The Amulet of Samarkand

Bartimaeus

The temperature of the room dropped fast. Ice formed on the curtains and crusted thickly around the lights in the ceiling. The glowing filaments in each bulb shrank and dimmed, while the candles that sprang from every available surface like a colony of toadstools had their wicks snuffed out. The darkened room filled with a yellow, choking cloud of brimstone, in which indistinct black shadows writhed and roiled. From far away came the sound of many voices screaming. Pressure was suddenly applied to the door that led to the landing. It bulged inward, the timbers groaning. Footsteps from invisible feet came pattering across the floorboards and invisible mouths whispered wicked things from behind the bed and under the desk.

The sulfur cloud contracted into a thick column of smoke that vomited forth thin tendrils; they licked the air like tongues before withdrawing. The column hung above the middle of the pentacle, bubbling ever upward against the ceiling like the cloud of an erupting volcano. There was a barely perceptible pause. Then two yellow staring eyes materialized in the heart of the smoke.

Hey, it was his first time. I wanted to scare him.

And I did, too. The dark—haired boy stood in a pentacle of his own, smaller, filled with different runes, three feet away from the main one. He was pale as a corpse, shaking like a dead leaf in a high wind. His teeth rattled in his shivering jaw. Beads of sweat dripped from his brow, turning to ice as they fell through the air. They tinkled with the sound of hailstones on the floor.

All well and good, but so what? I mean, he looked about twelve years old. Wide—eyed, hollow—cheeked. There's not that much satisfaction to be had from scaring the pants off a scrawny kid.[1]

So I floated and waited, hoping he wasn't going to take too long to get round to the dismissing spell. To keep myself occupied, I made blue flames lick up around the inner edges of the pentacle, as if they were seeking a way to get out and nab him. All hokum, of course. I'd already checked and the seal was drawn well enough. No spelling mistakes anywhere, unfortunately.

At last it looked as if the urchin was plucking up the courage to speak. I guessed this by a stammering about his lips that didn't seem to be induced by pure fear alone. I let the blue fire die away, to be replaced by a foul smell.

The kid spoke. Very squeakily.

"I charge you… to… to…" Get on with it! "T—t—tell me your n—name."

That's usually how they start, the young ones. Meaningless waffle. He knew, and I knew that he knew, my name already; otherwise how could he have summoned me in the first place? You need the right words, the right actions, and most of all the right name. I mean, it's not like hailing a cab—you don't get just anybody when you call.

I chose a rich, deep, dark chocolaty sort of voice, the kind that resounds from everywhere and nowhere and makes the hairs stand up on the back of inexperienced necks.

"Bartimaeus."

I saw the kid give a strangled kind of gulp when he heard the word. Good—then he wasn't entirely stupid; he knew who and what I was. He knew my reputation.

After taking a moment to swallow some accumulated phlegm, he spoke again. "I—I charge you again to answer. Are you that B—Bartimaeus who in olden times was summoned by the magicians to repair the walls of Prague?"

What a time waster this kid was. Who else would it be? I upped the volume a bit on this one. The ice on the light bulbs cracked like caramelized sugar. Behind the dirty curtains the window glass shimmered and hummed. The kid rocked back on his heels.

"I am Bartimaeus! I am Sakhr al—Jinni, N'gorso the Mighty, and the Serpent of Silver Plumes! I have rebuilt the walls of Uruk, Karnak, and Prague. I have spoken with Solomon. I have run with the buffalo fathers of the plains. I have watched over Old Zimbabwe till the stones fell and the jackals fed on its people. I am Bartimaeus! I recognize no master. So I charge you in your turn, boy. Who are you to summon me?"

Impressive stuff, eh? All true as well, which gives it more power. And I wasn't just doing it to sound big. I rather hoped the kid would be blustered by it into telling me his name in return, which would give me something to go on when his back was turned.[2] But no luck there.

"By the constraints of the circle, the points on the pentacle, and the chain of runes, I am your master! You will obey my will!"

There was something particularly obnoxious about hearing this old shtick coming from a weedy stripling, and in such a foolish high voice too. I bit back the temptation to give him a piece of my mind and intoned the usual response. Anything to get it over with quickly.

"What is your will?"

I admit I was already surprised. Most tyro magicians look first and ask questions later. They go window—shopping, eyeing up their potential power, but are far too nervous to try it out. You don't often get small ones like this squirt calling up entities like me in the first place, either.

The kid cleared his throat. This was the moment. This is what he'd been building up to. He'd been dreaming of this for years, when he should have been lying on his bed thinking about racing cars or girls. I waited grimly for the pathetic request. What would it be? Levitating some object was a usual one, or moving it from one side of the room to the other. Perhaps he'd want me to conjure an illusion. That might be fun: there was bound to be a way of misinterpreting his request and upsetting him.[3]

"I charge you to retrieve the Amulet of Samarkand from the house of Simon Lovelace and bring it to me when I summon you at dawn tomorrow."

"You what?"

"I charge you to retrieve—"

"Yes, I heard what you said." I didn't mean to sound petulant. It just slipped out, and my sepulchral tones slipped a bit too.

"Then go!"

"Wait a minute!" I felt that queasy sensation in my stomach that you always get when they dismiss you. Like someone sucking out your insides through your back. They have to say it three times to get rid of you, if you're keen on sticking around. Usually you're not. But this time I remained where I was, two glowing eyes in an angry fug of boiling smoke.

"Do you know what you are asking for, boy?"

"I am neither to converse, discuss, nor parley with you; nor to engage in any riddles, bets, or games of chance; nor to—"

"I have no wish to converse with a scrawny adolescent, believe you me, so save your rote—learned rubbish. Someone is taking advantage of you. Who is it—your master, I suppose? A wizened coward hiding behind a boy." I let the smoke recede a little, exposed my outlines for the first time, hovering dimly in the shadows. "You are playing with fire twice over, if you seek to rob a true magician by summoning me. Where are we? London?"

He nodded. Yes, it was London all right. Some grotty town house. I surveyed the room through the chemical fumes. Low ceiling, peeling wallpaper; a single faded print on the wall. It was a somber Dutch landscape—a curious choice for a boy. I'd have expected pop chicks, football players… Most magicians are conformists, even when young.

"Ah, me…" My voice was emollient and wistful. "It is a wicked world and they have taught you very little."

"I am not afraid of you! I have given you your charge and I demand you go!" The second dismissal. My bowels felt as if they were being passed over by a steamroller. I sensed my form waver, flicker. There was power in this child, though he was very young. "It is not me you have to fear; not now, anyway. Simon Lovelace will come to you himself when he finds his amulet stolen. He will not spare you for your youth." "You are bound to do my will." "I am." I had to hand it to him, he was determined. And very stupid. His hand moved. I heard the first syllable of the Systemic Vise. He was about to inflict pain. I went. I didn't bother with any more special effects.

Nathaniel

"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.

"I have listened very carefully, sir," he said.

His master nodded. "Have you ever seen a demon?" he asked.

"No, sir. I mean, only in books."

"Stand up."

The boy stood quickly, one foot almost slipping on his cushion. He waited awkwardly, hands at his sides. His master indicated a door behind him with a casual finger. "You know what's through there?"

"Your study, sir."

"Good. Go down the steps and cross the room. At the far end you'll find my desk. On the desk is a box. In the box is a pair of spectacles. Put them on and come back to me. Got that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well then. Off you go."

Under his master's watchful eye, the boy crossed to the door, which was made of a dark, unpainted wood with many whorls and grains. He had to struggle to turn the heavy brass knob, but the coolness of its touch pleased him. The door swung open soundlessly on oiled hinges and the boy stepped through to find himself at the top of a carpeted staircase. The walls were elegantly papered with a flowery pattern. A small window halfway down let in a friendly stream of sunlight.

