The Amulet of Samarkand Read online

  I rubbed my front two legs together with irritation. I would have to be very careful. The imp complicated matters.2

  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

  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.

  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.

  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 Amulet and hung it round my neck. I turned swiftly. The room was as before, but I could sense something on the seventh plane, moving swiftly and coming closer.

  The time for stealth was over.

  As I ran for the door I noticed out of the corner of my eye a portal suddenly open in midair. Inside the portal was a blackness that was immediately obscured as something stepped out through it.

  I charged at the door and hit it with my small boy’s fist. The door smashed open like a bent playing card. I ran past it without stopping.

  In the corridor, the toad turned toward me and opened its mouth. A green gobbet of slime issued forth, which suddenly accelerated down at me, aiming for my head. I dodged and the slime splattered on the wall behind me, destroying a painting and everything down to the bare bricks beneath it.

  I threw a bolt of Compression at the toad. With a small croak of regret it imploded into a dense blob of matter the size of a marble and dropped to the floor. I didn’t break stride. As I ran on down the corridor
I placed a protective Shield around my physical body in case of further missiles.

  Which was a wise move as it happened, because the next instant a Detonation struck the floor directly behind me.The impact was so great that I was sent flying headlong at an angle down the corridor and half into the wall. Green flames licked around me, leaving streaks on the decor like the fingers of a giant hand.

  I struggled to my feet amid the confusion of shattered bricks and turned around.

  Standing over the broken door at the end of the corridor was something that had taken the form of a very tall man with bright red skin and the head of a jackal.

  “Bartimaeus!”

  Another Detonation shot down the corridor. I somersaulted under it, aiming for the stairs, and as the green explosion vaporized the corner of the wall, rolled head over heels down the steps, through the banisters and six feet down onto the black-and-white tiled floor, cracking it quite badly.

  I got to my feet and took a look at the front door. Through the frosted glass beside it I could see the hulking yellow outline of one of the three sentinels. It was lying in wait, little realizing that it could be seen from inside. I decided to make my exit elsewhere. Thus does superior intelligence win over brute strength any day of the week!

  Speaking of which, I had to get out fast. Noises from above indicated pursuit.

  I ran through a couple of rooms—a library, a dining room—each time making a break for the window and each time retreating when one or more of the yellow creatures hove into view outside. Their foolishness in making themselves so obvious was only equaled by my caution in avoiding whatever magical weapons they carried.

  Behind me, my name was being called in a voice of fury. With growing frustration I opened the next door and found myself in the kitchen. There were no more internal doors, but one led out to what looked like a lean-to greenhouse, filled with herbs and greens. Beyond was the garden—and also the three sentinels, who came motoring round the side of the house at surprising speed on their rotating legs. To gain time, I put a Seal on the door behind me. Then I looked around me and saw the cook.

  He was sitting far back in his chair with his shoes on the kitchen table, a fat, jovial-looking man with a red face and a meat cleaver in his hand. He was studiously paring his nails with the cleaver, flicking each fragment of nail expertly through the air to land in the fireplace beside him. As he did so he watched me continuously with his dark little eyes.

  I felt unease. He didn’t seem at all perturbed to see a small Egyptian boy come running into his kitchen. I checked him out on the different planes. On one to six he was exactly the same, a portly cook in a white apron. But on the seventh …

  Uh-oh.

  “Bartimaeus.”

  “Faquarl.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Haven’t seen you around.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Shame, eh?”

  “Yes. Well… here I am.”

  “Here you are, indeed.”

  While this fascinating conversation was going on, the sounds of a sustained series of Detonations came from the other side of the door. My Seal held firm, though. I smiled as urbanely as I could.

  “Jabor seems as excitable as ever.”

  “Yes, he’s just the same. Only I think perhaps slightly more hungry, Bartimaeus. That’s the only change I’ve noticed in him. He never seems satisfied, even when he’s been fed. And that happens all too rarely these days, as you can imagine.”

  “’Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen,’ that’s your master’s watchword, is it? Still, he must be fairly potent to be able to have you and Jabor as his slaves.”

  The cook gave a thin smile and with a flick of the knife sent a nail paring spinning to the ceiling. It pierced the plaster and lodged there.

  “Now, now, Bartimaeus, we don’t use the s-word in civilized company, do we? Jabor and I are playing the long game.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “Speaking of disparities in power, I notice that you choose to avoid addressing me on the seventh plane. This seems a little impolite. Can it be that you are uneasy with my true form?”

  “Queasy, Faquarl, not uneasy."6

  “Well, this is all very pleasant. I admire your choice of form, by the way, Bartimaeus.Very comely. But I see that you are somewhat weighed down by a certain amulet. Perhaps you could be so good as to take it off and put it on the table. Then if you care to tell me which magician you are working for, I might consider ways of ending this meeting in a nonfatal manner.”

