Chapter 14
Beneath the Surface of Words
From the corner of the narrow alley, out of blue-black shadows of the jumbled pile of barrels, a figure larger than Nicolas had ever seen or had ever truly imagined stepped into the weak light of the doorway where Ranulf stood with crossed arms. The enormous figure was easily sixteen feet tall—nearly three times as tall as Nicolas—but what immediately spellbound the boy was the giant’s width—better said, it was the giant’s proportional size. Instead of having overly long-looking limbs, great gawky feet, and elongated facial features, which might have made the giant look simply stretched instead of truly massive, everything on this giant was proportionally normal, only much, much bigger. For instance, the giant’s hands were huge but not necessarily
