Jonathan Stroud - The Amulet of Samarkand

They could only see the first three planes clearly, of course, but that was enough to get the outline.

The entity trapped inside the Amulet had to be at least as powerful as this newcomer if Lovelace was to withstand its force. Even as a long—suffering djinni, I still had a grudging admiration for the ancient Asian people who had managed to capture and compress it.

This being was greater by far than all the various marids, afrits, and djinn that magicians normally summon. A strong magician can summon an afrit on his own; most marids require two. I was calculating a minimum of four for this one.

I hadn't heard of this particular being before. Unsurprising really, since though there are many thousands of us that magicians have cruelly summoned—and thus de—fined—there are countless more that merge into the Other Place without any need for names. Perhaps this was the first time Ramuthra had been summoned.

Ombos: city in Egypt sacred to Seth, Jabor's old boss. For a century or two, Jabor lurked in a temple there, feeding on the victims brought to him, until a pharaoh from Lower Egypt came and burned the place to the ground.

Or air, really. We were about twenty feet up.

I hadn't a clue. Words of Command are magicians' business. That is what they are good at. Djinn can't speak them. But crabbed old master magicians know an incantation for every eventuality.

If magicians rely on theatrical effects to overawe the people, they also use much the same techniques to impress and outmaneuver each other.

Amanda Cathcart, Simon Lovelace, and six servants had also vanished into the rift or the mouth of Ramuthra, but under the circumstances, the magicians did not consider these significant losses.

That is, at exactly the moment Lovelace perished.

So, once again, our paths had crossed without a definitive confrontation. A pity really; I was looking forward to giving Faquarl a good hiding. I just hadn't quite had time to get round to it.

As well as no doubt creating the secret mechanism in an adjacent room, which pulled back the carpet from the floor and triggered the bars upon the windows. Certain types of foliot are very gifted at construction jobs; I used to have a band of them under me when working on the walls of Prague. They're good workers, provided they don't hear the sound of church bells, in which case they drop tools and crumble into ashes. That was a drag on festival days—I had to employ a bunch of imps with dustpans and brushes to sweep away the pieces.

Homunculus: a tiny manikin produced by magic and often trapped in a bottle as a magician's curio. A few have prophetic powers, although it is important to do exactly the opposite of what they recommend, since homunculi are always malevolent and seek to do their creators harm.

Government offices tend to be full of afrits and search spheres, and I feared they might take exception to my presence.

An old Egyptian vow. Be careful when you use it—it invariably comes true.