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

‘How long have you been here,’ asked Fitz, ‘like this?’

‘All day. Since last night,’ the Master answered. ‘These birds have been good to me. The king even pulled some pieces of stone from the wound in my head. At least I think that’s what it was. I’m hoping it wasn’t bone.’

Keeping one eye on the restive birds, Fitz circled around to the Master’s head. The wound above his temple wasn’t deep, though the swelling was still high; he touched it, lightly. It seemed clean.

‘Not bone,’ he said. ‘There’s a bad bump, but whatever it was that cut you, it didn’t cut deep.’

The Master sighed and his body stretched into the shackles. Fitz realized that anxiety about his head had been giving the Master strength.

‘You’re going to have to get help,’ said the Master.

For the first time, Fitz turned his gaze back down the slope and across the valley towards the Heresy. Only a few lights glowed from its hundreds of windows. In the courts, lanterns, still burning, gave a sense of the place’s size; but, though the slope to the valley floor seemed from this height much shallower than his knees and shoulders remembered, Fitz shivered when he saw how far across the valley he had come, how much open ground now separated him from the warmth of his bed, from the safety of the walls, from the company of – of his friends.

‘You’re cold,’ the Master said, ‘but you can’t possibly get down the slope safely. Not in the dark.’

‘I can –’

‘No,’ said the Master. A spasm seemed to be running through his body. Fitz realized that he, too, was shaking against the breezes. ‘Whoever did this – is still down there. We’ll need help by daylight. It’s two or three hours to dawn. We’ll make it.’ Fitz felt he could hear in the Master’s voice the dull metal pain the words made in his aching head.

‘Hold your hand out to the birds. As if you’re inviting them.’

Fitz stepped around to the far side of the Master’s trembling torso, and did as instructed. Almost immediately, as if waiting for the summons, all six of them began to stir. By a series of little hops they crossed the ground between the rock and the Master’s body, and, without any further invitation, all in a neat row nestled into the crack between his body and the stone on which it lay. The wind at this elevation wasn’t high – it was much less than in the exposed flat of the valley – but what chill it carried the birds, like a living blanket, sealed and excluded. The Master stopped shivering almost immediately.

‘What were you doing up here?’ Fitz asked him. He feared the answer. At the back of his thought, just beyond his awareness, a part of him thought the Master might have given up, might have come to seal himself in the tombs.

The Master took a deep breath, as if about to speak. Then he sighed.

‘Have you finished my book, my child?’ The question was asked with such tenderness, with so much patience and love that it shamed Fitz to shake his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’

‘You remember the night we left your cottage.’

Fitz said nothing. A little howl or moan rose from the caves above them, where the wind had snagged in a hollow. The Master took this for his assent.

‘You noticed, I think, that my attempt to get you to the Heresy did not go unopposed.’

Again Fitz was silent.

‘Outside the walls of the Heresy, an Officer is not safe from the other Officers. Perhaps one will have reason for opposing another. Perhaps that reason will be serious. Perhaps it will be mortal.

‘We are locked in a game. There are rules, but the game is a grave thing. On the death of the Heresiarch, an Officer who would take his place must do one thing and one thing only. It is a very difficult thing. He must find the key to the Heresiarchy. Once he has found the key, he must summon the other Officers to the Palace of the Heresiarch. They will come if he is ready. By oath they must come. And there – and only there – they will acknowledge him. But here is a thing I think you have not imagined: the Heresiarch’s key, which opens the door to the palace – you don’t need it to get in. The door always stands open to those who would enter.’

‘Then why –’

‘It locks instead from the inside. You can’t get out without the key. So an Officer who wishes to become Heresiarch summons the other Officers to the Heresiarchy. One by one they enter the palace, allowing the door to close behind them. There they wait, as the new Heresiarch retrieves the key, and returns. The new Heresiarch then enters the palace, and takes the Officers’ new oaths of obedience. Only then can they be dismissed. That’s one possibility, anyway.’

Fitz shuddered again against the cold, but the shaking of his body did nothing to warm him. It seemed, rather, to let the cold fix its teeth more firmly, more deeply, into his flesh, that prickled where it bit.

‘But it’s not the only move. The new Heresiarch has a choice. He is not obliged to go to the Heresiarchy and swear the Officers to him. He can, instead, pursue another way. He can swear the Apprentices to loyalty in their place, and build the Heresy anew.’

‘But,’ Fitz protested, ‘then there would be two of everyone – two Masters, two Commissars –’

‘No,’ said the Master. He spoke very gently.

‘What happens to the old Officers?’ Fitz asked. Immediately after speaking, he wished he hadn’t asked the question.

‘The new Heresiarch passes by the Heresiarchy, but does not go in. Instead he goes to the Apprentices, room by room, each in turn, and invites them to join him. There is a term for it. It is called the Nightwalk. If the new Heresiarch chooses this path, he