“… 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.