Nathaniel addressed the fly. “Have you found a weak point yet?”
“No. It’s been well put together.” It buzzed angrily. “Why did you have to get yourself caught? We’re helpless in here.”
Helpless, yet again. Nathaniel bit his lip. “I assume Lovelace is going to summon something,” he said.
“Of course. He’s got a horn for that purpose, so he doesn’t have to speak the incantation. Saves him time.”
“What will it be?”
“Who knows? Something big enough to deal with that afrit, presumably.”
Again, panic struggled in Nathaniel’s throat, wrestling to be loosened in a cry. Outside, Lovelace was still describing the intricacies of the ceiling. Nathaniel’s eyes flicked back and forth, trying to catch the gaze of one of the magicians, but they were still absorbed in the marvelous chandeliers. He hung his head in despair.
And noticed something odd out of the corner of his eye.
The floor … It was difficult to be sure with the lights glaring in the glass, but he thought he could see a movement on the floor, like a white wave rapidly traveling across it from the far wall. He frowned; the Stricture’s membranes were getting in the way of his vision—he couldn’t be sure what he was actually seeing. But it was almost as if something was covering the carpet.
The fly was wheeling about near the side of his head. “One crumb of comfort,” it said. “It can’t be anything too powerful, or Lovelace would have to use a pentacle. The Amulet’s all very well for personal protection, but the really strong entities need to be carefully contained. You can’t afford to let them go running loose, or risk total devastation. Look what happened to Atlantis.”
Nathaniel had no idea what had happened to Atlantis. He was still watching the floor. He had suddenly become aware that there was a sense of movement all across the hall—the whole flooring seemed to be shifting, though the glass itself remained solid and firm. He looked between his feet and saw the smiling face of a young female magician move quickly past beneath the glass, closely followed by a stallion’s head and the leaves of a decorative tree.
It was then that he realized the truth. The carpet was not being covered. It was being drawn back, quickly and stealthily. And no one else had noticed. While the magicians gazed gawping at the ceiling, the floor below them changed.
“Erm, Bartimaeus—” he said.
” What? I’m trying to concentrate.”
“The floor …”
“Oh.” The fly settled on his shoulder. “That’s bad!’
As Nathaniel watched, the ornately twining border passed below him, then the carpet’s tasseled edge itself. It moved off, revealing a gleaming surface below—perhaps made of whitewashed plaster—on which great runes were inscribed in shining black ink. Nathaniel knew immediately what they were standing on, and one glance across the room confirmed it. He saw sections of perfectly drawn circles, two straight lines converging at the apex of a star, the elegant curving lines of runic characters, both red and black.
“A giant pentacle,” he whispered. “And we’re all inside.”
“Nathaniel,” said the fly. “You know I told you to keep calm and not bother waving or shouting?”
“Yes.”
“Cancel that. Make as much movement as you can. Perhaps we can attract the attention of one of these idiots.”
Nathaniel jiggled about, waved his hands and jerked his head from side to side. He shouted until his throat was sore. Around him whirled the fly, its body flashing in a hundred bright warning colors. But the magicians nearby noticed nothing. Even Jessica Whitwell, who was closest, still gazed at the ceiling with starry eyes.
The terrible helplessness that Nathaniel had felt on the night of the fire flooded over him again. He could feel his energy and resolution draining away.
“Why won’t they look?” he wailed.
“Pure greed,” the fly said. “They’re fixated with the trappings of wealth. This is no good. I’d try a Detonation, but it would kill you at this range.”
“No, don’t do that,” Nathaniel said.
“If only you’d already freed me from the Indefinite Confinement spell,” the fly mused. “Then I could break out and tackle Lovelace. You’d be dead, of course, but I’d save everyone else, honest, and tell them all about your sacrifice. It would—Look! It’s happening!”
