Ring Of Solomon (12 page)

Her hand moved towards her belt.

‘Softly,’ the man with the cloth said again. ‘Or I’ll hurt you.’ He took another step, then sighed, fell backwards. Starlight glinted on the dagger blade protruding from the centre of his eye.

Before he hit the ground, Asmira had swivelled, ducked beneath a clutching hand and pulled the knife from the waist-band of the nearest man behind her. Dancing aside from the stumbling assault of the third, who sought to loop a coil of wire about her head, she killed both men with rapid blows and turned to face the fourth.

The cripple had halted a few yards distant, his face slack with blank surprise. Now he gave a long, low snarl and snapped his fingers. The impling beat its wings and launched itself at Asmira with a cry. Asmira waited till it was close, then touched her silver necklace, spoke a Ward of force. The impling exploded in a ball of flame that spiralled away and burst against a wall in a shower of angry sparks.

Before the fires faded, the cripple was away along the street, stick tapping frantically upon the stone.

Asmira let the soiled knife fall to the ground. She turned and walked back to her bag, crouched, loosened its ties and removed a second silver dagger. Flipping it in her fingers, she looked back along the road.

The beggar was a long way off now, head down, rags flying, lolloping and bounding, swinging himself forward with great sweeps of his stick. In a few more steps he would be at a corner and out of sight.

Asmira took careful aim.

Shortly after dawn the following day, those emerging from their houses on the corner of Ink and Spice Streets made a gruesome discovery: four bodies sitting neatly against a wall, their seven legs stretched out side by side into the road. Each man had been a well-known slaver and vagrant of the district; each had been killed with a single strike.

At roughly the same moment, a camel train of thirty riders set out from Eilat’s central square on the long journey to Jerusalem. Asmira was among them.

I blame Beyzer for the incident. It was his turn keeping watch, but his spot in the cypress was a tad too comfy, what with the noonday heat and the smell of resin and the nice plump implet he was using as a cushion. Dozing gently, Beyzer didn’t notice Solomon’s approach. This took some doing, partly because the king was pretty tall, and partly because he was accompanied by seven magicians, nine court officials, eleven slaves, thirty-three warriors, and a robust percentage of his seven hundred wives. The rustling of their robes alone made a noise like a storm-lashed forest, and since on top of this you had the officials shouting at the slaves, the slaves waving their palm leaves, the warriors rattling their swords and the wives squabbling continuously in a dozen languages, Solomon and his entourage were hard to miss. So even without Beyzer, the rest of the temple workforce managed to stop in time.

Which just left me.

Thing was, I was at the end of the line; I was the one hefting each half-ton block out of the quarry, chucking it into the air, catching it by a corner on an outstretched finger, spinning it stylishly and then punting it on to Tivoc, who was waiting by the temple. Tivoc would then pass the block on to Nimshik, Faquarl, Chosroes or one of the other djinn who were hovering around the uncompleted walls in a variety of outlandish guises
³¹
. After that: a quick toss into position, a hasty aligning spell, and Solomon’s temple was a block nearer completion. Took about thirty-five seconds, quarry to wall-top. Lovely. A work-rate any employer would be chuffed with.

Except Solomon, that is. No.
He
didn’t want it done like that
³²
.

You’ll notice that conditions at the building site had altered markedly since the first few days. Back then, with Khaba and Gezeri close at hand, we’d been doing everything painstakingly, while keeping human form. But then things changed. Perhaps reassured by our compliance, and with the temple now progressing well, the magician stopped visiting the site so often. Shortly afterwards Gezeri departed too. To begin with, through fear of the flail, we remained on our best behaviour. On the second day, still left to our own devices, our resolve wavered. We took a swift vote amongst ourselves and, by a majority of six to two
³³
, approved a change of work practices with immediate effect.

We promptly set up our lookout and spent our time in a mixture of loafing, gambling, imp-tossing and philosophical debate. Occasionally, when we needed the exercise, we’d whip a few stones magically into position, just to make it look like we’d been doing something. It was a definite improvement in our daily grind.

Unfortunately, it was during one of these brief spasms of activity that Solomon – having never chosen to visit us before – decided to drop by. And it was thanks to Beyzer that I didn’t get the alarm.

