The Ring of Solomon

ease gently into calm introspection.
    But had they? Not a hope.
    Khaba was livid, of course – that was to be expected. The king had belittled and humiliated him in front of his peers, and his cushy existence at the palace had been replaced, for the moment, with bandit-hunting on the open road. Though it’s true he wasn’t exactly slumming it – he travelled by flying carpet, complete with cushions, grapes and a chained foliot holding a parasol, and at night slept in a black silk tent complete with couch and incense bath – you could see he felt it deeply, and blamed me. 1
    The curious and disconcerting thing, though, was that beyond a few initial scourings back on the building site, Khaba hadn’t actually punished me much for my misdemeanour. This was so out of character that I found myself getting jumpy; I kept expecting his wrath to fall upon me when I least expected it, and as a result expected it all the time. I watched him and his shadow obsessively, but nothing nasty came my way.
    Meanwhile my fellow djinn were cross with me as well, indignant that the safe and predictable routines of life at the temple had been replaced with combing the arid badlands in search of dangerous djinn to fight. I tried to argue that outlaw-killing was far better suited to our ferocious talents than building work, but was by turns shouted down, insulted and plain ignored. Xoxen, Tivoc and Beyzer refused to speak to me at all, and the others were decidedly snippy. Only Faquarl, who had loathed the quarry, showed any disposition to sympathy. He contributed a few acerbic comments, but otherwise left me alone.
    The first two days were uneventful. Each morning Khaba emerged from his tent, berated us soundly for our failings, uttered random threats and packed us off in all directions. Each evening, having crisscrossed the skies from dawn to dusk, we returned empty-handed to face his censure. The desert was large and our enemy elusive. The brigands, whoever they were, lay low.
    On the afternoon of the third day I was the phoenix again, flying high above the southern trade routes. The town of Hebron had passed beneath, and Arad. Not far to the east I caught the mirror flash of the great Salt Sea, where bones of ancient cities lay bleaching by the shore. Ahead rose the mountains of Edom, gateway to yet vaster wastes, and at their feet a low, dark purpled mass: the waterless desert of Zin.
    The spice road here was a thin brown vein in the dirt, spooled between the lifeless ridges. If I followed it long enough, I would arrive at last at the Red Sea, and the trading depots where caravans converged from Egypt, Sheba, even distant Nubia and Punt. But my business lay close by.
    As I circled, my dark eye flashing as it turned against the sun, I caught an answering gleam below. It came from a track just off the main highway, a path winding towards a village in the hills. The gleam was definite, and warranted investigation.
    Down I dropped, enjoying the wind in my plumage and the simple freedom of the air. All in all, things weren’t so bad. I was alive, I was aloft, I was away from that wretched building site. True, I had some ‘monsters’ to track down and slay, but when you’re a swashbuckling djinni of more than average talent who’s survived the battles of Qadesh and Megiddo, and who (more to the point), has been cooped up in Jerusalem with some of the most irritating entities ever to squeeze inside a pentacle, a bit of a scrap is precisely what you need.
    I was too late for the scrap here , though. It had been and gone.
    Even while I was in the air, I could see the devastation on the little track. The ground was charred and blistered, and stained with something dark. Fragments of cloth and wood had been strewn over a wide area. I smelled old horror: spent magic, sundered flesh.
    The gleam I’d seen turned out to come from a broken sword-blade lying on a rock. It wasn’t alone. Parts of its owner lay nearby.
    As I landed, I turned into the handsome young Sumerian, dark-eyed and watchful. I stood and looked around. The remains of several carts were clearly visible, their wood split and blackened, their wheels smashed. The rocks of the cliffs on either side had sad, limp things scattered on them. I didn’t look closely. I knew what they were.
    One of the victims was lying in the centre of the road, a splintered shield beside him. His arms and legs were out-flung casually, almost as if he slept. I say almost advisedly, since he lacked