A flurry of air beside her, a lightly descending figure. The demon Bartimaeus folded its gauzy wings behind its back and nodded to her politely. Kitty flinched.
“Oh, don’t worry,” the boy said. “My orders were to prevent your leaving in that car. Go anywhere near it and I’ll have to stop you. Otherwise, do whatever you like.”
Kitty frowned. “What’s happening? What’s this darkness?”
The boy sighed ruefully. “Remember that golem I mentioned? It’s turned up. Somebody has decided to intervene. No prizes for guessing why. That wretched Staff is the root of all our trouble.” It peered out through the smog. “Which reminds me …What’s he—Oh, he’s not. Tell me he’s not … He is as well. The little idiot.”
“What?”
“My dear master. He’s trying to activate the Staff.”
Roughly opposite them, not far from the limousine, the magician John Mandrake had retreated to stand against a wall. Ignoring the activities of the skeleton—it was now prancing back and forth across the cobblestone, declaiming insults against the ever-advancing cloud—he leaned upon the Staff, head bowed, eyes seemingly closed, as if asleep. Kitty thought she could see his lips moving, mouthing words.
“This is not going to end well,” the demon said. “If he’s trying some simple activation, without Reinforcement or Muting spells, he’s asking for trouble. He hasn’t a clue how much energy it contains. Two marids’ worth at least. Overambition, that’s always been his problem.” It shook its head sadly.
Kitty understood little of this and cared even less. “Please … Bartimaeus—is that your name? How can we get out? Can you help us? You could break through a wall.”
The boy’s dark eyes appraised her. “Why should I do that?”
“Erm …You … you don’t mean us harm. You’ve just been following orders …” She did not sound very confident.
The boy scowled. “I’m a wicked demon. You said so. Anyway, even if I wished to help you, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves right now. Our friend the afrit has forgotten us for the moment. He’s remembered the Siege of Prague, when golems like this one caused havoc among Gladstone’s troops.”
“It’s doing something,” Jakob whispered. “The skeleton …”
“Yes. Heads down.” For some moments, the cloud of darkness had paused in its advance, as if considering the antics of the capering skeleton before it. As they watched, it seemed to make a decision. Tendrils flowed forward, in the vague direction of Mandrake and the Staff. At this, the skeleton raised an arm: a brilliant stream of pale light shot out and slammed into the cloud. There was a muffled thump, as of an explosion behind strong doors; fragments of black cloud dispersed in all directions, twisting and melting away in the suddenly renewed warmth of the morning sun.
Bartimaeus made an appreciative sound. “Not bad, not bad. Won’t help him, though.”
Jakob and Kitty caught their breath. Standing in the center of the courtyard they saw revealed a giant figure, man-shaped but much greater, stocky and crude of limb, a colossal slablike head perched upon its shoulders. It seemed put out by the destruction of its cloud; it swung its arms uselessly, as if trying to scoop the darkness back around itself. Failing in this endeavor, and studiously ignoring the whoops of triumph uttered by the skeleton, it set off with lumbering steps across the courtyard.
“Mmm, Mandrake had better hurry with his conjuration …” Bartimaeus said. “Whoops, there goes Honorius again.”
“Keep back!” The skeleton’s cry echoed across the courtyard. “The Staff is my property! I defy you! I have not guarded it for a hundred years to see some coward rob me. I see you staring through that eye! I shall pluck it out and crush it in my fist!” With this, it fired several blasts of magic at the golem, which absorbed them without any ill effect.
The stone figure strode on. Kitty could see the details of the head more clearly now: two nominal eyes and above them a larger, far more defined third eye, planted in the center of the forehead. This swiveled left and right; it shone like a white flame. The mouth below was little more than a corrugated hole, token and useless. The demon’s words came back to her—somewhere in that terrible mouth was the magical paper that gave the monster its power.
