The Amulet of Samarkand tbt-1

by Jonathan Stroud

  The room was still. All the magicians had dropped their conversations and were staring at him. Nathaniel looked at his master, silently appealing for support or aid, but Arthur Underwood's eyes were bright with rage—rage that appeared to be directed at him. Nathaniel returned the look blankly, then he turned and walked along the silent passage that parted for him across the room, reached the door, opened it, and Walked through.

  He shut the door carefully and quietly behind him.

  White—faced and expressionless, he climbed the stairs.

  On the way up he met Mrs. Underwood coming down.

  "How did it go, dear?" she asked him. "Did you shine? Is anything wrong?"

  Nathaniel could not look at her for grief and shame. He started to go past her without answering, but at the last moment stopped short. "It was fine," he said. "Tell me, do you know who the magician is with the little glasses and the wide, white teeth?"

  Mrs. Underwood frowned. "That would be Simon Lovelace, I expect. The Junior Minister for Trade. He does have quite a set of gnashers, doesn't he? A rising star, I'm told. Did you meet him?"

  "Yes. I did."

  You're capable of nothing.

  "Are you sure you're all right? You look so pale."

  "Yes, thank you, Mrs. Underwood. I'll go up, now."

  "Ms. Lutyens is waiting for you in the schoolroom."

  You're helpless.

  "I'll go right along, Mrs. Underwood."

  Nathaniel did not go to the schoolroom. With slow, steady tread, he made his way to his master's workroom, where the dust on the dirty bottles gleamed in the sunlight, obscuring their pickled contents.

  Nathaniel walked along the pitted worktable, which was strewn with diagrams that he had been working on the day before.

  You're too weak to fight back.

  He stopped and reached out for a small glass box, in which six objects buzzed and whirred.

  We'll see.

  With slow, steady tread, Nathaniel crossed to a wall—cupboard and pulled at a drawer. It was so warped that it stuck halfway, and he had to place the glass box carefully on the work surface before wrenching it open with a couple of forceful tugs. Inside the drawer, among a host of other tools, was a small steel hammer. Nathaniel took it out, picked up the box again, and, leaving the drawer hanging open, left the sunny workroom.

  He stood in the cool shadows of the landing, silently rehearsing the Words of Direction and Control. In the glass box, the six mites tore back and forth with added zest; the box vibrated in his hands.

  You're capable of nothing.

  The party was breaking up. The door opened, and the first few magicians emerged in dribs and drabs. Mr. Underwood escorted them to the front door. Polite words were exchanged, farewells said. None of them noticed the pale—faced boy watching from beyond the stairs.

  You had to say the name after the first three commands, but before the last. It was not too difficult, provided you didn't trip over the quicker syllables. He ran it through his head again. Yes, he had it down fine.

  More magicians departed. Nathaniel's fingers were cold. There was a thin film of sweat between them and the box they held.

  The young magician and his two companions sauntered from the reception room. They were talking animatedly, chuckling over a remark made by the one with clammy skin. At a leisurely pace they approached Nathaniel's master, waiting by the door.

  Nathaniel gripped the hammer firmly.

  He held the glass box out in front of him. It shook from within.

  The old man was clasping Mr. Underwood's hand. The young magician was next in line, looking out into the street as if eager to be gone.

  In a loud voice Nathaniel spoke the first three commands, uttered the name of Simon Lovelace, and followed it with the final word.

  Then he smashed the box.

  A brittle cracking, a frenzied droning. Glass splinters cascaded toward the carpet. The six mites burst from their prison and rocketed down the stairs, their eager stings jutting forward.

  The magicians barely had time to look up before the mites were upon them. Three made a beeline for Simon Lovelace's face; raising his hand, he made a rapid sign. Instantly, each mite erupted into a ball of flame and careered off at an angle to explode against the wall. The three other mites disobeyed their command. Two darted toward the clammy, doughy—faced magician; with a cry, he stumbled back, tripped over the doorsill and fell out onto the garden path. The mites bobbed and dived above him, seeking exposed flesh. His arms thrashed back and forth in front of his face, but to no avail. Several successful jabs were made, each one accompanied by a howl of agony. The sixth mite approached the old man at speed. He appeared to do nothing, but when it was just inches from his face, the mite suddenly pulled to a halt and reversed frantically, cartwheeling in midair. It spun out of control and landed near Simon Lovelace, who trod it into the carpet.

