The Ring of Solomon by Jonathan Stroud

Author:Jonathan Stroud
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: General, Fantasy & Magic, Fiction
ISBN: 9780385619158
Publisher: Disney - Hyperions Books
Published: 2010-10-15T13:37:33+00:00

22

The food, at least, was good, and for a time Asmira thought of nothing but roasted meat and grapes and honeyed cakes and dark red wine. The noise of the hall engulfed her; she felt cocooned by it, swaddled in its splendour. At last, with pains in her belly and a warm haze in her brain, she sat back and looked around. The vizier was right. In such a place it would be easy for anyone to get detached from the purpose that had brought them here. She glanced up with narrowed eyes at the great throned figure painted on the wall: perhaps, indeed, this was what Solomon intended.

‘New, are you?’ the man beside her said. With his knife he speared a small glazed piece of meat from a selection on his plate. ‘Welcome! Try a jerboa!’ He spoke Arabic, though with a strange inflection.

‘Thank you,’ Asmira said. ‘I am already full. Are you here to speak with Solomon?’

‘I am. Need a dam built above our village. There’s water enough in the spring, but it all runs past. In the summer there’s drought. One touch of the Ring should sort it. Just need a few afrits, or a marid or two.’ He took a bite and went on chewing. ‘You?’

‘Something similar.’

‘We need terraces dug in our valley.’ This was the person opposite, a woman with bright, almost fevered eyes. ‘It’s too steep, you see. But his slaves could do it easily. Not hard for him, is it?’

‘I see,’ Asmira said. ‘How long have you waited?’

‘Five weeks, but my time is almost up! I shall be one of the lucky few next council!’

‘That’s what they told me two weeks ago,’ another man said dourly.

‘A month for me – no, two!’ the man beside her said, between chews. ‘Still, when there is such bounty to enjoy, who am I to complain?’

‘It’s all right for some,’ the dour man said. ‘But I don’t hold with waiting. There’s famine coming in the Hittite lands, and we need help now. Why he can’t just send out his demons to help all of us straight off, rather than this bloody hanging about, I’ll never know. Enjoying himself too much up there, I reckon.’

‘Wives,’ said the first man.

‘He’ll get to us in time,’ the woman said. Her bright eyes sparkled. ‘I can’t wait to see him.’

‘Have you not even seen Solomon?’ Asmira cried. ‘Not in five whole weeks?’

‘Oh no, he never comes down here. He’s up in his apartments across the gardens. But next council day I’ll see him, sure enough. You get to stand before him, so I’m told, but then he’s up on a throne, of course, top of some steps, so it’s not exactly close, but even so …’

‘How many steps?’ Asmira said. She could throw a dagger forty feet with perfect accuracy.

‘I’m sure I couldn’t say. You’ll see soon enough, dear. In a month or two.’

Asmira sat back from the conversation after this, a smile carefully maintained upon her face and a dull-edged stab of panic prodding in her gut.

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