The Amulet of Samarkand

Примечания

1

Not everyone agrees with me on this. Some find it delightful sport. They refine countless ways of tormenting their summoners by means of subtly hideous apparitions. Usually the best you can hope for is to give them nightmares later, but occasionally these stratagems are so successful that the apprentices actually panic and step out of the protective circle. Then all is well—for us. But it is a risky business. Often they are very well trained. Then they grow up and get their revenge.

2

I couldn't do anything while I was in the circle, of course. But later I'd be able to find out who he was, look for weaknesses of character, things in his past I could exploit. They've all got them. You've all got them, I should say.

3

One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror.

4

I have access to seven planes, all coexistent. They overlap each other like layers on a crushed mille—feuille. Seven planes is sufficient for anybody. Those who operate on more are just showing off.

5

On two planes. Cats have that power.

6

Once each on five different pebbles. Not the same pebble five times. Just want to make that clear. Sometimes you human beings are so dense.

7

For those who are wondering, I have no difficulty in becoming a woman. Nor for that matter a man. In some ways I suppose women are trickier, but I won't go into that now. Woman, man, mole, maggot—they're all the same, when all's said and done, except for slight variations in cognitive ability.

8

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't afraid of the imp. I could squish him without a second thought. But he was there for two reasons: for his undying loyalty to his master and for his perceptive eye. He would not be taken in by my cunning fly guise for one fraction of a second.

9

A human who listened to the conversation would probably have been slack—jawed with astonishment, for the magicians account of corruption in the British Government was remarkably detailed. But I for one was not agog Having seen countless civilizations of far greater panache than this one crumble into dust, I could rouse little interest in the matter I spent the time fruitlessly trying to recall which unearthly powers might have been bound into Simon Lovelace's service. It was best to be prepared.

10

Oh, it was all impressive enough if you were a nonmagician. Let me see, there were crystal orbs, scrying glasses, skulls from tombs, saints' knucklebones, spirit sticks that had been looted from Siberian shamans, bottles filled with blood of doubtful provenance, witch—doctor masks, stuffed crocodiles, novelty wands, racks of capes for different ceremonies and many, many weighty books on magic that looked as if they had been bound in human skin at the beginning of time, but had probably been mass—produced last week by a factory in Catford. Magicians love this kind of thing; they love the hocus—pocus mystery of it all (and half believe it, some of them) and they adore the awe—inspiring effect it has on outsiders. Quite apart from anything else, all these knickknacks distract attention from the real source of their power: us.

11

They were all at it—beetling off in coach parties (or, since many of them were well—heeled, renting jets) to tour the great magical cities of the past. All cooing and ahhing at the famous sights—the temples, the birthplaces of notable magicians, the places where they came to horrible ends. And all ready to snatch bits of statuary or ransack the black—market bazaars in the hope of getting knock—me—down sorcerous bargains. It's not the cultural vandalism I object to. It's just so hopelessly vulgar.

12

I'm no great looker myself, but Faquarl had too many tentacles for my liking.

13

Not strictly correct. I could have given over the Amulet and thus failed in my charge. But then, even if I had managed to escape from Faquarl, I would have had to return empty—handed to the pale—faced boy. My failure would have left me at his tender mercy, doubly in his power, and somehow I knew this was not a good idea.

14

Ouch.

15

All living things have auras too. They take the form of a colored nimbus surrounding the individual's body and are in fact the closest a visual phenomenon gets to becoming a smell. Auras do exist on the first plane, but are invisible to most humans. Many animals, such as cats, can see them, djinn and a few exceptional persons likewise Auras change color depending on mood and are a useful indication of fear, hatred, sorrow, etc. This is why it is very hard to deceive a cat (or a djinni) when you wish it ill.

16

It would have been a lot more agreeable to return to the urchin immediately to rid myself of the Amulet. But magicians almost always insist on specific summonses at specific times. It removes the possibility of us catching them at a (potentially fatal) disadvantage.

