The Anubis Gates (58 page)

It’s unknown, whatever happens to me from here on out,
he thought with a smoldering elation as he untied the rope.
No book I ever read can give me any hint. It may be that I’ll capsize the boat and drown within five minutes, or it may be I’ll live another twenty years!

He climbed in and fitted the thole pins into the oarlocks, and after three strong strokes he was well out onto the face of the river. And as he rowed on, toward whatever might prove to be the true destiny of the man who’d been Brendan Doyle and Dumb Tom and Eshvlis the cobbler and William Ashbless, and was not any of them any longer, he regaled the river birds with every Beatles song he could remember… except
Yesterday
.