Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 1 (4 page)

window beyond looked out toward a horse chestnut tree adorned with the full splendor of summer. The light in the room had a sweet greenish tint.

The boy made for the table.

Halfway there, he stopped and looked behind him.

Nothing. Yet he'd had the strangest feeling.... For some reason the slightly open

door, through which he had entered only a moment before, now gave him an unsettled

sensation. He wished that he had thought to close it after him.

He shook his head. No need. He was going back through it in a matter of seconds.

Four hasty steps took him to the edge of the table. He looked round again. Surely

there had been a noise....

The room was empty. The boy listened as intently as a rabbit in a covert. No, there

was nothing to hear except faint sounds of distant traffic.

Wide-eyed, breathing hard, the boy turned to the table. The metal box glinted in

the sun. He reached for it across the leather surface of the desk. This was not strictly necessary—he could have walked round to the other side of the desk and picked the box

up easily—but somehow he wanted to save time, grab what he'd come for, and get out.

He leaned over the table and stretched out his hand, but the box remained obstinately just out of reach. The boy rocked forward, swung his fingertips out wildly. They missed the box, but his flailing arm knocked over a small pot of pens. The pens sprayed across the leather.

The boy felt a bead of sweat trickle under his arm. Frantically, he began to collect

up the pens and stuff them back into the pot.

There was a throaty chuckle, right behind him, in the room.

He wheeled round, stifling his yell. But there was nothing there.

For a moment the boy remained leaning with his back against the desk, paralyzed

with fear.

Then something reasserted itself in him.
Forget the pens,
it seemed to say.
The
box is what you
came for.
Slowly, imperceptibly, he began to inch his way around the side of the desk, his back to the window, his eyes on the room.

Something tapped the window, urgently, three times. He spun round. Nothing

there; only the horse chestnut beyond the garden, waving gently in the summer breeze.

Nothing there.

At that moment one of the pens he had spilled rolled off the desk onto the carpet.

It made no sound, but he caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye. Another pen began to rock back and forth—first slowly, then faster and faster. Suddenly it spun away,

bounced off the base of the computer, and dropped over the edge onto the floor. Another did the same. Then another. Suddenly, all the pens were rolling, in several directions at once, accelerating off the edges of the desk, colliding, falling, landing, lying still.

The boy watched. The last one fell.

He did not move.

Something laughed softly, right in his ear.

With a cry he lashed out with his left arm, but made no contact. The momentum

of his swing turned him around to face the desk. The box was directly in front of him. He snatched it up and dropped it instantly—the metal had been sitting in the sun and its heat seared his palm. The box struck the desktop and lost its lid. A pair of horn-rimmed

spectacles fell out. A moment later, he had them in his hand and was running for the door.

Something came behind him. He heard it hopping at his back.

He was almost at the door; he could see the stairs beyond that led up to his master.

And the door slammed shut.

The boy wrenched at the doorknob, beat at the wood, hammered, called to his

master in a choking sob, but all to no avail. Something was whispering in his ear and he could not hear the words.

In mortal panic, he kicked at the door, succeeding only in jarring his toe through

his small black boot.

He turned then and faced the empty room.

Small rustlings sounded all about him, delicate taps and little flitterings, as if the carpet, the books, the shelves, even the ceiling were being brushed against by invisible, moving things. One of the light shades above his head swung slightly in a nonexistent

breeze.

Through his tears, through his terror, the boy found words to speak.

"Stop!" he shouted. "Begone!"

The rustling, tapping, and flittering stopped dead. The light shade's swing slowed,

diminished, and came to a halt.

The room was very still.

Gulping for breath, the boy waited with his back against the door, watching the

room. Not a sound came.

Then he remembered the spectacles that he was still holding in his hand. Out of

the clinging fog of fear, he recalled that his master had told him to put them on before returning. Perhaps if he did so, the door would open and he would be allowed to climb

the stairs to safety.

With trembling fingers he raised the spectacles and put them on.

And saw the truth about the study.

A hundred small demons filled every inch of the space in front of him. They were

stacked one on top of the other all over the room, like seeds in a melon or nuts in a bag, with feet squishing faces and elbows jabbed into bellies. So tightly were they clustered that the very carpet was blocked out.

Leering obscenely, they squatted on the desk, hung from the lights and bookcases,

and hovered in midair. Some balanced on the protruding noses of others or were

suspended from their limbs. A few had huge bodies with heads the size of oranges;

several displayed the reverse. There were tails and wings and horns and warts and extra hands, mouths, feet, and eyes. There were too many scales and too much hair and other

things in impossible places. Some had beaks, others had suckers, most had teeth. They

were every conceivable color, often in inappropriate combinations. And they were all

doing their best to keep very, very still so as to convince the boy that nobody was there.

They were trying extremely hard to remain frozen, despite the repressed shaking and

trembling of tails and wings and the uncontrollable twitching of their extremely mobile mouths.

But at the very moment the boy put on the spectacles and saw them, they realized

that he could see them too.

Then, with a cry of glee, they leaped at him.

The boy screamed, fell back against the door and sideways onto the floor. He

raised his hands to protect himself, dashing the spectacles from his nose. Blindly he

rolled over onto his face and curled himself up into a ball, smothered by the terrible noise of wings and scales and small sharp claws on top, around, beside him.

The boy was still there twenty minutes later, when his master came to fetch him

and dismiss the company of imps. He was carried to his room. For a day and a night he

did not eat. For a further week he remained mute and unresponsive, but at length he

regained his speech and was able to resume his studies.

His master never referred to the incident again, but he was satisfied with the

outcome of the lesson—with the well of hate and fear that had been dug for his

apprentice in that sunny room.

