The Anubis Gates

the trapdoor. Boaz was already down the ladder, and he impatiently guided Stowell’s feet onto the rungs as he descended, followed closely by Doyle, who pulled the trapdoor closed over them. A moment later all three of them stood on a stone floor, peering about at the barrels and boxes dimly visible in the radiance of the two sparkling boot chains.

“French wine I was saving,” said the innkeeper shortly, nodding at a stack of crates. He sighed. “Come this way, past the onions.” As they left the cellar and made their way down a narrow stone corridor, Doyle asked, speaking instinctively in a whisper, “Why did you have this bolt-hole ready?”

“Never you mind why—oh, what the hell. Further on the sewer’s broad enough to row a boat up from the river. Sometimes it’s prudent not to trouble the Customs House about a taxable shipment… and occasionally a patron wants to leave, but not by a visible door.”

Here I go leaving by another invisible door, Doyle thought. When they’d gone about forty paces down the tunnel the boot chains dimmed and went out.

“We’re out of the magic sphere,” Stowell muttered.

“Like enough ‘twas the damned chains set the place ablaze,” Boaz growled. “But here we are—you can see the moonlight through the grating.”

The tunnel floor crowded up against the ceiling below the sewer grating, and Doyle, his knees bent, braced his shoulder against the iron bars. He grinned sideways at Boaz. “Let’s hope I’m better at ripping up sewers than crushing pewter mugs.” Then his face lost all expression as he strained with all his strength to straighten up.

* * *

The fact of the matter, thought the shivering Duke of Monmouth as he stepped closer to the conveniently burning inn, is that I don’t truly need these sorcerers—or their damned forged marriage certificate. I’ve told Fikee that I’ve every reason to believe that my mother really was documentably married to King Charles, by the Bishop of Lincoln, at Liege. Why doesn’t he try to find the real marriage certificate?

He pursed his lips—which, to his chagrin, were unattractively chapped—for he knew the answer, and didn’t like it. It was plain that Fikee didn’t believe Monmouth was the rightful successor to the throne; and therefore his efforts couldn’t be interpreted as simple patriotic concern. The sneaking sorcerer must be relying on favors and influence from me when I’m properly crowned, he thought. And I suppose the main favor would be the one he’s been agitating for for years: the abandonment of all British interests in Tangier. I wonder, thought Monmouth, why Fikee is so determined to prevent any European power from gaining a toehold in Africa.

He looked toward the artificially tall Fikee, who was standing a few feet away, holding the black box that contained the forgery. “What are we waiting for, wizard?”

“Shut up, can’t you?” Fikee snapped, not taking his eyes off the burning building. Suddenly he pointed. “Ah! There!”

A burning man had come bounding around the corner of the building, springing an impossible three yards with each step, hotly pursued by two men who also seemed to be partially afire—at least there was a lot of sparking around their boots.

Fikee started forward just as one of the pursuers flung himself forward in a flying tackle that knocked the burning man off his feet and tumbling through the snow.

A gallant rescue, thought Monmouth. But then the fat man scrambled over to the stunned and still partially flaming figure, and Monmouth gasped to see him draw a dagger and drive it down at the man’s chest—but the blade snapped off, and the two men in the snow fell to wrestling savagely.

Another few steps and I’m at them, thought Fikee as he ran awkwardly toward the prone figures. This may prosper us yet, for though the wizard must be in awful agony lying on the abdicated ground, these interfering men certainly can’t kill him with fire or steel—or lead, he added, for he’d just seen the lagging pursuer pull from under his cloak a wide-muzzled pistol.

Burghard knew a gunshot couldn’t kill a wizard—especially not inside a magic sphere—any more than Longwell’s idiotic dagger thrust, but he’d just seen Doctor Romany reach out and actually grasp Longwell’s boot chain—the hand sizzled audibly, and the wizard howled with the pain—and with a wrench pull it right off. There was only an instant in which to distract Doctor Romany from blasting the defenseless Longwell, and Burghard rushed up, shoved the gun’s muzzle in Romany’s face even as the wizard was opening his mouth to speak some devastating spell, and pulled the trigger.

Doctor Romany’s face disintegrated like a kicked sand castle, and he tumbled back onto the blood-sprayed snow.

Both Burghard and Amenophis Fikee froze, staring in astonishment at the sprawled and motionless form, and in that instant the Duke of Monmouth, fearful of being involved in a murder trial when his father the king had forbidden him even to set foot in the country, turned and ran.

Slowly Burghard reached out and knocked the black box out of Fikee’s grasp.

When Doyle had gotten to twenty-eight in the thirty-second count that, he figured, would take him to the end of his endurance, the iron frame that had been biting into his shoulder suddenly burst up from its moorings with a metallic clang and a rattle of broken mortar on the cobblestones of the street above. Doyle flung the grating away and hopped out of the sewer. He reached back down and grabbed the innkeeper’s wrist and hauled him up onto the pavement, then did the same for Stowell.

“Did you hear some noises while I was straining at that?” he asked Stowell. “I thought I did.”

“Aye,” gasped Stowell, rubbing his shoulder, “a scream and a shot.”

“Let’s get back there.”

They sprinted back the way they’d come, over the pavement this time, and after a few steps Doyle could feel his ankle chain heating up again. Wearily he dragged the sword out of his belt.

But when they rounded the corner of the burning building it was a played out scene that met their eyes. Burghard and Longwell were sitting in the middle of the street, watching the fire. Burghard was idly tossing and catching a small black box, but it fell forgotten to the cobbles and he leaped to his feet when he saw the sooty trio coming toward him. “How in God’s name did you get out?” he cried. “Your wizard pulled down all the doorways a second after we got outside.”

“Out through the sewer from the cellar,” croaked Doyle, swaying as the evening’s full measure of exhaustion began to catch up with him. “Where’s Romany?”

“I killed him somehow,” said Burghard. “I think he had some allies waiting for him out front here, but they fled when I shot him. We dragged him across the street out of the magical bubble—”

“Did you search him?” Doyle interrupted anxiously, wondering how much longer the gap field might continue, if indeed it hadn’t closed already.

“All he had about him was this paper—”

Doyle snatched the damp and darkly stained piece of paper from Burghard, gave it a quick glance, then looked up again. “Where’d you drag his body to?”

“Over yonder under that—” Burghard pointed, then his eyes widened in horror. “My God, he’s gone! But I blew his whole face off!”

Doyle slumped. “He must have faked it. I don’t think they can be killed with guns.”

“I didn’t think so either,” said Burghard, “but I saw his face blow to bits when I fired Boaz’s gun at him! Damn it, I’m not some stripling claiming kills I didn’t make! Longwell, you saw—”

“Wait a moment,” said Doyle. “The gun that fell in the mud?”

“Aye, that’s the one. I’m lucky it didn’t burst in my hand, it was so clogged with dirt.”

Doyle nodded. A barrelful of mud, he thought, might indeed have given Romany a terrible injury, while a pistol ball would not. It had to do with their aversion to touching the ground. He opened his mouth to explain it to Burghard, but at that moment all the light went out and Doyle fell away, as it seemed to him, right through the earth and out into starless space on the other side.

After the implosive thump, Burghard stared for a few moments at the empty space where Doyle had stood, and at the pile of empty clothes that had flopped and fluttered onto the snow there. Then he looked around.