The girl had been taking it all in. ‘These are the gardens? Seem quiet enough.’
‘Which shows how much you know,’ I said. ‘You humans really are useless, aren’t you? It’s all go here. See that statue over by the rhododendrons? That’s an afrit. If you could make out the higher planes, you’d see – well, it’s probably just as well you can’t see what he’s doing. He’s one of the night-shift captains. All the sentries in this section of the palace will report to him periodically; they keep watch on each other too, just to ensure nothing’s untoward. I can see five – no, six – djinn either concealed in the shrubbery or floating amongst the trees, and there are a few wispy firefly things that I don’t like the look of either. In the middle of that central walkway is a trip-thread that triggers something nasty, and up there in the sky there’s a great big soaring fifth-plane dome covering the gardens; any spirit flying through that will activate alarms. So, taken all in all, this part of the palace is pretty well locked down.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ the girl said. ‘How do we get through?’
‘We don’t,’ I said. ‘Not yet. We need to cause a distraction. I think I can arrange that, but first, I’ve got a question for you: Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why are we doing all this? Why must we die?’
The girl scowled. Thinking again! How it taxed her. ‘I told you. Solomon threatens Sheba.’
‘In what way precisely?’
‘He demands our frankincense! A vast ransom! If we do not pay, he will destroy us! He told my queen so.’
‘Came himself, did he?’
‘No. He sent a messenger. What difference does it make?’
‘Maybe none. So pay the ransom.’
It was as if I’d asked her to kiss a corpse. Anger, incredulity and revulsion jostled for position in her dumbstruck face. ‘My queen would never do such a thing,’ she hissed. ‘It would be a crime against her honour!’
‘Ye-e-e-s,’ I said. ‘And we wouldn’t be dead.’
For a second you could sense the cogs whirring; then her expression went all hard and blank. ‘I serve my queen, just as my mother did, and my grandmothers, and their mothers before them. That is all there is to it. Now, we’re wasting time. Let’s go.’
‘Not you,’ I said shortly. ‘You need to keep undercover here a moment, and don’t talk to any strange imps while I’m gone. Sorry – no arguments!’ She had begun a tirade of questions and demands. ‘The more we dawdle, the sooner Khaba will catch us. His marid Ammet is probably already trying to trace your aura. What we need to do is find an appropriate place for you to hide … Aha!’
That ‘Aha’ was me noticing a thick rose bush just outside the cloister window. It had resplendent foliage, some slightly tired pinkish flowers and an awful lot of very spiny thorns. All in all, I felt it was perfect for our purposes. A swift grab, a hoist and dangle, and down the girl plopped into the thickest, thorniest patch of all.
I listened hopefully … Not even a squeak. She was very well trained.
With her safely disposed of, I changed into a small, brown and rather insignificant-looking cricket and flew off along the margins of the gardens, keeping low among the flowers.
You might have noticed that after my initial rage and despondency, I was recovering a certain amount of my customary élan. The truth was that an odd, fatalistic exhilaration had begun to seize hold of me. The sheer magnitude, the sheer dumb audacity of what I was now attempting was beginning to exert its own appeal. OK, there was the certain-death part, which wasn’t so hot, but given that I had no choice in the matter, I found I rather relished the challenge of my night’s work. Outwit a palaceful of spirits? Destroy the most celebrated magician then living? Steal the most powerful artefact of all? These were objectives worthy of the legendary Bartimaeus of Uruk and a far better use of my time than carrying big string bags of artichokes about the place, or bowing and scraping before masters like the vile Egyptian. I rather wondered what Faquarl would say if he could see me now.
Speaking of masters, the Arabian girl might be obsessive, driven and somewhat humourless, but despite my fury at the impudence of her summoning, I could not entirely despise her. Her personal courage was self-evident; also, there was the fact that she was prepared to sacrifice herself along with me.
The insignificant cricket headed south beside the gardens, in the opposite direction to the apartments of the king. As I went, I fixed the position of as many sentries as I could spot, taking note of their size, manner and vibrancy of aura.6 Most were djinn of medium potency, and there were a fair number of them about, albeit fewer than in the northern regions of the gardens.
