“Aye,” said Stowell, still fingering his scarf mistrustfully. “Time enough for food and drink after we’ve sent this fellow to hell.”
Burghard’s face, haggard as sea-polished driftwood in the orange light, broke into a hard grin. “So be it. And, sir,” he said, turning to Doyle, “neither trouble nor flatter yourself with the notion that these men died in aid of you. This is the work we’re paid for, and the considerable danger is the reason for our considerable pay. And if you hadn’t pitched Stowell to safety, we’d all be lying dead out there. You can walk?”
“I will walk.”
“Very well.” Burghard stepped to the edge of the dock. “Is the payment adequate?” he called to the boat’s owner, who was crouched on the ice watching it burn.
“Oh aye, aye,” the man nodded, waving cheerfully. “Ye be free always to borrow any boat of mine.”
“At least someone is clearing a profit this evening,” muttered Burghard bitterly.
The boat, a seething inferno now, rolled over and by slow degrees fell through the broken and melted ice, and through the clouds of steam the burning cross beams could be seen to fall one at a time, like counting fingers.
* * *
The innkeeper’s eyes narrowed with annoyance when Doyle ducked under the lintel and stepped into the room, then widened in surprise when he saw Burghard and the others follow him in. “This fellow is with you, Owen?” the innkeeper asked doubtfully.
“Yes, Boaz,” Burghard snapped, “and the Brotherhood will pay for all damages he may have done. Have you seen a—”
“The man who fell with me onto the tables,” Doyle interrupted. “Where is he?”
“That one? Yes, damn it, he—”
The house trembled, as if a powerful bass organ had begun playing a dirge in notes too deep to hear, and a high, flat singing could be faintly heard, seeming to come from a great distance away. The chain around Doyle’s ankle began vibrating strongly. It itched.
“Where is he?” Burghard shouted.
Abruptly a lot of things happened at once. The candles in the wooden chandeliers flared and spouted like Fourth of July fireworks, bouncing bright purple fireballs off the ceiling and casting heavy clouds of a shockingly malodorous smoke, and with a racket of tearing and snapping the tables sprang to pieces, tossing food, dishes, pitchers and diners in all directions, and as Doyle blinked roundabout in the sudden pandemonium he noticed that a long, twisting white funnel like a tornado had appeared over the head of Boaz the innkeeper. Doyle looked at the sprawled diners and saw a similar funnel twisting and swelling over each head. In sudden fright he looked up, but no ectoplasmic larva writhed above him, nor, he ascertained a moment later, over the heads of any of his companions.
It must be the chains, he thought, protecting us from this unholy Pentecost. Glancing down, he saw that his chain was fizzing brightly with gold sparks, and his companions each seemed to be wearing a whole ignited pack of sparklers on the right boot.
The exploded tables hastily reassembled themselves into vaguely anthropoid shapes, their face surfaces bristling with twitching splinters like iron filings on a magnet, and they began stumbling and lurching through the purple-lit smoke, slamming their wooden arms randomly against people, walls and each other, like blind berserkers.
“Circle!” Burghard yelled, and Doyle found himself pushed between Longwell and Stowell as the members of the Antaeus Brotherhood shifted their positions to form a loop. The others had drawn swords and daggers, and though Doyle couldn’t see how such mundane weapons could damage adversaries like these, he crouched forward to wrench the sword from the scabbard of a diner who’d been felled on his way to the door.
The white funnels now stretched rapidly upward and all slapped against one point on the ceiling. A big lump of the stuff began forming there. The dozen or so people who were connected by their heads to this spidery unpleasantness had, whether sitting, standing or lying down, ceased all motion, but now they all turned imbecilically calm eyes toward the circle of armed men by the front door. And the ungainly wooden men paused, as if listening, and then, blind no longer, all turned to face the Brotherhood and shuffled toward them with a cautious restraint.
One of them paused in front of Burghard and drew its table leg arm back for a smashing blow, but before it swung Burghard lunged in and poked his sword against the thing’s shoulder joint, and the block of wood that was its arm ceased to adhere to the table top that was its chest, and fell off and banged on the floor.
