The Ring of Solomon

by Jonathan Stroud

  ‘A few hours. It’s just gone midnight. I was talking with you yesterday afternoon.’

  The red-skinned demon stared; my flames went out. ‘Yesterday afternoon? The one just gone?’

  ‘Well, how many others are there? Yes, the yesterday just gone. Look at me. I’m wearing the same clothes.’

  ‘Right …’ I cleared my throat. ‘It’s just a little bit hard to keep tabs in there … Well, as I say, it’s been grim.’ My voice rose once more. ‘And I don’t care to be summoned again – by you or anybody! If you know what’s good for you, you’ll let me go.’

  ‘That I cannot do.’

  ‘You’d better,’ I snarled. ‘It’s not as if you’ll be able to keep me long, anyway. You’re obviously a novice.’

  The girl’s eyes blazed; flames didn’t dart from them, but it was a close-run thing.

  ‘Know, Bartimaeus of Uruk,’ she cried, ‘that in my land I am an initiate of the Eighteenth Attainment in the Temple of Marib! Know that it was I who summoned the demon Zufra and, by whipping her with cords, forced her to dig the reservoir at Dhamar in a single night! Know too that I have subdued twelve dozen demons to my will and cast nine into the innermost pit!’ She pushed a strand of hair back from her brow and smiled grimly. ‘And that I am now your master is the final thing you need to know.’

  The red-skinned demon gave a caw of mirth. ‘Good try,’ I said. ‘Falls down on three accounts. First, “Eighteenth Attainment in the Temple of Marib” doesn’t mean a fig to me. For all I know it means you’re qualified to scrub the toilets.’ The girl gave an indignant squeak here, but I ignored it. ‘Second,’ I went on, ‘there’s your tone of voice. You meant it to be awe-inspiring and terrible, didn’t you? Sorry. Sounded scared and constipated. Third, it’s clearly all absolute baloney! You only barely got your First Injunction5 out without tripping over your own tongue. I thought you were going to bind yourself at once point, you got so hesitant. Let’s face it, this is all a bluff.’

  The girl’s nose had gone all white and pinched. ‘It is not!’

  ‘Is so too.’

  ‘Is not!’

  ‘Say that any higher and you’re going to shatter that nice vase over there.’ I folded my scaly arms and gave her a savage glare. ‘And, by the way, you’ve just proved my point again. How many real magicians do you think get involved in stroppy little verbal spats like this? They’d have hit me with the Dark Scouring by now and had done with it.’

  The girl stared at me. Her face was livid.

  ‘You don’t even know what a Dark Scouring is, do you?’ I said, grinning.

  She breathed hard. ‘No. But I do know this.’ She took hold of the silver sun disc round her neck, and spoke a muttered phrase. Once again it was barely competent, the kind of Ward6 a hedge-witch might use to admonish a naughty imp. Even so, a swell of black substance plumed in the air, reared back and darted at my circle.

  I lifted my hand to fend off the stroke, called out her name. ‘Cyrine!’7

  Black shards of force went straight through my lifted hand and scoured my essence like a storm of whirling pins.

  They vanished. I considered my perforations grimly. ‘Cyrine’s not actually your name, is it?’ I said.

  ‘No. Who’d be so stupid as to give up their real name so readily – Bartimaeus?’

  Which was a fair point. ‘Even so,’ I said, ‘as punishments go, that was pathetic. And once again you only just spoke it right. Go on, do another one, I dare you.’

  ‘I don’t need to.’ The girl pushed her robes aside, revealing three silver daggers at her hip. ‘Anger me again,’ she said, ‘and I’ll skewer you with one of these.’

  She might have done, as well. Trapped in the circle, I knew that my opportunities for dodging were limited. But I just shrugged. ‘That’s my final proof,’ I said. ‘You’re an assassin of some kind. You’re not a magician at all. And you need to be a magician if you’re going to deal with me.’ My teeth glinted in the shadows. ‘I killed my last master, you know.’

  ‘What – Khaba? The one who trapped you in the bottle?’ The girl gave a rude snort. ‘He seemed alive enough to me when I left him drunk downstairs.’

