The Giant's Almanac

hardened. He searched them for her assurance, for any tenderness, for any warmth at all. He thought of the interminable mornings they had passed together, side by side and often arm in arm, in the Keep, painting; under the Jack’s lofty plane, swapping paradoxes and impossibilities, hyperboles and formulae; in the Registry, telling stories as they leafed through the atlases and inventories, the herbals and the encyclopedias, the endless catalogues and indices of learning. He looked for some memory of those happy hours, of the attachment they had formed, of the hands they had joined in the work of their learning.

But the only thing in Dina’s eyes was the end of the story.

Al-manac. The end of the journey. Burden’s close. The place of kneeling.

‘Kneel,’ she said again. Still her voice was iron.

Fitz kneeled. Beside the water he knelt. Crowned with a crown of beaten gold, with his friends gathered to see him glorified, he knelt. He knelt for a thousand years, for two, for the cities whose walls had been thrown down and for their people, for the desert and the mountains, for the sea and for the sky, for the Sad King and for Hožir his brother, for the tears that watered the tamarisk trees and for the wood of the Great Loom, smoking on the fire, he knelt. He knelt for the Giant, and he knelt for a thousand kings, for a thousand captains dead and sorrowing beneath the sands. He knelt for the game, and he knelt for the story. He knelt for the end.

She put her hand into his hair, kneading it with her fingers, running her grasp through its thick texture – closing, opening her hold, until she had touched every part of his scalp, felt every ridge and hidden mole. Then she began to cut. The knife was sharp, and the hair came away in thick clumps, easily and without pain. Again and again she held it, ran the knife through with a scything cut, and dropped the hair on the stone below. When she had made it short – very short – she pointed the blade of the knife towards the water beside Fitz. It was only a matter of leaning over, and he could rinse his whole scalp in the cold, foaming sea.

As he came upright again, she took the blade in both hands and worked it gently across his scalp like a razor, cutting against the angle of the bristles. She moved fast and dexterously, and within a couple of minutes she had finished. She stood back, and appraised him where he knelt beside the tomb.

Now she looked at her father, as if for the first time.

‘I am the Heresiarch,’ she said.

Mr Ahmadi buckled. His body hardly moved, but the courage and determination that had propelled him through every adversity, and carried him unbroken over every obstacle, now broke. His eyes foamed like suds washing harmless on the sand.

‘You.’ It wasn’t a question, or an accusation.

‘Grandfather chose me. The choice is mine. All the moves are mine. Now take the reading and end the game, for this is the heir and the Kingdom is now.’

Fitz bowed his head. Phantastes gasped. His awe filled the chamber.

Navy stepped forward, and put her hand to Fitz’s head.

‘It is strange that you cannot see this,’ she said.

‘You can be my eyes,’ answered Fitz.

‘There is a beautiful design on your head,’ said Navy. ‘There are shapes in red, and in green, like a constellation –’

‘It is the Giant,’ said Fitz.

‘It is the Great Loom,’ said Phantastes.

‘It is the Almanac,’ said Mr Ahmadi. ‘That day, in the Mastery, when I showed you the last problem on my father’s shatranj board, which was his father’s before him, the board that once belonged to the shāh himself. That problem is called the Giant’s Almanac.

‘And that is the state,’ said Phantastes from across the chamber, ‘in which the shāh and his brother abandoned their game, so long ago. And there is but one solution.’

‘I know,’ said Fitz.

‘It is time to take the reading,’ said Dina. ‘It is past time.’

Mr Ahmadi stood back. They all watched him. Clare and Ned, standing beside Fingal and the Rack, looked over the stone railing beyond the foaming pool, Phantastes behind; nearer at hand, Navy stared, spellbound.

‘Little brother,’ called Dina – imperious, solicitous. ‘The words grandfather taught you.’

With eyes like moons, like empty dishes, Fitz stared at her, uncomprehending. He staggered to his feet.

‘The words of your heart, little brother. Now.’

Fitz gibbered. His heart yearned, and his cheeks, hot, shook. He felt he was reaching into the innermost emptiness of a huge void, that he was tunnelling through a world of pure air, throwing nothing to every side as he dug through his memory for those words that were nearest to his heart. At the very centre, he found them.

‘Zenith,’ he said. It whispered from him as soft as a breeze in summer, in which the petals of the rose do not stir.

Dina drew up her arm in a sweep. Fitz, seeing her hand describe the gold dome above them, stood at the tip of the little island, beneath the dome’s very centre. On the stone beneath him, where his eyes were fixed, a cross laid in diamonds marked the spot. He fell again to one knee, and closed his eyes, presenting to Mr Ahmadi the top of his head, and the great mark with which he was marked.

‘Zenith,’ he said again. A sob choked in his throat. Tears began to stream on his cheek.

Before him, Mr Ahmadi held up the mater.

‘Zenith,’ insisted Fitz. He held his body straight as a wand, his head like a fixed mark in the green, green sea.

Mr Ahmadi set the first plate and turned it.

‘Nadir,’ Fitz said. The earth seemed to open, time to open, as the words dawned over him with a new light, and the sobs rose in his chest, forcing their way from his heart to his throat. Mr Ahmadi set the second plate.

‘Algorithm,’ he called.