Ptolemy's Gate

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. . .
    Nathaniel shook his head. "That's irrelevant," he said. "Stick to the job in hand."
    I am. Can I help it if you raid my memories?
    Nathaniel didn't answer. He had caught sight of faces he recognized lying amid the rubble. The corners of his mouth clamped down. "Let's go," he said.
    What's with the retrospective grief? You didn't like them anyway.
    "We need to speed up."
    All right. Leave the movement to me.
    This was the most peculiar sensation of all: to relax your muscles, to deliberately cut off all command from them, yet feel them tense and spring, move with great harmonious sweeps and bounds, feel them surging with an exuberance that was not human. Nathaniel kept tight hold of the Staff; other than this, he allowed the djinni free rein. With a single bound, he had crossed the hall, landed on a fallen block. A pause; his head moved left and right, then he was away again—a giant stride, then another; he ducked down through the hole in the wall, soared up into another room, dark, ravaged, filled with