Bartimaeus: The Golem’s Eye (49 page)

⁴
What you could see of them under his outsize lacy cuffs, that is.

⁵
Again, a bit of an overstatement here, unless you had a particularly gummy, rheumatic eye that took a while to unstick. Given a precise command and a partial retraction of my current charge, I can certainly dematerialize, materialize elsewhere, locate the necessary objects, and return, but this is bound to take a good few seconds—or more if the objects are hard to track down. I cannot just spirit things out of thin air. That would be silly.

⁶
A block of wood wearing a peaked cap would have had more verve and individuality.

⁷
Rather in the same way that tinned vegetables are never as nice and nutritious as the real thing, Elemental Spheres, or Inferno sticks, or any other weapon formed by trapping an imp or other spirit inside a globe or box, are never as effective or long-lasting as spells worked spontaneously by the spirits themselves. All magicians use them as often as possible, however—it’s so much easier than going through the laborious business of summoning.

⁸
Recognizable from the dreadful workmanship of the exterior. The cheeky, work-shy imp on the interior is even worse.

47

¹
The vast majority went quickly and without trouble. A few laggards were helped on their way by the application of Infernos to their backsides. A number of pressmen from
The Times,
who were discovered making detailed notes of the magicians’ panic, were escorted to a quiet place, where their reports were channeled more favorably.

²
They involved whitewash, wallpaper, and copious cleaning fluids. I say no more.

³
He was no different here from 90 percent of other magicians. When not attempting to stab one another in the back, they spend their time surrounding themselves with the finer things in life. Luxurious pads feature heavily on their wish lists, and it’s always the poor djinni who has to do the legwork. Persian magicians were the most extravagant: we had to shift palaces from one country to another overnight, build them on clouds, even underwater. There was one magician who wanted his castle made of solid glass. Aside from the obvious privacy angle, it was a hopeless mistake. We built it for him one evening and he joyfully took possession. Next morning, the sun came up: the walls acted like giant lenses and its rays were refracted through with vigor. By noon the magician and his entire household had been burned to charcoal crisps.

⁴
To help carry out the job, he’d presented me with two foliots, which wore the semblance of orphan waifs. They were round-eyed and pitiable enough to melt the hardest of hearts. However, they were also inclined to laziness. I roasted them over a slow flame, and so won their prompt obedience.

Teaser

¹
When goaded into invoking the spell of Indefinite Confinement, magicians usually compress the spirit into the first object they spy close at hand. I once cheeked a master a little too cleverly during his afternoon tea; before I knew it I was imprisoned inside a half-filled pot of strawberry jam and would have remained there possibly for all eternity had not his apprentice opened it by mistake at supper that same evening. Even so, my essence was infested with sticky little seeds for ages after.

²
The afrit Honorius was a case in point: he went mad after a hundred years’ confinement in a skeleton. A rather poor show; I like to think with my engaging personality I could keep myself entertained a
little
longer than that.

³
It is a curious fact that, despite our fury at being summoned into this world, spirits such as I derive a good deal of retrospective satisfaction from our exploits. At the time, of course, we do our darnedest to avoid them, but afterward we often display a certain weary pride in the cleverest, bravest, or most jammy events on our C.V Philosophers might speculate this is because we are essentially
defined
by our experiences in this world, since in the Other Place we are not so easily individualized. Thus, those with long and glittering careers (e.g. me) tend to look down on those (e.g. Ascobol) whose names have been unearthed more recently, and haven’t amassed so many fine achievements. In Ascobol’s case, I also disliked him for his silly falsetto voice, which ill becomes an eight-foot cyclops.

About the Author

Jonathan Stroud is the author of the
New York Times
best-selling Bartimaeus books:
The Amulet of Samarkand
,
The Golem’s Eye
,
Ptolemy’s Gate
, and
The Ring of Solomon
, as well as
The Amulet of Samarkand: A Bartimaeus Graphic Novel
(written with Andrew Donkin). His other books include
Heroes of the Valley
,
The Last Siege
,
The Leap
, and
Buried Fire
. He lives in England with his family. Visit him online at
www.jonathanstroud.com
.

Praise for the Bartimaeus Books

* “A must-purchase for all fantasy collections.” –
School Library Journal
(starred review)

“Fast-paced excitement.” –
Kirkus Reviews