Ptolemy's Gate

  “Well,” he began. “It’s just—”

  “For my part,” I said, in tones of quiet dignity, “I agreed to this proposal on the assumption that my host would be of moderate physical quality. Now, having viewed him, I’m having doubts.”

  The magician glared at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, you wouldn’t buy a horse without seeing it, would you? I’m allowed an inspection. Let’s see your teeth.”

  “Get lost!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “He’s rubbish. Can barely stand. Skin’s been burned by a Pestilence. And his shoulder’s bleeding. I bet he’s got worms and all.”

  The girl frowned. “What’s that about his shoulder? Where?”

  Nathaniel made a dismissive gesture, and winced. “It’s nothing. Not a problem.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because,” he snarled, “as you keep saying, we haven’t got time.”

  “Fair point,” I said.

  “In fact, I’m not sure I want to go ahead with it either,” the magician continued, rewarding me with an unpleasant look. “I don’t see how it could possibly work. He’s far too weak to help with the Staff, as well as being utterly vile in a thousand ways. Heaven knows what damage he’d do to me! It’s like inviting a herd of hogs to come and live in your bedroom.”

  “Is that so? Well, I’m not too enamored of being encased inside your earthly gunge,” I cried. “There’s a darn sight too much drippy stuff going on in there. All that phlegm and congealing wax and—”

  “Shut up!” Kitty shouted. It has to be said, her journey hadn’t affected her lungs. “Both of you—shut up! My city is being destroyed out there, and we need that Staff to work. The only way we can think of to do that is by combining your knowledge, Nathaniel, with your energies, Bartimaeus. All right, both of you might be a little inconvenienced, but—”

  I looked at Nathaniel. “Hear that? A little, she says.”

  He shook his head in deep disgust. “Tell me about it.”

  “—but it won’t last long. Hours at the most. Then, Nathaniel, you can dismiss Bartimaeus for good.”

  “Wait,” he said, “I want a guarantee that this creature won’t try to destroy my mind. It’d be just like him.”

  “Yeah right,” I cried, “and burn my only ticket out of there? I’m not hanging out in your head for all eternity, pal. Don’t worry. I need that Dismissal. I won’t touch nothing.”

  “You’d better not.”

  We glared at each other for a spell.

  The girl clapped her hands. “Ohhh-kay. Posturing over? Good. I didn’t ruin my health just to sit here and watch you two idiots fight. Can we please get on with it?”

  The magician sniffed. “All right.”

  The smoke coiled sullenly skyward. “All right.”

  “That’s better.”

  I would never have done it had it not been for the girl. But she had been quite correct, back there in the Other Place, to appeal to me in Ptolemy’s name. As she’d instantly perceived, that was my weak spot, my open wound. And two thousand years of accumulated cynicism hadn’t managed to heal it up, try as I might. For all that long and weary time I’d carried round the memory of his hope—that djinn and humans might one day act together, without malice, without treachery, without slaughter. Let’s face it, it was a stupid idea and I didn’t believe it for an instant—there was simply too much evidence to the contrary. But Ptolemy had believed it and that was enough. Just the echo of his faith was powerful enough to win me over when Kitty repeated his great gesture, and came across to meet me.

  She’d renewed his bond. And once that was done, my fate was sealed. No matter what the groans and cussing of my better judgement, I’d have thrown myself into a pit of fire for Ptolemy, and the same was true for Kitty now.

  Mind you … pit of fire? Vat of acid? Bed of nails? Any of them would’ve been preferable to what I was about to do.

  In one circle the magician was busy psyching himself up. He was getting his lines straight, readying the incantation. In the other, the column of smoke drifted back and forth like a caged tiger. I noticed that both pentacles had had holes scratched in their perimeters to allow me immediate transit from one side to the other. Boy, they were trusting … I could have nipped out there and then, and gobbled them both up before departing with a smile and a song. Part of me itched to do it as well, just to see the expression on my old master’s face. It had been ages since I’d devoured a magician.2 But of course, unscheduled devouring was off Kitty’s agenda for the day. Regretfully, I resisted the temptation.

