Ptolemy's Gate (8 page)

As was my wont, I had wandered late among the evening markets, listening to the rhythms of the city, to the ebb and flow of information carried on its human tide. My master was sitting cross-legged on the roof of his quarters, intermittently scratching at his papyrus strip and gazing out toward the darkened sea. I landed on the ledge in lapwing's form and fixed him with a beady eye.

“It's all over the bazaars,” I said. “You and the bull.”

He dipped his stylus into the ink. “What matter?”

“Perhaps no matter; perhaps much. But the people whisper.”

“What do they whisper?”

“That you are a sorcerer who consorts with demons.”

He laughed and completed a neat numeral. “Factually, they are correct.”

The lapwing drummed its claws upon the stone. “I protest! The term ‘demon' is fallacious and abusive in the extreme!”
¹

Ptolemy put down his stylus. “It is a mistake to be too concerned with names and titles, my dear Rekhyt. Such things are never more than rough approximations, matters of convenience. The people speak thus out of ignorance. It's when they understand your nature and are
still
abusive that you will have to worry.” He grinned at me sidelong. “Which is always possible, let's face it.”

I raised my wings a little, allowing the sea wind to ruffle through my feathers. “Generally you come off well in the accounts so far. But mark my words, they'll be saying you let the bull loose soon.”

He sighed. “In all honesty, reputation—for good or ill—doesn't much bother me.”

“It may not bother you,” I said darkly, “but there are those in the palace for whom the issue is life and death.”

“Only those who drown in the stew of politics,” he said. “And I am nothing to them.”

“May it be so,” I said darkly. “May it be so. What are you writing now?”

“Your description of the elemental walls at the margins of the world. So take that scowl off your beak and tell me more of it.”

Well, I let it go at that. Arguing with Ptolemy never did much good.

From the beginning he was a master of curious enthusiasms. The accumulation of wealth, wives, and bijou Nile-front properties—those time-honored preoccupations of most Egyptian magicians—did not enthrall him. Knowledge, of a kind, was what he was after, but it was not the sort that turns city walls to dust and tramples on the necks of the defeated foe. It had a more otherworldly cast.

In our first encounter he threw me with it.

I was a pillar of whirling sand, a fashionable getup in those days. My voice boomed like rock-falls echoing up a gully. “Name your desire, mortal.”

“Djinni,” he said, “answer me a question.”

The sand whirled faster. “I know the secrets of the earth and the mysteries of the air; I know the key to the minds of women.
²
What do you wish? Speak.”

“What is essence?”

The sand halted in midair. “Eh?”

“Your substance. What exactly is it? How does it work?”

“Well, um …”

“And the Other Place. Tell me of it. Is time there synchronous with ours? What form do its denizens take? Have they a king or leader? Is it a dimension of solid substance, or a whirling inferno, or otherwise? What are the boundaries between your realm and this Earth, and to what degree are they permeable?”

“Um …”

In short, Ptolemy was interested in us. Djinn. His slaves. Our
inner
nature, that is, not the usual surface guff.The most hideous shapes and provocations made him yawn, while my attempts to mock his youth and girlish looks merely elicited hearty chuckles. He would sit in the center of his pentacle, stylus on his knee, listening with rapt attention, ticking me off when I introduced a more than usually obvious fib, and frequently interrupting to clarify some ambiguity. He used no Stipples, no Lances, no other instruments of correction. His summonings rarely lasted more than a few hours. To a hardened djinni like me, who had a fairly accurate idea of the vicious ways of humans, it was all a bit disconcerting.

I was one of a number of djinn and lesser spirits regularly summoned. The normal routine never deviated: summons, chat, frenzied scribbling by the magician, dismissal.

In time, my curiosity was aroused. “Why do you do this?” I asked him curtly. “Why all these questions? All this writing?”

