Alexandria: 125 B.C. 3 страница. She had impressed me then both with the force of her .personality and with her fierce idealism, qualities rarely mingled in magicians

She had impressed me then both with the force of her.personality and with her fierce idealism, qualities rarely mingled in magicians. She was a commoner—scarcely educated, ignorant of everything that had conspired to create her world, but nonetheless defiant and hopeful of change. And more than that too: she had risked her life to save that of her enemy, a despicable lowlife, someone unfit to so much as lick her boots.5

5. My master, this was. Did you guess?

Yep, she'd made an impression on me. And on my master too, come to think of it.

I grinned. "So you liked what you heard, eh?"

"You set me thinking, Bartimaeus, with all your talk of civilizations come and gone. Above all, you said there were patterns to look out for, and I knew I had to find them." One finger jabbed down as she made the point, almost touching the red chalk line. It was close, very close. "So,"

she said simply, "I went looking."

Ptolemy adjusted the corner of his loincloth. "All very well, but that's a different thing from cruelly ripping an innocent djinni from his place of rest. My essence is in sore need of respite.

Mandrake's kept me in service"—I made a rapid finger-and-toe calculation—"for six hundred and eighty-three days out of the last seven hundred. And that has its effects. I'm like an apple at the bottom of a barrel—sweet and fair to look at, but bruised to a pulp beneath the skin. And you've taken me from my place of healing."

Her head was tilted; she looked up at me from under her brows. "The Other Place, you mean."

"That is one of its names."

"Well, I'm sorry to have disturbed you." She spoke as if all she'd done was rouse me from a little nap. "But I didn't know I could even do it. I feared my technique might be faulty."

"Your technique's fine," I said. "In fact it's good. And that leads me to my biggest question. How have you learned to summon me?"

She shrugged modestly. "Oh, it wasn't so hard. You know what I think? The magicians have been exaggerating the difficulty for years, just to put the commoners off. What does it take, after all? A few careful lines drawn with rulers, string, and compass. A few runes, some spoken Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 3 - Ptolemy's Gate

words. Popping down the market to get some herbs... a bit of peace and quiet, a little memorizing... do all that and you're sorted."

"No," I said. "A commoner's never done this before, as far as I know. It's unheard of. You must have had help. With the languages, the runes and circles, that noxious plant mix—all of it. A magician. Who?"

The girl twizzled a strand of hair beside her ear. "Well, I'm hardly going to give you his name.

But you're right. I have been helped. Not to do this, exactly—that goes without saying. He thinks I'm more of an amateur enthusiast. If he knew what I was doing he'd blow his top." She smiled. "Right now he's fast asleep two floors down. He's rather sweet, really. Anyway, it's taken time, but it's not been too bad. I'm surprised more people haven't given it a go."

Ptolemy gazed at her from under hooded lids. "Most people," I said meaningfully, "are a little nervous of what they might summon."

The girl nodded. "True. But it's not so bad if you're not scared of the demon in question."

I started. "What?"

"Well, I know that terrible things can happen if you get the incantation wrong, or misdraw the pentacle or something, but those terrible things are more or less up to the demon—sorry, I meant djinni, of course—the djinni in question. Aren't they? If it was some old afrit that I'd never met, I'd obviously be a bit worried, in case we got off on the wrong foot. But we know each other already, don't we, you and I?" She gave me a winning smile. "And I knew you wouldn't harm me if I made any little mistake."

I was watching her hands, which once again were gesticulating in the vicinity of the red chalk line...."Is that so?"

"Yes. I mean, we more or less teamed up last time, didn't we? You know, with that golem. You told me what to do. I did it. Good partnership, that was."

Ptolemy rubbed the corners of his eyes. "There was a small difference then," I sighed, "which it seems that I must spell out for you. Three years ago we were both under the heel of Mandrake's boot. I was his slave, you were his quarry. We had a shared interest in foiling him and ensuring our own survival."

