Ptolemy's Gate (19 page)

The two magicians stood dumbly looking at it. A lifeless frog.

Outside the window, noises continued to be heard, but more faintly now, receding with each second. One or two flashes briefly lit the window, then the night was dark once more.

Mandrake bent down to the crumpled frog. Its legs were bent and splayed, its mouth half open, its eyes tight shut. An odd colorless fluid spread slowly out upon the tiles around it. Heart pounding, he used his lenses: on all three planes the frog looked exactly the same. Nevertheless …

“What
is
this hideous creature?” Jane Farrar's pale face was contorted with distaste. “I shall summon my djinni to view it on the higher planes, then we can dispose—”

Mandrake held up a hand. “Wait.” He bent closer, addressed the frog: “Bartimaeus?”

Ms. Farrar frowned. “You mean this thing is—?”

“I don't know. Be silent.” He spoke again, louder this time, nearer the poor bent head. “Bartimaeus—is that you? It is I …” He paused, moistened his lips. “Your master.”

One of the forelegs twitched. Mandrake sat back on his haunches and looked up excitedly at his companion. “He's still alive! Did you see—?”

Ms. Farrar's lips were a hard line. She stood a little apart, as if subtly detaching herself from the scene. One or two wide-eyed footmen appeared at the margins of the hall; with angry motions, she waved them away. “It will not be alive for long. Look at the essence draining off. Did you request it to come here?”

Mandrake was not looking at her; he anxiously surveyed the body on the floor. “Yes, yes, I gave him an open-door injunction. He was to return when he had information on Hopkins.” He tried again. “Bartimaeus!”

Sudden interest flared in Farrar's voice. “Really? And from the sounds we heard, it seems he was pursued. Interesting! John, we have little time for the interrogation. Somewhere nearby Devereaux will have his pentacle chamber. It will be a close-run thing, but if we use sufficient force before the creature loses
all
its essence, we can—”

“Silence! He is waking!”

The back of the frog's head had become blurred and indistinct. The foreleg had not moved again. Nevertheless, one of the eyelids suddenly flickered; by minute increments it opened. A bulging eye looked forth, misty and unfocused.

“Bartimaeus …”

A tiny voice, as if from far away: “Who's asking?”

“Mandrake.”

“Oh. Thought it was … worth waking up for a minute there.” The head sagged, the eyelid drooped.

Ms. Farrar stepped close and nudged the frog's leg with the toe of a pointed shoe. “Fulfill your mission!” she said. “Tell us about Hopkins!”

The frog's eye opened a little. It swiveled painfully and focused for an instant on Ms. Farrar. The tiny voice sounded again. “Is this your bird? Tell me she's not. Oh
dear.
”

The eye closed, and despite all Mandrake's pleas and Farrar's commands, did not reopen. Mandrake sat back on his heels and ran a hand distractedly through his hair.

Farrar laid an impatient hand on his shoulder. “Pull yourself together, John. It's only a demon. Look at the spilled essence! If we don't take steps right now, we'll lose the information!”

He stood then, and looked at her wearily. “You think we can wake it?”

“Yes, with the right techniques. The Shimmering Coil or the Essence Rack perhaps. But I'd say we've got less than five minutes. It can no longer maintain its form.”

“Those techniques would destroy it.”

“Yes. But we'd have the information. Come on, John. You!”

She snapped her fingers at a manservant hovering at the fringes of a small knot of watching guests. “Over here! Bring a dustpan or some kind of shovel—we need to scrape this mess up fast.”

“No … there is another way.” Mandrake spoke quietly, too quietly for Ms. Farrar to hear. As she issued orders to the men around her, he crouched once more beside the frog and uttered a long and complex incantation under his breath. The frog's limbs shivered; a faint gray mist dribbled off its body, as of cold air meeting warm. With great speed, the body of the frog melted into the mist; the mist coiled about Mandrake's shoes and ebbed away.

Ms. Farrar turned around in time to see Mandrake rising. The frog was gone.

For a few seconds she gazed at him dumbfounded. “What have you done?”

“Dismissed my servant.” His eyes were fixed elsewhere. The fingers of one hand fiddled with his collar.

“But—the information! About Hopkins!” She was genuinely bewildered.

“Can be acquired from my servant in a couple of days. By which time his essence will have healed sufficiently in the Other Place for him to be able to talk to me.”

“Two days!” Ms. Farrar uttered a little squeal of anger. “That might be far too late! We have no idea what Hopkins—”

“He was a valuable servant,” Mandrake said. He looked at her, and his eyes were dull and distant, though his face had flushed at her words. “It will not be too late. I will talk to him when his essence has healed.”

Ms. Farrar's eyes flashed darkly. She stepped close, and Mandrake caught a sudden wave of pomegranates, with a hint of lemon. “I would have thought,” she said, “that you valued my regard rather higher than the spilled slime of a fading demon. That creature failed you! It was charged to bring you information, and it could not do so. Important intelligence was there for us to take … and you released it!”

