The Golem's Eye

Beyond that, there was nothing: no demi-afrits unleashed, no djinn of any capacity. Prague's leaders were heavily reliant on their unobservant human troops, and of this I took full advantage. Less than an hour after we had begun our flight, we had crossed the Vltava on the back of a vegetable lorry and were making our way on foot through a region of gardens toward the castle.
    In the great days of the Empire, the low hill on which the castle stood had been illuminated, each day at dusk, by a thousand lanterns; these changed color, and occasionally position, at the Emperor's whim, casting multifarious light upon the trees and houses clinging to its slopes. [1]  Now the lamps were broken and rusted to their posts. Except for a few feeble orange spots that marked out windows, Castle Hill was dark before us, enfolded by night.
     
    [1] Each lantern contained a sealed glass pod in which an irritable imp resided. The Master of Lamps, an hereditary official among the court magicians, stalked along the hillside each afternoon, instructing his captives in the colors and intensity required for the night to come. By subtle phrasing of each charge, the nuances achieved could be subtle or spectacular, but were always in accordance with the mood at court.
     
    We came at length to the base of a steep flight of cobbled steps. Up above was Golden Lane—I glimpsed its lights glinting high against the stars, on the very edge of the cold black slab of hill. Beside the bottom of the steps was a low wall, and behind this was a midden; I left Nathaniel lurking there, while I flew, as a bat, on a quick reconnaissance up the steps.
    The eastern steps had changed little, since that distant day when my master's death had released me from his service. Too much to hope that an afrit would leap out to grab my current master now. The only presences I could detect were three fat owls, hidden in the avenues of dark trees on either side of the way. I doublechecked; they were owls even on the seventh plane.
    Far off across the river, the hunt was still in operation. I could hear soldiers' whistles shrilling with sad futility, a sound that gave a thrill to my essence. Why? Because Bartimaeus was too fast for them, that's why; because the djinni they wanted was far away already, flitting and flapping the 256 steps up Castle Hill. And because somewhere ahead of me in the night silence was the source of the disturbance that I still felt tingling on each plane—the odd, unidentified magical activity. Things were going to get interesting.
    The bat passed the tumbled husk of the old Black Tower, once occupied by the Elite Guard, but home now to no one but a dozen sleeping ravens. Beyond it was my objective. A street, narrow and unassuming, walled by a series of humble cottages—all tall stained chimneys, small windows, cracked plaster-fronts, and plain wooden doors leading straight onto the road. The place was always like this, even in the great years. Golden Lane worked under different rules.
    The roofs, always sagging, were now beyond repair—a mess of warped frames and loose tiles. I settled on an exposed rib of wood on the endmost cottage and surveyed the street. In the days of Rudolf, greediest of the emperors, Golden Lane was a center of great magical effort, the objective of which was nothing less than the creation of the Philosopher's Stone. [2]  Each house was rented to a different alchemist and, for a time, the tiny cottages hummed with activity. [3]  Even after the search was abandoned, the street remained home to foreign magicians working for the Czechs. The government wanted them close beside the castle, where it could keep an eye on them. And so the situation remained, right through to the bloody night when Gladstone's forces took the city.
     
    [2] A fabled pebble accredited with the ability to turn base metals into gold or silver. Its existence is, of course, utter moonshine, as might be discovered by asking any imp. We djinn can alter the appearance of things by casting a Glamour or an Illusion; but to permanently shift the true nature of something is quite impossible. But humans never listen to something that doesn't suit them, and countless lives were expended on this futile search.
     
    [3] The magicians came from all over the known world—from Spain, from Britain, from snowbound Russia, from the fringes of the Indian deserts—in the hope of winning incalculable reward. Each was master of a hundred arts, each the tormentor of a