The Amulet of Samarkand tbt-1

by Jonathan Stroud

  The kid. Where did he rate in my list of all—time human lows? He wasn't the worst master I had endured,[86] but he presented some peculiar problems of his own. All sensible magicians, well versed in clever cruelty, know when the time is right to fight. They risk themselves (and their servants) comparatively rarely. But the kid hadn't a clue. He had been overwhelmed by a disaster brought about by his own meddling, and his reaction was to lunge back at his enemy like a wounded snake. Whatever his original grudge against Lovelace, his previous discretion had now been replaced by a desperation powered by grief. Simple things like self—preservation were disregarded in his pride and fury. He was going to his death. Which would have been fine, except he was taking me along for the ride.

  I had no solution to this. I was bound to my master. All I could do was try to keep him alive.

  By dawn, we had followed the waste strip down from north London almost to the Thames. Here the stream widened briefly before sluicing over a series of weirs into the main river. It was time to rejoin the roads. We climbed a bank to a wire fence (in which I burned a discreet hole), stepped through it and came out on a cobbled street. The political heart of the city was on our right, the Tower district on our left; the Thames stretched ahead. Curfew was safely over, but there was no one yet about.

  "Right," I said, halting. "The station is close by. Before we go there, we need to solve a problem."

  "Which is?"

  "To stop you looking—and smelling—like a swineherd." The various fluids of the wasteland adhered to him in a complex splatter—pattern. He could have been framed and hung up on a fashionable wall.

  He frowned. "Yes. Clean me up first. There must be a way."

  "There is."

  Perhaps I shouldn't have seized him and dunked him in the river. The Thames isn't that much cleaner than the quagmire we'd waded through. Still, it washed off the worst of the muck. After a minute of vigorous dousing, I allowed him to come up, water spouting through his nostrils. He made a gurgling sound that was hard to identify. I had a stab, though.

  "Again? You are thorough."

  Another good rinsing made him look as good as new. I propped him up in the shadows of a concrete embankment and dried his clothes out with discreet use of a Flame. Oddly, his temper had not improved with his smell, but you can't have everything.

  With this matter resolved, we set off and arrived at the railway station in time to catch the first train of the morning south. I stole two tickets from the kiosk, and while sundry attendants were busy combing the platforms for a red—faced clergywoman with a plausible manner, settled back into my seat just as the train got underway. Nathaniel sat in a different part of the carriage—rather pointedly, I thought. His improvised makeover still seemed to rankle with him.

  The first part of the journey out of the city was thus the quietest and least troublesome half—hour I had enjoyed since first being summoned. The train pottered along at an arthritic pace through the never—ending outskirts of London, a dispiriting jumbled wilderness of brick that looked like moraine left by a giant glacier. We passed a succession of rundown factories and concrete lots run to waste; beyond them stretched narrow terraced streets, with chimney smoke rising here and there. Once, high up against the bright, colorless cloud that hid the sun, I saw a troop of djinn heading west. Even at that distance, it was possible to pick out the light glinting on their breastplates.

  Few people got on or off the train. I relaxed. Djinn don't doze, but I did the equivalent, drifting back through the centuries and contemplating some of my happier moments—magicians' errors, my choice acts of revenge…

  This reverie was finally shattered by the boy throwing himself down on the seat opposite me. "I suppose we'd better plan something," he said sulkily. "How can we get through the defenses?"

  "With randomly shifting domes and sentries in place," I said, "there's no way we can break in unmolested. We'll need some kind of Trojan horse." He looked blank. "You know—something which seems to be innocent, which they allow in past the gates. In which we're hiding. Honestly—what do they teach you magicians nowadays?"[87]

  "So, we need to conceal ourselves in something," he grunted. "Any ideas?"

  "Nope."

  Scowling, he mulled it over. You could almost hear the fleshy innards of his brain straining. "The guests will arrive tomorrow," he mused. "They have to let them in, so there's bound to be a steady stream of traffic getting through the gates. Perhaps we can hitch a ride in someone's car."