“Only temporarily.” Mandrake had waved a hand, spoken a breathless syllable: a Bulb of Silence surrounded them, blocking their words from the sizable crowd now jostling at the garden entrance of the hall. They all still wore their masks: he glimpsed the sparkling, vibrant colors, the strange, exotic shapes, the blank eye-slits. He and Farrar were the only magicians who were maskless—it made him feel exposed and naked. Furthermore he knew that he had no real answer to her anger, for his actions had taken even himself by surprise. This made him furious in his turn. “Please control yourself,” he said coldly. “I deal with my slaves in the manner of my choosing.”

Ms. Farrar gave a short, wild laugh. “Indeed you do. Your slaves … or perhaps you mean your
little friends?”

“Oh, come now—”

“Enough!” She turned from him. “People have been hunting for your weakness for some time now, Mr. Mandrake,” she said over her shoulder, “and I, inadvertently, have found it. Extraordinary! I never would have guessed that you were such a sentimental fool.” Her coat swirled around her; with imperious steps she passed through the membrane of the Bulb; without any further backward glance, she stalked from the hall.

Mandrake watched her go. He took a deep breath. Then, with a single word, he dismissed the Bulb of Silence and was received eagerly by an ocean of noise, kerfuffle, and excited speculation.

T
hat morning, as on every morning, a little group of supplicants gathered outside the apartments of my master Ptolemy. They were there long before dawn, wrapped in their shawls, blue-legged and shivering, waiting patiently for the sun. As light spilled over the river, the magician's servants opened the doors and let them in, one by one.

That morning, as on every morning, the list of complaints, wrongs, and outright woes was recited and considered. To some, advice was given. To a few (the more obviously covetous or deluded), help was refused. To the rest, action of one sort or another was promised and delivered. Imps and foliots departed through the windows and flitted out across the city on a variety of errands. A certain noble djinni was seen to leave and, in due course, return. For several hours a steady stream of spirits came and went. It was a very busy household.

At half-past eleven the doors were shut and locked for the day. Thereafter, by a back route (to avoid lingering petitioners, who would have delayed him), the magician Ptolemy departed for the Library of Alexandria to resume his studies.

We were walking across the courtyard outside the library building. It was lunchtime and Ptolemy wished to get anchovy bread in the markets on the quay. I strolled beside him as an Egyptian scribe, bald-headed, hairy of leg, busily arguing with him on the philosophy of worlds.
¹
One or two scholars passed us as we went: disputatious Greeks; lean Romans, hot of eye and scrubbed of skin; dark Nabataeans and courteous diplomats from Meroe and far Parthia, all here to drink knowledge from the deep Egyptian wells. As we were about to leave the library compound, a clash of horns sounded in the street below. Up came a little knot of soldiers, the Ptolemaic colors aflutter on their pikes. They drew apart to reveal Ptolemy's cousin, the king's son and heir to the throne of Egypt, slowly swaggering up the steps. In his train came an adoring cluster of favorites—toadies and fawners to a man.
²
My master and I stopped; we inclined our heads in the traditional manner of respect.

“Cousin!”The king's son lolled to a stop; his tunic was tight about his stomach, wet where the brief walk had drawn sweat from his flesh. His face was blurry with wine, his aura sagged with it. His eyes were dull coins under their heavy lids. “Cousin,” he said again. “Thought I'd pay you a little visit.”

Ptolemy bowed again. “My lord. It is an honor, of course.”

“Thought I'd see where you skulk away your days instead of staying at my side”—he took a breath—“like a loyal cousin should.” The toadies tittered. “Philip and Alexander and all my other cousins are accounted for,” he went on, tumbling over the words. “They fight for us in the desert, they work as ambassadors in principalities east and west. They prove their loyalty to our dynasty. But you …” A pause; he picked at the wet cloth of his tunic. “
Well.
Can we rely on
you
?”

“In whatever way you wish me to serve.”

“But
can
we, Ptolemaeus? You cannot hold a sword or draw a bow with those girlish arms of yours; so where's your strength, eh? Up
here
”—he tapped his head with an unsteady finger—“that's what I've heard. Up here. What do you do in this dismal place then, out of the sun?”

Ptolemy bowed his head modestly. “I study, my lord. The papyri and books of record that the worthy priests have compiled, time out of mind. Works of history and religion—”

“And magic too, by all accounts. Forbidden works.” That was a tall priest, black-robed, head shaven, and with white clay daubed faintly around his eyes. He spat the words out softly like a cobra shooting venom. He was probably a magician himself.

“Ha! Yes. All manner of wickednesses.” The king's son lurched a little closer; sour fumes hung about his clothes and issued from his mouth. “The people celebrate you for it, cousin. You use your magic to beguile them, to win them over to you. I hear they come daily to your house to witness your devilry. I hear all
kinds
of stories.”

Ptolemy pursed his lips. “Do you, my lord? That is beyond my understanding. It is true that I am pestered by some of those who have fallen low in fortune. I offer them advice, nothing more. I am just a boy—weak, as you say, and unworldly. I prefer to remain alone, seeking nothing but a little knowledge.”