  “That’s kind of you, but you know I can’t do that.”7

  The cook prodded the edge of the table with the tip of his cleaver. “Let me be frank. You can and will. It is nothing personal, of course; one day we may work together again. But for now I am bound just as you are. And I too have my charge to fulfill. So it comes, as it always does, to a question of power. Correct me if I am wrong, but I note that you do not have too much confidence in yourself today—otherwise you would have left by the front door, quelling the triloids as you went, rather than allowing them to shepherd you round the house to me.”

  “I was merely following a whim.”

  “Mmm. Perhaps you would stop edging toward the window, Bartimaeus. Such a ploy would be pitifully obvious even to a human8 and besides, the triloids wait for you there. Hand over the Amulet or you will discover that your ramshackle defense Shield will count for nothing.”

  He stood up and held out his hand. There was a pause. Behind my Seal, Jabor’s patient (if unimaginative) Detonations still sounded. The door itself must have long since been turned to powder. In the garden the three sentinels hovered, all their eyes trained on me. I looked around the room for inspiration.

  “The Amulet, Bartimaeus.”

  I raised my hand, and with a heavy, rather theatrical sigh, took hold of the Amulet. Then I leaped to my left. At the same time, I released the Seal on the door. Faquarl gave a tut of annoyance and began a gesture. As he did so he was hit square on by a particularly powerful Detonation that came shooting through the empty gap where the Seal had been. It sent him backward into the fireplace and the brickwork collapsed upon him.

  I smashed my way into the greenhouse just as Jabor stepped through the gap into the kitchen. As Faquarl emerged from the rubble, I was breaking out into the garden. The three sentinels converged on me, eyes wide and legs rotating. Scything claws appeared at the ends of their blobby feet. I cast an Illumination of the brightest kind. The whole garden was lit up as if by an exploding sun. The sentinels’ eyes were dazzled; they chittered with pain. I leaped over them and ran through the garden, dodging bolts of magic that sprang from the house, incinerating trees.

  At the far end of the garden, between a compost heap and a motorized lawnmower, I vaulted the wall. I tore through the blue latticework of magical nodes, leaving a boy-shaped hole. Instantly alarm bells began ringing all over the grounds.

  I hit the pavement outside, the Amulet bouncing and banging on my chest. On the other side of the wall I heard the sound of galloping hooves. It was high time I made a change.

  Peregrine falcons are the fastest birds on record. They can attain a speed of two hundred kilometers an hour in diving flight. Rarely has one achieved this horizontally over the roofs of North London. Some would even doubt that this was possible, particularly while carrying a weighty amulet around its neck. Suffice it to say, however, that when Faquarl and Jabor landed in the Hampstead backstreet, creating an invisible obstruction that was immediately hit by a speeding moving van, I was nowhere to be seen.

  I was long gone.

  5

  “Above all,” said his master, “there is one fact that we must drive into your wretched little skull now so that you never afterward forget. Can you guess what that fact is?”

  “No, sir,” the boy said.

  “No?” The bristling eyebrows shot up in mock surprise. Mesmerized, the boy watched them disappear under the hanging
white thatch of hair. There, almost coyly, they remained just out of sight for a moment, before suddenly descending with a terrible finality and weight. “No. Well then …” The magician bent forward in his chair. “I shall tell you.”

  With a slow, deliberate motion, he placed his hands together so that the fingertips formed a steepled arch, which he pointed at the boy.

  “Remember this,” he said in a soft voice. “Demons are very wicked. They will hurt you if they can. Do you understand this?”

  The boy was still watching the eyebrows. He could not wrench his gaze away from them. Now they were furrowed sternly downward, two sharp arrowheads meeting. They moved with a quite remarkable agility—up, down, tilting, arching, sometimes together, sometimes singly. With their parody of independent life they exerted a strange fascination on the boy. Besides, he found studying them infinitely preferable to meeting his master’s gaze.

  The magician coughed dangerously. “Do you understand?”

  “Oh—yes, sir.”

  “Well now, you say yes, and I am sure you mean yes—and yet …” One eyebrow inched skyward musingly. “And yet I do not feel convinced that you really, truly understand!’

  “Oh, yes, sir; yes, I do, sir. Demons are wicked and they are hurtful and they will hurt you if you let them, sir.” The boy fidgeted anxiously on his cushion. He was eager to prove that he had been listening well. Outside, the summer sun was beating on the grass and the hot pavement; an ice-cream van had passed merrily under the window five minutes before. But only a bright rim of pure daylight skirted the heavy red curtains of the magician’s room; the air within was stuffy and thick. The boy wished for the lesson to be over, to be allowed to go.