The Ring of Solomon Page 10
And despite my trademark bravery and fortitude – famous from the deserts of Shur to the mountains of Lebanon – the hippo swallowed hard as it bumped along the ground, because when Solomon got tetchy, people tended to know about it. He had the wisdom stuff as well, it’s true, but what really got results when he wanted something done was his reputation for no-holds-barred homicidal tetchiness. That and his cursed Ring.7
The marids placed the block of stone gently on the earth before the king. The imps swung me across so that I came to an undignified halt, slumped against the stone. I blinked, sat upright as best I could, spat assorted pebbles out of my mouth and attempted a winning smile. A low murmur of repulsion came from the watching throng, and several wives fainted again.
Solomon raised a hand; all sound cut off.
This was the first time I’d got close to him, of course, and I must say he didn’t disappoint. He was everything your typical trumped-up west Asian despot could aspire to be: dark of eye and skin, long and glistening of hair, and covered with more clattering finery than a cut-price jewel stand at the bazaar. He seemed to have an Egyptian thing going too – his eyes were heavily made up with kohl just like the pharaohs; like them, he existed in a cloud of clashing oils and perfumes. That smell was another thing Beyzer should have noticed in advance.
On his finger something shone so brightly that I was almost rendered blind.
The great king stood over me, fingers toying with the bracelets on one arm. He breathed deeply; his face seemed pained. ‘Lowliest of the low,’ he said softly, ‘which of my servants are you?’
‘O Master-may-you-live-for-ever, I am Bartimaeus.’
A hopeful pause; the regal countenance did not change.
‘We haven’t had the pleasure before,’ I went on, ‘but I’m sure a friendly conversation would benefit us both. Let me introduce myself. I am a spirit of notable wisdom and sobriety, who once spoke with Gilgamesh, and—’
Solomon raised an elegant finger, and since it was the one with the Ring on it, I kind of snatched back as many of my words as I could and swallowed them down sharpish. Best just be quiet, eh? Wait for the worst.
‘You are one of Khaba’s troublemakers, I think,’ the king said musingly. ‘Where is Khaba?’
This was a good question; we’d been wondering it ourselves for days. But at that moment there was a flurry amongst the courtiers, and my master himself appeared, all red of cheek and glistening of pate. He had clearly been running hard.
‘Great Solomon,’ he panted. ‘This visit – I did not know—’ His moist eyes widened as they alighted on me, and he gave a wolfish cry. ‘Foul slave! How dare you defy me with such a shape! Great King, stand back! Let me admonish this creature—’ And he snatched at the essence-flail in his belt.
But Solomon held up his hand once more. ‘Be still, magician! Where were you while my edicts were being disobeyed? I shall attend to you presently.’
Khaba fell back, slack-jawed and gasping. His shadow, I noticed, was very small and inoffensive now, a small dark nub, cringing at his feet.
The king turned back to me. Ooh, his voice was soft then. All gentle and luxurious, like leopard fur. And just like a leopard’s fur, you didn’t want to rub it up the wrong way. ‘Why do you mock my orders, Bartimaeus?’
The pygmy hippo cleared its throat. ‘Um, well, I think mock is putting it a trifle strongly, O great Master. “Forget” might be better; and less fatal.’
One of Solomon’s other magicians, nameless, portly, face like a squashed fig, riddled me with a Spasm. ‘Cursed spirit! The king asked you a question!’
‘Yes, yes, I was getting to that.’ I squirmed against the stone. ‘And a cracking question it was. Beautifully put. Succinct. Probing …’ I hesitated. ‘What was it again?’
Solomon seemed to have a knack of never raising his voice, never speaking quickly. It was a good political technique, of course; it gave him an aura of control among his people. Now he spoke to me as to a sleepy babe. ‘When completed, Bartimaeus, this temple shall be the holiest of places, the centre of my religion and my empire. For that reason, as set out with great clarity in your instructions, I wish it built – and I quote – with “the utmost care, without magical shortcuts, irreverent acts or bestial shapes”.’
The hippo in the skirt frowned. ‘Goodness, who’d do any of that?’
