by Tim Powers
Burghard knew a gunshot couldn’t kill a wizard—especially not inside a magic sphere—any more than Longwell’s idiotic dagger thrust, but he’d just seen Doctor Romany reach out and actually grasp Longwell’s boot chain—the hand sizzled audibly, and the wizard howled with the pain—and with a wrench pull it right off. There was only an instant in which to distract Doctor Romany from blasting the defenseless Longwell, and Burghard rushed up, shoved the gun’s muzzle in Romany’s face even as the wizard was opening his mouth to speak some devastating spell, and pulled the trigger.
Doctor Romany’s face disintegrated like a kicked sand castle, and he tumbled back onto the blood-sprayed snow.
Both Burghard and Amenophis Fikee froze, staring in astonishment at the sprawled and motionless form, and in that instant the Duke of Monmouth, fearful of being involved in a murder trial when his father the king had forbidden him even to set foot in the country, turned and ran.
Slowly Burghard reached out and knocked the black box out of Fikee’s grasp.
When Doyle had gotten to twenty-eight in the thirty-second count that, he figured, would take him to the end of his endurance, the iron frame that had been biting into his shoulder suddenly burst up from its moorings with a metallic clang and a rattle of broken mortar on the cobblestones of the street above. Doyle flung the grating away and hopped out of the sewer. He reached back down and grabbed the innkeeper’s wrist and hauled him up onto the pavement, then did the same for Stowell.
“Did you hear some noises while I was straining at that?” he asked Stowell. “I thought I did.”
“Aye,” gasped Stowell, rubbing his shoulder, “a scream and a shot.”
“Let’s get back there.”
They sprinted back the way they’d come, over the pavement this time, and after a few steps Doyle could feel his ankle chain heating up again. Wearily he dragged the sword out of his belt.
But when they rounded the corner of the burning building it was a played out scene that met their eyes. Burghard and Longwell were sitting in the middle of the street, watching the fire. Burghard was idly tossing and catching a small black box, but it fell forgotten to the cobbles and he leaped to his feet when he saw the sooty trio coming toward him. “How in God’s name did you get out?” he cried. “Your wizard pulled down all the doorways a second after we got outside.”
“Out through the sewer from the cellar,” croaked Doyle, swaying as the evening’s full measure of exhaustion began to catch up with him. “Where’s Romany?”
“I killed him somehow,” said Burghard. “I think he had some allies waiting for him out front here, but they fled when I shot him. We dragged him across the street out of the magical bubble—”
“Did you search him?” Doyle interrupted anxiously, wondering how much longer the gap field might continue, if indeed it hadn’t closed already.
“All he had about him was this paper—”
Doyle snatched the damp and darkly stained piece of paper from Burghard, gave it a quick glance, then looked up again. “Where’d you drag his body to?”
“Over yonder under that—” Burghard pointed, then his eyes widened in horror. “My God, he’s gone! But I blew his whole face off!”
Doyle slumped. “He must have faked it. I don’t think they can be killed with guns.”
“I didn’t think so either,” said Burghard, “but I saw his face blow to bits when I fired Boaz’s gun at him! Damn it, I’m not some stripling claiming kills I didn’t make! Longwell, you saw—”
“Wait a moment,” said Doyle. “The gun that fell in the mud?”
“Aye, that’s the one. I’m lucky it didn’t burst in my hand, it was so clogged with dirt.”
Doyle nodded. A barrelful of mud, he thought, might indeed have given Romany a terrible injury, while a pistol ball would not. It had to do with their aversion to touching the ground. He opened his mouth to explain it to Burghard, but at that moment all the light went out and Doyle fell away, as it seemed to him, right through the earth and out into starless space on the other side.
After the implosive thump, Burghard stared for a few moments at the empty space where Doyle had stood, and at the pile of empty clothes that had flopped and fluttered onto the snow there. Then he looked around.
Longwell walked over to him, craning his neck left and right. “Did you hear a sort of boom that wasn’t from the fire?” he asked. “And where’d our mysterious guide go?”
