Ring Of Solomon (16 page)

‘Bit jumpy, Bartimaeus?’ Faquarl said.

I gazed at him dumbly. Wheeling round again, I stared back along the road. The cliffs were quiet and still – silent planes of light and shadow. None of the shadows had familiar form. None of the shadows moved.

The blue fire coursing between my fingers fizzled and went out. I scratched my head uncertainly.

‘Looks as if you found something interesting,’ Faquarl said.

Still I didn’t say anything. The Nubian walked past me, surveying the devastation on the road with a few sweeps of his practised eyes. ‘Not like you to get put off by a little bit of blood and sand,’ he remarked. ‘It’s not pretty, admittedly, but it’s not exactly Qadesh, is it
⁴⁰
? We’ve seen worse.’

I was still shaken, looking all around. Except for a few scraps of fabric flapping pathetically among the rocks, nothing stirred anywhere at all.

‘Doesn’t look like anyone survived …’ Faquarl came to the mutilated corpse in the centre of the road and nudged it with a sandal. He chuckled. ‘Now then, Bartimaeus, what have you been doing to this poor fellow?’

I came to life then. ‘That was how I found him! What are you suggesting?’

‘It’s not for me to judge your little habits, Bartimaeus,’ Faquarl said. He stepped close and patted me on the shoulder. ‘Calm down, I’m only joking. I know you wouldn’t devour a dead man’s head.’

I nodded tersely. ‘Thank you. Too right.’

‘You prefer a juicy buttock, as I remember.’

‘Quite. Much more nutritious.’

‘Anyhow,’ Faquarl went on, ‘the wounds are clearly old. Been lying there the best part of twenty-four hours, if I’m any judge of dead men
⁴¹
.’

‘The magic’s cold too,’ I said, surveying the scattered debris. ‘Detonations, mainly – fairly high-powered ones, though there were a few Convulsions here and there. Nothing too sophisticated, but very brutal.’

‘Utukku, you think?’

‘I’d say so. I found a footprint: bulky, but not big enough to be an afrit.’

‘Well, we’ve got a scent at last, Bartimaeus! I’d suggest going back to tell our master right away, but let’s face it – he’s unlikely to want to hear anything from
you
.’

I glanced about me once more. ‘Speaking of Khaba,’ I said quietly, ‘I had an odd experience just now. When you came down, you didn’t happen to see anything else here with me?’

Faquarl shook his gleaming head. ‘You seemed just as isolated as ever, if slightly more jittery. Why?’

‘Only I thought I had Khaba’s shadow after me—’ I stopped myself, cursed. ‘Not thought,
know
– it was creeping after me along the gorge. Just now! Only when you turned up, it scarpered.’

Faquarl frowned. ‘Really? This is bad.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Yes, it means technically I may have saved you from a nasty fate.
Please
don’t tell anyone about this, Bartimaeus. I’ve got a reputation to maintain.’ He rubbed his chin meditatively. ‘Odd, though, that Khaba should move against you out here,’ he mused. ‘Why not back at camp? Why the secrecy? It’s an intriguing little problem.’

‘I’m glad you feel that way,’ I snarled. ‘Personally speaking, it’s a bit more urgent than that.’

The Nubian grinned. ‘Well, what can you expect? In all honesty, I’m surprised you’ve survived this long. Khaba’s got a grudge against you after that hippo debacle. And then, of course, there’s the ongoing issue of your personality. That’s two good reasons to bump you off for starters.’

I stared at him askance. ‘My personality? Meaning what?’

‘How can you even ask the question? I’ve been around the ziggurat a few times, Bartimaeus, but I’ve never known a spirit like you. Ghuls
⁴²
are bad enough, skrikers
⁴³
likewise – they may all have appalling habits, but by Zeus at least they don’t talk out of turn so loudly, or cheek their betters the way you do. Let’s face it, just the sight of you is enough to drive any reasonable spirit insane.’

Whether it was my recent shock, or the smug expression on his face, my temper snapped. Blue flames flared between my fingers; I stepped in fury towards him.

Faquarl gave an indignant snort. Shards of green lightning crackled about his pudgy hands. ‘Don’t even
think
about it. You haven’t got a chance.’

