23
1 This is one of Prague’s odd qualities: something in its atmosphere, perhaps caused by five centuries of gloomy sorcery, brings out the macabre potential of every object, no matter how mundane.
2 See what I mean?
3 I was involved in constructing the Stone Bridge, the noblest of all, back in 1357. Nine of us performed the task, as required, in a single night, fixing the foundations with the usual sacrifice: the entombment of a djinni. We drew straws for the “honor” as dawn broke. Poor Humphrey is presumably there still, bored rigid, though we gave him a pack of cards with which to pass the time.
4 In Rudolf’s time, when the Holy Roman Empire was at its height and six afrits patrolled the newly fashioned walls of Prague, the Jewish community here supplied the Emperor with most of his money and much of his magic. Forcibly restricted to the crowded alleys of the ghetto, and at once distrusted and relied on by the rest of Prague society, the Jewish magicians grew powerful for a time. Since pogroms and slander against their people were commonplace, their magic was largely defensive in outlook—as exemplified by the great magician Loew, who created the first golem to protect the Jews against attack by human and djinni alike.
5 Actually, it made me shiver a little, too, but for different reasons. Earth was very strong here—its power extended upward into the air, leaching my energies away. Djinn were not welcome; it was a private place, working to a different magic.
6 They were weak defenses. An armless imp could have pried his way through. As a center of magic, Prague was a century into a steep decline.
7 For complex reasons possibly connected with astronomy and the angle of Earth’s orbit, it is at the twin points of midnight and noon that the seven planes draw closest together, allowing sensitive humans glimpses of activity that would normally be invisible to them. At these times, therefore, there is the most talk of ghosts, specters, black dogs, doppelgängers, and other revenants—which are generally imps or foliots doing errands in one guise or another. Because night particularly stimulates human imagination (such as it is), people pay less attention to apparitions at noon, but they’re still present: flickering figures glimpsed in heat haze; passersby who on inspection lack a shadow; pale faces in the midst of crowds, which, when you look directly, are nowhere to be seen.
27
1 Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), magician, astronomer, and duelist, perhaps the least offensive of my masters. Well, in fact quite possibly the most offensive, if you were one of his human contemporaries, since Tycho was a passionate fellow, forever getting into fights and trying to kiss friends’ wives. That was how he lost his nose, incidentally—it was cut off by a lucky stroke during a duel over a woman. I fashioned him a fine gold replacement, together with a delicate tufted stick for burnishing the nostrils, and with this won his friendship. Thereafter he summoned me mainly when he fancied a good conversation.
2 Mortal food clogs our essences something chronic. If we do devour anything—such as a human, say—it generally has to be still alive, so that its living essence galvanizes our own. This outweighs the burden of ingesting the useless bone and flesh. Sorry—not putting you off your tea, am I?
3 As a rough rule of thumb, the jazzier the uniform, the less powerful the army. In its golden age, Prague’s soldiers wore sober outfits with little decoration; now, to my disgust, they minced about under a heavy weight of pompous finery: a fluffy epaulette here, an extra brass knobble there. You could hear their metal bits jingling like bells on cats’ collars from far off down the street. Contrast that with London’s Night Police: their outfits were the color of river-sludge, yet they were the ones to fear.
4 Just as silver is deeply poisonous to our essences, so is it capable of cutting through many of our magical defenses like a hot knife through butter. Low in magic though Prague had now become, it seemed they hadn’t forgotten all the old tricks. Not that silver bullets were mainly used on djinn in the old days—they were generally employed against a hairier enemy.
5 I could almost hear old Tycho urging me on. He loved a gamble, Tycho did. He once bet me my freedom that I couldn’t jump across the Vltava in a single bound on a given day. If I succeeded he was mine to do with as I wished. Of course, the cunning hound had calculated the date of the spring tides in advance. On the given day, the river burst its banks and flooded a much wider area than normal. I landed hooves first in the drink, much to my master’s cruel amusement. He laughed so hard his nose fell off.
28
1 Each lantern contained a sealed glass pod in which an irritable imp resided. The Master of Lamps, an hereditary official among the court magicians, stalked along the hillside each afternoon, instructing his captives in the colors and intensity required for the night to come. By subtle phrasing of each charge, the nuances achieved could be subtle or spectacular, but were always in accordance with the mood at court.
2 A fabled pebble accredited with the ability to turn base metals into gold or silver. Its existence is, of course, utter moonshine, as might be discovered by asking any imp. We djinn can alter the appearance of things by casting a Glamour or an Illusion; but to permanently shift the true nature of something is quite impossible. But humans never listen to something that doesn’t suit them, and countless lives were expended on this futile search.