“Back where he came from, evidently,” said Burghard. “And I hope it’s warmer there.” He cocked an eyebrow at Longwell. “Did you recognize the man that was out here waiting for Romany?”
“Matter of fact, Owen, it looked like the gypsy chief, Fikee.”
“Hm? Oh, certainly Fikee was here—but I meant the other one.”
“No, I didn’t get a look at him. Why, who was he?”
“Well, he looked like—but he’s supposed to be in Holland.” He gave Longwell a grin that had a lot of weariness but no mirth in it. “We’ll probably never know what, precisely, was going on here tonight.”
He stooped and picked up the black wooden box. Stowell trudged up, his boots crunching in the snow. “I shouldn’t have left you there, Brian,” Burghard told him. “I’m sorry—and glad the bearded man went back for you.”
“I don’t blame you,” said Stowell. “I thought I was beyond rescue myself.” He knuckled his eyes. “Hell of a pace. What have you got in the box?”
Burghard tossed it and caught it. “Magical work, I imagine.”
He wound up and pitched it through one of the heat-burst windows into the seething ruin.
* * *
Hobbling down an alley, trying to see with his one remaining eye, Doctor Romany wept with rage and frustration. He couldn’t remember who had hurt him or why, but he knew he was marooned now. And there was a message he needed to give to someone—it was urgent—but the message seemed to have run out of his head along with all the blood that he’d lost before he regained consciousness and scrawled a few basic sustaining cantrips in the snow. If he could have spoken a spell he might have been able to repair himself, but his jaw was shattered and half gone, and the written charms only just managed to keep him alive and conscious.
There was one thing, though, that he knew and was profoundly glad of: the man Doyle was dead. Romany had trapped him inside that inn, and when he’d furtively crawled away from the place where they’d left him for dead, he had looked back and seen the exitless inn burning so thoroughly that he knew nothing inside could still be alive.
His sense of balance was gone, and he was having a rough time walking on his spring-shoes. Well, he thought, I’m already an old ka—after a few decades of deterioration I’ll be so light that gravity will hardly have a grip on me anyway, and I’ll be able to dispense with the damned shoes. And written spells will sustain me until my face heals and I can speak again. With any luck I should be able to live my way back to 1810.
And, he thought, when 1810 rolls around at last, I’ll look up Mr. Brendan Doyle. In fact, in the meantime I think I’ll buy that lot where the burning inn stands, and in 1810 I’ll take Mr. Doyle there and show him his own ancient, charred skull.
A bubbling rattle that might have been a tortured sort of laughter issued from the lower half of his destroyed face.
After a few more steps he lost his balance again, and lurched against a wall and started to slide to the pavement then an arm caught him, bore him back up and supported him as he took another step. He turned his head around to let his good eye have a look at his benefactor, and somehow he wasn’t surprised to see that it was not a person at all, but a vaguely man-shaped, animated collection of wood that had evidently once been a table. Romany gratefully draped an arm around the stout board that was the thing’s shoulder, and without a word, for neither of them was capable of speech, they made their way on down the alley.
CHAPTER 10
“Minerals are food for plants, plants for animals, animals for men; men will also be food
for other creatures, but not for gods, for their nature is far removed from ours; it must therefore be for devils.”
—Cardan’s Hyperchen
Doyle’s bare feet hit a desk after so short a fall that he barely had to flex his knees to stay upright. He was in a tent, and as a man suddenly awakened from a nightmare gradually and with mounting relief recognizes the details of his own bedroom, Doyle remembered where he’d seen this desk and litter of papers, candles and statues—he was in Doctor Romany’s gypsy tent. And, he noted as he hopped down from the desk, he was stark naked; thank God it was hot here. Clearly he’d returned to 1810.
But how can that be? he wondered. I didn’t have a mobile hook.
