Ring Of Solomon (9 page)

Asmira had hopped and capered with excitement, for she knew the answer. ‘Frankincense, Mother! The stuff the hill-men stink of!’

Her mother had placed a steely hand upon her daughter’s head. ‘Not so much jigging about, girl. A palace guard does not cavort like a dervish, even at the age of five. But you are right. This incense is our gold, and makes our people rich. We trade with distant empires far away beyond the deserts and the seas. They pay well for it, but they would steal it if they could. Only the great sands of Arabia, which an army cannot cross, have shielded us from their greed.’

Asmira had stopped her spinning. She frowned. ‘If enemies came here,’ she said, ‘the queen would kill them. Wouldn’t she, Mother? She keeps us safe.’

‘Yes, child. Our queen keeps Sheba safe. And we in turn keep
her
safe – the guards and I. That is what we are born to do. When you grow up, dear Asmira, you too must protect our blessed lady with your life – just as I have, and our grandmothers did before us. Do you so swear?’

Asmira was as still and serious as could be. ‘Mother, I do.’

‘Good girl. Then let us go down and join our sisters.’

At that time the old Queen of Sheba had not yet grown too heavy to leave the palace, and was accompanied wherever she went by an escort of her guard. As its leader, Asmira’s mother always walked right behind the queen, close as a shadow, curved sword hanging easily at her waist. Asmira (who particularly admired her mother’s long and shining hair) thought her far more beautiful and regal than the queen herself, though she took care not to mention this to anyone. Such a thought was possibly treasonous, and there was a place for traitors on the bare hill beyond the water meadows, where their remains were picked over by little birds. Instead she contented herself imagining the day when
she
would be First Guard and walk behind the queen. She went out to the gardens behind the palace and, with a severed reed stem, practised savage swordplay, putting ranks of imagined demons to full and awful flight.

From the earliest age she joined her mother in the training hall, where, under the watchful eye of the wrinkled guard-mothers, who were now too old for active service, the women of the guard daily learned their craft. Before breakfast they scaled ropes, ran around the meadows, swam in the canals below the walls. Now, their muscles readied, they worked six hours a day in the echoing, sunlit rooms, sparring with swords and twirl-staffs, duelling with knives and whirling fists, throwing discs and daggers into straw-stuffed targets across the floor. Asmira would watch it all from the benches, where the guard-mothers bound wounds and bruises in cloths lined with soothing herbs. Often she and other girls would pick up the little wooden weapons laid out for them, join their mothers in gentle play-fights, and so begin their training.

Asmira’s mother was the most accomplished of the women, which is why she was First Guard. She ran fastest, fought most fiercely, and above all threw the little shining daggers more accurately than anyone else. She could do this standing, moving, and even on the half-turn, sending the blade hilt-deep into any chosen target far off along the hall.

Asmira was mesmerized by this. Often she scampered up, holding out her hand. ‘I want a go.’

‘You’re not old enough,’ her mother said, smiling. ‘There are wooden ones that are better weighted, so you don’t do yourself a mischief. No, not like that’ – for Asmira had prised the dagger from her grasp – ‘you need to hold the point lightly between the thumb and forefinger … like so. Now, you must be calm. Close your eyes, take a deep, slow breath—’

‘Don’t need to! Watch this for a shot! Oh.’

Her mother laughed. ‘Not a bad attempt, Asmira. If the target was six paces to its right and twenty paces nearer, you would have hit it square on. As it is, I’m glad I don’t have slightly larger feet.’ She stooped, picked up the knife. ‘Have another try.’

The years passed, the Sun God worked his daily passage through the heavens. Now Asmira was seventeen years old, light of foot and serious of eye, and one of four newly promoted captains of the palace guard. She had excelled during the latest rebellion of the hill-tribes, and had personally captured the rebel chief and his magicians. She had several times deputized for the First Guard in standing behind the queen during ceremonies in the temples. But the Queen of Sheba herself had never once spoken to her, never once acknowledged her existence – until the night the tower burned.

Beyond the window, smoke still drifted on the air; from the Hall of the Dead came the sound of mourning drums. Asmira sat in the royal chamber, awkwardly holding a cup of wine and staring at the floor.

‘Asmira, my dear,’ the queen said. ‘Do you know who carried out this dreadful act?’