The boy descended carefully, one step at a time. The silence and sunlight reassured him and quelled some of his fears. Never having been beyond this point before, he had nothing but nursery stories to furnish his ideas of what might be waiting in his master's study. Terrible images of stuffed crocodiles and bottled eyeballs sprang garishly into his mind. Furiously he drove them out again. He would not be afraid.

At the foot of the staircase was another door, similar to the first, but smaller and decorated, in its center, with a five—sided star painted in red. The boy turned the knob and pushed: the door opened reluctantly, sticking on the thick carpet. When the gap was wide enough the boy passed through into the study.

Unconsciously he had held his breath as he entered; now he let it out again, almost with a sense of disappointment. It was all so ordinary. A long room lined with books on either side. At the far end a great wooden desk with a padded leather chair set behind it. Pens on the table, a few papers, an old computer, a small metal box. The 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.

Bartimaeus

The problem with a highly magical artifact such as the Amulet of Samarkand is that it has a distinctive pulsating aura[15] 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,[16] so I had several restless hours to survive first.

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.[17]

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[18] 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.

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.[19] 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 for the camera bulbs flashing, I might have been back in Karnak. Bargains were being struck, happy cries rang out, everyone was smiling. It was a timeless tableau of gullibility and greed.

But not everything in the square was trivial. Here and there rather more sober—faced men stood at the entrance to small closed tents. Visitors were admitted to these one by one. Evidently there were artifacts of genuine value inside, since without exception small watchers loitered near each booth. They came in various unobtrusive forms—pigeons mostly; I avoided going too close in case they were more perceptive than they looked.

A few magicians wandered about amid the crowd. They were unlikely to be buying anything here; more probably they were doing the night shift in the government offices in Whitehall and had come out for a breather. One (in a good suit) had an accompanying second—plane imp hopping at his heel; the others (more shabbily attired) simply trailed the telltale odor of incense, dried sweat, and candle wax.

The police were present too—several ordinary constables and a couple of hairy, hatchet—faced men from the Night Police keeping themselves just visible enough to prevent trouble.

And all around the square, the car lights swirled, carrying ministers and other magicians from their offices in Parliament to their clubs at St. James's. I was near the hub of a great wheel of power that extended over an empire, and here, with luck, I would remain undetected until I was finally summoned.

Or possibly not.

I had sauntered over to a particularly tatty—looking stall and was examining its fare when I had the uneasy feeling that I was being watched. I turned my head a little and scanned the crowd. An amorphous mass. I checked the planes. No hidden dangers: a bovine herd, all of it dull and human. I turned back to the stall and absently picked up My Magic Mirror™, a piece of cheap glass glued into a frame of pink plastic and feebly decorated with wands, cats, and wizards' hats.

There it was again! I turned my body sharply. Through a gap in the crowd directly behind me, I could see a short, plump female magician, a bunch of kids clustered round a stand, and a policeman eyeing them suspiciously. No one seemed to have the slightest interest in me. But I knew what I'd felt. Next time I'd be ready. I made a big show of considering the mirror. ANOTHER GREAT GIFT FROM LONDON, MAGIC CAPITAL OF THE WORLD! screamed the label on its back. MADE IN TAIW—

Then the feeling came again. I swiveled quicker than a cat and—success! I caught the starers eyeball to eyeball. Two of them, a boy and a girl, from within the gaggle of kids. They didn't have time to drop their gaze. The boy was in his mid—teens; acne was laying siege to his face with some success. The girl was younger but her eyes were cold and hard. I gazed back. What did I care? They were human, they couldn't see what I was. Let them stare.

After a few seconds they couldn't handle it; they looked away. I shrugged and made to move off. There was a loud cough from the man on the stand. I replaced My Magic Mirror™ carefully on his tray, gave him a cheesy smile, and went my way.

The children followed me.

I caught sight of them at the next booth, watching from behind a candyfloss stand. They were moving in a huddle—maybe five or six of them, I couldn't be sure. What did they want? A mugging? If so, why pick me out? There were dozens of better, fatter, richer candidates here. To test this I cozied up to a very small, wealthy—looking tourist with a giant camera and thick spectacles. If I'd wanted to mug someone, he'd have been top of my list. But when I left him and went on a loop through the crowd, the children followed right along too.

Weird. And annoying. I didn't want to make a change and fly off; I was too weary. All I wanted was to be left in peace. I still had many hours to go before the dawn.

I speeded up; the children did so too. Long before we'd done three circuits of the square, I'd had enough. A couple of policemen had watched us beetling around and they were likely to halt us soon, if only to stop themselves getting dizzy. It was time to go. Whatever the kids were after, I did not want any more attention drawn to me.

There was a subway close by. I hotfooted it down the steps, ignored the entrance to the Underground, and came up again on the other side of the road, opposite the central square. The kids had vanished—maybe they were in the subway. Now was my chance. I slipped round a street corner, along past a bookshop, and ducked down an alley. I waited a little there, in the shadows among the dumper bins.

A couple of cars drove past the end of the alley. No one came after me.

I allowed myself a brief smile. I thought I'd lost them.

I was wrong.

Nathaniel

Arthur Underwood was a middle—ranking magician who worked for the Ministry of Internal Affairs. A solitary man, of a somewhat cantankerous nature, he lived with his wife, Martha, in a tall Georgian house in Highgate.

Mr. Underwood had never had an apprentice, and nor did he want one. He was quite happy working on his own. But he knew that sooner or later, like all other magicians, he would have to take his turn and accept a child into his house.

Sure enough, the inevitable happened: one day a letter arrived from the Ministry of Employment, containing the dreaded request. With grim resignation, Mr. Underwood fulfilled his duty. On the appointed afternoon, he traveled to the ministry to collect his nameless charge.

He ascended the marbled steps between two granite pillars and entered the echoing foyer. It was a vast featureless space; office workers passed quietly back and forth between wooden doors on either side, their shoes making respectful pattering noises on the floor. Across the hall, two statues of past Employment ministers had been built on a heroic scale, and sandwiched between them was a desk, piled high with papers. Mr. Underwood approached. It was only when he actually reached the desk that he was able to glimpse, behind the bristling rampart of bulging files, the face of a small, smiling clerk.

"Hello, sir," said the clerk.

"Junior Minister Underwood. I'm here to collect my new apprentice."

"Ah—yes, sir. I was expecting you. If you'll just sign a few documents…" The clerk rummaged in a nearby stack. "Won't take a minute. Then you can pick him up from the day room."

" 'Him'? It's a boy, then?"

"A boy, five years old. Very bright, if the tests are anything to go by. Obviously a little upset at the moment…" The clerk located a wodge of papers and withdrew a pen from behind his ear. "If you could initial each page and sign on the dotted lines…"

Mr. Underwood flourished the pen. "His parents—they've left, I take it?"

"Yes, sir. They couldn't get away fast enough. The usual sort: take the money and run, if you get my meaning, sir. Barely stopped to say good—bye to him."

"And all the normal safety procedures—?"

"His birth records have been removed and destroyed, sir, and he has been strictly instructed to forget his birth name and not reveal it to anyone. He is now officially unformed. You can start with him from scratch."

"Very well." With a sigh, Mr. Underwood completed his last spidery signature and passed the documents back. "If that's all, I suppose I had better pick him up."

He passed down a series of silent corridors and through a heavy, paneled door to a brightly painted room that had been filled with toys for the entertainment of unhappy children. There, between a grimacing rocking horse and a plastic wizard doll wearing a comedy conical hat, he found a small pale—faced boy. It had been crying in the recent past, but had now fortunately desisted. Two red—rimmed eyes looked up at him blankly. Mr. Underwood cleared his throat.

"I'm Underwood, your master. Your true life begins now. Come with me."

