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

(after the manner of a riddle) men called the Almanac. By a dangerous agent whose secrecy he trusted, the king’s wazir discovered the instrument, stole it, and – working in darkness and in haste – took a detailed wax impression of each of its four brass plates. He then returned it, the theft never known. These impressions he committed to a blacksmith, with instructions to create a replica of the original instrument. Meanwhile, with only hours before the king’s slaves should depart for the desert again, there to bury the kingdom’s entire treasury, with themselves, in perpetual obscurity, the king’s brother sought out the man they called the Giant. He had only to take a single reading of the stars upon his head, and the key to unlock the treasure would belong to him – and to him alone – forever.

‘“And so the wazir sent to the Giant, and arranged to meet him at the well that stood near to the slave camp, just outside the city walls – here at this place, brother merchant. They would meet at dawn on the morning of the slaves’ departure. The wazir used fair words, but the Giant – remembering the cruelty of his torture when he was a boy – mistrusted the king’s brother, and when the time came for the meeting, he slipped into the well, and waited for the other to arrive. The king’s brother approached the well at dawn, accompanied by his trusted servant, who was his spy, his messenger and his assassin. To this man he confided all his counsels, and thought nothing of sharing with him – as he did now – his most inward plans.

‘“‘What a fool this Giant is,’ said the wazir to his servant, ‘ignorant as he is that he might have sat upon the king’s own seat, and owned all of this wealth for himself! To think that he might have mounted in glory upon the city walls, rather than writhing in chains beneath them! Together you and I have ground down the man who might have been the shāhanshāh, the greatest king upon the face of the earth, ground him into the very powder and scum that now stains his labourer’s hands. My triumph is nearly complete. It remains only for us to copy the pattern of the stars upon his head. I will spin him some tale beside the well; you climb upon the roof of the well house, and as he stands beneath you, take a sighting of this famous constellation, this map of warts or tumours for which the king’s slaves so revere him. When we have the map, I will promise some part of the treasure to certain armies in the north that wait upon my payment; with their aid, we will take the kingdom.’

‘“The Giant heard every word. Clinging to the stones inside the well, his heart ran cold – for he understood at that moment that his years of toil and hardship, the king’s years of sorrow and despair, were all the work of one, evil man. He knew then that he had but to escape the well, and present himself in the city, and he would be acknowledged the heir to the kingdom, perhaps even offered the throne outright. But he also knew that the king’s brother would never give up scheming to take the kingdom, and that if he were dispatched, some other would take his place. Great virtue and courage create great wealth, but great wealth creates evil, or so he thought as he hung by his fingertips in the cool of the well’s dark shaft. Perhaps because he had spent so many years constructing a magnificent underground tomb, a necropolis for the world’s most famous warrior and king, the Giant had come to believe that riches belong buried in the earth. And so he remained in the well, clinging to his perch, until in despair the chief counsellor and his servant, long after dawn, departed empty-handed.

‘“And the Giant took his place at the head of the slave army, and together they packed the mules and carts, the camels and the horses into the desert, watched helplessly from the walls by the king, his brother and the whole city. One by one the slaves disappeared over the horizon; one by one they unloaded the mules and carts and camels and horses into the vast, underground vault; one by one they themselves descended into their stone tomb. And the sands covered them, and they were no more.”’

‘And now, my eyes, I have again grown tired. But there is one further part of the story that my friend the merchant told me, on the last of the three days that I spent in that city. Come again to see me tomorrow, and I will try to finish it, for it is a thing of great importance to me that you should hear it.’

The old man’s eyes were already closed by the time the boy had returned his stool to its place by the library door. He gathered the embers of the fire by the front of the hearth, so that they should stay warm a long while, and pushed the little table, bearing the board with its unfinished play, back into the corner. By the door to the library, for a beat of his heart, he lingered, looking as long as he dared at the thousands of books stacked upon their hundred shelves. The old man was not asleep, as he had thought, and observed his hesitation.

‘My library is always open to you, my eyes. You must take whatever books you like, if you will only care for them, and return them. When I am dead, too, all this will be yours.’

He did not open the book he had taken until he had reached the grand staircase; but he stood there for a long time after, reading it.

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The case