17

Even magicians are confused by our infinite varieties, which are as different one from the other as elephants are from insects, or eagles from amoebae. However, broadly speaking, there are five basic ranks that you are likely to find working in a magician's service. These are, in descending order of power and general awe: marids, afrits, djinn, foliots, imps. (There are legions of lowly sprites that are weaker than the imps, but magicians rarely bother summoning these. Likewise, far above the marids exist great entities of terrible power; they are seldom seen on Earth, since few magicians dare even uncover their names.) A detailed knowledge of this hierarchy is vitally important for both magicians and for us, since survival frequently depends on knowing exactly where you stand. For example, as a particularly fine specimen of a djinni, I treat other djinn and anything above my rank with a certain degree of courtesy, but give foliots and imps short shrift.

18

Search spheres like these are a kind of sturdy imp. They possess giant scaly ears and a single bristled nostril, which make them particularly sensitive to magical pulsation and extremely irritable when exposed to any loud noise or pungent smell. For some of the night I was consequently forced to bunker down in the middle of Rotherhithe Sewage Works.

19

Particularly popular were shards of crystal that were purported to exude life—enhancing auras. People hung them round their necks for good luck. The shards had no magical properties whatsoever, but I suppose in one way they did have a protective function: people wearing them immediately advertised themselves to be magical ignoramuses, and as a result they were ignored by the many factions of feuding magicians. In London it was dangerous for a person to have had even the slightest magical training: then one became useful and/or dangerous—and as a result fair game for other magicians.

20

Then again… maybe that explains a lot.

21

There have been cases where a spirit has attempted to refuse a command. On one notable occasion, Asmoral the Resolute was instructed by his master to destroy the djinni Ianna. But Ianna had long been Asmoral's closest ally and there was great love between them. Despite his master's increasingly severe injunctions, Asmoral refused to act. Sadly, though his willpower was equal to the challenge, his essence was tied to the irresistible tug of the magician's command. Before long, because he did not give way, he was literally torn in two. The resulting matter explosion destroyed the Magician, his palace, and an outlying suburb of Baghdad. After this tragic event, magicians learned to be cautious of ordering direct attacks on opposing spirits (opposing magicians were a different matter). For our part, we learned to avoid conflicts of principle. As a result, loyalties among us are temporary and liable to shift. Friendship is essentially a matter of strategy.

22

Despite what some would say on the subject, many of us have no particular interest in harming ordinary humans. There are exceptions, of course, of which Jabor is one. However, even for mild—tempered djinn such as me, there is such a thing as being pushed too far.

23

Many great magicians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were entombed at Westminster Abbey after (and on one or two occasions shortly before) their death. Almost all took at least one powerful artifact with them to their grave. This was little more than a self—conscious flaunting of their wealth and power and a complete waste of the object in question. It was also a way of spitefully denying their successors any chance of inheriting the object—other mages were justly wary of retrieving the grave goods for fear of supernatural reprisals.

24

If a magician leaves his circle during a summons his power over his victim is broken I was hoping I would thus be able to leave. Incidentally, it would also have left me free to step out of my own pentacle and nail him.

25

Yep, by destroying him myself before they got there.

26

All magicians have two names, their official name and their birth name. Their birth name is that given to them by their parents, and because it is intimately bound up with their true nature and being, it is a source of great strength and weakness. They seek to keep it secret from everyone, for if an enemy learns it, he or she can use it to gain power over them, rather in the same way that a magician can only summon a djinni if he knows their true name. Magicians thus conceal their birth names with great care, replacing them with official names at the time of their coming of age. It is always useful to know a magician's official name—but far, far better to learn his secret one.

27

Strictly advisable when dealing with subtle, intelligent entities such as myself. It is often possible to interpret a pause for breath as a full stop, which either changes the meaning of the instructions or turns them into gobbledegook. If we can misinterpret something to our advantage, we most certainly will.

28

Magicians are the most conniving, jealous, duplicitous group of people on earth, even including lawyers and academics. They worship power and the wielding thereof, and seek every chance they can to undercut their rivals. At a rough guess about eighty percent of all summonses have to do with carrying out some skulduggery against a fellow magician, or with defense against the same. By contrast, most confrontations between spirits aren't personal at all, simply because they do not occur of our own free will. At that moment, for instance, I did not dislike Faquarl particularly; well, actually that's a lie—I loathed him, but no more than I had before. Anyway, our mutual hatred had taken many centuries, indeed millennia, to build up. Magicians squabble for fun. We'd really had to work at it.