‘You have disregarded my edict in each and every way. Why?’
Well, a number of excuses came to mind. Some of them were plausible. Some of them were witty. Some of them offered a certain pleasure in the use of language while at the same time being blatantly untrue. But Solomon’s wisdom thing was catching. I decided to tell the truth, albeit in a sulky monotone.
‘O great Master, I was bored and I wanted to get the job done quickly.’
The king nodded, an action that saturated the air with jasmine oil and rosewater. ‘And that vulgar song you were singing?’
‘Um – which vulgar song was that? I sing so many.’
‘The one about me.’
‘Oh, that one.’ The hippo swallowed. ‘You mustn’t pay any attention to such things, O Master, etc. Ribald songs have always been sung about great leaders by loyal troops. It’s a mark of respect. You should have heard the one we invented for Hammurabi. He used to join in the choruses.’
To my relief Solomon seemed to buy this. He straightened his back and stared hard around him. ‘Did any of the other slaves violate my orders too?’
I’d known this one was coming. I didn’t exactly look towards my companions, but somehow I could sense them shrinking back behind the crowd – Faquarl, Menes, Chosroes and the rest – all of them bombarding me with silent, heart-felt pleas. I sighed, spoke heavily. ‘No.’
‘Are you sure? None of them used magic? None of them changed form?’
‘No … No. Just me.’
He nodded. ‘Then they are exempt from punishment.’ His right hand moved left, in the direction of the dreaded Ring.
I’d been putting it off, but it was clearly time for a brief loss of dignity. With a strident expression of woe, the hippo lurched forward onto its wrinkly knees. ‘Do not be too hasty, great Solomon!’ I cried. ‘I have served you faithfully and well until today. Consider this block of stone – see how I’ve shaped and squared it most exactly. Now look at the temple – witness the dedication with which I’m pacing out its dimensions! Measure it, O King! Three score cubits, I was told, and three score cubits it shall be, and not a rat’s arse more!’8 I wrung my forefeet together, swaying from side to side. ‘My mistake today is just a symptom of my excess energies and zeal,’ I wailed. ‘I can turn these qualities to your majesty’s good, if only you spare my life …’
Well, I’ll omit the rest, which involved a great many sobs, random gesticulations and guttural cries. It wasn’t a bad performance: a number of the wives (and several of the warriors) were sniffling by the end, and Solomon himself looked smugger and more self-satisfied than ever. Which was pretty much as I planned it. Thing was, just by looking at him, I could see Solomon modelled himself on the big boys – the kings of Assyria and Babylon way to the east, tough potentates who didn’t get out of bed without a defeated enemy’s neck to step on en route to the bathroom. Thus my snivelling appealed to his imitative vanity. I thought I’d swung it at the last.
The great king coughed. The hippo stopped mid-bawl and eyed him hopefully. ‘Your ridiculous display of over-acting has entertained me,’ Solomon said. ‘I shan’t need my girners or my jugglers tonight. As a result I shall spare your meagre life’ – here he cut short my torrent of gratitude – ‘and instead put your “excess energies and zeal” to proper use.’
Solomon paused at this ominous juncture to select a variety of sweetmeats, wines and fruit from an attendant’s silver tray. Several of his nearest wives fought subtly but viciously amongst themselves for the honour of feeding him. The hippo, gritting its teeth with unease, shook a few flies out of its tufted ears and waited.
One
pomegranate, five grapes and an iced date-and-pistachio sherbet had passed the royal lips before the king held forth again. ‘O meanest and most despicable of my djinn – and don’t look around so blankly, I’m talking to you – since you find your work here so dull, we shall give you a more stimulating occupation.’
I bowed my head to the dirt. ‘Master, I listen and obey.’
‘So then. South from Jerusalem, across the Desert of Paran and the Desert of Zin, my trade road runs; on it travel merchants from Egypt and the Red Sea, from the Arabian interior, even – though more rarely than we might wish – from mysterious Sheba itself. These merchants,’ he went on, ‘carry myrrh, frank-incense, precious woods and spices, and other riches that bring prosperity to the people of Israel. In recent weeks it has come to my attention that many caravans have met with disaster; they have not got through.’
