His master was satisfied with his pupil's progress and Nathaniel, despite his impatience with the pace of his education, was delighted with what he learned. It was a productive relationship, if not a close one, and might well have continued to be so, but for the terrible incident that occurred in the summer before Nathaniel's eleventh birthday.
10
Bartimaeus
In the end, dawn came.
The first grudging rays flickered in the eastern sky. A halo of light slowly emerged over the Docklands horizon. I cheered it on. It couldn't come fast enough.
The whole night had been a wearisome and often humiliating business. I had repeatedly lurked, loitered, and fled, in that order, through half the postal districts of London. I had been manhandled by a thirteen—year—old girl. I had taken shelter in a bin. And now, to cap it all, I was crouching on the roof of Westminster Abbey, pretending to be a gargoyle. Things don't get much worse than that.
A rising shaft of sunlight caught the edge of the Amulet, which was suspended round my lichen—covered neck. It flashed, bright as glass. Automatically I raised a claw to cup it, just in case sharp eyes were on the lookout, but I wasn't too worried by then.
I had remained in that bin in the alley for a couple of hours, long enough to rest and become thoroughly ingrained with the odor of rotting vegetables. Then I'd had the bright idea of taking up stony residence on the abbey. I was protected there by the profusion of magical ornaments within the building—they masked the Amulet's signal.[23] From my new vantage point I'd seen a few spheres in the distance, but none of them came near. At last the night had ebbed away, and the magicians had become weary. The spheres in the sky winked out. The heat was off.
As the sun rose, I waited impatiently for the expected summons. The boy had said he would call me at dawn, but he was no doubt sleeping in like the layabout adolescent he was.
In the meantime I ordered my thoughts. One thing that was crystal clear was that the boy was the patsy of an adult magician, some shadowy influence who sought to deflect blame for the theft onto the kid. It wasn't hard to guess this—no child of his age would summon me for so great a task on his own. Presumably the unknown magician wished to deal a blow to Lovelace and gain control over the Amulet's powers. If so, he was risking everything. Judging by the scale of the hunt I had just evaded, several powerful people were greatly concerned by its loss.
Even alone, Simon Lovelace was a formidable proposition. The fact that he was able to employ (and restrain) both Faquarl and Jabor proved as much. I did not relish the urchin's chances when the magician caught up with him.
Then there was the girl, that nonmagician whose friends withstood my magic and saw through my illusions. Several centuries had gone by since I had last encountered humans of their sort, so to find them here in London was intriguing. Whether or not they understood the implications of their power was difficult to say. The girl didn't even seem to know exactly what the Amulet was, only that it was a prize worth having. She certainly wasn't allied to Lovelace or the boy. Strange… I couldn't see where she fit into this at all.
Oh well, it wasn't going to be my problem. Sunlight hit the roof of the abbey. I allowed myself a short, luxurious flex of my wings.
At that moment, the summons came.
A thousand fishhooks seemed to embed themselves in me. I was pulled in several directions at once. Resisting too long risked tearing my essence, but I had no interest in delay. I wished to hand over the Amulet and be done.
With this eager hope in mind I submitted to the summons, vanishing from the rooftop…
…and reappearing instantaneously in the child's room. I looked around.
"All right, what's this?"
"I order you, Bartimaeus, to reveal whether you have diligently and wholly carried out your charge—"
"Of course I have—what do you think this is, costume jewelry?" I pointed with my gargoyle's claw at the Amulet dangling on my chest. It waved and winked in the shuddering light of the candles. "The Amulet of Samarkand. It was Simon Lovelace's. Now it is yours. Soon it will be Simon Lovelaces again. Take it and enjoy the consequences. I was asking about this pentacle you've drawn here: what are these runes? This extra line?"
The kid puffed out his chest. "Adelbrand's Pentacle." If I didn't know better, I'd have sworn he smirked, an unseemly facial posture for one so young.
Adelbrand's Pentacle. That meant trouble. I made a big show of checking the lines of the star and circle, looking for minute breaks or wiggles in the chalk. Then I perused the runes and symbols themselves.
"Aha!" I roared. "You've spelled this wrong! And you know what that means, don't you…?" I drew myself up like a cat ready to pounce.
The kid's face went an interesting mix of white and red; his lower lip wobbled; his eyes bulged from their sockets. He looked very much like he wanted to run for it, but he didn't, so my plan was foiled.[24] Hastily he scanned the letters on the floor.
"Recreant demon! The pentacle is sound—it binds you still!"
"Okay, so I lied." I reduced in size. My stone wings folded back under my hump. "Do you want this amulet or not?"
"P—place it in the vessel."
A small soapstone bowl sat on the floor midway between the outermost arcs of the two circles. I removed the Amulet and with a certain amount of inner relief tossed it casually into the bowl. The boy bent toward it. Out of the corner of my eyes I watched him closely—if one foot, one finger, fell outside his circle, I would be on him faster than a praying mantis.
But the kid was wise to this. He produced a stick from the pocket of his tatty coat. Jammed into the tip was a hooked piece of wire that looked suspiciously like a twisted paperclip. With a couple of cautious prods and jerks he caught the lip of the bowl with the hook and drew it into his circle. Then he picked up the Amulet's chain, wrinkling his nose as he did so.
"Euch, this is disgusting!"
"Nothing to do with me. Blame Rotherhithe Sewage Works. No, on second thought, blame yourself. I've spent the whole night trying to evade capture on your account. You're lucky I didn't immerse myself completely."
"You were pursued?" He sounded almost eager. Wrong emotion, kid—try fear.
"By half the demonic hordes of London." I rolled my stony eyes and clashed my horny beak. "Make no mistake about it, boy, they are coming here, yellow—eyed and ravening, ready to seize you. You will be helpless, defenseless against their power. You have one chance only; release me from this circle and I will help you evade their clutches."[25]
"Do you take me for a fool?"
"The amulet in your hands answers that. Well, no matter. I have carried out my charge, my task is done. For the remainder of your short life, farewell!" My form shimmered, began to fade. A rippling pillar of steam issued up from the floor as if to swallow me and spirit me away. It was wishful thinking—Adelbrand's Pentacle would see to that.
"You cannot depart! I have other work for thee." More than the renewed captivity, it was these occasional archaisms that annoyed me so much. Thee, recreant demon—I ask you! No one used language like that anymore, and hadn't for two hundred years. Anyone would think he had learned his trade entirely out of some old book.
23
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.
24
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.