The Ring of Solomon

reach. The cat shot across the hall, leaped straight over the plunge-pool, skidded diagonally along a stretch of marble and, with a quick spin of the Evasive Cartwheel, flipped out of sight through the next arch along.
    Safety! Yet again my unique combination of quick thinking and agility had saved my precious skin!
    Except it was a dead end.
    Quite an interesting dead end, as dead ends go, but potentially fatal all the same. The room was clearly the place where Solomon kept many of his treasures – a small, windowless store, lit by oil lamps, and piled in every direction with shelves and caskets.
    No time to explore it. The cat turned tail and made for the arch – only to be dissuaded by another bloodcurdling roar sounding from outside. The ferocious entity was a loud one, sure enough, if a disappointingly slow worker. I’d hoped he would have swallowed the girl by now. But perhaps, having chomped off a leg or something, he was storing her for later. Perhaps he was coming after me. Clearly I needed somewhere safe to hide.
    I turned again to look around the storeroom. What did I see? Plenty of jewels, idols, masks, swords, helms, scrolls, tablets, shields and other artefacts of magical design, not to mention a few weird extras like a set of crocodile-skin gloves, a skull with eyes of shell, and a rather lumpy-looking straw doll covered with human skin. 2 I also saw an old friend of mine – that golden serpent I’d stolen from Eridu. But what I really wanted – namely a WAY OUT – was altogether missing.
    Sweaty-pawed with agitation, the cat looked left and right, scanning the shelves. Almost every item in the little room was magical – their auras interlaced across the planes, bathing me in rainbow light. If the entity did appear behind me, was there something I might use in last, desperate defence?
    Nope, unless I was going to lob the doll at him. Trouble was, I didn’t know what any of the artefacts did . 3 But then I noticed, half hidden amid the piled treasures at the back, a large copper pot. It was narrow at the base, swelling at the neck to the width of a man’s shoulders. On its top was a circular lid, and on that lid sat a layer of dust, implying that no one, including Solomon, ever checked within.
    In an instant the cat became a curl of mist, scrolling off the floor and up against the lid, which I nudged minutely to one side. With the speed of wind emerging from an elephant, I shot inside and (still in my gaseous state) flicked the lid back into position. Darkness all about me. The curl of mist hung in silence, waiting.
    Had I moved in time?
    I imagined the entity oozing level with the archway. I imagined several of its eye-stalks probing inwards, scanning the treasures from side to side. I imagined one of its polyped coils unfurling, flicking towards the surface of the pot …
    Squeezed tight with tension, the curl of mist floated quietly up and down.
    Nothing happened. The pot stayed undisturbed.
    Time passed.
    After a while I began to relax. The entity had doubtless gone, hopefully to hurry up and devour the girl. I was just debating whether to nudge the lid aside and tiptoe from my hiding place, or remain more prudently concealed, when I became aware of feeling watched .
    I looked about me. The interior of the pot was empty. Whatever it had originally contained was gone; now it was filled with nothing but secretive, dusty silence. Yet somehow there was an oddness in the atmosphere, an indefinable frisson in the old, stale air that made my essence tingle with occult sensation.
    I waited – and all at once, from somewhere close, yet infinitely far away, came a little voice, an echo of an echo, a plaintive memory of speech.
    Bartimaeus …
    Call me over-cautious, but strange voices in pots always put me on my guard. The curl of mist instantly coalesced into a small white moth, fluttering warily in the black vastness of the pot. I sent swift Pulses back and forth, checked all the planes. But there was nothing there, nothing but dust and shadows.
    Bartimaeus …
    And then, suddenly, I guessed. I remembered the three famous afrits who had dared defy Solomon. I recalled their reported fates. One of them – or so hushed fireside gossip had it – had been reduced, by the king’s caprice and the power of the Ring, into a mournful echo in a pot. Which one was it …?
    The moth’s antennae shivered. I cleared my throat, spoke cautiously: ‘Philocretes?’
    A sound as soft as owl-flight: The name of