Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 1 (9 page)

Nathaniel's heart nearly stopped in fright. He froze with one foot lifted. His

master's eyes had opened and were gazing at him with an awful anger. With a voice of

thunder, his master uttered the seven Words of Dismissal. The fire in the corner of the room vanished, the pile of papers with them; the candles were once again upright and

burning quietly. Nathaniel's heart quailed in his breast.

"Step outside the circle, would you?" Never had he heard his master's voice so scathing. "I told you that some remain invisible. They are masters of illusion and know a thousand ways to distract and tempt you. One step more and you'd have been on fire

yourself. Think of that while you go hungry tonight. Get up to your room!"

Further summonings were less distressing. Guided only by his ordinary senses,

Nathaniel observed demons in a host of beguiling shapes. Some appeared as familiar

animals—mewling cats, wide-eyed dogs, forlorn, limping hamsters that Nathaniel ached

to hold. Sweet little birds hopped and pecked at the margins of their circles. Once, a shower of apple blossom cascaded from the air, filling the room with a heady scent that made him drowsy.

He learned to withstand inducements of all kinds. Some invisible spirits assailed

him with foul smells that made him retch; others charmed him with perfume that

reminded him of Ms. Lutyens's or Mrs. Underwood's. Some attempted to frighten him

with hideous sounds—with squelchy rendings, whisperings, and gibbering cries. He

heard strange voices calling out beseechingly, first high-pitched, then plummeting deeper and deeper until they rang like a funeral bell. But he closed his mind to all these things and never came close to leaving the circle.

A year passed before Nathaniel was allowed to wear his spectacles during each

summoning.

Now he could observe many of the demons as they really were. Others, slightly

more powerful ones, maintained their illusions even on the other observable planes. To all these disorientating shifts in perception Nathaniel acclimatized calmly and confidently.

His lessons were progressing well, his self-possession likewise. He grew harder, more

resilient, more determined to progress. He spent all his spare waking hours poring

through new manuscripts.

His master was satisfied with his pupil's progress and Nathaniel, despite his

impatience with the pace of his education, was delighted with what he learned. It was a productive relationship, if not a close one, and might well have continued to be so, but for the terrible incident that occurred in the summer before Nathaniel's eleventh birthday.

10

Bartimaeus

In the end, dawn came.

The first grudging rays flickered in the eastern sky. A halo of light slowly emerged

over the Docklands horizon. I cheered it on. It couldn't come fast enough.

The whole night had been a wearisome and often humiliating business. I had

repeatedly lurked, loitered, and fled, in that order, through half the postal districts of London. I had been manhandled by a thirteen-year-old girl. I had taken shelter in a bin.

And now, to cap it all, I was crouching on the roof of Westminster Abbey, pretending to be a gargoyle. Things don't get much worse than that.

A rising shaft of sunlight caught the edge of the Amulet, which was suspended

round my lichen-covered neck. It flashed, bright as glass. Automatically I raised a claw to cup it, just in case sharp eyes were on the lookout, but I wasn't too worried by then.

I had remained in that bin in the alley for a couple of hours, long enough to rest

and become thoroughly ingrained with the odor of rotting vegetables. Then I'd had the

bright idea of taking up stony residence on the abbey. I was protected there by the

profusion of magical ornaments within the building—they masked the Amulet's signal.[1]

From my new vantage point I'd seen a few spheres in the distance, but none of them came near. At last the night had ebbed away, and the magicians had become weary. The spheres in the sky winked out. The heat was off.

[1] Many great magicians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were

entombed at Westminster Abbey after (and on one or two occasions shortly before) their death. Almost all took at least one powerful artifact with them to their grave. This was little more than a self-conscious flaunting of their wealth and power and a complete waste of the object in question. It was also a way of spitefully denying their successors any chance of inheriting the object—other mages were justly wary of retrieving the grave

goods for fear of supernatural reprisals.

