The Anubis Gates

For Doyle recognized the face in the mirror. It was Benner’s, of course, but with the wild mane of hair and the Old Testament prophet beard, the new, haggard lines in the cheeks and forehead and the somewhat haunted expression of the eyes, it was also, beyond any doubt, the face of William Ashbless.

BOOK TWO—The Twelve Hours of the Night

CHAPTER 8

“He told me that in 1810 he met me as he thought in St. James Street, but we passed without speaking.—He mentioned this—and it was denied as impossible—I being then in Turkey—A day or two after he pointed out to his brother a person on the opposite side of the way—”there”—said he “is the man I took for Byron”—his brother instantly answered “why it is Byron & no one else.”—But this is not all—I was seen by somebody to write down my name amongst the Enquirers after the King’s health—then attacked by insanity. Now—at this very period, as nearly as I could make out—I was ill of a strong fever at Patras… “

—Lord Byron, in a letter to John Murray, October 6, 1820

Though it had been difficult to find all the little motors and get them correctly wound, and to adjust the air vents around the dozens of concealed candles, the chest-high village Bavarois, as Monsieur Diderac had described the appallingly expensive toy, seemed to be ready to perform. All it needed was for the candles to be lit and the master switch, disguised as a miniature tree stump, to be clicked over to the right.

Doctor Romany sat back and stared morosely at the contraption. Damnable Richard had wanted to start it up so his monkey could see it work before the yags arrived, but Romany was afraid that a thing so complicated mightn’t work more than once, and he refused. He now reached out and gently touched the head of a tiny carved woodsman, and gasped in dismay when the little figure marched several inches down his painted path, swinging his toothpick-hafted axe and making a sound like a clock clearing its throat.

Apep eat me, he thought fretfully, I hope I haven’t broken it. Why have we all had to decline so, anyway? I remember when the yags demanded fine chess sets and sextants and telescopes for their services. And now what? Damn toys.

And they were never as respectful as they ought to be, he reflected ruefully, but now they’re downright rude.

He stood up and shook his head. The tent was murky with incense smoke and he crossed bobbingly to the entrance flap, lifted it away and hooked it to the side, and blinked in the sudden brightness at the heather fields of Islington.

It wasn’t so far from here, he reflected, that, eight years ago, poor old Amenophis Fikee gave himself to the dog-headed god of the gates, lost most of his mind and all of his magic—except that damned body-switching spell—and ran off with a pistol ball in his belly and the mark of Anubis whiskering out all over him … ran off to a dubious career as Dog-Face Joe, the “werewolf” that London mothers threatened badly behaving children with… leaving Romany, a ka that should have been retired long ago, in charge of Fikee’s post, the entire United Kingdom. Well, Romany thought complacently, the Master obviously did a good job of drawing this ka; I don’t think Fikee—or even Romanelli I—could have done any better at the task of maintaining and protecting the Master’s British interests. I suppose he’ll retire me—render me back down to the primal paut—after our coup here this week. I won’t be sorry to go.

Eight years is long enough for a ka.