Without conscious thought Doyle leaped forward in a hop-lunge that put his point squarely in the belly of another—and brought tears to his eyes from the pain in his foot—and the thing fell to the ground like an armful of firewood.
In the ensuing melee this proved to be the way to deal with the things, and though Stowell was knocked unconscious by a blow from one of them and Doyle’s right arm was nearly paralyzed by a blow on the point of the shoulder, in a couple of minutes of leaping, ducking and lunging they’d reduced all of the things except one to inert lumber—the exception was the last one which, when it had found itself alone facing four swords, had in a remarkably human display of dismayed panic, run out the open front door.
Though the purple fireballs had started a small fire or two among the tossed and scattered kindling, the chandeliers had subsided to their normal radiance and the acrid smoke had largely dissipated. “He’s on the premises somewhere,” Burghard gasped. “Let’s try the kitchen—and stay together.” He started forward.
“Wait,” came a chorus of flat voices, followed by a shuffling and knocking as Boaz and a dozen of his luckless patrons were drawn erect by the ectoplasmic umbilicus attached to their heads. Several of them drew swords and daggers, and the rest—including a couple of matronly ladies—picked up heavy, club-length pieces of lumber.
Doyle looked up at the intersection of all the white funnels, and saw that the lump that had grown on the ceiling there was now formed into a huge eyeless face, and the puppet-string tentacles all trailed out of its gaping, flap-lipped mouth.
“Doyle,” said all of the people in weird unison, “gather the remnants of your men and try to find a retreat so obscure that my wrath can’t follow.”
“Right, Burghard,” said Doyle, trying hard to keep hysteria from shrilling his voice, “a wizard in a hurry would head for the kitchen—where there’d be fire and boiling water and whatnot all just waiting for him.”
Doyle, Burghard, Longwell and the other remaining member, a short, stocky fellow, made a dash for the kitchen, but were instantly blocked by the innkeeper and diners.
Doyle ducked under a fat lady’s swing and managed to rap the board out of her hands with his sword pommel a moment before parrying a sword point that was rushing at his chest. His body automatically lunged forward in a riposte, and only at the last possible instant did he override the reflex and turn his sword to drive the knuckle guard, rather than the lethal point, into the belly of his puppet attacker.
The old lady had danced around behind him, and with a crabapple fist gave Doyle a hard punch in the kidney. He roared with pain and spun, kicking her legs out from under her, and as she tumbled he whirled his blade in a horizontal arc that snicked right through the white snake attached to her head—both ends shrivelled away, and the long end snapped up elastically and slapped the ceiling before being slurped like disgusting spaghetti into the now-grinning mouth. The fallen lady began snoring.
Though attacking with concentrated skill and attention, the erstwhile diners were muttering like sleep-walkers; one man who backed Doyle into a corner with a fast and deceptive series of sword thrusts—the instinctive parrying of which made Doyle profoundly thankful that Steerforth Benner had studied fencing—was saying in the most reasonable conversational tone, “… Might simply have asked before throwing it away, that’s all I’m claiming, and it seems to me if either of us has a right to be peeved… “
Peeved, he says, thought Doyle desperately as he finally got a bind on the elu
sive blade and twisted it out of the bemused man’s grip.
“… Why it’s me, my dear,” the man went on calmly, aiming a jackhammer kick which Doyle leaped over, “for it was my most treasured doublet… “
Two more jabbering, placid-faced men were rushing at him with bared swords, and not caring to have an enemy at his rear, Doyle lashed out backhanded at the trolley wire of the man who felt he had a right to be peeved; the blow had no force to it, and rebounded from the white cord, but the man screeched, leaped like a wounded rabbit and then dropped to the floor. Doyle whipped his sword back into line just as the two attackers made their final bounds, swords up and points aimed at Doyle’s chest.
Doyle flung himself to the right, parrying that man’s blade in a low quinte, and let himself keep falling forward into a sort of three-point crouch, catching himself with the fingertips of his right hand spread on the floor as he let his sword rebound from the parry back up into line, the point over his head; and he’d no sooner got the point up than the other man ran onto it, his own sword transfixing the empty air where Doyle’s torso had been a second ago.