3 The magicians came from all over the known world—from Spain, from Britain, from snowbound Russia, from the fringes of the Indian deserts—in the hope of winning incalculable reward. Each was master of a hundred arts, each the tormentor of a dozen djinn. Each drove their slaves for years in the great quest; each, in turn, failed utterly. One by one, their beards turned gray, their hands weakened and palsied, their robes grew faded and discolored from ceaseless summonings and experiments. One by one, they tried to give up their positions, only to find Rudolf was unwilling to let them go. Those who attempted to slip away found soldiers waiting for them on the castle steps; others, attempting a magical departure, discovered a strong nexus around the castle, sealing them in. They did not escape. Many ended in the dungeons; the rest took their own lives. It was, to those of us spirits who watched the process, a deeply moral tale: our captors had been caught in the prison of their own ambitions.
4 A type of conjuration formed by an expiration of air from the mouth and a magic sign. Not remotely connected to the Noisome Wind, which is created in a rather different way.
5 Very subtle, it was. Seventh plane only, the thinnest of thin threads. Anyone could have missed it.
6 He didn’t just have a skullcap on; he wore other clothes as well. Just in case you were getting excited. Look, I’ll get to the details later; it’s a narrative momentum thing.
7 See? He had a dressing gown on. And pajamas, for that matter. All perfectly respectable.
8 Also the rude ones, which might have upset the kid.
9 I speculate that these symbolize the power of earth (black) and the blood of the magician (red), which gives that earth its life. But this is only speculation: I am not privy to golem magic.
33
1 That used to bring the house down in the Yucatán, where you’d see the priests tumbling down the pyramid steps or diving into alligator-infested lakes to escape my mesmerizing sway. Didn’t have quite the same effect on the boy here. In response to my undulating menace, he yawned, picked his teeth with a finger and began scribbling in a notepad. Is it me, or have kids today simply seen too much?
2 I’d had a few close encounters with Gladstone’s afrits during his war of conquest and it was fair to say I wasn’t anxious for another. They were a prickly lot, in general, made restless and aggressive by unpleasant treatment. Of course, even if this afrit had started out with the loving personality of a gentle babe (unlikely), it would not have been improved by a century’s inhumation in a tomb.
3 I had no information on the trousers so far.
4 Several of us hovering nearby had been half-watching with the detached interest of the connoisseur. It’s always interesting to study one another?
??s styles when you get the chance, since you never know when you might pick up a new tip on presentation. In my youth, I was always one for the dramatic entrance. Now, in keeping with my character, I gravitate more toward the subtle and refined. Okay, with the occasional feathered serpent thrown in.
5 This guise suggested the djinni’s career had included a spell in the Hindu Kush. Amazing how these influences stay with you.
6 The words of a summons act as crucial reinforcements of the runes and lines drawn upon the floor. They create invisible bands of power that circle the pentacle, knotting and reknotting, and looping in upon themselves, until an impassable boundary is formed. However, just one word a smidgen out of place can leave a fatal weakness in the whole defense. As Tallow was about to discover.
34
1 In the 1860s, when Gladstone’s own remarkable health and vigor were fading, the old codger had endowed his Staff with considerable power, the better for him to access easily. It ended up containing several entities, whose natural aggression was exaggerated by being cooped up together in a single thimble-sized node within the wood. The resulting weapon was perhaps the most formidable since the glory days of Egypt. I’d glimpsed it from afar during Gladstone’s wars of conquest, carving the night with sickle-shaped bursts of light. I’d seen the old man’s silhouette, static, high-shouldered, holding the Staff, he and it the single fixed points within the parabolas of fire. Everything within its range—forts, palaces, well-built walls—it pounded into dust; even the afrits cringed before its power. And now this Kitty had pinched it. I wondered if she knew precisely what she’d got herself into.
2 There were plenty more incredibly intelligent thoughts, which I won’t bother troubling your pretty little heads with. Take it from me it was all good, damn good.
3 It is a simple fact that, upon materializing in the human world, we have to take on some form or other, even if it is just a drift of smoke or a dribble of liquid. Although some of us have the power to be invisible on the lower planes, on the higher, we must reveal a semblance: that is part of the cruel binding wrought by the magicians. Since we have no such definite forms in the Other Place, the strain of doing this is considerable and gives us pain; the longer we remain here, the worse that pain gets, although changing form can alleviate these symptoms temporarily. What we don’t do is “possess” material objects: the less we have to do with earthen things the better, and anyway, this procedure is strictly forbidden by the terms of our summoning.
4 Less trendy was the bony patella poking out.
5 One was my friend from the mass summoning—the bird with stilt legs. The other was shaped like a pot-bellied orangutan. Good honest traditional forms, in other words; no messing about with moldy bones for them.
6 You could tell Honorius was far gone by the fact that he evidently hadn’t bothered checking through the planes. If he had, he’d have seen that I was an imp only on the first three planes. On the rest, I was Bartimaeus, in all my lustrous glory.