  There was also the small matter of my condition. Even so simple a form as the smoke was proving hard to maintain. I needed protection, and I needed it fast.

  “Sometime today,” I said. “If you don’t mind.”

  The magician ran nervous fingers through his hair and turned to Kitty. “Any snide comments when he’s in there and I’ll dismiss him right off, Staff or no Staff. You tell him.”

  She tapped a foot. “I’m waiting, Nathaniel.”

  A curse, a rub of the face, then he was off. The incantation was a tad improvised, I felt—didn’t have the elegance and refinement I was used to. The clause “snare this cursed demon Bartimaeus and compress him with unmerciful precision” was a little crude, for instance, and could have been misinterpreted. But it seemed to do the trick. One moment the column of smoke was rising innocently in its circle, the next it had been sucked up and outward, over the break in my pentacle, over the break in his, and drawn down, down, down toward my master’s head.…

  I braced myself. I glimpsed him squeeze his eyes tight shut…. Plunk.

  Gone. The pain was gone. That was my first sensation. That was all that mattered. It was like a curtain had suddenly been flung open and everything had gone from dark to light. It was like being plunged into an ice-cold spring. It was a little like returning to the Other Place after months of slavery—the crisscross lattices of hurt that ran throughout my essence just fell away like scabs, left me suddenly feeling whole. It was like being refreshed and rebuilt and reborn, all at the same time.

  My essence surged with a terrible joy, the kind I hadn’t felt on Earth since my first few summonings back in Sumer, back when I thought my energies could cope with anything.3 I hadn’t realized how much of my recent weakness had simply been down to the accumulated pain; the moment it was gone I was ten times the djinni that I’d been before. No wonder Faquarl and the others had recommended it so.

  I let out a cry of triumph.

  Which echoed curiously, as if I were trapped in a bottle.4

  An instant later came another cry, curiously loud and all around. It deafened me. With this distraction, I awoke to my surroundings. To what cloaked me and shielded me from the world. Not to put too fine a point on it, it was human flesh.

  Nathaniel’s, to be precise.

  Where the soup in Faquarl’s tureen had given me a modicum of protection from the deathly silver on all sides, Nathaniel’s body made a much better job of it. My essence was immersed—in bone and blood and little thready things that I suppose might have been sinew; I’d spread throughout him from hair to toe. I felt the pulsing of his heart, the endless flow across the veins, the whispery wheeze-box of his lungs. I saw the flitting drifts of electricity moving back and forth across the brain; I saw (less certainly) the thoughts they signified. And for a moment there I marveled—it was like stepping into a great building—some holy mosque or shrine—and glimpsing its perfection; something airy built of clay. Then came the secondary wonder: that such a ropey thing could actually work at all, so fragile was it, so weak and cumbrous, so tied to earth.

  How easy it would have been to take control, to treat the body like a cart or chariot—a humble vehicle to be ridden where I pleased! The faintest of temptations ran through me … Without a second’s pause, I could have closed in upon the brain and damped down its little energies, set myself to pull the levers to keep the mechanism go
ing…. No doubt Nouda and Faquarl and Naeryan and all the rest had been pleased to do this. It was their revenge in microcosm, their triumph over humanity carried out in miniature.

  But that was not for me.

  Not that it wasn’t tempting, mind.

  I’ve never been the biggest fan of Nathaniel’s voice. It was just about bearable at a distance, but now it was as if I were tied up inside a loudspeaker on full volume. When he spoke, the reverberations hummed and quivered through my essence.

  “Kitty!” that great galumphing elephant of a voice cried. “I feel such energy!”

  Her voice came to me slightly muffled, refracted through his ears. “Tell me! What does it feel like?”

  “It ripples through me! I feel so light! I could leap to the stars!”5 He hesitated, as if embarrassed at his unmagicianish enthusiasm. “Kitty,” he said, “do I look any different?”

  “No … Except you’re less stooped. Can you open your eyes?”

  He opened them for the first time and I looked out. It was an odd double vision to begin with; for a moment it was all blurred and vague. I suppose that was his human vision—so weak and halting! Then I shifted my essence into alignment and things got clearer. I ratcheted through the seven planes and heard Nathaniel gasp.

