I ran through a couple of rooms – a library, a dining room – each time making a break for the window and each time retreating when one or more of the yellow creatures hove into view outside. Their foolishness in making themselves so obvious was only equalled by my caution in avoiding whatever magical weapons they carried.
Behind me, my name was being called in a voice of fury. With growing frustration I opened the next door and found myself in the kitchen. There were no more internal doors, but one led out to what looked like a lean-to greenhouse, filled with herbs and greens. Beyond was the garden – and also the three sentinels, who came motoring round the side of the house at surprising speed on their rotating legs. To gain time, I put a Seal on the door behind me. Then I looked around and saw the cook.
He was sitting far back in his chair with his shoes on the kitchen table, a fat, jovial-looking man with a red face and a meat cleaver in his hand. He was studiously paring his nails with the cleaver, flicking each fragment of nail expertly through the air to land in the fireplace beside him. As he did so he watched me continuously with his dark little eyes.
I felt unease. He didn’t seem at all perturbed to see a small Egyptian boy come running into his kitchen. I checked him out on the different planes. On one to six he was exactly the same, a portly cook in a white apron. But on the seventh …
Uh-oh. ‘Bartimaeus.’
‘Faquarl.’
‘How’s it going?’
‘Not bad.’
‘Haven’t seen you around.’
‘No, I guess not.’
‘Shame, eh?’
‘Yes. Well … here I am.’
‘Here you are, indeed.’
While this fascinating conversation was going on, the sounds of a sustained series of Detonations came from the other side of the door. My Seal held firm though. I smiled as urbanely as I could.
‘Jabor seems as excitable as ever.’
‘Yes, he’s just the same. Only I think perhaps slightly more hungry, Bartimaeus. That’s the only change I’ve noticed in him. He never seems satisfied, even when he’s been fed. And that happens all too rarely these days, as you can imagine.’
‘Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen, that’s your master’s watchword, is it? Still, he must be fairly potent to be able to have you and Jabor as his slaves.’
The cook gave a thin smile and with a flick of the knife sent a nail paring spinning to the ceiling. It pierced the plaster and lodged there.
‘Now, now, Bartimaeus, we don’t use the s-word in civilized company, do we? Jabor and I are playing the long game.’
‘Of course you are.’
‘Speaking of disparities in power, I notice that you choose to avoid addressing me on the seventh plane. This seems a little impolite. Can it be that you are uneasy with my true form?’
‘Queasy, Faquarl, not uneasy.’6
‘Well, this is all very pleasant. I admire your choice of form, by the way, Bartimaeus. Very comely. But I see that you are somewhat weighed down by a certain amulet. Perhaps you could be so good as to take it off and put it on the table. Then if you care to tell me which magician you are working for, I might consider ways of ending this meeting in a non-fatal manner.’
‘That’s kind of you, but you know I can’t do that.’7
The cook prodded the edge of the table with the tip of his cleaver. ‘Let me be frank. You can and will. It is nothing personal, of course; one day we may work together again. But for now I am bound just as you are. And I too have my charge to fulfil. So it comes, as it always does, to a question of power. Correct me if I am wrong, but I note that you do not have too much confidence in yourself today – otherwise you would have left by the front door, quelling the triloids as you went, rather than allowing them to shepherd you round the house to me.’
‘I was merely following a whim.’
‘Mm. Perhaps you would stop edging towards the window, Bartimaeus. Such a ploy would be pitifully obvious even to a human8 and besides, the triloids wait for you there. Hand over the Amulet or you will discover that your ramshackle Defence Shield will count for nothing.’
He stood up and held out his hand. There was a pause. Behind my Seal, Jabor’s patient (if unimaginative) Detonations still sounded. The door itself must have long since been turned to powder. In the garden the three sentinels hovered, all their eyes trained on me. I looked around the room for inspiration.
‘The Amulet, Bartimaeus.’
I raised my hand and, with a heavy, rather theatrical sigh, took hold of the Amulet. Then I leaped to my left. At the same time, I released the Seal on the door. Faquarl gave a tut of annoyance and began a gesture. As he did so he was hit square on by a particularly powerful Detonation that came shooting through the empty gap where the Seal had been. It sent him backwards into the fireplace and the brickwork collapsed upon him.
I smashed my way into the greenhouse just as Jabor stepped through the gap into the kitchen. As Faquarl emerged from the rubble I was breaking out into the garden. The three sentinels converged on me, eyes wide and legs rotating. Scything claws appeared at the ends of their blobby feet. I cast an Illumination of the brightest kind. The whole garden was lit up as if by an exploding sun. The sentinels’ eyes were dazzled; they chittered with pain. I leaped over them and ran through the garden, dodging bolts of magic from the house that incinerated trees.
At the far end of the garden, between a compost heap and a motorized lawnmower, I vaulted the wall. I tore through the blue latticework of magical nodes, leaving a boy-shaped hole. Instantly alarm bells began ringing all over the grounds.
I hit the pavement outside, the Amulet bouncing and banging off my chest. On the other side of the wall I heard the sound of galloping hooves. It was high time I made a change.
Peregrine falcons are the fastest birds on record. They can attain a speed of two hundred kilometres an hour in diving flight. Rarely has one achieved this horizontally over the roofs of North London. Some would even doubt that this was possible, particularly while carrying a weighty amulet around its neck. Suffice it to say, however, that when Faquarl and Jabor landed in the Hampstead backstreet, creating an invisible obstruction that was immediately hit by a speeding removal van, I was nowhere to be seen.
I was long gone.
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 it without a second thought. But it was there for two reasons: for its undying loyalty to its master and for its perceptive eye. It 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 non-magician. 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 k
nick-knacks 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, hiring 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 whip 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.
8Ouch.
COMING SOON!
978 0 552 56370 3
Every legend has a hero.
But only some heroes are legendary
Halli loves to hear stories from the days when the valley was a wild and dangerous place, besieged by the bloodthirsty Trows. He likes to imagine the night the legendary heroes joined together and defeated the ancient foe.
Nowadays heroics seem a thing of the past. But when a practical joke rekindles an old blood feud, Halli spots a chance for a quest of his own. Together with Aud, a girl just as fearless as he is, he begins an epic adventure. Soon they will challenge everything they’ve ever known, and uncover the truth about the legends, the valley and themselves.
‘Quite simply, stunning’ Guardian
978 0 552 55793 1
The Ring of Solomon Page 37