Nathaniel’s eyes had already been drawn to Lovelace, who had made a sudden movement. From pointing at the ceiling, his hands now descended to the back of the lectern with feverish haste. He drew something out, hurled its covering cloth to the floor and raised the object to his lips: a horn, old, stained, and cracked. Sweat beaded his forehead; it glistened in the light from the chandeliers.
Something in the crowd gave an inhuman roar of anger. The magicians lowered their heads in shock.
Lovelace blew.
When the carpet drew back and the giant summoning pentacle was revealed, I knew we were in for something nasty. Lovelace had it all worked out. All of us, him included, were trapped inside the circle with whatever he was calling from the Other Place. There were barriers on the windows and no doubt in the walls as well, so there was no chance any of us would escape. Lovelace had the Amulet of Samarkand—and with its power, he was immune—but the rest of us would be at the mercy of the being he had summoned.
I hadn’t lied to the boy. Without the constraining pentacle, there was a limit to what any magician would willingly summon. The greatest beings run amok if they’re given any freedom,3 and Lovelace’s hidden design meant that the only freedom this one was going to get would be inside this single room.
But that was all the magician needed. When his slave departed, he alone of the great ones of the Government would be left alive, ready to assume control.
He blew the horn. It made no sound on any of the seven planes, but in the Other Place it would have rung loud.
As was to be expected, the afrit acted fastest. Even as the summoning horn came into view, she let out a great bellow seized Rupert Devereaux by the shoulders and flew at the nearest set of windows, picking up speed as she went. She crashed into the glass; the magical barriers across it flared electric blue, and with an impact like thunder, she was propelled back into the room, head over heels, with Devereaux spinning limply in her grip.
Lovelace took the horn away from his lips, smiling slightly.
The cleverer magicians had understood the situation the instant the horn was blown. With a flurry of colored flashes, imps appeared at several shoulders. Others summoned greater assistance—the woman by our side was muttering an incantation, calling up her djinni.
Lovelace stepped down carefully from the podium, his eyes trained somewhere high above. Light danced on the surface of his spectacles. His suit was elegant, unruffled. He took no notice of the consternation all around.
I saw a flicker in the air.
Desperately, I threw myself at the edges of the web that surrounded us, searching for a weakness and finding none.
Another flicker. My essence shivered.
Many of the magicians were on their feet now, their voices raised in alarm, heads turning from side to side in bewilderment, as thick iron and silver bars slid into position across every door and window. Nathaniel had long since stopped bothering to move: it was clear that no one would take any notice of him. He could only watch as a magician some way in front slung his chair to one side, raised a hand and shot a ball of yellow flame at Lovelace from a distance of only a couple of meters. To the surprise of the magician, the flame altered its course slightly in midair and disappeared into the center of Lovelace’s chest. Lovelace, who was staring intently up toward the ceiling, appeared to have noticed nothing.
The fly buzzed back and forth, butting its head against the wall of the Stricture. “That’s the Amulet’s work,” it said. “It’ll take whatever they throw.”
Jessica Whitwell had finished her incantation: a short, stumpy djinni hovered in the air beside her; it had taken the form of a b
lack bear. She pointed, yelled an order. The bear moved forward through the air, paddhng its limbs as if swimming.
Other magicians sent attacks in Lovelace’s direction: for perhaps a minute, he was the center of a lightning storm of furious, crackling energy. The Amulet of Samarkand absorbed it all. Lovelace was unaffected. He carefully smoothed back his hair.
The afrit had picked itself up from where it had fallen and, having set the dazed Prime Minister lolling on a chair, leaped into the fray. It flew on speedy, shining wings, but Nathaniel noticed that it approached Lovelace on a peculiar circular course, avoiding the air directly above the podium.
Several magicians had by now reached the door of the hall, and were vainly straining at the handles.
The afrit sent a powerful magic toward Lovelace. Either it went too fast, or it was primarily on a plane he could not see, but Nathaniel only saw it as the suggestion of a jet of smoke that crossed to the magician in an instant. Nothing happened. The afrit cocked its head, as if bemused.
