Jordan moved on towards the bridge he used most often when skipping school to spend the afternoon in Somberholt Forest — Ne’er Do Well — but to no avail. He sped right past Amethyst, which required complete tranquility to cross, and past the Bridge of No Return, which no one ever used. Finally he reached the Undetermined Walkway, but it was hopeless. He was stopped in his tracks by an invisible force so strong he felt as if he’d smacked right into a wall. The distant shimmer of the Bridge of Many Happy Returns was so out of synch with his mood he didn’t bother checking it. Now what?
There was nothing for it but to go all the way back and try Peril. As he made his way once again past the tar-black Bridge of No Return, something made him stop. But no, surely it would be futile to try this bridge. And yet, if he didn’t, he would spend the rest of the afternoon trekking from one bridge to the next, and then it would be time to go home.
Jordan knew only one thing about this bridge: no one ever used it except Balbadoris, once a year on the Feast of the Great Light, when he dressed up as the Beggar King and had scores of children chasing him towards it. But he’d always come back, so the name couldn’t mean what it suggested. It won’t admit me. Still he hurried towards it, as if his feet knew something he didn’t.
Not a soul was about this morning. Most people were probably still stunned by Emperor Rabellus’s performance in the Meditary the night before. So no one gasped as Jordan took hold of the black wooden handrails of the Bridge of No Return and hoisted himself up onto its slanted entryway. No one cried out in shock as he took one step forward, and then another. He walked as if in a trance.
Halfway across, Jordan realized where he was. He realized with this horribly sensible adult reason that had begun forming inside him, which told him if he made it to the end of the bridge he might be doing something irreversible, something he would regret forever.
He spun around and ran back the way he’d come. This time he knew the Undetermined Walkway would grant him access, and it did. As he crossed, he glanced over at the black bridge and while the sensible adult told him he’d made the right decision, the teenager in him couldn’t help but tingle at what might have happened if he’d stayed on it.
Once across the bridge, he found himself on a path with three choices. Before him was the entrance to Somberholt Forest, a place he knew well. To one side was a path that led to the bridges on the Omarrian side. And to the other was the footpath that led into Omar and, of course, to the bazaar.
This was not the first time he’d crossed to the Omarrian mainland, but on every other occasion he’d lacked the courage to veer towards the bazaar. His father’s warnings of drunken underrats and dirty-dealing merchants had scared him enough to limit his truancy to Somberholt’s cedar grove. But today he did not head into the trees. Today he set his feet towards Omar and, with his eyes averted from the adults who might ask why he wasn’t in school, he walked.
While the Holy City’s buildings were made uniformly of whitewashed stone, Omarrians painted their homes and shops in brilliant reds, blues and yellows. Crossing the Balakan River felt like entering a different country.
The bazaar was Omar’s most infamous attraction, stretching like a maze from one end of the city to the other. As Jordan wandered in, he overheard two men arguing over the price of a goat. Nearby, some kind of meat sizzled in a sauce that smelled of pepper, and several women were shrieking about a snake that had fallen out of somebody’s basket. A flash of yellow slithered past Jordan’s feet, making him jump back. Chickens and goats sauntered by the canvas-partitioned stalls as if they, too, were browsing the merchandise. Merchants called to customers about the best prices for porcelain figurines or sasapher pipes, while in the background there was the erratic hammering of tradesmen. He closed his eyes and breathed it all in.
“Trinkets,” called a man in a striped suit. “Almost free.” Nearby came the jittery music of several twangers accompanied by a single flute. Jordan had heard about the wild women belt-dancers who moved with the travelling musicians, selling woven belts scented with cinnamon. He’d heard that sometimes the dancers took strangers with them for the night and that when you came home you couldn’t speak for a whole week.
Jordan concentrated upon the distant sound of hammers, following their irregular clanging until he arrived at a great rusted metal archway announcing Trades Alleyway. Open sheds and doorways lined the long winding road. Dust hung in the air, and the noise, the banging and pounding, was deafening. There were blacksmiths and cabinet makers and a man who made chairs, stacked one upon the other on a perilous pile, atop which sat, inexplicably, one red hat.