Everyone else was fine, thank you very much. As the royal entourage came clanking, jabbering and mincing to a halt, my fellow workers were safely back in human form, standing about meekly carving things with their chisels as if butter wouldn’t melt in their smug little mouths.

And me?

Me, I was still the pygmy hippo in a skirt
³⁴
, singing lusty songs about Solomon’s private life and tossing a giant stone back and forth through the air as I climbed out of the quarry at the edge of the site.

Immersed in my ditty, I didn’t notice anything amiss. As usual, I flexed a warty arm and tossed the stone.

As usual, it sailed across in the sweetest of arcs to the corner of the temple where Tivoc stood.

Or in this case didn’t stand, since he’d long since bowed and scraped and made shuffling way for Solomon to inspect the porch. And with Solomon had come his magicians, court officials, warriors, slaves and wives, each crowding close to bathe in the royal presence.

They heard my singing. They craned their heads round. They saw the half-ton stone being lobbed towards them in the sweetest of arcs. They had time for maybe the briefest of lamentations before it squished them flat.

The hippo in a skirt slapped its hand over its eyes.

But Solomon just touched the Ring on his finger that was the source and secret of his power. The planes trembled. And from the earth jumped four winged marids in emerald flame, who caught and held the stone, one at each corner, a few inches from the great king’s head
³⁵
.

Solomon touched the Ring again, and from the earth sprang nineteen afrits, who caught the exact same number of his wives mid-swoon
³⁶
.

Then Solomon touched the Ring a third time, and from the earth leaped a posse of sturdy imps, who caught the hippo in the skirt as it was quietly slipping away into the recesses of the quarry, bound it hand and foot with thorny bonds, and dragged it back through the dirt to where the great king stood, tapping his sandalled foot and looking rather tetchy.

And despite my trademark bravery and fortitude – famous from the deserts of Shur to the mountains of Lebanon – the hippo swallowed hard as it bumped along the ground, because when Solomon got tetchy, people tended to know about it. He had the wisdom stuff as well, it’s true, but what really got results when he wanted something done was his reputation for no-holds-barred homicidal tetchiness. That and his cursed Ring
³⁷
.

The marids placed the block of stone gently on the earth before the king. The imps swung me across so that I came to an undignified halt, slumped against the stone. I blinked, sat upright as best I could, spat assorted pebbles out of my mouth and attempted a winning smile. A low murmur of repulsion came from the watching throng, and several wives fainted again.

Solomon raised a hand; all sound cut off.

This was the first time I’d got close to him, of course, and I must say he didn’t disappoint. He was everything your typical trumped-up west Asian despot could aspire to be: dark of eye and skin, long and glistening of hair, and covered with more clattering finery than a cut-price jewel stand at the bazaar. He seemed to have an Egyptian thing going too – his eyes were heavily made up with kohl just like the pharaohs; like them, he existed in a cloud of clashing oils and perfumes. That smell was another thing Beyzer should have noticed in advance.

On his finger something shone so brightly that I was almost rendered blind.

The great king stood over me, fingers toying with the bracelets on one arm. He breathed deeply; his face seemed pained. ‘Lowliest of the low,’ he said softly, ‘which of my servants are you?’

‘O Master-may-you-live-for-ever, I am Bartimaeus.’

A hopeful pause; the regal countenance did not change.

‘We haven’t had the pleasure before,’ I went on, ‘but I’m sure a friendly conversation would benefit us both. Let me introduce myself. I am a spirit of notable wisdom and sobriety, who once spoke with Gilgamesh, and—’

Solomon raised an elegant finger, and since it was the one with the Ring on it, I kind of snatched back as many of my words as I could and swallowed them down sharpish. Best just be quiet, eh? Wait for the worst.

‘You are one of Khaba’s troublemakers, I think,’ the king said musingly. ‘Where
is
Khaba?’

This was a good question; we’d been wondering it ourselves for days. But at that moment there was a flurry amongst the courtiers, and my master himself appeared, all red of cheek and glistening of pate. He had clearly been running hard.

‘Great Solomon,’ he panted. ‘This visit – I did not know—’ His moist eyes widened as they alighted on me, and he gave a wolfish cry. ‘Foul slave! How dare you defy me with such a shape! Great King, stand back! Let me admonish this creature—’ And he snatched at the essence-flail in his belt.