29

Minor magicians take pains to fit this traditional wizardly bill. By contrast, the really powerful magicians take pleasure in looking like accountants.

30

Amulets are protective charms; they fend off evil. They are passive objects and although they can absorb or deflect all manner of dangerous magic, they cannot be actively controlled by their owner. They are thus the opposite of talismans, which have active magical powers that can be used at their owner's discretion. A horseshoe is a (primitive) amulet; seven—league boots are a form of talisman.

31

Natterjack impling: an unadventurous creature that affects the semblance and habits of a dull sort of toad.

32

Mouler: even less exciting than a natterjack impling, were that possible.

33

Armed with this, I would be able to combat the whippersnapper's most vicious attacks. Knowledge of the name redresses the power balance a little, you see, acting as a kind of defensive shield for djinn inside the circle. It's a simple and very ancient kind of talisman and—Well, what are you hanging around reading this for? Read on quickly and see for yourself.

34

Old or young, small or fat, the besetting weakness of all magicians is their pride. They can't bear to be laughed at. They hate it so much even the cleverest ones can lose control and make silly mistakes.

35

The Systemic Vise consists of a number of concentric bands of force that squeeze round you, tight as a mummy's bandage—cloth. As the magician repeats the incantation, the bands grow tighter and tighter until the helpless djinni trapped inside begs for mercy.

36

Better—looking by far, of course.

37

Succubus: a seductively shaped djinni in female form. Oddly popular with male magicians.

38

Typical magician's guff this. It was the unfortunate imp inside the bronze disc who did all the work.

39

A complicated penalty made up of fifteen curses in five different languages. Magicians can only use it on one of us who deliberately disobeys or refuses to carry out a given command. It causes immediate incineration. Only applied in extreme cases, since it is tiring for the magician and robs them of a slave.

40

There's big business in protective herbal aftershaves and underarm deodorants for magicians. Simon Lovelace, for instance, positively reeked of Rowan—tree Rub—on.

41

The Indefinite Confinement spell is a bad 'un, and one of the worst threats magicians can make. You can be trapped for centuries in horrid minute spaces, and to cap it all, some of them are just plain daft. Matchboxes, bottles, handbags… I even knew a djinni once who was imprisoned in a dirty old lamp.

42

He wasn't the only one, believe me.

43

Some societies I had known made great use of messenger imps. The rooftops and date palms of old Baghdad (which had neither telephone nor e—mail) used to swarm with the things after breakfast and shortly before sundown, which were the two traditional times for messages to be sent.

44

These polite asterisks replace a short, censored episode characterized by bad language and some sadly necessary violence. When we pick up the story again, everything is as before, except that I am perspiring slightly and the contrite imp is the model of cooperation.

45

On the night I stole the Amulet, I'd heard Lovelace being skeptical about the Prime Minister's abilities and this gap in my knowledge suggested he was right. If Devereaux had been a prominent magician, chances are I would have heard his name. Word spreads quickly about the powerful ones, who are always the most trouble.

46

Besides, it would have given me a stitch when flying.

47

Foliot: a cut—price djinni.

48

Most of us enact our duties only under sufferance, simply because we are hurt if we do not cooperate. But a few, typically ones in cushy jobs like Sholto's servant, grow to enjoy their servile status, and no longer resent their situation. Often they do not even have to be summoned, but are happy to engage in prolonged work for their masters, heedless of the pain they suffer from being continually trapped in a physical body. The rest of us generally regard them with hatred and contempt.

49

Literally swelling, I mean. Like a lime—green balloon slowly inflated by a foot pump. Some foliots (the simple sort) change size and shape to express their mood.

50

How wrong can you get? I brought the anklet to Nefertiti in the first place. And I might add that she was a stunner before she put it on. (By the way, these modern magicians were mistaken. The anklet doesn't improve a woman's looks; it forces her husband to obey her every whim. I half wondered how the poor old Duke was getting on.)

51

You could see how far he'd gone over to the enemy by the way he described the death of a magician as "murder." And was upset! Honestly, it almost makes you long for the simple aggression of Jabor.