I felt there was room to make them fewer still.
I was particularly interested in a secluded bit of garden not far from Solomon’s treasury: you could see its roof rising just beyond the trees. Before long I singled out a djinni stationed here, standing all on his own beside one of Solomon’s antiquities, a massive disc of weathered stone fixed upright in the grass.
To my great delight I recognized the djinni in question. It was none other than Bosquo, that same pompous little bean-counter who had ticked me off when I’d brought the artichokes in ‘late’ a couple of weeks before. He stood with weedy arms folded, pot-belly protruding, and an expression of abominable vacancy on his dreary face.
What better place could there be to begin?
The cricket’s wings began to beat at a slightly faster, more sinister tempo. It made a series of discreet loops and passes to check no one else was around, then landed on the stone at Bosquo’s back. I tapped him on the shoulder with a foreleg.
Bosquo gave a grunt of surprise, and turned to look.
With that, the city’s night of carnage began.
1Dogs and Jackals: a board game, usually played with ivory pieces, although sometimes the pharaohs back in Thebes did it large-scale, with djinn taking on the relevant canine shapes and bounding around a courtyard-sized board. You had to wrestle your opponent when you landed on a square, and it was all done in the heat of the day, so everyone got quite sticky and odorous, and the collars didn’t half itch. Not that I know anything about it really, having been far too important to take part in such a humiliating exercise.
2 Not to mention mindless optimism.
3 Can you define ‘plan’ as ‘a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision and ignorance’? If so, it was a very good plan.
4 It’s true that when it came to spirit-slaves there was serious devaluation going on in Jerusalem at that time. In normal eras a djinni is pretty close to the top of the pile, treated by all and sundry with appropriate awe and respect. But thanks to the Ring, and the concentration of top magicians drawn into its orbit, it had got so you couldn’t throw a stone over your shoulder without hitting an afrit on the kneecap. The consequence was that honest entities like me were shoved right down the pecking order, lumped together with foliots, imps and other undesirables.
5Celtic Cabinet: a small bureau containing a few pots of dried woad and a frayed grass G-string brought back from the British Isles. Solomon’s djinn had travelled the globe in many directions, hunting for cultural marvels to stimulate his appetite. Some journeys yielded better dividends than others.
6 Since most of us are able to adopt all manner of shapes, the most reliable way of assessing our relative strength quickly is by our auras, which wax and wane (wane mainly) throughout our time on Earth.
26
It was very quiet carnage to begin with, though. I didn’t want to disturb anyone.
To deal with Bosquo took approximately fifteen seconds. This was slightly longer than expected. He had a couple of awkward tusks.
In the four minutes that followed I paid several little visits to other sentries in that area of the gardens. Each encounter was similarly short, sharp and relatively painless – at least for me.1
With everything concluded, I turned back into a crick
et and – temporarily somewhat full and sluggish – drifted back in the direction of the girl. But I didn’t go to get her yet; I was more interested in the night-shift captain standing near the rhododendron thicket. I flew as close as I could to him in safety; then, alighting on one of Solomon’s more unusual sculptures, crept beneath the crook of a thigh to watch developments.
They weren’t long in coming.
The afrit was masquerading as a statue himself on the first plane – a demure milkmaid or some such fiction. On the others he was a glowering grey ogre with knobbly knees, bronze armbands and an ostrich-feather loincloth; in other words he was exactly the kind of spirit I didn’t want stationed in the gardens while the girl and I were passing. From his belt hung an enormous horn of ivory and bronze.
Presently, things began to happen. Out from the bushes scampered a gangling ape, with a bright pink muzzle and a shock of orange hair. It skidded to a halt before the afrit, sat back on its haunches and performed a brief salute. ‘Zahzeel, I crave a word!’
‘Well, Kibbet?’
‘I have been making my rounds in the southern gardens. Bosquo is missing from his post.’