"Exactly!" she cried, "and we—"

"We had nothing more in common than that," I went on imperturbably. "True, we had a bit of a chin-wag. True, I did give you a few clues about the golem's weaknesses—but that was merely in a scientific spirit, to see how perversely your odd little conscience would behave. And mighty perverse it was too."

"I don't accept—"

Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 3 - Ptolemy's Gate

"If I might be allowed to get a word in edgeways," I said, "I will just point out the salient difference between then and now. Then, we were both victims of the magicians. Agreed? Right. But now, one of us—i.e. moi" —I tapped my bare brown chest—"is still a victim, still a slave. As for the other one... she's changed sides."

She shook her head. "No."

"She's a turncoat—"

"I'm not—"

"A two-timing backstabber—"

"Bartim—"

"A conniving, treacherous, opportunistic, false-faced traitor, who's taken it upon herself to add to my endless years of slavery! Who's set out to learn the cursed arts, without prompting and without coercion! You can say this much for Nathaniel and the rest—they didn't have any choice in the matter. Most of them were molded into magicians before they were old enough to know better! But you —you could have taken a dozen different paths. And instead you decided to enslave Bartimaeus, Sakhr-al-Jinni, the Serpent of Silver Plumes, the wolf-jawed guardian of the Iroquois. And in your arrogance you consider I'll do you no harm! Well, let me tell you, young madam, you underestimate me at your peril! I am master of a thousand tricks, a hundred weapons! I can—ouch!!"

In rather heated fashion I had been ornamenting my argument with a series of brisk finger-jabs, one of which overshot the mark and touched the red chalk of my pentacle. With a small explosion of yellow sparks, my essence was rebuffed: I was tossed up and backward, head over heels, frantically pedaling in midair to avoid crossing the line on the other side. With the agility born of desperation, I managed it, and sank down to earth with blackened face and my loincloth torn asunder.

The girl considered the latter with a disapproving twist of the mouth. "Tsk," she said. "We're back to square one."

I delicately rearranged the fragments of cloth. "The point remains. By summoning me, you've redefined our roles. There can be nothing but hatred between us."

"Oh, rubbish," she said. "How else was I to get hold of you? I'm not enslaving you, you idiot. I wanted to discuss something with you, as equals."

I raised what remained of my eyebrows. "Hardly feasible. Do dust mites confer with lions?"

"Oh, stop being so sniffy. Who's Nathaniel, anyway?"

Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 3 - Ptolemy's Gate

I blinked at her uncertainly. "Who? Never heard of him."

"You just referred to someone called Nathaniel."

"No, no, you must have misheard." I changed the subject swiftly: "The whole idea is ridiculous, anyway. Equality is impossible between humans and djinn.You are young and foolish, so perhaps I shouldn't be too hard on you, but the notion is misguided. I have known a hundred masters over five thousand years, and whether their pentacles have been drawn on the desert sand or on the turf-moss of the steppe, the enmity between me and my summoners has been great and everlasting. So it has always been. So it shall always be."

I finished in resounding, plangent tones that brooked no argument. They echoed dramatically back and forth across the empty room. The girl smoothed back her hair.

"Absolute tripe," she said. "What about you and Ptolemy?"

Ktty knew immediately that her theory had been correct. The djinni's response told her so. Since his accident at the margins of the pentacle, the young Egyptian boy had been facing her, chest and chin thrust out, hands sweeping this way and that to illustrate his expansive statements and occasionally return his loincloth to position. As soon as she spoke, however, all his blustering and bravado instantly ceased. A great stillness came over him: the face became quite frozen, the body utterly transfixed, as if somehow caught in time. Only the eyes moved: slowly, very slowly, the pupils shifted to fix their gaze on her. The boy's eyes had always seemed dark—but now they had become quite black. Without wishing it, Kitty found herself staring into them: it was like looking at a clear night sky—all black and cold and infinite, with tiny lights glinting, unreachable and far away.... It was terrible, yet beautiful; she was drawn to it as a child to a window. She had been sitting safely in the center of her pentacle. Now she half uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, supporting herself on one arm, stretching out the other, reaching up slowly toward the eyes, toward their solitude and emptiness. Her fingertips trembled above the fringes of her circle; she sighed, hesitated, reached out....