The child gave a loud sniff. Mr. Underwood noticed its chin wobbling dangerously. With some distaste, he took the boy by the hand, pulled it to its feet, and led it out down echoing corridors to his waiting car.

On the journey back to Highgate, the magician once or twice tried to engage the child in conversation, but was met with teary silence. This did not please him; with a snort of frustration, he gave up and turned on the radio to catch the cricket scores. The child sat stock—still in the backseat, gazing at its knees.

His wife met them at the door. She carried a tray of biscuits and a steaming mug of hot chocolate, and straight away bustled the boy into a cozy sitting room, where a fire leaped in the grate.

"You won't get any sense out of him, Martha," Mr. Underwood grunted. "Hasn't said a word."

"Do you wonder? He's terrified, poor thing. Leave him to me." Mrs. Underwood was a diminutive, roundish woman with very white hair cropped short. She sat the boy in a chair by the fire and offered him a biscuit. He didn't acknowledge her at all.

Half an hour passed. Mrs. Underwood chatted pleasantly about anything that came into her head. The boy drank some chocolate and nibbled a biscuit, but otherwise stared silently into the fire. Finally, Mrs. Underwood made a decision. She sat beside him and put her arm around his shoulders.

"Now, dear," she said, "let's make a deal. I know that you've been told not to tell anyone your name, but you can make an exception with me. I can't get to know you properly just calling you 'boy, can I? So, if you tell me your name, I'll tell you mine—in strictest confidence. What do you think? Was that a nod? Very well, then. I'm Martha. And you are…?"

A small snuffle, a smaller voice. "Nathaniel."

"That's a lovely name, dear, and don't worry, I won't tell a soul. Don't you feel better already? Now, have another biscuit, Nathaniel, and I'll show you to your bedroom."

With the child fed and bathed and finally put to bed, Mrs. Underwood reported back to her husband, who was working in his study.

"He's asleep at last," she said. "It wouldn't surprise me if he was in shock—and no wonder, his parents leaving him like that. I think it's disgraceful, ripping a child from his home so young."

"That's how it's always been done, Martha. Apprentices have to come from somewhere." The magician kept his head bent meaningfully toward his book.

His wife did not take the hint. "He should be allowed to stay with his family," she went on. "Or at least to see them sometimes."

Wearily, Mr. Underwood placed the book on the table. "You know very well that is quite impossible. His birth name must be forgotten, or else future enemies will use it to harm him. How can it be forgotten if his family keeps in contact? Besides, no one has forced his parents to part with their brat. They didn't want him, that's the truth of it, Martha, or they wouldn't have answered the advertisements. It's quite straightforward. They get a considerable amount of money as compensation, he gets a chance to serve his country at the highest level, and the state gets a new apprentice. Simple. Everyone wins. No one loses out."

"All the same…"

"It didn't do me any harm, Martha." Mr. Underwood reached for his book.

"It would be a lot less cruel if magicians were allowed their own children."

"That road leads to competing dynasties, family alliances… it all ends in blood feuds. Read your history books, Martha: see what happened in Italy. So, don't worry about the boy. He's young. He'll forget soon enough. Now, what about making me some supper?"

The magician Underwood's house was the kind of building that presented a slender, simple, dignified countenance to the street, but which extended back for a remarkable distance in a confusion of stairs, corridors, and slightly varying levels. There were five main floors altogether: a cellar, filled with wine racks, mushroom boxes, and cases of drying fruit; the ground floor, containing reception room, dining hall, kitchen, and conservatory; two upper floors mainly consisting of bathrooms, bedrooms, and workrooms; and, at the very top, an attic. It was here that Nathaniel slept, under a steeply sloping ceiling of whitewashed rafters.

Each morning, at dawn, he was woken by the fluting clamor of pigeons on the roof above. A small skylight was set in the ceiling. Through it, if he stood on a chair, he could see out over the gray, rain—washed London horizon. The house stood on a hill and the view was good; on clear days he could see the Crystal Palace radio mast far away on the other side of the city.

His bedroom was furnished with a cheap plywood wardrobe, a small chest of drawers, a desk and chair, and a bedside bookcase. Every week Mrs. Underwood placed a new bunch of garden flowers in a vase on the desk.

From that first miserable day, the magician's wife had taken Nathaniel under her wing. She liked the boy and was kind to him. In the privacy of the house, she often addressed the apprentice by his birth name, despite the stern displeasure of her husband.

"We shouldn't even know the brat's name," he told her. "It's forbidden! He could be compromised. When he is twelve, at his coming of age, he will be given his new name, by which he will be known, as magician and man, for the rest of his life. In the meantime, it is quite wrong—"

"Who's going to notice?" she protested. "No one. It gives the poor lad comfort."

She was the only person to use his name. His tutors called him Underwood, after his master. His master himself just addressed him as "boy."

In return for her affection, Nathaniel rewarded Mrs. Underwood with open devotion. He hung on her every word, and followed her directions in everything.

At the end of his first week at the house, she brought a present to his room.

"This is for you," she said. "It's a bit old and dreary, but I thought you might like it."

It was a painting of boats sailing up a creek, surrounded by mudflats and low countryside. The varnish was so dark with age that the details could hardly be made out, but Nathaniel loved it instantly. He watched Mrs. Underwood hang it on the wall above his desk.

"You're to be a magician, Nathaniel," she said, "and that is the greatest privilege that any boy or girl could have. Your parents have made the ultimate sacrifice by giving you up for this noble destiny. No, don't cry, dear. So in turn you must be strong, strive as hard as you can, and learn everything your tutors ask of you. By doing that you will honor both your parents and yourself. Come over to the window. Stand on that chair. Now—look over there; do you see that little tower in the distance?"

"That one?"

"No, that's an office block, dear. The little brown one, over on the left? That's it. That's the Houses of Parliament, my dear, where all the finest magicians go, to rule Britain and our empire. Mr. Underwood goes there all the time. And if you work hard and do everything your master tells you, one day you will go there too, and I will be as proud of you as can be."

"Yes, Mrs. Underwood." He stared at the tower until his eyes ached, fixing its position firmly in his mind. To go to Parliament… One day it would be so. He would indeed work hard and make her proud.

With time, and the constant ministrations of Mrs. Underwood, Nathaniel's homesickness began to fade. Memory of his distant parents dimmed and the pain inside him grew ever less, until he had almost forgotten its existence. A strict routine of work and study helped with this process: it took up nearly all his time and left him little space to brood. On weekdays, the routine began with Mrs. Underwood rousing him with a double rap on his bedroom door.

"Tea outside, on the step. Mouth, not toes."

This call was a ritual stemming from one morning, when, on his way downstairs to the bathroom, Nathaniel had charged out of his bedroom in a befuddled state, made precise contact between foot and mug, and sent a tidal wave of hot tea crashing against the landing wall. The stain was still visible years later, like the imprint of a splash of blood. Fortunately his master had not discovered this disaster. He never ascended to the attic.

After washing in the bathroom on the level below, Nathaniel would dress himself in shirt, gray trousers, long gray socks, smart black shoes and, if it was winter and the house was cold, a thick Irish jumper that Mrs. Underwood had bought for him. He would brush his hair carefully in front of a tall mirror in the bathroom, running his eyes over the thin, neat figure with the pale face gazing back at him. Then he descended by the back stairs to the kitchen, carrying his schoolwork. While Mrs. Underwood fixed the cornflakes and toast, he would try to finish the homework left over from the night before. Mrs. Underwood frequently did her best to help him.

"Azerbaijan? The capital's Baku, I think."

"Bakoo?"

"Yes. Look in your atlas. What are you learning that for?"

"Mr. Purcell says I have to master the Middle East this Week—learn the countries and stuff."

"Don't look so down. Toast's ready. Well, it is important you learn all that 'stuff'—you have to know the background before you can get to the interesting bits."

"But it's so boring!"