A scream of defiance. Honorius the afrit, apoplectic at the failure of its magic, had flung itself forward into the path of the advancing golem. Dwarfed by the great figure, the skeleton bent its knees and sprang; as it did so, magical energies erupted from its mouth and hands. It landed directly on the golems chest, bony arms circling the neck, legs twining around the torso. Blue flames erupted where it touched. The golem stopped dead, raised a massive clublike hand, and seized the skeleton by a shoulder blade.
For a long moment, the two adversaries remained locked, motionless, in utter silence. The flames licked higher. There was a smell of burning, a radiation of the utmost cold.
Then, all at once—a rush of sound, a pulse of blue light …
The skeleton shattered.
Fragments of bone shot out across the cobblestones like a squall of hail.
“Strange …” Bartimaeus was seated cross-legged on the ground. He had the look of a fascinated spectator. “That was really very strange. Honorius didn’t need to do that, you know. It was totally foolhardy, a suicidal act—though brave, of course. Despite being mad, he must have known it would destroy him, don’t you think? Golems negate our magic, pulverize our essences, even when encased in bone. Very odd. Perhaps he was tired of this world after all. Do you understand it, Kitty Jones?”
“Kitty …” This was Jakob, plucking urgently at her sleeve. “The exit’s clear. We can slip away.”
“Yes …” She snatched another look across at Mandrake. Eyes closed, he was still reciting the words of some spell.
“Come on …”
The golem had been stationary since the destruction of the skeleton. Now it moved again. Its watch-eye glittered, swiveled, fixed upon Mandrake and the Staff.
“Looks like Mandrake’s for it.” Bartimaeus’s voice was neutral, matter-of-fact.
Kitty shrugged and began to inch after Jakob, along the edge of the wall.
Just then, Mandrake looked up. At first he seemed oblivious of the coming danger; then his gaze fell upon the advancing golem. His face broadened into a smile. He held the Staff out before him and spoke a single word. A nebulous light of pinks and purples drifted around the body of the Staff, rising toward its top. Kitty paused in her inching. A soft reverberation, a humming—as of a thousand bees trapped underground—a tremble in the air; the ground shook slightly.
“He can’t have,” Bartimaeus said. “He can’t have mastered it. Not the first time.”
The boy’s smile widened. He pointed Gladstone’s Staff toward the golem, which paused uncertainly. Colored lights played about the carvings on the Staff; the boy’s face was alive with their radiance and a terrible joy. In a deep, commanding voice, he uttered a complex charm. The Flux about the Staff flared. Kitty screwed up her eyes, half looked away; the golem rocked back on its heels. The Flux wobbled, sputtered, shot back down the Staff and along the magician’s arm. His head jerked back; he was lifted bodily off his feet and straight into the wall behind him with a melancholy thud.
The boy sprawled on the ground, tongue lolling. The Staff clattered from his hand.
“Ah.” Bartimaeus nodded sagely. “He hadn’t mastered it. Thought as much.”
“Kitty!” Jakob was already some way off along the wall. He was gesticulating furiously. “While there’s still time.”
The giant clay figure had resumed its stately progress toward the prone figure of the magician. Kitty made to follow Jakob, then turned back to Bartimaeus.
“What’s going to happen?”
“Now? After my master’s little error? Simple enough. You’ll run off. The golem will kill Mandrake, grab the Staff, and take it to whichever magician’s watching through that eye.”
“And you? You won’t help him?”
“I’m powerless against the golem. I’ve tried once already. Besides, when you were escaping just now, my master overruled all his previous charges—which included my duty to protect him. If Mandrake dies, I go free. It’s hardly in my interest to help the idiot out.”
The golem was drawing abreast of the limousine now, nearing the body of the chauffeur. Kitty looked again at Mandrake, lying unconscious by the wall. She bit her lip and turned away.
“I don’t have free will most of the time, you see,” the demon said behind her loudly. “So when I do, I’m hardly likely to act in a way that injures myself, if I can help it. That’s what makes me superior to muddled humans like you. It’s called common sense. Anyway, off you go,” it added. “Your resilience might well not work against the golem. It’s refreshing to see you doing exactly what I would do and getting out while the going’s good.”