52

No? Oh, well. It's the poet in me, I think.

53

With the aid of their lenses, magicians can see clearly onto the second and third planes and blearily onto the fourth. Sholto was no doubt checking me out on these. Fortunately my imp—form extended to the fourth, so I was safe.

54

Silver hurts us badly; it burns our essence with its searing cold. Which is why Sholto had installed it in his security system. What it did to the djinn imprisoned within the mannequins I dread to think.

55

The djinni within was forced to obey its instruction—the defense of the shop—no matter what the consequence to itself. This was where I held a slight advantage, since my only current obligation was to save my skin.

56

Several conscious levels, that is. By and large, humans can only manage one conscious level, with a couple of more or less unconscious ones muddling along underneath. Think of it this way: I could read a book with four different stories typed one on top of the other, and take them all in with the same sweep of my eyes. The best I can do for you is footnotes.

57

Essence: the fundamental, essential being of a spirit such as myself, wherein my identity and nature are contained In your world, we are forced to incorporate our essences into some sort of physical form; in the Other Place, where we come from, our essences intermingle freely and chaotically.

58

In fact, it had the appearance and odor of dirty washing—up water.

59

A type of djinni much favored by the Assyrian magicians for their unintelligent devotion to violence. I first fought these at the battle of Al—Arish, when the pharaoh drove back the Assyrian army from Egyptian soil. The utukku looked good—four meters high, heads of beasts and birds of prey, crystal breastplates, flashing scimitars. But they could all be caught by the old "He's behind you" trick. Recipe for success: 1. Take a stone. 2. Chuck behind utukku so that it makes a diverting sound. 3. Watch utukku swivel, eyes popping. 4. Run him through the back with gusto. 5. Gloat to taste. Oddly, my exploits that day made me a few enemies among the surviving utukku.

60

Which was unlikely to be much. As a rough rule of thumb, you can gauge a djinni's intelligence by the number of guises he or she likes to wear. Sprightly entities such as me have no limit to the forms we take. The more the merrier, in fact; it makes our existence slightly less wearisome. Conversely, the true dullards (viz. Jabor, utukku, etc.) favor only one, and it's usually one that is millennia out of date. The forms these utukku wore were fashionable in the streets of Nineveh back in 700 B.C. Who goes round as a bull—headed spirit nowadays? Exactly. It's so passe.

61

Unexpectedly sharp. And cold. No one can say I don't work hard describing things for you.

62

So right. I've been knocked out at various times by various people in places as far afield as Persepolis, the Kalahari, and Chesapeake Bay.

63

And I m scrupulously honest, as you know.

64

Thoughtful persons might at this point object that since Lovelace had stolen the Amulet and was thus working against the Government, it might have been worth a gamble to tell them about his crimes. Perhaps both Nathaniel and I might have then been let off for services rendered. True, but unfortunately there was no knowing who else was involved with Lovelace's plot, and since Sholto Pinn himself had been lunching with Love—lace the previous day, there was certainly no trusting him. All in all, the risks of coming clean far outweighed the possible benefits.

65

True, as it happens. That would be eight hundred years ago. In those days I was mostly in North America.

66

Well, this loses something in translation, of course. I shouted it in the language of Old Egypt, which both of them knew and hated. It was a reference to the time when the pharaoh sent his armies deep into the lands of Assyria, causing general mayhem. It is deeply impolite for djinn to bring up between themselves the memories of human wars (in which we are always forced to take sides). Reminding utukku of wars that they lost is both impolite and deeply unwise.

67

Horla: a powerful subclass of djinni. To a human, horlas appear as shadowy apparitions that cause madness and disease; to other djinn, they radiate a malicious aura that saps our essence.

68

Almost as much as silver, iron does not do a djinni any good. People have been using it to ward off our influence for millennia; even horseshoes are considered «lucky» because they are made of iron.

69

The less powerful the being, the quicker and easier it is to summon. Most magical empires employ some magicians specially to rustle up whole cohorts of imps at short notice. Only the greatest empires have the strength in depth to create armies of higher entities. The most formidable such army ever seen was put together by Pharaoh Tuthmosis III in 1478 B.C. It included a legion of afrits and a motley group of higher djinn, of which surely the most notable was… No, modesty prevents my continuing.