"That's all you know. I've been to Azerbaijan. Baku's a bit of a dump, but it is an important center for researching afrits."

"What are they?"

"Demons of fire. The second most powerful form of spirit. The fiery element is very strong in the mountains of Azerbaijan. That's where the Zoroastrian faith began too; they venerate the divine fire found in all living things. If you're looking for the chocolate spread, it's behind the cereal."

"Did you see a djinni when you were there, Mrs. Underwood?"

"You don't need to go to Baku to find a djinni, Nathaniel—and don't speak with your mouth full. You're spraying crumbs all over my tablecloth. No, djinn will come to you, especially if you're here in London."

"When will I see a freet?"

"An afrit. Not for a long time, if you know what's good for you. Now, finish up quickly—Mr. Purcell will be waiting."

After breakfast, Nathaniel would gather his school books and head upstairs to the first—floor workroom where Mr. Purcell would indeed be waiting for him. His teacher was a young man with thinning blond hair, which he frequently smoothed down in a vain effort to hide his scalp. He wore a gray suit that was slightly too big for him and an alternating sequence of horrible ties. His first name was Walter. Many things made him nervous, and speaking to Mr. Underwood (which he had to, on occasion) made him downright twitchy. As a result of his nerves, he took his frustrations out on Nathaniel. He was too honest a man to be really brutal with the boy, who was a competent worker; instead he tended to snap tetchily at his mistakes, yipping like a small dog.

Nathaniel learned no magic with Mr. Purcell. His teacher did not know any. Instead he had to apply himself to other subjects, primarily mathematics, modern languages (French, Czech), geography, and history. Politics was also important.

"Now then, young Underwood," Mr. Purcell would say. "What is the chief purpose of our noble government?" Nathaniel looked blank. "Come on! Come on!"

"To rule us, sir?"

"To protect us. Do not forget that our country is at war. Prague still commands the plains east of Bohemia, and we are struggling to keep her armies out of Italy. These are dangerous times. Agitators and spies are loose in London. If the Empire is to be kept whole, a strong government must be in place, and strong means magicians. Imagine the country without them! It would be unthinkable: commoners would be in charge! We would slip into chaos, and invasion would quickly follow. All that stands between us and anarchy is our leaders. This is what you should aspire to, boy. To be a part of the Government and rule honorably. Remember that."

"Yes, sir."

"Honor is the most important quality for a magician," Mr. Purcell went on. "He or she has great power, and must use it with discretion. In the past, rogue magicians have attempted to overthrow the State: they have always been defeated. Why? Because true magicians fight with virtue and justice on their side."

"Mr. Purcell, are you a magician?"

His teacher smoothed back his hair and sighed. "No, Underwood. I was… not selected. But I still serve as best I can. Now—"

"Then you're a commoner?"

Mr. Purcell slapped the table with his palm. "If you please! I'm asking the questions! Take up your protractor. We shall move on to geometry."

Shortly after his eighth birthday, Nathaniel's curriculum was expanded. He began to study chemistry and physics on the one hand, and the history of religion on the other. He also began several other key languages, including Latin, Aramaic, and Hebrew.

These activities occupied Nathaniel from nine in the morning until lunch at one, at which time he would descend to the kitchen to devour in solitude the sandwiches that Mrs. Underwood had left out for him under moist Saran Wrap.

In the afternoons the timetable was varied. On two days of the week, Nathaniel continued work with Mr. Purcell. On two other afternoons he was escorted down the street to the public baths, where a burly man with a mustache shaped like a mudguard supervised a punishing regimen. Along with a bedraggled posse of other small children, Nathaniel had to swim countless lengths using every conceivable style of stroke. He was always too shy and exhausted to talk much to his fellow swimmers, and they, sensing him for what he was, kept their distance from him. Already, by the age of eight, he was avoided and left alone.

The other two afternoon activities were music (Thursday) and drawing (Saturday). Nathaniel dreaded music even more than swimming. His tutor, Mr. Sindra, was an obese, short—tempered man whose chins quivered as he walked. Nathaniel kept a close eye on those chins: if their trembling increased it was a sure sign of a coming rage. Rages came with depressing regularity. Mr. Sindra could barely contain his fury whenever Nathaniel rushed his scales, misread his notes, or fluffed his sight—reading, and these things happened often.

"How," Mr. Sindra yelled, "do you propose to summon a lamia with plucking like this? How? The mind boggles! Give me that!" He snatched the lyre from Nathaniel's hand and held it against his ample chest. Then, his eyes closed in rapture, he began to play. A sweet melody filled the workroom. The short, fat fingers moved like dancing sausages across the strings; outside, birds stopped in the tree to listen. Nathaniel's eyes filled with tears. Memories from the distant past drifted ghostlike before him…

"Now you!" The music broke off with a jarring screech. The lyre was thrust back at him. Nathaniel began to pluck at the strings. His fingers tripped and stumbled; outside, several birds dropped from the tree in a stupor. Mr. Sindra's jowls shook like cold tapioca.

"You idiot! Stop! Do you want the lamia to eat you? She must be charmed, not roused to fury! Put down that poor instrument. We shall try the pipes."

Pipes or lyre, choral voice or sistrum rattle—whatever Nathaniel tried, his faltering attempts met with bellows of outrage and despair. It was a far cry from his drawing lessons, which proceeded peacefully and well under his tutor, Ms. Lutyens. Willowy and sweet—tempered, she was the only one of his teachers to whom Nathaniel could talk freely. Like Mrs. Underwood, she had little time for his «nameless» status. In confidence, she had asked him to tell her his name, and he had done so without a second thought.

"Why," he asked her one spring afternoon, as they sat in the workroom with a fresh breeze drifting through the open window, "why do I spend all my time copying this pattern? It is both difficult and dull. I would much rather be drawing the garden, or this room—or you, Ms. Lutyens."

She laughed at him. "Sketching is all very well for artists, Nathaniel, or for rich young women with nothing else to do. You are not going to become an artist or a rich young woman, and the purpose for your picking up your pencil is very different. You are to be a craftsman, a technical draftsman—you must be able to reproduce any pattern you wish, quickly, confidently, and above all, accurately."

He looked dismally at the paper resting on the table between them. It showed a complex design of branching leaves, flowers, and foliage, with abstract shapes fitted snugly in between. He was re—creating the image in his sketchbook and had been working on it for two hours without a break. He was about halfway finished.

"It just seems pointless, that's all," he said in a small voice.

"Pointless it is not," Ms. Lutyens replied. "Let me see your work. Well, it's not bad, Nathaniel, not bad at all, but look—do you not think that this cupola is rather bigger than the original? See here? And you've left a hole in this stem—that's rather a bad mistake."

"It's only a small mistake. The rest's okay, isn't it?"

"That's not the issue. If you were copying out a pentacle and you left a hole in it, what would happen? It would cost you your life. You don't want to die just yet, do you, Nathaniel?"

"No."

"Well, then. You simply mustn't make mistakes. They'll have you, otherwise." Ms. Lutyens sat back in her chair. "By rights, I should get you to start again with this."

"Ms. Lutyens!"

"Mr. Underwood would expect no less." She paused, pondering. "But from your cry of anguish I suppose it would be useless to expect you to do any better the second time around. We will stop for today. Why don't you go out into the garden? You look like you could do with some fresh air."

For Nathaniel, the garden of the house was a place of temporary solitude and retreat. No lessons took place there. It had no unpleasant memories. It was long and thin and surrounded by a high wall of red brick. Climbing roses grew against this in the summer, and six apple trees shed white blossom over the lawn. Two rhododendron bushes sprawled widthwise halfway down the garden—beyond them was a sheltered area largely concealed from the many gaping windows of the house. Here the grass grew long and wet. A horse chestnut tree in a neighboring garden towered above, and a stone seat, green with lichen, rested in the shadows of the high wall. Beside the seat was a marble statue of a man holding a fork of lightning in his hand. He wore a Victorian—style jacket and had a gigantic pair of sideburns that protruded from his cheeks like the pincers of a beetle. The statue was weather worn and coated with a thin mantle of moss, but still gave an impression of great energy and power. Nathaniel was fascinated by it and had even gone so far as to ask Mrs. Underwood who it was, but she had only smiled.

