The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud
“I have listened very carefully, sir,” he said.
His master nodded. “Have you ever seen a demon?” he asked.
“No, sir. I mean, only in books.”
“Stand up.”
The boy stood quickly, one foot almost slipping on his cushion. He waited awkwardly, hands at his sides. His master indicated a door behind him with a casual finger. “You know what’s through there?”
“Your study, sir.”
“Good. Go down the steps and cross the room. At the far end you’ll find my desk. On the desk is a box. In the box is a pair of spectacles. Put them on and come back to me. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well then. Off you go.”
Under his master’s watchful eye, the boy crossed to the door, which was made of a dark, unpainted wood with many whorls and grains. He had to struggle to turn the heavy brass knob, but the coolness of its touch pleased him. The door swung open soundlessly on oiled hinges and the boy stepped through to find himself at the top of a carpeted staircase. The walls were elegantly papered with a flowery pattern. A small window halfway down let in a friendly stream of sunlight.
The boy descended carefully, one step at a time. The silence and sunlight reassured him and quelled some of his fears. Never having been beyond this point before, he had nothing but nursery stories to furnish his ideas of what might be waiting in his master’s study. Terrible images of stuffed crocodiles and bottled eyeballs sprang garishly into his mind. Furiously he drove them out again. He would not be afraid.
At the foot of the staircase was another door, similar to the first, but smaller and decorated, in its center, with a five-sided star painted in red. The boy turned the knob and pushed: the door opened reluctantly, sticking on the thick carpet. When the gap was wide enough the boy passed through into the study.
Unconsciously he had held his breath as he entered; now he let it out again, almost with a sense of disappointment. It was all so ordinary. A long room lined with books on either side. At the far end a great wooden desk with a padded leather chair set behind it. Pens on the table, a few papers, an old computer, a small metal box. The window beyond looked out toward a horse chestnut tree adorned with the full splendor of summer. The light in the room had a sweet greenish tint.
The boy made for the table.
Halfway there, he stopped and looked behind him.
Nothing. Yet he’d had the strangest feeling…. For some reason the slightly open door, through which he had entered only a moment before, now gave him an unsettled sensation. He wished that he had thought to close it after him.
He shook his head. No need. He was going back through it in a matter of seconds.
Four hasty steps took him to the edge of the table. He looked round again. Surely there had been a noise….
The room was empty. The boy listened as intently as a rabbit in a covert. No, there was nothing to hear except faint sounds of distant traffic.
Wide-eyed, breathing hard, the boy turned to the table. The metal box glinted in the sun. He reached for it across the leather surface of the desk. This was not strictly necessary—he could have walked round to the other side of the desk and picked the box up easily-—but somehow he wanted to save time, grab what he’d come for, and get out. He leaned over the table and stretched out his hand, but the box remained obstinately just out of reach. The boy rocked forward, swung his fingertips out wildly. They missed the box, but his flailing arm knocked over a small pot of pens. The pens sprayed across the leather.
The boy felt a bead of sweat trickle under his arm. Frantically, he began to collect up the pens and stuff them back into the pot.
There was a throaty chuckle, right behind him, in the room.
He wheeled round, stifling his yell. But there was nothing there.
For a moment the boy remained leaning with his back against the desk, paralyzed with fear. Then something reasserted itself in him. Forget the pens, it seemed to say. The box is what you came for. Slowly, imperceptibly, he began to inch his way around the side of the desk, his back to the window, his eyes on the room.
Something tapped the window, urgently, three times. He spun round. Nothing there; only the horse chestnut beyond the garden, waving gently in the summer breeze.
Nothing there.
At that moment one of the pens he had spilled rolled off the desk onto the carpet. It made no sound, but he caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye. Another pen began to rock back and forth—first slowly, then faster and faster. Suddenly it spun away, bounced off the base of the computer, and dropped over the edge onto the floor. Another did the same. Then another. Suddenly, all the pens were rolling, in several directions at once, accelerating off the edges of the desk, colliding, falling, landing, lying still.
The boy watched. The last one fell.
He did not move.
Something laughed softly, right in his ear.
With a cry he lashed out with his left arm, but made no contact. The momentum of his swing turned him around to face the desk. The box was directly in front of him. He snatched it up and dropped it instantly—the metal had been sitting in the sun and its heat seared his palm. The box struck the desktop and lost its lid. A pair of horn-rimmed spectacles fell out. A moment later, he had them in his hand and was running for the door.
Something came behind him. He heard it hopping at his back.
He was almost at the door; he could see the stairs beyond that led up to his master.
And the door slammed shut.
The boy wrenched at the doorknob, beat at the wood, hammered, called to his master in a choking sob, but all to no avail. Something was whispering in his ear and he could not hear the words. In mortal panic, he kicked at the door, succeeding only in jarring his toe through his small black boot.
He turned then and faced the empty room.
Small rustlings sounded all about him, delicate taps and little flitterings, as if the carpet, the books, the shelves, even the ceiling were being brushed against by invisible, moving things. One of the light shades above his head swung slightly in a nonexistent breeze.
