The Amulet of Samarkand

entering the manor. So if we get ourselves into position early enough, we might well get a chance to sneak a ride with someone. It's worth a try. Now... in the meantime, you should sleep. There's a long walk ahead of us when we get to the station."
     
    [4] They've got the worst taste in the world, magicians. Always have done. Oh, they keep themselves all suave and sober in public, but give them a chance to relax and do they listen to chamber orchestras? No. They'd rather have a dwarf on stilts or a bellydancing bearded lady any day. A little-known fact about Solomon the Wise: he was entertained between judgements by an enthusiastic troupe of Lebanese clowns.
     
    His eyelids looked as if they were made of lead. For once he didn't argue.
    I've seen glaciers cover ground more quickly than that train, so in the end he got a pretty decent kip. But finally we arrived at the station closest to Heddleham Hall. I shook my master awake and we tumbled out of the carriage onto a platform that was being speedily reclaimed by the forces of nature. Several varieties of grass grew up through the concrete, while an enterprising bindweed had colonized the walls and roof of the ramshackle waiting room. Birds nested under the rusty lamps. There was no ticket office and no sign of human life.
    The train limped off as if it were going to die under a hedge. Across the track a white gate led straight onto an unpaved road. Fields stretched away on all sides. I perked up: it felt good to be free of the city's malignant clutches and surrounded by the natural contours of the trees and crops.[5]
     
    [5] Even though they have been scraped and shaped by human will, fields do not have magicians' stench about them. Throughout history, magicians have been resolutely urban creatures: they flourish in cities, multiplying like plague rats, running along thickly spun threads of gossip and intrigue like fat-bellied spiders. The nearest that nonurban societies get to magicians are the shamans of North America and the Asian steppe But they operate so differently that they almost deserve not to be called magicians at all. But their time is past.
     
    "We follow the road," I said. "The hall is at least nine miles away, so we don't have to be on our guard yet. I—what's the matter now?"
    The boy was looking quite pale and unsettled. "It's nothing. Just... I'm not used to so much... space. I can't see any houses."
    "No houses is good. It means no people. No magicians."
    "It makes me feel strange. It's so quiet."
    Made sense. He'd never been out of the city before now. Never even been in a big park, most likely. The emptiness terrified him.
    I crossed the track and opened the gate. "There's a village beyond those trees. You can get food there and cuddle up to some buildings."
    It took my master some time to lose his jitters. It was almost as if he expected the empty fields or winter bushes to rise like enemies and fall on him, and his head turned constantly against surprise attack. He quaked at every bird call.
    Conversely, I stayed relaxed for this first part of the journey, precisely because the countryside seemed wholly deserted. There was no magical activity of any description, even in the distant skies.
     
    When we reached the village, we raided its solitary grocery store and pinched sufficient supplies to keep the boy's stomach happy for the rest of the day. It was a smallish place, a few cottages clustered around a ruined church, not nearly large enough to have its own resident magician. The few humans we saw ambled around quietly without so much as an imp in tow. My master was very dismissive of them.
    "Don't they realize how vulnerable they are?" he sniffed, as we passed the final cottage. "They've got no defenses. Any magical attack and they'd be helpless."
    "Perhaps that's not high on their list of priorities," I suggested. "There are other things to worry about: making a living, for example. Not that you'll have been taught anything about that."[6]
     
    [6] How true this was. Magicians are essentially parasitic. In societies where they are dominant, they live well off the strivings of others In those times and places when they lose power and have to earn their own bread, they are generally reduced to a sorry state, performing small conjurations for jeering ale-house crowds in return for a few brass coins.
     
    "Oh no?" he said. "To be a magician is the greatest calling. Our skills and sacrifices hold the country together, and those fools should