Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 1 (10 page)

His room... I wanted a clue to his identity. Some letter addressed to him, perhaps,

or a name tag in his coat. Both of those had worked before. I wasn't after his birth name, of course—that would be too much to hope for—but his official name would do for a

start.[4] But I was out of luck. The most private, intimate, telltale place in the room—his desk—had been carefully covered with a thick black cloth. A wardrobe in the corner was shut; ditto a chest of drawers. There was a cracked glass vase with fresh flowers among the mess of candles—an odd touch, this. He hadn't put it there himself, I reckoned; so somebody liked him.

[4] All magicians have two names, their official name and their birth name. Their

birth name is that given to them by their parents, and because it is intimately bound up with their true nature and being, it is a source of great strength and weakness. They seek to keep it secret from everyone, for if an enemy learns it, he or she can use it to gain power over them, rather in the same way that a magician can only summon a djinni if he knows
their
true name. Magicians thus conceal their birth names with great care, replacing them with official names at the time of their coming of age. It is always useful to know a magician's official name—but far, far better to learn his secret one.

The kid waved his hand over the scrying glass and the surface went dull. He

replaced the disc in his pocket, then looked up at me suddenly. Uh-oh. Here it came.

"Bartimaeus," he began, "I charge you to take the Amulet of Samarkand and hide it in the magical repository of the magician Arthur Underwood, concealing it so that he cannot observe it, and achieving this so stealthily that no one, either human or spirit, on this plane or any other, shall see you enter or depart; I further charge you to return to me immediately, silent and unseen, to await further instructions."

He was blue in the face when he finished this, having completed it all in one

straight breath.[5] I glowered under my stony brows.

[5] Strictly advisable when dealing with subtle, intelligent entities such as myself.

It is often possible to interpret a pause for breath as a full stop, which either changes the meaning of the instructions or turns them into gobbledegook. If we can misinterpret

something to our advantage, we most certainly will.

"Very well. Where does this unfortunate magician reside?"

The boy smiled thinly. "Downstairs."

11

Downstairs... Well, that
was
surprising.

"Framing your master, are you? Nasty."

"I'm not framing him. I just want it safe, behind whatever security he's got. No

one's going to find it there." He paused. "But if they do..."

"You'll be in the clear. Typical magician's trick. You re learning faster than most."

"No one's going to find it."

"You think not? We'll see."

Still, I couldn't float there gossiping all day. I encased the Amulet with a Charm,

rendering it temporarily small and giving it the appearance of a drifting cobweb. Then I sank through a knothole in the nearest plank, snaked as a vapor through the empty floor space, and in spider guise crawled cautiously out of a crack in the ceiling of the room below.

I was in a deserted bathroom. Its door was open; I scurried toward it along the

plaster as fast as eight legs could carry me. As I went I shook my mandibles at the

effrontery of the boy.

Framing another magician: that wasn't unusual. That was part and parcel, it came

with the territory.[1] Framing your own master, though, now that
was
out of the ordinary

—in fact possibly unique in a wizardling of twelve. Sure, as adults, magicians fell out with ridiculous regularity, but not when they were starting off; not when they were just being taught the rules.

[1] Magicians are the most conniving, jealous, duplicitous group of people on

earth, even including lawyers and academics. They worship power and the wielding

thereof, and seek every chance they can to undercut their rivals. At a rough guess about eighty percent of all summonses have to do with carrying out some skulduggery against a fellow magician, or with defense against the same. By contrast, most confrontations

between spirits aren't personal at all, simply because they do not occur of our own free will. At that moment, for instance, I did not dislike Faquarl particularly; well, actually that's a lie—I loathed him, but no more than I had before. Anyway, our mutual hatred had taken many centuries, indeed millennia, to build up. Magicians squabble for fun. We'd

really had to work at it.

How was I sure the magician in question was his master? Well, unless age-old

practices were now being dropped and apprentices were being bussed off to boarding

school together (hardly likely), there was no other explanation. Magicians hold their

knowledge close to their shriveled little hearts, coveting its power the way a miser covets gold, and they will only pass it on with caution.

Since the days of the Median Magi, students have always lived alone in their

mentors' house—one master to one pupil, conducting their lessons with secrecy and

stealth. From ziggurat to pyramid, from sacred oak to skyscraper, thousands of years pass and things don't change.

To sum up then: it seemed that to guard his own skin, this ungrateful child was

risking bringing the wrath of a powerful magician down upon his innocent master's head.

I was very impressed. Even though he had to be in cahoots with an adult—some enemy

of his master, presumably—it was an admirably twisted plan for one so young.

I did an eightfold tiptoe out of the door. Then I saw the master.

I had not heard of this magician, this Mr. Arthur Underwood. I assumed him

therefore to be a minor conjuror, a dabbler in fakery and mumbo-jumbo who never dared

disturb the rest of higher beings such as me. Certainly, as he passed underneath me into the bathroom (I had evidently exited just in time), he fit the bill of second-rater. A sure sign of this was that he had all the time-honored attributes that other humans associate with great and powerful magic: a mane of unkempt hair the color of tobacco ash, a long whitish beard that jutted outward like the prow of a ship, and a pair of particularly bristly eyebrows.[2] I could imagine him stalking through the streets of London in a black

velveteen suit, hair billowing behind him in a sorcerous sort of way. He probably

flourished a gold-tipped cane, maybe even a swanky cape. Yes, he'd look the part then, all right: very impressive.

As opposed to now, stumbling along in his pajama bottoms, scratching his

unmentionables and sporting a folded newspaper under his arm.

[2] Minor magicians take pains to fit this traditional wizardly bill. By contrast, the really powerful magicians take pleasure in looking like accountants.

"Martha!" He called this just before closing the bathroom door. A small, spherical female emerged from a bedroom. Thankfully, she was fully dressed.