Through his tears, through his terror, the boy found words to speak.
“Stop!” he shouted. “Begone!”
The rustling, tapping, and flittering stopped dead. The light shade’s swing slowed, diminished, and came to a halt.
The room was very still.
Gulping for breath, the boy waited with his back against the door, watching the room. Not a sound came.
Then he remembered the spectacles that he was still holding in his hand. Out of the clinging fog of fear, he recalled that his master had told him to put them on before returning. Perhaps if he did so, the door would open and he would be allowed to climb the stairs to safety.
With trembling fingers he raised the spectacles and put them on.
And saw the truth about the study.
A hundred small demons filled every inch of the space in front of him. They were stacked one on top of the other all over the room, like seeds in a melon or nuts in a bag, with feet squishing faces and elbows jabbed into bellies. So tightly were they clustered that the very carpet was blocked out. Leering obscenely, they squatted on the desk, hung from the lights and bookcases, and hovered in midair. Some balanced on the protruding noses of others or were suspended from their limbs. A few had huge bodies with heads the size of oranges; several displayed the reverse. There were tails and wings and horns and warts and extra hands, mouths, feet, and eyes. There were too many scales and too much hair and other things in impossible places. Some had beaks, others had suckers, most had teeth. They were every conceivable color, often in inappropriate combinations. And they were all doing their best to keep very, very still so as to convince the boy that nobody was there. They were trying extremely hard to remain frozen, despite the repressed shaking and trembling of tails and wings and the uncontrollable twitching of their extremely mobile mouths.
But at the very moment the boy put
Then, with a cry of glee, they leaped at him.
The boy screamed, fell back against the door and sideways onto the floor. He raised his hands to protect himself, dashing the spectacles from his nose. Blindly he rolled over onto his face and curled himself up into a ball, smothered by the terrible noise of wings and scales and small sharp claws on top, around, beside him.
The boy was still there twenty minutes later, when his master came to fetch him and dismiss the company of imps. He was carried to his room. For a day and a night he did not eat. For a further week he remained mute and unresponsive, but at length he regained his speech and was able to resume his studies.
His master never referred to the incident again, but he was satisfied with the outcome of the lesson—with the well of hate and fear that had been dug for his apprentice in that sunny room.
This was one of Nathaniel’s earliest experiences. He did not speak of it to anyone, but the shadow of it never left his heart. He was six years old at the time.
6
The problem with a highly magical artifact such as the Amulet of Samarkand is that it has a distinctive pulsating aura1 that attracts attention like a naked man at a funeral. I knew that no sooner had Simon Lovelace been informed of my escapade than he would send out searchers looking for the telltale pulse, and that the longer I remained in one place, the more chance there was of something pinpointing it. The boy would not summon me until dawn,2 so I had several restless hours to survive first.
What might the magician send after me? He was unlikely to command many other djinn of Faquarl’s and Jabor’s strength, but he would certainly be able to whip up a host of weaker servants to join in the hunt. Ordinarily I can dispose of foliots and the like with one claw tied behind my back, but if they arrived in large numbers, and I was weary, things might become difficult.3
I flew from Hampstead at top speed and took shelter under the eaves of a deserted house beside the Thames, where I preened my feathers and watched the sky. After a time, seven small spheres of red light passed across the heavens at low altitude. When they reached the middle of the river, they split forces: three continued south, two went west, two east. I pressed myself deep into the shadows of the roof, but couldn’t help notice the Amulet giving an extra-vibrant throb as the questing spheres disappeared downriver. This unnerved me; shortly afterward I departed to a girder halfway up a crane on the opposite bank, where they were erecting a swanky riverside condo for the magical gentry.
Five silent minutes passed. The river sucked and swirled round the muddy posts of the wharf. Clouds passed over the moon. A sudden green and sickly light flared in all the windows of the deserted house on the other side of the river. Hunched shadows moved within it, searching. They found nothing; the light congealed and became a glowing mist that drifted from the windows and was blown away. Darkness shrouded the house again. I flew south at once, darting and swooping from street to street.
For half the night I continued my frantic, fugitive dance across London. The spheres4 were out in even greater numbers than I had feared (evidently more than one magician had summoned them) and appeared above me at regular intervals. To keep safe I had to keep moving, and even then I was nearly caught twice. Once I flew around an office block and nearly collided with a sphere coming the other way; another came upon me as, overcome with exhaustion, I huddled in a birch tree in Green Park. On both occasions I managed to escape before reinforcements arrived.
Before long I was on my last wings. The constant drag of supporting my physical form was wearing me down and using up precious energy. So I decided to adopt a different plan—to find a place where the Amulet’s pulse would be drowned out by other magical emissions. It was time to mingle with the many-headed multitude, the great unwashed: in other words, with people. I was that desperate.
I flew back to the center of the city. Even at this late hour, the tourists in Trafalgar Square still flowed around the base of Nelson’s Column in a gaudy tide, buying cut-price charms from the official vending booths wedged between the lions. A cacophony of magical pulses rose up from the square. It was as good a place as anywhere to hide.
