The Amulet of Samarkand tbt-1

by Jonathan Stroud

  "Well done," I said. "I reckon you made about five centimeters there. Keep going." He made another Herculean effort. "Another centimeter! Good try! You'll get your hands on me soon." To encourage him, I stuck a cheeky foot in his direction and waved it in front of his face, just out of reach. He snarled and tried to swipe, but now the essence was curling away from the surface of his limbs and being drawn into the rift; his muscular tone was visibly changing, growing thinner by the instant. As his strength ebbed, the pull of the rift became stronger and he began to move backward, slowly first, then faster.

  If Jabor had had half a brain he might have changed into a gnat or something: perhaps with less bulk he might have fought free from the rift's gravitational pull. A word of friendly advice could have saved him, but dear me, I was too busy watching him unravel to think of it until it was far too late. Now his rear limbs and wings were sloughing off into liquid streams of greasy gray—black stuff that spiraled through the rift and away from Earth. It can't have been pleasant for him, especially with Lovelace's charge still binding him here, but his face showed no pain, only hatred. So it was, right to the end. Even as the back of his head lost its form, his blazing red eyes were still locked on mine. Then they were gone, away into the rift, and I was alone, waving him a fond adieu.

  I didn't waste too much time on my good—byes. I had other matters to attend to.

  Nathaniel

  "An amazing thing, the Amulet of Samarkand." Whether from fear, or from a cruel delight in reasserting his control, Lovelace persisted in keeping up a one—sided conversation with Nathaniel even as Ramuthra stalked remorselessly toward them. It seemed he could not bring himself to shut up. Nathaniel was retreating slowly, hopelessly, knowing there was nothing he could do.

  "Ramuthra disrupts the elements, you see." Lovelace continued. "Wherever it treads, the elements rebel. And that ruins the careful order on which all magic depends. Nothing any of you might try can stop it: every magical effort will misfire—you cannot hurt me, you cannot escape. Ramuthra will have you all. But the Amulet contains an equal and opposite force to Ramuthra's; thus I am secure. It might even lift me to its mouth, so that chaos raged upon me, and I would feel nothing."

  The demon had halved the distance to Nathaniel and was picking up pace. One of its great transparent arms was outstretched. Perhaps it was eager to taste him.

  "My dear master suggested this plan," Lovelace said, "and, as always, he was inspired. He will be watching us at this moment."

  "You mean Schyler?" Even on the threshold of death, Nathaniel couldn't restrain a savage satisfaction. "I doubt it. He's lying dead upstairs."

  Lovelace's self—possession faltered for the first time. His smile flickered.

  "That's right," Nathaniel said. "I didn't just escape. I killed him."

  The magician laughed. "Don't lie to me, child—"

  A voice behind Lovelace: a woman's, soft and plaintive. "Simon!"

  The magician looked back; Amanda Cathcart stood there, close at hand, her gown torn and muddied, her hair disheveled and now slightly maroon. She limped as she approached him, her arms out, bafflement and terror etched upon her face. "Oh, Simon" she said. "What have you done?"

  Lovelace blanched; he turned to face the woman. "Stay back!" he cried. There was a note of panic in his voice. "Get away!"

  Tears welled in Amanda Cathcart's eyes. "How could you do this, Simon? Am I to die too?"

  She lurched forward. Discomforted, the magician raised his hands to ward her off. "Amanda—I—I'm sorry. It… it had to be."

  "No, Simon—you promised me so much."

  Sideways on, Nathaniel stole closer.

  Lovelace's confusion turned to anger. "Get away from me, woman, or I will call on the demon to tear you to shreds! Look—it is almost upon you!" Amanda Cathcart made no move. She seemed past caring.

  "How could you use me in this way, Simon? After everything you said. You have no honor."

  Nathaniel took another shuffling step. Ramuthra's outline towered above him now.

  "Amanda, I'm warning you—"

  Nathaniel leaped forward and snatched. His fingers rasped against the skin on Lovelace's neck, then closed about something cold, hard, and flexible. The Amulet's chain. He pulled at it with all his strength. For an instant the magician's head was jerked toward him, then a link somewhere along the chain snapped and it came away free in his hand.

