Ptolemy's Gate (50 page)

“Wasn't I? Oh. Good. Now you mention it, I
do
feel a little stronger.”

“There you go, you see.”

“But it's just so difficult,” she said, “to look in the mirror and see … a different face. To see that everything's
changed.
”

“Not everything,” he said.

“No?”

“No. Your eyes. They haven't changed at all.”

“Oh.” She peered dubiously at the glass. “You think?”

“Well, they were fine before you started squinting. Take my word for it.” He lowered the mirror, placed it on the table. “Kitty,” he said. “I have to tell you something. The demons have broken out across London. After I found you, I tried to set the Staff of Gladstone going, but”—he sighed—“I couldn't make it. It's not the incantations. I've got the knowledge that I didn't have before. It's just … I haven't got the physical strength to force my will upon it. And without the Staff, we can't face up to Nouda.”

“Nathaniel—”

“There
may
be other magicians left alive and unpossessed. I haven't gone looking yet. But even if we can round up some allies and get their djinn on our side, Nouda's much too strong. The Staff was our only hope.”

“That's not so.” Kitty leaned forward in the chair. (It was true what he'd said—she was moving a little more easily now. To begin with, everything had felt uncomfortable and misaligned, as if she were out of sync with her bones and sinew.) “I didn't go to the Other Place just for fun,” she said primly. “You got the Staff, I found Bartimaeus. Now all we need to do is put them together.” She grinned at him.

The magician shook his head in vexation. “Meaning what?”

“Ah. Now, you're not going to like this part.”

32

T
he sulphur cloud contracted into an ailing column of smoke that slouched in the middle of the pentacle. It dribbled up toward the ceiling with the awesome force of water spurting from a drinking fountain. Two timorous yellow eyes materialized in the heart of the smoke. They blinked anxiously.

I was having second thoughts.

The dark-haired youth stood in the pentacle opposite, leaning heavily on the Staff. I recognized it straightaway. Difficult not to: the aura of the talisman beat upon my circle with the intensity of a solar flare. My essence quailed at the proximity.

Bad. I was too weak. I should not have agreed to this.

Mind you, it looked to me as if the magician was of similar mind. His face was the delightful color of off milk.

He drew himself up as best he could and tried to look imposing. “Bartimaeus.”

“Nathaniel.”
¹

He cleared his throat, gazed at the floor, scratched his head, hummed a few odd notes … did everything in fact but look me straight in the eye like a man should. Not that I was
much
better. Instead of billowing ominously, the column of smoke seemed intent on winding its rising threads into pretty braidy patterns. If we'd been left to ourselves, I'd probably have ended up knitting a virtual cardigan or something, but after a few seconds of high-quality dithering, a rude interruption came.

“Get
on
with it!”

No prizes for guessing who
that
was. Magician and smoke swiveled in their circles, coughing and muttering. Both wore expressions of wounded aggravation.

“I know, I know,” Kitty said. “I don't envy either of you. Just
do
it. We haven't time to waste.”

I must say she was looking rather more spry than I expected. Okay, she was a bit frail looking, and she had gray hair and her skin was lined and aged, but she was nothing
like
Ptolemy had been. And her eyes were as bright as a bird's; they shone with the light of what they'd seen. I regarded her with mingled reverence and compassion.

“Keep your knickers on,” I said. “We're getting to it.”

“That's right,” Nathaniel agreed. “Can't rush these things.”

“Like you'd
know
,” she snorted. “What's the holdup?”

“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 going…. 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.