Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 1 (13 page)

sweat between them and the box they held.

The young magician and his two companions sauntered from the reception room.

They were talking animatedly, chuckling over a remark made by the one with clammy

skin. At a leisurely pace they approached Nathaniel's master, waiting by the door.

Nathaniel gripped the hammer firmly.

He held the glass box out in front of him. It shook from within.

The old man was clasping Mr. Underwood's hand. The young magician was next

in line, looking out into the street as if eager to be gone.

In a loud voice Nathaniel spoke the first three commands, uttered the name of

Simon Lovelace, and followed it with the final word.

Then he smashed the box.

A brittle cracking, a frenzied droning. Glass splinters cascaded toward the carpet.

The six mites burst from their prison and rocketed down the stairs, their eager stings jutting forward.

The magicians barely had time to look up before the mites were upon them. Three

made a beeline for Simon Lovelace's face; raising his hand, he made a rapid sign.

Instantly, each mite erupted into a ball of flame and careered off at an angle to explode against the wall. The three other mites disobeyed their command. Two darted toward the clammy, doughy-faced magician; with a cry, he stumbled back, tripped over the doorsill and fell out onto the garden path. The mites bobbed and dived above him, seeking

exposed flesh. His arms thrashed back and forth in front of his face, but to no avail.

Several successful jabs were made, each one accompanied by a howl of agony. The sixth

mite approached the old man at speed. He appeared to do nothing, but when it was just

inches from his face, the mite suddenly pulled to a halt and reversed frantically,

cartwheeling in midair. It spun out of control and landed near Simon Lovelace, who trod it into the carpet.

Arthur Underwood had been watching this in horror; now he pulled himself

together. He stepped over the threshold to where his guest was writhing in the flower bed and clapped his hands sharply. The two vengeful mites dropped to the around as if

stunned.

At this point Nathaniel thought to make a judicious retreat.

He slipped away to the schoolroom, where Ms. Lutyens was sitting by the table

reading a magazine. She smiled as he entered.

"How did you get on? Sounds like a boisterous party for this time of day. I'm sure I heard someone's glass smashing."

Nathaniel said nothing. In his mind's eye he saw the three mites exploding

harmlessly into the wall. He began to shake—whether from fear or disappointed rage, he did not know.

Ms. Lutyens was on her feet in a trice. "Nathaniel, come here. What's the matter?

You look ill!

You're shaking!" She put her arm around him and let his head rest gently against

her side. He closed his eyes. His face was on fire; he felt cold and hot all at the same time. She was still talking to him, but he could not answer her....

At that moment the schoolroom door blew open.

Simon Lovelace stood there, his glasses flashing in the light from the window. He

issued a command; Nathaniel was ripped bodily from Ms. Lutyens's grasp and carried

through the air. For a moment, he hung suspended midway between ceiling and floor,

time enough to catch a glimpse of the other two magicians crowding in behind their

leader, and also, relegated to the back almost out of sight, his master.

Nathaniel heard Ms. Lutyens shouting something, but then he was upended, the

blood rushed to his ears, and everything else was drowned out.

He hung with his head, arms, and legs dangling toward the carpet and his bottom

aloft. Then an invisible hand, or an invisible stick, struck him on his rump. He yelled, wriggled, kicked in all directions. The hand descended again, harder than before. And

then again....

Long before the tireless hand ceased its work, Nathaniel stopped kicking. He hung

limply, aware only of the stinging pain and the ignominy of his punishment. The fact that Ms. Lutyens was witness to it made it far more brutal than he could bear. Fervently he wished he were dead. And when at last a darkness welled up and began to carry him

away, he welcomed it with all his heart.

The hands released him, but he was already unconscious before he hit the floor.

Nathaniel was confined to his room for a month and subjected to a great number

of further punishments and deprivations. After the initial series of penalties, his master chose not to speak to him, and contact with everyone else—with the exception of Mrs.

Underwood, who brought him his meals and dealt with his chamber pot—ceased

forthwith. Nathaniel had no lessons and was allowed no books. He sat in his room from

dawn until dusk looking out across the roofscapes of London toward the distant Houses

of Parliament.

Such solitude might have driven him mad had he not discovered a discarded

ballpoint pen under his bed. With this and a few old sheets of paper he managed to wile away some of the time with a series of sketches of the world beyond the window. When

these became tedious, Nathaniel devoted himself instead to compiling a large number of minutely detailed lists and notes, drawn over his sketches, which he concealed under his mattress whenever he heard footsteps on the stair. These notes contained the beginnings of his revenge.

To Nathaniel's great distress, Mrs. Underwood had been forbidden to talk to him.

Although he detected some sympathy in her manner, her silence gave him cold comfort.

He withdrew into himself and did not speak when she entered.

It was thus only when his month's isolation came to an end and his lessons started

up once more that he discovered that Ms. Lutyens had been dismissed.

13

Throughout the long, wet autumn, Nathaniel retreated to the garden whenever he

could. When the weather was fine, he brought with him books from his master's shelves

and devoured their contents with a remorseless hunger while the leaves rained down upon the stone seat and the lawn.

On drizzly days, he sat and watched the dripping bushes, his thoughts circling to

and fro on familiar paths of bitterness and revenge. He made swift progress with his

studies, for his mind was fired with hate. All the rites of summoning, all the incantations that a magician could bind around himself to prevent attack, all the words of power that smote the disobedient demon or dismissed it in a trice—Nathaniel read and committed

these to memory. If he met with a difficult passage—perhaps written in Sumerian or

Coptic, or hidden within a tortuous runic cipher—and he felt his heart quail, he had only to glance up at the gray-green statue of Gladstone to recover his determination.