"Ask your master," she said. "He knows everything."

But Nathaniel had not dared ask.

This restful spot, with its solitude, its stone seat, and its statue of an unknown magician, was where Nathaniel came whenever he needed to compose himself before a lesson with his cold, forbidding master.

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.[23] 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.

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.[24] Hastily he scanned the letters on the floor.

"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."[25]

"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.

His room… I wanted a clue to his identity. Some letter addressed to him, perhaps, or a name tag in his coat. Both of those had worked before. I wasn't after his birth name, of course—that would be too much to hope for—but his official name would do for a start.[26] But I was out of luck. The most private, intimate, telltale place in the room—his desk—had been carefully covered with a thick black cloth. A wardrobe in the corner was shut; ditto a chest of drawers. There was a cracked glass vase with fresh flowers among the mess of candles—an odd touch, this. He hadn't put it there himself, I reckoned; so somebody liked him.

The kid waved his hand over the scrying glass and the surface went dull. He replaced the disc in his pocket, then looked up at me suddenly. Uh—oh. Here it came.

"Bartimaeus," he began, "I charge you to take the Amulet of Samarkand and hide it in the magical repository of the magician Arthur Underwood, concealing it so that he cannot observe it, and achieving this so stealthily that no one, either human or spirit, on this plane or any other, shall see you enter or depart; I further charge you to return to me immediately, silent and unseen, to await further instructions."

He was blue in the face when he finished this, having completed it all in one straight breath.[27] I glowered under my stony brows.

"Very well. Where does this unfortunate magician reside?"

The boy smiled thinly. "Downstairs."

Nathaniel

One summer's day, when Nathaniel was ten years old, he sat with his tutor on the stone seat in the garden, sketching the horse chestnut tree beyond the wall. The sun beat upon the red bricks. A gray—and—white cat lolled on the top of the wall, idly swishing its tail from side to side. A gentle breeze shifted the leaves of the tree and carried a faint scent across from the rhododendron bushes. The moss on the statue of the man with the lightning fork gleamed richly in the yellow sunlight. Insects hummed.

It was the day that everything changed.

"Patience, Nathaniel."

"You've said that so many times, Ms. Lutyens."

"And I'll say it again, I have no doubt. You are too restless. It's your biggest fault."

Nathaniel irritably cross—hatched a patch of shade.

"But it's so frustrating," he exclaimed. "He never lets me try anything! All I'm allowed to do is set up the candles and the incense and other stuff that I could do in my sleep standing on my head! I'm not even allowed to talk to them."

"Quite right too," Ms. Lutyens said firmly. "Remember, I just want subtleties of shading. No hard lines."

"It's ridiculous." Nathaniel made a face. "He doesn't realize what I can do. I've read all his books, and—"

"All of them?"

"Well, all the ones in his little bookcase, and he said they'd keep me going till I was twelve. I'm not even eleven yet, Ms. Lutyens. I mean, I've already mastered the Words of Direction and Control, most of them; I could give a djinni an order, if he summoned it for me. But he won't even let me try."

"I don't know which is less attractive, Nathaniel—your boasting or your petulance. You should stop worrying about what you don't yet have and enjoy what you have now. This garden, for instance. I'm very pleased you thought of having our lesson out here today."

"I always come here when I can. It helps me think."

"I'm not surprised. It's peaceful, solitary… and there are precious few parts of London like that, so be grateful."

"He keeps me company." Nathaniel indicated the statue. "I like him, even though I don't know who he is."

"Him?" Ms. Lutyens glanced up from her sketchbook, but went on drawing. "Oh, that's easy. That's Gladstone."

"Who?"

"Gladstone. Surely you know. Doesn't Mr. Purcell teach you recent history?"

"We've done contemporary politics."

"Too recent. Gladstone died more than a hundred years ago. He was a great hero of the time. There must have been thousands of statues made of him, put up all over the country. Rightly so, from your point of view. You owe him a lot."

Nathaniel was puzzled. "Why?"

"He was the most powerful magician ever to become prime minister. He dominated the Victorian age for thirty years and brought the feuding factions of magicians under government control. You must have heard of his duel with the sorcerer Disraeli on Westminster Green? No? You should go and see. The scorch marks are still on show. Gladstone was famous for his supreme energy and his implacable defiance when the chips were down. He never gave up his cause, even when things looked bad."

"Gosh." Nathaniel gazed at the stern face staring from beneath its covering of moss. The stone hand gripped its lightning bolt loosely, confidently, ready to throw.

"Why did he have that duel, Ms. Lutyens?"

"I believe Disraeli made a rude remark about a female friend of Gladstone's. That was a big mistake. Gladstone never let anyone insult his honor, or that of his friends. He was very powerful and quite prepared to challenge anyone who had wronged him." She blew charcoal from her sketch and held it up to the light critically.

"Gladstone did more than anyone else to help London ascend to magical prominence. In those days Prague was still the most powerful city in the world, but its time had long gone; it was old and decadent and its magicians bickered among the slums of the Ghetto. Gladstone provided new ideals, new projects. He attracted many foreign magicians here by acquiring certain relics. London became the place to be. As it still is, for better or for worse. As I say, you ought to be grateful."

Nathaniel looked at her. "What do you mean, 'For better or for worse? What's worse about it?"

Ms. Lutyens pursed her lips. "The current system is very beneficial for magicians and for a few lucky others who cluster all about them. Less so for everyone else. Now—let me see how your sketch is going."

Something in her tone aroused Nathaniel's indignation. His lessons with Mr. Purcell came flooding into his mind. "You shouldn't speak of the Government like that," he said. "Without magicians, the country would be defenseless! Commoners would rule and the country would fall apart. Magicians give their lives to keep the country safe! You should remember that, Ms. Lutyens." Even to his own ears, his voice sounded rather shrill.

"I'm sure that when you have grown up you will make many telling sacrifices, Nathaniel." She spoke rather more sharply than was usual. "But in fact not all countries have magicians. Plenty do very well without them."

"You seem to know a lot about it all."

"For a humble drawing tutor? Do I detect surprise in your voice?"

"Well, you're only a commoner—" He stopped short, flushed. "Sorry, I didn't mean—"

"Quite right," Ms. Lutyens said shortly, "I am a commoner. But magicians don't have a complete monopoly on knowledge, you know. Far from it. And anyway, knowledge and intelligence are very different things. As you'll one day discover."

For a few minutes they busied themselves with their paper and pens and did not speak. The cat on the wall flicked a lazy paw at a circling wasp. At length Nathaniel broke the silence.

"Did you not want to become a magician, Ms. Lutyens?" he asked, in a small voice.

She gave a small dry laugh. "I didn't have that privilege," she said. "No, I'm just an art teacher, and happy to be one."

Nathaniel tried again. "What do you do when you're not here? With me, I mean."

"I'm with other pupils, of course. What did you think—that I'd go home and mope? Mr. Underwood doesn't pay me enough for moping, I'm afraid. I have to work."

"Oh." It had never occurred to Nathaniel that Ms. Lutyens might have other pupils. Somehow the knowledge gave him a slightly knotty feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Perhaps Ms. Lutyens sensed this; after a short pause she spoke again in a less frosty manner. "Anyway," she said, "I look forward to my lessons here very much. One of the highlights of my working week. You're good company, even if you're still prone to rushing things and think you know it all. So cheer up and let me see how you've got on with that tree."

