The Anubis Gates

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.