The Anubis Gates

A wild and agonized howl brought Doctor Romany to his feet; the sound rebounded among the trees by the river for several seconds, and when it had died he could hear a gypsy fearfully muttering protective cantrips. No further sounds issued from the tent, and Romany let out his breath and resumed his crouching position. Good luck, Amenophis, he thought—I’d say “may the gods be with you,” but that’s what you’re deciding right now. He shook his head uneasily.

When the French came into power it had seemed like the end of any hope of restoring the old order, and their Master had, by hard-wrought sorcerous manipulation of wind and tides, lent subtle aid to the British admiral Nelson when he destroyed the French fleet less than two weeks later. But then the French occupation turned to their Master’s advantage; the French curtailed the arrogant power of the Mameluke Beys, and in 1800 drove out the Turkish mercenaries who’d been strangling the country. And the general who took command of Cairo when Napoleon returned to France, Kleber, didn’t interfere with their Master’s political intrigues and his efforts to lure the Moslem and Coptic population back into the old pantheist worship of Osiris, Isis, Horus and Ra. It looked, in fact, as though the French occupation would do for Egypt what Jenner’s cowpox was evidently doing now for human bodies: substituting a manageable infection, which could be easily eliminated after a while, for a deadly one that would relent only upon the death of the host.

Then, of course, it began to go wrong. Some lunatic from Aleppo stabbed Kleber to death in a Cairo street, and in the ensuing months of confusion the British took up the slack; by September of 1801 Kleber’s inept successor had capitulated to the British in Cairo and Alexandria. The British were in, and a single week saw the arrest of a dozen of the Master’s agents. The new British governor even found reason to close the temples to the old gods that the Master had had erected outside the city.

In desperation their Master sent for his two oldest and most powerful lieutenants, Amenophis Fikee from England and Doctor Monboddo Romanelli from Turkey, and unveiled to them the plan that, though fantastic to a degree that suggested senility in the ancient man, was, he insisted, the only way to scorch England from the world picture and restore Egypt’s eons-lost ascendancy.

They had met him in the huge chamber in which he lived, alone except for his ushabtis, four life-size wax statues of men. From his peculiar ceiling perch he had begun by pointing out that Christianity, the harsh sun that had steamed the life-juices out of the now all but dry husk of sorcery, was at present veiled by clouds of doubt arising from the writings of people like Voltaire and Diderot and Godwin.

Romanelli, as impatient with the antique magician’s extended metaphors as he was with most things, broke in to ask bluntly how all this might aid in evicting the British from Egypt.

“There is a magical procedure—” the Master began.

“Magic!” Romanelli had interrupted, as scornfully as he dared. “These days we’d get headaches and double vision—not to mention losing about five pounds—if we tried to charm a pack of street dogs out of our way; and even then as likely as not it’d go awry and they’d all simply drop dead where they stood. It’s easier to shout and wave a stick at them. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten how you suffered after playing with the weather at the Bay of Aboukeer three years ago. Your eyes withered up like dates left too long in the sun, and your legs—!”

“As you say, I haven’t forgotten,” said the Master coldly, turning those partially recovered eyes on Romanelli, who involuntarily shivered, as always, before the almost imbecilic hatred that burned in them. “As it happens, although I’ll be present by proxy, one of you must perform this spell, for it has to be sited very near the heart of the British Empire, which would be the city of London, and my condition forbids travel. Though I’ll provide you with all the strongest remaining wards and protective amulets, the working of it will, as you suggest, consume quite a bit of the sorcerer. You will draw straws from the cloth on that table, and the man with the short straw will be the one to do it.”

Fikee and Romanelli stared at the two stubs of straw protruding from beneath a scarf, then at each other.

“What is the spell?” queried Fikee.