The Ring of Solomon

was too late; he had tossed the serpent back across the space, where the maiden caught it doubtfully.
    ‘Do you take me for an idiot, Bartimaeus?’ my master cried, stamping a wrinkled foot upon the marble. ‘Quite patently you planned to snare me with some trick! You egged me on to pry into this device, hoping it would seal my doom! Well, I’m not going to press any of these studs. But you will.’
    The maiden blinked up at the magician with her big brown eyes. ‘Look, this really isn’t necessary—’
    ‘Do as I say!’
    With the greatest reluctance, I raised the serpent in my hand and considered the studs set upon the claws. There were three of them, each decorated with an emerald. Selecting the first, I pressed it gingerly. There was a whirring sound. At once the serpent emitted a brief electric shock that raddled my essence and set the maiden’s long luxuriant hair standing up like a toilet brush.
    The old magician hooted with laughter. ‘You planned that for me, did you?’ he chortled. ‘Let this be a lesson to you. Well, and the next!’
    I pressed the second stud. Swivelling on a set of hidden cogs and fulcra, several of the serpent’s golden scales flipped up and egested puffs of tarry smoke. As with the first trap, long centuries had dulled the mechanism, and my face was only lightly blackened.
    My master rocked back and forth with mirth. ‘Better and better,’ he crowed. ‘Look at the state of you! Now the third.’
    The third emerald had evidently been designed to let off a jet of poison gas, but all that remained after so many years was a faint green cloud and a bad smell.
    ‘You’ve had your fun,’ I sighed, holding out the serpent once more. ‘Now dismiss me, or send me off again, or whatever it is you want to do. But leave me be. I’m fed up with this.’
    But the magician’s good eye glinted. ‘Not so fast, Bartimaeus!’ he said grimly. ‘You forget the tail.’
    ‘I don’t see—’
    ‘Are you blind? There is a hinge there too! Press that, if you will.’
    I hesitated. ‘Please. I’ve had enough.’
    ‘No, Bartimaeus. Perhaps this is the “secret catch” you mentioned. Perhaps you will now get to meet this “mighty spirit” of ancient legend.’ The old man grinned with cruel delight; he folded his spindly arms. ‘Or more probably you will find out yet again what it is like to attempt to defy me! Go on – no dallying! Press the tail!’
    ‘But—’
    ‘I order you to press it!’
    ‘Righty-ho.’ That was what I’d been waiting for all this time. The terms of any summoning always include stringent clauses preventing you from directly harming the magician who brings you here: it’s the first, most basic rule of all magic from Ashur to Abyssinia. Lulling your master into disaster through soft words and raw cunning is different, of course, as is striking if they break their circle or mess up the incantation. But direct assaults are out. You can’t touch your master unless you’re expressly commanded to do so by their own spoken word. As, rather pleasantly, was the case here.
    I hefted the golden serpent and tweaked the tail. As I’d assumed, Naabash had not spoken falsely; 3 nor had the water elemental 4 trapped within deteriorated like the clockwork mechanisms. A bright, pulsing jet of water shot forth from the serpent’s open mouth, glistening in the happy light of dawn. Since, by merest chance, I was holding the serpent directly facing the magician, the jet crossed the intervening space and struck the old codger full in the chest, lifting him off his feet and carrying him out of his circle and halfway across his chamber. The distance he went was gratifying, but leaving the circle was the crucial bit. Even before he landed, heavily and soggily, on his back, the bonds about me snapped and withered, and I was free to move.
    The pretty maiden tossed the serpent to the floor. She stepped forward out of her constraining pentacle. Away across the room, the magician had been winded; he lay there helpless, flapping like a fish.
    The maiden passed the goat’s-fat candles, and as she did so, every single one of them winked out. Her foot glanced against a bowl of ward-herbs; rosemary spilled upon her skin, which fizzed and steamed. The maiden paid no heed; her big dark eyes were fixed upon the magician, who struggled now to raise his head a little, saw my slow approach.
    He made one desperate effort, wet and winded as he was. A shaking hand was raised and pointed.