Finally, at the end of the alley, he spied a small placard announcing, ‘Willa, Maker of Doors that Open and Shut.’ A wooden shed stood behind it, surrounded by the greatest number of glass chimes Jordan had ever seen in one place. In the gentle breeze they sounded like a symphony of falling coins.
He poked his head into the shed and called, “Hello?”
One inadequate lantern gave off a dull yellow light, revealing a space made of rough wood, with sawdust on the floor and cobwebs strung across the ceiling. A scrawny pigeon rambled out into the sunlight. Jordan waited, but no one came. He was about to leave when a sudden movement caught the corner of his eye, startling him.
“I don’t do spells for boys no more,” someone said in a low voice.
Before him stood a stooped woman with the hurricane hair he remembered from the Meditary. Her grey eyes were set far apart and seemed to see more of Jordan than he would have chosen to show.
“That’s not what I came for,” he said, taking a step inside.
“Why, then? You ain’t here to buy a door.”
The way she held her hammer — upright, in one strong hand — made her look dangerous. Jordan shifted his weight, considered leaving. It felt as if she was looking right through him.
“Out with it — what sort of foolery have ye got yourself into?”
“Do you know about a door in the Cirran palace?”
“There’s over three hundred doors in that place. Ye can’t expect me to know ‘em all.”
Jordan swallowed hard. “This one is made of brass. It doesn’t look much like a door, actually. It doesn’t even have a handle.” Willa stiffened. She knew exactly what he was talking about.
“Well, then, if it ain’t got a handle, it ain’t a door,” she said matter-of-factly. “Now, I got orders to fill, and I reckon ye got a mind to waste my time. Go home to your mama and find something useful to do.”
Jordan’s jaw tensed. “I can’t go home to my mother. She’s been taken prisoner by the Brinnians. I snuck up to the palace to find out what happened to her and the Brinnian Landguards showed up, so I ran. I found this door, and it is a door. Please, if you know anything about it, could you tell me? Because my friend said it’s enchanted and I don’t want my mother to die, and I touched the door and then it opened.”
She put down the hammer. “Eh?”
“I didn’t mean for it to open,” he sputtered. “I just touched the runes and — ”
“Who were ye with?”
“No one.”
“Ye did it yourself?”
“Yes,” said Jordan.
She went to the shed door and slid it shut with a thud, making it even darker inside. As she tramped towards him, she looked at him with those hammer-force eyes. “Sit,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”
Jordan settled himself onto a pock-marked wooden bench, resting his forearms on his thighs, and struggled to find a way to describe it.
“It was like a vision,” he began, and told her about speaking a language he didn’t know, which he believed was what had made the door open — or maybe not. “It was an opening in a different way,” he said. “Inside me, sort of.” He grimaced in frustration. He told her about the shadow. He didn’t mention that it looked like a person. He no longer felt sure about any of it. It all sounded so silly now that he put it into words.
When he had finished, she
smacked her lips and said, “Ye been eating anchovies?”
“No. Why?”
“Indigestion. Does funny things to the head.”
Jordan leaned back so hard he almost fell off the bench. “I didn’t imagine this. It felt like something was calling out, like it was waiting for the person who knew the words, and I don’t know — with my hand on the runes, I knew them.”
“All right, then. Say ‘em to me.”
“I can’t. I don’t remember them.”
“Well,” said Willa, crossing her arms with a snort.
“I know it makes no sense,” said Jordan.
“Damn straight it don’t.” Willa scratched at the rough fabric of her beige work robes with dirty fingernails. “I told Arrabel to set guards by that door,” she said to herself. “I told her it wasn’t safe.”
“They’re probably in prison,” said Jordan. Something welled up in his throat but he forced it down. “What sort of enchantment is it? Is my mother going to die now?”
“Don’t be a fool. Ain’t no enchantment, not like that anyhow. That’s naught but a silly palace rumour.” She was studying his face. “How old are you?”
“I turned fifteen on the Feast of the Great Light.”
She smiled. “Only a few days ago. Pray, tell me, what is yer gift?”
