The Anubis Gates (23 page)

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

“The dirt on it, man!” said Tay with impatience. “Before Doctor Romany made Horrabin a magician, the clown didn’t have to walk around all day on stilts. But when you cast your lot with magic you … forfeit, you forfeit your connection with the earth—the dirt, the soil. Touching the earth is terribly painful for these magical boys, which is why Romany wears those spring-shoes and Horrabin walks on stilts. Their magic can’t work on dirt, and so this muddy stake punched through his charms as if they were cobwebs.” The dwarf pulled a knife out from under his shapeless coat and handed it to Jacky. “There’s plenty of mud between these paving blocks—rub a lot of it on the blade and then go crouch in the shadows. When he bends over to peek into the pit I’ll knock him down, and then you run up and just hack away. The underground dock is through that arch there, and we can escape down the river. Got all that?”

“Why don’t we just escape? Right now?” said Jacky with a weak smile. “I mean, why bother taking the risk of actually trying to kill him?”

Tay frowned angrily. “Well, for one thing because you promised—but I’ll give you some better reasons. It’s a good twenty minutes to the Thames by the underground channel, and if I’m not back upstairs pretty quick he’ll send men down to see what’s going on, and when he learned we were gone he’d send men running south to climb down into the sewers ahead of us and intercept us—but if we kill him, especially if he leaves orders not to be interrupted, and if we hide the body—why nobody’ll miss him for hours.”

Jacky nodded unhappily and, crouching down, fingered up a lump of mud and smeared it on both sides of the blade.

“Good. You go stand over there.” With great reluctance Jacky picked her way over the uneven pavement to a point twenty yards from the dwarf. “No, I can still see you. Farther! Yes, and a bit farther still. That should do it.”

Jacky was trembling and darting fearful glances at the impenetrable shadows all around her, and she cried out when the dwarf turned toward the arch. “Wait!” she almost shrieked. “Aren’t you going to leave the torch here?”

The dwarf shook his head. “It’d look suspicious. I’m sorry—but it’ll only be for a few minutes, and you’ve got that dagger.”

He walked away through the arch. Paralyzed with fear, Jacky could hear his footsteps receding away down the hall beyond as she watched the shape of the arch, the only spot of light, slowly darken. A few seconds after the chamber had reverted to full dark, Jacky heard a harsh whisper from nearby: “While she’s alone.” And there was a sound like long, stiff-starched skirts sweeping across the floor toward her.

Stilling a scream, Jacky ran in the direction in which it seemed to her that the dock archway had stood. After ten pounding paces she rebounded from a brick wall—and though she had struck it first with her knee and shoulder, her head had been the next to collide with it, and she wound up sitting half-stunned on the floor. She shook her head, trying to clear it and stop her ears from ringing. She knew she’d misjudged the direction of the dock arch—but was it left or right of here? Had she done a half turn or a full one when she bounced off the wall? Was the wall a yard or two in front of her, or behind, or to one side?

Suddenly something poked at her eye, and with a sob Jacky lunged upward with the dagger, and felt the point tear through balloon-like resiliencies that popped and bathed her hand and arm in cold fluid; then there was shrill, whispered screaming and the dank air shook with a buzzing like the vibrating wing-cases of some giant insect, and Jacky was on her feet and running again, stumbling over the unevennesses of the floor but never quite falling, sobbing hopelessly and sweeping the dagger back and forth through the darkness in front of her. Abruptly the floor shelved away under her feet, slanted down, and though she managed to maintain her balance for a few tilting, tiptoe steps, finally she tripped, tumbled and came up onto her skinned hands and knees, winded but still clutching the dagger.
All right, come on then,
she thought despairingly.
At least I know you can be hurt. I suppose I’ve run right out of that chamber, and down into some tunnel where there never has been and never will be the faintest ray of light, but I’ll hack away at you monsters until you kill me.

Cautious rustlings sounded from nearby, A whispering voice muttered something, of which Jacky caught only the words, “Killed her… “

Another voice said softly, “It still has its eyes—I can feel the wind of them blinking.”

“Take its eyes,” whined a voice like an old woman’s, “but my children need its blood.”