‘Is that so, my friend? Well, let me tell you—’

I halted; my fires died suddenly away. At the same time Faquarl let his hands fall back. We stood silent on the road, facing each other, listening hard. We could both detect the same sensation: an almost imperceptible shivering on the planes, with every now and then a faint, decisive thud. It was familiar and it was not far off.

It was the noise of djinn being summoned.

As one, we leaped into the air, our quarrel forgotten. As one, we changed. Two eagles (one plump, unsavoury; one a paragon of avian grace and beauty) rose up between the cliffs. We circled high above the wastes, which shimmered brown and white beneath the sun.

I checked the higher planes, where colours are more muted and less distracting, and gave a cawk of triumph. Away to the south, distant luminosities moved upon the ground. The lights – evidently those of several spirits – were closing in on where the spice road passed among some barren hills.

Without a word the eagles banked their wings. Side by side, we shot south towards the road.

³⁹
You could tell this by the little evil looks he flashed, and his overall
froideur
when I passed by. Subtle clues, yes, but I’m a sensitive sort and I spotted them. The regular occasions when he shook his fists and cursed my name by all the death gods of Egypt only served to back up my theory.

⁴⁰
Battle of Qadesh
: major engagement between the Egyptians under Rameses the Great and the Hittites under King Muwatallis back in 1274 BC. Faquarl and I had fought in separate divisions of the pharaoh’s armies, and helped carry out the final pincer movement that drove the enemy utukku from the field. Many great deeds were done that day, not all of them by me. Two centuries later, the battlefield was still a blackened waste, a field of bones.

⁴¹
He was.

⁴²
Ghul
: a lowly class of djinni, a frequenter of cemeteries, a devourer of unburied morsels.

⁴³
Skriker
: an unpleasant sub-type of imp, with large flat feet and creeping tread. Follows travellers in lonely places, whispering and calling, and drives them to their death.

Soon afterwards two bearded travellers could be seen trudging forth upon King Solomon’s highway. One was young and handsome, the other thick-set and dishevelled; both were stained with the sand of many miles. Each wore a dyed wool robe and had a heavy pack slung across his shoulders. They supported their steps with staffs of oak.

Trudge, trudge, hobble, hobble – that was Faquarl and me doing our best to project an aura of human vulnerability. To cloak our actual potency, we’d made the change on five planes, and used Glamours to shield our true natures on the other two.

Shoulders drooping with weariness, the men scuffed southwards through the dust and watched the dark hills draw in on either side. Here, as we’d judged while still aloft, were cliffs and overhangs that offered opportunity for ambush, if you were that way inclined.

Faquarl and I had decided on an ambush of our own. Somewhere above were the hidden djinn we’d glimpsed from afar, but for the present we saw no sign of them. Everything was still, save for two vultures drifting slowly in and out of view against the sky. I snatched a look at them. Genuine, as far as I could tell. I lowered my gaze; on we went, step by weary step.

In the middle of the range of hills, the cliffs receded a little and the road entered a wider defile, surrounded by scree slopes topped with jagged spurs of basalt.

For the first time, the lonely and ever so vulnerable travellers stopped. Faquarl made a pretence of fiddling with his pack. I pulled at my beard, looked all around me with narrowed eyes.

Quietness.

Grasping our staffs more tightly, we set off again along the way.

From behind, somewhere remote among the cliffs, came a tiny rattling of stones. Neither of us turned our head.

At our backs sounded a skittering of pebbles, louder, halfway down the scree. Faquarl scratched his bulbous nose. I whistled tunelessly as I walked along.

A heavy thud sounded on the road, the click of claws on rock. Still we trudged on, weariness itself.

And now came the rasp of scales. The stench of sulphur. A sudden swathe of darkness filling the ravine. A cackle of demonic—

All right, now
was
probably the time.

Faquarl and I spun round, beards jutting, staffs raised, ready to attack – and saw nothing.

We looked down.

There at our feet stood the smallest, most rubbish foliot we’d ever set eyes on, frozen guiltily mid-path with one foot raised. It wore the terrifying guise of a shrew in a baggy tunic. In one furry paw it carried a weapon that resembled a toasting fork.

I lowered my staff and gazed at it. It goggled back with its big brown eyes.

On all seven planes the shrew looked the same, though to be fair on the seventh it
did
have a set of fangs. I shook my head in wonder. Could
this
be the hideous monster that had carried out such rapine on the desert road?