I grunted wisely. ‘Probably ran out of water. That’s the thing about deserts. Dry.’
‘Indeed. A fascinating analysis. But survivors reaching Hebron report differently: monsters fell upon them in the wastes.’
‘What, fell upon them in a squashed-them kind of way?’
‘More the leaped-out-and-slew-them kind. These monsters were huge, hideous and terrible.’
‘Well, aren’t they all?’ The hippo considered. ‘My advice is to send those four off to investigate.’ I indicated the marids from the Ring, who were still hanging about on the seventh plane, quietly arguing about the succulence of the nearest wives.
Solomon gave a feline smile. ‘Most conceited of my spirits, it is you who must investigate. The attacks are clearly the work of bandits who have powerful magicians amongst them. So far my troops have been unable to trace the instigators. You must search the deserts, eliminate them, and discover who is behind this outrage.’
I hesitated. ‘All on my lonesome?’
The king drew back; he had come to a new decision. ‘No, you will not be on your own. Khaba! Step forward!’
My master did so, fawning, supplicating. ‘Great King, please! I can explain my absence—’
‘No explanation is required. I gave you strict instructions to keep a close eye on your servants, and this you failed to do. I blame you for this djinni’s misdeeds. Since neither you nor your group is worthy of working on this temple a moment longer, you shall all depart into the deserts tomorrow and not return until the brigands are found and brought to heel. Do you understand this, Khaba? Well, man? Speak up!’
The Egyptian was staring at the ground; a muscle in his cheek throbbed steadily. One of the other magicians suppressed a chuckle.
Khaba looked up; he bowed stiffly. ‘Master, as always I follow your requirements and your will.’
Solomon made an ambiguous gesture. The interview was over. Wives darted forth offering water, sweetmeats and vials of scent; slaves wafted palms; officials unscrolled papyri with plans of the temple precincts. Solomon turned away, and the gaggle of humanity departed with him, leaving Khaba, the hippo, and the seven other disgraced djinn standing silent and disconsolate on the hill.
1 Most of them winged. Faquarl’s were leathery, Chosroes’ feathery, and Nimshik’s ashimmer with the silver scales of the flying fish. Xoxen, as ever, had to be different: he bounded up and down beside the porch on a pair of giant frog’s legs, which meant that most of his blocks were hopelessly out of true.
2 Heaven knows why he was so fussy about this temple job. Early in his reign his host of spirits had jerry-built most of Jerusalem for him, throwing up new housing districts in a day or two, hiding their slapdash workmanship with strategically placed Illusions. They’d spent a bit longer on the palace itself, admittedly, and the city walls only wobbled if you pushed really hard, but this temple Solomon wanted done without any magical sleights of hand, which in my view kind of defeated the point of using djinn.
3 Tivoc and Chosroes voted against: Tivoc because of a complicated argument involving certain subtleties in clause 51c of his summoning; Chosroes because he was just plain chicken.
4Hippo in a skirt: this was a comic reference to one of Solomon’s principal wives, the one from Moab. Childish? Yes. But in the days before printing we had limited opportunities for satire.
5 A bit showy, that. You only need a middling djinni for a stone that size.
6 Again, do you need an afrit to catch a wife? No, except maybe in the case of the one from Moab.
7 I suppose I should have been glad he’d only touched the thing and not turned it. It was when the terrible Spirit of the Ring was invoked that things were supposed to get really nasty.
8Rat’s arse: technical term, this, corresponding to about 1/15th of a cubit. Other units of measurement used by the djinn during this period were ‘camel’s thigh’, ‘leper’s stretch’, and ‘the length of a Philistine’s beard’.
12
Returning to his tower at speed, Khaba descended by secret ways to his cellar workroom, where a doorway of black granite stood embedded in the wall. As he approached, he spoke an order. Soundless as thought, the spirit residing in the floor spun the door ajar. Khaba passed through without breaking stride; he spoke another word and the door shut fast behind him.
