The Anubis Gates

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.