‘Hand over your valuables and prepare for death!’ squeaked the shrew, flourishing its fork. ‘Make haste, if you please. There is a camel train approaching the other way, and I wish to dispose of your bodies and join my fellows.’

Faquarl and I glanced at one another. I held up a hand. ‘Please, if I may: one question. In whose name do you act? Who summoned you?’

The shrew’s chest swelled. ‘My master is employed by the king of the Edomites. Now hand over your goods. I don’t want blood all over them.’

‘But Edom is a friend to Israel,’ Faquarl persisted. ‘Why should its king seek to rebel against great Solomon?’

‘This would be the same Solomon who demands a vast yearly tribute from the king, so that his treasury is emptied and his people groan beneath the burden of their taxes?’ The shrew gave a shrug. ‘Were it not for the Ring he wears, Solomon would find Edom rising against him in war. As it is, we must be content with simple banditry. Well, so much for international relations; we come now to your sad demise …’

I smiled negligently. ‘First, a detail. Check out the planes.’ So saying, I made a subtle change. On the first plane I was still a dusty traveller leaning on his staff. On the higher planes, however, the man was gone, and I was something
other
. Faquarl had done likewise. All at once the shrew’s fur went grey and bristled stiff and upright on its body. It shivered so violently that its fork began to hum.

The shrew sidled backwards. ‘Let’s talk about this …’

My grin broadened. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ I made a gesture; my staff was gone. From my outstretched hand a Detonation roared. The shrew sprang sideways; the earth at its feet exploded in crimson fire. Mid-leap, the shrew jabbed its fork; from the tip came a frail green shaft of light that raked across the ground, stabbing Faquarl’s toe unpleasantly. He hopped and cursed, threw up a Shield. The shrew hit the ground with a squeak and darted away. I peppered its wake with a string of Convulsions that sent avalanches tumbling up and down the gorge.

The shrew sprang behind a boulder, from where its paw protruded at intervals, wielding the toasting fork. Further green bolts rained down on us, hissing and spitting against the edges of our Shields. Faquarl sent a Spasm whirling; the boulder shattered, became a heap of gravel. The shrew was blown backwards, fur smouldering. It dropped its fork. With a high-pitched oath, it leaped for the scree and began to climb.

Faquarl gave a cry. ‘You go after it – I’ll cut it off on the other side.’

Hands smoking, robe and beard whipping around me, I vaulted onto a tumbled slab, jumped to an adjacent ledge, bounded up the slope from stone to stone. With my feet hardly touching the rocks, I quickly homed in on the desperate blur of brown that zigzagged ahead of me up the scree. Lightning crackled from my fingers; it drove down into the earth, propelling me upwards even faster.

The shrew reached the top of the slope, and for a moment was outlined furrily against the sky. At the last instant it ducked away; my Detonation missed it by a whisker.

From my back I sprouted wings – each feathered, pure white, divided in two like those of a butterfly
⁴⁴
. They flexed into life; over the crest of the dust-dry hill I soared, so the sun’s warmth burst upon my essence. Down below me was the shrew, stumbling, plunging down an undulating ridge of ground. Not far beyond I saw a rough encampment of tents, four of them set in a little hollow, surrounded by store-piles, the blackened remnants of a fire, three bored camels tethered to an iron post and many other spoors and scatterings.

The owners of all this were three men (presumably the Edomite magicians, though to be honest all the tribes of the region looked the same to me), clad in robes of brown and caramel, with walking staffs in hand and dusty sandals on their feet. They stood in the shadow of the tents, as still as statues, in postures of calm attention, looking away from us towards the opposite side of the ridge, which abutted another curve of the desert road.

The shrew’s yelps alerted them: spinning round, they saw its tumbling approach and, further off, my implacable, avenging form hurtling from the heavens.

The men cried out; they scattered. One cried out a spirit’s name. From the ravine beyond came an answering call, deep and urgent.

Now
things were getting interesting.

Down from above I plunged, giving vent to all the pent-up fury of my slavery. From my fingers a succession of fiery bolts strafed left and right into the ground. Stone shattered, dirt and sand burst against the bright blue sky. The shrew was finally hit in the centre of its furry back, blasting into a thousand plaintive motes of light.