  Arthur Underwood had been watching this in horror; now he pulled himself together. He stepped over the threshold to where his guest was writhing in the flower bed and clapped his hands sharply. The two vengeful mites dropped to the around as if stunned.

  At this point Nathaniel thought to make a judicious retreat.

  He slipped away to the schoolroom, where Ms. Lutyens was sitting by the table reading a magazine. She smiled as he entered.

  "How did you get on? Sounds like a boisterous party for this time of day. I'm sure I heard someone's glass smashing."

  Nathaniel said nothing. In his mind's eye he saw the three mites exploding harmlessly into the wall. He began to shake—whether from fear or disappointed rage, he did not know.

  Ms. Lutyens was on her feet in a trice. "Nathaniel, come here. What's the matter? You look ill! You're shaking!" She put her arm around him and let his head rest gently against her side. He closed his eyes. His face was on fire; he felt cold and hot all at the same time. She was still talking to him, but he could not answer her…

  At that moment the schoolroom door blew open.

  Simon Lovelace stood there, his glasses flashing in the light from the window. He issued a command; Nathaniel was ripped bodily from Ms. Lutyens's grasp and carried through the air. For a moment, he hung suspended midway between ceiling and floor, time enough to catch a glimpse of the other two magicians crowding in behind their leader, and also, relegated to the back almost out of sight, his master.

  Nathaniel heard Ms. Lutyens shouting something, but then he was upended, the blood rushed to his ears, and everything else was drowned out.

  He hung with his head, arms, and legs dangling toward the carpet and his bottom aloft. Then an invisible hand, or an invisible stick, struck him on his rump. He yelled, wriggled, kicked in all directions. The hand descended again, harder than before. And then again…

  Long before the tireless hand ceased its work, Nathaniel stopped kicking. He hung limply, aware only of the stinging pain and the ignominy of his punishment. The fact that Ms. Lutyens was witness to it made it far more brutal than he could bear. Fervently he wished he were dead. And when at last a darkness welled up and began to carry him away, he welcomed it with all his heart.

  The hands released him, but he was already unconscious before he hit the floor.

  Nathaniel was confined to his room for a month and subjected to a great number of further punishments and deprivations. After the initial series of penalties, his master chose not to speak to him, and contact with everyone else—with the exception of Mrs. Underwood, who brought him his meals and dealt with his chamber pot—ceased forthwith. Nathaniel had no lessons and was allowed no books. He sat in his room from dawn until dusk looking out across the roofscapes of London toward the distant Houses of Parliament.

  Such solitude might have driven him mad had he not discovered a discarded ballpoint pen under his bed. With this and a few old sheets of paper he managed to wile away some of the time with a series of sketches of the world beyond the window. When these became tedious, Nathaniel devoted himself instead to compiling a large number
of minutely detailed lists and notes, drawn over his sketches, which he concealed under his mattress whenever he heard footsteps on the stair. These notes contained the beginnings of his revenge.

  To Nathaniel's great distress, Mrs. Underwood had been forbidden to talk to him. Although he detected some sympathy in her manner, her silence gave him cold comfort. He withdrew into himself and did not speak when she entered.

  It was thus only when his month's isolation came to an end and his lessons started up once more that he discovered that Ms. Lutyens had been dismissed.

  13

  Throughout the long, wet autumn, Nathaniel retreated to the garden whenever he could. When the weather was fine, he brought with him books from his master's shelves and devoured their contents with a remorseless hunger while the leaves rained down upon the stone seat and the lawn. On drizzly days, he sat and watched the dripping bushes, his thoughts circling to and fro on familiar paths of bitterness and revenge. He made swift progress with his studies, for his mind was fired with hate. All the rites of summoning, all the incantations that a magician could bind around himself to prevent attack, all the words of power that smote the disobedient demon or dismissed it in a trice—Nathaniel read and committed these to memory. If he met with a difficult passage—perhaps written in Sumerian or Coptic, or hidden within a tortuous runic cipher—and he felt his heart quail, he had only to glance up at the gray—green statue of Gladstone to recover his determination.