70

Mirror illusion: a particularly cunning and sophisticated spell. It forms false images of a large—scale object—e.g. an army, a mountain, or a castle. They are flat and dissolve away as you pass through them. Mirror illusions can baffle even the cleverest opponent. As demonstrated here.

71

Many modern products—synthetic plastics, metal alloys, the inner workings of machines—carry so much of the human about them that they afflict our essence if we get too close for too long. It's probably some sort of allergy.

72

Chance or, as I prefer to think of it, my own quick—wittedness. But it was true that somehow I'd always managed to avoid a full—on fight.

73

Only without the squeal. Obviously.

74

At this point someone with excellent hearing might have heard a spurt of webbing being shot furiously into the ceiling in the corner of the room Fortunately, the imp was busy trying to intimidate Underwood by changing its frozen expression very, very slowly. It didn't hear a thing.

75

I felt a sudden surge of affection for the old fool. Didn't last long. Just thought I'd mention it.

76

Oops. It looked as if Lovelace had guessed I might escape from Faquarl He must have set spies watching the Tower to trail us once we broke free And I'd led them straight back to the Amulet in double—quick time How embarrassing.

77

He could have produced the Amulet, agreed to terms, and seen Lovelace head off satisfied into the night. Of course, now that he knew a little of Lovelace's crimes, he would certainly have been bumped off soon afterward, but that breathing space might have given him time to shave his beard, put on a flowery shirt, fly off somewhere hot and sandy and so survive.

78

How unnecessary. What play—actors these magicians are.

79

So Faquarl had been right A small army of horlas and utukku had been unable to stop Jabor. This didn't bode too well.

80

Typical Jabor, this. He's just the sort who'd happily saw off a branch he was sitting on, or paint himself steadily into a corner. If he were given to D.I.Y., that is. Which he isn't.

81

Don't worry. It was in Old Babylonian. The boy wouldn't have understood the references.

82

Without much conviction. It seemed a perfectly reasonable desire to me.

83

Psychology of this sort is not my strong suit. I haven't a clue what motivates most humans and care even less. With magicians it's usually pretty simple: they fall into three distinct types, motivated by ambition, greed, or paranoia. Underwood, for example, now he was the paranoid type, from what I'd seen of him. Lovelace? Easy—ambition leaked from his body like a foul smell. The boy was of the ambitious kind as well, but he was still young, unformed. Hence this sudden ridiculous burst of altruism.

84

To me. Which is what counts.

85

One side—benefit of this route was that its difficulties eventually took his mind off the loss of his precious scrying glass. Honestly, the way he went on about it, you'd think that imp was his blood brother, rather than a vulgar baby impersonator trapped against its will. He did seem to have taken his misfortune personally. But after the loss of his beloved Mrs. Underwood, I suppose the disc was his only friend in the world, poor thing.

86

A "good master" is a contradiction in terms, of course. Even Solomon would have been insufferable, he was so prissy in his early years, but fortunately he could command 20,000 spirits with one twist of his magic ring, so with him I got plenty of days off.

87

Obviously not classical history. This ignorance would have upset Faquarl, as it happens, who often boasted how he'd given Odysseus the idea for the wooden horse in the first place. I'm sure he was lying, but I can't prove it because I wasn't at Troy: I was in Egypt at the time.

88

They've got the worst taste in the world, magicians. Always have done. Oh, they keep themselves all suave and sober in public, but give them a chance to relax and do they listen to chamber orchestras? No. They'd rather have a dwarf on stilts or a belly—dancing bearded lady any day. A little—known fact about Solomon the Wise: he was entertained between judgements by an enthusiastic troupe of Lebanese clowns.

89

Even though they have been scraped and shaped by human will, fields do not have magicians' stench about them. Throughout history, magicians have been resolutely urban creatures: they flourish in cities, multiplying like plague rats, running along thickly spun threads of gossip and intrigue like fat—bellied spiders. The nearest that nonurban societies get to magicians are the shamans of North America and the Asian steppe But they operate so differently that they almost deserve not to be called magicians at all. But their time is past.