"Yes, dear?"

"I thought you said that woman cleaned yesterday."

"Yes, she did, dear. Why?"

"Because there's a grubby cobweb dangling from the middle of the ceiling, with a

repellent spider skulking in it. Loathsome. She should be sacked."

"Oh, I see it. How foul. Don't worry, I'll speak to her. And I'll get the duster to it shortly."

The great magician humphed and shut the door. The woman shook her head in a

forgiving manner and, humming a lighthearted ditty, disappeared downstairs. The

"loathsome" spider made a rude sign with two of its legs and set off along the ceiling, trailing its cobweb behind it.

It took several minutes' scuttering before I located the entrance to the study at the

bottom of a short flight of stairs. And here I halted. The door was protected against

interlopers by a hex in the form of a five-pointed star. It was a simple device. The star appeared to consist of flaking red paint; however, if an unwary trespasser opened the door the trap would be triggered and the "paint" would revert to its original state—a ricocheting bolt of fire.

Sounds good, I know, but it was pretty basic stuff actually. A curious housemaid

might be frazzled, but not Bartimaeus. I erected a Shield around me and, touching the

base of the door with a tiny claw, instantly sprang back a couple of feet.

Thin orange streaks appeared within the red lines of the five-pointed star. For a

second the lines coursed like liquid, racing round and round the shape. Then a jet of

flame burst from the star's uppermost point, rebounded off the ceiling and speared down toward me.

I was ready for the impact on my Shield, but it never took place.

The flame bypassed me altogether and hit the cobweb I was trailing. And the

cobweb sucked it up, drawing the fire from the star like juice through a straw. In an

instant it was over. The flame was gone. It had disappeared into the cobweb, which

remained as cool as ever.

In some surprise, I looked around. A charcoal-black star was seared into the wood

of the study door. As I watched, the hex began to redden slowly—it was reassembling its charge for the next intruder.

I suddenly realized what had happened. It was obvious. The Amulet of Samarkand

had done what amulets are supposed to do—it had protected its wearer.[3] Very nicely,

too. It had absorbed the hex without any trouble whatsoever. That was fine by me. I

removed my Shield and squeezed myself beneath the door and into Underwood's study.

[3]
Amulets
are protective charms; they fend off evil. They are passive objects and although they can absorb or deflect all manner of dangerous magic, they cannot be

actively controlled by their owner. They are thus the opposite of
talismans,
which have active magical powers that can be used at their owner's discretion. A horseshoe is a

(primitive) amulet; seven-league boots are a form of talisman.

Beyond the door I found no further traps on any of the planes, another sign that

the magician was of a fairly low order. (I recalled the extensive network of defenses that Simon Lovelace had rigged up and which I'd broached with such easy panache. If the boy thought that the Amulet would be safe behind his master's "security" he had another thing coming.) The room was tidy, if dusty, and contained among other things a locked

cupboard that I guessed housed his treasures. I entered via the keyhole, tugging the

cobweb in my wake.

Once inside I performed a small Illumination. A pitiful array of magical

gimcracks were arranged with loving care on three glass shelves. Some of them, such as the Tinker's Purse, with its secret pocket for making coins "vanish," were frankly not magical at all. It made my estimate of second-rater seem overly generous. I almost felt sorry for the old duffer. For his sake I hoped Simon Lovelace never came to call.

There was a Javanese bird totem at the back of the cupboard, its beak and plumes

gray with dust. Underwood obviously never touched it. I pulled the cobweb between the

purse and an Edwardian rabbit's foot and tucked it behind the totem. Good. No one would find it there unless they were really hunting. Finally I removed the Charm on it restoring it to its normal amulet-y size and shape.

With that, my assignment was complete. All that remained was to return to the

boy. I exited cupboard and study without any hiccups and set off back upstairs.

This was where it got interesting.

I was heading up to the attic room again, of course, using the sloping ceiling

above the stairs, when unexpectedly the boy passed me coming down. He was trailing in

the wake of the magician's wife, looking thoroughly fed up. Evidently he had just been summoned from his room.

I perked up at once. This was bad for him, and I could see from his face that he

realized it too.

He knew I was loose, somewhere nearby. He knew I would be coming back, that

my charge had been to return to him immediately, silent and unseen, to await further

instructions. He knew I might therefore be following him now, listening and watching,

learning more about him, and that he couldn't do anything about it until he got back to his room and stood again within the pentacle.

In short, he had lost control of the situation, a dangerous state of affairs for any

magician.

I swiveled and followed eagerly in their wake. True to my charge, no one saw or

heard me as I crept along behind.

The woman led the boy to a door on the ground floor. "He's in there, dear," she said.

"Okay," the boy said. His voice was nice and despondent, just how I like it.

They went in, woman first, boy second. The door shut so fast that I had to do a

couple of quick-fire shots of web to trapeze myself through the crack before it closed. It was a great stunt—I wish someone had seen it. But no. Silent and unseen, that's me.

We were in a gloomy dining room. The magician, Arthur Underwood, was seated

alone at the head of a dark and shiny dining table, with cup, saucer, and silver coffee pot close to hand. He was still occupied with his newspaper, which lay folded in half on the table. As the woman and the boy entered, he picked up the paper, unfolded it, turned the page crisply, and smacked the whole thing in half again. He didn't look up.

The woman hovered near the table. "Arthur, Nathaniel's here," she said.

The spider had backed its way into a dark corner above the door. On hearing these

words it remained motionless, as spiders do. But inwardly it thrilled.

Nathaniel! Good. That was a start.

I had the pleasure of seeing the boy wince. His eyes flitted to and fro, no doubt

wondering if I was there.

The magician gave no sign that he had heard, but remained engrossed in the