AN: REVISED 10/13/14

Bartimaeus

A thick, heavy, gray mist swept through the room. In the midst of it an inhuman screech was heard, like that of a bird, but harsher and shriller. The flickering flames of candles faltered and disappeared at the sound of it. A hulking figure stepped out of the mist, becoming more visible as the mist faded away. It had a bull's horned head, a human's torso, a faun's legs. A Minotaur.

What? It had been hard enough to get to my destination in the first place. Two summons came almost simultaneously, but one had been a split second the leader.

The mist was still hanging in the room, though fading away; it gave me time to think. One of them had obviously been Kitty's; she had promised to summon me after a few hours of recuperating in the Other Place. But I had still been careful in materializing. If the first summoning had been another's, it wouldn't do to appear in Ptolemy's form, would it?

On the other hand, who was the other summoner? Kitty was the only one alive* who knew about my existence (probably.) The only other possibility was him, but he was dead, wasn't he?

|*I say alive because...oh, read on.|

The mist had dissipated. It was show time.

The first thing I noticed was the figure opposite from me in the other pentacle. I instantly recognized her face. The first (and last) time I had seen it was through a fuzzy haze when I was...oh, never mind that. I knew who she was, even if my memory of her was blurry. All I knew was that my ex-master had been rather fond of her.

It was Jane Farrar, most likely the last magician in England left who could control an over-5000-year-old djinni like myself. Who had been presumed dead, by the way.

Speaking of England, where were we?

It didn't look like London, as I flicked my glance over to the window on my right; rolling hills of green and an empty blue sky with a few houses dotting the landscape was definitely not London. It was the only window in the room. The rest of the room was bare except for the usual summoning things* and...

|*Which, in case you're interested, consisted of chalk, herbs, candles, some iron ankhs, a shelf overstuffed with summoning material, and things like that. |

Oh dear.

Behind the woman standing in the pentacle was a chair. And in that chair...

I recognized him despite the fact that I couldn't see his face.

Even though he was tied up (which did give me a bit of respite) with his head hanging limply, hair grown long* and draped over his face, and a grinning third-plane** foliot^ perched on his shoulder, I still knew his shape. It was hard not to, when I had previously been inside him^^.

|*It had been precisely 240 days since I last saw him, and hair grows, of course. At least on humans.

**I have access to seven planes, all co-existing and overlapping. Most organisms can only see the first plane; cats, the first two; and spirits the others. Things are hidden on the earlier planes, but must be revealed somewhere along the line.

^There are many kinds of spirits, broken down into five main types, from lowest to highest: imps, foliots, djinn (like myself), afrits, and marids.

^^In a rather disturbing episode which I would rather not repeat. |

Him who had been presumed and recorded dead. Him who had been the "demon" of my life, as I had been of his.

Nathaniel, aliased John Mandrake.

I wondered if he had told Farrar his true name. As far as I knew, other than himself, Kitty and I were the only ones who knew that piece of information.

Speaking of Farrar...I focused on her once more. She was looking at me rather impatiently, even though all those observations I just had had taken less than two minutes. "I see you have noticed him," she said rather coolly, instead of the usual magician gabbling of "You must obey my will."

The Minotaur glared. Obviously she had either moved him there or he had been there already. Whatever the case, he had been put there to perturb me. And though I wouldn't admit it, it had.

"What is your will?" I asked drily with a deep Minotaur-appropriate voice. Get it over with already.

Farrar smiled. "If I am correct, your sole master for these past months has been the ever-famous Kitty Jones, has she not?"

I ransacked my never-empty supply of lies and came up with "No. I haven't even had a master."*

|*This was more for Kitty's sake than for Nathaniel's; I wouldn't really willingly do anything for him. However, he was/had been Kitty's friend, and we still had a – though rather fragile – bond from...oh, forget it.|

The person in the pentacle opposite from mine went on as if she had asked a rhetorical question*. "Then you should be perfectly aware of her current location. My will is for you to find her."

|*Which she hadn't.|

She hadn't properly dismissed me yet. I waited.

"All this time. Eight months. Almost half of those were spent with the doctor healing him" - I noticed that she only referred to Nathaniel as him, not by either of his names - "and the rest were spent finding a proper spirit to find that Jones. Also, as you can imagine, we tried squeezing information out of him, but after six months he had revealed nothing except your name, and only just that at that. But I still tracked you down. And now after you bring Jones here we can give them a proper execution before I conquer London. So go."

First dismissal. Two more before I really had to leave and get Kitty.

Poor Nathaniel. During the six years of my servitude to him he had always been speaking of this – becoming Prime Minister, ruling over all of England as the most powerful magician. And now he was going to die before he got to see it happen by someone else's hand. Of course, with the weakling magicians in Parliament right now, it was an easy task.

"I am giving you an open invitation, much as I distrust you. And now the terms of our contract." Why hadn't she said that before the first dismissal?* She spoke the words and I absentmindedly repeated them, only half paying attention to their actual meaning. Something about protecting her, which no honorary magician would omit**, and some other things about securing Kitty.

|*Flawed reasoning, this one. She always tried so hard to be clever.

**Of course, Kitty and Ptolemy had done away with this, but they were special.|

Second dismissal. I still stayed, resisting the pull.

Farrar looked at me with her icy eyes while nodding in the foliot's direction. Something only a magician could do. The foliot leaned down and pinched Nathaniel, effectively awakening him. His eyelids fluttered open and his head jerked up. I hadn't realized before what a pitiful state he was in. His cheekbones* were hollow and his clothes hung loosely on his frame.

|*On his face, of course.|

He noticed me and relaxed somewhat. "Hello, Bartimaeus," he said in a weary voice.

"Hello...John." I almost called him Nathaniel before I remembered that Farrar and the foliot were listening. "Good to see you."

"You too." He made an attempt to smile that fell flat. Poor boy looked like he'd been in a war.

Before we could have any more interesting conversation, Farrar dismissed me. The last thing I saw before I vanished was Nathaniel's face.

So he lived.

As you can see, I made one or two changes to grammar, tweaked for continuity with the following chapters, and smoothed out some of the more awkward parts. No harm done.

Chapter 2 coming shortly!