Longwell walked over to him, craning his neck left and right. “Did you hear a sort of boom that wasn’t from the fire?” he asked. “And where’d our mysterious guide go?”
“Back where he came from, evidently,” said Burghard. “And I hope it’s warmer there.” He cocked an eyebrow at Longwell. “Did you recognize the man that was out here waiting for Romany?”
“Matter of fact, Owen, it looked like the gypsy chief, Fikee.”
“Hm? Oh, certainly Fikee was here—but I meant the other one.”
“No, I didn’t get a look at him. Why, who was he?”
“Well, he looked like—but he’s supposed to be in Holland.” He gave Longwell a grin that had a lot of weariness but no mirth in it. “We’ll probably never know what, precisely, was going on here tonight.”
He stooped and picked up the black wooden box. Stowell trudged up, his boots crunching in the snow. “I shouldn’t have left you there, Brian,” Burghard told him. “I’m sorry—and glad the bearded man went back for you.”
“I don’t blame you,” said Stowell. “I thought I was beyond rescue myself.” He knuckled his eyes. “Hell of a pace. What have you got in the box?”
Burghard tossed it and caught it. “Magical work, I imagine.”
He wound up and pitched it through one of the heat-burst windows into the seething ruin.
* * *
Hobbling down an alley, trying to see with his one remaining eye, Doctor Romany wept with rage and frustration. He couldn’t remember who had hurt him or why, but he knew he was marooned now. And there was a message he needed to give to someone—it was urgent—but the message seemed to have run out of his head along with all the blood that he’d lost before he regained consciousness and scrawled a few basic sustaining cantrips in the snow. If he could have spoken a spell he might have been able to repair himself, but his jaw was shattered and half gone, and the written charms only just managed to keep him alive and conscious.
There was one thing, though, that he knew and was profoundly glad of: the man Doyle was dead. Romany had trapped him inside that inn, and when he’d furtively crawled away from the place where they’d left him for dead, he had looked back and seen the exitless inn burning so thoroughly that he knew nothing inside could still be alive.
His sense of balance was gone, and he was having a rough time walking on his spring-shoes. Well, he thought, I’m already an old ka—after a few decades of deterioration I’ll be so light that gravity will hardly have a grip on me anyway, and I’ll be able to dispense with the damned shoes. And written spells will sustain me until my face heals and I can speak again. With any luck I should be able to live my way back to 1810.
And, he thought, when 1810 rolls around at last, I’ll look up Mr. Brendan Doyle. In fact, in the meantime I think I’ll buy that lot where the burning inn stands, and in 1810 I’ll take Mr. Doyle there and show him his own ancient, charred skull.
A bubbling rattle that might have been a tortured sort of laughter issued from the lower half of his destroyed face.
After a few more steps he lost his balance again, and lurched against a wall and started to slide to the pavement then an arm caught him, bore him back up and supported him as he took another step. He turned his head around to let his good eye have a look at his benefactor, and somehow he wasn’t surprised to see that it was not a person at all, but a vaguely man-shaped, animated collection of wood that had evidently once been a table. Romany gratefully draped an arm around the stout board that was the thing’s shoulder, and without a word, for neither of them was capable of speech, they made their way on down the alley.
CHAPTER 10
—Cardan’s Hyperchen
Doyle’s bare feet hit a desk after so short a fall that he barely had to flex his knees to stay upright. He was in a tent, and as a man suddenly awakened from a nightmare gradually and with mounting relief recognizes the details of his own bedroom, Doyle remembered where he’d seen this desk and litter of papers, candles and statues—he was in Doctor Romany’s gypsy tent. And, he noted as he hopped down from the desk, he was stark naked; thank God it was hot here. Clearly he’d returned to 1810.
He crossed to the tent flap and pulled it slightly open just in time to see a couple of giant skeletal figures, as faintly luminous as after-images on the retina, running in slow motion behind the burning tents; they faded to nothing, so quickly that he wasn’t sure he’d even seen them. The only sound, aside from the quiet crackle of the fires, was incongruously merry piano and accordion music from the north end of camp.
He let the flap fall shut, then rummaged around in the litter until he found a belted robe and some high-soled sandals, which he put on, a clean scarf to knot around his still bleeding foot, and a scabbarded sword. Feeling a little better equipped, he left the tent.
Footsteps approached from his left. He drew the sword and turned toward them and found himself facing the old gypsy, Damnable Richard, who gaped at him in surprise and then leaped backward, snatching a dagger out of his sash.
Doyle lowered his point to the dirt. “You’re in no danger from me, Richard,” he said quietly. “I owe you my life… as well as several drinks. How’s your monkey?”
The gypsy’s eyebrows were as high on his forehead as they could be. After several indecisive wobbles his dagger-hand relaxed to his side. “Why… very kushto, thankee, and all the better for your concern,” he said uncertainly. “Uh… where’s Doctor Romany?”
On the cool evening breeze the music from the north slowed and took on a melancholy tone. “He’s gone,” said Doyle. “I don’t think you’ll ever see him again.”
Richard nodded, assimilating this, then put his dagger away, pulled his monkey out of a pocket and whispered the news to it. “Thank you,” he said finally, looking up at Doyle again. “Now I must go and gather my poor scattered people.” He started away, but after a few steps he paused and turned, and by the light of the burning tent Doyle saw his teeth flash in a grin. “I guess you gorgios aren’t always stupid,” he said, then started away again.
The tent Doyle had exited was now burning thoroughly and sending glowing patches of tent fabric whirling up into the clear night sky. Remembering the chamber pot that had shrapnelled over his head, Doyle gingerly felt his hair—but it seemed clean, and it occurred to him that he must have left the befoulment back in 1684 along with the borrowed clothes.
“Ashbless!” someone yelled from away to the right, and it took a moment for Doyle to remember that he was Ashbless. It must be Byron, he thought. Or, he amended, the Byron ka.
“Here, my lord, “he called.
Byron came limping up out of the shadows, glaring around and holding his dagger ready. “Here you are,” he said. He looked more closely at him. “What are you wearing the robe and odd shoes for?”
“It’s… a long story,” said Doyle, sheathing his sword. “Let’s get out of here—I need to find a pair of trousers and a long, strong drink.”
“Oh?” Byron blinked. “But what of the fire giants? Have they gone?”
“Yes. Romany consumed them, used them up to fuel a bolt-hole spell of his.”
“Spells,” Byron said disgustedly, then spat. “Where is he now, then?”
“Gone,” said Doyle. “Dead by now, almost certainly.”
“Damn. I had hoped to kill him myself.” He eyed Doyle suspiciously. “You seem to know an awful lot about it. And how did you manage to lose your trousers in the few minutes since I last saw you?”
