The Ring of Solomon

captain of the guard
    THE SPIRITS

    And numerous other marids, afrits, djinn, foliots and imps

    This story takes place in and around Jerusalem, in 950 BC .

Part
One

1
    S unset above the olive groves. The sky, like a bashful youth kissed for the first time, blushed with a peach-pink light. Through the open windows came the gentlest of breezes, carrying the fragrances of evening. It stirred the hair of the young woman standing alone and pensive in the centre of the marble floor, and caused her dress to flutter against the contours of her lean, dark limbs.
    She lifted a hand; slim fingers toyed with a ringlet of hair beside her neck. ‘Why so shy, my lord?’ she whispered. ‘Come near and let me look on you.’
    In the opposite pentacle the old man lowered the wax cylinder in his hand and glared at me with his single eye. ‘Great Jehovah, Bartimaeus! You don’t think that’s going to work on me ?’
    My eyelashes quivered beguilingly. ‘I’ll dance too, if you’ll only step a little closer. Come on, spoil yourself. I’ll do you the Twirl of the Seven Veils.’
    The magician spoke with irritation. ‘No, thank you. And you can stop that too.’
    ‘Stop what?’
    ‘That … that jiggling about . Every now and then you— There! You did it again!’
    ‘Oh, come on, sailor, live a little. What’s putting you off?’
    My master uttered an oath. ‘Possibly your clawed left foot. Possibly your scaly tail. Also possibly the fact that even a new-born babe would know not to step outside his protective circle when requested to do so by a wicked, duplicitous spirit such as yourself. Now silence, cursed creature of air, and abandon your pathetic temptations, or I shall strike you sideways with such a Pestilence as even great Egypt never suffered!’ The old boy was quite excited, all out of breath, his white hair a disordered halo around his head. From behind his ear he took a stylus and grimly made a notation on the cylinder. ‘There’s a black mark there for you, Bartimaeus,’ he said. ‘ Another one. If this line gets filled, you’ll be off the special allowances list for good, you understand. No more roasted imps, no time off, nothing. Now, I’ve a job for you.’
    The maiden in the pentacle folded her arms. She wrinkled her dainty nose. ‘I’ve just done a job.’
    ‘Well, now you’ve got another one.’
    ‘I’ll do it when I’ve had a rest.’
    ‘You’ll do it this very night.’
    ‘Why should I do it? Send Tufec or Rizim.’
    A bright jag of scarlet lightning issued from the forefinger of the old man, looped across the intervening space and set my pentacle aflame, so that I wailed and danced with mad abandon.
    The crackling ceased; the pain in my feet lessened. I came to an ungainly standstill.
    ‘You were right, Bartimaeus,’ the old man chuckled. ‘You do dance well. Now, are you going to give me any more backchat? If so, another notch upon the cylinder it shall be.’
    ‘No, no – there’s no need for that.’ To my great relief the stylus was slowly replaced behind the aged ear. I clapped my hands vigorously. ‘So, another job, you say? What joy! I’m humbled that you have selected me from among so many other worthy djinn. What brought me to your attention tonight, great Master? The ease with which I slew the giant of Mount Lebanon? The zeal with which I put the Canaanite rebels to flight? Or just my general reputation?’
    The old man scratched his nose. ‘None of that; rather it was your behaviour last night, when the watch-imps observed you in the form of a mandrill swaggering through the undergrowth below the Sheep Gate, singing lewd songs about King Solomon and loudly extolling your own magnificence.’
    The maiden gave a surly shrug. ‘Might not have been me.’
    ‘The words “Bartimaeus is best”, repeated at tedious length, suggest otherwise.’
    ‘Well, all right. So I’d had too many mites at supper. No harm done.’
    ‘No harm? The Watch reported it to their supervisor, who reported it to me. I reported it to High Magician Hiram, and I believe it has since come to the ears of the king himself.’ His face became all prim and starchy. ‘He is not pleased.’
    I blew out my cheeks. ‘Can’t he tell me so in person?’
    The magician’s eye bulged; it looked like an egg emerging from a chicken. 1 ‘You dare suggest,’ he cried, ‘that great Solomon, King of all Israel, master of all lands from the Gulf of Aqaba to the broad Euphrates, would deign to speak