  Lovelace gave a great cry.

  Nathaniel fell back from him and rolled onto the floor, the chain's links colliding against his face. He scrabbled at it with both hands, clasping the small, thin oval thing that hung from the middle of the broken chain. As he did so, he was conscious of a weight being removed from him, as if a remorseless gaze had suddenly shifted elsewhere.

  Lovelace had reeled in the first shock of the assault, then made to pounce upon Nathaniel—but two slender arms pulled him back. "Wait, Simon—would you hurt a poor, sweet boy?"

  "You're mad, Amanda! Get off me! The Amulet—I must—" For an instant he fought to extricate himself from the woman's desperate grip, and then the towering presence directly above him caught his horrified eye. His legs sagged. Ramuthra was very close to all three of them now: in the full power of its proximity, the fabric of their clothes flapped wildly, their hair blew about their faces. The air around them shivered, as if with electricity.

  Lovelace squirmed backward. He nearly fell. "Ramuthra! I order you—take the boy! He has stolen the Amulet! He is not truly protected!" His voice carried no conviction. A great translucent hand reached out. Lovelace redoubled his entreaties. "Then forget the boy—take the woman! Take the woman first!"

  For a moment, the hand paused. Lovelace made a great effort and ripped himself from the woman's grasp. "Yes! See? There she is! Take her first!"

  From everywhere and nowhere, came a voice like a great crowd speaking in unison. "I see no woman. Only a grinning djinni."

  Lovelace's face froze; he turned to Amanda Cathcart, who had been gazing at him with a look of agonized entreaty. As he watched, her features slowly altered. A smile of triumphant wickedness spread across her face from ear to ear. Then, in a flash, one of her arms snaked out, plucked the summoning horn from Lovelace's slackening grip and snatched it away. With a bound, Amanda Cathcart was gone, and a marmoset hung by its tail from a light fixture several meters away. It waved the horn merrily at the aghast magician.

  "Don't mind if I have this?" it called. "You won't need it where you're going."

  All energy seemed to depart from the magician; his skin hung loose and ashen on his bones. His shoulders slumped; he took a pace toward Nathaniel, as if halfheartedly trying to reclaim the Amulet. Then a great hand reached down and engulfed him, and Lovelace was plucked into the air. High, high, higher he went, his body shifting and altering as it did so. Ramuthra's head bent to meet him. Something that might have been a mouth was seen to open.

  An instant later, Simon Lovelace was gone.

  The demon paused to look for the cackling marmoset, but for the moment it had vanished. Ignoring Nathaniel, who was still sprawled on the floor, it turned back heavily toward the magicians at the other end of the hall.

  A familiar voice spoke at Nathaniel's side.

  "Two down, one to go," it said.

  Bartimaeus

  I was so elated at the success of my fine trick that I risked changing into Ptolemy's form the moment Ramuthra's attention was elsewhere. Jabor and Love—lace were gone, and now only the great entity remained to be dealt with. I nudged my master with a boot. He was lying on his back, cradling the Amulet of Samarkand in his grubby mitts as a mother would her baby. I set the summoning horn down by his side.

  He struggled to a sitting position. "Lovelace… did you see?"

  "Yep, and it wasn't pretty."

  As he rose stiffly to his feet, his eyes shone with a strange brilliance—half horror, half exaltation. "I've got it," he whispered. "I've got the Amulet."

  "Yes," I replied, hastily. "Well done.
But Ramuthra is still with us, and if we want to get help, we're running out of time."

  I looked across at the far side of the auditorium. My elation dwindled. The assembled ministers of State were a lamentable heap by now, either cowering in dumb stupefaction, banging on the doors, or fighting viciously with each other for a position as far away as possible from the oncoming Ramuthra. It was an unedifying spectacle, like watching a crowd of plague rats scrapping in a sewer. It was also highly worrying: since not one of them looked in a fit state to recite a complex dismissal spell.

  "Come on," I said. "While Ramuthra takes some, we can rouse the others. Who's most likely to remember the counter—summons?

  His lip curled. "None of them, by the looks of things."

