The Anubis Gates

The yelling grew louder still, and she could hear a fast wooden knocking, and then from out of one of the farther tunnels burst Horrabin, completely ablaze and running on his stilts, flanked and followed by what seemed to be a horde of bounding, chittering rats; a moment later his pursuers skidded around the same corner and came bounding after him, flinging rocks and baying like hounds.

Jacky looked back at the stairs, and dimly saw two men crouching just outside the archway, aiming some sort of guns at the approaching rout. No help in that direction, she thought. In desperation she flung herself down against the wall with one arm over her face, in the faint hope of being mistaken for a corpse by all parties.

The two guns went off with one prolonged roar and a flash that brightened the tunnel for a full second, and as stone chips flew from the walls and ceiling, the burning clown rocked to a stop—but caught his balance, evidently unhurt by the blasts; their impact did, though, stop him long enough for his bestial pursuers to catch up with him.

A number of the Spoonsize Boys and their foot-tall counter-parts had been blown away by the sprays of shot, but the survivors turned and flung themselves into the faces of the ravening Mistakes, who had knocked the flaming, screaming clown over against the wall and were tearing at his legs with mud-stained claws. The miniature men leaped right in past the talons of the Mistakes and drove their little swords into eyes and throats and ears, totally careless of their own survival; but the Mistakes were fighting to the death and were willing to risk the blades of the Spoonsize Boys, and a scorching, in order to get close enough to Horrabin to take a bite out of any reachable part of him with muddied teeth, or to pull one of the stilts farther out from under him.

The lunatic spectacle was taking place only a few yards in front of Jacky, and she couldn’t help lifting her head a little to watch. The blackened, whimpering clown wasn’t burning as brightly as before, but there was still enough flame to see some individual struggles: Jacky saw one of the Mistakes, a poodle-sized thing with tentacles all over it and both eyes ruined by the homunculi’s swords, latch a toothy mouth onto Horrabin’s clutching right hand, and, with a horrible snapping, bite most of it off; and a couple of things like unshelled snails, dying under the fierce attentions of a dozen of the little men, had got in between the wall and the left stilt, and managed with their last, expiring efforts to push it out past the supporting point, so that the clown came crashing down onto them; most of the light went out when Horrabin hit the floor, so that all Jacky could see was a heaving, tortured mass of dying shapes, and all she could hear was an ever-weaker chorus of gasps, crunchings, whimpers and long, rattling exhalations. A nasty smell like burning garbage choked the tunnel.

Jacky got up and ran past the mass of death, deeper into the maze, and after twenty paces in the darkness she lost her footing and tumbled, and when she slid to a dazed stop a hand closed firmly on her wrist.

She writhed around, wondering if she had the strength left to strangle something, but she halted when she heard her unseen companion’s voice. “I say, excuse me. Sir Thought or Whimsy or Fugitive Virtue, but could you possibly direct me to the waking levels of my mind?”

* * *

Ashbless had been dimly aware for some time that he was lying in the bottom of a boat that was being weakly rowed by Doctor Romanelli, but he came fully awake one more time when he noticed that the surface he was lying on had changed. The last time he’d been aware of it, it had been hard, angular wood, but now it seemed to be soft leather stretched loosely over some kind of flexible ribs. He opened his eye and was mildly surprised to find that he could see, though there was no light. The boat was passing through a vast ruinous hall, along the walls of which stood upright sarcophagi that shone with an intense blackness.

He heard Romanelli gasp, and looked in his direction. The gaunt sorcerer too shone in the anti-light; he was staring in awe at something over Ashbless’ shoulder. Ashbless dragged an elbow under himself and managed to turn his head, and saw several tall, dim figures standing at the stern, and a little shrine in the center of the boat, encircled by a snake with its tail in its mouth, and in the shrine stood a man-high disk that blazed so darkly with the radiant blackness that it hurt Ashbless’ eye, and he had to look away; though he thought he had seen dimly the pattern of a kephera beetle inscribed on the disk. When he could see again he noticed that Romanelli was smiling with relief, and that tears were slicking his eroded cheeks.