The Amulet of Samarkand

  He saw the handcarts sitting in the middle of the lane. The pole with Stanley’s light had been removed from its cart and could now be seen glowing faintly in a sheltered doorway. Within its wan halo, three figures talked quietly: Fred, Stanley and someone else—a slight figure, wearing black. Nathaniel could not make out his face.

  Nathaniel hardly breathed; he strained to hear their words. No good. He was too far away. He could not fight them now, but any scrap of information might be useful in the future. It was worth risking. He edged a little nearer.

  Still no luck. He could tell only that Fred and Stanley were largely silent, that the other figure was holding court. He had a high voice, young and sharp.

  A little closer …

  On the next step his boot knocked against an empty wine bottle that had been placed against the wall. It teetered, clinked faintly against the bricks, righted itself. It didn’t fall. But the clink was enough. The light in the doorway jerked; three faces turned toward him: Stanley’s, Fred’s and—

  In the instant Nathaniel was allowed, he only caught a glimpse, but it imprinted itself indelibly upon his mind. A girl’s face, pale and young, with straight, dark hair whipping around. Her eyes were wide, startled but not scared, fierce too. He heard her cry a command, saw Fred lunge forward, glimpsed something pale and shiny shoot toward him out of the darkness. Nathaniel ducked frantically and cracked the side of his head against the brickwork of the building. Bile rose to his throat; he saw lights before his eyes. He collapsed in the puddle at the base of the wall.

  Neither fully unconscious nor awake, he lay motionless, eyes closed, body relaxed, dimly aware of his surroundings. Pattering footsteps came close, a metal scraping sounded, leather squeaked. He sensed a presence near him, something light brushing his face.

  “You missed him. He’s out, but alive.” A female voice.

  “I can cut his throat for you, Kitty.” Fred speaking.

  The pause that followed might have been of any duration; Nathaniel could not tell. “No … He’s only a stupid kid. Let’s go.”

  Silence fell in the darkened alley. Long after his head stopped swimming, long after the water had soaked through his coat to chill his flesh, Nathaniel remained quite still. He dared not move.

  34

  I had been back for almost five hours when a weary scuffling sounded at the loose plank and my sad, bedraggled and extremely smelly master tumbled back into the library. Leaving a trail of what I hoped was mud in his wake, he limped his way like some giant land snail up the stairs to the first-floor room, where he promptly collapsed against a wall. Out of a spirit of scientific curiosity, I lit a small Flame and inspected him closely. It’s a good job I’ve had experience dealing with stygian implets and the like, because he wasn’t a pretty sight. He seemed to have been taken bodily and rolled through a particularly pungent mire or stable yard, before being stirred head first into a vat of dirt and grass-cuttings. His hair stuck up like a porcupine’s rump. His jeans were torn and bloodied at the knee. He had a large bruise on his cheek and a nasty cut above one ear. Best of all, though, his eyes were furious.

  “Had a good evening, sir?” I said.

  “A fire,” he snarled. “Make me a fire. I’m freezing.”

  This haughty master mode sounded a little out of place coming from something a jackal would have spurned, but I didn’t object. I was finding it all too amusing. So I gathered sundry bits of wood, got a reviving fire going, then settled down (in Ptolemy’s form) as close as I could stomach.

  “Well,” I said cheerily, “this makes a pleasant change. Usually it’s the djinni who comes in worn out and covered in muck. I approve of such innovations. What made you leave the library? Did Lovelace’s forces find you? Did Jabor break in?”

  He spoke slowly through clenched teeth. “I went to get a newspaper.”

  This was getting better and better! I shook my head regretfully. “You should leave such a dangerous assignment to people better qualified: next time ask an old granny, or a toddler—”

  “Shut up!” His eyes blazed. “It was that paperboy! And his friend Fred! Two commoners! They lured me away from here and stole my disc—the one I made. I followed them and they tried to kill me; would have done it too, if it wasn’t for the girl—”

  “A girl? What girl?”