  ‘All right,’ I growled, ‘my last master but one. Same difference. Statistically speaking, that’s the fate of forty-six per cent of all—’ I stopped short. ‘Wait up. The magician Khaba is downstairs? Where exactly are we?’

  ‘The palace of King Solomon. Do you not recognize it? I thought you were well acquainted with the place; that is why I released you.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know every last bedroom, do I?’ And all at once the red-skinned demon grew suddenly still, conscious of an unpleasant trepidation, a creeping certainty that, annoying as things currently were, they were shortly to get a whole lot worse.

  I fixed her with a cold, hard stare. She stared back, her eyes as cold as mine. ‘I’ll say this politely just one time,’ I said. ‘Thank you for letting me out of my prison. That puts paid to the debt you owe me. Now – speak the Dismissal and let me go.’

  ‘Have I or have I not bound you, Bartimaeus?’

  ‘For the moment.’ I prodded the cloth with a toe-claw. ‘But I’ll find a loophole. It won’t take long.’

  ‘Well, while you look,’ the girl said, ‘you’ll agree you are in my service. Which means you do as I say, or suffer the Dismal Flame. You’ll find that won’t take long, either.’

  ‘Oh, sure. Like you know that spell.’

  ‘Try me.’

  And here, of course, I was fairly caught, because I couldn’t be certain either way. It was possible she didn’t know the incantation – which is the final security of all magicians – but equally possible that she did. And if she did, and I disobeyed her, it was a sad look-out for me.

  I changed the subject. ‘Why did Khaba give you the bottle?’

  ‘He didn’t,’ she said. ‘I stole it.’

  So there you go. As predicted, things were worse already. Worse mainly (I was thinking here of the horrors of the magician’s vaulted room) for the girl.

  ‘You’re a fool,’ I said. ‘Stealing from him is not a good idea.’

  ‘Khaba is irrelevant.’ Her face was still pale, but a certain composure had returned to it, and there was a brightness in her eyes that I didn’t like at all. They shone, in fact, with a zealot’s gleam.8 ‘Khaba is nothing,’ she said. ‘Forget him. You and I must concern ourselves with greater things.’

  And now my trepidation became a cold, hard knot of fear, because I recalled the girl’s conversation in the gorge, and all her questions about forbidden matters. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Before you say anything we’ll both regret, think about where you are. The planes around us are a-thrum with the auras of great spirits. I can sense them, even if you cannot, and the echoes they make are almost deafening. If you wish to summon me, go right ahead, but do it somewhere far away where we have a chance of prolonged survival. Stealing magicians’ property is frowned on here, and so are unofficial summonings. They’re exactly the sort of things it’s best not to do in or around the House of Solomon.’9

  ‘Bartimaeus,’ the girl said, putting her hand upon one of the daggers in her belt, ‘stop talking.’

  I stopped. I waited. Waited for the worst.

  ‘Tonight,’ the girl went on, ‘you are going to help me complete the mission that has brought me a thousand miles and more from the gardens of fair Sheba.’

  ‘Sheba? Hold on, you mean the Himyar stuff wasn’t true either? Honestly. What a fibber you are.’

  ‘Tonight, you will help me save my nation, or we shall both die in the attempt.’

  So, bang went my last lingering hope that she wanted me to help change the colour co-ordination of her bedroom. Which was a pity. I could have done wonders with those silks.

  ‘Tonight, you will help me do two things.’

  ‘Two things …’ I said. ‘Very well. Which are …?’

  Just how mad was she? Exactly where on the scale of raving insanity did she fall
?

  ‘Kill King Solomon,’ the girl said brightly, ‘and take his Ring.’ She smiled at me. Her bright eyes shone.

  Right on the very end, that’s where.

  1 Humans don’t often suffer such indignities, I know, but it has happened. One magician I worked for once called for my aid during an earthquake which was toppling his tower. Unfortunately for him, the precise words he used were: ‘Preserve me!’ A cork, a great big bottle, a vat of pickling fluid, and – presto! – the job was done.

  2 Bottled imps require less stringent Bindings and their glass is usually transparent. Being regrettably low-minded, they thereupon perform countless contortions to shock and repulse any passers-by. Needless to say I never stooped to anything like this. It’s no fun doing it if you can’t see the reaction.