The afrit frowned. ‘Bosquo? Who sits below the treasury? He has leave to patrol the Rose Glade and the eastern arbours. No doubt you will find him there.’
‘I have looked under every twig and leaf,’ the ape replied. ‘Bosquo is nowhere to be seen.’
The ogre pointed at the sparkling dome high above the garden. ‘The outer nexus has not been breached. There is no attack from outside. Bosquo has gone walkabout and shall be Stippled soundly when he chooses to return. Go back to your duties, Kibbet, and report to me at sunrise.’
The ape departed. Safe in its hiding place, the cricket chirped quietly in satisfaction.
Standing on a plinth for hours isn’t my idea of fun, but Zahzeel the ogre seemed happy with his lot. Over the next minute or two he rocked idly back on his heels a bit, flexed his knees once or twice and made a variety of contented smacking noises with his mouth. Perhaps he would have spent the whole night doing this if he’d been given the opportunity.
It wasn’t to be. In a shower of leaves and a four-limbed lollop, the ape burst out from the bushes once more. It appeared rather more dishevelled than previously; its teeth were bared and its eyes bulged in their sockets.
‘Zahzeel! I make report of further oddities.’
‘Not Bosquo again?’
‘Bosquo has not yet been located, sir. But now Susu and Trimble are missing too.’
The ogre stopped short. ‘What? Where were they stationed?’
‘On the battlements adjacent to the treasury. Susu’s pike was discovered in the garden below, protruding from the flowerbed. Several of Trimble’s scales were also scattered here and there, but there is no sign of the djinn themselves on any plane.’
‘And the outer nexus is still undamaged?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Zahzeel smacked a meaty fist into a palm. ‘Then nothing has entered from outside! If there is an enemy spirit abroad, it must have been conjured by someone inside the palace. We must get reinforcements and go to the scene.’ At this the ogre seized the horn hanging at his side, and was just about to set it to his lips when, with a flash of light, another small spirit materialized in mid-air.
This one was a manikin sitting in an oyster shell. ‘I have news, Master!’ it squeaked. ‘The sentry Hiqquus has been discovered compressed inside a water butt; he is somewhat squashed, not to mention soggy – but he lives. He says that he was attacked—’
The afrit gave a curse. ‘By whom?’2
‘He only got a glimpse, but … it was Bosquo! He recognized his belly and his snout!’
The ogre nearly fell off his pedestal in shock. He was just about to speak when, in a shower of damp earth, a third small demon, this one with the soft, sad face of a gazelle, rose from the turf below him. ‘Master, the sentry Balaam has been pushed into the manure pile and a heavy statue placed on top of him! I heard his muffled squeaks, and with a grapple on the end of a long pole have just succeeded in tugging him free. Poor Balaam – he won’t smell of brimstone for some considerable time to come. As soon as he could speak he named his cruel assailant – it was the djinni Trimble!’
‘Zahzeel’ – this was Kibbet, the first of the informants – ‘clearly Trimble and Bosquo have gone berserk! We must locate them with all speed.’
The ogre gave a decisive nod. ‘I have noted a pattern here. Their assaults are focused on the area around the treasury. The king’s gold is collected there, and many precious treasures. Clearly these djinn – or the magicians who are their masters – intend a robbery, or some other atrocious act. We must act fast! Kibbet and you others, go at speed to the treasury block. I shall summon further help and meet you there. Once our forces are assembled we will alert the vizier. Hiram will have to decide whether to disturb the slumbers of the king.’
The gazelle-imp ducked down into the ground; the manikin pulled down his oyster shell and spun away into the sky; the orange ape gave a star-jump and, with a grunt, devolved into a twirl of orange sparks that drifted out of sight.
Zahzeel the afrit? He raised the horn to his mouth and blew.