  “But even so I smashed my head open and fell in a puddle, and then, when they’d gone, I couldn’t find the way back and it was after curfew and the search spheres were out and I had to keep hiding as they passed. In the end, I found a stream under a bridge and lay there in the mud for ages while the lights patrolled up and down the road above. And then, when they’d gone, I still had to find my way back. It took me hours! And I hurt my knee.”

  Well, it wasn’t exactly Shakespeare, but it was the best bedtime story I’d heard in a long time. It quite cheered me up.

  “They’re part of the Resistance,” he went on, staring into the fire. “I’m sure of it. They’re going to sell my disc—give it to the same people who attacked Parliament! Ahh!” He clenched his fists. “Why weren’t you there to help me? I could have caught them—forced them to tell me about their leader.”

  “If you recall,” I remarked, coldly, “I was off on a mission you gave me. Who was this girl you mentioned?”

  “I don’t know. I only saw her for a second. She was in charge of them. One day, though, I’ll find her and make her pay!”

  “I thought you said she stopped them from killing you?”

  “She still took my disc! She’s a thief and a traitor.”

  Whatever else the girl was, she sounded very familiar. A thought struck me. “How did they know you had the disc? Did you show it to them?”

  “No. Do you think I’m stupid?”

  “That’s beside the point. Are you sure you didn’t bring it out when you were fumbling for change?”

  “No. The paperboy just knew, somehow. Like he was a djinni or an imp.”

  “Interesting …” It sounded exactly like the same bunch who jumped me the night I had the Amulet of Samarkand. My girl and her cronies hadn’t needed to see the Amulet to know I had it on me, either. And they’d later found me hidden behind my Concealment spell. Useful abilities, which were evidently being put to good use. If they were part of this Resistance movement, it sounded like opposition to the magicians was more developed—and potentially formidable—than I’d thought. Times were moving on in London….

  I didn’t share these thoughts with the boy. He was the enemy, after all, and the last thing magicians need are any clever insights. “Leaving your misfortunes to one side for a moment,” I said, “perhaps you wish to hear my report?”

  He grunted. “You found Heddleham Hall?”

  “I did—and if you choose I can get you there. Beside the Thames is a railway heading south, over the river and out of London. But first I should tell you about the defenses Lovelace has rigged up around his girlfriend’s house. They are formidable. Airborne foliots patrol the surrounding countryside, while higher-ranking entities materialize at random on the ground. There are at least two protective domes over the estate itself, which also change position. I was unable to get beyond the boundary on my foray, and it will be even harder to succeed with a deadbeat like you in tow.”

  He didn’t rise to the bait. He was too tired. “However,” I continued, “I can feel in my essence that they are hiding something at the Hall. These defenses are in place two days too early, which involves a colossal expenditure of power. That implies mischief going on.”

  “How long will it take to get there?”

  “We can reach the edge of the estate by nightfall—if we catch an early morning train. There’s a long walk at the other end. But we’ll need to get going now.”

  “Very well.” He began to get up, squelching and oozing as he did so.

  “Are you sure about this plan?” I said. “I could take you to the docks instead. There’s bound to be vacancies for cabin boys there. It’s a hard life, but a
good one. Think of all that salty air.”

  There was no answer. He was on his way out. I gave a sigh, snuffed out the fire, and followed him.

  The route I selected was a strip of wasteland that ran south and east between the factories and warehouses, following a narrow tributary of the Thames. Although the stream itself was meager, it meandered excessively across its mini flood plain, creating a maze of hummocks, marshes, and little pools that took us the rest of the night to negotiate. Our shoes sank into mud and water, sharp reeds spiked our legs and hands, and mosquitoes whined occasionally about our heads. The boy, by contrast, whined pretty much continually. After his adventures with the Resistance, he was in a very bad temper.

  “It’s worse for me than it is for you,” I snapped, after a particularly petulant outburst. “I could have flown this in five minutes, but oh, no—I have to keep you company. Writhing about in mud and slime is your birthright, human, not mine.”

