The Golem's Eye

booby traps. As I drew close, I felt a warning throb on all seven planes, the indication of powerful magic up ahead. I stuck a tentative head through the hole and looked around.
    It was little more than a glorified cupboard, a seedy hole half filled with the cheap gimmicks that the girl and her friends had pinched from the magicians. There were the usual glass orbs and metal containers: shoddy stuff all, none of it any good. [7]

    [7] Rather in the same way that tinned vegetables are never as nice and nutritious as the real thing, Elemental Spheres, or Inferno sticks, or any other weapon formed by trapping an imp or other spirit inside a globe or box, are never as effective or long-lasting as spells worked spontaneously by the spirits themselves. All magicians use them as often as possible, however—it's so much easier than going through the laborious business of summoning.
     
    The exception to this was the item propped casually in the far corner, incongruously fighting for space with a few explosive lances.
    When I'd seen the Staff from afar across the burning roofs of Prague, it had been crackling with a storm's power. Lightning bolts had converged on it from a rent and wounded sky, its shadow extended across the clouds. A whole city was subjugated before its anger. Now it was quiet and dusty and a spider was innocently spinning a web between its carved head and a recess in the wall.
    Even so, its energy was still latent within it. Its aura pulsed strongly, filling the room (on the higher planes) with light. Such an object is not to be trifled with, and it was with hooked fingertip and thumb, in the reluctant manner of someone extracting a maggot from an apple, that I carried Gladstone's Staff out of the secret storeroom and presented it to my master.
    Oh, he was happy then. The relief just poured off him. He took it from me and gazed at it, and the aura of the thing lit the contours of his face with a dull radiance.
    "Mr. Mandrake." That was the girl talking. She was standing next to Hyrnek now, one arm around him protectively. The invisible foliot had swung to Hyrnek's opposite shoulder and was eyeing her with profound mistrust. Perhaps it sensed her innate resilience. "Mr. Mandrake," she said, "I have completed my half of the bargain. Now you must set us free."
    "Yes, yes." My master scarcely looked up from his appreciation of the Staff. "Of course. I will make the appropriate arrangements. An escort will be found for you. But first, let us get out of this gloomy place."
     
     
    By the time we emerged, the light of early morning had begun to spill into the corners of the cobbled mews and shone faintly on the chrome of the limousine on the opposite side of the lane. The chauffeur sat stock-still in his seat, gazing out in front; he did not appear to have moved in all the time we'd been gone. Now the girl tried again. She was very tired; her voice did not carry great hope. "You do not have to escort us from here, Mr. Mandrake," she said. "We can make our own way."
     
    My master had just clambered up the steps holding the Staff. He did not appear to hear her at first; his mind was far away, dwelling on other things. He blinked, stopped dead in his tracks, and fixed his eyes upon her as if seeing her for the first time.
    "You made a promise," the girl said.
    "A promise..." He frowned vaguely.
    "To let us go." I noticed her subtly shifting her weight onto the front of her feet as she spoke, readying herself for sudden movement. I wondered with some interest what she planned to do.
    "Ah yes." There might have been a time, a year or two back, when Nathaniel would have honored any agreement he had made. He'd have considered it beneath his dignity to break a vow, despite his enmity with the girl. It may be that, even now, part of him still disliked doing so. Certainly, he hesitated for a moment, as if in actual doubt. Then I saw him glance up at the red spheres, which had emerged from the cellar and were once more hovering above. His eyes went dark. His masters' gazes were on him, and that decided matters.
    He tugged at a cuff as he spoke, but his resemblance to the other magicians was now deeper than such outward mimicry. "Promises made to terrorists are scarcely obligatory, Ms. Jones," he said. "Our agreement is void. You will be interrogated and tried for treason forthwith, and I shall make it my business to escort you to the Tower myself. Do not try anything!" His voice rose in warning—the girl had slipped a