Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 1 (48 page)

their heads in shock.

Lovelace blew.

Bartimaeus

When the carpet drew back and the giant summoning pentacle was revealed, I

knew we were in for something nasty. Lovelace had it all worked out. All of us, him

included, were trapped inside the circle with whatever he was calling from the Other

Place. There were barriers on the windows and no doubt in the walls as well, so there was no chance any of us would escape. Lovelace had the Amulet of Samarkand—and with its

power, he was immune—but the rest of us would be at the mercy of the being he had

summoned.

I hadn't lied to the boy. Without the constraining pentacle, there was a limit to

what any magician would willingly summon. The greatest beings run amok if they're

given any freedom,[3] and Lovelace's hidden design meant that the only freedom this one was going to get would be inside this single room.

[3] One of the worst examples was the Mycenean outpost of Atlantis on the island

of Santonni in the Mediterranean About 3,500 years ago, if memory serves. They wanted

to conquer another island (or some predictable objective like that), so their magicians clubbed together and summoned an aggressive entity. They couldn't control it. I was only a few hundred miles away on the Egyptian delta; I heard the explosion and saw the

tsunami waves come roaring across to deluge the African coast. Weeks later, when things had settled down, the pharaoh's boats sailed to Santorini. The entire central section of the island, with its people and its shining city, had sunk into the sea. And all because they hadn't bothered with a pentacle.

But that was all the magician needed. When his slave departed, he alone of the

great ones of the Government would be left alive, ready to assume control.

He blew the horn. It made no sound on any of the seven planes, but in the Other

Place it would have rung loud.

As was to be expected, the afrit acted fastest. Even as the summoning horn came

into view, she let out a great bellow, seized Rupert Devereaux by the shoulders and flew at the nearest set of windows, picking up speed as she went. She crashed into the glass; the magical barriers across it flared electric blue, and with an impact like thunder, she was propelled back into the room, head over heels, with Devereaux spinning limply in

her grip.

Lovelace took the horn away from his lips, smiling slightly.

The cleverer magicians had understood the situation the instant the horn was

blown. With a flurry of colored flashes, imps appeared at several shoulders. Others

summoned greater assistance—the woman by our side was muttering an incantation,

calling up her djinni.

Lovelace stepped down carefully from the podium, his eyes trained somewhere

high above.

Light danced on the surface of his spectacles. His suit was elegant, unruffled. He

took no notice of the consternation all around.

I saw a flicker in the air.

Desperately, I threw myself at the edges of the web that surrounded us, searching

for a weakness and finding none.

Another flicker. My essence shivered.

Nathaniel

Many of the magicians were on their feet now, their voices raised in alarm, heads

turning from side to side in bewilderment, as thick iron and silver bars slid into position across every door and window. Nathaniel had long since stopped bothering to move: it

was clear that no one would take any notice of him. He could only watch as a magician

some way in front slung his chair to one side, raised a hand and shot a ball of yellow flame at Lovelace from a distance of only a couple of meters. To the surprise of the

magician, the flame altered its course slightly in midair and disappeared into the center of Lovelace's chest. Lovelace, who was staring intently up toward the ceiling, appeared to have noticed nothing.

The fly buzzed back and forth, butting its head against the wall of the Stricture.

"That's the Amulet's work," it said. "It'll take whatever they throw."

Jessica Whitwell had finished her incantation: a short, stumpy djinni hovered in

the air beside her; it had taken the form of a black bear. She pointed, yelled an order. The bear moved forward through the air, paddling its limbs as if swimming.

Other magicians sent attacks in Lovelace's direction: for perhaps a minute, he was

the center of a lightning storm of furious, crackling energy. The Amulet of Samarkand

absorbed it all. Lovelace was unaffected. He carefully smoothed back his hair.

The afrit had picked itself up from where it had fallen and, having set the dazed

Prime Minister lolling on a chair, leaped into the fray. It flew on speedy, shining wings, but Nathaniel noticed that it approached Lovelace on a peculiar circular course, avoiding the air directly above the podium.

Several magicians had by now reached the door of the hall, and were vainly

straining at the handles.

The afrit sent a powerful magic toward Lovelace. Either it went too fast, or it was

primarily on a plane he could not see, but Nathaniel only saw it as the suggestion of a jet of smoke that crossed to the magician in an instant. Nothing happened. The afrit cocked its head, as if bemused.

On Lovelace's other side, the black bear djinni was closing fast. From each paw, it

unsheathed two scimitar-like claws.

Magicians were running helter-skelter, making for the windows, the door, for

anywhere at all, accompanied by their host of shrieking imps.

Then something happened to the afrit. To Nathaniel, it was as if he was looking at

the afrit's reflection in a pond and the water surface was suddenly disturbed. The afrit seemed to shatter, its form splitting into a thousand quavering shards that were sucked toward a section of air above the podium. A moment later they were gone.

The black bear djinni stopped paddling forward. Its claws were drawn back out of

sight. Very subtly, it went into reverse.

The fly buzzed loudly against Nathaniel's ear, shouting in pure panic. "It's

happening!" it cried.

"Can't you see it?"

But Nathaniel saw nothing.

A woman ran past, mouth open in panic. Her hair was a pale shade of blue.

Bartimaeus

The first thing most of them noticed was the afrit. That was the spectacular one,

the real curtain raiser, but in fact plenty had been going on in the previous seconds. The afrit was unlucky, that was all; in her haste to destroy the threat to her master, she got too close to the rift.

The split in the air was about four meters in length and only visible on the seventh

plane. Perhaps a few of the imps glimpsed it, but none of the humans could have done so.

[4] It wasn't a nice, clean, vertical sort of rift, but diagonal, with jagged edges, as if the air had been torn like thick, fibrous cloth.