The boy blinked, his eyelids flicking like a lizard's. The spell was broken. Kitty's skin crawled; her hand jerked back. She shrank into the center of the circle, fresh sweat beading on her brow.

Still the boy did not move.

"What do you presume," a voice said, "to know about me?"

It had sounded all around her—not loudly, but very near at hand—a voice different from any that she had heard before. It spoke in English, but the inflection was odd, as if the tongue found the language alien and strange; it sounded close, but also not so, as if dredged up from some incalculable distance.

Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 3 - Ptolemy's Gate

"What do you know?" the voice said again, quieter than before. The djinni's lips were still, the black eyes locked on her. Kitty hunched herself against the floor, trembling, teeth clenched together. Something in the voice unmanned her, but what? It did not speak violently or with anger, quite. But it was a voice of power from a far-off place, a voice of terrible command, and it was a child's voice too.

She lowered her head and shook it dumbly, gazing at the floor.

"TELL ME!" Now there was anger in the voice; as it spoke, a great noise sounded in the room—a thunderclap that shook the window and rippled out across the floorboards, sending chips of rotten plaster dropping from the walls. The door slammed shut (but she had not opened it, nor seen it open); the window shattered and fell away. At the same time a great wind rose up around the chamber, whirling all about her, faster and faster, sending the bowls of rosemary and rowan wood flying, slamming them out against the walls, seizing the book and the candlesticks, her satchel and her coat, carrying them high and low around the room, whistling and wailing, around and around and around until they blurred. And now the very walls were moving too, tearing from their sockets in the floor and joining in the frenzied dance, spitting bricks loose as they spun, spiraling around and around beneath the ceiling. And finally the ceiling was gone, and the awful immensity of the night sky stretched above, with stars and moon spinning and the clouds being drawn out into pale white threads that shot in all directions, until the only still points in all the universe were Kitty and the boy inside their circles.

Kitty clapped her fingers across her eyes and buried her head between her knees.

"Please stop," she cried. "Please!"

And the tumult ceased.

She opened her eyes; saw nothing. Her hands were still clamped to her face.

With stiff and painful care, she raised her head and lowered her hands. The room was exactly as before, as it had always been: door, book, candlesticks and window, walls, ceiling, floor; beyond the window, a placid sky. All was quiet, except... the boy in the opposing pentacle was moving now, bending his legs slowly, slowly—then sitting with abrupt finality, as if all the energy had gone out of him. His eyes were closed. He passed a hand wearily in front of his face.

He looked at her then, and the eyes, though dark, had nothing of their former emptiness. When he spoke, his voice was back to normal, but it sounded tired and sad. "If you're going to summon djinn," he said, "you summon their history with them. It's wise to keep matters firmly in the present, for fear of what you might awaken."

With great difficulty, Kitty forced herself to sit upright and face him. Her hair was wet with perspiration; she ran a hand through it and wiped her forehead. "There was no need for that. I merely mentioned—"

"A name.You ought to know what names can do."

Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 3 - Ptolemy's Gate

Kitty cleared her throat. The first surge of fright was wearing off, to be fast replaced with a teary feeling. She fought it down. "If you're so keen to keep matters in the present," she gulped furiously, "why do you persist in wearing... his form?"

The boy frowned. "You're a little too clever today, Kitty.What makes you think I'm wearing anyone's guise? Even in my weakened state I can look how I please."Without stirring, he changed shape once, twice, half a dozen times, each form more startling than the last, each one sitting in exactly the same position in the circle. He finished as a giant rodent of some kind, plump and fluffy, with hind legs crossed and forelegs folded irritably.