Gladstone had avenged himself on anyone who wronged him: he had upheld his

honor and was praised for it. Nathaniel planned to do the same, but he was no longer

mastered by his impatience; from now on he used it only to spur himself on. If he had

learned one painful lesson, it was not to act until he was truly ready, and through many long, solitary months, he worked tirelessly toward his first aim: the humiliation of Simon Lovelace.

The history books that Nathaniel studied were full of countless episodes in which

rival magicians had fought each other. Sometimes the more powerful mages had won, yet

often they had been defeated by stealth or guile. Nathaniel had no intention of

challenging his formidable enemy head on—at least not until he had grown in strength.

He would bring him down by other means.

His proper lessons at this time were a tedious distraction. As soon as they had

resumed, Nathaniel had immediately adopted a mask of obedience and contrition,

designed to convince Arthur Underwood that his wicked act was now, for him, a matter

of the utmost shame. This mask never slipped, even when he was put to the most

wearisome and banal jobs in the workroom. If his master harangued him for some trifling error, Nathaniel did not allow so much as a flicker of discontent to cross his face. He simply bowed his head and hastened to repair the fault. He was outwardly the perfect

apprentice, deferring to his master in every way and certainly never expressing any

impatience with the snail's pace at which his studies now progressed.

In truth, this was because Nathaniel did not regard Arthur Underwood as his true

master any longer. His masters were the magicians of old, who spoke to him through their books, allowing him to learn at his own pace and offering ever-multiplying marvels for his mind. They did not patronize or betray him.

Arthur Underwood had forfeited his right to Nathaniel's obedience and respect the

moment he failed to shield him from Simon Lovelace's jibes and physical assaults. This, Nathaniel knew, simply was not done. Every apprentice was taught that their master was effectively their parent. He or she protected them until they were old enough to stand up for themselves. Arthur Underwood had failed to do this. He had stood by and watched

Nathaniel's unjust humiliation—first at the party, then in the schoolroom. Why? Because he was a coward and feared Lovelace's power.

Worse than this, he had sacked Ms. Lutyens.

From brief conversations with Mrs. Underwood, Nathaniel learned that while he

had been suspended upside down, being beaten by Lovelace's imp, Ms. Lutyens had done

her best to help him.

Officially she had been fired for "insolence and impertinence," but it was hinted that she had actually tried to hit Mr. Lovelace and had only been restrained from doing so by his companions. When he thought about this, Nathaniel's blood boiled even more

forcefully than when he considered his own humiliation. She had tried to protect him, and for doing this, for doing exactly what Mr. Underwood
should
have done, his master had dismissed her.

This was something that Nathaniel could never forgive.

With Ms. Lutyens gone, Mrs. Underwood was now the only person whose

company gave Nathaniel any pleasure. Her fondness punctuated his days of studying and

brought relief from his master's cold detachment and the indifference of his tutors. But he could not confide his plans to her: they were too dangerous. To be safe and strong, you had to be secret. A true magician kept his own counsel.

After several months Nathaniel set himself his first real test, the task of

summoning a minor imp.

There were risks involved, for although he was confident enough about the

incantations, he neither owned a pair of contact lenses for observing the first three planes, nor had received his new official name. Both of these were due to appear on Underwood's say-so, at the beginning of his coming of age, but Nathaniel could not wait for this far-off day. The spectacles from the workroom would help his vision. As for his name, he would not give the demon any opportunity to learn it.

Nathaniel stole an old piece of bronze sheeting from his master's workroom and

cut it, with great difficulty, into a rough disc. Over several weeks, he polished the disc and buffed it and polished it again until it sparkled in the candlelight and reflected his image without defect.

Next, he waited until one weekend when both his master and Mrs. Underwood

were away. No sooner had their car vanished down the street than Nathaniel set to work.

He rolled back the carpet in his bedroom and on the bare floorboards chalked two simple pentacles. Sweating profusely despite the chill in the room, he drew the curtains and lit the candles. He placed a single bowl of rowan-wood and hazel between the circles (only one was required, since the imp concerned was weak and timorous). When all was ready,

Nathaniel took the polished bronze disc and set it in the center of the circle in which the demon was to appear. Then he placed the spectacles on his nose, put on a tattered lab coat he had found on the workroom door, and stepped into his circle to begin the incantation.

Dry-mouthed, he spoke the six syllables of the summoning and called out the

creature's name.

His voice cracked a little as he spoke, and he wished that he had had the foresight

to enclose a glass of water within his circle. He could not afford to mispronounce a word.

He waited, counting under his breath the nine seconds that it would take for his

voice to carry across the void to the Other Place. Then he counted the seven seconds that it would take for the creature to awaken to its name. Finally he counted the three seconds that it would take for—

A naked baby floated above the circle, moving its arms and legs as if it were

swimming on the spot. It looked at him with sullen yellow eyes. Its small red lips pursed and blew an insolent bubble of spit.

Nathaniel spoke the words of Confinement.

The baby gurgled with rage, frantically flapping its pudgy arms as its legs were

drawn downward toward the shining bronze disc. The command was too strong: as if

sucked suddenly down a drain, the baby elongated into a flow of color, which spiraled

down into the disc. For an instant its angry face could be seen squashing its nose up

against the metal surface from below; then a misty sheen obscured it and the disc was

clear once more.

Nathaniel uttered several charms to secure the disc and check for snares, but all

was well. With shaking legs, he stepped from his circle.

His first summons had been successful.

The imprisoned imp was surly and impudent, but by applying a small spell that

amounted to a brisk electric shock, Nathaniel could induce it to reveal true glimpses of things happening far away. It was able to report conversations it overheard as well as to reveal them visually in the disc. Nathaniel kept his crude but effective scrying glass hidden under the roof tiles outside the skylight, and with its aid learned many things.