  “I can’t see where I’m putting my feet,” he said. “Create some light, can’t you?”

  “Yes, if you want to attract the attention of night-flying djinn. The streets are well watched—as you’ve already discovered—and don’t forget Lovelace may still be seeking us too. The only reason I’ve chosen this way is because it’s so dark and unpleasant.”

  He did not seem greatly comforted by this; nevertheless, his protests ceased.1

  As we stumbled on, I considered our situation with my usual impeccable logic. It had been six days since the kid had summoned me. Six days of discomfort building up inside my essence. And no immediate end in sight.

  The kid. Where did he rate in my list of all-time human lows? He wasn’t the worst master I had endured,2 but he presented some peculiar problems of his own. All sensible magicians, well versed in clever cruelty, know when the time is right to fight. They risk themselves (and their servants) comparatively rarely. But the kid hadn’t a clue. He had been overwhelmed by a disaster brought about by his own meddling, and his reaction was to lunge back at his enemy like a wounded snake. Whatever his original grudge against Lovelace, his previous discretion had now been replaced by a desperation powered by grief. Simple things like self-preservation were disregarded in his pride and fury. He was going to his death. Which would have been fine, except he was taking me along for the ride.

  I had no solution to this. I was bound to my master. All I could do was try to keep him alive.

  By dawn, we had followed the waste strip down from north London almost to the Thames. Here the stream widened briefly before sluicing over a series of weirs into the main river. It was time to rejoin the roads. We climbed a bank to a wire fence (in which I burned a discreet hole), stepped through it and came out on a cobbled street. The political heart of the city was on our right, the Tower district on our left; the Thames stretched ahead. Curfew was safely over, but there was no one yet about.

  “Right,” I said, halting. “The station is close by. Before we go there, we need to solve a problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “To stop you looking—and smelling—like a swineherd.” The various fluids of the wasteland adhered to him in a complex splatter-pattern. He could have been framed and hung up on a fashionable wall.

  He frowned. “Yes. Clean me up first. There must be a way.”

  “There is.”

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have seized him and dunked him in the river. The Thames isn’t that much cleaner than the quagmire we’d waded through. Still, it washed off the worst of the muck. After a minute of vigorous dousing, I allowed him to come up, water spouting through his nostrils. He made a gurgling sound that was hard to identify. I had a stab, though.

  “Again? You are thorough.”

  Another good rinsing made him look as good as new. I propped him up in the shadows of a concrete embankment and dried his clothes out with discreet use of a Flame. Oddly, his temper had not improved with his smell, but you can’t have everything.

  With this matter resolved, we set off and arrived at the railway station in time to catch the first train of the morning south. I stole two tickets from the kiosk, and while sundry attendants were busy combing the platforms for a red-faced clergywoman with a plausible manner, settled back into my seat just as the train got underway. Nathaniel sat in a different part of the carriage—rather pointedly, I thought. His improvised makeover still seemed to rankle with him.

  The first part of the journey out of the city was thus the quietest and least troublesome half-hour I had enjoyed since first being summoned. The train pottered along at an arthritic pace through the never-ending outskirts of London, a dispiriting jumbled wilderness of brick that looked like moraine left by a giant glacier. We passed a succession of rundown factories and concrete lots run to waste; beyond them stretched narrow terraced streets, with chimney smoke rising here and there. Once, high up against the bright, colorless cloud that hid the sun, I saw a troop of djinn heading west. Even at that distance, it was possible to pick out the light glinting on their breastplates.

  Few people got on or off the train. I relaxed. Djinn don’t doze, but I did the equivalent, drifting back through the centuries and contemplating some of my happier moments—magicians’errors, my choice acts of revenge.…

  This reverie was finally shattered by the boy throwing himself down on the seat opposite me. “I suppose we’d better plan something,” he said sulkily. “How can we get through the defenses?”