Kitty did not blink. "Yes, but you don't generally go around as a king-size hamster," she snapped. "You always revert to the same dark kid in a loincloth. Why? Because it means something to you. That's obvious. It's someone important from your past. All I had to do was work out who."

The hamster licked a pink paw and smoothed a tuft of fur behind one ear. "I don't acknowledge there's any truth in those far-fetched statements," it said. "But I'm curious. Where did you go from there? The boy could have been anyone."

Kitty nodded. "True. It happened this way. After our last meeting I was keen to speak with you again. All I knew about you was your name—or one of them—Bartimaeus. Which was tough enough, since I didn't even know how to spell it. But I knew that if I looked hard, you'd turn up in the historical records somewhere. So when I began to study, I kept my eyes peeled for mention of you."

The hamster nodded modestly. "I imagine that it didn't take long. There must be countless references to my exploits."

"In fact it took almost a year to find the slightest mention. I got the names of plenty of other demons of all sorts here and there among the library books. Nouda the Terrible kept coming up, as did an afrit named Tchue, and something called Faquarl was notable too in a dozen cultures.

And then at last you appeared— a fleeting mention in a footnote."

The hamster bristled." What? Which books did you look in? All the best ones must have been taken out. A footnote indeed!" It continued muttering indignantly into its fur.

"My problem," Kitty said hastily, "was that you weren't always known as Bartimaeus, so even when you had long, long, very important mentions, I couldn't pick up on it. But the footnote helped me out, you see, because it linked the name I knew—Bartimaeus of Uruk—to two others

—Sakhr al-Jinni (wasn't that your Persian one?) and Wakonda of the Algonquin. After that I was able to get more references to you here and th—I mean, everywhere I looked. And so I proceeded. I learned a bit about some of your tasks and ventures, and discovered the names of several of your masters, which was interesting too."

"Well, I hope you were impressed," the hamster said. It still sounded rather put out.

"Of course," Kitty went on." Very. Did you really speak with Solomon?"

Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 3 - Ptolemy's Gate

The hamster grunted. "Yeah, yeah, only a brief chat." All the same, it seemed a little mollified.

"All the while," Kitty said, "I was learning the art of summoning. My master was rather slow, and I was slower, I'm afraid, but I was gradually getting to the stage when I felt I might call you.

But I still had no clue to the identity of this boy, which was a pity, because I knew he was important to you. And then I suddenly found the vital clue! I discovered your Egyptian name—

Rekhyt—and linked that to the magician Ptolemaeus." She broke off, grinning with triumph.

"Even so," the hamster said, "what did that tell you? I have had a hundred masters, and whether their pentacles have been drawn on the sand or the steppe, the enmity—"

"Yes, yes." Kitty waved the hamster into silence. "That was exactly the point. One account mentioned a close bond between this Ptolemaeus and his slaves. It also mentioned that he was only a boy when he died. That's when it became clear to me. That's when I realized the identity of your favorite guise."

The hamster was busy cleaning one of its toenails. "And what details," it asked lightly, "might the account have given about the relationship between the djinni and the boy? Just out of interest, you understand."

"Not a lot," Kitty admitted. "In fact, nothing. I don't think anything much is known about Ptolemaeus as a person any more. Some of his writing's survived, I believe.They mentioned a thing called 'Ptolemy's Gate,' whatever that is—"

She broke off. The hamster was staring out of the window at the midnight moon. At last it turned its head to her, and as it did so reverted back to the familiar shape of the boy-magician, Ptolemy of Alexandria.

"Enough," the boy said. "What is it you want from me?"

