The Giant's Almanac Andrew Zurcher (books to read fiction TXT) 📖

‘Here,’ said Fitz. ‘Wait a minute.’

This will surprise you.

From the cupboard by the fireside he extracted a large wooden case, tough and dark-stained, gleaming with thick shellac. At its corners it had been finished with leather pads, and along its long, top edge a carved handle revealed exquisitely precise craftsmanship. Fitz knew Ned had been indulging him by listening to the stories of his old neighbour; behind the spectacles, behind the eyes, Ned’s focus had been on something else – the pain in his head, perhaps, or maybe he was still tired. Fitz’s own thoughts had been elsewhere, too. But now, by quick glances as he settled the case, opened it, and began to unpack it, Fitz could tell – and he observed it with satisfaction – that Ned had woken right up.

It was a chessboard. But it wasn’t like any other chessboard Ned had ever seen. Fitz watched him take it in. Two feet along each edge, opened, it contained a raised playing surface of sixty-four squares, the dark squares cut from polished obsidian, the lighter foiled with beaten gold. Between the squares a grid of carved wood latticed the board with intricately cut figures, words flowing in all four directions in some ancient script along which Ned couldn’t help but trace his fingers. At every corner of this lattice a miniature sapphire, cut round, was set, the wood setting cunningly dimpled to allow the gem proudly to catch and dazzle the ambient light. They glittered in the sunlight now, like stars of day. In a trough carved all the way round the board, the pieces lay couched as if in moulds perfectly shaped to take them, eight along every side. Half had been cut from whole rubies, the other from whole emeralds, and each was set on an ivory base. The workmanship was exquisite, and the board – though evidently ancient, scuffed here and there by centuries of use – in almost pristine condition.

Ned was still trailing his finger across the inscriptions carved into the playing surface, mumbling syllables, when Clare appeared in the doorway, bearing a tray heaped with tea and sandwiches.

‘Fitz,’ she said, ‘aren’t you forgetting something?’

He looked up sharply, and Clare motioned to the table with a nod of her temple. Without protest or much attention he set out a few cups and plates from the shelf in the corner. His eyes never left the board where it sat before their guest.

‘Shatranj,’ Ned said. ‘The Persian ancestor of chess. Where did you get this?’ Without waiting for a reply, he added, ‘This writing is Middle Persian – how old is this board? I’ve never seen its equal. This should be in a museum.’

Fitz smiled. While Clare set down the tea, he began to remove the pieces from their cradles: two greater thrones, each a shāh; two lesser thrones, the wazirs or counsellors who guided them; four chariots, four elephants, and four horsemen, the full sum of each shāh’s council; and sixteen foot soldiers – half in red, the other half in green. He arranged them carefully on the board, each turned precisely according to the training he had received from Mr Ahmadi Senior.

‘Battle formation,’ he said. They all looked at the board for a few moments, while the fire took up a slow blaze beside them. ‘Mr Ahmadi Senior gave me this set, before he died. He was our neighbour. He taught me the ten tabiyyaat of the Arab masters, and many famous mansūbat.’ And then, his speech over, and almost as an afterthought, he added, ‘He told me he was given this board by his father, who taught him.’

Ned looked for a second as if he might say something, glanced up at Clare, and then changed his mind. Moving quickly, he removed several pieces from the board, and rearranged others, trying to keep the orientation of the remaining pieces in just those attitudes in which Fitz had originally placed them. ‘A tabiyya is a fixed opening position,’ he said to Clare, as he worked. ‘It’s a state of the board that two players will recognize has balance, a point of departure from which the true action of the game can commence. And a mansūba –’ here he paused, and with care disposed two pawns, moved them, then moved them back – ‘is a set problem, a kind of riddle.’ Ned seemed happy with his changes; he leaned back from the board, holding his hands out over it, as if over a warm flame.

Fitz smiled, again. He had recognized it. ‘The greatest mansūba of the Persian masters,’ he said. ‘Dilaram.’

Clare had pulled up a spindled chair, and now seated herself next to Ned. She looked as perplexed by Fitz’s arcane knowledge as Ned was. Without withdrawing his eyes from the board, he explained her son’s allusion. ‘It’s said that a rich Persian nobleman, a master at shatranj – this was hundreds of years ago, a thousand – he was on an unfortunate day outplayed by his opponent. Distracted by his love for his favourite wife, Dilaram – who sat, as the custom then was, obscured behind a screen – he agreed to ever wilder wagers, even as his opponent manoeuvred him into ever more difficult positions. Before long he found he had staked against his win not only his whole wealth, but his estate, his palace and all his ancestral lands. Unable to continue the game unless he found a further prize to which his opponent would agree, in an evil moment he staked Dilaram herself – and, on the very next move, found himself in a position – just as you see before you – that he considered inescapable. He began to weep.’

‘But he was wrong to weep,’ said Fitz, proud of his knowledge. ‘Because Dilaram had watched every move of the match. Through the screen. And she saw a solution that her husband didn’t see. She couldn’t advise him – that was against