He crossed to the tent flap and pulled it slightly open just in time to see a couple of giant skeletal figures, as faintly luminous as after-images on the retina, running in slow motion behind the burning tents; they faded to nothing, so quickly that he wasn’t sure he’d even seen them. The only sound, aside from the quiet crackle of the fires, was incongruously merry piano and accordion music from the north end of camp.
He let the flap fall shut, then rummaged around in the litter until he found a belted robe and some high-soled sandals, which he put on, a clean scarf to knot around his still bleeding foot, and a scabbarded sword. Feeling a little better equipped, he left the tent.
Footsteps approached from his left. He drew the sword and turned toward them and found himself facing the old gypsy, Damnable Richard, who gaped at him in surprise and then leaped backward, snatching a dagger out of his sash.
Doyle lowered his point to the dirt. “You’re in no danger from me, Richard,” he said quietly. “I owe you my life… as well as several drinks. How’s your monkey?”
The gypsy’s eyebrows were as high on his forehead as they could be. After several indecisive wobbles his dagger-hand relaxed to his side. “Why… very kushto, thankee, and all the better for your concern,” he said uncertainly. “Uh… where’s Doctor Romany?”
On the cool evening breeze the music from the north slowed and took on a melancholy tone. “He’s gone,” said Doyle. “I don’t think you’ll ever see him again.”
Richard nodded, assimilating this, then put his dagger away, pulled his monkey out of a pocket and whispered the news to it. “Thank you,” he said finally, looking up at Doyle again. “Now I must go and gather my poor scattered people.” He started away, but after a few steps he paused and turned, and by the light of the burning tent Doyle saw his teeth flash in a grin. “I guess you gorgios aren’t always stupid,” he said, then started away again.
The tent Doyle had exited was now burning thoroughly and sending glowing patches of tent fabric whirling up into the clear night sky. Remembering the chamber pot that had shrapnelled over his head, Doyle gingerly felt his hair—but it seemed clean, and it occurred to him that he must have left the befoulment back in 1684 along with the borrowed clothes.
“Ashbless!” someone yelled from away to the right, and it took a moment for Doyle to remember that he was Ashbless. It must be Byron, he thought. Or, he amended, the Byron ka.
“Here, my lord, “he called.
Byron came limping up out of the shadows, glaring around and holding his dagger ready. “Here you are,” he said. He looked more closely at him. “What are you wearing the robe and odd shoes for?”
“It’s… a long story,” said Doyle, sheathing his sword. “Let’s get out of here—I need to find a pair of trousers and a long, strong drink.”
“Oh?” Byron blinked. “But what of the fire giants? Have they gone?”
“Yes. Romany consumed them, used them up to fuel a bolt-hole spell of his.”
“Spells,” Byron said disgustedly, then spat. “Where is he now, then?”
“Gone,” said Doyle. “Dead by now, almost certainly.”
“Damn. I had hoped to kill him myself.” He eyed Doyle suspiciously. “You seem to know an awful lot about it. And how did you manage to lose your trousers in the few minutes since I last saw you?”
“Let’s get out of here,” Doyle repeated, beginning to shiver.
They walked away, past the burning tent by the tree from which Doyle had broken a limb—only, he realized dazedly, a few minutes ago by local time—and then they set off across the grass beyond, and the streaks of their shadows in front of them were gradually absorbed by the darkness as they left the fire farther and farther behind.
* * *
The creature in the dark grass found it easier to crawl than walk through the field, for it could grab weed stalks and pull itself along and only use its feet for kicking off from the ground every now and then to keep itself from settling to the earth; if anyone had been watching, the thing would have looked like some agile crustacean skimming across the sea floor.
Well, thought the thing that had once been indistinguishable from a man, there’s the last score settled, the long circle closed, and the man who ruined me is off on his way to be killed by me. I saw the yags extinguished, so I know he’s gone. The thing chuckled like dry leaves rattling in the wind. Half an hour ago, it thought, I was afraid he might somehow evade his death, and now he’s been dead a hundred and twenty-six years.
It heard voices and the swishing of feet through the grass behind it and to its right, so it ceased all motion, turning over and over as it lost speed until it rocked to a halt against a bush, its arms and legs pointed upward.
