The Anubis Gates (35 page)

“Yes, damn it. Did you see where he went?”

After patting and prying at his clothes with diminishing dread, the young man began shivering. “I m-must get back,” he said, getting stiffly to his feet. “Devilish cold. Oh, aye, ye wanted to know where he went.”

“Yes.” Doyle was almost tap-dancing on the cobblestones in a fit of shivering. His right ankle was numb, and he was afraid that the trailing chain would freeze solid with his skin.

Sammy sniffed again. “He leapt over the house there into the next street.”

Doyle cocked his head to hear better. “What?”

“He jumped over that house, like a grasshopper.” Sniff. “He had metal coils on the bottoms of his shoes,” Sammy added by way of explanation.

“Ah. Well… thank you.” Obviously Romany hypnotized this boy with both barrels, Doyle reflected. And in only seconds! Better not let the fact that he seems to be afraid of you make you overconfident if you run into him. “Oh, by the way,” he said as the boy began shuffling away, “where are we? I’m lost.”

“Borough High Street. Southwark.” Doyle raised his eyebrows. “London?”

“Well of course London,” the boy said, beginning to jog in place impatiently.

“Uh, and what’s the year? The date?”

“Lord, mister, I don’t know. It’s winter, that’s certain.” He turned and hurried away back toward the inn.

“Who is king?” Doyle called after him.

“Charles!” came the over the shoulder reply.

Charles the whichth, thought Doyle. “Who was king before him?” he shouted after the disappearing figure.

Sammy chose not to hear him, but there was the snap and creak of a window being pushed open above him. “Oliver the Blessed,” called a man’s voice irritably, “and when he ruled, there beed not such street clamors at night.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Doyle hastily, turning his cold-stung eyes upward and trying to spot which one of the dozen small paned windows was slightly open. “I’m suffering from a,” why not, he thought, “from a brain fever, and I’ve lost my memory. I have nowhere to go. Could you let me sleep until dawn in the kitchen, or toss me down a more substantial coat? I—”

He heard the window bang closed, and the latch scritch tight, though he still hadn’t spotted which one it was. Typical Cromwellian, he thought, heaving a sigh that sailed away as a small cloud. So, he thought as he slouched onward, I’m somewhere between, uh, 1660 and—what? When did Charles II die? Around 1690, I think. This is worse still. At least in 1810 I had the chance of finding Darrow’s men and going home with them, or, failing that, to accept what fate seemed to have groomed me for and live out my life in fair comfort as William Ashbless. (Damnation, it’s cold.) You idiot—why didn’t you do that? Just write out Ashbless’ poems from memory, visit Egypt, and let the modest fame and fortune—and pretty wife, even—roll in. But no, instead you had to go bothering sorcerers, and so now history’s deprived of William Ashbless, and you’re stuck in a damn century when nobody brushed their teeth or took baths, and a man is middle-aged at thirty.

He happened to be glancing up when a bizarre figure swooped diagonally across the narrow strip of sky visible between the overhanging rooftops—it was silhouetted for an instant against the nearly full moon—and he leaped backward out of the street, huddling against the stones of the nearest wall, though he knew he must be invisible down among the shadows, for the impossibly high-bounding figure had been Doctor Romany, unmistakable even for a moment and at a distance with his bald head, flapping robe and the bottom sole of each shoe flying two feet behind him on the fully extended springs.

As his upward momentum disappeared and he felt gravity’s first faint cobweb net begin to coax him back down, and as the nearer rooftops began to rise again, blotting out the frosted splendor of the tall houses along the length of London Bridge and the motionless white river that lay under it. Doctor Romany realized that his leaps were not as high now as they had been several minutes ago, and his envelope of agitated air was losing its integrity and letting the intense chill in at him. This was not really an increase in his powers, but just his usual magical strength extending farther in the more archaic, and therefore more conducive to sorcery, environment—and already the effect was beginning to wear off. This is like, he thought as he flexed his legs against an outcropping gable and did a slow somersault down toward the cobblestones, a man finding his customary sword light after practicing for hours with a very heavy one: the sword is actually as heavy as ever, and the delusion of new strength soon disappears. This apparent increase in my powers probably won’t last the night… and the gate at that inn we disrupted will close at about dawn.