The first man had recovered and stepped back, ready to drive his point into Doyle’s face—”If the damnable cat would just decide whether she wants to be inside,” he was saying quietly—and Doyle pulled hard sideways on his sword, toppling the dying man into the way of the thrust. “… or outside,” the first man continued as his sword chugged deep into his companion’s back.
God damn you, Romany, thought Doyle as his cold-bellied apprehension at last ignited into rage, you made me kill one of them. He dragged his sword free and clanked the flat of it against the temple of the man who wished the cat would make up her mind, and as he fell over Doyle snatched up an extinguished but unbroken oil lamp from the floor and pitched it like a football across the flame-lit dining room toward the kitchen door; it knocked the door open as it shattered, and Doyle scrambled over to the nearest fire—which was rushing up a wall and splashing at the ceiling—grabbed a long stick that was burning at one end, and hurled it like a flame-tipped javelin into the kitchen.
He heard the stick clatter on flagstones… and he had just decided the move had failed when there was a deep whoosh and an orange flash from the kitchen and the puppet people screamed in perfect unison, like a dozen radios all tuned to the same signal, then dropped their weapons, looked around with expressions of horror, and all but Boaz the innkeeper bolted for the door.
The ectoplasm tentacles dangled limp and unconnected, and a moment later the huge white face tore loose from the ceiling with a loud sucking sound and fell through the smoky air to splat horribly on the floor. Doyle leaped over it and sprinted toward the burning kitchen, closely followed by Burghard and a limping and swearing Longwell. Boaz ran to a shelf of glasses, swept them clanging and shattering to the floor, pulled a cloth-wrapped bundle from the back of the shelf and, untying it with trembling fingers, hurried after them.
Doyle bounded through the kitchen doorway whirling his sword in a wild figure eight in front of him—but Doctor Romany was gone. Doyle skidded to a halt on the dirt floor and looked around at first with caution, then with amazement—for though the kitchen was splashed with smokily blazing oil, he could see that the shelves, benches, tables and even the stone fireplace were all warped, pulled toward the center of the room as though they were forms painted on a taut sheet of rubber that had been pushed far in at the middle.
Burghard piled into Doyle from behind, and Longwell and the raging innkeeper, who was juggling the bell-muzzled flintlock pistol he had unwrapped, bumped into Burghard. Boaz dropped the gun, and it fell muzzle down in a muddy corner.
“Guerlay is dead,” Burghard panted. “I want this Doctor Romany.”
The innkeeper had retrieved his gun and was waving the mud-fouled muzzle in all directions and demanding to know if the Duke of York would reimburse him for the destruction of his inn.
“Aye, damn it,” snapped Burghard, “he’ll buy you a new one anywhere you please. Give me that before you kill somebody,” he added, snatching the gun away. “Where does that doorway go? “
“A hall,” answered Boaz grudgingly. “Right to the rooms, left to the stables out back.”
“Very well, let’s search—”
Suddenly the fires began to burn more furiously, so that instead of flames there was a static radiance, its glare moving up from yellow-orange to white, and for the second time that night Doyle was gasping in baking, oxygen-depleted air.
“He’s doing this from outside!” Burghard choked. “Run!”
Burghard and Longwell stumbled into the hall. Doyle moved to follow, then remembered the unconscious Stowell, and ran back into the dining room, which was also burning at a ferociously accelerated rate.
Stowell was sitting up, blinking in the white light, and Doyle crossed to him, yanked him upright, and propelled him toward the open front door.
Stowell reeled back, though, when the flaring lintel gave way in a swirl of white sparks and dropped half a ton of tumbling masonry and lumber onto the doorstep.
“No good!” yelled Doyle. “Back to the kitchen!” He grabbed Stowell’s shoulder and dragged the dazed man along. “Look out, it’s an oven in here,” he said as he braced himself before entering the incandescent kitchen. Then they lurched and bumped through, beating out sparks that sprang up on their clothing and Doyle’s beard, and burst at last into the relative coolness of the hallway beyond. “There should be a door here,” croaked Doyle—then he noticed that the leftward end of the hall was a slope of smoldering rubble. “Jesus,” he whispered hopelessly.