  3 I was, in fact, the living embodiment of a kusarikku, a less civilized sub-type of utukku, which used to be employed in some of the old Sumerian cities as executioners, tomb-guardians, baby-minders, etc.

  4 It was close, though. You could tell at once that she wasn’t practised at it. Every last syllable was painfully precise, as if she were in some public-speaking competition. At the end I felt like holding up a mark card with a ‘6’ on it. Contrast this to the best magicians, who throw off multiple summonings casually, while clipping their toenails or having breakfast, and never put a phoneme wrong.

  5First Injunction: traditionally spoken in all summonings since at least the days of Eridu. Usually something along the lines of: ‘By the constraints of the circle, the points on the pentacle and the chain of signs, know that I am your master. You will obey my will.’

  6Ward: a short incantation which turns the spirit’s own power back on itself. High-level Wards, used by trained magicians, include barbarities such as the Systematic Vice and the Stimulating Compass. These can do real damage to a djinni. Low-level ones, such as the girl knew, are pretty much the equivalent of a quick spank on the bottom, and about as sophisticated.

  7 Knowledge of someone’s birth-name allows you to nullify many of their magical attacks. As not demonstrated here.

  8Zealots: wild-eyed persons afflicted with incurable certainty about the workings of the world – a certainty which can lead to violence when the world doesn’t fit. My personal favourites, some centuries after Solomon, were the stylites, hairy ascetics who spent years sitting atop high pillars in the desert. There was nothing violent about them, other than their smell. They summoned djinn to beguile them with temptations, the better to prove their abstinence and faith. Personally I didn’t bother with the temptation bit. I used to tickle them until they fell off.

  9 Other forbidden activities in the palace included: fighting, devouring servants, running in the corridors, cursing, drawing rude stick-figures on the harem walls, causing unpleasant smells to permeate the kitchens, and spitting on the upholstery. At least these were the ones I’d got told off for; there were probably others.

  24

  Asmira had expected the djinni to say something after her revelation – he had not exactly been short of comments hitherto. But instead his stillness deepened, and the little flames that had been flickering along the contours of his body dwindled suddenly and went out.

  Still as a stone he stood, and as silent as one too – yet the silence he projected was utterly ferocious. It filled the room like a poisoned cloud, bearing down upon her with such intensity that her knees began to buckle. Quite unconsciously she stepped back a pace upon her cloth.

  She closed her eyes and took a long slow breath. Calm. She had to remain calm. Bartimaeus, despite his threats and protestations, was hers now. He had no choice but to obey.

  Only calm, swift action, almost without thought, had enabled Asmira to survive the previous half-hour. If she had halted to assess what she was doing – robbing a powerful magician, summoning a demon far stronger than any she had ever attempted – her fear would have overcome her, she would have faltered and been doomed. Instead, as was at the heart of her talent, she carried out each stage with detached concentration, focusing on the practicalities and not the implications.

  The hardest part, in fact, had come beforehand, during the endless wait at the banquet table, while Khaba and several of the other high magicians drank themselves insensible. Outwardly Asmira had sat there smiling, laughing at their jokes and sipping at her wine. Inwardly she had been in an agony of suspense, expecting every moment to be sent away, or for the Egyptian to put the crystal bottle out of reach: behind her smile she longed to scream. But when, finally, Khaba’s head lolled and his eyelids closed, she was ready on the instant. Plucking the bottle from beneath his nose, she walked out of the hall beneath the ranks of flying djinn, and hurried to her room. There she removed the cloths and candles from her bag, set them out methodically, smashed the bottle and made the summons. And all without a single hesitation.

  The incantation itself had almost finished her. Asmira had summoned minor djinn before, using the same technique, but she had not reckoned on Bartimaeus’s strength. Even with her eyes closed, she had felt his power pressing against the margins of her circle as she tried to complete the words; knowledge of what would happen should she make a single error had drained her energies rapidly. But Sheba’s fate depended on her survival, and that knowledge was stronger still. Despite her weariness, despite the many months since she had last performed a summons, despite the djinni’s fury beating down upon her, Asmira had shut her fears out from her mind and bound him to her service.