  "Perhaps," I said. "But all the magicians will be cloaked to the eyeballs with protective Shields and bug—eyed imps. We'd be hard pushed to sneak anywhere near them without being spotted."

  "What about servants?" he said. "They must get in somehow."

  Give him credit—he'd had an idea. "Most of them will be on site already," I said, "but you're right—some may arrive on the day. Also there are bound to be deliveries of fresh food; and maybe entertainers will come, musicians or jugglers—"

  He looked scornful. "Jugglers?"

  "Who's got more experience of magicians—you or me? There are always jugglers.[88] But the point is that there will be some nonmagical outsiders entering the manor. So if we get ourselves into position early enough, we might well get a chance to sneak a ride with someone. It's worth a try. Now… in the meantime, you should sleep. There's a long walk ahead of us when we get to the station."

  His eyelids looked as if they were made of lead. For once he didn't argue.

  I've seen glaciers cover ground more quickly than that train, so in the end he got a pretty decent kip. But finally we arrived at the station closest to Heddleham Hall. I shook my master awake and we tumbled out of the carriage onto a platform that was being speedily reclaimed by the forces of nature. Several varieties of grass grew up through the concrete, while an enterprising bindweed had colonized the walls and roof of the ramshackle waiting room. Birds nested under the rusty lamps. There was no ticket office and no sign of human life.

  The train limped off as if it were going to die under a hedge. Across the track a white gate led straight onto an unpaved road. Fields stretched away on all sides. I perked up: it felt good to be free of the city's malignant clutches and surrounded by the natural contours of the trees and crops.[89]

  "We follow the road," I said. "The hall is at least nine miles away, so we don't have to be on our guard yet. I—what's the matter now?"

  The boy was looking quite pale and unsettled. "It's nothing. Just… I'm not used to so much… space. I can't see any houses."

  "No houses is good. It means no people. No magicians."

  "It makes me feel strange. It's so quiet."

  Made sense. He'd never been out of the city before now. Never even been in a big park, most likely. The emptiness terrified him.

  I crossed the track and opened the gate. "There's a village beyond those trees. You can get food there and cuddle up to some buildings."

  It took my master some time to lose his jitters. It was almost as if he expected the empty fields or winter bushes to rise like enemies and fall on him, and his head turned constantly against surprise attack. He quaked at every bird call.

  Conversely, I stayed relaxed for this first part of the journey, precisely because the countryside seemed wholly deserted. There was no magical activity of any description, even in the distant skies.

  When we reached the village, we raided its solitary grocery store and pinched sufficient supplies to keep the boy's stomach happy for the rest of the day. It was a smallish place, a few cottages clustered around a ruined church, not nearly large enough to have its own resident magician. The few humans we saw ambled around quietly without so much as an imp in tow. My master was very dismissive of them.

  "Don't they realize how vulnerable they are?" he sniffed, as we passed the final cottage. "They've got no defenses. Any magical attack and they'd be helpless."

  "Perhaps that's not high on their list of priorities," I suggested. "There are other things to worry about: maki
ng a living, for example. Not that you'll have been taught anything about that."[90]

  "Oh no?" he said. "To be a magician is the greatest calling. Our skills and sacrifices hold the country together, and those fools should be grateful we're there."

  "Grateful for people like Lovelace, you mean?"

  He frowned at this, but did not answer.

  It was mid—afternoon before we ran into danger. The first thing my master knew about it was my throwing myself upon him and bundling us into a shallow ditch beside the road. I pressed him low against the earth, a little harder than necessary.

  He had a mouthful of mud. "Whop you doing?"

  "Keep your voice down. A patrol's flying up ahead. North—south."

  I indicated a gap in the hedge. A small flock of starlings could be seen drifting far off across the clouds.

  He spat his mouth empty. "I can't make them out."

  "On planes five onward they're foliots.[91] Trust me. We have to go carefully from now on."

