"Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 1 - The Amulet of Samarkand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stroud Jonathan)

"Ah, me..." My voice was emollient and wistful. "It is a wicked world and they have taught you
very little."

"I am not afraid of you! I have given you your charge and I demand you go!"

The second dismissal. My bowels felt as if they were being passed over by a steamroller. I
sensed my form waver, flicker. There was power in this child, though he was very young.

"It is not me you have to fear; not now, anyway. Simon Lovelace will come to you himself when
he finds his amulet stolen. He will not spare you for your youth."

"You are bound to do my will."

"I am." I had to hand it to him, he was determined. And very stupid.

His hand moved. I heard the first syllable of the Systemic Vise. He was about to inflict pain.

I went. I didn't bother with any more special effects.




2
When I landed on the top of a lamppost in the London dusk it was peeing with rain. This was
just my luck. I had taken the form of a blackbird, a sprightly fellow with a bright yellow beak and
jet-black plumage. Within seconds I was as bedraggled a fowl as ever hunched its wings in
Hampstead. Flicking my head from side to side, I spied a large beech tree. Leaves moldered at its
footтАФit had already been stripped clean by the November windsтАФbut the thick sprouting of its
branches offered some protection from the wet. I flew over to it, passing above a lone car that purred
its way along the wide suburban street. Behind high walls and the evergreen foliage of their gardens,
the ugly white facades of several sizeable villas shone through the dark like the faces of the dead.

Well, perhaps it was my mood that made it seem like that. Five things were bothering me. For a
start the dull ache that comes with every physical manifestation was already beginning. I could feel it in
my feathers. Changing form would keep the pain at bay for a time, but might also draw attention to
me at a critical stage of the operation. Until I was sure of my surroundings, a bird I had to remain.

The second thing was the weather. Enough said.

Third, I'd forgotten the limitations of material bodies. I had an itch just above my beak, and kept
futilely trying to scratch it with a wing.

Fourth, that kid. I had a lot of questions about him. Who was he? Why did he have a death
wish? How would I get even with him before he died for subjecting me to this assignment? News
travels fast, and I was bound to take some abuse for scurrying around on behalf of a scrap like him.

Fifth... the Amulet. By all accounts it was a potent charm. What the kid thought he was going to
do with it when he got it beat me. He wouldn't have a clue. Maybe he'd just wear it as some tragic
fashion accessory. Maybe nicking amulets was the latest craze, the magician's version of pinching