Ptolemy's Gate (51 page)

“Kitty!” that great galumphing elephant of a voice cried. “I feel such energy!”

Her voice came to me slightly muffled, refracted through his ears. “Tell me! What does it feel like?”

“It ripples through me! I feel so light! I could leap to the stars!”
⁵
He hesitated, as if embarrassed at his unmagicianish enthusiasm. “Kitty,” he said, “do I look any different?”

“No … Except you're less stooped. Can you open your eyes?”

He opened them for the first time and I looked out. It was an odd double vision to begin with; for a moment it was all blurred and vague. I suppose that was his human vision—so weak and halting! Then I shifted my essence into alignment and things got clearer. I ratcheted through the seven planes and heard Nathaniel gasp.

“You'd never believe it!” he bellowed in my ear. “Kitty! It's like everything's got more colors, more dimensions. And around you there's such a
glow
!”

That was her aura. Always stronger than average, since her visit to the Other Place it had waxed into noonday splendor. Just as Ptolemy's had done. I never saw another human one like it. Ripples of wonder ran through Nathaniel's body; his brain fizzed with it. “You're so
beautiful
!” he said.

“Oh, only now?” He'd really fallen into that one. It was the tone of stupefied amazement that had sunk him.
⁶

“No! I only meant—”

I thought it was time to assert myself. The poor sap wasn't doing so well on his own. I took control of his larynx. “Do you mind keeping your voice down?” I said. “I can't hear yourself think.”

He went very quiet then. They both did. I felt him raise a hand to his mouth, as if he'd just hiccuped in company.

“That's right,” I said. “Me. What, did you think I'd be all nice and quiet for you? Think again, sonny. There are two of us in this body now. Check this out.”

To prove my point I lifted one of his fingers and methodically picked his nose. He uttered a squawk of protest. “Stop that!”

I lowered the arm. “That's not all I can do if I put your mind to it. Sheesh … it's a strange little world in here … Like being dunked in chocolate mousse, except without the nice flavor. Some of your thoughts, Nathaniel …
Well!
If Kitty only knew.…”

He wrested control of his mouth again. “Enough!
I'm
in charge. We agreed that. We must act in harmony, or risk destruction.”

Kitty spoke from her chair. “He's right, Bartimaeus. We've wasted too much time already.You've got to work together.”

“Fine,” I said, “but he needs to listen to
me.
I know more about Faquarl and Nouda than he does. I'll be able to preempt their actions. And I can move his body around all right. Watch this….”

I'd figured out the leg muscles nicely; I bent them, stretched them—my essence did the rest. From a standing start we leaped over the desk to the far side of the room.

“Not bad, eh?” I chuckled. “Smooth as silk.” I bent the legs again, gave a stretch … At exactly the same time the magician attempted to walk in the opposite direction. Our body floundered, one leg up in the air, the other about 170 degrees akimbo from it. We did the splits, uttered harmonic cries of mild discomfort, and crashed upon the carpet.

“Yeah,” Kitty said. “
Really
smooth.”

I allowed Nathaniel to organize the business of getting to his feet again. “I
knew
that would happen,” he snarled. “This is hopeless.”

“You just don't like taking orders,” I snapped back. “Don't like your slave calling the shots. Once a magician, always a—”

“Quiet,” Kitty said. Whether it was her aura or not, something about her nowadays brooked no argument. We stood quiet and let her speak. “If you took a moment to stop squabbling,” she went on, “you'd see that you're acting together far better than Nouda and the others are managing in their stolen bodies. Faquarl was at home in Hopkins, but
he'd
had practice. The others were almost helpless.”

“She's right.…” Nathaniel said. “Nouda couldn't walk.”

It took a djinni to get to the nub of the matter. “There are two crucial differences,” I said. “I haven't destroyed your mind. That's
got
to help. Also, I know your birth name. I'll bet that gives me deeper access to you than the other spirits can hope to gain. There you go, you see. I
knew
it would come in useful one day.”

The magician scratched his chin. “Maybe …”

Our philosophical speculations were curtailed by an impatient cry. “Whatever,” Kitty said. “Just tell each other what you plan and you should avoid stupid pratfalls. Now—how about the
Staff
?”

How
about
the Staff? All this time we had held it in our fist, and even through Nathaniel's insulating bones and flesh I could feel its immanence. I sensed the restless writhing of the great beings trapped inside it, dimly heard their pleading to be free. The locks and binding seals that Gladstone had wrought upon the wood were still as strong as the day he fixed them. Fortunate, that—since, if released all at once, the pent-up energies would have leveled a city block.
⁷

Kitty was watching us narrowly. “Do you think you can activate it?”

“Yes,” we said.

Nathaniel held the Staff with both hands. (I allowed him to manipulate our limbs here. This was his moment—we needed
his
formula to start the process, his direction. I was just providing the extra energies, the strength behind his will.) We stood with legs slightly apart, body braced for the impact. He began to speak. While he did so, I looked through his eyes around the little room. There was Kitty, sitting in the chair. Her aura more than matched the Staff's. Beyond was a doorway, broken in by some small blast. Piled up on the floor were several Inferno sticks and elemental spheres. Nathaniel had brought them; he'd used a Detonation cube to destroy the door. He'd been so anxious about Kitty, he'd forgotten the pain in his shoulder, forgotten his weariness for a time….

A curious thing, feeling a man's mind move. It shifted like a sleeper in the dark, while elsewhere his conscious thoughts churned out the incantation. Faces floated past me: Kitty's; an older woman's; others that I didn't recognize at all. And then (a shock this)—Ptolemy's too, clear as a bell. So
long
since I had seen it two.… thousand years … But of course,
this
image was nothing but a memory of me.

