My slight sarcasm was wasted on him. “That’s what Mr. Devereaux said.”
I sat up suddenly and cupped my ear toward the window. “Listen to that!” I exclaimed.
“What?”
“It’s the sound of lots of people not cheering.”
He scowled. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning the Government’s keeping this all very quiet. Where are the photographers? Where are the newspapermen? I’d have expected you on the front page of The Times this morning. They should be asking for your life story, giving you medals in public places, putting you on cheesy limited-edition postage stamps. But they aren’t, are they?”
The boy sniffed. “They have to keep it quiet for security reasons. That’s what they told me.”
“No, it’s for reasons of not wanting to look stupid. ‘Twelve-year old saves Government’? They’d be laughed at in the street. And that’s something no magicians ever want, take it from me. When that happens, it’s the beginning of the end.”
The boy smirked. He was too young to understand. “It’s not the commoners we have to fear,” he said. “It’s the conspirators—the ones who got away. Ms. Whitwell says that at least four magicians must have summoned the demon, so as well as Lovelace, Schyler, and Lime there must be at least one more. Lime’s gone, and no one’s seen that red-bearded magician at any of the harbors or aerodromes. It’s a real mystery. I’m sure Sholto Pinn’s in on it, too, but I can’t say anything about him, after what you did to his shop.”
“Yes,” I said, putting my hands behind my head and speaking in a musing sort of way, “I suppose you do have rather a lot to hide. There’s me, your ‘minor imp,’and all my exploits. There’s you, stealing the Amulet and framing your master….” He flushed at this and made a big show of going off to investigate the walk-in wardrobe. I got up and followed him. “By the way,” I added, “I notice you gave Mrs. Underwood a starring role in your version of events. Helps salve your conscience, does it?”
He spun round, his face reddened. “If you have a point,” he snapped, “get to it.”
I looked at him seriously then. “You said you would revenge yourself on Lovelace,” I said, “and you did what you set out to do. Perhaps that takes away a little of your pain—I hope so; I wouldn’t know. But you also promised that if I helped you against Lovelace, you’d set me free. Well, help has been dutifully given. I think I saved your life several times over. Lovelace is dead and you’re better off—in your eyes—than you’ve ever been before. So now’s the time to honor your promise, Nathaniel, and let me go.”
For a moment he was silent. “Yes,” he said, at last. “You did help me. You did save me.”
“To my eternal shame.”
“And I’m—” He halted.
“Embarrassed?”
“No.”
“Delighted?”
“No.”
“A teensy bit grateful?”
He took a deep breath. “Yes. I’m grateful. But that doesn’t alter the fact that you know my birth name.”
It was time to iron this out once and for all. I was tired; my essence ached with the effort of nine days in the world. I had to go. “True,” I said. “I know your name and you know mine. You can summon me. I can damage you. That makes us even. But while I’m in the Other Place, who am I going to tell? No one. You should want me to go back there. If we’re both lucky, I won’t even be summoned again during your lifetime. However, if I am"—I paused, gave a heavy sigh—"I promise I won’t reveal your name.”
He said nothing. “You want it official?” I cried. “How about this? ‘Should I break this vow, may I be trampled into the sand by camels and scattered among the ordure of the fields.'2 Now I can’t say fairer than that, can I?”
He hesitated. For an instant, he was going to agree. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “You’re a de—a djinni.Vows mean nothing to you.”
“You’re confusing me with a magician! All right, then.” I jumped back in anger. “How about this? If you don’t dismiss me here and now, I’ll go right downstairs and tell your dear Ms. Whitwell exactly what’s been going on. She’ll be very interested to see me in my true form.”
He bit his lip, reached for his book. “I could—”
“Yes, you could do lots of things,” I said. “That’s your trouble.You’re too clever for your own good. A lot has happened because you were too clever to let things lie. You wanted revenge, you summoned a noble djinni, you stole the Amulet, you let others pay the price. You did what you wanted, and I helped because I had to. And no doubt, with your cleverness, you could devise some new bond for me in time, but not quickly enough to stop me telling your master right now about you, the Amulet, Underwood, and me.”
“Right now?” he said quietly.
“Right now.”
“You’d end up in the tin.”
“Too bad for both of us.”
For a few moments we held each other’s gaze properly, perhaps for the first time. Then, with a sigh, the boy looked away.
“Dismiss me, John,” I said. “I’ve done enough. I’m tired. And so are you.”
He gave a small smile at this.“I’m not tired,” he said."There’s too much I want to do.”
“Exactly,” I said. “The Resistance … the conspirators … You’ll want a free hand trying to hunt them down. Think of all the other djinn you’ll need to summon as you embark on your great career. They won’t have my class, but they’ll give you less lip.”
Something in that seemed to strike a chord with him. “All right, Bartimaeus,” he said finally. “I agree. You’ll have to wait while I draw the circle.”
“That’s no problem!” I was eagerness itself. “In fact, I’ll gladly entertain you while you do it! What would you like? I could sing like a nightingale, summon sweet music from the air, create a thousand heavenly scents.… I suppose I could even juggle a bit if that tickles your fancy.”
