"Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 3 - Ptolemy's Gate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stroud Jonathan)

fighting djinn came into focus.3 Seen from this perspective, the night sky was veritably awash
with rushing forms, contorted shapes, and sinister activity.

Truer, anyway. At bottom, we are all alike in our seeping formlessness, but every spirit has a "look" that
suits them, and which they use to represent themselves while on Earth. Our essences are molded into
these personal shapes on the higher planes, whileтАФon the lower onesтАФwe adopt guises that are
appropriate to the given situation. Listen, I'm sure I've told you all this before.


Fair play was entirely disregarded. I saw one spiked knee go crunching into an opponent's belly,
sending him spinning away behind a chimney to recover. Disgraceful! If I'd been up there I'd
have had no truck with that.4

I'd have kneed him first, then stuck a wingtip in his eye, while kicking his shin for good measure. Much
more effective. The techniques of these young djinn were so inefficient, it pained me.


But I wasn't up there. I'd been put out of action.

Now, if it had been an afrit or marid who'd done the damage, I could have lived with it. But it
wasn't. In fact my conqueror was none but a third-level djinni, the kind I could normally roll up
in my pocket and smoke after dinner. I could still see her now from where I lay, her nimble
feminine grace rather undermined by her pig's head and the long rake she clutched in her
trotters. There she was, standing on a post-box, laying left and right with such brio that the
government forces, of which I was nominally a part, backed off and left her well alone. She was


file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Jonathan%20Stroud%20-%20Bartimaeus%203%20-%20Ptolemy's%20Gate%20(v1.0).htm (10 of 304)22-12-2006 15:56:56
 Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 3 - Ptolemy's Gate

a formidable customer, with experience in Japan if her kimono was anything to go by. In truth,
I'd been misled by her rustic appearance and had ambled close without upping my Shields.
Before I knew it, there was a piercing oink, a blur of movement, andтАФwhump!тАФshe'd left me
pinned in the road, too weary to break free.

Little by little, however, my side was gaining the upper hand. See! Here strode Cormocodran,
snapping off a lamppost and swinging it like a twig; there raced Hodge, loosing off a volley of
poison darts. The enemy dwindled and began to adopt ever more fatalistic guises. I saw several
large insects buzzing and dodging, one or two wisps twisting frantically, a couple of rats heading
for the hills. Only the she-pig stubbornly maintained her original appearance. My colleagues
surged forward. One beetle went down in a corkscrew cloud of smoke; a wisp was blown apart
by a double Detonation. The enemy fled; even the pig realized the game was up. She leaped
gracefully onto a porch, somersaulted up onto a roof, and vanished. The victorious djinn set off
in hot pursuit.

It was quiet in the street. Water trickled past my ears. From topknot to toes, my essence was
one long ache. I gave a heartfelt sigh.

"Dear me," a voice chuckled. "A damsel in distress."