The Ring of Solomon

it was the latest thing in Nimrud that century. The white feathers were a drag during combat – they didn’t half show up stains – but made you resemble a celestial being: fearsome, beautiful, cold, aloof. This was particularly useful when out hunting humans, who were often so busy gawping at you they quite forgot to run.
    2 Clearly the shrew, whatever its many faults, had not lied to us. Other travellers were currently being waylaid below.
    3 This is a generally sound principle. When forced into sudden battle with another spirit, you have no way of assessing their character. They may be repugnant and loathsome, or genial and pleasant, or any combination in between. The only certain fact is that they would not be fighting you were it not for the charge put upon them, and thus it makes sense to expunge the master and spare the puppet. In the case of the utukku, of course, it was safe to assume they had the morals of two ferrets fighting in a bag, but even so, the principle remained.
    4 This curious time delay always occurs in such cases. I sometimes wonder what, in those fleeting seconds, the victim’s consciousness sees or experiences inside the Node, alone in that infinity of nothing.
    5 Plus the shrew. But I’m not really sure you can count him.

16
    I t wasn’t that I hadn’t noticed we had company. It was just that I hadn’t cared. When you’re in the middle of a fight, you stick to the basics, namely trying to disembowel your enemy while stopping him tearing off your arm and beating you around the head with it. If you’ve any energy left over, you use it for swearing. Prostrating yourself before watching strangers doesn’t feature highly in the programme. Particularly when it’s them you’re saving.
    So I took my time here, flicking the desert dust off my limbs and inspecting remote regions of my essence, before turning to see who’d spoken.
    Not twelve inches away, a face regarded me with an expression that mingled arrogance, derision and the hope of obtaining grassy foodstuffs. This was a camel. Following its neck upwards, I discovered a couch of red and yellow silks set upon its saddle. Tasselled drapes hung below it; above, slumped on broken poles, there swung a canopy, now sadly burned and torn.
    On the couch sat a young woman, little more than a girl. Her black hair was drawn back and mostly hidden by a silken headscarf, but her eyebrows were elegant and quizzical, her eyes as black as onyx. Her face was slim, its structure graceful, her skin-tone dark and even. A human might have accounted her beautiful. My expert eye also detected signs of wilfulness, high intelligence and stern resolve, though whether these qualities added to her beauty or detracted from it is not for me to say.
    This girl sat straight-backed upon her camel-couch, one hand resting on the forward pommel of acacia wood, the other loosely holding the beast’s reins. She wore a hempen riding cloak, stained ochre from the desert storms, and singed in places by utukku fire; also a long woollen garment, woven with geometric designs in yellow and red. This was wrapped tight about her torso and more loosely about her legs. She rode side-saddle, her feet neatly encased in little leather shoes. Bronze bangles hung upon her slim, bare wrists. Around her neck she had a silver pendant, shaped like a sun.
    Her hair was slightly disordered – a few strands had fallen across her face – and she had a small fresh cut beneath one eye; otherwise, she seemed none the worse for her ordeal.
    This all takes a lot longer to recount than it did to observe. I stared at her for a moment. ‘Who spoke,’ I said, ‘you or the camel?’
    The girl frowned. ‘It was I.’
    ‘Well, you have a camel’s manners.’ I turned aside. ‘We’ve just killed the utukku who were attacking you. By rights you should be on your knees thanking us for your deliverance. Wouldn’t you say so, Faquarl?’
    My associate had at last drawn close, tentatively prodding at his gaping chest wound. ‘That goat!’ he grumbled. ‘Gored me with a horn just as I was strangling the other two. I ask you. Three against one! Some djinn haven’t the slightest conception of common courtesy …’ He noticed the girl for the first time. ‘Who’s this?’
    I shrugged. ‘A survivor.’
    ‘Any others about?’
    We surveyed the forlorn wreckage of the camel train, scattered about the gorge. All was silent, all was still, apart from a couple of riderless camels wandering in the