Blackness enfolded him, incalculable and absolute. The magician stood there for a time, enduring as an exercise of will the silence and the solitude and the relentless pressing of the dark. Gradually soft noises started in the cages: shuffles, faint mewlings of things shut long in blackness, the anxious stirring of other things that anticipated light and feared its violence. Khaba luxuriated in the plaintive sounds a while, then stirred himself. He gave a fresh command, and all along the ceiling of the vault, the imps trapped in their faience globes made their magic flare. Eerie blue-green radiance filled the chamber, waxing, ebbing, deep and fathomless as the sea.
The vault was broad and domed; its roof supported at intervals by rough-hewn columns that cut across the blue-green haze like the stalks of giant underwater reeds. Behind his back the granite door was one block among many on an immense grey wall.
Between the columns stood an assortment of marble plinths and tables, chairs, couches and many instruments of subtle use. It was the heart of Khaba’s domain, an intricate reflection of his mind and inclinations.
He threaded his way past the slabs where he conducted his experiments of dissection, past the preservation pits, acrid with the taint of natron, past the troughs of sand where the process of mummification could be observed. He skirted between the ranks of bottles, vats and wooden piping, between the pots of powdered herbs, the trays of insects, the dim, dark cabinets containing the carcasses of frog and cat and other, larger, things. He bypassed the ossuary, where the labelled skulls and bones of a hundred beasts sat neatly side by side with those of men.
Khaba ignored the calls and supplications from the essence-cages in the recesses of the hall. He halted at a large pentacle, made of smooth black onyx and mounted in a raised circle on the floor. Stepping into its centre, he took up the flail that hung loosely at his belt. He cracked it once into the empty air.
All sounds from the cages stilled.
In the shadows beyond the columns, on the margins of the blue-green light, a presence made itself known by a deepening of darkness and a clattering of teeth.
‘Nurgal,’ Khaba said. ‘Is that you?’
‘It is I.’
‘The king insults me. He treats me with disdain, and the other magicians laugh.’
‘What do I care? This is a cold, dark vault, and its occupants make for dismal company. Release me from my bonds.’
‘I shall not release you. I wish something for my colleague Reuben. It was he who laughed the loudest.’
‘What do you wish for him?’
‘Marsh fever.’
‘It shall be done.’
‘Make it last four days, worsening each night. Make him lie awash in his misery, his limbs afire, his body chilled; make his eyes blind, but let him see visions and horrors during the hours of darkness, so that he screams and wr
ithes and cries out for aid that never comes.’
‘You wish him to die?’
Khaba hesitated. The magician Reuben was weak and would not retaliate; but if he died, Solomon would surely take a hand. He shook his head. ‘No. Four days. Then he recovers.’
‘Master, I obey.’
Khaba cracked the flail; with a clattering of teeth the horla swept past him and away through a narrow aperture in the roof; sour air buffeted the margins of the pentacle and set the caged things howling in the dark.
The magician stood in silence, tapping the whip slowly against the palm of his hand. At last he spoke a name. ‘Ammet.’
A soft voice at his ear. ‘Master.’
‘I have lost the favour of the king.’
‘I know, Master. I saw. I am sorry.’
‘How shall I regain it?’
‘That is no easy matter. Apprehending these desert bandits would seem to be the first step.’
Khaba gave a cry of rage. ‘I need to be here! I must be at the court! The others will seize the chance to speak with Solomon and further undermine me. You saw their faces on the hill. Hiram could scarcely keep from crowing with joy as he watched me squirm!’ He took a deep breath and spoke more quietly. ‘Besides, there is my other business to attend to. I must continue to observe the queen.’
‘Do not be distressed about that,’ the soft voice said. ‘Gezeri can report to you in the desert as well as anywhere. Besides, you have given too much time to your … secondary affairs these last few days – and see where it has got you.’
The magician ground his teeth. ‘How was I to know that the preening fool would choose today to inspect his cursed temple? He might have given me some warning!’
‘He has the Ring. He is not beholden to you or anyone.’
‘Ah! You think I do not know that?’ Khaba gripped the flail tightly; his curling fingernails dug deep into the ancient human leather. He bent his head forward to let something stroke the back of his neck. ‘How I wish … I wish …’