The Anubis Gates

Jacky was suddenly aware that she could smell river water, and faintly she heard water slapping against stone. It seemed to be at her back, and she turned around—and was surprised to find that she could see.

No, not see exactly, for seeing needs light; in the darkness her eyes were aware of a patch of deeper darkness, a blackness that shone with the absence and negation of light, and she knew that if the object approaching on the river should ever appear above ground, even the brightest sunlight would be swallowed up and obscured by its black rays. As it drew slowly closer she could see that it was a boat.

Another piece of the positive darkness arose behind it, defining the opposite bank; it seemed to be the shape of a vast serpent, and Jacky could hear a metallic rasping echo along the watercourse as it slowly uncoiled itself.

The whisperers around Jacky chittered in terror. “Apep!” exclaimed one. “Apep rises?” And Jacky heard a scuttling and pattering as her pursuers fled.

Jacky was right behind them.

There was light—real, red-orange light—visible when the floor levelled out into the main chamber, and Jacky could see the dwarf and the clown on stilts just appearing through the arch a hundred feet away. The two figures, weirdly tall and weirdly short, halted and stared in Jacky’s direction. She hunched down, though she knew they couldn’t see her that far back in the shadows.

“I wonder what’s got them so agitated,” said Horrabin.

“Your damned mistakes,” said Tay uneasily. “The Hindoo complained that they were speaking to him through the peek-hole.”

Horrabin laughed, but his merriment sounded forced. “You object to company, Ahmed? Be grateful we don’t render you incapable of being aware of it.”

Horrabin and Tay advanced across the warped floor and halted. Jacky knew they must have arrived at the hole in which she’d been incarcerated. Gripping the dagger tightly, she stole forward; her sandals had been lost in the tumble, and her bare feet made no sound on the stone.

When she was fifty feet away, and beginning to tread cobblestones crescented with the orange reflection of the torch-light, Horrabin leaned forward—an odd spectacle, for his stilts had to lean backward—and said, “Step into the light, Ahmed, and make your best offer!” The dwarf actually crossed himself before placing both hands against Horrabin’s stilts and shoving.

With a shrill, fearful cry the clown lurched forward, tried to get his stilts back under himself, failed, and crashed to the floor as Jacky crossed the last few yards at a sprint; the clown rolled over on his back, his head strained back with yellow teeth showing in a grimace of agony, and Jacky sprang onto the arched-up stomach and drove the dagger down at the proffered white-painted throat.

The blade snapped off as if she’d tried to stab one of the paving stones; and as it clanged away across the floor the red-veined eyes rolled down to look at her over the white point of the chin, and though the bared teeth were flecked with blood, and blood was running out of the painted ears, the mouth curled up in what was, unmistakably, a smile.

“Whatcha got in yer ‘and, yer Worship?” Horrabin whispered. Jacky felt something scrabbling strongly in her still poised right fist, and she convulsively flung away what should have been the bladeless dagger hilt, but was a handful of big black bees, as dark and fat as plums. One stung her hand before she could flick it off, and the others swarmed buzzing and clicking around her head as she rolled off the clown and scrambled away across the floor. Tay was standing in the archway that led to the dock, still holding the torch. “All we can do is run!” he shouted to Jacky. “Come on, before he can get up!”

As Jacky hurried to the arch, pursued by the bees, and joined Tay in a scramble to the end of the dock, they heard Horrabin cry from behind them, “I’ll have you back. Father!

And I’ll make you into something that has to live in a tank!”

The two fugitives had found a raft, crawled onto it, and cast loose. “What happened to the mud on the blade?” Tay asked, in a tone of only mild interest.

“I had to stab one of the creatures down here,” gasped Jacky, slapping a persistent bee into a pasty mess against the wood of the raft. “It seemed to have cold water for blood. I guess it washed the mud off.”

“Ah, well. Good try, anyway.” The dwarf opened a pouch at his belt and took out a pill, which he swallowed. He shuddered, then offered another of the pills to Jacky.

“What is it?”

“Poison,” said Tay. “Take it—a much easier death than what he’ll give you if he catches you alive.”

Jacky. was shocked. “No! And you shouldn’t have taken one! My God, perhaps you can vomit it up. I think—”