Now that her guess had been confirmed, Kitty found her perception of the djinni's guise had completely changed. It was a curious and disconcerting thing to realize that she was looking into the face of a real boy, two thousand years dead. Previously she had viewed the guise merely as a mask, a costume, one illusion among many. Now, while acknowledging that still to be true, she could not help but sense the ancient presence. That the demon was reproducing the boy accurately she had no doubt: for the first time she noticed two moles on the thin brown neck, a little pale scar running beneath the chin, a particular boniness of the elbows on the slender arms. There was a devotion to detail here that could only come with genuine affection, or perhaps even with love.

This knowledge gave her confidence to proceed.

"Okay," she said, "I'll tell you. But first I want to repeat—I am not going to enslave you.

Whatever your response, I'll set you free."

"That's mighty big of you," the boy said.

Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 3 - Ptolemy's Gate

"All I want is for you to listen fairly to what I have to say."

"Well, if you actually get on with it, I might give it a try." The djinni folded its arms. "I'll tell you one thing that's in your favor, though," it went on ruminatively. "In all the centuries of my burden, not one single magician has been interested enough even to ask about this guise. Why should they? I'm a 'demon,' and therefore willfully perverse. I have no motives but wickedness and temptation. Through general fear and a desire for self-preservation, they never ask me anything about myself. But you have done so. You've found things out. I wouldn't say it was clever, because you're human, but it wasn't a bad effort, all in all. So, then"—it waved a regal hand—"fire away."

"Right." Kitty settled herself comfortably. "I don't know whether you've noticed, but things have been going from bad to worse in London. The magicians are starting to lose control. Commoners are being sent off to fight, trade's being disrupted. There's a lot more poverty and that's led to disruption— thereVe even been riots in some towns. And there's a lot of resentment about...

demons."

"It's as I predicted when we last spoke," the djinni said. "People are starting to notice spirits and uncover their own resilience too. They'll explore the possibilities, then begin fighting back."

Kitty nodded. "But the magicians are responding— the police are cracking down, there's violence, people being arrested and spirited away, worse things even than that."

"It happens," the boy said.

"I think that the magicians will be prepared to carry out terrible deeds," Kitty went on, "in order to remain in power. There are many secret commoners' groups, but they are weak, divided. No one has the strength to oppose the government."

"That will come," the djinni said. "In time."

"But how much time? That's the issue."

"You want a rough guess?" The boy tilted his head, thinking."! reckon another couple of generations will do it. Say fifty years. That'll allow resilience to build up to the required levels for a successful revolt. Fifty years isn't too bad. With luck you might see it happen when you're a sweet, old granny, dandling big fat babies on your knee. Actually"—he held up a hand, interrupting Kitty's cry of protest—"no, that's wrong. My projection is incorrect."

"Good."

"You'll never be a sweet old granny. Let's say, 'sad, lonely old biddy' instead."

Kitty banged her fist against the floor. "Fifty years isn't good enough! Who knows what the magicians will have done by then? My whole life will have gone by! I'll probably be dead when the revolution comes."

Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 3 - Ptolemy's Gate

"True," the boy said. "But I'll still be here to watch it. I'll be exactly the same."

"Yes," Kitty snarled. "Aren't you lucky?"

"You think so?" The boy looked down at his cross-legged form. He was sitting straight-backed, legs folded neatly in the manner of an Egyptian scribe. "It's two thousand, one hundred and twenty-nine years since Ptolemy died," he said. "He was fourteen. Eight world empires have risen up and fallen away since that day, and I still carry his face. Who do you think is the lucky one?"

Kitty made no answer. At length she asked, "Why do you do it? Take on his shape, I mean."

"Because I promised myself," the djinni said. "I'm showing him how he was. Before he changed."

"But I thought he never grew up," Kitty said.

"No. That's right. He didn't."

Kitty opened her mouth to ask a question, but shook her head instead. "We're getting off the point," she said firmly. "I can't afford to wait and watch while the magicians do more wicked things; life's too short. Action is needed now. But we—the people, the commoners—can't unseat the government on our own. We need help."

The boy shrugged. "That may well be."

"So, my idea, or my proposal, really," Kitty said, "is that the djinn and other spirits give us that help." She sat back.

