The Ring of Solomon

stylish. 8 I decided to join in, and allowed two small ram’s horns to curl out on my brow. Faquarl, I noticed, had given his Nubian an elegant set of nicely filed fangs. Thus beautified, we took our places in the line.
    We waited; a hot wind blew upon the hilltop. Far to the west, clouds were massing above the sea.
    I shifted from foot to foot and yawned. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘is he coming or not? I’m bored, I’m knackered, and I could do with an imp. In fact I saw some back in the yard that wouldn’t be missed if we were quiet about it. If we got a little bag—’
    My neighbour nudged me. ‘Hush,’ he hissed.
    ‘Oh come on, what’s so bad about that? We all do it.’
    ‘ Hush ,’ he snapped. ‘He’s here.’
    I stiffened. At my side seven other djinn sprang to swift attention; we all stared glassily above our heads.
    A figure in black came up the hill, his shadow stretching long and thin behind him.

    1 Which I’m certainly not going to repeat here. Unlike some lesser djinn I could name, who rejoice in vulgarisms and inappropriate analogies, I’m a stickler for propriety. Always have been. Famous for it. In fact you could tattoo what I don’t know about good taste on the backside of a midget, assuming you hold him down hard enough to stop him squirming.
    2 Tomb-building, treasure-hunting, battle-fighting, artichoke-collecting … Outwardly different, maybe – but in the end all magicians’ demands boil down to wealth and power, whatever they might claim .
    3 Spasms, Whirls, Stipples , etc.: punitive spells frequently employed to keep a healthy young djinni in line. Painful, tedious, usually non-fatal.
    4 Gourmet’s note: one roc’s egg, scrambled, feeds roughly 700 wives, provided you mix in a few vats of milk and a churn or three of butter. I had to whisk the thing as well, which gave me a sore elbow.
    5 It hadn’t always been that way, if you could believe the stories. Long-serving djinn reported that in the early years of his reign Solomon enjoyed regular banquets and masques and entertainments of every conceivable kind (though girning and juggling always featured prominently). Each night, garlands of imp-lights would illuminate the cypress trees, and roving spirit-globes bathed the palace in a thousand shifting colours. Solomon, his wives and courtiers would frolic upon the lawns while he worked wonders for them with his Ring. Times, it seemed, had changed since then.
    6 As well as all this the Ring was said to protect Solomon from magical attack, give him extraordinary personal allure (which possibly explained all those wives cluttering up the place) and allow him to understand the language of birds and animals. Not bad, in short, though the last one isn’t half as useful as you might expect, since when all’s said and done the language of the beasts tends to revolve around: (a) the endless hunt for food, (b) finding a warm bush to sleep in of an evening, and (c) the sporadic satisfaction of certain glands.* Elements such as nobility, humour and poetry of the soul are conspicuously lacking. You have to come to middle-ranking djinn for them. * Many would argue that the language of humankind boils down to this too.
    7 It was the guise I’d worn when I was spear-bearer to Gilgamesh, two thousand years before: a tall, beautiful young man, smooth-skinned and almond-eyed. He wore a long wrapped skirt, necklaces of amethyst on his breast and ringlets in his hair, and had about him an air of wistful grace that contrasted pungently with the foul detritus of the kitchen yard. I often used this form in such circumstances. It made me feel better somehow.
    8 Solomon’s edicts dictated that ordinary human shapes were maintained at all times outside the palace walls. Animals were forbidden, likewise mythic beasts; grotesque deformities were out too, which was a shame. The idea was to prevent the common people being startled by repulsive sights – such as Beyzer taking a stroll with his limbs on back to front. Or, admittedly, yours truly forgetfully popping out to buy some figs in the guise of a rotting corpse, thus causing the great Fruit Market Terror, fifteen deaths in the associated stampede, and the destruction of half the commercial district. Got my figs dirt cheap, mind, so it wasn’t all bad.

7
    H is name 1 was Khaba, and whatever else he might have been, he was certainly a formidable magician. In origin, perhaps, he was a child of Upper Egypt, the quick-witted son of some peasant farmer