Following a few minutes of calm discussion about art—related issues, the conversation resumed its usual peaceful course, but it was not long afterward that the lesson was suspended by the unexpected arrival of Mrs. Underwood, all in a fluster.

"Nathaniel!" she cried. "There you are!"

Ms. Lutyens and Nathaniel both stood up respectfully. "I've looked all over for you, dear," Mrs. Underwood said, breathing hard. "I thought you'd be in the schoolroom…"

"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Underwood," Ms. Lutyens began. "It was such a nice day—"

"Oh, that doesn't matter. That's quite all right. It's just that my husband needs Nathaniel straight away. He has guests over, and wishes to present him."

"There you are, then," Ms. Lutyens said quietly, as they hurried back up the garden. "Mr. Underwood isn't overlooking you at all. He must be very pleased with you to introduce you to other magicians. He's going to show you off!"

Nathaniel smiled weakly, but said nothing. The thought of meeting other magicians made him feel quite queasy. Through all his years in the house he had never once been allowed to meet his master's professional colleagues, who appeared there intermittently. He was always packed off to his bedroom, or kept out of harm's way with his tutors upstairs. This was a new and exciting development, if a rather frightening one. He imagined a room stuffed full of tall, brooding men of power, glowering at him over their bristling beards and swirling robes. His knees shook in anticipation.

"They're in the reception room," Mrs. Underwood said as they entered the kitchen. "Let's look at you…" She wet her finger and hurriedly removed a pencil—lead smudge from the side of his forehead. "Very presentable. All right, in you go."

The room was full; he'd got that part right. It was warm with bodies, the smell of tea, and the effort of polite conversation. But by the time Nathaniel had closed the door and edged across to occupy the only space available, in the lee of an ornamental dresser, his magnificent visions of a company of great men had already evaporated.

They just didn't look the part.

There wasn't a cape to be seen. There were precious few beards on display, and none half as impressive as that of his own master. Most of the men wore drab suits with drabber ties; only a few sported daring additions, such as a gray waistcoat or a visible breast—pocket handkerchief. All wore shiny black shoes. It felt to Nathaniel as if he had strayed upon an undertakers' office party. None of them seemed like Gladstone, in strength or in demeanor. Some were short, others were crabbed and old, more than one was prone to pudginess. They talked among themselves earnestly, sipping tea and nibbling dry biscuits, and not one of them raised his voice above the consensus murmuring.

Nathaniel was deeply disappointed. He stuck his hands in his pockets and breathed deeply.

His master was inching himself through the throng, shaking hands and uttering an odd, short, barking laugh whenever a guest said something that he thought was intended to be funny. Catching sight of Nathaniel, he beckoned him over; Nathaniel squeezed between a tea plate and someone's protruding belly and approached.

"This is the boy," the magician said gruffly, clapping Nathaniel on the shoulder in an awkward gesture. Three men looked down at him. One was old, white—haired, with a florid sun—dried—tomato face, covered in tiny creases. Another was a doughy, watery—eyed individual in middle age; his skin looked cold and clammy, like a fish on a slab. The third was much younger and more handsome, with slicked—back hair, round glasses, and a xylophone—size array of gleaming white teeth. Nathaniel stared back at them in silence.

"Doesn't look like much," the clammy man said. He sniffed and swallowed something.

"He's learning slowly," Nathaniel's master said, his hand still patting Nathaniel on the shoulder in an aimless manner that suggested he was ill at ease.

"Slow, is he?" said the old man. He spoke with an accent so thick that Nathaniel could barely understand the words. "Yes, some boys are. You must persevere."

"Do you beat him?" the clammy man asked.

"Rarely."

"Unwise. It stimulates the memory."

"How old are you, boy?" the younger man said.

"Ten, sir." Nathaniel said politely. "Eleven in Nov—"

"Still a couple of years before he'll be any use to you, Underwood." The young man cut over Nathaniel as if he did not exist. "Costs a fortune, I suppose."

"What, bed and board? Of course."

"I'll bet he eats like a ferret, too."

"Greedy, is he?" said the old man. He nodded regretfully. "Yes, some boys are."

Nathaniel listened with barely suppressed indignation. "I'm not greedy, sir," he said in his politest voice. The old man's eyes flickered toward him, then drifted away again as if he had not heard; but his master's hand clamped down on his shoulder with some force.

"Well, boy; you must get back to your studies," he said. "Run along."

Nathaniel was only too happy to leave, but as he began to sidle off the young man in the glasses raised a hand.

"You've got a tongue in your head, I see," he said. "Not afraid of your elders."

Nathaniel said nothing.

"Perhaps you don't think we're your betters too?"

The man spoke lightly, but the sharpness in his voice was clear. Nathaniel could tell at once that he himself was not the point at issue and that the young man was challenging his master through him. He felt as if he ought to answer, but was so confused by the question that he did not know whether to say yes or no.

The young man misinterpreted his silence. "He thinks he's too good to talk to us at all now!" he said to his companions and grinned. The clammy man tittered wetly into his hand and the old, red—faced man shook his head. "Tcha," he said.

"Run along, boy," Nathaniel's master said again.

"Hold on, Underwood," the young man said, smiling broadly. "Before he goes, let's see what you've taught this whippet of yours. It'll be amusing. Come here, lad."

Nathaniel glanced across at his master, who did not meet his eye. Slowly and unwillingly he drew near to the group again. The young man snapped his fingers with a flourish and spoke at top speed.

"How many classified types of spirit are there?"

Nathaniel replied without a pause. "Thirteen thousand and forty—six, sir."

"And unclassified?"

"Petronius postulates forty—five thousand; Zavattini forty—eight thousand, sir."

"What is the modus apparendi of the Carthaginian subgroup?"

"They appear as crying infants, sir, or as doppelgangers of the magician in his youth."

"How should one chastise them?"

"Make them drink a vat of asses' milk."

"Hmmph. If summoning a cockatrice, what precautions should one take?"

"Wear mirrored glasses, sir. And surround the pentacle with mirrors on two other sides also, to force the cockatrice to gaze in the remaining direction, where its written instructions will be waiting."

Nathaniel was gaining in confidence. He had committed simple details such as these to memory long ago, and he was pleased to note that his unerringly correct answers were exasperating the young man. His success had also stopped the clammy man's snickering, and the old magician, who was listening with his head cocked to one side, had even nodded grudgingly once or twice. He noticed his master smiling, rather smugly. Not that I owe any of this to you, Nathaniel thought witheringly. I read all this. You've taught me next to nothing.

For the first time there was a pause in the barrage of the young man's questions. He appeared to be thinking. "All right," he said at last, speaking much more slowly now and rolling the words luxuriously over his tongue, "what are the six Words of Direction? Any language."

Arthur Underwood uttered a startled protest. "Be fair, Simon! He can't know that yet!" But even as he spoke, Nathaniel was opening his mouth. This was a formula contained in several of the books in his master's large bookcase, where Nathaniel was already browsing.

"Appare; Mane; Ausculta; Se Dede; Pare; Redi: Appear; Remain; Listen; Submit; Obey; Return." He looked into the young magician's eyes as he finished, conscious of his triumph. Their audience murmured their approval. His master now wore an unconcealed grin; the clammy man raised his eyebrows; and the old man made a wry face, quietly mouthing, "Bravo." But his interrogator just shrugged dismissively, as if the incident were of no account. He looked so supercilious that Nathaniel felt his self—satisfaction turn into a fiery anger.

"Standards must have dropped," said the young man, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping at an imaginary spot on his sleeve, "if a backward apprentice can be congratulated for spouting something we all learned at our mothers' teats."

"You're just a sore loser," Nathaniel said.