The boy looked at her. "Say again."

"You help us out. After all, like you said just now—we're all victims here, both djinn and commoners. The magicians subjugate us the same whether we're human or spirit. So. We can team up and defeat them."

The boy's face was expressionless. "Just like that?"

"Well, it's not going to be easy, of course. But there's bound to be a way. For instance, if commoners like me can summon important djinn like you, why can't we take on the government together? It needs a bit of thought, and a lot more de— spirits to get involved, but we'd have the advantage of surprise, wouldn't we? And it would be so much more effective for us to fight as an equal force: no slaves, no masters. No scrapping among ourselves or undermining each other. Just smooth cooperation. We'd be unstoppable!"

Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 3 - Ptolemy's Gate

She was leaning forward in the pentacle now; eyes bright and shining with her vision. The boy seemed transfixed too; for a long while he did not answer. At last he spoke. "Insane," he said.

"Nice hair, nice outfit, but quite, quite mad."

Kitty squirmed with frustration. "You just have to listen —"

"Quite a few of my masters over the years have been mad," the boy continued. "I've had religious zealots beating their bottoms with brambles, dead-eyed emperors joylessly committing mass murder, misers lusting after hoards of gold. I've had countless abusers of themselves and others....You are a perverse and unappetizing species. I'll go as far as to say that your particular madness, Kitty, is less harmful than most, but it will lead to your death, and to mine also if I'm not careful, so I'll be frank with you. What you have just suggested is ridiculous in a thousand ways, and if I went through them all, we'd still be here when the British Empire finally does fall. So let me single out two reasons. No djinni, no afrit, no city-trampling marid or skin-tickling mite, will ever, ever team up (as you put it) with any kind of human. Team up... I ask you! Do you see us all wearing the same jersey or something, going into battle hand in hand?"The boy laughed—a harsh, unpleasant sound. "No! We've suffered too much pain for us ever to view a human as an ally."

"That's a lie!" Kitty shouted. "I say again—what about Ptolemy?"

"He was unique!" The boy clenched his fists. "He was the exception. Don't bring him into this!"

"He disproves everything you've said!" Kitty shouted. "Sure, it would be difficult to persuade most demons, but—"

"Difficult? It could never be done!"

"That's what you said about me learning enough to summon you. But I did it!"

"Utterly irrelevant. Let me tell you something. I've been sitting here, talking nicely, keeping pretty manners as a djinni will, but all the time I've been watching you like a hawk, waiting to see if you stuck so much as a toe outside the circle. If you had, I'd have been onto you faster than blinking, and you'd have learned something about humans and demons then, I can tell you."

"Yeah?" Kitty sneered. "Instead of which you stuck your own stupid toe out and blew your skirt off. Which more or less sums up your last few thousand years.You're going nowhere on your own, pal."

"Is that so?"The boy's face was livid with fury. "Well, let me get on to the second reason why your plan's a dud, shall I? Even if I wanted to help you, even if a hundred other djinn almost as potent as me shared that sentiment and wanted nothing better than to cast their lot in with some oat-brained humans, we couldn't. Because the only way we can come to Earth is through summoning. And that means losing free will. It means pain. It means obeying your master. And there's no equality in that equation."

Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 3 - Ptolemy's Gate

"Rubbish," Kitty said. "It doesn't have to be that way."

"Of course it does. What's the alternative? Every summons binds us. That's what they do. Would you seek some way to let us off the leash? With our power? Would you be happy to give us control?"

"Of course," Kitty said stoutly. "If that was what it took."

"You wouldn't! Not in a million years."

"I would. If the trust was there, I'd do it."

"Is that so? Well, why not prove it right now? Step out of your pentacle."

"What?"

"You heard me well enough. Step out, across those lines.Yes, those ones right there. Let's see this trust of yours in action, shall we? Give me power for a moment. Let's see you put your money where your mouth is."

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