The Amulet of Samarkand

his heart.
    The hands released him, but he was already unconscious before he hit the floor.
     
    Nathaniel was confined to his room for a month and subjected to a great number of further punishments and deprivations. After the initial series of penalties, his master chose not to speak to him, and contact with everyone else—with the exception of Mrs. Underwood, who brought him his meals and dealt with his chamber pot—ceased forthwith. Nathaniel had no lessons and was allowed no books. He sat in his room from dawn until dusk looking out across the roofscapes of London toward the distant Houses of Parliament.
    Such solitude might have driven him mad had he not discovered a discarded ballpoint pen under his bed. With this and a few old sheets of paper he managed to wile away some of the time with a series of sketches of the world beyond the window. When these became tedious, Nathaniel devoted himself instead to compiling a large number of minutely detailed lists and notes, drawn over his sketches, which he concealed under his mattress whenever he heard footsteps on the stair. These notes contained the beginnings of his revenge.
    To Nathaniel's great distress, Mrs. Underwood had been forbidden to talk to him. Although he detected some sympathy in her manner, her silence gave him cold comfort. He withdrew into himself and did not speak when she entered.
    It was thus only when his month's isolation came to an end and his lessons started up once more that he discovered that Ms. Lutyens had been dismissed.

13
     
    Throughout the long, wet autumn, Nathaniel retreated to the garden whenever he could. When the weather was fine, he brought with him books from his master's shelves and devoured their contents with a remorseless hunger while the leaves rained down upon the stone seat and the lawn. On drizzly days, he sat and watched the dripping bushes, his thoughts circling to and fro on familiar paths of bitterness and revenge. He made swift progress with his studies, for his mind was fired with hate. All the rites of summoning, all the incantations that a magician could bind around himself to prevent attack, all the words of power that smote the disobedient demon or dismissed it in a trice—Nathaniel read and committed these to memory. If he met with a difficult passage—perhaps written in Sumerian or Coptic, or hidden within a tortuous runic cipher—and he felt his heart quail, he had only to glance up at the gray-green statue of Gladstone to recover his determination.
    Gladstone had avenged himself on anyone who wronged him: he had upheld his honor and was praised for it. Nathaniel planned to do the same, but he was no longer mastered by his impatience; from now on he used it only to spur himself on. If he had learned one painful lesson, it was not to act until he was truly ready, and through many long, solitary months, he worked tirelessly toward his first aim: the humiliation of Simon Lovelace.
    The history books that Nathaniel studied were full of countless episodes in which rival magicians had fought each other. Sometimes the more powerful mages had won, yet often they had been defeated by stealth or guile. Nathaniel had no intention of challenging his formidable enemy head on—at least not until he had grown in strength. He would bring him down by other means.
    His proper lessons at this time were a tedious distraction. As soon as they had resumed, Nathaniel had immediately adopted a mask of obedience and contrition, designed to convince Arthur Underwood that his wicked act was now, for him, a matter of the utmost shame. This mask never slipped, even when he was put to the most wearisome and banal jobs in the workroom. If his master harangued him for some trifling error, Nathaniel did not allow so much as a flicker of discontent to cross his face. He simply bowed his head and hastened to repair the fault. He was outwardly the perfect apprentice, deferring to his master in every way and certainly never expressing any impatience with the snail's pace at which his studies now progressed.
    In truth, this was because Nathaniel did not regard Arthur Underwood as his true master any longer. His masters were the magicians of old, who spoke to him through their books, allowing him to learn at his own pace and offering evermultiplying marvels for his mind. They did not patronize or betray him.
    Arthur Underwood had forfeited his right to Nathaniel's obedience and respect the moment he failed to shield him from Simon