  “With randomly shifting domes and sentries in place,” I said, “there’s no way we can break in unmolested. We’ll need some kind of Trojan horse.” He looked blank. “You know—something which seems to be innocent, which they allow in past the gates. In which we’re hiding. Honestly—what do they teach you magicians nowadays?"3

  “So, we need to conceal ourselves in something,” he grunted. “Any ideas?”

  “Nope.”

  Scowling, he mulled it over. You could almost hear the fleshy innards of his brain straining. “The guests will arrive tomorrow,” he mused. “They have to let them in, so there’s bound to be a steady stream of traffic getting through the gates. Perhaps we can hitch a ride in someone’s car.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “But all the magicians will be cloaked to the eyeballs with protective Shields and bug-eyed imps. We’d be hard pushed to sneak anywhere near them without being spotted.”

  “What about servants?” he said. “They must get in somehow.”

  Give him credit—he’d had an idea. “Most of them will be on site already,” I said, “but you’re right—some may arrive on the day. Also there are bound to be deliveries of fresh food; and maybe entertainers will come, musicians or jugglers—”

  He looked scornful. “Jugglers?”

  “Who’s got more experience of magicians—you or me? There are always jugglers.4 But the point is that there will be some nonmagical outsiders entering the manor. So if we get ourselves into position early enough, we might well get a chance to sneak a ride with someone. It’s worth a try. Now … in the meantime, you should sleep. There’s a long walk ahead of us when we get to the station.”

  His eyelids looked as if they were made of lead. For once he didn’t argue.

  I’ve seen glaciers cover ground more quickly than that train, so in the end he got a pretty decent kip. But finally we arrived at the station closest to Heddleham Hall. I shook my master awake and we tumbled out of the carriage onto a platform that was being speedily reclaimed by the forces of nature. Several varieties of grass grew up through the concrete, while an enterprising bindweed had colonized the walls and roof of the ramshackle waiting room. Birds nested under the rusty lamps. There was no ticket office and no sign of human life.

  The train limped off as if it were going to die under a hedge. Across the track a white gate led straight onto an unpaved road. Fields stretched away on all sides. I perked up: it felt good to be free of the city’s malignant clutches and surrounded by the natural contours of the trees and crops.5

  “We follow the road,” I
said. “The hall is at least nine miles away, so we don’t have to be on our guard yet. I—what’s the matter now?”

  The boy was looking quite pale and unsettled. “It’s nothing. Just… I’m not used to so much … space. I can’t see any houses.”

  “No houses is good. It means no people. No magicians.”

  “It makes me feel strange. It’s so quiet.”

  Made sense. He’d never been out of the city before now. Never even been in a big park, most likely. The emptiness terrified him.

  I crossed the track and opened the gate. “There’s a village beyond those trees. You can get food there and cuddle up to some buildings.”

  It took my master some time to lose his jitters. It was almost as if he expected the empty fields or winter bushes to rise like enemies and fall on him, and his head turned constantly against surprise attack. He quaked at every bird call.

  Conversely, I stayed relaxed for this first part of the journey, precisely because the countryside seemed wholly deserted. There was no magical activity of any description, even in the distant skies.

  When we reached the village, we raided its solitary grocery store and pinched sufficient supplies to keep the boy’s stomach happy for the rest of the day. It was a smallish place, a few cottages clustered around a ruined church, not nearly large enough to have its own resident magician. The few humans we saw ambled around quietly without so much as an imp in tow. My master was very dismissive of them.

  “Don’t they realize how vulnerable they are?” he sniffed, as we passed the final cottage. “They’ve got no defenses. Any magical attack and they’d be helpless.”

  “Perhaps that’s not high on their list of priorities,” I suggested. “There are other things to worry about: making a living, for example. Not that you’ll have been taught anything about that.”6

  “Oh no?” he said. “To be a magician is the greatest calling. Our skills and sacrifices hold the country together, and those fools should be grateful we’re there.”

  “Grateful for people like Lovelace, you mean?”