The Amulet of Samarkand

roofward, only to have my attention caught by a very tall and ornate set of windows a little way off on a projecting wing of the house. They suggested a sizeable room beyond. Not only that, but a powerful network of magical bars crisscrossed the windows on the seventh plane. None of the Hall's other windows had such defenses. My curiosity was piqued.
    The lizard sped across to take a look, scales scuffling on the stones. It gripped a column and poked its head toward the window, being careful to keep well back from the glowing bars. What it saw inside was interesting, all right. The windows looked onto a vast circular hall or auditorium, brightly lit by a dozen chandeliers suspended from the ceiling. At the center was a small raised podium draped with red cloth, around which a hundred chairs had been arranged in a neat semicircle. A speaker's stand stood on the podium, complete with glass and jug of water. Evidently this was the venue for the conference.
    Everything about the auditorium's decor—from the crystal chandeliers to the rich gold trimmings on the walls—was designed to appeal to the magicians' (vulgar) sense of wealth and status. But the really extraordinary thing about the room was the floor, which seemed to be entirely made of glass. From wall to wall it glinted and gleamed, refracting the light of the chandeliers in a dozen unusual tints and shades. If this wasn't unusual enough, beneath the glass stretched an immense and very beautiful carpet. It was Persian made, displaying—amid a wealth of dragons, chimeras, manticores, and birds—a fantastically detailed hunting scene. A life-size prince and his court rode into a forest, surrounded by dogs, leopards, kestrels, and other trained beasts; ahead of them, among the bushes, a host of fleet-footed deer skipped away. Horns blew, pennants waved. It was an idealized Eastern fairy-tale court and I would have been quite impressed, had I not glanced at a couple of the faces of the courtiers. That rather spoiled the effect. One of them sported Lovelace's horrid mug; another looked like Sholto Pinn. Elsewhere, I spied my erstwhile captor, Jessica Whitwell, riding a white mare. Trust Lovelace to spoil a perfectly good work of art with such an ingratiating fancy.[1] No doubt the prince was Devereaux, the Prime Minister, and every important magician was pictured among his fawning throng.
     
    [1] How the weavers of Basra must have loathed being commissioned to create such a monstrosity. Gone are the days when, with complex and cruel incantations, they wove djinn into the fabric of their carpets, creating artifacts that carried their masters across the Middle East and were stain-resistant at the same time. Hundreds of us were trapped this way. But now, with the magical power of Baghdad long broken, such craftsmen escape destitution only by weaving tourist tat for rich foreign clients. Such is progress.
     
    This curious floor was not the only odd thing about the circular hall. All the other windows that looked onto it had shimmering defenses similar to the one through which I spied. Reasonable enough: soon most of the Government would be inside—the room had to be safe from attack. But hidden in the stonework of my window frame were things that looked like embedded metal rods, and their purpose was not at all clear.
    I was just pondering this when a door at the far end of the auditorium opened and a magician walked swiftly in. It was the oily man I had seen passing in the car: Lime, the boy had called him, one of Lovelace's confederates. He carried an object in his hand, shrouded under a cloth. With hasty steps and eyes flicking nervously back and forth, he crossed to the podium, mounted it and approached the speaker's stand. There was a shelf inside the stand, hidden from the floor below, and the man placed the object inside it.
    Before he did so, he removed the cloth and a shiver ran down my scales.
    It was the summoning horn I'd seen in Lovelace's study on the night I stole the Amulet of Samarkand. The ivory was yellow with age and had been reinforced with slender metal bands, but the blackened fingerprints on its side[2] were still quite visible.
     
    [2] The only remains of the first person to blow the horn, it being an essential requirement of such items that their first user must surrender himself to the mercy of the entity he summons. With this notable design flaw, summoning horns are pretty rare, as you'd imagine.
     
    A summoning horn...
    I began to see