and with a crabapple fist gave Doyle a hard punch in the kidney. He roared with pain and spun, kicking her legs out from under her, and as she tumbled he whirled his blade in a horizontal arc that snicked right through the white snake attached to her head—both ends shrivelled away, and the long end snapped up elastically and slapped the ceiling before being slurped like disgusting spaghetti into the now- grinning mouth. The fallen lady began snoring.
Though attacking with concentrated skill and attention, the erstwhile diners were muttering like sleep- walkers; one man who backed Doyle into a corner with a fast and deceptive series of sword thrusts—the instinctive parrying of which made Doyle profoundly thankful that Steerforth Benner had studied fencing—was saying in the most reasonable conversational tone, “… Might simply have asked before throwing it away, that’s all I’m claiming, and it seems to me if either of us has a right to be peeved… “
“… Why it’s me, my dear,” the man went on calmly, aiming a jackhammer kick which Doyle leaped over, “for it was my most treasured doublet… “
Two more jabbering, placid-faced men were rushing at him with bared swords, and not caring to have an enemy at his rear, Doyle lashed out backhanded at the trolley wire of the man who felt he had a right to be peeved; the blow had no force to it, and rebounded from the white cord, but the man screeched, leaped like a wounded rabbit and then dropped to the floor. Doyle whipped his sword back into line just as the two attackers made their final bounds, swords up and points aimed at Doyle’s chest.
Doyle flung himself to the right, parrying that man’s blade in a low quinte, and let himself keep falling forward into a sort of three-point crouch, catching himself with the fingertips of his right hand spread on the floor as he let his sword rebound from the parry back up into line, the point over his head; and he’d no sooner got the point up than the other man ran onto it, his own sword transfixing the empty air where Doyle’s torso had been a second ago.
The first man had recovered and stepped back, ready to drive his point into Doyle’s face—”If the damnable cat would just decide whether she wants to be inside,” he was saying quietly—and Doyle pulled hard sideways on his sword, toppling the dying man into the way of the thrust. “… or outside,” the first man continued as his sword chugged deep into his companion’s back.
He heard the stick clatter on flagstones… and he had just decided the move had failed when there was a deep whoosh and an orange flash from the kitchen and the puppet people screamed in perfect unison, like a dozen radios all tuned to the same signal, then dropped their weapons, looked around with expressions of horror, and all but Boaz the innkeeper bolted for the door.
The ectoplasm tentacles dangled limp and unconnected, and a moment later the huge white face tore loose from the ceiling with a loud sucking sound and fell through the smoky air to splat horribly on the floor. Doyle leaped over it and sprinted toward the burning kitchen, closely followed by Burghard and a limping and swearing Longwell. Boaz ran to a shelf of glasses, swept them clanging and shattering to the floor, pulled a cloth-wrapped bundle from the back of the shelf and, untying it with trembling fingers, hurried after them.
Doyle bounded through the kitchen doorway whirling his sword in a wild figure eight in front of him—but Doctor Romany was gone. Doyle skidded to a halt on the dirt floor and looked around at first with caution, then with amazement—for though the kitchen was splashed with smokily blazing oil, he could see that the shelves, benches, tables and even the stone fireplace were all warped, pulled toward the center of the room as though they were forms painted on a taut sheet of rubber that had been pushed far in at the middle.
Burghard piled into Doyle from behind, and Longwell and the raging innkeeper, who was juggling the bell- muzzled flintlock pistol he had unwrapped, bumped into Burghard. Boaz dropped the gun, and it fell muzzle down in a muddy corner.
“Guerlay is dead,” Burghard panted. “I want this Doctor Romany.”
The innkeeper had retrieved his gun and was waving the mud-fouled muzzle in all directions and demanding to know if the Duke of York would reimburse him for the destruction of his inn.
“Aye, damn it,” snapped Burghard, “he’ll buy you a new one anywhere you please. Give me that before you kill somebody,” he added, snatching the gun away. “Where does that doorway go? “
“A hall,” answered Boaz grudgingly. “Right to the rooms, left to the stables out back.”
“Very well, let’s search—”
Suddenly the fires began to burn more furiously, so that instead of flames there was a static radiance, its glare moving up from yellow-orange to white, and for the second time that night Doyle was gasping in baking, oxygen-depleted air.
“He’s doing this from outside!” Burghard choked. “Run!”
Burghard and Longwell stumbled into the hall. Doyle moved to follow, then remembered the unconscious Stowell, and ran back into the dining room, which was also burning at a ferociously accelerated rate.
Stowell was sitting up, blinking in the white light, and Doyle crossed to him, yanked him upright, and propelled him toward the open front door.
Stowell reeled back, though, when the flaring lintel gave way in a swirl of white sparks and dropped half a ton of tumbling masonry and lumber onto the doorstep.
“No good!” yelled Doyle. “Back to the kitchen!” He grabbed Stowell’s shoulder and dragged the dazed man along. “Look out, it’s an oven in here,” he said as he braced himself before entering the incandescent kitchen. Then they lurched and bumped through, beating out sparks that sprang up on their clothing and Doyle’s beard, and burst at last into the relative coolness of the hallway beyond. “There should be a door here,” croaked Doyle—then he noticed that the leftward end of the hall was a slope of smoldering rubble. “Jesus,” he whispered hopelessly.
“Hist!” Doyle turned toward the sound, and at this point wasn’t very surprised to see the stout innkeeper’s head sitting up on the floor blinking at him. Then he realized that the man was neck-deep in a hole.
“Hither, you fools!” Boaz cried. “Into the cellar! It connects to a sewer in the next street—though why I should be saving bastards of the goddamned Antaeus Brotherhood… “
Doyle snapped out of his stupor and, pushing the half-stunned Stowell along in front of him, hurried over to