As the sun rose, I waited impatiently for the expected summons. The boy had said

he would call me at dawn, but he was no doubt sleeping in like the layabout adolescent he was.

In the meantime I ordered my thoughts. One thing that was crystal clear was that

the boy was the patsy of an adult magician, some shadowy influence who sought to

deflect blame for the theft onto the kid. It wasn't hard to guess this—no child of his age would summon me for so great a task on his own. Presumably the unknown magician

wished to deal a blow to Lovelace and gain control over the Amulet's powers. If so, he was risking everything. Judging by the scale of the hunt I had just evaded, several

powerful people were greatly concerned by its loss.

Even alone, Simon Lovelace was a formidable proposition. The fact that he was

able to employ (and restrain) both Faquarl and Jabor proved as much. I did not relish the urchin's chances when the magician caught up with him.

Then there was the girl, that nonmagician whose friends withstood my magic and

saw through my illusions. Several centuries had gone by since I had last encountered

humans of their sort, so to find them here in London was intriguing. Whether or not they understood the implications of their power was difficult to say. The girl didn't even seem to know exactly what the Amulet was, only that it was a prize worth having. She certainly wasn't allied to Lovelace or the boy. Strange... I couldn't see where she fit into this at all.

Oh well, it wasn't going to be my problem. Sunlight hit the roof of the abbey. I

allowed myself a short, luxurious flex of my wings.

At that moment, the summons came.

A thousand fishhooks seemed to embed themselves in me. I was pulled in several

directions at once. Resisting too long risked tearing my essence, but I had no interest in delay. I wished to hand over the Amulet and be done.

With this eager hope in mind I submitted to the summons, vanishing from the

rooftop....

...and reappearing instantaneously in the child's room. I looked around.

"All right, what's this?"

"I order you, Bartimaeus, to reveal whether you have diligently and wholly

carried out your charge—"

"Of course I have—what do you think this is, costume jewelry?" I pointed with my gargoyle's claw at the Amulet dangling on my chest. It waved and winked in the

shuddering light of the candles.

"The Amulet of Samarkand. It was Simon Lovelace's. Now it is yours. Soon it

will be Simon Lovelaces again. Take it and enjoy the consequences. I was asking about

this pentacle you've drawn here: what are these runes? This extra line?"

The kid puffed out his chest. "Adelbrand's Pentacle." If I didn't know better, I'd have sworn he smirked, an unseemly facial posture for one so young.

Adelbrand's Pentacle. That meant trouble. I made a big show of checking the lines

of the star and circle, looking for minute breaks or wiggles in the chalk. Then I perused the runes and symbols themselves.

"Aha!" I roared. "You've spelled this wrong! And you know what that means, don't you...?" I drew myself up like a cat ready to pounce.

The kid's face went an interesting mix of white and red; his lower lip wobbled; his

eyes bulged from their sockets. He looked very much like he wanted to run for it, but he didn't, so my plan was foiled.[2] Hastily he scanned the letters on the floor.

[2] If a magician leaves his circle during a summons his power over his victim is

broken I was hoping I would thus be able to leave. Incidentally, it would also have left me free to step out of my own pentacle and nail him.

"Recreant demon! The pentacle is sound—it binds you still!"

"Okay, so I lied." I reduced in size. My stone wings folded back under my hump.

"Do you want this amulet or not?"

"P-place it in the vessel."

A small soapstone bowl sat on the floor midway between the outermost arcs of the

two circles. I removed the Amulet and with a certain amount of inner relief tossed it

casually into the bowl. The boy bent toward it. Out of the corner of my eyes I watched him closely—if one foot, one finger, fell outside his circle, I would be on him faster than a praying mantis.

But the kid was wise to this. He produced a stick from the pocket of his tatty coat.

Jammed into the tip was a hooked piece of wire that looked suspiciously like a twisted paperclip. With a couple of cautious prods and jerks he caught the lip of the bowl with the hook and drew it into his circle. Then he picked up the Amulet's chain, wrinkling his nose as he did so.

