Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 1 (40 page)

Few people got on or off the train. I relaxed. Djinn don't doze, but I did the

equivalent, drifting back through the centuries and contemplating some of my happier

moments—magicians' errors, my choice acts of revenge....

This reverie was finally shattered by the boy throwing himself down on the seat

opposite me. "I suppose we'd better plan something," he said sulkily. "How can we get through the defenses?"

"With randomly shifting domes
and
sentries in place," I said, "there's no way we can break in unmolested. We'll need some kind of Trojan horse." He looked blank. "You know—something which seems to be innocent, which they allow in past the gates. In

which we're hiding. Honestly—what
do
they teach you magicians nowadays?"[3]

[3] Obviously not classical history. This ignorance would have upset Faquarl, as it

happens, who often boasted how he'd given Odysseus the idea for the wooden horse in

the first place. I'm sure he was lying, but I can't prove it because I wasn't at Troy: I was in Egypt at the time.

"So, we need to conceal ourselves in something," he grunted. "Any ideas?"

"Nope."

Scowling, he mulled it over. You could almost hear the fleshy innards of his brain

straining. "The guests will arrive tomorrow," he mused. "They have to let them in, so there's bound to be a steady stream of traffic getting through the gates. Perhaps we can hitch a ride in someone's car."

"Perhaps," I said. "But all the magicians will be cloaked to the eyeballs with protective Shields and bug-eyed imps. We'd be hard pushed to sneak anywhere near them

without being spotted."

"What about servants?" he said. "They must get in somehow."

Give him credit—he'd had an idea. "Most of them will be on site already," I said,

"but you're right—some may arrive on the day. Also there are bound to be deliveries of fresh food; and maybe entertainers will come, musicians or jugglers—"

He looked scornful.
"Jugglers?"

"Who's got more experience of magicians—you or me? There are
always

jugglers.[4] But the point is that there will be some nonmagical outsiders entering the manor. So if we get ourselves into position early enough, we might well get a chance to sneak a ride with someone. It's worth a try.

Now... in the meantime, you should sleep. There's a long walk ahead of us when

we get to the station."

[4] They've got the worst taste in the world, magicians. Always have done. Oh,

they keep themselves all suave and sober in public, but give them a chance to relax and do they listen to chamber orchestras? No. They'd rather have a dwarf on stilts or a belly-dancing bearded lady any day. A little-known fact about Solomon the Wise: he was

entertained between judgements by an enthusiastic troupe of Lebanese clowns.

His eyelids looked as if they were made of lead. For once he didn't argue.

I've seen glaciers cover ground more quickly than that train, so in the end he got a

pretty decent kip. But finally we arrived at the station closest to Heddleham Hall. I shook my master awake and we tumbled out of the carriage onto a platform that was being

speedily reclaimed by the forces of nature.

Several varieties of grass grew up through the concrete, while an enterprising

bindweed had colonized the walls and roof of the ramshackle waiting room. Birds nested under the rusty lamps. There was no ticket office and no sign of human life.

The train limped off as if it were going to die under a hedge. Across the track a

white gate led straight onto an unpaved road. Fields stretched away on all sides. I perked up: it felt good to be free of the city's malignant clutches and surrounded by the natural contours of the trees and crops.[5]

[5] Even though they have been scraped and shaped by human will, fields do not

have magicians' stench about them. Throughout history, magicians have been resolutely

urban creatures: they flourish in cities, multiplying like plague rats, running along thickly spun threads of gossip and intrigue like fat-bellied spiders. The nearest that nonurban societies get to magicians are the shamans of North America and the Asian steppe But

they operate so differently that they almost deserve not to be called magicians at all. But their time is past.

"We follow the road," I said. "The hall is at least nine miles away, so we don't have to be on our guard yet. I—what's the matter now?"

The boy was looking quite pale and unsettled. "It's nothing. Just... I'm not used to so much...

space.
I can't see any houses."

"No houses is good. It means no people. No magicians."

"It makes me feel strange. It's so quiet."

Made sense. He'd never been out of the city before now. Never even been in a big

park, most likely. The emptiness terrified him.

I crossed the track and opened the gate. "There's a village beyond those trees. You can get food there and cuddle up to some buildings."

It took my master some time to lose his jitters. It was almost as if he expected the

empty fields or winter bushes to rise like enemies and fall on him, and his head turned constantly against surprise attack. He quaked at every bird call.

Conversely,
I
stayed relaxed for this first part of the journey, precisely
because
the countryside seemed wholly deserted. There was no magical activity of any description,

even in the distant skies.

When we reached the village, we raided its solitary grocery store and pinched

sufficient supplies to keep the boy's stomach happy for the rest of the day. It was a

smallish place, a few cottages clustered around a ruined church, not nearly large enough to have its own resident magician. The few humans we saw ambled around quietly

without so much as an imp in tow. My master was very dismissive of them.

"Don't they realize how vulnerable they are?" he sniffed, as we passed the final cottage. "They've got no defenses. Any magical attack and they'd be helpless."

"Perhaps that's not high on their list of priorities," I suggested. "There are other things to worry about: making a living, for example. Not that you'll have been taught

anything about that."[6]

[6] How true this was. Magicians are essentially parasitic. In societies where they

are dominant, they live well off the strivings of others In those times and places when they lose power and have to earn their own bread, they are generally reduced to a sorry state, performing small conjurations for jeering ale-house crowds in return for a few brass coins.

"Oh no?" he said. "To be a magician is the greatest calling. Our skills and sacrifices hold the country together, and those fools should be grateful we're there."

"Grateful for people like Lovelace, you mean?"

He frowned at this, but did not answer.

