‘The wazir tried to meet this Giant. He would have done anything – he would have imprisoned him, killed him – whatever it took. He was delirious with his frustration, insane with his desperation. He failed. The Giant disappeared, and the wazir was left with only the bronze copy of his compass, a complex system of circular metal discs intricately cast and minutely inscribed – as beautiful and as ingenious an instrument as the Great Loom itself, but useless without its creator. The wazir understood the futility of his situation, and accepted at last the punishment for his own greed and error. He went to the king his brother, and confessed all that he had done. To him he surrendered the copy of the Giant’s ingenious instrument, which in after-times we have come to call al-manac, “the end of the journey”. After this, having given up the Almanac, he passed out of his brother’s kingdom into exile. He learned many years later that the king himself, impoverished and isolated, had at last been beaten from his own palace and, with the seven officers of his council and the eight generals of his army, had been sent into exile. They sailed far from their country, across a sea as vast as was then known, and came to land on a wild island at the farthest end of the world. There, the king dying, his officers buried him with his Almanac – the very last of all his treasure – in a secret tomb.
From the Riddler a low murmur had been building, and growing in intensity, at first no more than the vibrations a gnat might make with its wings, but after a time more, stronger, insistent, the humming of a reed, the insistent, angry, nasal drone of an engine.
‘But even this was not the end,’ said the Professor. ‘For the officers and generals of the king’s court, beleaguered and dispossessed as they were, believed in a prophecy that had been given them, that the heir to his kingdom should be born again, once in every generation; and if only they should find this child, he – and only he – would be able to regain and rebuild the Kingdom, the greatest empire ever known to the world. To this end, though surrounded by barbarians and in a remote country, the fifteen of them founded a society they called the Heresy, whose purpose was to prepare for the coming of the heir, and the recovery of the kingdom they had lost.
‘Their hope was a hope born out of vengeance. They could not be content with their defeat. For them, the great game of power, the struggle between two brothers, the fate of an empire, would one day be resolved; more – when the game was finally ended, they were determined they should be its victors.’
The game is already ended.
Suddenly the Riddler’s arms – muscular, deliberate, ruthlessly efficient – flashed into motion. So abrupt was the action, after so much stillness, that it was over before anyone could react. In his hands he had brandished the Collar, and with practised, unerring precision slipped it round the Professor’s neck. With a deft turn to his wrist he had cinched it tight, cutting off – as Fitz well knew – the old man’s sense of feeling. And then, with another flash of his arm, hoisting the whole of the Professor’s body with the full strength of his legs, the Riddler had toppled him into the silent, black, rising pool. Together, thrashing, they sank below the surface of the water, which churned and bubbled for almost a minute after. Fitz and Navy, alone, knew what the Riddler had done, how thickly numb and disorientating the Collar could be, how impossible the Professor would find it to defend himself, to fight free of the Riddler’s hold, to escape the dark engulfing water. They watched the edge of the water helplessly.
And then it was still. The cave subsided again into darkness and silence.
They had been forced to compress themselves into the farthest, sharpest angle where the wall of bones met the side of the sloping floor. Wherever they stood against the wall, sharp bones tore into their clothing, and around them over the flat expanse of the rising seawater they could make out nothing more than the vanishing dome, festooned with swirls and shoals of skeletal geometry.
The stillness was absolute. Seconds ached by.
‘And what happened to the wazir,’ asked Navy. She was grasping timidly at the story. ‘Did he ever give up his search? Did he ever succumb? Did he ever lose faith?’
‘Never,’ answered Mr Ahmadi, quietly. He paced from them, and crouched in a far corner, his head nestled among skulls. ‘He returned to his great guild of plotters and imaginers, and continued to do the work of story. From generation to generation, he has sought the heir to the Kingdom, searching for the child who should bear the mark of the Giant, never giving up hope, never surrendering to despair. From generation to generation, he has sought the lost secret of the Great Loom. He is one of the immortals now, the last of the great Imaginers, and lives in this world almost as a shadow – a bright and vital shadow, the very stuff of magic.’
With no warning, like a strike of lightning lashing up from the depths, a huge showering form shot from the surface of