On Lovelace’s other side, the black bear djinni was closing fast. From each paw, it unsheathed two scimitar-like claws.
Magicians were running helter-skelter, making for the windows, the door, for anywhere at all, accompanied by their host of shrieking imps.
Then something happened to the afrit. To Nathaniel, it was as if he was looking at the afrit’s reflection in a pond and the water surface was suddenly disturbed. The afrit seemed to shatter, its form splitting into a thousand quavering shards that were sucked toward a section of air above the podium. A moment later they were gone.
The black bear djinni stopped paddling forward. Its claws were drawn back out of sight. Very subtly, it went into reverse.
The fly buzzed loudly against Nathaniel’s ear, shouting in pure panic. “It’s happening!” it cried. “Can’t you see it?”
But Nathaniel saw nothing.
A woman ran past, mouth open in panic. Her hair was a pale shade of blue.
The first thing most of them noticed was the afrit. That was the spectacular one, the real curtain raiser, but in fact plenty had been going on in the previous seconds. The afrit was unlucky, that was all; in her haste to destroy the threat to her master, she got too close to the rift.
The split in the air was about four meters in length and only visible on the seventh plane. Perhaps a few of the imps glimpsed it, but none of the humans could have done so.4 It wasn’t a nice, clean, vertical sort of rift, but diagonal, with jagged edges, as if the air had been torn like thick, fibrous cloth. From my prison, I had watched it form: after the first flicker above the podium, the air had vibrated, distorted wildly, and finally snapped along that line.5
As soon as the rift appeared, the changes had begun.
The lectern on the podium altered: its substance turned from wood to clay, then to an odd, orange metal, then to something that looked suspiciously like candle wax. It sagged a little, as if melting along one side.
A few blades of grass grew up from the surface of the podium.
The crystal drops of the chandelier directly above it turned to water droplets, which hung suspended for a second in position, shimmering in many colors, then fell to the floor as rain.
A magician was running toward a window. Each line of the pinstripe on his jacket undulated like a sidewinder.
No one noticed these first minor changes or a dozen similar others. It would take the afrit’s fate for them to cotton on.
Pandemonium filled the room, with humans and imps squeaking and gibbering in all directions. As if oblivious to this, Lovelace and I watched the rift. We waited for something to come through.
42
Then it happened. The planes close to the rift suddenly went out of sync, as if they were being pulled sideways at varying speeds. It was as though my focus had gone haywire, as it does after a blow to the head—I suddenly saw the windows beyond seven times over, all in slightly different positions. It was most disconcerting.
If whatever Lovelace had summoned was strong enough to disrupt the planes like this, it boded ill for all of us inside the pentacle; It must be very close now. I kept my eye on the rift in the air….
Amanda Cathcart passed us, screaming, her bob a fetching blue. A few more changes had been noticed by all and sundry: two magicians, who had strayed too near the podium in a vain attempt to attack Lovelace, found their bodies elongating unpleasantly; one man’s nose also grew to a ridiculous length, while the other’s vanished altogether.
“What’s happening?” the boy whispered.
I did not answer. The rift was opening.
All seven planes distorted like stirred syrup. The rift widened and something like an arm thrust through. It was quite transparent, as if it were made of the most perfect glass; in fact, it would have been wholly invisible were it not for the twisting, swirling convulsions of the planes around it. The arm moved back and forth experimentally: it seemed to be testing the odd sensations of the physical world. I glimpsed four thin protuberances or fingers at the end of the arm: they, like it, had no substance of their own, and were only given form by the rippling disturbances in the air about them.
Down below, Lovelace stepped back, his fingers nervously feeling between his shirt buttons for the Amulet’s reassuring touch.
