Three years on from the events in The Golem’s Eye, the magicians‘ rule in London is teetering on a knife-edge, with strikes, riots and general unrest. The Prime Minister is largely controlled by two advisors, one of whom is 17-year-old Nathaniel. Meanwhile, living under a false identity, Kitty has been researching djinn; she has come to believe that the only way to destroy the magicians is for an alliance of some kind between djinn and ordinary people. Kitty seeks out Bartimaeus and embarks on a terrifying journey into the djinn’s chaotic domain – The Other Place – which no human being has ever survived. But even as she does so, Makepeace engineers a dramatic coup d’etat. The outcome is a shattering of the magicians’control and all magical laws are turned upside down. Can Bartimaeus, Nathaniel and Kitty settle old scores if they are to survive and prevent the earth’s destruction?
Short extract:
Alexandria
125 BC
The assassins dropped into the palace grounds at midnight, four fleet shadows dark against the wall. The fall was high, the ground was hard; they made no more sound on impact than the pattering of rain. Three seconds they crouched there, low and motionless, sniffing at the air. Then away they stole, through the dark gardens, among the tamarisks and date palms, towards the quarters where the boy lay at rest. A cheetah on a chain stirred in its sleep; far away in the desert, jackals cried.
They went on pointed toe-tips, leaving no trace in the long wet grass. Their robes flittered at their backs, fragmenting their shadows into wisps and traces. What could be seen? Nothing but leaves shifting in the breeze. What could be heard? Nothing but the wind sighing among the palm fronds. No sight, no noise. A crocodile djinni, standing sentry at the sacred pool, was undisturbed though they passed within a scale’s breadth of his tail. For humans, it wasn’t badly done.
The heat of the day was a memory; the air was chill. Above the palace a cold round moon shone down, slathering silver across the roofs and courtyards.
Away beyond the wall, the great city murmured in the night: wheels on dirt roads, distant laughter from the pleasure district along the quay, the tide lapping at its stones. Lamplight shone in windows, embers glowed on roof hearths, and from the top of the tower beside the harbour gate the great watch fire burned its message out to sea. Its image danced like imp-light on the waves.
At their posts, the guards played games of chance. In the pillared halls, the servants slept on beds of rushes. The palace gates were locked by triple bolts, each thicker than a man. No eyes were turned to the western gardens, where death came calling, secret as a scorpion, on four pairs of silent feet.
The boy’s window was on the first floor of the palace. Four black shadows hunched beneath the wall. The leader made a signal. One by one they pressed against the stonework; one by one they began to climb, suspended by their fingertips and the nails of their big toes. In this manner they had scaled marble columns and negotiated waterfalls of ice from Massilia to Hadhramaut; the rough stone blocks were easy for them now. Up they went, like bats upon a cave wall. Moonlight glinted on bright things suspended in their mouths.
The first of the assassins reached the window ledge: he sprang tiger-like upon it and peered into the chamber.
Moonlight spilled across the room; the pallet was lit as if by day. The boy lay sleeping, motionless as one already dead. His dark hair fell loose upon the cushions, his pale lamb’s throat shone against the silks.
The assassin took his dagger from between his teeth. With quiet deliberation, he surveyed the room, gauging its extent and the possibility of traps. It was large, shadowy, empty of ostentation. Three pillars supported the ceiling. In the distance stood a door of teak, barred on the inside. A chest, half filled with clothes, sat open against the wall. He saw a royal chair draped with a discarded cloak, sandals lying on the floor, an onyx basin filled with water. A faint trace of perfume hung on the air. The assassin, for whom such scents were decadent and corrupt, wrinkled his nose.
His eyes narrowed; he reversed the dagger, holding it between finger and thumb by its shining, gleaming tip. It quivered once, twice. He was gauging the range here – he’d never missed a target yet, from Carthage to old Colchis. Every knife he’d thrown had found its throat.
His wrist flickered; the silver arc of the knife’s flight cut the air in two. It landed with a soft noise, hilt-deep in the cushion, an inch from the child’s neck.
The assassin paused in doubt, still crouched upon the sill. The back of his hands bore the crisscross scars that marked him as an adept of the dark academy. An adept never missed his target. The throw had been exact, precisely calibrated . . . Yet it had missed. Had the victim moved a crucial fraction? Impossible – the boy was fast asleep. From his person he pulled a second dagger. Another careful aim (the assassin was conscious of his brothers behind and below him on the wall: he felt the grim weight of their impatience). A flick of the wrist, a momentary arc-
With a soft noise, the second dagger landed in the cushion, an inch to the other side of the prince’s neck. As he slept, perhaps he dreamed – a smile twitched ghostlike at the corners of his mouth.
Behind the black gauze of the scarf that masked his face, the assassin frowned. From within his tunic he drew a strip of fabric, twined tightly into a cord. In seven years since the Hermit had ordered his first kill, his garrotte had never snapped, his hands had never failed him. With leopard’s stealth, he slid from the sill and stole across the moonlit floor.
Jonathan Stroud
Ptolemy’s Gate
514 Seiten // € 16,–
Wer das letzte Abenteuer von Bartimäus, Nathaniel und Kitty lieber auf Deutsch lesen möchte, muss sich noch ein wenig gedulden. Mit der Übersetzung rechnen wir zum Herbst hin…