Kitty blew her cheeks out and took a few steps more. She looked back over her shoulder again. “Mandrake wouldn’t have helped me,” she said.
“Exactly. You’re a smart girl. Off you go and leave him to die.”
She looked at the golem. “It’s too big. I could never tackle it.”
“Especially once it’s past that limousine.”
“Oh, hell.” Then Kitty was running, not toward the stricken Jakob, but out across the cobblestones, toward the lumbering giant. She ignored the pain and numbness in her shoulder, ignored her friend’s despairing shouts; most of all, she ignored the voices in her head ridiculing her, screaming out the danger, the futility of her action. She put her head down, increased her speed. She was no demon, no magician—she was better than they were. Greed and self-interest were not her only concerns. She scampered around the back of the golem, close enough to see the rough smears on the surface of the stone, to smell the terrible wet earthen taint that drifted in its wake. She leaped onto the bonnet of the limousine, ran along it, level with the torso of the monster.
The sightless eyes stared forward, like those of a dead fish; above them, the third eye sparkled with malign intelligence. Its gaze was fixed firmly upon Mandrake’s body; it did not perceive Kitty, at its side, jumping with all her strength to land upon the golem’s back.
The extreme cold of the surface made her gasp with pain: even with her resilience, it was like plunging into an icy stream—her breath left her, every nerve stung. Her head swam with the earthen stench, bile rose in her throat. She flung her good arm around the golem’s shoulder, clung desperately. Each footstep threatened to shake her free.
She had expected the golem to reach up and tear her off, but it did not do so. The eye did not see her; its controller could not feel her weight on the creature’s body.
Kitty reached forward with her wounded arm; her shoulder throbbed, making her cry out. She bent her elbow, reached around the front of the face, feeling for the great gaping mouth. That was what the demon had said: a manuscript, a paper, lodged inside. Her fingers touched the ice-cold stone of the face; her eyes rolled, she almost blacked out.
It was no good. She couldn’t reach the mouth—
The golem stopped. With surprising suddenness, its back began to bend. Kitty was flung forward, almost headfirst over its shoulders. She had a brief glimpse of the lumpen hand below reaching out and down toward the unconscious boy: it would seize him by the neck, snap it like a twig.
Still the back bent. Kitty began to topple; her grip failed. Her fingers slapped frantically against the great flat face and, all at once, lit upon the cavity of the mouth; they thrust inside. Rough cold stone … jagged snags that might almost have been teeth … something else, of a soft coarseness. She grasped at it, and in the same moment, lost all purchase on the creature’s back. She tumbled forward over its shoulder, landing heavily on the prone figure of the boy.
She lay on her back, opened her eyes, and screamed.
The golem’s face was right above her: the gaping mouth, the sightless eyes, the third eye fixed upon her, alive with fury. As she watched, the fury dimmed. The intelligence went out. The eye in the forehead was nothing but a clay oval, intricately carved, but dull and lifeless.
Kitty raised her head stiffly, looked at her left hand.
A scroll of yellow parchment was clutched between her finger and thumb.
Painfully, Kitty propped herself up on her elbows. The golem was completely frozen, one fist inches from John Mandrake’s face. The stonework was cracked and pitted; it might have been a statue. It no longer radiated extreme cold.
“Mad. Quite mad.” The Egyptian boy was standing beside her, hands on hips, shaking its head gently. “You’re as mad as that afrit was. Still”—it indicated the magician’s body—“at least you got a soft landing.”
Behind the demon, she saw Jakob approaching diffidently, wide-eyed. Kitty groaned. Her shoulder wound was bleeding again, and every muscle in her body seemed to ache. With laborious care she righted herself and stood, hauling herself up by pulling on the golem’s outstretched hand.
Jakob was gazing down at John Mandrake. Gladstone’s Staff lay across his breast. “Is he dead?” He sounded hopeful.
