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.
121
I hadn't a clue. Words of Command are magicians' business. That is what they are good at. Djinn can't speak them. But crabbed old master magicians know an incantation for every eventuality.