There was a moment's hush. Then the young man barked a word, and Nathaniel felt something small and compact land heavily upon his shoulders. Invisible hands clenched into his hair and jerked it backward with vicious strength, so that his face stared at the ceiling, and he cried out with pain. He tried to raise his arms but found them pinioned to his sides by a hideously muscular coil that wrapped itself around him like a giant tongue. He could see nothing except the ceiling; delicate fingers tickled his exposed throat with horrible finesse. In panic, he cried out for his master.

Someone came close, but it was not his master. It was the young man.

"You cocksure guttersnipe," the young man said softly. "What will you do now? Can you get free? No. How surprising: you're helpless. You know a few words, but you're capable of nothing. Perhaps this will teach you the dangers of insolence when you're too weak to fight back. Now, get out of my sight."

Something sniggered in his ear and with a kick of powerful legs removed itself from Nathaniel's shoulders. At the same moment, his arms were freed. His head drooped forward; tears welled from his eyes. They were caused by the injury to his hair, but Nathaniel feared that they would seem the weeping of a cowardly boy. He wiped them away with his cuff.

The room was still. All the magicians had dropped their conversations and were staring at him. Nathaniel looked at his master, silently appealing for support or aid, but Arthur Underwood's eyes were bright with rage—rage that appeared to be directed at him. Nathaniel returned the look blankly, then he turned and walked along the silent passage that parted for him across the room, reached the door, opened it, and Walked through.

He shut the door carefully and quietly behind him.

White—faced and expressionless, he climbed the stairs.

On the way up he met Mrs. Underwood coming down.

"How did it go, dear?" she asked him. "Did you shine? Is anything wrong?"

Nathaniel could not look at her for grief and shame. He started to go past her without answering, but at the last moment stopped short. "It was fine," he said. "Tell me, do you know who the magician is with the little glasses and the wide, white teeth?"

Mrs. Underwood frowned. "That would be Simon Lovelace, I expect. The Junior Minister for Trade. He does have quite a set of gnashers, doesn't he? A rising star, I'm told. Did you meet him?"

"Yes. I did."

You're capable of nothing.

"Are you sure you're all right? You look so pale."

"Yes, thank you, Mrs. Underwood. I'll go up, now."

"Ms. Lutyens is waiting for you in the schoolroom."

You're helpless.

"I'll go right along, Mrs. Underwood."

Nathaniel did not go to the schoolroom. With slow, steady tread, he made his way to his master's workroom, where the dust on the dirty bottles gleamed in the sunlight, obscuring their pickled contents.

Nathaniel walked along the pitted worktable, which was strewn with diagrams that he had been working on the day before.

You're too weak to fight back.

He stopped and reached out for a small glass box, in which six objects buzzed and whirred.

We'll see.

With slow, steady tread, Nathaniel crossed to a wall—cupboard and pulled at a drawer. It was so warped that it stuck halfway, and he had to place the glass box carefully on the work surface before wrenching it open with a couple of forceful tugs. Inside the drawer, among a host of other tools, was a small steel hammer. Nathaniel took it out, picked up the box again, and, leaving the drawer hanging open, left the sunny workroom.

He stood in the cool shadows of the landing, silently rehearsing the Words of Direction and Control. In the glass box, the six mites tore back and forth with added zest; the box vibrated in his hands.

You're capable of nothing.

The party was breaking up. The door opened, and the first few magicians emerged in dribs and drabs. Mr. Underwood escorted them to the front door. Polite words were exchanged, farewells said. None of them noticed the pale—faced boy watching from beyond the stairs.

You had to say the name after the first three commands, but before the last. It was not too difficult, provided you didn't trip over the quicker syllables. He ran it through his head again. Yes, he had it down fine.

More magicians departed. Nathaniel's fingers were cold. There was a thin film of 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.

Bartimaeus

I knew there was going to be a decent scrap when we got back to the attic, so this time I prepared for it properly. First, I had to decide what shape to take. I wanted something that would really goad him—make him totally lose his cool—and, strange as it may seem, that ruled out most of my more scary forms. In fact, it meant appearing as a person of some kind. It's odd, but being insulted by a flickering specter or being called names by a fiery winged serpent isn't half as annoying for a hardened magician as hearing it from the mouth of something that seems to be human. Don't ask me why. It's just something to do with the way people's minds work.

I figured that the best I could do was appear as another boy of about the same age, someone who would rouse all the kid's feelings of direct competition and rivalry. That was no problem. Ptolemy was fourteen when I knew him best. Ptolemy it would be.

After that, all that remained was to revise my best counter—spells and look forward with pleasure to being able to return home shortly.

Perceptive readers might have noticed a new optimism in my attitude toward the kid. They would not be wrong. Why? Because I knew his birth name.[33]

Give him his due, however: he came out fighting. No sooner had he got up to his room than he put on his coat, hopped into his circle, and summoned me in a loud voice. He didn't have to shout so; I was right beside him, scuttling along the floor.

An instant later, the small Egyptian boy appeared in the circle opposite, wearing his London gear. I flashed a grin.

"Nathaniel, eh? Very posh. Doesn't really suit you. I'd have guessed something a bit more down—market—Bert or Chuck, maybe."

The boy was white with rage and fear; I could see panic in his eyes. He controlled himself with an effort and put on a lying face.

"That's not my true name. Even my master doesn't know it."

"Yeah, right. Who are you trying to kid?"

"You can think what you want. I charge you now—"

I couldn't believe it—he was trying to send me off again! I laughed in his face, adopted a puckish pose with hands on hips, and interrupted in sophisticated style.

"Go boil your head."

"I charge you now—"

"Yah, boo, sucks!"

The boy was almost frothing at the mouth, he was so angry.[34] He stamped his foot like a toddler in the playground. Then—as I hoped—he forgot himself and went for the obvious attack. It was the Systemic Vise again, the bully's favorite.

He spat out the incantation, and I felt the bands drawing in.[35]

"Nathaniel." Under my breath I spoke his name and then the words of the appropriate counter—spell.

The bands immediately reversed their loop. They expanded outward, away from me, out of the circle like ripples in a pond. Through his lenses, the boy saw them heading in his direction. He gave a yelp and, after a moment's panic, found the words of cancellation. He gabbled them out; the bands vanished.

I flicked a nonexistent piece of dust from the sleeve of my jacket and winked at him.

"Whoops," I said. "Nearly took your own head off there."

If the boy had paused, he would have realized what had happened, but his rage was too great. He probably thought he had made some error, spoken something out of turn. Breathing deeply, he searched through his repertoire of nasty tricks. Then he clapped his hands and spoke again.

I wasn't expecting anything as potent as the Stimulating Compass. From each of the five points of the pentacle I was in, a glowing column of electricity shot up, jarring and crackling. It was as if five lightning bolts had been momentarily trapped; in another instant, each column had discharged into a horizontal beam that pierced me with the force of a javelin. Arcs of electricity coursed around my body; I screamed and jerked, carried off the floor by the force of the charge.

Through gritted teeth I spoke it—"Nathaniel!" —then a counter—spell as before. The effect was immediate. The charge left me, I slumped to the ground. Small lightning bolts shot off in all directions. The boy dived just in time—an electric charge that would have killed him beautifully speared straight through his flailing coat as he hit the floor. Other bolts collided with his bed and desk; one zapped into his vase of flowers, slicing the glass cleanly in two. The rest vanished into the walls, peppering them with small, asterisk—shaped burn marks. It was a delightful sight.

The kid's coat had fallen over his face. Slowly he raised his head and peered out from under it. I gave him a friendly thumbs—up.

"Keep going," I grinned. "One day, if you work hard and stop making all these stupid mistakes, you might make a real grown—up wizard."

The kid said nothing. He got painfully to his feet. By pure fluke, he had dived pretty much straight down and so was still safe within his pentacle. I didn't mind. I was looking forward to whatever mistake he would make next.

But his brain was working again. He stood still for a minute and took stock.