“I have read most of the manuscripts in the Great Library,” the boy said. “They have much about summoning, chastisement, and other practicalities, but almost nothing about the nature of demons themselves. Your personality, your own desires. It seems to me that this is of the first importance. I intend to write the definitive work on the subject, a book that will be read and admired forever. To do this, I must ask many questions. Does my ambition surprise you?”

“Yes, in truth. Since when has any magician cared about our sufferings? There's no reason why you should. It's not in your interests.”

“Oh, but it is. If we remain ignorant, and continue to enslave you rather than understand you, trouble will come from it sooner or later. That's my feeling.”

“There is no alternative to this slavery. Each summons wraps us in chains.”

“You are too pessimistic, djinni. Traders tell me of shamans far off among the northern wastes who leave their own bodies to converse with spirits in another world. To my mind, that is a much more courteous proceeding. Perhaps we too should learn this technique.”

I laughed harshly. “It will never happen. That route is far too perilous for the corn-fed priests of Egypt. Save your energy, boy. Forget your futile questions. Dismiss me and have done.”

Despite my skepticism, he could not be dissuaded. A year went by; little by little my lies dried up. I began to tell him truth. In turn, he told me something of himself.

He was the nephew of the king. At birth, twelve years before, he had been a frail and delicate runtling, coughing at the nipple, squealing like a kitten. His discomfort cast a pall over the ceremony of naming: the guests departed hurriedly, the silent officials exchanged somber looks. At midnight his wet nurse summoned a priest of Hathor,
³
who pronounced the infant close to death; nevertheless, he completed the necessary rituals and gave the child into the protection of the goddess. The night passed fitfully. Dawn came; the first rays of sun glimmered through the acacia trees and fell upon the infant's head. His squalling subsided, his body grew calm. Without noise or hesitation, he nuzzled at the breast and drank.

The nature of this reprieve did not go unnoticed, and the child was swiftly dedicated to the sun god, Ra. He grew steadily in strength and years. Quick-eyed and intelligent, he was never as strapping as his cousin, the king's son,
⁴
eight years older and burly with it. Ptolemy remained a peripheral figure in the court, happier with the priests and women than with the sun-browned boys brawling in the yard.

In those days the king was frequently on campaign, struggling to protect the frontiers against the incursions of the Bedouin. A series of advisers ruled the city, growing rich on bribes and port taxes, and listening ever closer to the soft words of foreign agents—particularly those of the emerging power across the water: Rome. Swathed in luxury in his marbled palace, the king's son fell into precocious dissipation. By his late teens he was a grotesque, loose-lipped youth, already potbellied with drink; his eyes glittered with paranoia and the fear of assassination. Impatient for power, he dawdled in the shadow of his father, seeking rivals in his blood-kin while waiting for the old man to die.

Ptolemy, by contrast, was a scholarly boy, slim and handsome, with features more nearly Egyptian than Greek.
⁵
Although distantly in line for the throne, he was clearly not a warrior or a statesman and was generally ignored by the royal household. He spent most of his time in the Library of Alexandria, close to the waterfront, studying with his tutor. This man, an elderly priest from Luxor, was learned in many languages and in the history of the kingdom. He was also a magician. Finding an exceptional student, he imparted his knowledge to the child. It was quietly begun and quietly completed, and only much later, with the incident of the bull, did rumor of it seep out into the wider world.

Two days afterward, while we were in discussion, a servant knocked upon my master's door. “Pardon me, Highness, but a woman waits without.”

“Without what?” I wore the guise of a scholar, in case of just such an interruption.

Ptolemy silenced me with a gesture. “What does she want?”

“A plague of locusts threatens her husband's crops, sir. She seeks your aid.”

My master frowned. “Ridiculous! What can I do?”

“Sir, she speaks of …” The servant hesitated; he had been with us in the field. “Of your power over the bull.”

“This is too much! I am hard at work here. I cannot be disturbed. Send her away.”

“As you wish.” The servant sighed, made to close the door.