“But if my friends will let us stay with them,” a man was saying impatiently, “and I tell you again they’d be glad to, then why not?”
Why I believe it’s that young lord, thought the thing in the grass. We were going to have him do something for us. That’s right, and he was a ka—the original was in Greece. What was his name? And he was to have killed the king. Plots and schemes, half-wit dreams.
“Well,” answered someone else dubiously, “they think you’re out of the country. How would you explain your presence here?”
There was something about the second voice that profoundly upset the crawler, and it sat up so quickly that it left the ground and hovered for a few moments like a nearly worn out helium balloon, and when it touched down again it kicked strongly and flew twenty feet into the air so as to be able to see.
Two men were walking across the field away from the burning tents, and the slowly descending creature stared in horror at the taller of them. Yes, very tall, it thought, and—Isis!—a full mane and beard that seem to be blond! But by what damnable aid did he get out of that inn? And back to now? Who is this man Doyle?
It began flailing and swimming to get back to the ground quicker, for it had to follow him. If there was any spark of purpose left in the deteriorated ka that had once been Doctor Romany, it was to see, finally, Doyle dead.
* * *
The induced fever was breaking, and Doctor Romanelli stared angrily at his placidly sleeping patient. Damn you, Romany, he thought, let me know how it proceeds. This fever story won’t hold up much longer—I’m going to have to either kill him or let him recover.
The doctor laid his palm on Lord Byron’s forehead, and swore softly, for it felt cool. The sleeper shifted, and Romanelli tiptoed hastily out of the room. Sleep on, my lord, he thought; for a little while longer—at least until I hear from my incompetent duplicate. He strode into the disordered room he was using for a workshop, looked hopefully at the lit but inert Candle of Far Speaking, then sighed and let his gaze drift out the open window to where the sun was sinking over the hills beyond Missolonghi. The broad Gulf of Patras was already in shadow, and several fishing boats were plying for home, their triangular sails bellying in the evening breeze.
A sputtering from the table made him whirl and stare at the candle, which had begun to glow more brightly. “Romany!” he called into the flame. “Do you succeed?”
The candle flame was silent, and though it was glowing more brightly every second, it had not taken on the spherical shape.
“Romany!” the wizard repeated, louder now, not caring if he w
oke Byron. “Shall I kill him now?”
There was no reply. Suddenly the almost blindingly bright candle bent in the middle, like a beckoning finger—Doctor Romanelli grunted in surprise—then it split softly open in the middle and spilled a steaming flood of wax out onto the table top. As the candle folded down to a sizzling puddle Romanelli saw that the whole snaky length of the wick was glowing yellow-white.
Damn me, he thought, that means Romany’s candle is at this very moment burning up. His tent must have caught fire. Could he have lost control of the yags? Yes, that must be it—they got too excited, and burned down his camp. There’s no way they’ll be ready to burn London tomorrow, then; they’ll be sated and sluggish for weeks. Romany, you blundering, damned… forgery!
He waited until the wick stopped glowing and the puddle of wax had begun to scum over as it cooled, and then he went to the closet and unbuckled a trunk and carefully lifted out of it another candle. He unwrapped it, lifted the frosted glass hood of the room’s lantern to touch it alight, and in a few moments the new candle’s wick bloomed with the magical round flame.
“Master!” Romanelli barked into it.
“Yes, Romany,” answered the Master’s groaning voice at once. “Are the yags agreeable? Is the toy sufficiently—”
“Damn it, this is Romanelli. Something’s gone wrong at the London end. My candle just melted when I tried to contact him—you understand? His candle has burned up somehow. I think he must have lost control of the yags. I don’t know whether to kill Byron or not.”
“Roman-Romanelli? Burned up? Killed? What?”
Romanelli repeated his news several times, until the Master had finally grasped the situation.
“No,” the Master said. “No, don’t kill Byron. The plan may still be salvageable. Go to London and find out what’s happened.”