90

How true this was. Magicians are essentially parasitic. In societies where they are dominant, they live well off the strivings of others In those times and places when they lose power and have to earn their own bread, they are generally reduced to a sorry state, performing small conjurations for jeering ale—house crowds in return for a few brass coins.

91

A variety with five eyes, two on the head, one on either flank, and one—well, let's just say it would be hard to creep up on him unawares while he was touching his toes.

92

Very, very nasty it was. Remind me to tell you about it some day.

93

Faquarl would have argued that it was more expedient simply to devour them, while Jabor wouldn't have argued at all, but just done it. But I find that human flesh makes my essence ache. It's like eating bad seafood—too much accumulated grime per mouthful.

94

To date, the only experience I'd had of driving had been during the Great War, when the British army had been camped thirty miles outside Prague. A Czech magician, who shall remain nameless, charged me to steal certain documents. They were well guarded and I was forced to pass the enemy djinn by driving a staff ambulance into the British camp. My driving was very bad, but at least it enabled me to complete my disguise (by filling the ambulance with each soldier I knocked down en route). When I entered the camp, the men were rushed off to the hospital, while I slipped away to steal the campaign plans.

95

Ghuls: lesser djinn of an unsavory cast, keen on the taste of humans Hence efficient (if frustrated) sentries They can only see onto five planes. I was Squalls on all but the seventh

96

Everything seems to aspire to be something better than it is. Mites aspire to be moulers, moulers aspire to be foliots, foliots aspire to be djinn Some djinn aspire to be afrits or even marids In each case it's hopeless. It is impossible to alter the limitations of one's essence. But that doesn't stop many entities waltzing around in the guise of something more powerful than they are. Of course, when you're pretty darn perfect to start with, you don't want to change anything.

97

All built to celebrate one insignificant tribe's victory over another. From Rome to Beijing, Timbuktu to London, triumphal arches crop up wherever there are cities, heavy with the weight of earth and death. I've never seen one I liked.

98

I wasn't being rude here. Well, all right, I was, but it was accurate abuse nevertheless. I may not be a search sphere imp (all nostrils, remember), but I've got an acute sense of smell, and can nearly always identify a magician, even when they're going incognito. All those years of hanging out in smoky rooms summoning powerful entities gives their skin a distinctive odor, in which incense and the sharp pang of fear feature prominently. If after that you're still unsure, the clincher is to look 'em in the eyes: usually you can see their lenses.

99

Not that my advice was always taken: check out the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

100

Not a good enough description for you? Well, I was only trying to move the story on. Heddleham Hall was a great rectangular pile with stubby north—south wings, plenty of tall, arched windows, two stories, high sloping gables, a surfeit of brick chimneys, ornate tracery that amounted to the Baroque, faux—battlements above the main door, high vaulted ceilings (heavily groined), sundry gargoyles (likewise) and all constructed from a creamy—brown stone that looked attractive in moderation but en masse made everything blur like a big block of melting fudge.

101

So decoratively that I wondered if their feet had been glued in position.

102

Don't think I'd forgotten Simpkin. On the contrary. I have a long memory and a fertile imagination. I had plans for him.

103

How the weavers of Basra must have loathed being commissioned to create such a monstrosity. Gone are the days when, with complex and cruel incantations, they wove djinn into the fabric of their carpets, creating artifacts that carried their masters across the Middle East and were stain—resistant at the same time. Hundreds of us were trapped this way. But now, with the magical power of Baghdad long broken, such craftsmen escape destitution only by weaving tourist tat for rich foreign clients. Such is progress.

104

The only remains of the first person to blow the horn, it being an essential requirement of such items that their first user must surrender himself to the mercy of the entity he summons. With this notable design flaw, summoning horns are pretty rare, as you'd imagine.

105

In a perfect example of most magicians' dreary style, each and every vehicle was big, black, and shiny. Even the smallest looked as if it wanted to be a hearse when it grew up.

106

Inadvisable.

107

I'd thought my blows would keep them unconscious for at least a couple of days. But I'd fluffed it. That's what comes of hurrying a job.

