Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 1 (2 page)

observed the bird[2] from some way off waited a few moments for it to emerge, lost

patience, and scuttled curiously after it. Behind the bags it discovered no bird, black or otherwise. There was nothing there but a freshly turned molehill.

[2] On two planes. Cats have that power.

3

I hate the taste of mud. It is no fit thing for a being of air and fire. The cloying

weight of earth oppresses me greatly whenever I come into contact with it. That is why I am choosy about my incarnations. Birds, good. Insects, good. Bats, okay. Things that run fast are fine. Tree dwellers are even better. Subterranean things, not good. Moles, bad.

But there's no point being fastidious when you have a protective shield to bypass.

I had reasoned correctly that it did not extend underground. The mole dug its way deep, deep down, under the foundations of the wall. No magical alarm sounded, though I did

hit my head five times on a pebble.[1] I burrowed upward again, reaching the surface

after twenty minutes of snuffling, scruffling, and turning my beady nose up at the juicy worms I uncovered after every couple of scrapes.

[1] Once each on five different pebbles. Not the same pebble five times. Just want

to make that clear.

Sometimes you human beings are so
dense.

The mole poked its head cautiously out of the little pile of earth it had driven

through the immaculate surface of Simon Lovelace's lawn. It looked around, checking

out the scene. There were lights on in the house, on the ground floor. The curtains were drawn. The upper floors, from what the mole could see, were dark. The translucent blue span of the magical defense system arched overhead.

One yellow sentry trudged its stupid way ten feet above the shrubbery. The other

two were presumably behind the house.

I tried the seventh plane again. Still nothing, still that uneasy sense of danger. Oh, well.

The mole retreated underground and tunneled below the grass roots toward the

house. It reappeared in the flowerbed just below the nearest windows. It was thinking

hard. There was no point going further in this guise, tempting though it was to try to break into the cellars. A different method would have to be found.

To the mole's furry ears came the sound of laughter and clinking glasses. It was

surprisingly loud, echoing from very close by. An air vent, cracked with age, was set in the wall not two feet away. It led indoors.

With some relief, I became a fly.

4

From the security of the air vent, I peered with my multi-faceted eyes into a rather

traditional drawing room. There was a thick pile carpet, nasty striped wallpaper, a

hideous crystal thing pretending to be a chandelier, two oil paintings that were dark with age, a sofa and two easy chairs (also striped), a low coffee table laden with a silver tray, and, on the tray, a bottle of red wine and no glasses. The glasses were in the hands of two people.

One of them was a woman. She was youngish (for a human, which means

infinitesimally young) and probably quite good-looking in a fleshy sort of way. Big eyes, dark hair, bobbed. I memorized her automatically. I would appear in her guise tomorrow when I went back to visit that kid. Only naked. Let's see how his very steely but ever so adolescent mind responded to that![1]

[1] For those who are wondering, I have no difficulty in becoming a woman. Nor

for that matter a man. In some ways I suppose women are trickier, but I won't go into that now. Woman, man, mole, maggot—they're all the same, when all's said and done, except

for slight variations in cognitive ability.

However, for the moment I was more concerned with the man this woman was

smiling and nodding at. He was tall, thin, handsome in a rather bookish sort of way, with his hair slicked back by some pungent oil. He had small round glasses and a large mouth with good teeth. He had a prominent jaw. Something told me that this was the magician, Simon Lovelace. Was it his indefinable aura of power and authority? Was it the

proprietorial way in which he gestured round the room? Or was it the small imp which

floated at his shoulder (on the second plane), warily watching out for danger on every side?

I rubbed my front two legs together with irritation. I would have to be very

careful. The imp complicated matters.[2]

[2] Don't get me wrong. I wasn't afraid of the imp. I could squish him without a

second thought. But he was there for two reasons: for his undying loyalty to his master and for his perceptive eye. He would not be taken in by my cunning fly guise for one

fraction of a second.

It was a pity I wasn't a spider. They can sit still for hours and think nothing of it.

Flies are far more jittery. But if I changed here, the magician's slave would be certain to sense it. I had to force my unwilling body to lurk, and ignore the ache that was building up again, this time inside my chitin.

The magician was talking. He did little else. The woman gazed at him with

spaniel eyes so wide and silly with adoration that I wanted to bite her.

"...It will be the most magnificent occasion, Amanda. You will be the toast of

London society!

Did you know that the Prime Minister himself is looking forward to viewing your

estate? Yes, I have that on good authority. My enemies have been hounding him for

weeks with their vile insinuations, but he has always remained committed to holding the conference at the Hall. So you see, my love, I can still influence him when it counts. The thing is to know how to play him, how to flatter his vanity....

Keep it to yourself, but he is actually rather weak. His speciality is Charm, and

even that he seldom bothers with now. Why should he? He's got men in suits to do it for him...."

The magician rattled on like this for several minutes, name-dropping with tireless

energy. The woman drank her wine, nodded, gasped, and exclaimed at the right moments,

and leaned closer to him along the sofa. I nearly buzzed with boredom.[3]

[3] A human who listened to the conversation would probably have been slack-

jawed with astonishment, for the magicians account of corruption in the British

Government was remarkably detailed. But I for one was not agog Having seen countless

civilizations of far greater panache than this one crumble into dust, I could rouse little interest in the matter I spent the time fruitlessly trying to recall which unearthly powers might have been bound into Simon Lovelace's service. It was best to be prepared

Suddenly the imp became alert. Its head swiveled 180 degrees and peered at a

door at the other end of the room. It tweaked the magician's ear gently in warning.

Seconds later, the door opened and a black-jacketed flunky with a bald head stepped

respectfully in.

"Pardon me, sir, but your car is ready."

