The Ring of Solomon by Jonathan Stroud Read Free Book Online Page B

craw was the amused chuckles and wry expressions I was getting from my fellow spirits as I neared Jerusalem.
    Grinning broadly, they flitted past me through the air, splendid and warlike, carrying their shimmering spears and swords. They were off hunting for brigands in the desert wastes – a decent mission worthy of the name. Me? I trundled slowly north with my bag of groceries, wearing a forced smile and muttering salty insults under my breath. 1
    I was being punished, you see, and it frankly wasn’t fair.
    Ordinarily, when you kill a magician with a bit of honest trickery and escape back to the Other Place, you’re likely to be left in peace for a while. A few years pass by, maybe a decade or two, and then finally another avaricious chancer who’s learned a bit of old Sumerian and worked out how to draw a pentacle without too many wonky lines will locate your name, summon you back, and start your slavery anew. But at least when that happens, the rules are clear, and tacitly acknowledged by both parties. The magician forces you to help him get wealth and power, 2 and you do your best to find a way to nobble him.
    Sometimes you succeed; more often than not, you don’t. It all depends on the skill and judgement of both sides. But it’s a personal duel, and if you score a rare victory over your oppressor, the last thing you expect is to be brought back instantly and punished for that victory by someone else.
    Yet that was exactly the way things worked in Solomon’s Jerusalem. Not twenty-four hours after devouring the old magician and departing his tower with a burp and a smile, I’d been summoned back to another tower further along the city wall. Before I could so much as open my mouth to protest, I’d been raddled with a Spasm, Whirled, Pressed, Flipped and Stretched, and finally given a good hard Stippling for my trouble. 3 You might think after all that I’d have been given a moment to pass a few acerbic remarks, but no. An instant later I found myself packed off on the first of many degrading missions, all specifically designed to break my carefree spirit.
    It was a depressing list. First I was sent to Mount Lebanon to chip blue ice from its summit, so the king’s sherbets would be nicely chilled. Next I was ordered to the palace granaries to count the grains of barley for the annual stocktaking. After that I was employed in Solomon’s gardens to pluck dead leaves from the trees and flowers, so that nothing brown or shrivelled might offend the royal eye. There then followed an unpleasant two days in the palace sewers, over which I draw a slightly soiled veil, before a taxing expedition in search of a fresh roc’s egg for the royal household’s breakfast. 4 And now, if all that wasn’t enough, I’d been saddled with this current artichoke-fest, which was making me a laughing stock in the eyes of my fellow djinn.
    None of this broke my spirit, naturally, but it didn’t half make me irritable. And you know who I blamed it all on? Solomon.
    Not that he was the one who summoned me, of course. He was much too important for that. So important, in fact, that in the three long years I’d spent enslaved in the city, I’d scarcely set eyes on him. Though I’d hung about the palace a fair bit, exploring its mile-wide maze of halls and pleasure gardens, I’d only once or twice seen the king in the distance, surrounded by a gaggle of squalling wives. He didn’t get out much. Apart from his daily councils, to which I wasn’t invited, he passed most of his time cooped up in his private apartments beyond the northern gardens. 5 And while he lolled about up there, pampering himself, day-to-day summonings were delegated to his seventeen top magicians, who dwelt in the towers strung along the city walls.
    My previous master had been one of the Seventeen, and my new master was also – and this, in a nutshell, was proof of Solomon’s power. All magicians are by nature bitter rivals. When one of them is killed, their