The Amulet of Samarkand

chance they can to undercut their rivals. At a rough guess about eighty percent of all summonses have to do with carrying out some skulduggery against a fellow magician, or with defense against the same. By contrast, most confrontations between spirits aren't personal at all, simply because they do not occur of our own free will. At that moment, for instance, I did not dislike Faquarl particularly; well, actually that's a lie—I loathed him, but no more than I had before. Anyway, our mutual hatred had taken many centuries, indeed millennia, to build up. Magicians squabble for fun. We'd really had to work at it.
     
    How was I sure the magician in question was his master? Well, unless age-old practices were now being dropped and apprentices were being bussed off to boarding school together (hardly likely), there was no other explanation. Magicians hold their knowledge close to their shriveled little hearts, coveting its power the way a miser covets gold, and they will only pass it on with caution. Since the days of the Median Magi, students have always lived alone in their mentors' house—one master to one pupil, conducting their lessons with secrecy and stealth. From ziggurat to pyramid, from sacred oak to skyscraper, thousands of years pass and things don't change.
    To sum up then: it seemed that to guard his own skin, this ungrateful child was risking bringing the wrath of a powerful magician down upon his innocent master's head. I was very impressed. Even though he had to be in cahoots with an adult— some enemy of his master, presumably—it was an admirably twisted plan for one so young.
    I did an eightfold tiptoe out of the door. Then I saw the master.
    I had not heard of this magician, this Mr. Arthur Underwood. I assumed him therefore to be a minor conjuror, a dabbler in fakery and mumbo-jumbo who never dared disturb the rest of higher beings such as me. Certainly, as he passed underneath me into the bathroom (I had evidently exited just in time), he fit the bill of second-rater. A sure sign of this was that he had all the time-honored attributes that other humans associate with great and powerful magic: a mane of unkempt hair the color of tobacco ash, a long whitish beard that jutted outward like the prow of a ship, and a pair of particularly bristly eyebrows.[2] I could imagine him stalking through the streets of London in a black velveteen suit, hair billowing behind him in a sorcerous sort of way. He probably flourished a gold-tipped cane, maybe even a swanky cape. Yes, he'd look the part then, all right: very impressive. As opposed to now, stumbling along in his pajama bottoms, scratching his unmentionables and sporting a folded newspaper under his arm.
     
    [2] Minor magicians take pains to fit this traditional wizardly bill. By contrast, the really powerful magicians take pleasure in looking like accountants.
     
    "Martha!" He called this just before closing the bathroom door. A small, spherical female emerged from a bedroom. Thankfully, she was fully dressed.
    "Yes, dear?"
    "I thought you said that woman cleaned yesterday."
    "Yes, she did, dear. Why?"
    "Because there's a grubby cobweb dangling from the middle of the ceiling, with a repellent spider skulking in it. Loathsome. She should be sacked."
    "Oh, I see it. How foul. Don't worry, I'll speak to her. And I'll get the duster to it shortly."
    The great magician humphed and shut the door. The woman shook her head in a forgiving manner and, humming a lighthearted ditty, disappeared downstairs. The "loathsome" spider made a rude sign with two of its legs and set off along the ceiling, trailing its cobweb behind it.
    It took several minutes' scuttering before I located the entrance to the study at the bottom of a short flight of stairs. And here I halted. The door was protected against interlopers by a hex in the form of a five-pointed star. It was a simple device. The star appeared to consist of flaking red paint; however, if an unwary trespasser opened the door the trap would be triggered and the "paint" would revert to its original state—a ricocheting bolt of fire.
    Sounds good, I know, but it was pretty basic stuff actually. A curious housemaid might be frazzled, but not Bartimaeus. I erected a Shield around me and, touching the base of the door with a tiny claw, instantly sprang back a couple of feet.
    Thin orange streaks appeared within the red lines of the five-pointed star. For a second the lines coursed like liquid, racing round and round