"Thank you, Carter. We shan't be a moment."

The flunky withdrew. The magician replaced his (still full) wineglass on the

coffee table and took hold of the woman's hand. He kissed it gallantly. Behind his back the imp made faces of extreme disgust.

"It pains me to have to go, Amanda, but duty calls. I will not be home this

evening. May I call you? The theater, tomorrow night, perhaps?"

"That would be charming, Simon."

"Then that is settled. My good friend Makepeace has a new play out. I shall get

tickets presently. For now, Carter will drive you home."

Man, woman, and imp exited, leaving the door ajar. Behind them, a wary fly crept

from its hiding place and sped soundlessly across the room to a vantage point that gave a view of the hall. For a few minutes there was activity, coats being brought, orders given, doors slammed. Then the magician departed his house.

I flew out into the hall. It was wide and cold, and had a floor of black-and-white

tiles. Bright green ferns grew from gigantic ceramic pots. I circled the chandelier,

listening. It was very quiet. The only sounds came from a distant kitchen, and they were innocent enough—just the banging of pots and plates and several loud belches,

presumably emanating from the cook.

I debated sending out a discreet magical pulse to see if I could detect the

whereabouts of the magician's artifacts, but decided that it was far too risky. The sentry creatures outside might pick it up, for one thing, even if there was no further guard. I, the fly, would have to go hunting myself.

All the planes were clear. I went along the hall, then—following an intuition—up

the stairs.

On the landing a thickly carpeted corridor led in two directions, each lined with

oil paintings. I was immediately interested in the right-hand passage, for halfway along it was a spy. To human eyes it was a smoke alarm, but on the other planes its true form was revealed: an upside-down toad with unpleasantly bulbous eyes sitting on the ceiling.

Every minute or so it hopped on the spot, rotating a little. When the magician returned, it would relate to him anything that had happened.

I sent a small magic the toad's way. A thick oily vapor issued from the ceiling and

wrapped itself around the spy, obscuring its vision. As it hopped and croaked in

confusion, I flew rapidly past it down the passage to the door at the end. Alone of the doors in the corridor, this did not have a keyhole; under its white paint, the wood was reinforced with strips of metal. Two good reasons for trying this one first.

There was a minute crack under the door. It was too small for an insect, but I was

aching for a change anyway. The fly dissolved into a dribble of smoke, which passed out of sight under the door just as the vapor screen around the toad melted away.

In the room I became a child.

If I had known that apprentice's name, I would have been malicious and taken his

form, just to give Simon Lovelace a head start when he began to piece the theft together.

But without his name I had no handle on him. So I became a boy I had known once

before, someone I had loved. His dust had long ago floated away along the Nile, so my

crime would not hurt him, and anyhow it pleased me to remember him like this. He was

brown skinned, bright eyed, dressed in a white loincloth. He looked around in that way he had, his head slightly cocked to one side.

The room had no windows. There were several cabinets against the walls, filled

with magical paraphernalia. Most of it was quite useless, fit only for stage shows,[4] but there were a few intriguing items there.

[4] Oh, it was all impressive enough if you were a nonmagician. Let me see, there

were crystal orbs, scrying glasses, skulls from tombs, saints' knucklebones, spirit sticks that had been looted from Siberian shamans, bottles filled with blood of doubtful

provenance, witch-doctor masks, stuffed crocodiles, novelty wands, racks of capes for

different ceremonies and many, many weighty books on magic that looked as if they had

been bound in human skin at the beginning of time, but had probably been mass-

produced last week by a factory in Catford. Magicians love this kind of thing; they love the hocus-pocus mystery of it all (and half believe it, some of them) and they
adore
the awe-inspiring effect it has on outsiders. Quite apart from anything else, all these

knickknacks distract attention from the real source of their power: us.

There was a summoning horn that I knew was genuine, because it made me feel

ill to look at it.

One blast of that and anything in that magician's power would be at his feet

begging for mercy and pleading to do his bidding. It was a cruel instrument and very old and I couldn't go near it. In another cabinet was an eye made out of clay. I had seen one of them before, in the head of a golem. I wondered if the fool knew the potential of that eye. Almost certainly not—he'd have picked it up as a quaint keepsake on some package

holiday in central Europe. Magical tourism... I ask you.[5] Well, with luck it might kill him some day.

[5] They were all at it—beetling off in coach parties (or, since many of them were

well-heeled, renting jets) to tour the great magical cities of the past. All cooing and ahhing at the famous sights—the temples, the birthplaces of notable magicians, the places where they came to horrible ends. And all ready to snatch bits of statuary or ransack the black-market bazaars in the hope of getting knock-me-down sorcerous
bargains.
It's not the cultural vandalism I object to. It's just so hopelessly vulgar.

And there was the Amulet of Samarkand. It sat in a small case all of its own,

protected by glass and its own reputation. I walked over to it, flicking through the planes, seeking danger and finding—well, nothing explicit, but on the seventh plane I had the

distinct impression that something was stirring. Not here, but close by. I had better be quick.

The Amulet was small, dull, and made of beaten gold. It hung from a short gold

chain. In its center was an oval piece of jade. The gold had been pressed with simple

notched designs depicting running steeds. Horses were the prize possessions of the

people from central Asia who had made the Amulet three thousand years before and had

later buried it in the tomb of one of their princesses. A Russian archaeologist had found it in the 1950s, and before long it had been stolen by magicians who recognized its value.

How Simon Lovelace had come by it—who exactly he had murdered or swindled to get it

—I had no idea.

I cocked my head again, listening. All was quiet in the house.

I raised my hand over the cabinet, smiling at my reflection as it clenched its fist.

Then I brought my hand down and drove it through the glass.

A throb of magical energy resounded through all seven planes. I seized the