  “You’d never believe it!” he bellowed in my ear. “Kitty! It’s like everything’s got more colors, more dimensions. And around you there’s such a glow!”

  That was her aura. Always stronger than average, since her visit to the Other Place it had waxed into noonday splendor. Just as Ptolemy’s had done. I never saw another human one like it. Ripples of wonder ran through Nathaniel’s body; his brain fizzed with it. “You’re so beautiful!” he said.

  “Oh, only now?” He’d really fallen into that one. It was the tone of stupefied amazement that had sunk him.6

  “No! I only meant—”

  I thought it was time to assert myself. The poor sap wasn’t doing so well on his own. I took control of his larynx. “Do you mind keeping your voice down?” I said. “I can’t hear yourself think.”

  He went very quiet then. They both did. I felt him raise a hand to his mouth, as if he’d just hiccuped in company.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Me. What, did you think I’d be all nice and quiet for you? Think again, sonny. There are two of us in this body now. Check this out.”

  To prove my point I lifted one of his fingers and methodically picked his nose. He uttered a squawk of protest. “Stop that!”

  I lowered the arm. “That’s not all I can do if I put your mind to it. Sheesh … it’s a strange little world in here … Like being dunked in chocolate mousse, except without the nice flavor. Some of your thoughts, Nathaniel … Well! If Kitty only knew.…”

  He wrested control of his mouth again. “Enough! I’m in charge. We agreed that. We must act in harmony, or risk destruction.”

  Kitty spoke from her chair. “He’s right, Bartimaeus. We’ve wasted too much time already.You’ve got to work together.”

  “Fine,” I said, “but he needs to listen to me. I know more about Faquarl and Nouda than he does. I’ll be able to preempt their actions. And I can move his body around all right. Watch this….”

  I’d figured out the leg muscles nicely; I bent them, stretched them—my essence did the rest. From a standing start we leaped over the desk to the far side of the room.

  “Not bad, eh?” I chuckled. “Smooth as silk.” I bent the legs again, gave a stretch … At exactly the same time the magician attempted to walk in the opposite direction. Our body floundered, one leg up in the air, the other about 170 degrees akimbo from it. We did the splits, uttered harmonic cries of mild discomfort, and crashed upon the carpet.

  “Yeah,” Kitty said. “Really smooth.”

  I allowed Nathaniel to organize the business of getting to his feet again. “I knew that would happen,” he snarled. “This is hopeless.”

  “You just don’t like taking orders,” I snapped back. “Don’t like your slave calling the shots. Once a magician, always a—”

  “Quiet,” Kitty said. Whether it was her aura or not, something about her nowadays brooked no argument. We stood quiet and let her speak. “If you took a moment to stop squabbling,” she went on, “you’d see that you’re acting together far better than Nouda and the others are managing in their stolen bodies. Faquarl was at home in Hopkins, but he’d had practice. The others were almost helpless.”

  “She’s right.…” Nathaniel said. “Nouda couldn’t walk.”

  It took a djinni to get to the nub of the matter. “There are two crucial differences,” I said. “I haven’t destroyed your mind. That’s got to help. Also, I know your birth name. I’ll bet that gives me deeper access to you than the other spirits can hope to gain. There you go, you see. I knew it would come in useful one day.”

  The magician scratched his chin. “Maybe …”

  Our philosophical speculations were curtailed by an impatient cry. “Whatever,” Kitty said. “Just tell each other what you plan and you should avoid stupid pratfalls. Now—how about the Staff?”

  How about the Staff? All this time we had held it in our fist, and even through Nathaniel’s insulating bones and flesh I could feel its immanence. I sensed the restless writhing of the great beings trapped inside it, dimly heard their pleading to be free. The locks and binding seals that Gladstone had wrought upon the wood were still as strong as the day he fixed them. Fortunate, that—since, if released all at once, the pent-up energies would have leveled a city block.7

  Kitty was watching us narrowly. “Do you think you can activate it?”

