The Ring of Solomon

by Jonathan Stroud

  ‘Lack of choice,’ I said. ‘Preordained from birth. Ordered to sacrifice yourself for a cruel, unfeeling master. You’re a slave.’

  ‘The queen is not unfeeling,’ the girl cried. ‘She practically wept when she sent me—’

  ‘Here to die,’ I finished. ‘You can’t see what’s right in front of your nose, can you? Speaking of which, there’s another trip-thread here, suspended between those trees. Bend down double, like this, nice and low. That’s it, you’re through. Take it from me,’ I went on as we took up the pace once more. ‘You’ve got a fancy title and a nice line in weaponry, but you’re just as enslaved as if your neck was chained. I pity you.’

  The girl had had enough by now. ‘Be silent!’

  ‘Sorry, don’t do silent. The only difference between you and me is that I’ve got self-knowledge. I know I’m enslaved, and it gets on my wick. That gives me just a shadowy slice of freedom. You haven’t even got that. This queen of yours must be laughing her crown off, you’re so eager to obey her every whim.’

  Something flashed in the starlight; a dagger was in her hand. ‘Never dare to insult the queen, demon!’ the girl cried. ‘You cannot imagine the responsibility she holds. She has absolute faith in me, and I in her. I would never question a command she gave.’

  ‘Apparently not,’ I said crisply. ‘Right, watch out here: we need three little jumps, one after the other, high as you can. That’s it. Now get down on all fours … wiggle forwards … try and keep your bottom a little lower please … a bit more … OK, you can get up now.’

  The girl stared back at me across the empty patch of lawn in wonder. ‘How many trip-threads were concealed there?’

  I strolled across to her, grinning. ‘Absolutely none. That was just a little illustration of what your queen is doing to you – as well as being highly amusing to watch. You certainly don’t question anything, do you? “Blind obedience to no good purpose” – that could be your motto.’

  The girl gave a gasp of fury; the knife in her hand was suddenly finely balanced between fingertip and thumb. ‘I should kill you for that.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, but you won’t.’ I turned away from her and began surveying the great stone blocks of the building rising just ahead. ‘Why? Because that wouldn’t help your precious queen. Besides, I’m not in a circle now. I could dodge it pretty well out here, even when I’m looking in the opposite direction. But by all means try it, if you like.’

  For a few moments there wasn’t any sound behind, then I heard feet padding on the grass. When the girl came alongside me, the knife was in her belt.

  She scowled up at the mass of stonework. At its splaying foot the last vestiges of the northern gardens broke apart in a sculpted mess of jasmine trees. The pale white flowers were probably quite pretty by daylight, but under the stars’ spectral gloaming brought to mind a glittering pile of bones.

  ‘Is this it, then?’ the girl said.

  I nodded. ‘Yep, probably in every sense. This is Solomon’s tower. There’s a rooftop balcony somewhere up there, which is where I suggest we try to enter. But I’ve one final question before we do.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘What’s your mother think about this? About you coming out here, all on your own. Is she as pleased as you are?’

  Unlike some of my other probing questions, the girl seemed to find this a very easy one to answer. ‘My mother died in the service of the last queen,’ she said simply. ‘As she looks down on me from the Sun God’s realm, I am sure she honours all I do.’

  ‘I see,’ was all I said to this. And I did, too.

  Other things being equal, I would at that point have turned myself into a roc, phoenix or other dashing bird, seized the girl by an ankle, and hoisted her indecorously up to the balcony. Sadly, I was prevented from doing this by a fresh danger in the air above us: a multitude of bright-green, luminous Pulses, drifting at different heights close beside the wall. They weren’t moving fast, but they were very thick in places, and also erratic, sometimes speeding up for no apparent reason. Any flying thing would inevitably collide with some of them, with unpleasant results.

  They were first-plane, so the girl could see them too. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We need,’ I said, ‘an appropriate guise … What sticks to walls?’

  ‘Spiders,’ she said. ‘Or slugs.’

  ‘Not keen on spiders. Too many limbs to control; I get confused. I could do a slug, but we’d be here all night, and anyway, how would I carry you?’ I snapped my fingers. ‘I know! A nice big lizard.’