“Hist!” Doyle turned toward the sound, and at this point wasn’t very surprised to see the stout innkeeper’s head sitting up on the floor blinking at him. Then he realized that the man was neck-deep in a hole.
“Hither, you fools!” Boaz cried. “Into the cellar! It connects to a sewer in the next street—though why I should be saving bastards of the goddamned Antaeus Brotherhood… “
Doyle snapped out of his stupor and, pushing the half-stunned Stowell along in front of him, hurried over to the trapdoor. Boaz was already down the ladder, and he impatiently guided Stowell’s feet onto the rungs as he descended, followed closely by Doyle, who pulled the trapdoor closed over them. A moment later all three of them stood on a stone floor, peering about at the barrels and boxes dimly visible in the radiance of the two sparkling boot chains.
“French wine I was saving,” said the innkeeper shortly, nodding at a stack of crates. He sighed. “Come this way, past the onions.” As they left the cellar and made their way down a narrow stone corridor, Doyle asked, speaking instinctively in a whisper, “Why did you have this bolt-hole ready?”
“Never you mind why—oh, what the hell. Further on the sewer’s broad enough to row a boat up from the river. Sometimes it’s prudent not to trouble the Customs House about a taxable shipment… and occasionally a patron wants to leave, but not by a visible door.”
Here I go leaving by another invisible door, Doyle thought. When they’d gone about forty paces down the tunnel the boot chains dimmed and went out.
“We’re out of the magic sphere,” Stowell muttered.
“Like enough ‘twas the damned chains set the place ablaze,” Boaz growled. “But here we are—you can see the moonlight through the grating.”
The tunnel floor crowded up against the ceiling below the sewer grating, and Doyle, his knees bent, braced his shoulder against the iron bars. He grinned sideways at Boaz. “Let’s hope I’m better at ripping up sewers than crushing pewter mugs.” Then his face lost all expression as he strained with all his strength to straighten up.
* * *
The fact of the matter, thought the shivering Duke of Monmouth as he stepped closer to the conveniently burning inn, is that I don’t truly need these sorcerers—or their damned forged marriage certificate. I’ve told Fikee that I’ve every reason to believe that my mother really was documentably married to King Charles, by the Bisho
p of Lincoln, at Liege. Why doesn’t he try to find the real marriage certificate?
He pursed his lips—which, to his chagrin, were unattractively chapped—for he knew the answer, and didn’t like it. It was plain that Fikee didn’t believe Monmouth was the rightful successor to the throne; and therefore his efforts couldn’t be interpreted as simple patriotic concern. The sneaking sorcerer must be relying on favors and influence from me when I’m properly crowned, he thought. And I suppose the main favor would be the one he’s been agitating for for years: the abandonment of all British interests in Tangier. I wonder, thought Monmouth, why Fikee is so determined to prevent any European power from gaining a toehold in Africa.
He looked toward the artificially tall Fikee, who was standing a few feet away, holding the black box that contained the forgery. “What are we waiting for, wizard?”
“Shut up, can’t you?” Fikee snapped, not taking his eyes off the burning building. Suddenly he pointed. “Ah! There!”
A burning man had come bounding around the corner of the building, springing an impossible three yards with each step, hotly pursued by two men who also seemed to be partially afire—at least there was a lot of sparking around their boots.
Fikee started forward just as one of the pursuers flung himself forward in a flying tackle that knocked the burning man off his feet and tumbling through the snow.
A gallant rescue, thought Monmouth. But then the fat man scrambled over to the stunned and still partially flaming figure, and Monmouth gasped to see him draw a dagger and drive it down at the man’s chest—but the blade snapped off, and the two men in the snow fell to wrestling savagely.
Another few steps and I’m at them, thought Fikee as he ran awkwardly toward the prone figures. This may prosper us yet, for though the wizard must be in awful agony lying on the abdicated ground, these interfering men certainly can’t kill him with fire or steel—or lead, he added, for he’d just seen the lagging pursuer pull from under his cloak a wide-muzzled pistol.