Read Online The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers - Free Book Online

hundred and seventy years, Doyle thought, is the distance to 1810. Can I get there by candlelight? Yes, and back again. He noted almost disinterestedly that his heart was pounding and that he didn’t seem able to take a deep breath.
    They all filed out onto the packed dirt of the lot. Two broughams, each with two horses harnessed to it, had been drawn up to within a few yards of the trailer, and by the light of the flickering coach lamps Doyle could see that the vehicles, like the period clothes they were all wearing, were clean and in good repair but obviously not new.
    “There’s room for five in each vehicle with a bit of crowding,” Darrow said, “and since Treff couldn’t attend, I’ll take his place inside. Staff rides up top.”
    Benner took Doyle by the elbow as the guests, with a good deal of hat dropping and shawl tangling, began climbing in. “We’ve got the back of the second coach,” he said. They walked around to the rear of the farther coach and climbed up to two little seats that projected from the back at the same height as the driver’s. The night air was chilly, and Doyle was glad of the heat from the left rear lamp below his elbow. From his perch he could see more horses being led in from the north end of the lot.
    The carriage rocked on its springs when two of the guards hoisted themselves up onto the driver’s seat, and hearing metal clink close by, Doyle glanced toward Benner and saw the butts of two pistols sticking out of a leather pouch slung near Benner’s left hand.
    He heard reins snap and hooves clop on the dirt as the first carriage got moving. “Where are we going?” he asked as their own carriage got under way. “Spatially speaking, I mean.”
    “Over to the fence there, that section where the curtain isn’t up. Do you see that low wooden platform? There’s a truck pulled up right to the edge of the fence just outside.”
    “Ah,” said Doyle, trying not to sound as nervous as he felt. Looking back, he saw that the horses he’d noticed being led up were now harnessed to the two trailers and were pulling them away toward the north end.
    Benner followed his glance. “The lot, the gap field, has to be completely cleared for every jump,” he explained.
    “Anything that’s within it goes back with us.”
    “So why didn’t your tents and gypsies come back here?”
    “The whole field doesn’t come back on the return, just the hooks and whatever they’re touching. The hook works like the rubber band on one of those paddleball things—energy’s required to swat the ball away, and if a fly’s in the way he’ll go too, but only the ball comes back. Even these coaches will stay there. In fact,” he added, and there was enough light from the lamps for Doyle to see his grin, “I noted on my own jaunt that even one’s clothes stay there, though hair and fingernails somehow stay attached. So Treff got in on at least part of the fun.” He laughed. “That’s probably why he’s only getting a fifty percent refund.”
    Doyle was glad now of the tarpaulin curtain around the lot. The two coaches drew up to the fence, and through the chain links Doyle could see the truck, its wide side panel slid all the way open. A wooden stage, only about a foot high but more than a dozen yards long and wide, had been set up on the patch of dirt next to the truck but just inside the fence, and it boomed and rattled like a dozen drums when the drivers goaded the horses to pull the coaches up onto it. A number of men, already looking anachronistic in 1983 jumpsuits, quickly set up aluminum poles and draped a stiff and evidently heavy cloth over them, so that the two coaches were in a large cubical tent. The fabric of the tent gleamed dully in the contained lamplight, and Doyle leaned way out of his seat to brush it with his fingers.
    “A mesh of woven steel strands sheathed in lead,” Benner said, his voice sounding louder in the enclosed space. “The same stuff my robe and hood were made