  Gladstone had avenged himself on anyone who wronged him: he had upheld his honor and was praised for it. Nathaniel planned to do the same, but he was no longer mastered by his impatience; from now on he used it only to spur himself on. If he had learned one painful lesson, it was not to act until he was truly ready, and through many long, solitary months, he worked tirelessly toward his first aim: the humiliation of Simon Lovelace.

  The history books that Nathaniel studied were full of countless episodes in which rival magicians had fought each other. Sometimes the more powerful mages had won, yet often they had been defeated by stealth or guile. Nathaniel had no intention of challenging his formidable enemy head on—at least not until he had grown in strength. He would bring him down by other means.

  His proper lessons at this time were a tedious distraction. As soon as they had resumed, Nathaniel had immediately adopted a mask of obedience and contrition, designed to convince Arthur Underwood that his wicked act was now, for him, a matter of the utmost shame. This mask never slipped, even when he was put to the most wearisome and banal jobs in the workroom. If his master harangued him for some trifling error, Nathaniel did not allow so much as a flicker of discontent to cross his face. He simply bowed his head and hastened to repair the fault. He was outwardly the perfect apprentice, deferring to his master in every way and certainly never expressing any impatience with the snail's pace at which his studies now progressed.

  In truth, this was because Nathaniel did not regard Arthur Underwood as his true master any longer. His masters were the magicians of old, who spoke to him through their books, allowing him to learn at his own pace and offering ever—multiplying marvels for his mind. They did not patronize or betray him.

  Arthur Underwood had forfeited his right to Nathaniel's obedience and respect the moment he failed to shield him from Simon Lovelace's jibes and physical assaults. This, Nathaniel knew, simply was not done. Every apprentice was taught that their master was effectively their parent. He or she protected them until they were old enough to stand up for themselves. Arthur Underwood had failed to do this. He had stood by and watched Nathaniel's unjust humiliation—first at the party, then in the schoolroom. Why? Because he was a coward and feared Lovelace's power.

  Worse than this, he had sacked Ms. Lutyens.

  From brief conversations with Mrs. Underwood, Nathaniel learned that while he had been suspended upside down, being beaten by Lovelace's imp, Ms. Lutyens had done her best to help him. Officially she had been fired for "insolence and impertinence," but it was hinted that she had actually tried to hit Mr. Lovelace and had only been restrained from doing so by his companions. When he thought about this, Nathaniel's blood boiled even more forcefully than when he considered his own humiliation. She had tried to protect him, and for doing this, for doing exactly what Mr. Underwood should have done, his master had dismissed her.

  This was something that Nathaniel could never forgive.

  With Ms. Lutyens gone, Mrs. Underwood was now the only person whose company gave Nathaniel any pleasure. Her fondness punctuated his days of studying and brought relief from his master's cold detachment and the indifference of his tutors. But he could not confide his plans to her: they were too dangerous. To be safe and strong, you had to be secret. A true magician kept his own counsel.

  After several months Nathaniel set himself his first real test, the task of summoning a minor imp. There were risks involved, for although he was confident enough about the incantations, he neither owned a pair of contact lenses for observing the first three planes, nor had received his new official name. Both of these were due to appear on Underwood's say—so, at the beginning of his coming of age, but Nathaniel could not wait for this far—off day. The spectacles from the workroom would help his vision. As for his name, he would not give the demon any opportunity to learn it.

  Nathaniel stole an old piece of bronze sheeting from his master's workroom and cut it, with great difficulty, into a rough disc. Over several weeks, he polished the disc and buffed it and polished it again until it sparkled in the candlelight and reflected his image without defect.