This was one of Nathaniel's earliest experiences. He did not speak of it to anyone,

but the shadow of it never left his heart. He was six years old at the time.

6

Bartimaeus

The problem with a highly magical artifact such as the Amulet of Samarkand is

that it has a distinctive pulsating aura[1] that attracts attention like a naked man at a funeral. I knew that no sooner had Simon Lovelace been informed of my escapade than

he would send out searchers looking for the telltale pulse, and that the longer I remained in one place, the more chance there was of something pinpointing it. The boy would not summon me until dawn,[2] so I had several restless hours to survive first.

[1] All living things have auras too. They take the form of a colored nimbus

surrounding the individual's body and are in fact the closest a visual phenomenon gets to becoming a smell. Auras do exist on the first plane, but are invisible to most humans.

Many animals, such as cats, can see them, djinn and a few exceptional persons likewise Auras change color depending on mood and are a useful indication of fear, hatred,

sorrow, etc. This is why it is very hard to deceive a cat (or a djinni) when you wish it ill.

[2] It would have been a lot more agreeable to return to the urchin immediately to

rid myself of the Amulet.

But magicians almost always insist on specific summonses at specific times. It

removes the possibility of us catching them at a (potentially fatal) disadvantage.

What might the magician send after me? He was unlikely to command many other

djinn of Faquarl's and Jabor's strength, but he would certainly be able to whip up a host of weaker servants to join in the hunt. Ordinarily I can dispose of foliots and the like with one claw tied behind my back, but if they arrived in large numbers, and I was weary,

things might become difficult.[3]

[3] Even magicians are confused by our infinite varieties, which are as different

one from the other as elephants are from insects, or eagles from amoebae. However,

broadly speaking, there are five basic ranks that you are likely to find working in a

magician's service. These are, in descending order of power and general awe: marids,

afrits, djinn, foliots, imps. (There are legions of lowly sprites that are weaker than the imps, but magicians rarely bother summoning these. Likewise, far above the marids exist great entities of terrible power; they are seldom seen on Earth, since few magicians dare even uncover their names.) A detailed knowledge of this hierarchy is vitally important for both magicians and for us, since survival frequently depends on knowing exactly where

you stand.

For example, as a particularly fine specimen of a djinni, I treat other djinn and

anything above my rank with a certain degree of courtesy, but give foliots and imps short shrift.

I flew from Hampstead at top speed and took shelter under the eaves of a deserted

house beside the Thames, where I preened my feathers and watched the sky. After a time, seven small spheres of red light passed across the heavens at low altitude. When they

reached the middle of the river, they split forces: three continued south, two went west, two east. I pressed myself deep into the shadows of the roof, but couldn't help notice the Amulet giving an extra-vibrant throb as the questing spheres disappeared downriver. This unnerved me; shortly afterward I departed to a girder halfway up a crane on the opposite bank, where they were erecting a swanky riverside condo for the magical gentry.

Five silent minutes passed. The river sucked and swirled round the muddy posts

of the wharf.

Clouds passed over the moon. A sudden green and sickly light flared in all the

windows of the deserted house on the other side of the river. Hunched shadows moved

within it, searching. They found nothing; the light congealed and became a glowing mist that drifted from the windows and was blown away. Darkness shrouded the house again. I flew south at once, darting and swooping from street to street.

For half the night I continued my frantic, fugitive dance across London. The

spheres[4] were out in even greater numbers than I had feared (evidently more than one magician had summoned them) and appeared above me at regular intervals. To keep safe

I had to keep moving, and even then I was nearly caught twice. Once I flew around an

office block and nearly collided with a sphere coming the other way; another came upon me as, overcome with exhaustion, I huddled in a birch tree in Green Park. On both

occasions I managed to escape before reinforcements arrived.

[4] Search spheres like these are a kind of sturdy imp. They possess giant scaly

ears and a single bristled nostril, which make them particularly sensitive to magical

pulsation and extremely irritable when exposed to any loud noise or pungent smell. For some of the night I was consequently forced to bunker down in the middle of Rotherhithe Sewage Works.

Before long I was on my last wings. The constant drag of supporting my physical

form was wearing me down and using up precious energy. So I decided to adopt a

different plan—to find a place where the Amulet's pulse would be drowned out by other

magical emissions. It was time to mingle with the many-headed multitude, the great

unwashed: in other words, with people. I was that desperate.

I flew back to the center of the city. Even at this late hour, the tourists in Trafalgar Square still flowed around the base of Nelson's Column in a gaudy tide, buying cut-price charms from the official vending booths wedged between the lions. A cacophony of

magical pulses rose up from the square. It was as good a place as anywhere to hide.

A bolt of feathered lightning plunged down out of the night and disappeared into

the narrow space between two stalls. Presently a young, sad-eyed Egyptian boy emerged

and elbowed his way into the throng. He wore new blue jeans and a padded black bomber

jacket over a white T-shirt; also a pair of big white trainers with laces that were constantly coming loose. He mingled with the crowd.

I felt the Amulet burning against my chest. At regular intervals it sent out little

waves of intense heat in double bursts, like heartbeats. I fervently hoped that this signal would now be swallowed by the auras all around.

Much of the magic here was all show, no substance. The plaza was littered with

licensed quacks selling minor charms and trinkets that had been approved by the

authorities for common use.[5]

Wide-eyed tourists from North America and Japan eagerly probed the stacks of

multicolored stones and gimcrack jewelry, trying to recall the birth signs of their relatives back home while being patiently prompted by the cheery Cockney vendors. If it weren't