  So saying, the handsome youth was gone, and in his place stood a slightly less good-looking giant gecko, complete with spiny, interlocking scales, splay-toes, multi-suckered feet and bulbous boggling eyes set on either side of its gummy, grinning mouth. ‘Hello,’ it said, extending a juicy tongue. ‘Give us a hug.’

  The girl’s squeal would probably have been the shrillest ever uttered by one of Sheba’s hereditary guard, except that it was muffled by the coiling tip of my long and sinewy tail, which wrapped itself around her and lifted her off the ground. Then the lizard was up and away, clinging to the stones with the sticky spatulae upon its spreading feet. With one eye I kept my gaze fixed on the wall ahead; the other, swivelled at approximately ninety degrees over my scaly shoulder, kept close watch on the floating Pulses in case any should come too near. It was a shame I didn’t have a spare eye to check out the dangling girl as well, but various distant Arabian curses reassured me of her state of mind.

  My progress was fast, and the way relatively unimpeded. Only once did a Pulse come anywhere near us, and then I managed a sideways shimmy to avoid it – I felt the air grow momentarily chill as it bounced off the stonework beside my head.

  Things went very well, in short; until, that is, I heard the girl calling something out below me.

  ‘What was that?’ I said, swivelling an acerbic eye in her direction. ‘I told you, I can’t do spiders. It’s a leg thing. Think yourself lucky I didn’t do the slug.’

  Her face was white, which might have been the ride, but she was also pointing upwards and to the side. ‘No,’ she croaked. ‘A spider – over there.’

  The lizard looked with both eyes then, just in time to observe a large, fat spider-djinni squeezing out from a concealed opening in the wall. It had a tarantula’s body, swollen big as a cow corpse after the rains. Each of its legs was hard and knobbly as bamboo and ended in a sharpened sting. Its face, however, was human, with a neat little beard and a tall conical hat. Evidently, as a guardian of Solomon’s tower, it wasn’t under Zahzeel’s command; either that, or it was deaf. Whichever, it reacted swiftly enough now. A jet of yellow webbing shot from its baggy undercarriage and struck me full on, breaking my grip on the wall. I fell a few yards, caught desperate hold and hung one-handed, encased in webbing, swinging back and forth above the gulf.

  Somewhere below, I heard the girl cry out, but I hadn’t time to heed her. One of the spider’s legs rose, made ready to send a Flare high above the gardens; soon all Solomon’s slaves would have seen it and congregated at the scene.

  But the lizard acted. With one free leg I sent forth a Mantle to encase the spider. My spell shimmered into being just as the Flare was loosed: the bolt of energy struck the inside of the Mantle, rebounded and hit the spider’s balloon-like belly. At the same time, the lizard broke through its bonds with one slash of a fore-claw.

  Its body steaming where the Flare had struck, the spider broke the Mantle apart with a swiftly spoken counter-spell, bent its legs and leaped straight down the wall towards me. I swung to the side, dodged its swiping blow and, snaring it by a bristly hind leg, whirled it round and round with as much force as I could muster, before spinning it out with all my considerable might, straight into a drifting Pulse thirty feet or so beyond.

  There was a flash; a field of black and yellow bands of light engulfed the djinni, grew tight, grew tighter – and squeezed it messily into nothing.

  The magical effusion was
regrettable, and might possibly be spotted from the south, but in the circumstances it couldn’t really be helped. The lizard looked down at the dangling girl and gave her a broad wink. ‘Like the throwing technique?’ I grinned. ‘Learned it squirrel-tossing with the Mongol nomads.4 On quiet nights we’d— Oh! No! What are you doing?’

  She had the silver dagger poised in her hand again; her arm was drawn back, her eyes wild and staring.

  ‘Don’t!’ I cried. ‘You’ll kill us both! You’ll—’

  A whirl of movement; the dagger left her hand, flashed past my snout and embedded in something close behind with a soft, wet and very decisive splat.

