The prime minister escapes unharmed, and Nathaniel learns for the first time of a feared “resistance” to the magicians’ rule by non-magicians within the cities. Before Nathaniel can shout a warning, the intruder throws an elemental sphere into the audience, releasing elemental imps of fire, water, air and earth, and creating chaos in Parliament. While listening to a speech by the prime minister, Nathaniel sees a youth sneak in from the balcony. Underwood brings Nathaniel to his first Parliamentary affair. If the demon fails to perform his duty and Nathaniel is harmed in any way, that would prevent him from canceling the spell, and Bartimaeus will have to spend 100 years as the prisoner of a tobacco tin filled with rosemary (an herb detrimental to a demon’s health). So the boy has to make Bartimaeus his hostage. It weakens Nathaniel’s ability to control him. When Nathaniel orders the djinni to hide the amulet in Underwood’s study, Bartimaeus overhears the boy’s name. Lovelace and his accomplices are desperate to retrieve the talisman before an important event takes place the following week.

Nathaniel orders Bartimaeus to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from Simon Lovelace, the magician who humiliated him.īartimaeus succeeds but informs Nathaniel the amulet is more important than the boy realized. When Bartimaeus arrives, he can’t believe he is to be enslaved to a 12-year-old child. It takes Nathaniel a year to learn the spell necessary and gain the confidence needed to conjure a demon or djinni, known as Bartimaeus. When another magician embarrasses Nathaniel in front of others, the boy seeks revenge. But Nathaniel is smarter than Underwood believes, and over the years, he learns spells and magic on his own from books. Throughout the years, Underwood barely tolerates the boy, doing only the barest essential teaching necessary to instruct him in magic.

It is magicians, and the demons they control by their spells, that run the governments of the world. Arthur Underwood, an average wizard working in England’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, reluctantly takes charge of 5-year-old Nathaniel in order to raise him up as a magician.

The bartimaeus trilogy book 1