Jonathan Stroud - The Amulet of Samarkand

Or so I thought. But he was an unusually clever and resourceful child.

"No," he said slowly, "I can't stop you if you want to betray me. All I can do is make sure you suffer along with me. Let's see…"

He rummaged through the pockets of his shabby coat. "There must be something in here somewhere… Aha!" His hand emerged holding a small battered tin, on which the words Old Chokey were ornately inscribed.

"That's a tobacco tin!" I exclaimed. "Don't you know smoking kills?"

"It doesn't contain tobacco anymore," the boy said. "It's one of my master's incense pots. It's full of rosemary now." He lifted the lid a fraction; sure enough, an instant later, a waft of the hellish scent reached me and made the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Some herbs are very bad for our essence, and rosemary is one of these. In consequence, magicians can't get enough of it. [40] There's big business in protective herbal aftershaves and underarm deodorants for magicians. Simon Lovelace, for instance, positively reeked of Rowan—tree Rub—on.

"I'd turf that out and fill it up with some honest baccy," I advised. "Far healthier."

The boy closed the lid. "I am going to send you on a mission," he said. "The moment you've gone, I shall cast the spell of Indefinite Confinement, binding you into this tin. The spell will not take effect immediately; in fact I shall make it start up a month from today. If for any reason I am not around to cancel this spell before a month is up, you shall find yourself drawn into this tin and trapped there, until such time as it is opened again. How'd you like the idea of that? A few hundred years encased in a small tin of rosemary. That will do wonders for your complexion."

"You've got a scheming little mind, haven't you?" I said glumly.

"And in case you're tempted to risk the penalty, I shall bind this tin with bricks and throw it into the Thames before the day is out. So don't go expecting anyone to release you early."

"I won't." Too right—I'm not insanely optimistic. [41] The Indefinite Confinement spell is a bad 'un, and one of the worst threats magicians can make. You can be trapped for centuries in horrid minute spaces, and to cap it all, some of them are just plain daft. Matchboxes, bottles, handbags… I even knew a djinni once who was imprisoned in a dirty old lamp.

The kid's face now bore a horribly triumphant look. He looked like an unpleasant boy in a playground who'd just won my best marble. "So, Bartimaeus," he said, sneering. "What do you say to that ?" I gave him a beaming smile. "How about you forget all that silly tin business and just trust me instead?" "Not a chance." My shoulders sagged. That's the trouble, you see. No matter how hard you try, magicians always find a way to clobber you in the end. "All right, Nathaniel," I said. "What exactly is it that you want me to do?"

No sooner had the djinni transformed itself into a pigeon and flown from his window than Nathaniel closed the fastener, drew the curtains, and sank down upon the floor. His face was corpse—white and his body shook with exhaustion. For almost an hour, he remained slumped against the wall, staring at nothing.

He had done it; yes, he had done it all right. The demon was bested, was under his control again. He only had to work the binding spell on the tin, and Bartimaeus would be forced to serve him for as long as he desired. It was all going to be fine. He had nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

So he told himself. But his hands trembled in his lap and his heart pounded painfully against his chest, and the confident assertions he tried to conjure fell from his mind. Angrily, he forced himself to breathe deeply and clasped his hands together tightly to suppress the shaking. Of course, this fear was only natural. He had ducked the Stimulating Compass by a fraction of a second. It was the first time he had come near death. That sort of thing was bound to cause a reaction. In a few minutes he would be back to normal; he could work the spell, take the bus to the Thames…

The djinni knew his birth name.

It knew his birth name.

Bartimaeus of Uruk, Sakhr al—Jinni of Al—Arish… He had allowed it to uncover his name. Mrs. Underwood had spoken, and the djinni had heard; and in that moment the cardinal rule had been broken. And now Nathaniel was compromised, perhaps forever.

He felt the panic welling up in his throat; the force of it practically made him gag. For the first time he could remember, his eyes stung with tears. The cardinal rule… if you broke that, you gave yourself up for lost. Demons always found a way. Give them any power at all and sooner or later they would have you. Sometimes it took years, but they would always…

He remembered famous case studies from the books. Werner of Prague: he had allowed his birth name to be uncovered by a harmless imp in his employ; in due course the imp had told a foliot and the foliot had told a djinni and the djinni had told an afrit. And three years later, when Werner had been crossing Wenceslas Square to buy a smoked sausage, a whirlwind had swept him into the air. For several hours his howls from above had deafened the townspeople going about their business, until the disruption had finished with pieces of the magician raining down upon on the weathervanes and chimneys. And this fate was hardly the most horrible that had befallen careless magicians. There was Paulo of Turin, Septimus Manning, Johann Faust…

A sob broke from Nathaniel's mouth, and the small, pathetic sound shocked him out of his despair and self—pity. Enough of this. He wasn't dead yet, and the demon was still under his command. Or it would be, once he had disposed of the tobacco tin properly. He would pull himself together.

Nathaniel struggled to his feet, his limbs awash with weakness. With a great effort, he drove his fears to the back of his mind and began his preparations. He redrew the pentacle and changed the incense. He lit new candles. He stole down to his master's library and double—checked the incantations. Then he added more rosemary to the tobacco tin, placed it in the center of its circle, and began the spell of Indefinite Confinement. After five long minutes, his mouth was dry and his voice cracked, but a steel—gray aura began to gleam across the surface of the tin. It flared and faded. Nathaniel uttered the name of Bartimaeus, added an astrological date on which the confinement would begin, and finished. The tin was as before. Nathaniel put it in the pocket of his jacket, snuffed out the candles, and drew the rug over the markings on the floor. Then he collapsed upon the bed.

When Mrs. Underwood brought her husband his lunch an hour later, she confided an anxiety with him.

"I'm worried about the boy," she said. "He's barely touched his sandwich. He's flopped himself down at the table, white as a sheet. Like he's been up all night. Something's scared him, or he's sickening for something." She paused. "Dear?"

Mr. Underwood was inspecting the array of food upon his plate. "No mango chutney, Martha? You know I like it with my ham and salad."

"We've run out, dear. So what do you think we should do?"

"Buy some more. That's obvious, isn't it? Heavens above, woman—"

"About the boy."

"Mmm? Oh, he's all right. The brat's just nervous about the Naming. And about summoning his first impling. I remember how terrified I got—my master practically had to whip me into the circle." Mr. Underwood shoveled a forkful of ham into his mouth. "Tell him to meet me in the library in an hour and a half's time and not to forget the Almanac. No—make it an hour. I'll need to ring Duvall about those thefts afterward, curse him."