Ptolemy's Gate

industriously resumed again.
    I snapped my teeth together nastily. "In a few moments," I said, "they're going to break through, and when they do, they'll learn to fear the power of Bartimaeus of Uruk! Anyhow—who knows? I've taken out six djinn at once before now."
    "And how many are out there?"
    "Oh, about twenty."
    "Right. That settles it." With shaking arms, the boy rose to a sitting position. "Help me lean back against that wall. Come on! Come on! Do you want me to die lying down?"
    The lion did as he was bid, then straightened. I took up my post facing the door, which, in the center, was glowing red with an intense heat and beginning to bulge a little. "Don't ask again," I said. "I'm not shifting."
    "Oh, I won't ask, Bartimaeus."
    Something in his tone made me swivel round. I saw Ptolemy grinning lopsidedly at me, one hand raised.
    I reached toward him. "Don't—"
    He snapped his fingers, spoke the Dismissal words. Even as he did so, the door exploded in a shower of molten metal; three tall figures sprang into the room. Ptolemy gave me a small salute, then his head fell back gently against the wall. I rotated toward the enemy and raised a paw to smite them, but my substance had become diffuse like smoke. Despite my most desperate urgings, I could do nothing to hold it firm. All light around me vanished, my consciousness departed; the Other Place pulled me away. Furiously, against my will, I accepted Ptolemy's last gift.

31

    The first feeling was that of terrible constriction. With the sudden act of waking, her infinite dimensions were all at once reduced to a single point. She was compressed back down to the margins of her body, tangled up within its lumpen weight. A moment of suffocation, the hideous sensation of being buried alive—then she remembered how to breathe. She lay in darkness, hearing the rhythms within her: the blood moving, the air wheezing back and forth, the bubbles shifting and gurgling in stomach and bowels. She'd never realized before quite how noisy she was, how heavy, how densely packed. It seemed an appalling complexity, and one that would be quite impossible to operate. The idea of moving it mystified her.
    Gradually the confusion resolved itself into vague recognition of the contours of her limbs—the knees drawn up almost to her waist, the feet gently overlapping each other, the hands clasped close against her breast. She visualized it in her head, and with this, a sensation of affection and gratitude for her body came flooding through her. It warmed her: awareness grew. She sensed the hardness of the surface on which she lay; the softness of the cushion pillowing her head. She remembered where she was—and where she had been.
    Kitty opened her eyes. Everything was blurred. For a second the swimming lines of light and shadow beguiled her; she thought she was drifting in the Other Place again. . . Then she steadied herself and concentrated, and slowly, grudgingly, the lines snagged and stopped and yielded up a picture of a person sitting in a chair.
    He sat in a posture of extreme exhaustion. His head had slumped sideways; his legs lolled left and right. She heard the rasping of his breath. His eyes were closed.
    A chain hung about his neck; at its end was an oval piece of gold, centered with a green-black stone. It rose and fell with the rhythmic movement of his chest. Between his knees a long wooden staff rested at an acute diagonal. One hand was cupped loosely to support it; the other hung limply over the chair arm.
    After a while she remembered his name. "Nathaniel?"
    Her voice was so faint she could not be sure whether she had actually made a noise, or only sounded the word in her head. Nevertheless, it seemed to work. A grunt, a splutter—the magician's legs and arms jerked as if electrically charged. The staff fell to the floor; with something midway between a leap and a plunge, he was crouching at her side.
    She tried to smile. It was hard. Her face hurt. "Hello," she said.
    The magician didn't answer. He just stared.
    "You got the Staff then," she said, and: "My throat's dry. Got any water?"
    Still no reply. His skin, she noticed, was red and chafed, as if he had been out in a high wind. He was gazing at her with extreme attention, yet still contriving to ignore her words completely. Kitty became irritated.
    "Move out the way," she snapped. "I'm getting up."
    She tensed her stomach muscles, moved an arm, and pressed her fingers to the floor to push herself up. An object