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

Fitz decided she was right – and, anyway, he knew what Dina seemed always to forget, that soon they would come for him, that soon he would be leaving. But a niggling anxiety troubled him throughout his lessons with the Jack, and with the Sweeper, whom he often met in the afternoons, the thought that he had always felt something akin to stacking, even before he had arrived at the Heresy, and that he had always known that other feeling – the sense of coming down from the mountain, or out of the fog, the moment in the mind and heart that was like coming into shadow after glare, when nothing would focus and everything rushed. It felt like stepping inside, into the cool spareness of the cottage, after being in the riot of the wood. It felt like coming home.

‘How is it a side effect?’ Fitz asked the Jack. They were sitting under a large plane tree in the garden of the Jack’s court. Dina was lying in the cool grass, reciting verses to herself in a low murmur. Verses, or formulae.

‘The stack gives you a centred experience of place, time and your own attention,’ said the Jack. ‘You learn things very quickly, and very solidly, in that state. In a few weeks you have already mastered skills and knowledge that otherwise you might have required years to learn. I have seen your paintings. They are very good. Looking at them, I, too, hear the wind moving in the branches of the wood. Perhaps more importantly, you know more about your own mind than most people do; you have practised recollection, you have learned to look at yourself as if from the outside, and by repeatedly coming out of the experience of stacking, you have learned to question your sense of what your “self” is. Coming to know yourself is learning to know that there is no great self there to know. Perhaps there is nothing at all.’

The Jack sat still for several minutes, while Dina in the grass continued to murmur verses. Fitz realized at once that he was meditating, and he waited impatiently for the big man to finish. On it went. Fitz became restless, and several times he nearly got to his feet to go inside; at least there, he might find a book to work through.

‘Let me tell you something that I find curious,’ said the Jack abruptly, opening his eyes. Fitz was startled to see that, though they had been closed, they were already focused on him, as if the Jack had been watching him blindly all this time.

‘There is a reason that my office is called the Jack. It is the word for a small bird, a bird of prey, a falcon more usually these days called the merlin. I wear its colours on my robe. This name was given to my office for a reason. The merlin is the nimblest of falcons. It can follow even the smallest prey, even on windy days, with relentless precision. In its flight it mimics the movements of other birds – pigeons, starlings, sparrows – so adeptly that they often don’t recognize the danger until the jack is already among them.

‘But in one ability it excels all other hunters. Its quarry when attacked is likely to circle, often in huge flocks; in starlings, we call these mass formations “murmurations”. Higher and higher, in rings and gyres, the murmuration will ascend in the sky, moving in ever tighter circles, seeking to shake off the predator. The jack will hang on them as if by a string. He is relentless when on the ring, capable of withstanding impossible pressures, unimaginable contortions. And somehow, more often than not, by circling he comes away with a kill.

‘It is this paradox that defines my office, which is itself the office of paradox. How to go round and round, and ever go round, and yet finish with the end.’

Under the plane tree they worked every day through this paradox in different ways – always the same problem emerged, but it was expressed in different forms. Fitz often saw the Master hurrying through the courts at this time, rushing from the Registry to the Keep, papers or a book under his arm. High above him, from time to time, wings circled in the sky. He was, Fitz knew, still looking for the answer that would enable him to escape, to leave this place and go home. But something about his gait and his posture, something about the way he looked up at the windows as he passed, something about those wings in the sky, made Fitz think that he was not just hunting, but that he was being hunted, too.

‘What’s that round your neck?’ asked Dina on one of these afternoons. The Master had just appeared from under an arch, covered the length of the Jack’s court in a distracted hurry, and disappeared into a staircase that led to the Keep. ‘What’s in your hand?’

Fitz realized that he had been holding the silver jay that Clare had given him, which he kept concealed beneath his shirt. It was too late, now, to pretend it was nothing.

‘It’s just a necklace,’ he said, as if that might be enough for Dina.

It wasn’t.

‘Let me see it,’ she said. She had been lying propped on her elbows on the grass. The Jack had disappeared inside, to rummage through one of his queer little libraries for a book. He had told them to use the time to recite some of the new formulae Fitz was learning. Dina sat up and held out her hand.

Fitz untied the necklace with reluctance, collected it in his hand, and held it out to her. She studied it for a few moments.

‘Does it mean something to you?’ she asked.

‘It – somebody important gave it to me,’ he answered. He found he couldn’t say Clare’s name.

Instead he thought it must be nearly time to go to the hall