  The starlings vanished to the south. Cautiously, I got to my feet and scanned the horizon. A little way ahead a straggling band of trees marked the beginning of an area of woodland. "We'd better get off the road," I said. "It's too exposed here. After nightfall we can get closer to the house." With infinite caution, we squeezed through a gap in the hedge and, after rounding the perimeter of the field beyond, gained the relative safety of the trees. Nothing threatened on any plane.

  The wood was negotiated without incident; soon afterward, we crouched on its far fringes, surveying the land ahead. Before us, the ground fell away slightly, and we had a clear view over the autumn fields, heavily plowed and purple—brown. About a mile distant, the fields ran themselves out against an old brick boundary wall, much weathered and tumbledown. This, and a low, dark bunching of pine trees behind it, marked the edge of the Heddleham estate. A red dome was visible (on the fifth plane) soaring up from the pines. As I watched, it disappeared; a moment later another, bluish, dome materialized on the sixth plane, somewhat farther off.

  Hunched within the trees was the suggestion of a tall arch—perhaps the official entrance to the manor's grounds. From this arch a road extended, straight as a javelin thrust between the fields, until it reached a crossroads next to a clump of oak trees, half a mile from where we stood. The lane that we had recently been following also terminated at this crossroads. Two other routes led away from it elsewhere.

  The sun had not quite disappeared behind the trees and the boy squinted against its glare. "Is that a sentry?" He pointed to a distant stump halfway to the crossroads. Something unclear rested upon it: perhaps a motionless, black figure.

  "Yes," I said. "Another's just materialized at the edge of that triangular field."

  "Oh! The first one's gone."

  "I told you—they're randomly materializing. We can't predict where they'll appear. Do you see that dome?"

  "No."

  "Your lenses are worse than useless."

  The boy cursed. "What do you expect? I don't have your sight, demon. Where is it?"

  "Coarse language will get you nowhere. I'm not telling."

  "Don't be ridiculous! I need to know."

  "This demon's not saying."

  "Where is it?"

  "Careful where you stamp your feet. You've trodden in something." "Just tell me!" "I've been meaning to mention this for some time. I don't like being called a demon. Got that?"

  He took a deep breath. "Fine."

  "Just so you know."

  "All right."

  "I'm a djinni."

  "Yes, all right. Where's the dome?"

  "It's in the wood. On the sixth plane now, but it'll shift position soon."

  "They've made it difficult for us."

  "Yes. That's what defenses do."

  His face was gray with weariness, but still set and determined. "Well, the objective's clear. The gateway is bound to mark the official entrance to the estate—the only hole in the protective domes. That's where they'll check people's identities and passes. If we can get beyond it, we'll have got inside."

  "Ready to be trussed up and killed," I said. "Hurrah."

  "The question," he continued, "is how we get in…"

  He sat for a long time, shading his eyes with his hand, watching as the sun sank behind the trees and the fields were swathed in cold green shadow. At irregular intervals, sentries came and went without trace (we were too far away to smell the sulfur).

  A distant sound drew our attention back to the roads. Along the one that led to the horizon, something that from a mile away looked like a black matchbox came roaring: a magician's car, speeding between the hedges, honking its horn imperiously at every corner. It reached the crossroads, slowed to a halt and—safely assured that nothing was coming—turned right along the road to Heddleham. As it neared the gateway, two of the sentries bounded toward it at great speed across the darkened fields, robes fluttering behind them like tattered rags. Once they reached the hedges bordering the road they went no further, but kept pace beside the car, which presently drew close to the gateway in the trees. The shadows here were very thick, and it was hard to glimpse what happened. The car pulled up in front of the gate. Something approached it. The sentries hung back at the lip of the trees. Presently, the car proceeded on its way, through the arch and out of sight. Its drone faded on the evening air. The sentries flitted back into the fields.

  The boy sat back and stretched his arms. "Well," he said, "that tells us what we need to do."

  35

  The crossroads was the place for the ambush. Any vehicles approaching it had to slow down for fear of accident, and it was concealed from the distant Heddleham gateway by a thick clump of oaks and laurel. This also promised good cover for lurking.