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—”

“No, no.” Tay wedged the torch between two of the raft timbers and lay down across the rough surface, staring at the passing ceiling. “I decided to die this morning. He told me to get ready for a full-dress performance tonight—skirt, wig, nail polish—and I just decided… no. I couldn’t do it one more time. I decided to try to kill him, so I’d have died either way, you see; four years ago he set up—what did he call it?—a one-way sustenance link. Magical talk. Means when he dies, I do too. He thought that made him safe from me. It might have, if he hadn’t made me do those goddamn song and dance numbers all the time. God, I’m sleepy.” He smiled peacefully. “And I can’t think of a… nicer way to spend my last few minutes than on a boat ride with a young lady.”

Jacky blinked. “You… know?”

“Ah, I’ve known all along, lass. You’re that Jacky, too. With the false moustache. Oh yes.” He closed his eyes.

Jacky stared at the silent dwarf, horrified and fascinated. The raft turned and bumped down the canal. When she judged he was dead, she said softly, “Are you really his father?”

She was startled when he answered. “Yes, lass,” he said weakly. “And I can’t really blame him for the way he’s treated me. I deserved no better. Any man that would… alter his own son, just to make the lad a more efficient beggar… ah, I had it all coming to me, certainly.” A faint smile touched Tay’s lips. “Oh, and did that boy repay it in full! He took over my beggar army … and then put me through the hospital in the basement … many, many times… yes, I was tall once… ” He sighed, and his left heel thumped a few times on the wood. Jacky had now seen two people die.

Remembering Tay’s prediction that men would be sent ahead to descend into the sewers to intercept them, Jacky didn’t wait to arrive at one of the docks further down, but lowered herself into the water. It was cold, but as the subterranean river had slowed and diminished in width since her dip in it Saturday night, it had also lost its sharp chill. For a moment she clung to the raft.

“Rest in peace, Teobaldo,” she said, and then pushed off. Once she’d shucked the sodden Ahmed robe she had no difficulty in swimming against the current, and soon she had left the raft—and the torch—behind, and was swimming upstream in darkness. It wasn’t a threatening darkness, though, and Jacky knew instinctively that the deeper river, the one on which she’d “seen” the boat, had no connection with this channel—perhaps not even with the Thames.

Voices were echoing down the watercourse—”Who the hell did he say it was?”

“Old Dungy and that Hindoo.”

“Well, Pete’s lads will stop ‘em at the dock below Covent Garden.”—and yellow light glinted on the water and the wet walls and ceiling ahead of her. Then she rounded a curve, dog paddling silently, and could see, far ahead, the dock from which they’d embarked. There were several men on it, all carrying torches, though Horrabin didn’t seem to be present.

“They must be crazy,” commented one, his voice carrying clearly down the tunnel. “Or maybe they thought the Hindoo had better magic. It’ll be interesting to hear them—ow! Damn it, how did a bee get down here?”

“Jesus, there’s another one! Come on, there’s nothing to be done here. Let’s go upstairs and watch when they bring them in. It ought to be good—the clown ordered the hospital opened.”

The men hurried away, and the tunnel went dark; for a moment the archway glowed orange, and then as the torches were carried away up the hall it too faded into the uniform darkness. Jacky paddled steadily toward the after image in her eyes, being careful not to turn her head, even when she felt the false beard peel off and slide past her shoulder. After a few minutes she banged a hand against the timbers of the dock. She pulled herself up onto it and sat there, panting. She was naked except for a pair of shorts, and reaching up to brush her hair back she noticed that her moustache had pulled away with the beard.

This wasn’t, she reflected, the sort of costume in which she could slip unnoticed out of Rat’s Castle.

She padded timidly through the arch, wishing she still had the dagger. In the silence she could hear a bee buzzing somewhere. The long hallway was evidently empty, and she picked her way down it, pausing frequently to listen for pursuit from either direction, but especially from behind.

She climbed a set of stone steps to a wide landing, and in groping to find the next set of steps she brushed the wooden surface of a door. There was no faintest sliver of light visible around the frame or between the boards, so either the room beyond was as dark as the stairs or this was an unreasonably solid door.

She pressed the latch—it wasn’t locked!—and inched the door open. No light spilled out on the stairs, so she hurried inside and closed the door behind her.

She had no way to strike a light even if she’d dared to, so she reconnoitered the room by feel, following the wall around all four sides of the little room back to the door again, and then making a cautious diagonal across the middle of the floor. There was a narrow bed, neatly made, a dresser with a couple of books on it, a table on which Jacky’s gently groping hands felt a bottle and a cup—she sniffed the cup: sharp gin—and, in the corner, a chair on which were draped—and Jacky thanked God as she fumblingly identified the objects—a short dress, a wig, a make-up kit, and an ancient pair of ladies’ leather slippers.