  The lizard’s eyes swivelled once more, only to observe a second large, fat spider-djinni staring in astonishment at the silver dagger embedded in the centre of its belly. Its legs, which had been poised above my head, scrabbled weakly at the poisoned wound. Its essence grew brown and dull; like an aged puffball it fell in upon itself, letting out sprays of fine grey dust. It toppled from the wall, dropped like a stone, was gone.

  The night was still once more.

  I looked down at the girl, still dangling in my coiled tail. ‘Good,’ I said at last. ‘Well done.’

  ‘Well done?’ Possibly it was the starlight, possibly her tilted angle, but I could have sworn there was a mild smirk upon her face. ‘Well done? What kind of a response is that?’

  ‘All right,’ I growled. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘See?’ she said. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it?’

  The lizard did not reply, but with a slightly indignant flick of the tail continued up the wall. A moment later we had reached the balcony.

  1 I won’t go into the details here, to spare the sensibilities of my more delicate readers, but suffice it to say that the horrid scenes were enlivened by my caustic wit, plus certain rather clever changes of form, which had the amusing effect of— Well, you’ll see.

  2 He was one of your better-quality afrits, Zahzeel. Even in moments of high stress he kept his grammar up to scratch.

  3 It wasn’t a bad effect, all told. I’d probably use it one day. Assuming I was still alive.

  4 On quiet nights we’d go down to Lake Baikal with a basket of plump ones each and send them skimming out across the waves. My record was eight bounces, seven squeaks.

  27

  The ascent of the wall had proved something of a trial for Asmira. The motion-sickness had been bad enough – she strongly suspected that the djinni had whipped its tail from side to side more vigorously than was strictly necessary – but she had also thoroughly disliked the extreme helplessness she felt. Wrapped in the tail, suspended high above the ground, watching as the lizard fought so desperately with the first of the repulsive spider guards, she had realized for the first time how utterly dependent she was upon her slave. Deny it as she might, that dependency was total. Without Bartimaeus, she would never have got so far; without Bartimaeus she had no hope of getting any nearer to her goal.

  Of course, it was she who by quickness of thinking and strength of mind had commanded the djinni to her service – she had made the most of the chance that had come her way. But that was all it was, in truth – a lucky chance. Left to her own devices in the palace, all her skills and years of training would have come to nothing, and the trust her queen had showed her would have proved misplaced. On her own, she would have failed.

  Knowledge of her limitations, of her individual frailty, suddenly enveloped Asmira and took its usual shape. In her mind’s eye she saw again her mother standing on the chariot beside the throne, with her killers advancing on all sides. She saw the knives gleaming in the sun. And she felt again the terror of her weakness – the weakness of her six-year-old self – too slow, too feeble, too far away to help.

  Much more than the swinging of the tail, it was this sensation that made her sick at heart, and it had actually come as a relief to her when the second guard had scuttled from its hole, and she had been able to wrest a dagger from her belt and strike it down. As always, her fluidity of action brought respite – her heart’s unease was smothered by enjoyment in her skill. In the flash of a knife-strike her memory of her mother was, for the moment, gone, and Asmira was refocused on the task ahead. Even the last few lurching moments of the climb, in which the djinni seemed to throw her around more violently than ever, did not damp down the feeling, and she was deposited at last upon the balcony in better spirits than before.

  She was on a pillared walkway, open to the stars. Between the pillars, silhouetted statues sat on plinths; here and there were scattered seats and tables. Above, and very close now, the tower’s dome soared into the night. Set into the dome’s base and accessed by a covered passage leading from the balcony, there stood a pitch-black arch.

  Asmira turned to look back the way she had come. Far below, silvery in the starlight, the gardens stretched away towards the southern regions of the palace, where distant points of colour could be seen, darting to and fro.

  A small sand cat, with long, pointed ears, neat body and a striped and fluffy tail curled around its forepaws, sat atop the balustrade watching the movement of the lights.

  ‘Still milling about the treasury, chasing shadows,’ the cat remarked. ‘What a flock of fools they are.’ It shook its head pityingly, and glanced at Asmira with big, lilac-coloured eyes. ‘Just think, you might have summoned one of them. Aren’t you lucky you got me?’