"Euch, this is disgusting!"

"Nothing to do with me. Blame Rotherhithe Sewage Works. No, on second

thought, blame yourself. I've spent the whole night trying to evade capture on your

account. You're lucky I didn't immerse myself completely."

"You were pursued?" He sounded almost eager. Wrong emotion, kid—try fear.

"By half the demonic hordes of London." I rolled my stony eyes and clashed my horny beak.

"Make no mistake about it, boy, they are coming here, yellow-eyed and ravening,

ready to seize you.

You will be helpless, defenseless against their power. You have one chance only;

release me from this circle and I will help you evade their clutches."[3]

[3] Yep, by destroying him myself before they got there.

"Do you take me for a fool?"

"The amulet in your hands answers that. Well, no matter. I have carried out my

charge, my task is done. For the remainder of your short life, farewell!" My form shimmered, began to fade. A rippling pillar of steam issued up from the floor as if to swallow me and spirit me away. It was wishful thinking—Adelbrand's Pentacle would

see to that.

"You cannot depart! I have other work for thee." More than the renewed captivity, it was these occasional archaisms that annoyed me so much.
Thee, recreant demon
—I ask you! No one used language like that anymore, and hadn't for two hundred years. Anyone

would think he had learned his trade entirely out of some old book.

But extraneous
thees
or not, he was quite right. Most ordinary pentacles bind you to one service only. Carry it out, and you are free to go. If the magician requires you again, he must repeat the whole draining rigmarole of summoning from the beginning.

But Adelbrand's Pentacle countermanded this: its extra lines and incantations double

locked the door and forced you to remain for further orders. It was a complex magical

formula that required adult stamina and concentration, and this gave me ammunition for my next attack.

I allowed the steam to ebb away. "So where is he, then?"

The boy was busy turning the Amulet over and over in his pale hands. He looked

up absently.

"Where is who?"

"The boss, your master, the
éminence grise,
the power behind the throne. The man who has put you up to this little theft, who's told you what to say and what to draw.

The man who'll still be standing unharmed in the shadows when Lovelace's djinn are

tossing your ragged corpse around the London rooftops. He's playing some game that you know nothing of, appealing to your ignorance and youthful vanity."

That stung him. His lips curled back a little.

"What did he say to you, I wonder?" I adopted a patronizing singsong voice: "

'Well
done,
young fellow, you're the best little magician I've seen in a long while. Tell me, would you like to raise a powerful djinni? You would? Well, why don't we do just that!

We can play a prank on someone too—steal an amulet—' "

The boy laughed. Unexpected that. I was anticipating a furious outburst or some

anxiety. But no, he laughed.

He turned the Amulet over a final time, then bent and replaced it in the pot. Also

unexpected.

Using the stick with the hook, he pushed the pot back through the circle to its

original position on the floor.

"What are you doing?"

"Giving it back."

"I don't want it."

"Pick it up."

I wasn't about to get into a prissy exchange of insults with a twelve-year old,

particularly one who could impose his will on me, so I reached out through my circle and hefted the Amulet.

"Now, what? When Simon Lovelace comes I won't be hanging on to this, you

know. I'll be giving it right back to him with a smile and a wave. And pointing out which curtain you're shivering behind."

"Wait."

The kid produced something shiny from one of the inner pockets of his

voluminous coat. Did I mention that this coat was about three sizes too big for him? It had evidently once belonged to a very careless magician, since, although heavily patched, it still displayed the unmistakable ravages of fire, blood, and talon. I wished the boy similar fortune.

Now he was holding in his left hand a burnished disc—a scrying glass of highly

polished bronze.

He passed his right hand over it a few times and began to gaze into the reflective

metal with passive concentration. Whatever captive imp dwelled within, the disc soon

responded. A murky picture formed; the boy observed it closely. I was too far off to see the image, but while he was distracted I did a bit of looking of my own.