Asmira raised her eyes. The queen was sitting so close to her their knees almost touched. It was an unheard-of proximity. Her heart thudded in her chest. She lowered her gaze again. ‘They say, my lady,’ she stammered, ‘they say it was King Solomon.’

‘Do they say why?’

‘No, my lady.’

‘Asmira, you
may
look on me when you speak. I am your queen, yes, but we are both of us daughters of the Sun.’

When Asmira looked up once more, the queen was smiling. The sight made her a little light-headed; she took a sip of wine.

‘The First Guard has often spoken about your qualities,’ the queen went on. ‘Quick, strong and clever, she says. Unafraid of danger. Resourceful, almost reckless … And pretty too – I can see
that
for myself. Tell me, what do you know of Solomon, Asmira? What stories have you heard?’

Asmira’s face was burning and her throat felt tight. Perhaps it was the smoke. She had been marshalling the water-chains below the tower. ‘I have heard the usual tales, my lady. He has a palace of jade and gold, built in a single night with his magic Ring. He controls twenty thousand spirits, each more terrible than the last. He has seven hundred wives – and is therefore clearly a man of abominable wickedness. He—’

The queen raised her hand. ‘I have heard this too.’ Her smile faded. ‘Asmira, Solomon desires the wealth of Sheba. One of his demons carried out tonight’s attack, and when the moon is new – which will be in thirteen days – the full host of the Ring will come here to destroy us all.’

Asmira’s eyes opened wide in horror; she said nothing.

‘Unless, that is,’ the queen went on, ‘I pay a ransom. Needless to say, I do not wish to do so. That would be an affront to both Sheba’s honour and my own. But what is the alternative? The power of the Ring is too great to withstand. Only if Solomon himself is killed might the danger pass. But
that
is almost impossible, since he never leaves Jerusalem, a city that is too well-guarded for armies or magicians to hope to enter. And yet …’ The queen sighed heavily and stared out of the window. ‘And yet I wonder. I wonder whether someone travelling alone, someone with sufficient intelligence and skill, someone who
seems
harmless, and yet is not so – whether that person might find a way to get access to the king … And when she is alone with him, she might— Ah, but it would be a hard task indeed.’

‘My lady …’ Asmira’s voice quivered with eagerness, as well as fear at what she was about to say. ‘My lady, if there’s any way that I can help—’

The Queen of Sheba smiled benignly. ‘My dear, you need say no more. I already know your faith. I know your love for me. Yes, dear Asmira, thank you for suggesting it. I do believe you can.’

The rising sun hung low above the eastern desert. When Asmira stirred and turned to face the west again, she found the port of Eilat had become a clear white scattering of buildings, and the sea an azure strip, to which tiny white things clung.

Her eyes narrowed. Ships belonging to the wicked Solomon. From now on she must take care.

She picked up the silver dagger from where it lay beside her bag and tucked it in her belt, pushing it out of sight beneath her cloak. As she did so, her gaze strayed high above: she saw the outline of the waning moon, still hanging frail and ghost-like in the blue. The sight gave her fresh urgency. Twelve days remaining! And Solomon was far away. Picking up her bag, she jogged swiftly down the hill.

‘Watch where you drop those chippings,’ Faquarl snapped. ‘That last shower went down my neck.’

‘Sorry.’

‘And you might wear a longer skirt while you’re about it. I’m afraid to look up.’

I paused in my chiselling. ‘Can I help it if this is the current fashion?’

‘You’re eclipsing the sun. Move along a bit, at least.’

We scowled at each other. I moved a grudging inch to my left; Faquarl moved a resentful inch to his right. We went on carving.

‘I wouldn’t mind so much,’ Faquarl said sourly, ‘if we could do this
properly
. A quick Detonation or two would work wonders on this rock.’

‘Tell that to Solomon,’ I said. ‘It’s his fault we’re not allowed to—
Ow!
‘ My hammer hit my thumb instead of the chisel. I hopped and pranced; my curses echoed off the rock-face and startled a nearby vulture.

All morning, since the dark-blue hour of dawn, the two of us had been toiling in the quarry below the building site, hacking out the first blocks for the temple. Faquarl’s ledge was somewhat below mine, so he got the worst of the view. Mine was fully exposed to the rigours of the risen sun, so I was hot and irritable. And now my thumb was sore.