  And now it just remained to spell that service out.

  She cleared her throat, and fixed her gaze upon the demonic shape. How different to the creature’s pleasant guise the day before! But terrible as it was, it might be used.

  ‘Bartimaeus,’ she said hoarsely, ‘I charge you now to come with me from this place, without hesitation or delay, and bring me safely to King Solomon, so that I may put him to death and remove his Ring (and for the avoidance of doubt this refers to the talisman of unparalleled power and not one of his lesser rings), then assist me in escaping with it to a place of safety. Is that all clear?’

  The figure said nothing. It was wreathed in smoke, a dark and frozen thing.

  Asmira shivered; a cold breeze seemed to waft across her neck. She glanced back at the chamber door, but all was still.

  ‘I also charge,’ she went on, ‘that if Solomon cannot be slain, or if I am captured or separated from you, above all else you must steal and destroy the Ring, or, that being impossible, hide it permanently from the sight and knowledge of all men.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I say again: is that clear?’

  The djinni did not move. Even the fires in his yellow eyes seemed to have died away.

  ‘Bartimaeus, is that clear?’

  There was a stirring in the slender body. ‘Suicide. It can’t be done.’

  ‘You are an ancient spirit of great resource. You told me so yourself.’

  ‘Steal the Ring?’ The voice was very soft. ‘Kill Solomon? No. It’s suicide. I might as well jump down Khaba’s throat or take a bath in molten silver. I might as well eat myself feet first, or put my head under the bottom of a squatting elephant. At least those options would be entertaining to watch. You send me to my death.’

  ‘I risk myself as well,’ Asmira said.

  ‘Ah, yes. That’s the worst thing about it.’ The red-skinned demon moved at last. He seemed to have shrunk a little, and the brilliance of his colour had leached away. He half turned away from her, hugging himself as if he felt the cold. ‘You don’t care about dying,’ he said. ‘In fact, you almost expect it. And if that’s the way you feel about yourself, there’s not much hope for one of your slaves, is there?’

  ‘We have no time to debate this, Bartimaeus. There are far greater things at risk here than the lives of you and me.’

  ‘Greater things?’ The demon chuckled hollowly. ‘Oh, I wonder what they are. You know,’ he went on, interrupting Asmira as she began to speak, ‘ordinary magicians don’t care about anything except
their wealth and waistline. But they do have a strong sense of self-preservation: they don’t like the idea of dying any more than I do. So when they send me off on a job, it’s rarely suicidal. Dangerous, yes – but always a calculated risk. Because they know that if I fail, the consequences might rebound on them. But you?’ The demon gave a heavy sigh. ‘No. I knew I’d run into someone like you one day. I knew it and I dreaded it. Because you’re a fanatic, aren’t you? You’re young and pretty and ever so empty-headed, and you don’t care.’

  An image flashed before Asmira’s eyes: the tower of Marib burning, almost two weeks before. Chains of people bringing water. Bodies being brought down to the street. Furious tears studded her vision. ‘You foul, self-centred, vicious little … imp!’ she snarled. ‘You have no idea how much I care! You have no idea why I’m doing this!’

  ‘You think not?’ The demon held up three knobbly, clawed fingers and counted them off swiftly. ‘Three guesses. Your king. Your country. Your religion. At least two of them, and probably all three. Well? Tell me I’m wrong.’

  Asmira knew that the djinni was deliberately provoking her, and knew that she should ignore it. But rage and weariness made her susceptible. ‘I am here out of love for my queen,’ she said, ‘and for Sheba, fairest nation under the Sun. And there can be no higher honour than that – not that a soulless creature like you would ever realize it.’

  The demon grinned, showing curved, white, sharply intersecting fangs. ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘I must be soulless because all that rubbish leaves me cold.’ His shape suddenly blurred; it became a succession of tousled, wide-eyed youths, tall, short, handsome, plain, with skins of many nations. The last was the same beautiful, dark-haired guise she remembered from the gorge, but this time wingless, sober-faced. ‘You don’t need a djinni for this job,’ the youth said. ‘Young men are best at dying for empty concepts. Go back to Sheba and find some of your own.’