All across the gardens of the palace of Solomon there was a roaring and a shaking as Zahzeel’s subordinates were summoned to his side. Bright lights flared in unexpected places among the pavilions and rose bowers; eyes blinked open in shrubs and potted ferns. Sculptures shifted, hopped down from pedestals; innocent-seeming vines bent and coiled; benches shimmered, were suddenly no more. All across the northern gardens the hidden sentries bestirred themselves: and here they came – horned, clawed, red-eyed and frothing, things with twisting tails of bone, and fibrous wings, and dangling bellies; oozing things and scuttling things; things with legs and things without; darting mites and bounding ghuls, wisps and implets, foliots and djinn, all silently surfing the lawns and treetops of the gardens to congregate about Zahzeel.
The afrit gave a few brief orders and clapped his hands. The air grew chill; ice formed on the pedestal and glittered on the rhododendron leaves. The ogre was gone; atop the pedestal rose a column of rushing smoke and licking tendrils, from which two baleful yellow eyes gleamed down with grim ferocity.3
Coiling like a spring, the column of smoke shot upwards into the air and disappeared over the shrubbery. There followed an explosion of movement as Zahzeel’s hordes took to the skies, or set off, galloping, along the ground. In a few short seconds the whole grisly cavalcade had thundered south in the direction of the treasury – precisely where I wasn’t, and didn’t want to go.
To the north, however, the garden was quiet and still.
On its exotic sculpture the cricket gave a brief caper of wicked glee. The score so far could be summarized as follows: Bartimaeus of Uruk 1, Assembled Spirits of Solomon 0. Not bad for twenty minutes’ work, I’ll think you’ll agree. But I didn’t hang about to celebrate. There was no telling how soon it would be before Zahzeel and Co. returned.
In keeping with this sense of urgency, I hoicked the girl out of the rose bush in double-quick time and set her running alongside me north across the lawns. As we went, I gave her a modest précis of my triumph – just the bare bones of it, keeping it terse and unshowy, as is my wont, limiting the historical comparisons to a minimum and only concluding with three rhyming paeans of self-praise. When I finished, I waited expectantly, but the girl said nothing; she was still too busy plucking thorns from her underclothes.
At last she finished. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Well done.’
I stared at her. ‘Well done? Is that all you can say?’ I gestured at the empty trees and rustic arbours all around. ‘Look – nothing left on any plane! I’ve cleared the way right to Solomon’s door. A marid couldn’t have done any better than that in the time available. Well done?’ I scowled. ‘What kind of a response is that?’
‘It’s a thank-you,’ she said. ‘Would your other masters have spoken any better?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then.’
‘Only I’d have thought you might have viewed things in a different light,’ I said idly. ‘You know, on account of you being a slave yourself.’
There was a silence; ahead of us, between the trees, the king’s apartments could now be seen, a dark domed mass rising sheer against the milky sheen of stars.
The girl jumped over the little tiled channel that marked the beginnings of the water gardens. She said: ‘I’m not a slave.’
‘Sure.’ I was in human form again: the handsome young Sumerian, lolloping along like a wolf, with easy strides. ‘I remember. You’re a “hereditary guard”. Nice one. Altogether different. That “hereditary” bit, incidentally – what’s that mean?’
‘Is it not obvious, Bartimaeus? I follow my mother, and my mother’s mother, and so on down the years. I, as they, have the sacred role of protecting our queen’s life. There is no higher calling. Where now?’
‘Left around the lake – there’s a footbridge there. So you’ve prepared for this from birth?’
‘Well, from early girlhood. As a baby I couldn’t hold a knife.’
I glanced at her. ‘Was that a joke, or just painfully literal thinking? I’m guessing the latter.’
The girl said flatly: ‘Do not seek to demean me, demon. I have an exalted position. There is a special altar in the Temple of the Sun dedicated to the guards. The priestesses bless us individually at each festival. The queen addresses us each by name.’
‘How thrilling for you,’ I said. ‘Wait, watch out on the bridge – there’s a trip-thread on the second plane – it’ll trigger an alarm. When you get to the top, do a little jump like me. That’s it; you’re over it … Now, I’ve a question. Have you, at any time, had any choice in what you do? Could you have been anything other than a guard?’
‘No. And I wouldn’t have wanted to. I followed my mother.’
The Ring of Solomon Page 23