  "Even so, we've got to try." I tugged at his sleeve. "Come on. Neither of us knows the incantation."[121]

  "Speak for yourself," he said, slowly. "I know it."

  "You?" I was a little taken aback. "Are you sure?"

  He scowled at me. Physically, he was pretty ropy—white of skin, bruised and bleeding, swaying where he stood. But a bright fire of determination burned in his eyes. "That possibility hadn't even occurred to you, had it?" he said. "Yes—I've learned it."

  There was more than a hint of doubt in the voice, and in the eyes too—I glimpsed it wrestling with his resolve. I tried not to sound skeptical. "It's high level," I said. "And complex; and you'll need to break the horn at exactly the right moment. This is no time for false pride, boy. You could still—"

  "Ask for help? I don't think so." Whether through pride or practicality, he was quite right. Ramuthra was almost upon the magicians now; we had no chance of getting help from them. "Stand away," he said. "I need space to think."

  I hesitated for an instant. Admirable though his strength of character was, I could see all too clearly where it led. Amulet or no Amulet, the consequences of a fluffed dismissal are always disastrous, and this time I would suffer right along with him. But I could think of no alternative.

  Helplessly, I stood back. My master picked up the summoning horn and closed his eyes.

  Nathaniel

  He closed his eyes to the chaos in the hall and breathed as slowly and deeply as he could. Sounds of suffering and terror still came to him, but he shoved them from his mind with a force of will.

  That much was relatively easy. But a host of inner voices were speaking at him, and he could not shut their clamor out. This was his moment! This was the moment when a thousand insults and deprivations would be cast aside and forgotten! He knew the incantation—he had learned it long ago. He would speak it and everyone would see that he could not be overlooked again. Always, always he had been underestimated! Underwood had thought him an imbecile, a fool with barely the strength to draw a circle. He had refused to believe his apprentice could summon a djinni of any kind. Lovelace had thought him weak, childishly softhearted, yet likely to be tempted by the first cursory offer of power and status. He had refused to accept that Nathaniel had killed Schyler too: he had gone to his death denying it. And now, even Bartimaeus, his own servant, doubted that he knew the dismissal spell! Always, always, they cast him down.

  Now was the moment when everything was in his hands. Too often before he had been rendered powerless—locked in his room, carried from the fire, robbed by the commoners, trapped in the Stricture… The memories of these indignities burned hot inside him. But now he would act—he would show them!

  The outcry of his wounded pride almost overwhelmed him. It pounded on the inside of his skull. But at the deeper core of his being, beneath this desperation to succeed for his own sake, another desire struggled for expression. Far off, he heard someone cry out in fear and a shudder of pity ran through him. Unless he could bring the spell to mind, the hapless magicians were going to die. Their lives depended on him. And he had the knowledge to help. The counter—summons, the dismissal. How had it gone? He'd read the incantation, he knew he had—he'd committed it to memory months before. But he couldn't concentrate now, he couldn't bring it to mind.

  It was no good. They were all going to die, just as Mrs. Underwood had died, and again he was about to fail. How badly Nathaniel wanted to help them! But desire alone was not enough. More than anything else he had wanted to save Mrs. Underwood, bring her from the flames. He would have given his life for hers, if he could. But he had not saved her. He had been carried away and she had gone forever. His love had counted for nothing.

  For a moment, his past loss and the urgency of his present desire mingled and welled within him. Tears ran down his cheeks.

  Patience, Nathaniel.

  Patience…

  He breathed in slowly. His sorrow receded. And across a great gulf came the remembered peace of his master's garden—he saw again the rhododendron bushes, their leaves glinting dark green in the sun. He saw the apple trees shedding their white blossom; a cat lying on a red—brick wall. He felt the lichen under his fingers; saw the moss on the statue; he felt himself protected again from the wider world. He imagined Ms. Lutyens sitting quietly, sketching by his side. A feeling of peace stole over him.

  His mind cleared, his memory blossomed.

  The necessary words came to him, as he had learned them sitting on the stone seat a year or more ago.

  He opened his eyes and spoke them, his voice loud and clear and strong. At the end of the fifteenth syllable, he split the summoning horn in two across his knee.