  Next, he waited until one weekend when both his master and Mrs. Underwood were away. No sooner had their car vanished down the street than Nathaniel set to work. He rolled back the carpet in his bedroom and on the bare floorboards chalked two simple pentacles. Sweating profusely despite the chill in the room, he drew the curtains and lit the candles. He placed a single bowl of rowan—wood and hazel between the circles (only one was required, since the imp concerned was weak and timorous). When all was ready, Nathaniel took the polished bronze disc and set it in the center of the circle in which the demon was to appear. Then he placed the spectacles on his nose, put on a tattered lab coat he had found on the workroom door, and stepped into his circle to begin the incantation.

  Dry—mouthed, he spoke the six syllables of the summoning and called out the creature's name. His voice cracked a little as he spoke, and he wished that he had had the foresight to enclose a glass of water within his circle. He could not afford to mispronounce a word.

  He waited, counting under his breath the nine seconds that it would take for his voice to carry across the void to the Other Place. Then he counted the seven seconds that it would take for the creature to awaken to its name. Finally he counted the three seconds that it would take for—

  A naked baby floated above the circle, moving its arms and legs as if it were swimming on the spot. It looked at him with sullen yellow eyes. Its small red lips pursed and blew an insolent bubble of spit.

  Nathaniel spoke the words of Confinement.

  The baby gurgled with rage, frantically flapping its pudgy arms as its legs were drawn downward toward the shining bronze disc. The command was too strong: as if sucked suddenly down a drain, the baby elongated into a flow of color, which spiraled down into the disc. For an instant its angry face could be seen squashing its nose up against the metal surface from below; then a misty sheen obscured it and the disc was clear once more.

  Nathaniel uttered several charms to secure the disc and check for snares, but all was well. With shaking legs, he stepped from his circle.

  His first summons had been successful.

  The imprisoned imp was surly and impudent, but by applying a small spell that amounted to a brisk electric shock, Nathaniel could induce it to reveal true glimpses of things happening far away. It was able to report conversations it overheard as well as to reveal them visually in the disc. Nathaniel kept his crude but effective scrying glass hidden under the roof til
es outside the skylight, and with its aid learned many things.

  As a trial, he directed the imp to reveal what went on in his master's study. After a morning's observation, he discovered that Underwood spent most of his time on the telephone, attempting to keep abreast of political developments. He seemed to be paranoid that his enemies in Parliament were seeking his downfall. Nathaniel found this interesting in principle, but dull in the details, and soon left off spying on his master.

  Next he observed Ms. Lutyens from afar. The mist swirled across the disc, cleared, and with a quickening heart, Nathaniel glimpsed her again as he remembered her so well: smiling, working… and teaching. The disc's image shifted across to reveal a small, gap—toothed boy apprentice, drawing furiously in a sketchpad and evidently hanging on Ms. Lutyens's every word. Nathaniel's eyes burned hot with jealousy and grief. In a choked voice, he ordered the image to vanish, grinding his teeth at the laughter that bubbled up from the delighted imp.

  Nathaniel then turned his attention to his main objective. Late one evening, he ordered the imp to spy on Simon Lovelace, but was disconcerted to see the baby's face appear in the burnished bronze instead.

  "What are you doing?" Nathaniel cried. "I've given you the order—now obey!"

  The baby wrinkled its nose and spoke in a disconcertingly deep voice. "Trouble is, this one's tricky, innit?" it said. "He's got barriers up. Not sure I can pass 'em. Might set off a spot of bother, if you know what I mean."

  Nathaniel raised a hand and waved it menacingly. "Are you saying it's impossible?"

  The baby winced and extended a pointed tongue gingerly out of the side of its mouth, as if licking old wounds. "Not impossible, no. Just difficult."

  "Well, then."

  The baby sighed heavily and vanished. After a short pause, a flickering image began to form in the disc. It blurred and leaped like a badly tuned television. Nathaniel cursed. He was about to speak the words of the Punitive Jab when he considered that this was probably the best the imp could do. He bent close to the disc and gazed into it, focusing on the scene within…