But Solomon held up his hand once more. ‘Be still, magician! Where were
you
while my edicts were being disobeyed? I shall attend to you presently.’

Khaba fell back, slack-jawed and gasping. His shadow, I noticed, was very small and inoffensive now, a small dark nub, cringing at his feet.

The king turned back to me. Ooh, his voice was soft then. All gentle and luxurious, like leopard fur. And just like a leopard’s fur, you didn’t want to rub it up the wrong way. ‘Why do you mock my orders, Bartimaeus?’

The pygmy hippo cleared its throat. ‘Um, well, I think
mock
is putting it a trifle strongly, O great Master. “Forget” might be better; and less fatal.’

One of Solomon’s other magicians, nameless, portly, face like a squashed fig, riddled me with a Spasm. ‘Cursed spirit! The king asked you a question!’

‘Yes, yes, I was getting to that.’ I squirmed against the stone. ‘And a cracking question it was. Beautifully put. Succinct. Probing …’ I hesitated. ‘What was it again?’

Solomon seemed to have a knack of never raising his voice, never speaking quickly. It was a good political technique, of course; it gave him an aura of control among his people. Now he spoke to me as to a sleepy babe. ‘When completed, Bartimaeus, this temple shall be the holiest of places, the centre of my religion and my empire. For that reason, as set out with great clarity in your instructions, I wish it built – and I quote – with “the utmost care, without magical shortcuts, irreverent acts or bestial shapes”.’

The hippo in the skirt frowned. ‘Goodness, who’d do any of that?’

‘You have disregarded my edict in each and every way. Why?’

Well, a number of excuses came to mind. Some of them were plausible. Some of them were witty. Some of them offered a certain pleasure in the use of language while at the same time being blatantly untrue. But Solomon’s wisdom thing was catching. I decided to tell the truth, albeit in a sulky monotone.

‘O great Master, I was bored and I wanted to get the job done quickly.’

The king nodded, an action that saturated the air with jasmine oil and rosewater. ‘And that vulgar song you were singing?’

‘Um – which vulgar song was that? I sing so many.’

‘The one about me.’

‘Oh,
that
one.’ The hippo swallowed. ‘You mustn’t pay any attention to such things, O Master, etc. Ribald songs have
always
been sung about great leaders by loyal troops. It’s a mark of respect. You should have heard the one we invented for Hammurabi. He used to join in the choruses.’

To my relief Solomon seemed to buy this. He straightened his back and stared hard around him. ‘Did any of the other slaves violate my orders too?’

I’d known this one was coming. I didn’t exactly look towards my companions, but somehow I could sense them shrinking back behind the crowd – Faquarl, Menes, Chosroes and the rest – all of them bombarding me with silent, heart-felt pleas. I sighed, spoke heavily. ‘No.’

‘Are you sure? None of them used magic? None of them changed form?’

‘No … No. Just me.’

He nodded. ‘Then they are exempt from punishment.’ His right hand moved left, in the direction of the dreaded Ring.

I’d been putting it off, but it was clearly time for a brief loss of dignity. With a strident expression of woe, the hippo lurched forward onto its wrinkly knees. ‘Do not be too hasty, great Solomon!’ I cried. ‘I have served you faithfully and well until today. Consider this block of stone – see how I’ve shaped and squared it most exactly. Now look at the temple – witness the dedication with which I’m pacing out its dimensions! Measure it, O King! Three score cubits, I was told, and three score cubits it shall be, and not a rat’s arse more
³⁸
!’ I wrung my forefeet together, swaying from side to side. ‘My mistake today is just a symptom of my excess energies and zeal,’ I wailed. ‘I can turn these qualities to your majesty’s good, if only you spare my life …’

Well, I’ll omit the rest, which involved a great many sobs, random gesticulations and guttural cries. It wasn’t a bad performance: a number of the wives (and several of the warriors) were sniffling by the end, and Solomon himself looked smugger and more self-satisfied than ever. Which was pretty much as I planned it. Thing was, just by looking at him, I could see Solomon modelled himself on the big boys – the kings of Assyria and Babylon way to the east, tough potentates who didn’t get out of bed without a defeated enemy’s neck to step on en route to the bathroom. Thus my snivelling appealed to his imitative vanity. I thought I’d swung it at the last.