The Anubis Gates

“Of course,” said Jacky. We’re about to find out whether I can or not, she thought.

The dwarf laid the stick across the hole and pushed the rope into the pit. Excess loops piled up on the muddy ground at Jacky’s feet. She took a deep breath, stepped up to the dangling rope, locked her hands onto it as high as she could reach, and then began yanking herself up, hand over hand. In two seconds she had one hand, and a moment later both hands, locked on the stick.

“Grab the coping,” said Teobaldo, “and then I’ll move the stick and you can pull yourself out.”

Jacky discovered that she could also chin herself and scramble out of a hole with no footholds. When she’d got to her feet she stared somberly at her rescuer, for she remembered now where she’d heard the name Teobaldo. “You used to be in charge here,” she said quietly.

The old dwarf gave her a sharp glance as he hauled up the line and quickly coiled it around his palm and elbow. “That’s right.”

“I… heard you were tall, though.”

The dwarf set down the coiled rope and stood on the edge of the hole opposite from the stone lid. He flexed his arms and then said, reluctantly, “Push that down, will you? I’ll try to catch it and lower it into place quietly. I’m supposed to be bringing you your dinner, and I’d just have pitched it in through the peek-hole, so if they hear the slab fall they’ll all come running.”

Jacky braced herself against the block, wedged her sandalled feet into a channel between two paving stones, and heaved.

The dwarf caught it against his outstretched palms and let it fold him down to a low crouch. He took several deep breaths and then heaved it up a little, got out from under it and caught the descending edge in his hands. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a rictus of extreme effort, and Jacky could see sweat popping out on his forehead as he lowered it, his arms trembling; then he let go and leaped back. The slab dropped into place with a sound like a heavy door slamming.

Tay sat on the floor panting. “That’s… good,” he gasped. “They’ll… not have heard that.”

He got painfully to his feet. “I was tall once.” He pulled the torch out and looked across the slab at Jacky. “Can you do magic?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Well, we’ll trick him. I’ll go back upstairs now and tell him you want to talk—but not to Doctor Romany, who would only kill you. I’ll say you want to buy your freedom by telling Horrabin so much that he’ll be equal to—hell, stronger than—Romany. You’ve got Words of Power, I’ll say. He’s become a fair sorcerer, Horrabin has, in the eight years he’s been Romany’s right-hand man, but he’s always trying to get the old man to give him a Word of Power or two. Romany’s never done it. And we’ll say that your group knows all about Romany’s plans in Turkey; ‘cause that’s another thing that bothers Horrabin, that Romany won’t tell him anything except stuff he needs to know to run the London end of things. Yeah,” said the old man bleakly, “he’ll bite that hook. He’ll ask why you let yourself get captured if you’re such a whizzo witch, but I’ll just tell him that you said—I don’t know—that the stars are crooked for that stuff right now. Does that sound good?”

“I guess so, but why the complicated story?” Jacky asked nervously, already wishing she hadn’t promised to help him in this perilous undertaking.

“To get him down here alone,” snapped Tay, “without his guards. He wouldn’t want them to hear the Words of Power, or even be aware that he was making deals with Doctor Romany’s enemies.”

“And what will we do when he comes down here? Just kill him?” Though glad to be out of the pit, Jacky was feeling tense and distinctly ill. “Do you have a gun?”

“No, but a gun’s no good against him anyway. One of the spells Doctor Romany gave him is a bullet-deflecting charm. I’ve seen a pistol fired straight into the middle of his chest but the ball never touched him, just broke a window off to the side. And I’ve twice seen hard-thrust daggers simply jerk to a stop inches away from him, and shatter, as if he’d been wearing a suit of thick clear glass. The only time I’ve ever seen him cut was a couple of years ago when he went to Hampstead Heath to explain city ways to the gypsies—for at the time they thought the gypsies might be useful in organized burglary—and a gypsy that didn’t fancy the idea said Horrabin was the Beng, they tell me that means devil, and this gypsy leaped up, yanked a tent spike out of the ground and slammed it into the clown’s thigh. And it wasn’t deflected and it didn’t stop inches away from him—it tore right through, and the clown was bleeding like a ripped wineskin and almost fell off his stilts, and if the gypsy’d been able to get a second swing he’d have put Horrabin right out of the picture.”

Jacky nodded dubiously. “So what was so special about the stake?”