  “Yes,” we said.

  Nathaniel held the Staff with both hands. (I allowed him to manipulate our limbs here. This was his moment—we needed his formula to start the process, his direction. I was just providing the extra energies, the strength behind his will.) We stood with legs slightly apart, body braced for the impact. He began to speak. While he did so, I looked through his eyes around the little room. There was Kitty, sitting in the chair. Her aura more than matched the Staff’s. Beyond was a doorway, broken in by some small blast. Piled up on the floor were several Inferno sticks and elemental spheres. Nathaniel had brought them; he’d used a Detonation cube to destroy the door. He’d been so anxious about Kitty, he’d forgotten the pain in his shoulder, forgotten his weariness for a time….

  A curious thing, feeling a man’s mind move. It shifted like a sleeper in the dark, while elsewhere his conscious thoughts churned out the incantation. Faces floated past me: Kitty’s; an older woman’s; others that I didn’t recognize at all. And then (a shock this)—Ptolemy’s too, clear as a bell. So long since I had seen it two.… thousand years … But of course, this image was nothing but a memory of me.

  Time to concentrate. I felt my energies being drawn upon—sucked out through Nathaniel’s words and converted into bonds around the Staff. The incantation was coming to its close. Gladstone’s Staff shuddered. Pale streams of light ran up its length and congregated by the carved pentacle at the end. We felt the beings within pressing against the crack we had created in their prison; we felt Gladstone’s locking mechanisms struggling to seal themselves. We denied them both.

  Nathaniel’s chant came to an end. The Staff pulsed once—a brilliant white light filled the room on every plane. We stumbled where we stood: Nathaniel shut our eyes. Then the light fell back. Equilibrium was reached. All was still. The room was quiet. Almost too faintly to be heard, the Staff of Gladstone hummed in our grasp.

  As one, we turned to where Kitty sat watching in her chair.

  “Ready now,” we said.

  33

  Just for a moment, when the Staff had been activated and the djinni’s energies had flowed through him to keep its power in check, Nathaniel remembered the wound in his shoulder. He got an indignant stab of pain, a sudden wooziness in his head … then his new strength waxed in him once again, and the frailty vanished. He felt better than he had ever done.

&n
bsp; His body still echoed with the sensation of that first instant, when Bartimaeus’s powers had fused within him. It was like an electric shock, a surge that threatened to carry him off the floor, to deny gravity altogether—all his weight and weariness fell away. He burned with life. With sudden clarity (his mind seemed sharper, newly whetted), he perceived the djinni’s nature—understood its ceaseless urge for movement, change, and transformation. He sensed how harsh a fate it was for this nature to be forcibly restricted, to be pent up among earthly, solid things. He glimpsed (only blearily at first) an endless succession of images, memories, imprints, stretching back into a terrible abyss of time. It gave him a feeling not unlike vertigo.

  All his senses were afire. His fingers felt each whorl and grain upon the Staff, his ears caught its minute hum. Best of all he saw and understood each plane—all seven of them. The room was bathed in the colors of a dozen auras—from the Staff, from himself and, most extraordinary of all, from Kitty. Through its glow her face seemed smooth and young again, her hair shone like flames. He could have gazed at her forever—

  Stop that nonsense right now. I feel quite sick.

  If a wretched djinni hadn’t been gabbling in his head.

  I wasn’t doing anything, he thought.

  Not much you weren’t. Staff’s up and running. We need to go.

  Yes. Warily, in case the djinni had other plans for his legs, Nathaniel turned to Kitty. “You should stay here.”

  “I’m feeling stronger.” To Nathaniel’s alarm, she inched forward in the chair and, supporting her weight with shaking hands, got to her feet. “I can walk,” she said.

  “Even so, you’re not coming with us.”

  He felt the djinni stir within his mind; its voice echoed from his mouth. As before, the effect was disconcerting. Also, it rather tickled. “Nathaniel’s right,” Bartimaeus said. “You’re far too weak. If his memory’s up to scratch, which I doubt, there may still be prisoners in the building—if Nouda hasn’t killed them all. Why not try to find them?”