Therefore,
he thought as he arrested his slow fall by draping an arm around the shoulder of an inn sign shaped like a dancing blackamoor,
I shall have to get word to Fikee and the Master as soon as possible, tell them who I am and why I’m here.

One of the fine dinners this will be, thought Ezra Longwell, who always relished the excellent food the Brotherhood provided for its members. He refilled his glass of port from the bottle near the hearth—in this grim winter even champagnes had to sit for half an hour by the fire before they were served, and clarets and fortified wines needed a full hour and a half. As he sipped the still chilly wine he crossed to the little Tudor window, which the kitchen heat had kept unfrosted. He wiped the steam off it with his sleeve and peered out.

West of the bridge, lights twinkled among the clustered booths and tents of the frost fair that stretched across the iced-over river from the Temple Stairs to the Surrey shore. Skaters whirling lanterns raced merrily across the ice like rockets or shooting stars, but Longwell was glad to be indoors and looking forward to a hot meal.

He stepped away from the window and with one last affectionate look at the steaming pots—”Deal gently with those admirable sawfages!” he told the stout kitchen mistress—he walked out through the hall to the dining room, the fine chain on his ankle rattling faintly on the boards of the floor.

Owen Burghard looked up and smiled as Longwell entered the room. “And how is the ‘sixty-eight bearing up, Ezra?”

Longwell reddened as he crossed to his customary chair, aware of the amused glances he was getting from the other members. “Not too badly,” he said gruffly as the chair creaked under his weight, “though too damn cold.”

“The better to temper your sanguine humors, Ezra,” said Burghard, returning his attention to the chart on the table. He tapped the right-hand edge with the stem of his clay pipe and said, in his not quite pedantic manner, “So you see, gentlemen, that these periods of increased activity on the part of Fikee’s band of gypsies—”

He was interrupted by a heavy pounding on the door.

In an instant all of them were on their feet, hands on sword hilts and pistol butts, and each one of them had automatically flicked the chain trailing from his right boot before standing up, as though the free play of the chain was as vital as a weapon.

Burghard crossed to the door, drew the bolt and stepped back. “It’s not locked,” he said.

The door opened, and all eyebrows went up as what would appear to be a giant from Norse mythology lurched into the room. He was shockingly tall, more so even than the King, who stood a full two yards, and his peculiarly cut and unseasonably thin coat did nothing to conceal his broad shoulders and muscular arms. His ice-crusted beard made him look ancient. “If you’ve got a fire,” this frost apparition croaked in a barbarous accent, “and any kind of hot drink…” He swayed, and Longwell feared that the books would be shaken from their shelves if this monster were to topple over.

Then Burghard had gasped, pointing at the intruder’s right boot—from which an ice-clogged length of chain trailed across the floor—and rushed to support him. “Beasley!” he snapped. “Help me with him. Ezra, coffee and brandy, haste!” Burghard and Beasley helped the faltering, half-frozen man across the floor to the bench in front of the dining room fire.

When Longwell brought a big mug of fortified coffee, the giant just inhaled the pungent steam for a while before taking a sip. “Ah,” he breathed at last, putting the coffee down beside him and spreading his hands before the blaze. “I thought I was going to die out there. Are your winters always this bad?”

Burghard frowned and glanced at the others. “Who are you, sir, and how did you come here?”

“I heard you used to—that you meet in a house on the south end of the bridge. At the first place I knocked they wouldn’t let me in, but they gave me directions to get here. As to who I am, you can call me—well hell, I can’t think of a name that would do. But I came here,” and a smile split the haggard face, “because I knew I would. I think you’re the hounds I need to help me catch my fox. There’s a sorcerer called Doctor Romany—”

“Do you mean Doctor Romanelli?” asked Burghard. “We know of him.”

“You do? This far upstream? Good God. Well, Romanelli has a twin, called Romany, who has jumped—I think I may say by sorcerous means?—to your London. He must be caught and induced to return to… where he belongs. And with any luck he can be made to take me back with him.”

“A twin? A ka I’ll wager you mean,” said Longwell, longing up a coal from the grate and setting it carefully into the newly packed bowl of his pipe. “Would you like a pipe?”

“Lord, yes,” said Doyle, accepting from him a fragile white clay pipe and a bag of tobacco. “What do you mean, a ka?”