A bolt of feathered lightning plunged down out of the night and disappeared into the narrow space between two stalls. Presently a young, sad-eyed Egyptian boy emerged and elbowed his way into the throng. He wore new blue jeans and a padded black bomber jacket over a white T-shirt; also a pair of big white trainers with laces that were constantly coming loose. He mingled with the crowd.
I felt the Amulet burning against my chest. At regular intervals it sent out little waves of intense heat in double bursts, like heartbeats. I fervently hoped that this signal would now be swallowed by the auras all around.
Much of the magic here was all show, no substance. The plaza was littered with licensed quacks selling minor charms and trinkets that had been approved by the authorities for common use.5 Wide-eyed tourists from North America and Japan eagerly probed the stacks of multicolored stones and gimcrack jewelry, trying to recall the birth signs of their relatives back home while being patiently prompted by the cheery Cockney vendors. If it weren’t for the camera bulbs flashing, I might have been back in Karnak. Bargains were being struck, happy cries rang out, everyone was smiling. It was a timeless tableau of gullibility and greed.
But not everything in the square was trivial. Here and there rather more sober-faced men stood at the entrance to small closed tents. Visitors were admitted to these one by one. Evidently there were artifacts of genuine value inside, since without exception small watchers loitered near each booth. They came in various unobtrusive forms—pigeons mostly; I avoided going too close in case they were more perceptive than they looked.
A few magicians wandered about amid the crowd. They were unlikely to be buying anything here; more probably they were doing the night shift in the government offices in Whitehall and had come out for a breather. One (in a good suit) had an accompanying second-plane imp hopping at his heel; the others (more shabbily attired) simply trailed the tell—tale odor of incense, dried sweat, and candle wax.
The police were present too—several ordinary constables and a couple of hairy, hatchet-faced men from the Night Police keeping themselves just visible enough to prevent trouble.
And all around the square, the car lights swirled, carrying ministers and other magicians from their offices in Parliament to their clubs at St. James’s. I was near the hub of a great wheel of power that extended over an empire, and here, with luck, I would remain undetected until I was finally summoned.
Or possibly not.
I had sauntered over to a particularly tatty-looking stall and was examining its fare when I had the uneasy feeling that I was being watched. I turned my head a little and scanned the crowd. An amorphous mass. I checked the planes. No hidden dangers: a bovine herd, all of it dull and human. I turned back to the stall and absently picked up My Magic MirrorTM, a piece of cheap glass glued into a frame of pink plastic and feebly decorated with wands, cats, and wizards’hats.
There it was again! I turned my body sharply. Through a gap in the crowd directly behind me, I could see a short, plump female magician, a bunch of kids clustered round a stand, and a policeman eyeing them suspiciously. No one seemed to have the slightest interest in me. But I knew what I’d felt. Next time I’d be ready. I made a big show of considering the mirror. ANOTHER GREAT GIFT FROM LONDON, MAGIC CAPITAL OF THE WORLD! screamed the label on its back, MADE IN TAIW—
Then the feeling came again. I swiveled quicker than a cat and—success! I caught the starers eyeball to eyeball. Two of them, a boy and a girl, from within the gaggle of kids. They didn’t have time to drop their gaze. The boy was in his mid-teens; acne was laying siege to his face with some success. The girl was younger but her eyes were cold and hard. I gazed back. What did I care? They were human, they couldn’t see what I was. Let them stare.
After a few seconds they couldn’t han
The children followed me.
I caught sight of them at the next booth, watching from behind a candyfloss stand. They were moving in a huddle—maybe five or six of them, I couldn’t be sure. What did they want? A mugging? If so, why pick me out? There were dozens of better, fatter, richer candidates here. To test this I cozied up to a very small, wealthy-looking tourist with a giant camera and thick spectacles. If I’d wanted to mug someone, he’d have been top of my list. But when I left him and went on a loop through the crowd, the children followed right along too.
Weird. And annoying. I didn’t want to make a change and fly off; I was too weary. All I wanted was to be left in peace. I still had many hours to go before the dawn.
I speeded up; the children did so too. Long before we’d done three circuits of the square, I’d had enough. A couple of policemen had watched us beetling around and they were likely to halt us soon, if only to stop themselves getting dizzy. It was time to go. Whatever the kids were after, I did not want any more attention drawn to me.
There was a subway close by. I hotfooted it down the steps, ignored the entrance to the Underground, and came up again on the other side of the road, opposite the central square. The kids had vanished—maybe they were in the subway. Now was my chance. I slipped round a street corner, along past a book shop, and ducked down an alley. I waited a little there, in the shadows among the dumper bins.
A couple of cars drove past the end of the alley. No one came after me.
I allowed myself a brief smile. I thought I’d lost them.
I was wrong.
7
The Egyptian boy wandered off along the alley, made a couple of right-angle turns and came out in one of the many roads that radiate from Trafalgar Square. I was revising my plans as I went.