The Amulet of Samarkand

darkness cloaking my mind lifted. Instantly, I was as alert as ever, crystalsharp in all my perceptions, a coiled spring ready to explode into action. It was time to escape!
    Except it wasn't.
    My mind works on several levels at once.[1] I've been known to make pleasant small talk while framing the words of a spell and assessing various escape routes at the same time. This sort of thing regularly comes in handy. But right then I didn't need more than one cognitive level to tell me that escape was wholly out of the question. I was in big trouble.
     
    [1] Several conscious levels, that is. By and large, humans can only manage one conscious level, with a couple of more or less unconscious ones muddling along underneath. Think of it this way: I could read a book with four different stories typed one on top of the other, and take them all in with the same sweep of my eyes. The best I can do for you is footnotes.
     
    But first things first. One thing I could do was look good. The moment I awoke I realized that my form had slipped while I had been out. My falcon form had deteriorated into a thick, oily vapor that sloshed back and forth in midair, as if pulled by a miniature tide. This substance was in fact the nearest I could get to revealing my pure essence[2] while enslaved on earth, but despite its noble nature, it wasn't wholly fetching.[3] I thus quickly changed myself into the semblance of a slender human female, draped in a simple tunic, before adding a couple of small horns on her scalp for the heck of it.
     
    [2] Essence: the fundamental, essential being of a spirit such as myself, wherein my identity and nature are contained In your world, we are forced to incorporate our essences into some sort of physical form; in the Other Place, where we come from, our essences intermingle freely and chaotically.
     
    [3] In fact, it had the appearance and odor of dirty washing-up water.
     
    With this done, I appraised my surroundings with a jaundiced eye.
    I was standing on top of a small stone plinth or pillar, which rose about two meters high from the middle of a flagstoned floor. On the first plane my view was clear in all directions, but on the second to seventh, it was blocked by something nasty: a small energy sphere of considerable power. This was made up of thin, white, crisscrossing lines of force that expanded out from the top of the pillar beside my slender feet and met again over my delicate head. I didn't have to touch the lines to know that if I did so they would cause me unbearable pain and hurl me back.
    There was no opening, no weak spot in my prison. I could not get out. I was stuck inside the sphere like some dumb goldfish in a bowl.
    But unlike a goldfish, I had a good memory. I could remember what had happened after I busted out of Sholto's shop. The silver Snare falling on me; the afrit's red-hot hooves melting the pavement stones; the smell of rosemary and garlic throttling me fast as a murderer's hands until my consciousness fled. The outrage of it—me, Bartimaeus, spark out on a London street! But there was time for anger later. Now I had to keep calm, look for a chance.
    Beyond the surface of my sphere was a sizeable chamber of some antiquity. It was built of gray stone blocks and roofed with heavy wooden beams. A single window high up on one wall let in a shaft of weak and ailing light, which barely managed to push through the swirling motes of dust to reach the floor. The window was fitted with a magical barrier similar to my prison. Elsewhere in the room were several other pillars similar to the one on which I stood. Most were desolate and empty, but one had a small, bright, and very dense blue sphere balanced upon it. It was hard to be sure, but I thought I could see a contorted something pressed inside.
    There were no doors in the walls, though that meant little. Temporary portals were common enough in magicians' prisons. Access to the next chamber out (or in) would be impossible except through gateways opened to order by combinations of trusted magician-warders. It would be tiresomely difficult to bypass these, even if I could escape my prison sphere.
    The guards didn't help matters either. They were two sizeable utukku,[4] stolidly marching around the perimeter of the room. One of them had the face and crest of a desert eagle, all cruel curving beak and bristling plumes. The other had a bull's head, blowing clouds of spittle out of his nostrils. Both walked like men on massive legs; their