“He’s still breathing, more’s the pity.” The demon sighed; looked sidelong at Kitty. “By your foolhardy actions you’ve condemned me to further toil.” It glanced into the sky. “I would take issue with you, but there were some search spheres here earlier. I think the golem’s cloud caused them to retreat, but they’ll be back—and soon. It would be best if you depart with haste.”
“Yes.” Kitty took a few steps, then remembered the parchment in her hand. With sudden disgust she loosened her fingers; it drifted to the cobblestones.
“What about the Staff?” Bartimaeus said. “You could take it, you know. No one’s here to stop you.”
Kitty frowned, glanced back at it. It was a formidable object, she knew that much. Mr. Pennyfeather would have taken it. So would Hopkins, the benefactor, Honorius the afrit, Mandrake himself… Many others had died for it. “I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s no good to me.”
She turned away, began hobbling after Jakob toward the arch. She half expected the demon to call to her again, but it did not do so. In less than a minute, Kitty was at the arch. As she rounded it, she looked back and saw the dark-skinned boy still staring after her across the courtyard. A moment later he was out of view.
46
A sudden ice-cold shock; Nathaniel gasped, sputtered, opened his eyes. The Egyptian boy stood over him, lowering a dripping pail. Freezing water ran into Nathaniel’s ears, nostrils, and open mouth; he tried to speak, coughed, retched, coughed again, and rolled onto his side, conscious of a wrenching pain in his stomach and a dull tingling in every muscle. He groaned.
“Rise and shine.” That was the djinni’s voice. It sounded extremely cheerful.
Nathaniel raised a shaking hand to the side of his head. “What happened? I feel … terrible.”
“You look it too, believe me. You were hit by a considerable magical backlash through the Staff. Your brains and body will be even more addled than usual for a while, but you’re lucky to be alive.”
Nathaniel tried to lever himself into a sitting position. “The Staff…”
“The magical energies have been gradually ebbing through your system,” the djinni went on. “Your skin’s been steaming gently and the end of each hair’s been glowing at the tip. A remarkable sight. Your aura’s gone haywire, too. Well, it’s a delicate process, ridding yourself of a charge like that. I wanted to wake you straightaway, but I knew I had to wait several hours to ensure you were safely recovered.”
“What! How long has it been?”
“Five minutes. I got bored.”
Recent memories flooded back into Nathaniel’s mind.
“The golem! I was trying to—”
“Overcome a golem? An almost impossible task for any djinni or magician, and doubly so when operating an artifact as subtle and powerful as that Staff. You did well to activate it at all. Be thankful it wasn’t charged enough to kill yo
u.”
“But the golem! The Staff! … Oh no—” With sudden horror, Nathaniel realized the implications. With both of them gone, he’d have failed utterly, he would be helpless before his enemies. With great weariness, he put his head in his hands, scarcely troubling to stifle the beginnings of a sob.
A hard, firm toe jabbed him sharply on his leg. “If you had the wit to look around you,” the djinni said, “you might see something to your advantage.”
Nathaniel opened his eyes, peeled his fingers away. He looked; what he saw practically jolted him clear of the cobblestones. Not two feet from where he sat, the golem towered against the sky; it was bent toward him, its clawing hand so close he might touch it, the head lowered menacingly; but the spark of life had vanished from it. It had no more motion than a statue or a lamppost.
And propped up against one of its legs, so casually it might almost have been a gentleman’s cane: the Staff of Gladstone.
Nathaniel frowned and looked, and frowned some more, but the solution to this puzzle quite eluded him.
“I’d close your mouth,” the djinni advised him. “Some passing bird might use it as a nest.”
With difficulty, as his muscles seemed like water, Nathaniel got to his feet. “But how …?”
“Isn’t it a poser?” The boy grinned. “How do you think it happened?”
“I must have done it, just before I lost control.” Nathaniel nodded slowly; yes, that was the only possible solution. “I was trying to immobilize the golem, and I must have succeeded, just as the backlash happened.” He began to feel rather better about himself.
The djinni snorted long and loud. “Guess again, sonny. What about the girl?”