The Amulet of Samarkand

Nathaniel's eyes filled with tears. Memories from the distant past drifted ghostlike before him....
    "Now you!" The music broke off with a jarring screech. The lyre was thrust back at him. Nathaniel began to pluck at the strings. His fingers tripped and stumbled; outside, several birds dropped from the tree in a stupor. Mr. Sindra's jowls shook like cold tapioca.
    "You idiot! Stop! Do you want the lamia to eat you? She must be charmed, not roused to fury! Put down that poor instrument. We shall try the pipes."
    Pipes or lyre, choral voice or sistrum rattle—whatever Nathaniel tried, his faltering attempts met with bellows of outrage and despair. It was a far cry from his drawing lessons, which proceeded peacefully and well under his tutor, Ms. Lutyens. Willowy and sweet-tempered, she was the only one of his teachers to whom Nathaniel could talk freely. Like Mrs. Underwood, she had little time for his "nameless" status. In confidence, she had asked him to tell her his name, and he had done so without a second thought.
    "Why," he asked her one spring afternoon, as they sat in the workroom with a fresh breeze drifting through the open window, "why do I spend all my time copying this pattern? It is both difficult and dull. I would much rather be drawing the garden, or this room—or you, Ms. Lutyens."
    She laughed at him. "Sketching is all very well for artists, Nathaniel, or for rich young women with nothing else to do. You are not going to become an artist or a rich young woman, and the purpose for your picking up your pencil is very different. You are to be a craftsman, a technical draftsman—you must be able to reproduce any pattern you wish, quickly, confidently, and above all, accurately."
    He looked dismally at the paper resting on the table between them. It showed a complex design of branching leaves, flowers, and foliage, with abstract shapes fitted snugly in between. He was re-creating the image in his sketchbook and had been working on it for two hours without a break. He was about halfway finished.
    "It just seems pointless, that's all," he said in a small voice.
    "Pointless it is not," Ms. Lutyens replied. "Let me see your work. Well, it's not bad, Nathaniel, not bad at all, but look—do you not think that this cupola is rather bigger than the original? See here? And you've left a hole in this stem—that's rather a bad mistake."
    "It's only a small mistake. The rest's okay, isn't it?"
    "That's not the issue. If you were copying out a pentacle and you left a hole in it, what would happen? It would cost you your life. You don't want to die just yet, do you, Nathaniel?"
    "No."
    "Well, then. You simply mustn't make mistakes. They'll have you, otherwise." Ms. Lutyens sat back in her chair. "By rights, I should get you to start again with this."
    "Ms. Lutyens!"
    "Mr. Underwood would expect no less." She paused, pondering. "But from your cry of anguish I suppose it would be useless to expect you to do any better the second time around. We will stop for today. Why don't you go out into the garden? You look like you could do with some fresh air."
    For Nathaniel, the garden of the house was a place of temporary solitude and retreat. No lessons took place there. It had no unpleasant memories. It was long and thin and surrounded by a high wall of red brick. Climbing roses grew against this in the summer, and six apple trees shed white blossom over the lawn. Two rhododendron bushes sprawled widthwise halfway down the garden—beyond them was a sheltered area largely concealed from the many gaping windows of the house. Here the grass grew long and wet. A horse chestnut tree in a neighboring garden towered above, and a stone seat, green with lichen, rested in the shadows of the high wall. Beside the seat was a marble statue of a man holding a fork of lightning in his hand. He wore a Victorian-style jacket and had a gigantic pair of sideburns that protruded from his cheeks like the pincers of a beetle. The statue was weather worn and coated with a thin mantle of moss, but still gave an impression of great energy and power. Nathaniel was fascinated by it and had even gone so far as to ask Mrs. Underwood who it was, but she had only smiled.
    "Ask your master," she said. "He knows everything."
    But Nathaniel had not dared ask.
     
    This restful spot, with its solitude, its stone seat, and its statue of an unknown magician, was where Nathaniel came whenever he needed to compose himself before a lesson with his cold,