Time to concentrate. I felt my energies being drawn upon—sucked out through Nathaniel's words and converted into bonds around the Staff. The incantation was coming to its close. Gladstone's Staff shuddered. Pale streams of light ran up its length and congregated by the carved pentacle at the end. We felt the beings within pressing against the crack we had created in their prison; we felt Gladstone's locking mechanisms struggling to seal themselves. We denied them both.

Nathaniel's chant came to an end. The Staff pulsed once—a brilliant white light filled the room on every plane. We stumbled where we stood: Nathaniel shut our eyes. Then the light fell back. Equilibrium was reached. All was still. The room was quiet. Almost too faintly to be heard, the Staff of Gladstone hummed in our grasp.

As one, we turned to where Kitty sat watching in her chair.

“Ready now,” we said.

33

J
ust for a moment, when the Staff had been activated and the djinni's energies had flowed through him to keep its power in check, Nathaniel remembered the wound in his shoulder. He got an indignant stab of pain, a sudden wooziness in his head … then his new strength waxed in him once again, and the frailty vanished. He felt better than he had ever done.

His body still echoed with the sensation of that first instant, when Bartimaeus's powers had fused within him. It was like an electric shock, a surge that threatened to carry him off the floor, to deny gravity altogether—all his weight and weariness fell away. He burned with life. With sudden clarity (his mind seemed sharper, newly whetted), he perceived the djinni's nature—understood its ceaseless urge for movement, change, and transformation. He sensed how harsh a fate it was for this nature to be forcibly restricted, to be pent up among earthly, solid things. He glimpsed (only blearily at first) an endless succession of images, memories, imprints, stretching back into a terrible abyss of time. It gave him a feeling not unlike vertigo.

All his senses were afire. His fingers felt each whorl and grain upon the Staff, his ears caught its minute hum. Best of all he saw and understood each plane—all seven of them. The room was bathed in the colors of a dozen auras—from the Staff, from himself and, most extraordinary of all, from Kitty. Through its glow her face seemed smooth and young again, her hair shone like flames. He could have gazed at her forever—

Stop that nonsense right now. I feel quite sick.

If a wretched djinni hadn't been gabbling in his head.

I wasn't doing anything
, he thought.

Not much you weren't. Staff's up and running. We need to go.

Yes.
Warily, in case the djinni had other plans for his legs, Nathaniel turned to Kitty. “You should stay here.”

“I'm feeling stronger.” To Nathaniel's alarm, she inched forward in the chair and, supporting her weight with shaking hands, got to her feet. “I can walk,” she said.

“Even so, you're not coming with us.”

He felt the djinni stir within his mind; its voice echoed from his mouth. As before, the effect was disconcerting. Also, it rather tickled. “Nathaniel's right,” Bartimaeus said. “You're far too weak. If his memory's up to scratch, which I doubt, there may still be prisoners in the building—if Nouda hasn't killed them all. Why not try to find them?”

She nodded. “Okay. What's your plan? Why don't you use the scrying glass to see where Nouda is?”

Nathaniel shifted. “Well—”

“He's bust it,” the djinni said. “Set the imp free. Big mistake, in my opinion.”

“I can answer for myself”
Nathaniel growled. He found it particularly annoying to be interrupted by his own larynx.

Kitty smiled at him. “Good for you. Well, see you later then.”

“Yes … Sure you'll be all right?”

He felt a burst of impatience from the djinni. His limbs quivered; he longed to give a leap, surge through the air…. “I'll be fine. Here—you'd better take this.” He ducked his head, lifted the Amulet of Samarkand from around his neck and held it out to her. “Wear it,” he said. “It'll protect you.”

“Just against
magic,
mind,” the djinni added. “Not against physical attack, or tripping up, or banging your head, or stubbing your toe, or anything like that. But within its strictly limited parameters, it works pretty well.”

Kitty hesitated. “I do have
some
resilience,” she began. “Maybe I shouldn't—”

“Not enough to cope with Nouda,” Nathaniel said. “Especially after what you've been through. Please …”

She put the necklace over her head. “Thanks,” she said. “Good luck.”

“You too.” There was nothing more to say. The moment had come. Nathaniel strode to the doorway, chin foremost, eyes somber and purposeful. He did not look back. A mound of debris from the broken door littered the floor; he stepped carefully over it at the very moment that the djinni forced his legs into a skip and a jump. His feet collided; he tripped, sprawled, dropped the Staff, and rolled head across heels over the debris and out through the door.

Suavely done,
Bartimaeus said.

Nathaniel made no audible response. Scooping up the Staff of Gladstone, he trudged off down the corridor.

A scene of inventive devastation unfolded at the Hall of Statues, where the marble heads of every deceased Prime Minister had been ripped from their torsos and apparently used to play a game of bowls. The broken Council table sat near the wall; around it, on the seven chairs, the bodies of various magicians had been placed in comical positions, as if in ghastly conclave. The room had suffered every kind of magical assault, sporadic and at random: areas of floor, wall, and ceiling were broken, pierced, blackened, melted, and cut away. Smoking fragments showed where the rugs had been. Corpses lay higgeldy-piggeldy, forlorn, broken, like discarded toys. At the far end of the hall a giant hole had been blasted in the stonework. Cold air came gusting through it.

“Look at the pentacles,” Nathaniel said suddenly.

I am looking. I've got your eyes, haven't I? And I agree with you.

“What?”

What you're thinking. They've destroyed them systematically. They want to make it harder for any magicians who've survived.

Every pentacle had been somehow defaced or ruined: the mosaic circles torn up and scattered, the careful lines shot to fragments by casual bursts of fire. It was just like the scenes in the Forum at Rome, when the barbarians came knocking at the gate and the citizens rose up against the ruling magicians.
They'd
begun by destroying the pentacles too….