  Accordingly, we made our way there that night. The boy crawled along the base of the hedges beside the road. I flitted in front of him in the guise of a bat.

  No sentries materialized beside us. No watchers flew overhead. The boy reached the crossroads and burrowed into the undergrowth below the biggest oak tree. I hung from a bough, keeping watch.

  My master slept, or tried to. I observed the rhythms of the night: the fleeting movements of owl and rodent, the scruffles of foraging hedgehogs, the prowling of the restive djinn. In the hours before dawn, the cloud cover drifted away and the stars shone down. I wondered whether Lovelace was reading their import from the roof of the hall, and what they told him. The night grew chill. Frost sparkled across the fields.

  All at once, it struck me that my master would be suffering greatly from the cold.

  A pleasant hour passed. Then another thought struck me. He might actually freeze to death in his hiding place. That would be no good: I'd never escape the tin. Reluctantly, I spiraled down into the bushes and went in search of him.

  To my grudging relief, he was still alive, if somewhat blue in the face. He was huddled in his coat under a pile of leaves, which rustled perpetually with his shivering.

  "Want some heat?" I whispered.

  His head moved a little. It was hard to tell whether it was a shiver or a shake.

  "No?"

  "No."

  "Why?"

  His jaw was clamped so tight it could barely unlock. "It might draw them to us."

  "Sure it isn't pride? Not wanting help from a nasty demon? You'd better be careful with all this frost about—bits might drop off. I've seen it happen."[92]

  "L—leave me."

  "Suit yourself." I returned to my tree. Some while later, as the eastern sky began to lighten, I heard him sneeze, but otherwise he remained stubbornly silent, locked into his self—appointed discomfort.

  With the arrival of dawn, hanging about as a bat became a less convincing occupation. I took myself off under the bushes and changed into a field mouse. The boy was where I had left him, stiff as a board and rather dribbly about the nose. I perched on a twig nearby.

  "How about a handkerchief, O my master?" I said.

  With some difficult
y, he raised an arm and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He sniffed. "Has anything happened yet?"

  "Still a bit under your left nostril. Otherwise clean."

  "I meant on the road."

  "No. Too early. If you've got any food left, you should eat it now. We need to be all set when the first car comes by."

  As it transpired, we needn't have hurried. All four roads remained still and silent. The boy ate the last of his food, then crouched in the soaking grass under a bush, watching one of the lanes. He appeared to have caught a slight chill, and shivered uncontrollably inside his coat. I scurried back and forth, keeping an eye out for trouble, but finally returned to his side.

  "Remember," I said, "the car mustn't be seen to stop more than a few seconds, or one of the sentries might smell a rat. We've got to get on board as soon as it reaches the crossroads. You'll have to move fast."

  "I'll be ready."

  "I mean really fast."

  "I'll be ready, I said."

  "Yes, well. I've seen slugs cover ground more quickly than you. And you've

  made yourself ill by refusing my help last night."

  "I'm not ill."

  "Sorry, didn't catch that. Your teeth were chattering too loudly."

  "I'll be fine. Now leave me alone."

  "This cold of yours could let us down big time if we get in the house. Lovelace might follow the trail of sn—Listen!"

  "What?"

  "A car! Coming from behind us. Perfect. It'll slow right here. Wait for my or der."

  I scampered through the long grasses to the other side of the copse and waited behind a large stone on the dirt bank above the road. The noise of the oncoming vehicle grew loud. I scanned the sky—no watchers could be seen, and the trees hid the road from the direction of the house. I readied myself to spring…

  Then hunched down behind the stone. No good. A black and shiny limousine: a magician's car. Too risky to try. It flashed past in a welter of dust and pebbles; all skirling brakes and shining bonnet. I caught a glimpse of its occupant: a man I did not know, broad—lipped, pasty, with slicked—back hair. There was no sign of an imp or other guardian, but that meant nothing. There was no point in ambushing a magician.