  Asmira blew a strand of hair away from her face, irritated that the djinni had echoed her own thoughts. ‘You’re just as lucky,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Seeing as I got you out of that bottle, and killed that spider-thing just now.’ She checked her belt. Two knives left. Well, that would be enough.

  ‘I’d say we’re both lucky to have survived this far,’ the sand cat said. It jumped silently to the ground. ‘Let’s see how much further we can make our fortune stretch.’

  With tail high and whiskers out, it dinked between the pillars, flowing in and out of shadows. ‘No obvious hexes, no trip-threads, no dangling tendrils …’ it murmured. ‘The walkway’s clear. Solomon must have been relying on everything that came before. Now then, this arch … No door, just heavy drapes. A bit too easy, one might think … and one would be right, because there’s a nexus on the seventh plane.’ The cat looked over its furry shoulder as Asmira drew close. ‘For your information it’s like a pearly shimmery cobweb thing strung all the way across. Quite pretty really, only alarmed.’

  Asmira frowned. ‘What can we do?’

  ‘You, as usual, can’t do anything except stand around looking cross. I, on the other hand, have options. Now, hush up a moment. I need to concentrate on this …’

  The cat went very still. It sat before the open archway, regarding it intently. Presently it began to make the faintest hissing sound. Once or twice it raised its fore-paws and moved them from side to side, but otherwise it appeared to do nothing. Asmira watched in some frustration, angered again by her blind reliance on her slave. And he was a slave – there was no doubt about that. Whatever Bartimaeus had claimed earlier, there was no equivalence between him and her at all. None. The summons she had spoken had spelled his bondage out in black and white. It was a wholly different thing from her willing obedience to her queen.

  She thought of Queen Balkis, waiting back in Marib – hoping, praying for her loyal guard’s success. Only a day remained before the deadline! By now, they would probably all have assumed she’d failed, and be taking steps to withstand attack. Asmira wondered what magics the priestesses might construct around the city, what demons they were mustering in last, desperate defence …

  Her lips tightened. She was very close now. She would not fail.

  The cat gave a sudden chuckle and twitched its tail in appreciation. ‘There you go! Look at that beauty! The Obedient Breath’s a cracker, isn’t it? Works every time.’

  Asmira gazed at the arch. ‘I can’t see any difference.’

  ‘Well, of course you can’t. You’re human and therefore, by the immutable law
s of nature, completely hopeless. I’ve used the Breath to push the nexus back, see, and put a Seal on it to hold it open. There’s a nice hole in the middle here. Not too big – can’t risk any of the threads knocking against each other. So we’ll have to jump through the hole. Yes, I know you can’t see it. Just do what I do.’

  The sand cat gave a vigorous spring through the centre of the arch, landed lightly just in front of the hanging drapes. Asmira didn’t hesitate; fixing the cat’s trajectory in her mind, she took two steps back, ran forward and launched herself into a tight somersault through the air. At the apex of her leap she sensed something cold close by; it made no contact and was gone. She flipped head over heels, landed right beside the sand cat and, carried by the momentum she had generated, fell head-first through the drapes.

  She came to a halt on all fours, half sprawling into the room beyond.

  It was a room of stately proportions, long and high, with squared white pillars projecting from the whitewashed walls. Between each pillar—

  Asmira sneezed.

  Small claws grasped her shoulder, dragged her back into the concealment of the drapes. Asmira sneezed again. The air was warm and close, and suffused with such an overwhelming flowery tang that her nose recoiled. She buried her face in her sleeve.

  When she recovered, the sand cat was looking at her. It was holding its nose with a paw. ‘Perfume got to you?’ it whispered. ‘Me too. It’s the king’s.’

  Asmira wiped her eyes. ‘It’s so strong! He must have just passed by!’

  ‘Nope, could have been hours ago. Let’s just say Solomon likes his aftershave. But it’s a good job for us that he isn’t in there right now, given the way you’ve just been trumpeting like an angry elephant. We’re trying to assassinate the man, remember? A bit of care and subtlety is needed from here on in.’

  So saying, the cat slid forwards and disappeared between the drapes. Biting back her anger, Asmira picked herself up, took a deep breath, and stepped through into the private chambers of King Solomon.