7 I have to say that his ramblings were not without interest, in an odd sort of way. Since time out of mind, every one of us, from the toughest marid to the smallest imp, has been cursed by the twin problems of obedience and pain. We have to obey the magicians, and it hurts us to do it. Through Gladstone’s injunction, Honorius seemed to have found a way out of this cruel vise. But he had lost his sanity in the process. Who would rather stay on Earth than return home?
8 My six imp’s fingers came in handy here; each one had a small sucker on the end.
9 The lorry, which was delivering a cargo of melons somewhere, careered into the glass front of a fishmonger’s, sending an avalanche of ice and halibut cascading out onto the pavement. The trap at the back of the lorry opened, and the melons bounced out into the street, where, following a natural incline, they gathered pace along the road. Several bicycles were upended, or forced sideways into the gutter, before the melons’ descent was halted by a glassware store at the foot of the hill. The few pedestrians who managed to avoid the rolling missiles were subsequently knocked flying by the horde of alley cats converging on the fish shop.
10 Imagine the discomfort of closely approaching a raging fire: this was the effect so much silver had on me—except that it was cold.
11 Cleopatra’s Needle: a sixty-foot Egyptian obelisk, weighing 180-odd tons, that has nothing to do with Cleopatra at all. I should know, since I was one of the workers who erected it for Tuthmosis III in 1475 B.C. As we’d plunked it in the sand at Heliopolis, I was rather surprised when I saw it in London 3,500 years later. I suppose someone pinched it. You can’t take your eyes off anything these days.
37
1 There was the sad overthrow of Akhenaton, for instance. Nefertiti never forgave me for that, but what could I do? Blame the High Priests of Ra, not me. Then there was that uncomfortable business of Solomon’s magic ring, which one of his rivals charged me to pinch and chuck into the sea. I needed some fast talking on that occasion, I can tell you. Then there were all the other countless assassinations, abductions, thefts, slanders, intrigues, and deceits … come to think of it, actual bona fide nonshabby assignments are rather few and far between.
2 Well, all right: perpetual.
3 I rejected this procedure on aesthetic grounds also. I dislike leaving a mess.
41
1 This chronic unreliability is one of the reasons werewolves get such bad press. As is the fact that they’re ravenous, savage, bloodthirsty and very poorly house-trained. Lycaon of Arcadia assembled the first wolf corps as his personal bodyguard, way back about 2000 B.C., and despite the fact that they promptly ate several of his houseguests, the notion of their fulfilling a useful enforcing role stuck fast. Many tyrannical rulers who had recourse to magic have used them ever since: casting complex transformation spells over suitably brawny humans, keeping them in isolation, and sometimes carrying out breeding programs to improve the strain. As with so much else, it was Gladstone who inaugurated the British Night Police; he knew their worth as instruments of fear.
2 Indian elephants, usually. The rocs lived on remote isles in the Indian Ocean, appearing inland infrequently in search of prey. Their nests were an acre across, their eggs vast white domes visible far out across the sea. The adults were formidable opponents, and sank most ships sent out to pillage the nesting sites by dropping rocks from great heights. The caliphs paid huge sums for rocs’ feathers, cut by stealth from the breasts of sleeping birds.
3 As exemplified by Icarus, an early pioneer of flight. According to Faquarl, who admittedly wasn’t the most reliable of sources, the Greek magician Daedalus constructed a pair of magical wings, each one housing a short-tempered foliot. These wings were tested by Icarus, a fey and facetious youth, who made cheap remarks at the foliots’ expense while at several thousand feet above the Aegean. In protest, they loosed their feathers one by one, sending Icarus and his witticisms plummeting to a watery grave.
4 We were about six feet up. Hey, she was young and bouncy.
5 If not particularly inventive. I was tired and out of sorts.
6 Actually, it was grinning already, grinning being one of the few things skulls do really well.
7 You know the trick. The clever mortal convinces the stupid djinni to squeeze inside a bottle (or some other confined space), then stoppers him up and refuses to let him out unless he grants three wishes, etc., etc. Ho hum. Unlikely as it may seem, however, if the djinni enters the bottle of his own free will this entrapment actually has a fair degree of power. But even the smallest, doziest imp is unlikely to fall for this chestnut today.
8 Take it as a mark of respect for what he did for me.
9 Only a few, such as old Faquarl, openly (and hopelessly) plot revolt. But they’ve been wittering on about it for so long without results that no one pays any attention.
44
1 Lesser spirits such as this are often small-minded and vengeful, and take any opportunity to discomfort a human in their power with talk of bloodcurdling tortures. Others
have an endless roster of smutty jokes. It’s a toss-up which is worse.
2 Unaccountable as this was. He seemed a bit wet to me.
3 Not that I would have, of course. Humans and their sad little affairs are nothing to do with me. If I’d had the option of helping the girl out or dematerializing straight off, I’d probably have vanished with a ringing laugh and a gout of brimstone in her eye. Charming as she was, it never pays a djinni to get close to people. Never. Take it from one who knows.
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.