Jonathan Stroud - The Amulet of Samarkand

How true this was. Magicians are essentially parasitic. In societies where they are dominant, they live well off the strivings of others In those times and places when they lose power and have to earn their own bread, they are generally reduced to a sorry state, performing small conjurations for jeering ale—house crowds in return for a few brass coins.

A variety with five eyes, two on the head, one on either flank, and one—well, let's just say it would be hard to creep up on him unawares while he was touching his toes.

Very, very nasty it was. Remind me to tell you about it some day.

Faquarl would have argued that it was more expedient simply to devour them, while Jabor wouldn't have argued at all, but just done it. But I find that human flesh makes my essence ache. It's like eating bad seafood—too much accumulated grime per mouthful.

To date, the only experience I'd had of driving had been during the Great War, when the British army had been camped thirty miles outside Prague. A Czech magician, who shall remain nameless, charged me to steal certain documents. They were well guarded and I was forced to pass the enemy djinn by driving a staff ambulance into the British camp. My driving was very bad, but at least it enabled me to complete my disguise (by filling the ambulance with each soldier I knocked down en route). When I entered the camp, the men were rushed off to the hospital, while I slipped away to steal the campaign plans.

Ghuls: lesser djinn of an unsavory cast, keen on the taste of humans Hence efficient (if frustrated) sentries They can only see onto five planes. I was Squalls on all but the seventh

Everything seems to aspire to be something better than it is. Mites aspire to be moulers, moulers aspire to be foliots, foliots aspire to be djinn Some djinn aspire to be afrits or even marids In each case it's hopeless. It is impossible to alter the limitations of one's essence. But that doesn't stop many entities waltzing around in the guise of something more powerful than they are. Of course, when you're pretty darn perfect to start with, you don't want to change anything.

All built to celebrate one insignificant tribe's victory over another. From Rome to Beijing, Timbuktu to London, triumphal arches crop up wherever there are cities, heavy with the weight of earth and death. I've never seen one I liked.

I wasn't being rude here. Well, all right, I was, but it was accurate abuse nevertheless. I may not be a search sphere imp (all nostrils, remember), but I've got an acute sense of smell, and can nearly always identify a magician, even when they're going incognito. All those years of hanging out in smoky rooms summoning powerful entities gives their skin a distinctive odor, in which incense and the sharp pang of fear feature prominently. If after that you're still unsure, the clincher is to look 'em in the eyes: usually you can see their lenses.

Not that my advice was always taken: check out the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Not a good enough description for you? Well, I was only trying to move the story on. Heddleham Hall was a great rectangular pile with stubby north—south wings, plenty of tall, arched windows, two stories, high sloping gables, a surfeit of brick chimneys, ornate tracery that amounted to the Baroque, faux—battlements above the main door, high vaulted ceilings (heavily groined), sundry gargoyles (likewise) and all constructed from a creamy—brown stone that looked attractive in moderation but en masse made everything blur like a big block of melting fudge.

So decoratively that I wondered if their feet had been glued in position.

Don't think I'd forgotten Simpkin. On the contrary. I have a long memory and a fertile imagination. I had plans for him.

How the weavers of Basra must have loathed being commissioned to create such a monstrosity. Gone are the days when, with complex and cruel incantations, they wove djinn into the fabric of their carpets, creating artifacts that carried their masters across the Middle East and were stain—resistant at the same time. Hundreds of us were trapped this way. But now, with the magical power of Baghdad long broken, such craftsmen escape destitution only by weaving tourist tat for rich foreign clients. Such is progress.

The only remains of the first person to blow the horn, it being an essential requirement of such items that their first user must surrender himself to the mercy of the entity he summons. With this notable design flaw, summoning horns are pretty rare, as you'd imagine.

In a perfect example of most magicians' dreary style, each and every vehicle was big, black, and shiny. Even the smallest looked as if it wanted to be a hearse when it grew up.

Inadvisable.

I'd thought my blows would keep them unconscious for at least a couple of days. But I'd fluffed it. That's what comes of hurrying a job.

Potent magical devices, invented in medieval Europe. At the wearers command, the boots can cover considerable distances in the smallest of strides. Normal (Earth) rules of time and space do not apply. Allegedly, each boot contains a djinni capable of traveling on a hypothetical eighth plane (not that I would know anything about that). It was now easier to understand how the mercenary had managed to evade capture when he first stole the Amulet for Lovelace.

They were intertwined. Never mind how.

In both senses. And I can tell you I've been in some sticky places in my time, but for sheer waxy unpleasantness, his earlobe would be hard to beat.

The threads of a Stricture act as a seal. They allow no object (or sound) to escape their cocoon It's a kind of temporary prison, more usually employed on unfortunate humans than on djinn.

One of the worst examples was the Mycenean outpost of Atlantis on the island of Santonni in the Mediterranean About 3,500 years ago, if memory serves. They wanted to conquer another island (or some predictable objective like that), so their magicians clubbed together and summoned an aggressive entity. They couldn't control it. I was only a few hundred miles away on the Egyptian delta; I heard the explosion and saw the tsunami waves come roaring across to deluge the African coast. Weeks later, when things had settled down, the pharaoh's boats sailed to Santorini. The entire central section of the island, with its people and its shining city, had sunk into the sea. And all because they hadn't bothered with a pentacle.

Unless they noticed a faint gray smudge along the line of the rift. This was where light was draining away, being sucked off into the Other Place.

It was the old chewing—gum principle in action. Imagine pulling a strip of chewed gum between your fingers: first it holds and stretches, then gets thin somewhere near the middle. Finally a tiny hole forms at the thinnest point, which quickly tears and splits Here, Lovelace's summoning had done the pulling. With some help from the thing on the other side.