Jonathan Stroud - The Amulet of Samarkand

Natterjack impling: an unadventurous creature that affects the semblance and habits of a dull sort of toad.

Mouler: even less exciting than a natterjack impling, were that possible.

Armed with this, I would be able to combat the whippersnapper's most vicious attacks. Knowledge of the name redresses the power balance a little, you see, acting as a kind of defensive shield for djinn inside the circle. It's a simple and very ancient kind of talisman and—Well, what are you hanging around reading this for? Read on quickly and see for yourself.

Old or young, small or fat, the besetting weakness of all magicians is their pride. They can't bear to be laughed at. They hate it so much even the cleverest ones can lose control and make silly mistakes.

The Systemic Vise consists of a number of concentric bands of force that squeeze round you, tight as a mummy's bandage—cloth. As the magician repeats the incantation, the bands grow tighter and tighter until the helpless djinni trapped inside begs for mercy.

Better—looking by far, of course.

Succubus: a seductively shaped djinni in female form. Oddly popular with male magicians.

Typical magician's guff this. It was the unfortunate imp inside the bronze disc who did all the work.

A complicated penalty made up of fifteen curses in five different languages. Magicians can only use it on one of us who deliberately disobeys or refuses to carry out a given command. It causes immediate incineration. Only applied in extreme cases, since it is tiring for the magician and robs them of a slave.

There's big business in protective herbal aftershaves and underarm deodorants for magicians. Simon Lovelace, for instance, positively reeked of Rowan—tree Rub—on.

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.

He wasn't the only one, believe me.

Some societies I had known made great use of messenger imps. The rooftops and date palms of old Baghdad (which had neither telephone nor e—mail) used to swarm with the things after breakfast and shortly before sundown, which were the two traditional times for messages to be sent.

These polite asterisks replace a short, censored episode characterized by bad language and some sadly necessary violence. When we pick up the story again, everything is as before, except that I am perspiring slightly and the contrite imp is the model of cooperation.

On the night I stole the Amulet, I'd heard Lovelace being skeptical about the Prime Minister's abilities and this gap in my knowledge suggested he was right. If Devereaux had been a prominent magician, chances are I would have heard his name. Word spreads quickly about the powerful ones, who are always the most trouble.

Besides, it would have given me a stitch when flying.

Foliot: a cut—price djinni.

Most of us enact our duties only under sufferance, simply because we are hurt if we do not cooperate. But a few, typically ones in cushy jobs like Sholto's servant, grow to enjoy their servile status, and no longer resent their situation. Often they do not even have to be summoned, but are happy to engage in prolonged work for their masters, heedless of the pain they suffer from being continually trapped in a physical body. The rest of us generally regard them with hatred and contempt.

Literally swelling, I mean. Like a lime—green balloon slowly inflated by a foot pump. Some foliots (the simple sort) change size and shape to express their mood.

How wrong can you get? I brought the anklet to Nefertiti in the first place. And I might add that she was a stunner before she put it on. (By the way, these modern magicians were mistaken. The anklet doesn't improve a woman's looks; it forces her husband to obey her every whim. I half wondered how the poor old Duke was getting on.)

You could see how far he'd gone over to the enemy by the way he described the death of a magician as "murder." And was upset! Honestly, it almost makes you long for the simple aggression of Jabor.

No? Oh, well. It's the poet in me, I think.

With the aid of their lenses, magicians can see clearly onto the second and third planes and blearily onto the fourth. Sholto was no doubt checking me out on these. Fortunately my imp—form extended to the fourth, so I was safe.

Silver hurts us badly; it burns our essence with its searing cold. Which is why Sholto had installed it in his security system. What it did to the djinn imprisoned within the mannequins I dread to think.

The djinni within was forced to obey its instruction—the defense of the shop—no matter what the consequence to itself. This was where I held a slight advantage, since my only current obligation was to save my skin.

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.

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.

In fact, it had the appearance and odor of dirty washing—up water.

A type of djinni much favored by the Assyrian magicians for their unintelligent devotion to violence. I first fought these at the battle of Al—Arish, when the pharaoh drove back the Assyrian army from Egyptian soil. The utukku looked good—four meters high, heads of beasts and birds of prey, crystal breastplates, flashing scimitars. But they could all be caught by the old "He's behind you" trick. Recipe for success: 1. Take a stone. 2. Chuck behind utukku so that it makes a diverting sound. 3. Watch utukku swivel, eyes popping. 4. Run him through the back with gusto. 5. Gloat to taste. Oddly, my exploits that day made me a few enemies among the surviving utukku.

Which was unlikely to be much. As a rough rule of thumb, you can gauge a djinni's intelligence by the number of guises he or she likes to wear. Sprightly entities such as me have no limit to the forms we take. The more the merrier, in fact; it makes our existence slightly less wearisome. Conversely, the true dullards (viz. Jabor, utukku, etc.) favor only one, and it's usually one that is millennia out of date. The forms these utukku wore were fashionable in the streets of Nineveh back in 700 B.C. Who goes round as a bull—headed spirit nowadays? Exactly. It's so passe.