The Ring of Solomon

form?’
    ‘Queasy, Faquarl, not uneasy.’ 6
    ‘Well, this is all very pleasant. I admire your choice of form, by the way, Bartimaeus. Very comely. But I see that you are somewhat weighed down by a certain amulet. Perhaps you could be so good as to take it off and put it on the table. Then if you care to tell me which magician you are working for, I might consider ways of ending this meeting in a non-fatal manner.’
    ‘That’s kind of you, but you know I can’t do that.’ 7
    The cook prodded the edge of the table with the tip of his cleaver. ‘Let me be frank. You can and will. It is nothing personal, of course; one day we may work together again. But for now I am bound just as you are. And I too have my charge to fulfil. So it comes, as it always does, to a question of power. Correct me if I am wrong, but I note that you do not have too much confidence in yourself today – otherwise you would have left by the front door, quelling the triloids as you went, rather than allowing them to shepherd you round the house to me.’
    ‘I was merely following a whim.’
    ‘Mm. Perhaps you would stop edging towards the window, Bartimaeus. Such a ploy would be pitifully obvious even to a human 8 and besides, the triloids wait for you there. Hand over the Amulet or you will discover that your ramshackle Defence Shield will count for nothing.’
    He stood up and held out his hand. There was a pause. Behind my Seal, Jabor’s patient (if unimaginative) Detonations still sounded. The door itself must have long since been turned to powder. In the garden the three sentinels hovered, all their eyes trained on me. I looked around the room for inspiration.
    ‘The Amulet , Bartimaeus.’
    I raised my hand and, with a heavy, rather theatrical sigh, took hold of the Amulet. Then I leaped to my left. At the same time, I released the Seal on the door. Faquarl gave a tut of annoyance and began a gesture. As he did so he was hit square on by a particularly powerful Detonation that came shooting through the empty gap where the Seal had been. It sent him backwards into the fireplace and the brickwork collapsed upon him.
    I smashed my way into the greenhouse just as Jabor stepped through the gap into the kitchen. As Faquarl emerged from the rubble I was breaking out into the garden. The three sentinels converged on me, eyes wide and legs rotating. Scything claws appeared at the ends of their blobby feet. I cast an Illumination of the brightest kind. The whole garden was lit up as if by an exploding sun. The sentinels’ eyes were dazzled; they chittered with pain. I leaped over them and ran through the garden, dodging bolts of magic from the house that incinerated trees.
    At the far end of the garden, between a compost heap and a motorized lawnmower, I vaulted the wall. I tore through the blue latticework of magical nodes, leaving a boy-shaped hole. Instantly alarm bells began ringing all over the grounds.
    I hit the pavement outside, the Amulet bouncing and banging off my chest. On the other side of the wall I heard the sound of galloping hooves. It was high time I made a change.
    Peregrine falcons are the fastest birds on record. They can attain a speed of two hundred kilometres an hour in diving flight. Rarely has one achieved this horizontally over the roofs of North London. Some would even doubt that this was possible, particularly while carrying a weighty amulet around its neck. Suffice it to say, however, that when Faquarl and Jabor landed in the Hampstead backstreet, creating an invisible obstruction that was immediately hit by a speeding removal van, I was nowhere to be seen.
    I was long gone.

    1 For those who are wondering, I have no difficulty in becoming a woman. Nor for that matter a man. In some ways, I suppose women are trickier, but I won’t go into that now. Woman, man, mole, maggot – they’re all the same, when all’s said and done, except for slight variations in cognitive ability.
    2 Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t afraid of the imp. I could squish it without a second thought. But it was there for two reasons: for its undying loyalty to its master and for its perceptive eye. It would not be taken in by my cunning fly guise for one fraction of a second.
    3 A human who listened to the conversation would probably have been slack-jawed with astonishment, for the magician’s account of corruption in the British Government was remarkably detailed. But I for one was not agog. Having seen countless civilizations of