108

Potent magical devices, invented in medieval Europe. At the wearers command, the boots can cover considerable distances in the smallest of strides. Normal (Earth) rules of time and space do not apply. Allegedly, each boot contains a djinni capable of traveling on a hypothetical eighth plane (not that I would know anything about that). It was now easier to understand how the mercenary had managed to evade capture when he first stole the Amulet for Lovelace.

109

They were intertwined. Never mind how.

110

In both senses. And I can tell you I've been in some sticky places in my time, but for sheer waxy unpleasantness, his earlobe would be hard to beat.

111

The threads of a Stricture act as a seal. They allow no object (or sound) to escape their cocoon It's a kind of temporary prison, more usually employed on unfortunate humans than on djinn.

112

One of the worst examples was the Mycenean outpost of Atlantis on the island of Santonni in the Mediterranean About 3,500 years ago, if memory serves. They wanted to conquer another island (or some predictable objective like that), so their magicians clubbed together and summoned an aggressive entity. They couldn't control it. I was only a few hundred miles away on the Egyptian delta; I heard the explosion and saw the tsunami waves come roaring across to deluge the African coast. Weeks later, when things had settled down, the pharaoh's boats sailed to Santorini. The entire central section of the island, with its people and its shining city, had sunk into the sea. And all because they hadn't bothered with a pentacle.

113

Unless they noticed a faint gray smudge along the line of the rift. This was where light was draining away, being sucked off into the Other Place.

114

It was the old chewing—gum principle in action. Imagine pulling a strip of chewed gum between your fingers: first it holds and stretches, then gets thin somewhere near the middle. Finally a tiny hole forms at the thinnest point, which quickly tears and splits Here, Lovelace's summoning had done the pulling. With some help from the thing on the other side.

115

They could only see the first three planes clearly, of course, but that was enough to get the outline.

116

The entity trapped inside the Amulet had to be at least as powerful as this newcomer if Lovelace was to withstand its force. Even as a long—suffering djinni, I still had a grudging admiration for the ancient Asian people who had managed to capture and compress it.

117

This being was greater by far than all the various marids, afrits, and djinn that magicians normally summon. A strong magician can summon an afrit on his own; most marids require two. I was calculating a minimum of four for this one.

118

I hadn't heard of this particular being before. Unsurprising really, since though there are many thousands of us that magicians have cruelly summoned—and thus de—fined—there are countless more that merge into the Other Place without any need for names. Perhaps this was the first time Ramuthra had been summoned.

119

Ombos: city in Egypt sacred to Seth, Jabor's old boss. For a century or two, Jabor lurked in a temple there, feeding on the victims brought to him, until a pharaoh from Lower Egypt came and burned the place to the ground.

120

Or air, really. We were about twenty feet up.

121

I hadn't a clue. Words of Command are magicians' business. That is what they are good at. Djinn can't speak them. But crabbed old master magicians know an incantation for every eventuality.

122

If magicians rely on theatrical effects to overawe the people, they also use much the same techniques to impress and outmaneuver each other.

123

Amanda Cathcart, Simon Lovelace, and six servants had also vanished into the rift or the mouth of Ramuthra, but under the circumstances, the magicians did not consider these significant losses.

124

That is, at exactly the moment Lovelace perished.

125

So, once again, our paths had crossed without a definitive confrontation. A pity really; I was looking forward to giving Faquarl a good hiding. I just hadn't quite had time to get round to it.

126

As well as no doubt creating the secret mechanism in an adjacent room, which pulled back the carpet from the floor and triggered the bars upon the windows. Certain types of foliot are very gifted at construction jobs; I used to have a band of them under me when working on the walls of Prague. They're good workers, provided they don't hear the sound of church bells, in which case they drop tools and crumble into ashes. That was a drag on festival days—I had to employ a bunch of imps with dustpans and brushes to sweep away the pieces.

127

Homunculus: a tiny manikin produced by magic and often trapped in a bottle as a magician's curio. A few have prophetic powers, although it is important to do exactly the opposite of what they recommend, since homunculi are always malevolent and seek to do their creators harm.

128

Government offices tend to be full of afrits and search spheres, and I feared they might take exception to my presence.

129

An old Egyptian vow. Be careful when you use it—it invariably comes true.