The Ring of Solomon

and I was something other . Faquarl had done likewise. All at once the shrew’s fur went grey and bristled stiff and upright on its body. It shivered so violently that its fork began to hum.
    The shrew sidled backwards. ‘Let’s talk about this …’
    My grin broadened. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ I made a gesture; my staff was gone. From my outstretched hand a Detonation roared. The shrew sprang sideways; the earth at its feet exploded in crimson fire. Mid-leap, the shrew jabbed its fork; from the tip came a frail green shaft of light that raked across the ground, stabbing Faquarl’s toe unpleasantly. He hopped and cursed, threw up a Shield. The shrew hit the ground with a squeak and darted away. I peppered its wake with a string of Convulsions that sent avalanches tumbling up and down the gorge.
    The shrew sprang behind a boulder, from where its paw protruded at intervals, wielding the toasting fork. Further green bolts rained down on us, hissing and spitting against the edges of our Shields. Faquarl sent a Spasm whirling; the boulder shattered, became a heap of gravel. The shrew was blown backwards, fur smouldering. It dropped its fork. With a high-pitched oath, it leaped for the scree and began to climb.
    Faquarl gave a cry. ‘You go after it – I’ll cut it off on the other side.’
    Hands smoking, robe and beard whipping around me, I vaulted onto a tumbled slab, jumped to an adjacent ledge, bounded up the slope from stone to stone. With my feet hardly touching the rocks, I quickly homed in on the desperate blur of brown that zigzagged ahead of me up the scree. Lightning crackled from my fingers; it drove down into the earth, propelling me upwards even faster.
    The shrew reached the top of the slope, and for a moment was outlined furrily against the sky. At the last instant it ducked away; my Detonation missed it by a whisker.
    From my back I sprouted wings – each feathered, pure white, divided in two like those of a butterfly. 1 They flexed into life; over the crest of the dust-dry hill I soared, so the sun’s warmth burst upon my essence. Down below me was the shrew, stumbling, plunging down an undulating ridge of ground. Not far beyond I saw a rough encampment of tents, four of them set in a little hollow, surrounded by store-piles, the blackened remnants of a fire, three bored camels tethered to an iron post and many other spoors and scatterings.
    The owners of all this were three men (presumably the Edomite magicians, though to be honest all the tribes of the region looked the same to me), clad in robes of brown and caramel, with walking staffs in hand and dusty sandals on their feet. They stood in the shadow of the tents, as still as statues, in postures of calm attention, looking away from us towards the opposite side of the ridge, which abutted another curve of the desert road.
    The shrew’s yelps alerted them: spinning round, they saw its tumbling approach and, further off, my implacable, avenging form hurtling from the heavens.
    The men cried out; they scattered. One cried out a spirit’s name. From the ravine beyond came an answering call, deep and urgent.
    Now things were getting interesting.
    Down from above I plunged, giving vent to all the pent-up fury of my slavery. From my fingers a succession of fiery bolts strafed left and right into the ground. Stone shattered, dirt and sand burst against the bright blue sky. The shrew was finally hit in the centre of its furry back, blasting into a thousand plaintive motes of light.
    Two hulking shapes rose from the gorge beyond. Both, like me, were winged in the bifurcated Assyrian style; both, like me, wore human bodies. Unlike me, they had chosen rather more exotic heads, the better to spread terror to their victims on the road.
    The nearest, an utukku with a lion’s face, carried a bloodied spear. 2 His comrade, whose head resembled that of an unpleasantly jowly, loose-skinned monitor lizard, preferred a scimitar; with horrid cries and feathered wings beating at the air, they flew towards me at speed.
    I would kill them if I had to, but I preferred to kill their masters. 3
    The Edomite magicians had each acted according to his nature. The first had panicked, spinning this way, then that, before finally tripping over his trailing robe and falling into the side of the nearest tent. Before he could regain his balance my Detonation expunged him in a ball of flame. The second stood his ground: from a bag beside the fire he drew a long, thin