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

‘You have read books. Perhaps you have read of that hunter Death, and of his scouts and skirmish parties, the little infirmities that surprise the body, and the mind, too, as a man makes his way towards his end. Perhaps you can imagine them: a weariness that saps the muscles and dries out the bones; a sluggish drag on every action and on every thought; the dimming, the little crazing of the eyes; the long and restless nights; the tattering of recall. But what you don’t know, what you cannot know, is death’s dearness. The full day of youth shines with only a brittle and a skimming light. The afternoon, much more than the morning, lies deep and lush among the encroaching veils of night. Here cool quiet steals along the nerves like sugar on the tongue, that pleases even as it sickens. Here darkness huddles at the edge of every vision, every memory and idea, by contrast brightening it, conferring on it a lustre that the object, in itself, never had nor could ever have.’

They watched him. His body seemed so weak, but his voice, for all that, sounded so strong.

‘You see me cast low. I have suffered since the night I passed at the tombs. Illness, weakness and fear have been constant visitors to my bedside – more constant, even, than the Commissar, and she has watched the dreary and the tedious nights with me, and kept my body whole.’ He paused, gathering his breath. ‘But you find me in the tower of my strength. Do not be deceived by appearances. For now, when Death is nearest, I feel most keenly my lingering powers. Every word I choose in pain, like jewels prised from the rock with hammers. Every word is a jewel, every thought a hoard. Each moment that passes is for me an eternity. Death greens the world, and I find myself besotted with it.’

Moving slowly, as if his bones were brittle glass, the Master pushed himself to his feet, turned, and stepped to a tall wooden cupboard built into the wall behind his desk. He opened it, and from it withdrew a large wooden case. It seemed impossible that he should hold it, but he turned, and set it on the empty desk before them.

Fitz had to stifle the gasp that very nearly burst from him.

It was the shatranj case that Mr Ahmadi Senior had given him, that he had given to Ned More, that had to be –

It lay on the table before them. The Master opened it, and Fitz felt with his gaze the cool lustre of the emerald and the ruby pieces, of the gold tooling that ran between the chequered wooden panels. It was like a drink after thirst, a breeze on his cheek at noon in summer.

‘In the lessons to come, I will teach you the secrets of this game,’ he said, looking with even detachment at Fitz. He knew what the look meant: that he should say nothing about the days he had passed in the Old Friary, sitting before the fire with the board laid out on the little table. He should say nothing about the winter afternoon when Mr Ahmadi Senior closed it for the last time, and committed it to Fitz’s keeping, telling him to use it well. He should say nothing about the fact that the board must have gone to the Mountain, that it must have returned to the Heresy with his mother, in the night, in a dream –

‘It is the ancestor of chess. It is like chess. And like chess it is a game played between two opponents, the object of which is to capture the opponent’s king, his shāh –’

‘What’s the purpose of this?’ said Dina, sharply. Fitz could read the suspicion and impatience clearly on her face. She didn’t try to conceal it.

The Master didn’t answer. With quick, trembling fingers, he retrieved from the case the emerald and the ruby pieces, and set them in their arrays on the board. Once they were in place, with a further series of quick, judicious motions he manoeuvred them into a new configuration. ‘You see,’ he said to them both, looking up and taking their eyes with neither embarrassment, nor anxiety, ‘the dilemma I have laid out for you.’ Fitz glanced at the board, and understood at once how every one of the ruby pieces stood in danger of capture, whereas every emerald piece was perfectly defended by a network of further moves. Dina didn’t deign to scrutinize the problem.

‘You have been unwise,’ he said, sweeping his hand over the board to indicate that Fitz and Dina should understand the ruby pieces as their own. ‘You have left yourself exposed almost everywhere. But see how wise my own play has been. Every one of my active pieces threatens one of your own, some more than one. With precision and with foresight I have put you under enormous strain, for I know each of your vulnerabilities, and they lie open to me as leaves on the trees in summer.’

Dina snorted.

‘But I have also defended myself. You cannot capture any of my pieces without yourself suffering a loss – a series of losses. I will win this game, for it is already ended. But I will win it because I have treated each of my own pieces in exactly the same way I have treated each of yours.’ Fitz fumbled after his meaning, and the Master saw from the concentration in his brow that he would have to explain himself. ‘I make myself safe by defending my own pieces exactly in the same manner that I threaten yours. What makes it defence, in one situation, and attack in the other, is only a matter of colour. Change the pieces, and change the operation. The play is the same.’

Fitz sat back in his chair.

‘You have been awakened in the night for cases.’ He had turned towards Fitz, and was addressing him directly. ‘By