I took a look around: rocks, heat haze, nothing moving on any plane. ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ I said. ‘Khaba’s not about, and nor is that nasty little foliot of his. I’m having a break.’ So saying, the handsome youth tossed his chisel aside and slid down the wooden ladder to the quarry floor.

Faquarl was the Nubian again, plump, pot-bellied, dusty and glowering. He hesitated, then threw his tools down as well. We squatted together in the shade beneath his half-squared block, in the manner of idling slaves the world over.

‘We’ve got the worst job again,’ I said. ‘Why couldn’t we be digging foundations with the rest of them?’

The Nubian scratched his stomach, selected a chipping from the rubble at our feet and picked his delicately pointed teeth. ‘Perhaps because our master dislikes us most particularly. Which in your case isn’t surprising, considering the lip you gave him yesterday.’

I smiled contentedly. ‘True.’

‘Speaking of the magician,’ Faquarl said. ‘This Khaba: what do you make of him?’

‘Bad. You?’

‘One of the very worst.’

‘I’d say top-ten bad, possibly even top-five.’

‘Not only is he vicious,’ Faquarl added, ‘but he’s arbitrary. Viciousness I can respect; in many ways I find it a positive quality. But he’s just a little too quick with the essence-flail. If you work too slow; if you work too fast; if you happen to be nearby when he feels like it – every opportunity, out it comes.’

I nodded. ‘Too right. He scoured me again last night simply because of a pure coincidence.’

‘Which was?’

‘I made a gratuitous comedy sound-effect just as he bent to retie his sandals.’ I gave a sigh and shook my head sadly. ‘True, it echoed off the valley walls like a thunderclap. True, several grandees of Solomon’s court were in attendance and hurriedly changed course to get upwind of him. But even so! The fellow lacks humour – that’s the root of the problem.’

‘Good to see you’re still as cultivated as ever, Bartimaeus,’ Faquarl said blandly.

‘I try. I try.’

‘But recreations aside, we need to be careful with Khaba. You remember what he showed us in the sphere? That could be either one of us.’

‘I know.’

The Nubian finished picking at his teeth and tossed the chip away. We stared out together at the pulsating whiteness of the quarry.

Now, to the casual onlooker the dialogue above may seem unremarkable, but in fact it scores highly for originality as it featured Faquarl and me having a chat without resorting to (a) petty abuse, (b) contrived innuendo, or © attempted murder. This, down the centuries, was a fairly unusual event. In fact there were entire civilizations that had hauled themselves from the mud, mastered the arts of writing and astronomy, and decayed slowly into decadence in the intervals between us having a civil conversation.

We’d first crossed paths in Mesopotamia, during the interminable wars between the city states. Sometimes we fought on the same side; sometimes we were ranged against each other in battle. This in itself wasn’t a big deal – it was par for the course for any spirit, and a situation quite outside our control, since it was our masters who forced us into action – but somehow Faquarl and I seemed to rub each other up the wrong way.

Quite
why
was hard to say. In many respects we had a lot in common.

First off, we were both djinn of high repute and ancient origin, although (typically) Faquarl insisted his origin was a little more ancient than mine
²⁴
.

Secondly, we were both zestful individuals, potent, resourceful and good in a scrap, and formidable opponents of our human masters. Between us we had accounted for a great many magicians who had failed to close their pentacles properly, misspoken a word during our summonings, left a loophole in the terms and conditions of our indentures, or otherwise messed up the dangerous process of bringing us to Earth. The flaw in our feistiness, however, was that
competent
magicians, recognizing our qualities and wishing to use them for their own ends, summoned us ever more frequently. The net result was that Faquarl and I were the two hardest-working spirits of that millennium, at least in our opinion.

If all that wasn’t enough, we had plenty of shared interests too, notably architecture, politics and regional cuisine
²⁵
. So one way and another you’d have thought that Faquarl and I would have got along fine.

Instead, for some reason, we got up each other’s noses
²⁶
, and always had done.

Still, we were generally prepared to put our differences aside when faced with a mutual enemy, and our present master certainly fitted that bill. Any magician capable of summoning eight djinn at once was clearly a formidable proposition, and the essence-flail didn’t make things any easier. But I felt there was something more to him even than that.