  As the ivory cracked and the words rang out, Ramuthra stopped dead. The shimmering ripples in the air that defined its outlines quivered, first gently and then with greater force. The rift in the center of the room opened a little. Then, with astonishing suddenness, the outlines of the demon crumpled and shrank, were drawn back into the rift and vanished.

  The rift closed up: a scar healing at blinding speed.

  With it gone, the hall seemed cavernous and empty. One chandelier and several small wall lights came on again, casting a weak radiance here and there. Outside, the late afternoon sky was gray, darkening to deep blue. The wind could be heard rushing through the trees in the wood.

  There was absolute silence in the hall. The crowd of magicians and one or two bruised and battered imps remained quite still. Only one thing moved: a boy limping forward across the center of the room, with the Amulet of Samarkand dangling from his fingers. The jade stone at its center gleamed faintly in the half light.

  In utter silence, Nathaniel crossed to where Rupert Devereaux sprawled half buried under the Foreign Minister, and placed the Amulet carefully in his hands.

  43

  Bartimaeus

  Typical of the kid, that was. Having carried out the most important act of his grubby little life, you'd expect him to sink to the ground in exhaustion and relief. But did he? No. This was his big chance, and he seized it in the most theatrical fashion possible. With all eyes on him, he hobbled across the ruined auditorium like a wounded bird, frail as you like, straight for the center of power. What was he going to do? No one knew; no one dared to guess (I saw the Prime Minister flinch when the boy held out his hand). And then, in the climactic moment of this little charade, all was revealed: the legendary Amulet of Samarkand—held up high so all could see—handed back to the bosom of the Government. The kid even remembered to bow his head deferentially as he did so.

  Sensation in the hall!

  What a performance, eh? In fact, almost more than his ability to bully djinn, this instinctive pandering to the crowd suggested to me that the boy was probably destined for worldly success.[122] Certainly, his actions here had the desired effect: in moments, he was the center of an admiring throng.

  Unnoticed in all this fuss, I abandoned Ptolemy's form and took on the semblance of a minor imp, which presently (when the crowd drew back) hovered over to the boy's side in a humble sort of way. I had no desire for my true capabilities to be noticed. Someone might have drawn a connection with the swashbuckling djinni who had lately escaped from the government prison.

  Nathaniel's
shoulder was the ideal vantage point for me to observe the aftermath of the attempted coup, since for a few hours at least the boy was the center of attention. Wherever the Prime Minister and his senior colleagues went, my master went too, answering urgent questions and stuffing his face with the reviving sweetmeats that underlings brought him.

  When a systematic headcount was made, the list of missing was found to include four ministers (all fortunately from fairly junior posts) and a single undersecretary.[123] In addition, several magicians had suffered major facial and bodily distortions, or been otherwise inconvenienced.

  The general relief quickly turned to anger. With Ramuthra gone, the magicians were able to set their slaves against the magical barriers on the doors and walls and quickly burst out into the house. A thorough search was made of Heddleham Hall, but apart from assorted servants, the dead body of the old man and an angry boy locked in a lavatory, no one was discovered. Unsurprisingly, the fish—faced magician Rufus Lime had gone; nor was there any sign of the tall, black—bearded man who had manned the gatehouse. Both seemed to have vanished into thin air.

  Nathaniel also directed the investigators to the kitchen, where a compressed group of under—cooks was found trembling in a pantry. They reported that about half an hour previously,[124] the head chef had given a great cry, burst into blue flame, and swelled to a great and terrifying size before vanishing in a gust of brimstone. Upon inspection, a meat cleaver was found deeply embedded in the stonework of the fireplace, the last memento of Faquarl's bondage.[125]

  With the main conspirators dead or vanished, the magicians set to interrogating the servants of the Hall. However, they proved ignorant of the conspiracy. They reported that during the previous few weeks Simon Lovelace had organized the extensive refurbishment of the auditorium, keeping it out of bounds for long periods. Unseen workers, accompanied by many oddly colored lights and sounds, had constructed the glass floor and inserted the new carpet,[126] supervised by a certain well—dressed gentleman with a round face and reddish beard.