The Amulet of Samarkand

spinning limply in her grip.
    Lovelace took the horn away from his lips, smiling slightly.
    The cleverer magicians had understood the situation the instant the horn was blown. With a flurry of colored flashes, imps appeared at several shoulders. Others summoned greater assistance—the woman by our side was muttering an incantation, calling up her djinni.
    Lovelace stepped down carefully from the podium, his eyes trained somewhere high above. Light danced on the surface of his spectacles. His suit was elegant, unruffled. He took no notice of the consternation all around.
    I saw a flicker in the air.
    Desperately, I threw myself at the edges of the web that surrounded us, searching for a weakness and finding none.
    Another flicker. My essence shivered.
    Nathaniel
     
    Many of the magicians were on their feet now, their voices raised in alarm, heads turning from side to side in bewilderment, as thick iron and silver bars slid into position across every door and window. Nathaniel had long since stopped bothering to move: it was clear that no one would take any notice of him. He could only watch as a magician some way in front slung his chair to one side, raised a hand and shot a ball of yellow flame at Lovelace from a distance of only a couple of meters. To the surprise of the magician, the flame altered its course slightly in midair and disappeared into the center of Lovelace's chest. Lovelace, who was staring intently up toward the ceiling, appeared to have noticed nothing.
    The fly buzzed back and forth, butting its head against the wall of the Stricture. "That's the Amulet's work," it said. "It'll take whatever they throw."
    Jessica Whitwell had finished her incantation: a short, stumpy djinni hovered in the air beside her; it had taken the form of a black bear. She pointed, yelled an order. The bear moved forward through the air, paddling its limbs as if swimming.
    Other magicians sent attacks in Lovelace's direction: for perhaps a minute, he was the center of a lightning storm of furious, crackling energy. The Amulet of Samarkand absorbed it all. Lovelace was unaffected. He carefully smoothed back his hair.
    The afrit had picked itself up from where it had fallen and, having set the dazed Prime Minister lolling on a chair, leaped into the fray. It flew on speedy, shining wings, but Nathaniel noticed that it approached Lovelace on a peculiar circular course, avoiding the air directly above the podium.
    Several magicians had by now reached the door of the hall, and were vainly straining at the handles.
    The afrit sent a powerful magic toward Lovelace. Either it went too fast, or it was primarily on a plane he could not see, but Nathaniel only saw it as the suggestion of a jet of smoke that crossed to the magician in an instant. Nothing happened. The afrit cocked its head, as if bemused.
    On Lovelace's other side, the black bear djinni was closing fast. From each paw, it unsheathed two scimitar-like claws.
    Magicians were running helter-skelter, making for the windows, the door, for anywhere at all, accompanied by their host of shrieking imps.
    Then something happened to the afrit. To Nathaniel, it was as if he was looking at the afrit's reflection in a pond and the water surface was suddenly disturbed. The afrit seemed to shatter, its form splitting into a thousand quavering shards that were sucked toward a section of air above the podium. A moment later they were gone.
    The black bear djinni stopped paddling forward. Its claws were drawn back out of sight. Very subtly, it went into reverse.
    The fly buzzed loudly against Nathaniel's ear, shouting in pure panic. "It's happening!" it cried. "Can't you see it?"
    But Nathaniel saw nothing.
    A woman ran past, mouth open in panic. Her hair was a pale shade of blue.
    Bartimaeus
     
    The first thing most of them noticed was the afrit. That was the spectacular one, the real curtain raiser, but in fact plenty had been going on in the previous seconds. The afrit was unlucky, that was all; in her haste to destroy the threat to her master, she got too close to the rift.
    The split in the air was about four meters in length and only visible on the seventh plane. Perhaps a few of the imps glimpsed it, but none of the humans could have done so.[4] It wasn't a nice, clean, vertical sort of rift, but diagonal, with jagged edges, as if the air had been torn like thick, fibrous cloth. From my prison, I had watched it form: after the first flicker above the podium, the air had