"Better get rid of me quickly," I said, in a helpful sort of way. "Old man Un derwood will be coming to see what all the noise is about."

"No, he won't. We're too high up."

"Only two floors."

"And he's deaf in one ear. He never hears anything."

"His missus—"

"Shut up. I'm thinking. You did something then, both times… What was it…?"

He snapped his fingers. "My name! That's it! You used it to deflect my spells, curse you."

I studied my fingernails, eyebrows raised. "Might have, might not. It's for me to know and you to find out."

The kid stamped his foot again. "Stop it! Don't speak to me like that!"

"Like what?"

"Like you just did! You're speaking like a child."

"Takes one to know one, bud."

This was fun. I was really riling him. The loss of his name had made him lose his cool. He was seconds away from another attack, I could tell—he had the stance and everything. I adopted a similar, but defensive pose, like a sumo wrestler. Ptolemy had been exactly this boy's height, dark hair and everything,[36] so it was nice and symmetrical.

With an effort, the kid controlled himself. You could see him flicking through all his lessons, trying to remember what he should do. He had realized that an ordinary quick—fire punishment was out of the question now: I'd just send it back at him.

"I'll find another way," he muttered darkly. "Wait and see."

"Ooh, I'm really scared," I said. "Watch me shiver."

The kid was thinking hard. There were big gray bags under his eyes. Every time he made an incantation he wore himself out further, which suited me just fine. Some magicians have been known to drop dead simply from overexertion. It's a high—stress lifestyle they have, poor things.

His thinking went on for a long time. I gave an ostentatious yawn and made a watch appear on my wrist so that I could glance at it wearily.

"Why not ask the boss?" I suggested. "He'll help you out."

"My master? You must be joking."

"Not that old fool. The one who's directing you against Lovelace."

The boy wrinkled his brow. "There's no one. I don't have a boss."

Now it was my turn to look blank.

"I'm acting on my own."

I whistled. "You mean you really summoned me on your lonesome? Not bad… for a kid." I tried to sound suitably sycophantic. "Well then, let me give you a tip. The best thing now is for you to let me go. You need a rest. Have you looked in a mirror recently? One without an imp inside, I mean? There are worry lines there. Not good at your age. It'll be gray hairs next. What will you do then when you meet your first succubus?[37] Put her right off, it will."

I was talking too much, I knew, but I couldn't help it. I was worried. The kid was looking at me with a calculating expression that I didn't like.

"Besides," I said, "with me gone, no one will know you have the Amulet. You'll be able to use it in complete secrecy. It's a precious commodity—everybody seems to want it. I didn't tell you before, but some girl tried to jump me for it when I was hanging around in town."

The boy frowned. "What girl?"

"Search me." I neglected to mention that this was pretty much what the girl had succeeded in doing.

He shrugged. "It's Simon Lovelace I'm interested in," he said, almost to himself. "Not the Amulet. He humiliated me, and I'm going to destroy him for it."

"Too much hate is bad for you," I ventured.

"Why?"

"Um…"

"I shall tell you a secret, demon," he went on. "By dint of my magic,[38] I saw how Simon Lovelace came by the Amulet of Samarkand. Some months ago, a stranger—swarthy, black—bearded and cloaked—came to him in the middle of the night. He brought him the Amulet. Money was exchanged. It was a furtive meeting."

I snorted. "What's surprising there? It's how all magicians trade. You should know that. They thrive on unnecessary secrecy."

"It was more than that. I saw it in Lovelace's eyes and in the eyes of the stranger. There was something illegal, underhand about it… The man's cloak was stained with fresh blood."

"I'm still not impressed. Murder's part of the game for you lot. I mean, you're obsessed with revenge already, and you're only about six."

"Twelve."

"Same difference. No, there's nothing unusual in it. That bloke with the bloodstains probably runs a well—known service. He'll be in the Yellow Pages, if you let your fingers do the walking."

"I want to find out who he is."

"Hmm. Black—bearded and cloaked, eh? That narrows our suspects down to about fifty—five percent of the magicians in London. Doesn't even exclude all the female ones."

"Stop talking!" The kid seemed to have had enough.

"What's the matter? I thought we were getting along well."

"I know that the Amulet was stolen. Someone was killed to get it. When I find out who, I shall expose Lovelace and see him destroyed. I will plant the Amulet, lure him to it and alert the police at the same time. They will catch him red—handed. But first, I want to know all about him and what he gets up to. I want to know his secrets, how he does business, who his friends are, everything! I need to discover who had the Amulet before and exactly what it does. And I must know why Lovelace stole it. To this end, I charge you, Bartimaeus—"

"Wait just a minute. Aren't you forgetting something?"

"What?"

"I know your true name, Natty boy. That means I have some power over you. It's not all one way anymore, is it?"

The kid paused to consider.

"You can't hurt me so easily now," I went on. "And that limits your room for maneuver in my book. Throw something at me, and I'll throw it right back."

"I can still bind you to my will. You still have to obey my commands."

"That's true. Your commands are the terms on which I'm in this world at all. I can't break out of them without your unleashing the Shriveling Fire.[39] But I can sure as hell make life difficult for you when I carry out your orders. For example, while I'm spying on Simon Lovelace, why shouldn't I grass you up to some other magician? The only thing that stopped me doing that before was fear of the consequences. But I'm not so worried about them now. And even if you explicitly forbid me to grass you up, I'll find some other way to do you a nasty. Let slip your birth name, maybe, to acquaintances of mine. You won't be able to sleep in your bed for terror of what I might do."

He was rattled, I could see that much. His eyes flicked from side to side, as if hunting for a flaw in my reasoning. But I was quietly confident: entrusting a mission to a djinni who knows your name is like tossing lit matches into a fireworks factory. Sooner or later you're going to have consequences. The best he could do was to let me go and hope no one else called me up while he was alive.

Or so I thought. But he was an unusually clever and resourceful child.

"No," he said slowly, "I can't stop you if you want to betray me. All I can do is make sure you suffer along with me. Let's see…"

He rummaged through the pockets of his shabby coat. "There must be something in here somewhere… Aha!" His hand emerged holding a small battered tin, on which the words Old Chokey were ornately inscribed.

"That's a tobacco tin!" I exclaimed. "Don't you know smoking kills?"

"It doesn't contain tobacco anymore," the boy said. "It's one of my master's incense pots. It's full of rosemary now." He lifted the lid a fraction; sure enough, an instant later, a waft of the hellish scent reached me and made the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Some herbs are very bad for our essence, and rosemary is one of these. In consequence, magicians can't get enough of it.[40]

"I'd turf that out and fill it up with some honest baccy," I advised. "Far healthier."

The boy closed the lid. "I am going to send you on a mission," he said. "The moment you've gone, I shall cast the spell of Indefinite Confinement, binding you into this tin. The spell will not take effect immediately; in fact I shall make it start up a month from today. If for any reason I am not around to cancel this spell before a month is up, you shall find yourself drawn into this tin and trapped there, until such time as it is opened again. How'd you like the idea of that? A few hundred years encased in a small tin of rosemary. That will do wonders for your complexion."

"You've got a scheming little mind, haven't you?" I said glumly.

"And in case you're tempted to risk the penalty, I shall bind this tin with bricks and throw it into the Thames before the day is out. So don't go expecting anyone to release you early."

"I won't." Too right—I'm not insanely optimistic.[41]

The kid's face now bore a horribly triumphant look. He looked like an unpleasant boy in a playground who'd just won my best marble. "So, Bartimaeus," he said, sneering. "What do you say to that?" I gave him a beaming smile. "How about you forget all that silly tin business and just trust me instead?" "Not a chance." My shoulders sagged. That's the trouble, you see. No matter how hard you try, magicians always find a way to clobber you in the end. "All right, Nathaniel," I said. "What exactly is it that you want me to do?"