It was mid-afternoon before we ran into danger. The first thing my master knew

about it was my throwing myself upon him and bundling us into a shallow ditch beside

the road. I pressed him low against the earth, a little harder than necessary.

He had a mouthful of mud. "Whop you doing?"

"Keep your voice down. A patrol's flying up ahead. North-south."

I indicated a gap in the hedge. A small flock of starlings could be seen drifting far

off across the clouds.

He spat his mouth empty. "I can't make them out."

"On planes five onward they're foliots.[7] Trust me. We have to go carefully from now on."

[7] A variety with five eyes, two on the head, one on either flank, and one—well,

let's just say it would be hard to creep up on him unawares while he was touching his

toes.

The starlings vanished to the south. Cautiously, I got to my feet and scanned the

horizon. A little way ahead a straggling band of trees marked the beginning of an area of woodland. "We'd better get off the road," I said. "It's too exposed here. After nightfall we can get closer to the house." With infinite caution, we squeezed through a gap in the hedge and, after rounding the perimeter of the field beyond, gained the relative safety of the trees. Nothing threatened on any plane.

The wood was negotiated without incident; soon afterward, we crouched on its far

fringes, surveying the land ahead. Before us, the ground fell away slightly, and we had a clear view over the autumn fields, heavily plowed and purple-brown. About a mile

distant, the fields ran themselves out against an old brick boundary wall, much weathered and tumbledown. This, and a low, dark bunching of pine trees behind it, marked the edge of the Heddleham estate. A red dome was visible (on the fifth plane) soaring up from the pines. As I watched, it disappeared; a moment later another, bluish, dome materialized on the sixth plane, somewhat farther off.

Hunched within the trees was the suggestion of a tall arch—perhaps the official

entrance to the manor's grounds. From this arch a road extended, straight as a javelin thrust between the fields, until it reached a crossroads next to a clump of oak trees, half a mile from where we stood. The lane that we had recently been following also terminated at this crossroads. Two other routes led away from it elsewhere.

The sun had not quite disappeared behind the trees and the boy squinted against

its glare. "Is that a sentry?" He pointed to a distant stump halfway to the crossroads.

Something unclear rested upon it: perhaps a motionless, black figure.

"Yes," I said. "Another's just materialized at the edge of that triangular field."

"Oh! The first one's gone."

"I told you—they're randomly materializing. We can't predict where they'll

appear. Do you see that dome?"

"No."

"Your lenses are worse than useless."

The boy cursed. "What do you expect? I don't have your sight, demon. Where is

it?"

"Coarse language will get you nowhere. I'm not telling."

"Don't be ridiculous! I need to know."

"This demon's not saying."

"Where is it?"

"Careful where you stamp your feet. You've trodden in something."

"Just tell me!"

"I've been meaning to mention this for some time. I don't like being called a

demon. Got that?"

He took a deep breath. "Fine."

"Just so you know."

"All right."

"I'm a djinni."

"Yes,
all right.
Where's the dome?"

"It's in the wood. On the sixth plane now, but it'll shift position soon."

"They've made it difficult for us."

"Yes. That's what defenses do."

His face was gray with weariness, but still set and determined. "Well, the

objective's clear. The gateway is bound to mark the official entrance to the estate—the only hole in the protective domes.

That's where they'll check people's identities and passes. If we can get beyond it,

we'll have got inside."

"Ready to be trussed up and killed," I said. "Hurrah."

"The question," he continued, "is how we get in...."

He sat for a long time, shading his eyes with his hand, watching as the sun sank

behind the trees and the fields were swathed in cold green shadow. At irregular intervals, sentries came and went without trace (we were too far away to smell the sulfur).

A distant sound drew our attention back to the roads. Along the one that led to the

horizon, something that from a mile away looked like a black matchbox came roaring: a

magician's car, speeding between the hedges, honking its horn imperiously at every

corner. It reached the crossroads, slowed to a halt and—safely assured that nothing was coming—turned right along the road to Heddleham. As it neared the gateway, two of the

sentries bounded toward it at great speed across the darkened fields, robes fluttering behind them like tattered rags. Once they reached the hedges bordering the road they

went no further, but kept pace beside the car, which presently drew close to the gateway in the trees. The shadows here were very thick, and it was hard to glimpse what

happened. The car pulled up in front of the gate. Something approached it. The sentries hung back at the lip of the trees. Presently, the car proceeded on its way, through the arch and out of sight. Its drone faded on the evening air. The sentries flitted back into the fields.

The boy sat back and stretched his arms. "Well," he said, "that tells us what we need to do."

35

The crossroads was the place for the ambush. Any vehicles approaching it had to

slow down for fear of accident, and it was concealed from the distant Heddleham

gateway by a thick clump of oaks and laurel. This also promised good cover for lurking.

Accordingly, we made our way there that night. The boy crawled along the base

of the hedges beside the road. I flitted in front of him in the guise of a bat.

No sentries materialized beside us. No watchers flew overhead. The boy reached

the crossroads and burrowed into the undergrowth below the biggest oak tree. I hung

from a bough, keeping watch.

My master slept, or tried to. I observed the rhythms of the night: the fleeting

movements of owl and rodent, the scruffles of foraging hedgehogs, the prowling of the

restive djinn. In the hours before dawn, the cloud cover drifted away and the stars shone down. I wondered whether Lovelace was reading their import from the roof of the hall,

and what they told him. The night grew chill. Frost sparkled across the fields.

All at once, it struck me that my master would be suffering greatly from the cold.

A pleasant hour passed. Then another thought struck me. He might actually freeze

to death in his hiding place. That would be no good: I'd never escape the tin. Reluctantly, I spiraled down into the bushes and went in search of him.

To my grudging relief, he was still alive, if somewhat blue in the face. He was