With the distortion of the planes, the other magicians began to see the arm for the first time.1 They emitted assorted cries of woe that, from the biggest, hairiest man to the smallest, shrillest woman, covered a range of several octaves. Several of the bravest ran into the center of the room and coerced their attendant djinn into sending Detonations and other magics galore in the direction of the rift. This turned out to be a mistake. Not one single bolt or blast made it anywhere near the arm; all either screamed off at angles to smash into the walls and ceiling, or dribbled to the floor like water from a dripping hose, the energy taken out of them.
The boy’s mouth hung so low and loosely, a rodent could have used it as a swing. “That th-thing,” he stammered. “What is it?”
A fair enough question. What was it, this thing that distorted the planes and disrupted the most powerful magic, when only one arm had actually come through? I could have said something dramatic and eerie like, “The death of us all!” but it wouldn’t have got us very far. Besides, he’d only have asked again.
“I don’t know exactly,” I said. “Judging by its caution in coming through, it has rarely been summoned before. It is probably surprised and angry, but its strength is clear enough. Look around! Inside the pentacle, magic is going wrong, things are beginning to change form. All normal laws are being warped, suspended. The greatest of us always bring the chaos of the Other Place with them. No wonder Lovelace needed the Amulet of Samarkand to protect himself.”2
As we watched, the giant, translucent arm was followed by a brawny, translucent shoulder, more than a meter long. And now something like a head began to emerge through the rift. Once more it was only an outline: seen through it, the windows and the distant trees showed perfectly; around its edge, the planes shuddered in a new frenzy.
“Lovelace can’t have summoned this on his own,” I said. “He must have had help. And I don’t just mean that old scarecrow you killed, or the clammy one at the door. Someone with real power must have had a hand."3
The great being pulled itself through the gap. Now another arm appeared, and the suggestion of a torso. Most of the magicians were clustering against the periphery of the room, but a few near the windows were caught in a ripple running through the planes. Their faces changed—a man’s became a woman’s; a woman’s a child’s. Maddened by his transformation, one magician ran blindly toward the podium—in an instant, his body seemed to become liquid: it slewed in a corkscrew motion up into the rift and vanished from sight. My master gasped in horror.
Now a great, translucent leg emerged, with almost feline stealth and poise. Things were really desperate. Nevertheless, I’m an optimist at heart. I noticed that the ripples emanating from the being changed the na
ture of every spell they hit. And that gave me hope.
“Nathaniel,” I said. “Listen to me.”
He didn’t answer at first. He was transfixed at the sight of the lords and ladies of his realm running about like demented chickens. After all the events of the previous few days, I had almost forgotten how young he was. Right at that moment, he did not look like a magician at all, but just a terrified small boy.
“Nathaniel.”
A faint voice. “Yes?”
“Listen. If we get out of this Stricture, do you know what we have to do?”
“But how can we get out?”
“Don’t bother about that. If we escape, what must we do?”
He shrugged.
“I’ll tell you, then. We need to accomplish two things. First—get the Amulet off Lovelace. That’s your job.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t touch the Amulet now that he’s wearing it: it’s absorbing everything magical that comes near him—and I don’t wish to be included accidentally. It’s got to be you. But I’ll try to distract him while you get close.”
“That’s kind.”
“The second thing,” I said, “is that we must reverse the summons to drive our big friend away. That’s your job.”
“My job again?”
“Yes—I’ll help by stealing the summoning horn from Lovelace. It needs to be broken if we’re to do the job. But you’ll have to round up some of the other magicians to speak the Dismissal Spell. Some of the stronger ones are bound to know enough, providing they’re still conscious. Don’t worry—you won’t have to do it yourself.”
The boy frowned. “Lovelace intends to dismiss it on his own.” He said this with a touch of his normal vigor.
“Yes, and he’s a master magician, highly skilled and powerful. Right—that’s settled. We go for the Amulet. If we get it, you head off and seek help from the others, while I deal with Lovelace.”
Bartimaeus: The Amulet of Samarkand Page 34