“Thank you. None of that will be necessary.”
The floor in one corner of the room had been purposely left bare of carpet and was slightly raised. Here, with great precision, and with only one or two fleeting glances at his book of formulae, the boy drew a simple pentacle and two circles with a piece of black chalk he found in the drawer of his desk. I kept very quiet while he did so. I didn’t want him to make any mistakes.
At last he finished, and rose stiffly, holding his back.
“It’s done,” he said, stretching. “Get in.”
I considered the runes carefully. “That cancels Adelbrand’s Pentacle, does it?”
“Yes.”
“And breaks the bond of Perpetual Confinement?”
“Yes! See that hieroglyph here? That snaps the thread. Now do you want to be dismissed or not?”
“Just checking.” I skipped into the bigger circle and turned to face him. He readied himself, ordering the words in his mind, then looked at me severely.
“Take that stupid grin off your face,” he said. “You’re putting me off.”
“Sorry.” I adopted a hideous expression of malady and woe.
“That’s not much better.”
“Sorry, sorry.”
“All right, prepare yourself.” He took a deep breath.
“Just one thing,” I said. “If you were going to summon someone else soon, I recommend Faquarl. He’s a good worker. Put him to something constructive, like draining a lake with a sieve, or counting grains of sand on a beach. He’d be good at that.”
“Look, do you want to go or not?”
“Oh, yes. I do. Very much.”
“Well, then—”
“Nathaniel—one last thing.”
“What?”
“Listen: for a magician, you’ve got potential. And I don’t mean the way you think I mean. For a start, you’ve got far more initiative than most of them, but they’ll crush it out of you if you’re not careful. And you’ve a conscience too, another thing which is rare and easily lost. Guard it. That’s all. Oh, and I’d beware
of your new master, if I were you.”
He looked at me for a moment, as if he wanted to speak. Then he shook his head impatiently. “I’ll be all right. You needn’t bother about me. This is your last chance. I have to be down for dinner in five minutes.”
“I’m ready.”
Then the boy spoke the counter-summons swiftly and without fault. I felt the weight of words binding me to the earth lessen with every syllable. As he neared the end, my form extended, spread, blossomed out from the confines of the circle. Multiple doors opened in the planes, beckoning me through. I became a dense cloud of smoke that roared up and outward, filling a room that became less real to me with every passing instant.
He finished. His mouth snapped shut. The final bond broke like a severed chain.
So I departed, leaving behind a pungent smell of brimstone. Just something to remember me by.
Endnotes
1
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.
2
1 I have access to seven planes, all coexistent. They overlap each other like layers on a crashed mille-feuille. Seven planes is sufficient for anybody. Those who operate on more are just showing off.
2 On two planes. Cats have that power.
3
1 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.
4
1 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.
2 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.
3 A human who listened to the conversation would probably have been slack-jawed with astonishment, for the magician’s 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.
4 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.
5 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.
6 I’m no great looker myself, but Faquarl had too many tentacles for my liking.
7 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.
8 Ouch.
6
1 All living things have auras too. They take the form of a colored nimbus surrounding the individual’s body and are in fact the closest a visual phenomenon gets to becoming a smell. Auras do exist on the first plane, but are invisible to most humans. Many animals, such as cats, can see them; djinn and a few exceptional persons likewise. Auras change color depending on mood and are a useful indication of fear, hatred, sorrow, etc. This is why it is very hard to deceive a cat (or a djinni) when you wish it ill.
2 It would have been a lot more agreeable to return to the urchin immediately to rid myself of the Amulet. But magicians almost always insist on specific summonses at specific times. It removes the possibility of us catching them at a (potentially fatal) disadvantage.
3 Even magicians are confused by our infinite varieties, which are as different one from the other as elephants are from insects, or eagles from amoebae. However, broadly speaking, there are five basic ranks that you are likely to find working in a magician’s service. These are, in descending order of power and general awe: marids, afrits, djinn, foliots, imps. (There are legions of lowly sprites that are weaker than the imps, but magicians rarely bother summoning these. Likewise, far above the marids exist great entities of terrible power; they are seldom seen on Earth, since few magicians dare even uncover their names.) A detailed knowledge of this hierarchy is vitally important for both magicians and for us, since survival frequently depends on knowing exactly where you stand. For example, as a particularly fine specimen of a djinni, I treat other djinn and anything above my rank with a certain degree of courtesy, but give foliots and imps short shrift.
4 Search spheres like these are a kind of sturdy imp. They possess giant scaly ears and a single bristled nostril, which make them particularly sensitive to magical pulsation and extremely irritable when exposed to any loud noise or pungent smell. For some of the night I was consequently forced to bunker down in the middle of Rotherhithe Sewage Works.
5 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.
7
1 Then again … maybe that explains a lot.
2 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.
3 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.
10
1 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.
2 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.
3 Yep, by destroying him myself before they got there.
4 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.
Bartimaeus: The Amulet of Samarkand Page 37
