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

‘But some things are true,’ Fitz protested. ‘Ice is cold. And one and one make two.’

‘If ice is cold, why does it seem to burn?’ asked Dina. ‘And one and one make two when you’re adding, I don’t know, sticks, but not when you’re adding rabbits.’ She smiled, but she hadn’t yet looked at him; they both still watched the preparations in the hall below. ‘I’m being silly, I know,’ she conceded; ‘but the more you push against apparent truths, the more they seem to crumble and give way. Even one and one.’

‘Don’t you believe in anything?’ asked Fitz.

‘Of course I do,’ said Dina. Her voice had now grown sharp, and it stung him like fat from a pan. ‘Of course I do. Listen. You saw the gatehouse on your way into the Heresy. You saw the blank eye. When the Sad King left his kingdom, when he gave it all away, relinquished everything of value and took to the waves with his counsellors and his generals, accompanied by only a few servants and friends, it’s said that they were driven by a storm into a strange harbour – lush, overflowing with grapes and olives and every kind of fruit that is sweet and nourishing to the taste. There were fat herds on the hills, no end of grass, and the water where they rode was deep and – fed by a cascading stream – fresh. The king put his people ashore; they thought they had reached a land of plenty, a promised land. No sooner had they put their foot to land, though, than a hideous colossus stalked over the mountain, a monster covered in grime and blood, at his side a heavy barbed truncheon with which he threatened to crush and powder them all. But the most strange, most terrifying thing about him was that he had only a single, round eye in the middle of his forehead. The sight of him turned them all to jelly. There was nothing they could do to defend themselves. He shut them up in his cave, where every night he returned from his day’s labour among his herds and vineyards, and every night he plucked one or other of them from the cowering crowd hunched by the wall, and stripped him, and ate him whole. They would all have perished in that way, had the Sad King not devised a plan for their escape. He gathered every piece of metal that they had – little knives, ornaments, brooches, rings, each forged or hammered thing of use or beauty, and while the giant was out, from the alloy fashioned in the giant’s fire a single, strong shaft tipped with a fine point. When the monster returned that night from his toil, even where he stood in the mouth of his cave, the Sad King thrust the spear through his eye, and he and his people fled to their ship, and escaped.

‘That is the blank eye. Not until you have relinquished sight, until you have surrendered the false promises made by every sensation, not until you have begun to see not with your eye, but with your new sight, your blank sight, your blindness, can you find anything truly true, anything actually beautiful.’

In the hall below them, things had suddenly changed. Six of the Officers had filed in, wearing their heavy black gowns drawn close round their long coats, but instead of the usual caps they were wearing what looked like hook-nosed bird masks, grey and engorged, with huge black eyes. Moving as one, as a single line, they stepped down from the dais at the end of the hall, and advanced towards its centre. The floor had been cleared before them, and the lights dropped; even from this vantage and distance, in the safety of a tower room through two windows, Fitz found their synchronized advance, their surreal garb and their poise both enthralling and unsettling.

But he was completely unprepared for what happened next.

He and Dina were unable to see all the way to the far end of the hall, but it was clear that, down by the kitchens, a commotion was stirring. Black-coated Serfs, repulsed or battered by something, someone, were being flung across the floor towards the Officers, some staggering backwards as they tried to regain their balance, others sprawling along the floor as if they had been pushed, slung or kicked. Over and over again these figures rushed back out of sight, back towards the end of the hall, only to find themselves, again, knocked or fought back. Their motions were large, theatrical, like caricatures in human form, the swirls and arcs of their arms balletic, the exaggerated movement athletic. It was theatre. It was dance. All this Dina and Fitz observed in complete silence, mesmerized; the muted action below them, however strange and violent, elicited not a murmur from either of them.

At first. After a minute, or maybe two, Fitz thought he could hear a kind of rhythm or chant rising from the hall below. It was then, for the first time, that he noticed that the Officers – still occupying the centre of the hall – had begun to shake their arms, at first only gently but with increasing force and violence, in an accelerating rhythm that matched the now unmistakable sound of their chanting. What is more, beside him Dina began to move against the window sill, apparently unconsciously and only very slightly, rocking back and forth on her knees, as if her body yearned to participate in the dance, in the primality of ritual that was unfolding below.

Fitz felt himself paralysed. He was embarrassed even to be aware of Dina’s involvement, anxious about the nature of whatever was happening in the hall, and uncertain about how he should react to the things he was witnessing.

She seems to be enjoying it.

And then the figure appeared. Surrounded by a mob of black-suited Serfs, pushing and shoving one another to be nearer to the centre, a small