Burghard squinted at Doyle. “You’re a damn puzzling mix of knowledge and ignorance, sir, and sometime I would relish hearing your own story. For example, you are wearing a connection chain but don’t seem to know much about us, and you know of Doctor Romanelli but don’t know what a ka is or how it happens that this winter is so savage.” He smiled, though a calculating glint remained in his deceptively mild-looking eyes. He ran his fingers through his short-cropped, thinning hair. “In any case, a ka is a duplicate of a human, grown, in a vat full of a special solution, from as little as a few drops of the original person’s blood. If the procedure be done rightly, the duplicate will not only resemble the original in every particular, but will have, too, all the knowledge that the original had.”

Doyle had stuffed his pipe with the dry tobacco and now lit it the same way Longwell had. “Yes, I suppose Romany might be such a thing,” he said, puffing smoke and letting the fire melt the ice out of his beard. His eyes widened. “Ah, and I believe I know another man who is probably a… ka, also. Poor devil. I’m sure he doesn’t know.”

“Do you know of Amenophis Fikee?” asked Burghard.

Doyle looked around at the company, wondering how much he dared disclose. “He is, will be or has been the chief of a band of gypsies.”

“Aye, he is. Why all the was’s and shall-be’s?”

“Never mind. Anyway, gentlemen, this ka of Doctor Romanelli is here in London tonight, and he’s armed with knowledge no one here should have, and he needs to be found and driven back to where he belongs.”

“And you want to go back with him,” said Burghard.

“Right.”

“Why employ such a perilous, albeit quick, means of travel?” asked Burghard. “By ship and horse or donkey you could be anywhere in six months.”

Doyle sighed. “I gather that you function as a sort of… magical police force,” he began.

Burghard smiled and winced at the same time. “Not precisely, sir. What we’re paid by certain wealthy and savvy lords to do is prevent sorcerous treason. We employ not magic but the negation of magic.”

“I see.” Doyle laid down his pipe on the hearth. “If I tell you the story,” he said carefully, “and you agree that this Romany creature is a—let’s say direly powerful—menace to London and England and the world, will you help me catch him and then not hinder my return—if it’s even possible—to where I belong?”

“You have my word,” said Burghard quietly.

Doyle stared at the man for several seconds while the fire popped and crackled in the silence. “Very well,” he rumbled at last. “I’ll make it quick, for we must act soon, and I believe I know where he’ll be for the next hour or so. He and I jumped here by some magical process or other, but not from another place, such as Turkey. We jumped from… another time. The last morning I saw was that of September the twenty-sixth, in the year 1810.”

Longwell burst into a gale of laughter which ceased when Burghard raised his hand.

“Go on,” he said.

“Well, it seems that something has—” He paused, for he’d noticed a leather-bound book on the table, and though now it was new, and the 1684 stamped in gold on the spine gleamed brightly, he recognized it and stood up and crossed to it. A pen lay beside an inkwell ready to hand, and, grinning, he dipped the pen in the ink, flipped to the last page and scrawled across it, “IHAY, ENDANBRAY. ANCAY OUYAY IGITDAY?”

“What did you write?” asked Burghard.

Doyle dismissed the question with an impatient wave. “Gentlemen, something has broken holes in the structure of time… “

Only fifteen minutes later a band of a dozen men, bundled up against the extreme cold, filed out of the old building’s street door and hurried away south down the narrow bridge street toward the Surrey shore. There was room between the ancient houses to walk two abreast, but they moved in single file. Doyle was the second man in line, right behind the cloaked figure of Burghard, whose stride Doyle was able to match easily, even with the unaccustomed angular bulk of a sheathed sword bumping his right thigh. The thin streak of yellow light thrown by Burghard’s dark lantern was the only illumination, for the darkness was absolute in the dark defile of the street, though several storeys overhead the moonlight frosted the ragged roofs and the web of stout crossbeams meant to keep the unsteady old buildings from falling against each other. The bridge was silent except for the occasional rattle of an ankle chain against a cobblestone, and from away to his right Doyle could faintly hear music and shouted laughter.

“Here,” whispered Burghard, stepping into an alley and turning his light on a wooden framework that Doyle realized was a stairway leading down. “No sense announcing our coming by marching through the south gate.”