Ptolemy's Gate

closed her eyes and tried to relax her muscles. The room was very quiet—no sound came through the door. Time to begin the summons? No, something was still not right----What was it? After a moment she realized her hand was clenched so tightly upon the key that it dug hard into her skin. That was a symbol of her fear. She concentrated for a few moments, allowing her finger-grip to slacken. . . Now she cupped the metal gently. Better . . .
    Remembered fragments came into her head, words written by past authorities about the Other Place: a region of chaos, a whirl of endless abominations, a sump of madness . . . cheerful pronouncements all. Then there was Mr. Button's pithy edict: to venture there risks body and soul. Oh, God, so what would happen to her? Would she melt or burn? Would she see—? Yes, but whatever she saw could hardly be worse or more abhorrent than Nouda and his crippled hybrids—his demons cloaked in human flesh. And none of Mr. Button's authorities had even visited the Other Place! It was all pure speculation. Besides, Ptolemy had returned alive.
    She ran through the words of the reverse summons in her head, then—since to delay was merely to invite further fears— she spoke them out loud. As far as she could tell, it was all correct—she used her own name rather than a demon's and swapped the normal verbs. She finished by calling Bartimaeus's name, three times.
    Done.
    She lay there in the quiet room.
    Seconds passed. Kitty quelled her mounting frustration. No good being impatient. Conventional summonings needed time for the word s to travel to the Other Place. She listened, though for what she did not know. Her eyes were closed. She saw nothing but darkness and flickering brain-echoes of light.
    Still nothing. Evidently the process was not going to work. Kitty's hopes passed away; she felt hollow and a little sad. She toyed with getting up, but the room was warm, she was comfortable on her pillow and after the privations of the night, was happy to rest a little. Her mind drifted on currents of its own devising: she wondered about her parents, what they were doing, how these events would touch them; how Jakob, far away in Europe, might respond; whether Nathaniel had survived the conflagration in the hall. She found herself hoping so.
    A distant sound came to her ears, a clear bell ringing. The demons, perhaps, or survivors trying to alert the city . . .
    Nathaniel had saved her from the mercenary's knife. She had enjoyed sparring with him, forcing him to face the truth about many things, Bartimaeus most of all. He had taken it surprisingly well. As for Bartimaeus. . . she remembered how she'd last seen him, a forlorn shapeless mass of slime, worn down by weariness of the world. Was it wrong to be pursuing him? Like anyone else, the djinni needed rest.
    The bell continued to ring. It was an odd sound, now she thought about it—high and pure, as if struck on crystal, not low and booming as most bells in the city were. Also, rather than repeatedly ringing, it was a single continuous vibration that remained slightly out of reach, right on the edge of her hearing. She strained to catch it. . . First it faded, then grew louder— but though alluring, its character was still impossible to pin down; it was lost somewhere amid the pulsing of her blood, her quiet breathing, the little rasps of her clothing as her chest went up and down. She tried again, suddenly fascinated. The ringing seemed somewhere above her, far away. She strove to listen, wishing she could draw closer to the source. She tried to block out all other sounds. Her efforts paid off—little by little, then with a sudden rush, the ringing clarified, became unmuffled. She was alone with it. It rang perpetually, like something precious on the verge of breaking. She felt that it was very close.
    Was it visible too? Kitty opened her eyes.
    And saw many things at once. A complex grid of stonework all around, little walls and floors running off in three dimensions, separating, joining, arching, ending. Among them were stairs, windows, and open doors; she was passing among them at speed, both very close and somehow far away. Glancing down, she saw a girl's body curled up at a distance—it reminded her of a sleeping cat. Other figures were frozen, doll-like, all about the grid of stone—groups of men and women clustered closely, many lying prone, as if asleep or dead. Around them stood strange blurry things with uncertain outlines—neither