From my prison, I had watched it form: after the first flicker above the podium,

the air had vibrated, distorted wildly, and finally snapped along that line.[5]

[4] Unless they noticed a faint gray smudge along the line of the rift. This was

where light was draining away, being sucked off into the Other Place.

[5] It was the old chewing-gum principle in action. Imagine pulling a strip of

chewed gum between your fingers: first it holds and stretches, then gets thin somewhere near the middle. Finally a tiny hole forms at the thinnest point, which quickly tears and splits Here, Lovelace's summoning had done the pulling. With some help from the thing

on the other side.

As soon as the rift appeared, the changes had begun.

The lectern on the podium altered: its substance turned from wood to clay, then to

an odd, orange metal, then to something that looked suspiciously like candle wax. It

sagged a little, as if melting along one side.

A few blades of grass grew up from the surface of the podium.

The crystal drops of the chandelier directly above it turned to water droplets,

which hung suspended for a second in position, shimmering in many colors, then fell to the floor as rain.

A magician was running toward a window. Each line of the pinstripe on his jacket

undulated like a sidewinder.

No one noticed these first minor changes or a dozen similar others. It would take

the afrit's fate for them to cotton on.

Pandemonium filled the room, with humans and imps squeaking and gibbering in

all directions.

As if oblivious to this, Lovelace and I watched the rift. We waited for something

to come through.

42

Bartimaeus

Then it happened. The planes close to the rift suddenly went out of sync, as if they

were being pulled sideways at varying speeds. It was as though my focus had gone

haywire, as it does after a blow to the head—I suddenly saw the windows beyond seven

times over, all in slightly different positions. It was most disconcerting.

If whatever Lovelace had summoned was strong enough to disrupt the planes like

this, it boded ill for all of us inside the pentacle. It must be very close now. I kept my eye on the rift in the air....

Amanda Cathcart passed us, screaming, her bob a fetching blue. A few more

changes had been noticed by all and sundry: two magicians, who had strayed too near the podium in a vain attempt to attack Lovelace, found their bodies elongating unpleasantly; one man's nose also grew to a ridiculous length, while the other's vanished altogether.

"What's happening?" the boy whispered.

I did not answer. The rift was opening.

All seven planes distorted like stirred syrup. The rift widened and something like

an arm thrust through. It was quite transparent, as if it were made of the most perfect glass; in fact, it would have been wholly invisible were it not for the twisting, swirling convulsions of the planes around it. The arm moved back and forth experimentally: it

seemed to be testing the odd sensations of the physical world. I glimpsed four thin

protuberances or fingers at the end of the arm: they, like it, had no substance of their own, and were only given form by the rippling disturbances in the air about them.

Down below, Lovelace stepped back, his fingers nervously feeling between his

shirt buttons for the Amulet's reassuring touch.

With the distortion of the planes, the other magicians began to see the arm for the

first time.[1]

They emitted assorted cries of woe that, from the biggest, hairiest man to the

smallest, shrillest woman, covered a range of several octaves. Several of the bravest ran into the center of the room and coerced their attendant djinn into sending Detonations and other magics galore in the direction of the rift. This turned out to be a mistake. Not one single bolt or blast made it anywhere near the arm; all either screamed off at angles to smash into the walls and ceiling, or dribbled to the floor like water from a dripping hose, the energy taken out of them.

[1] They could only see the first three planes clearly, of course, but that was

enough to get the outline.

The boy's mouth hung so low and loosely, a rodent could have used it as a swing.

"That th-thing," he stammered. "What is it?"

A fair enough question. What was it, this thing that distorted the planes and

disrupted the most powerful magic, when only one arm had actually come through? I

could have said something dramatic and eerie like, "The death of us all!" but it wouldn't have got us very far. Besides, he'd only have asked again.

"I don't know exactly," I said. "Judging by its caution in coming through, it has rarely been summoned before. It is probably surprised and angry, but its strength is clear enough. Look around!

Inside the pentacle, magic is going wrong, things are beginning to change form.

All normal laws are being warped, suspended. The greatest of us always bring the chaos of the Other Place with them.

No wonder Lovelace needed the Amulet of Samarkand to protect himself."[2]

[2] The entity trapped inside the Amulet had to be at least as powerful as this

newcomer if Lovelace was to withstand its force. Even as a long-suffering djinni, I still had a grudging admiration for the ancient Asian people who had managed to capture and

compress it.

As we watched, the giant, translucent arm was followed by a brawny, translucent

shoulder, more than a meter long. And now something like a head began to emerge

through the rift. Once more it was only an outline: seen through it, the windows and the distant trees showed perfectly; around its edge, the planes shuddered in a new frenzy.

"Lovelace can't have summoned this on his own," I said. "He
must
have had help.

And I don't just mean that old scarecrow you killed, or the clammy one at the door.

Someone with real power must have had a hand."[3]

[3] This being was greater by far than all the various marids, afrits, and djinn that

magicians normally summon. A strong magician can summon an afrit on his own; most

marids require two. I was calculating a minimum of four for this one.

The great being pulled itself through the gap. Now another arm appeared, and the

suggestion of a torso. Most of the magicians were clustering against the periphery of the room, but a few near the windows were caught in a ripple running through the planes.

Their faces changed—a man's became a woman's; a woman's a child's. Maddened by his

transformation, one magician ran blindly toward the podium—in an instant, his body

seemed to become liquid: it slewed in a corkscrew motion up into the rift and vanished from sight. My master gasped in horror.

Now a great, translucent leg emerged, with almost feline stealth and poise. Things

were really desperate. Nevertheless, I'm an optimist at heart. I noticed that the ripples emanating from the being changed the nature of every spell they hit. And that gave me