My master stirred. “Is she
very
miserable?”

“Mightily, sir. She has been here since dawn.”

Ptolemy gave a gasp of impatience. “Oh, this is rank foolishness!” He turned to me. “Rekhyt—go with him. See what can be done.”

In due course I returned, looking plump. “Locusts gone.”

“Very well.” He scowled at his tablets. “I have altogether lost the thread. We were talking about the fluidity of the Other Place, I believe….”

“You realize,” I said, as I sat delicately on the straw matting, “that you've done it now. Got yourself a reputation. Someone who can solve the common ills. Now you'll
never
get any peace. Same thing happened to Solomon with the wisdom thing. Couldn't step outdoors without someone thrusting a baby in his face. Mind you, that was often for a different reason.”

The boy shook his head. “I am a scholar, a researcher, nothing else. I shall aid mankind by the fruits of my writing,
not
by my success with bulls or locusts. Besides, it's
you
who's doing the work, Rekhyt. Do you mind removing that wing-case from the corner of your mouth? Thank you. Now, to begin …”

He was wise about some things, Ptolemy was, but not about others.The next day saw two more women standing outside his chambers; one had problems with hippos on her land, the other carried a sick child. Once again I was sent to deal with them as best I could. On the morning after that, a little line of people stretched out into the street. My master tore his hair and lamented his ill fortune; nevertheless I was dispatched again, along with Affa and Penrenutet, two of his other djinn. So it went. Progress on his research slowed to a snail's pace, while his reputation among the ordinary people of Alexandria grew fast as summer's flowering. Ptolemy suffered the interruptions with good, if exasperated, grace. He contented himself with completing a book on the mechanics of summoning and put his other inquiries aside.

The year aged, and in due time came the Nile's annual inundation. The floods went down, the dark earth shone fertile and wet, crops were planted, a new season began. Sometimes the queue of supplicants at Ptolemy's door was lengthy, at other times less so, but it never went away entirely. And it was not long before this daily ritual became known to the black-robed priests of the greater temples, and to the blackhearted prince sitting brooding on his wine-soused throne.

5

A
disrespectful sound alerted Mandrake to the return of the scrying-glass imp. He put aside the pen with which he was scribbling notes for the latest war pamphlets, and stared into the polished disc. The baby's distorted features pressed up against the surface of the bronze as if it were frantically trying to push free. Mandrake ignored its writhing. “Well?” he asked.

“Well what?” The imp groaned and strained.

“Where's Bartimaeus?”

“Sitting on a lump of masonry twenty-six miles southeast of here in the shape of a long-haired girl. Very pretty she is, and all. But she ain't coming.”

“What? She—he refused?”

“Yep. Ooh, it's dreadful tight in here. Six years I've been inside this disc with never a glimpse of home. You might let me out, you really might. I've served you heart and soul.”

“You
have
no soul,” Mandrake said. “What did Bartimaeus say?”

“I can't tell you, you're that young. It was rude, mind. Made my ears wax up. Well, he ain't coming voluntarily and that's all there is to it. Burn him and have done, I say. Can't think why you ain't snuffed him already. Oh, not back in that drawer
again
—can't you have mercy, you hateful boy?”

With the disc wrapped and the drawer shut fast, Mandrake rubbed his eyes. The Bartimaeus problem was growing intractable. The djinni was weaker and more cantankerous than ever; almost useless as a servant. In all logic he should let him go, but—as always—he found the thought distasteful. Quite
why
was hard to say, since alone of all his slaves the djinni never treated him with anything approaching respect. His abuse was tiring, exasperating beyond measure … and also oddly refreshing. Mandrake lived in a world where true emotions skulked forever behind politely smiling masks. But Bartimaeus made no pretense of his dislike. Where Ascobol and company were emollient and fawning, Bartimaeus was as impertinent now as the day he had first met him, back when he was just a child, owner of an entirely different name….