“I don’t know. I mean . . . ”
She nodded. “Not to worry, boy. Some gifts take longer to declare themselves. Usually they’re the special ones. But you,” she wagged her crooked finger, “ye’d do well to find something in the meantime.”
Find a gift? “It’s not like that. You’ve got to be good at something. You have to have a feeling for — ”
“Find something,” she said. “Don’t matter what.”
“But why? There’s still a whole year before I choose my robes.”
“For protection. That door ain’t meant to open. Certainly not for a boy who’s still in his short pants.”
Jordan gritted his teeth. “Then how did it happen?”
“I can’t rightly say. Maybe ye got a sense for spirits.”
A night gift. His skin went cold. He may have wanted a gift, but he certainly didn’t want a night gift. Those with night gifts were into creepy things like talking to spirits or ridding a home of ghosts. People were afraid of them. He was afraid of them.
Willa just shrugged. “Can ye see into the future?”
“No,” said Jordan.
“You ever have communications with the spirits?”
He laughed nervously. “Not that I know of.”
She sighed. “Night gifts normally declare themselves very early. By yer age, you’d know if ye had one. I reckon it ain’t that at all.” For a moment she was quiet. “’Tis what makes the great gifts dangerous — they take their time coming out. Folks what got ‘em think they got nothing. Most don’t have the patience to wait it out, so they take up a labouring job like farming, or they set up a stall in the market, or they take to drink.” She picked up a chisel and examined it, as if for rust. “Too bad, but it happens. ‘Tis an empty time, the waiting, when you’re like a passage that wants walking through. Makes the underside of this world sit up and take notice. That could be why ye opened that door.”
Jordan was silent. A great gift? Could he dare to hope for that much?
“Some say Arrabel didn’t know what she been about till she was nineteen at least. All she showed was a love of birds, not one thing more. Dark world tried to lure her into sorcery. Almost had her, too, if ye believe the scholars.”
The High Priestess Arrabel? Jordan frowned in disbelief.
“All I’m saying,” Willa continued, “is ye got a sense that others don’t, and it could get ye into trouble if ye don’t get busy doing something on the living side of the world. Cuz it seems the dead side’s got its eye on you.”
The dead side. He made as if to stand, but then Willa started talking again.
“Tell me, what bridge did ye use to cross into Omar today?”
“The Walkway,” he mumbled.
She put down the chisel. “The Walkway was yer second choice.”
Jordan could hear the chimes from outside, and the tradesmen and merchants who were handling their affairs — their normal, everyday, living concerns.
“No one steps foot upon the Bridge of No Return ‘less something allows it,” said Willa. “That’s two handfuls of bad business, now.”
Jordan remembered the strange man he’d seen, and then didn’t see. He couldn’t bring himself to confide in Ophira, for fear of losing her good opinion of him, but maybe he could speak to Willa.
She was watching him. “Ask yer question, then,” she said. “I ain’t got all day to sit here while ye crap yer pants with worrying.”
Jordan focused on the cracks and knot-holes in the shed walls as he told her about the man at the holy tree, about how this man had killed a songbird and taken something from the tree, although Jordan wasn’t sure what. “And then he disappeared.”
As soon as he’d finished, Willa’s face went saggy, as if her skin had suddenly become too heavy. “What did he look like?” she said in a hoarse whisper.
“He had pale skin and long greasy hair and — ”
“Then he’s back,” she almost spat. “I thought if I gave it up, it would be enough. I thought it was just me.” Her eyes were very dark now, almost opaque, and she seemed to have forgotten he was there.
“Feirhaven?” Jordan said, and then more loudly, “Willa!”
She startled, and then held up a trembling hand. “You stay away from that man. Do ye hear me? He has nothin’ to offer you. Promise me ye’ll stay away.”
“But . . . I only saw him from a distance. We didn’t speak. Do you know him?”
Willa scowled towards the far corner of the shed, scratching her head so hard that sawdust flaked from her hair and onto the ground. “Ain’t no virtue in being a fool, boy. He’s been itching to come back and he’s got just enough of the undermagic to do it. You stay away from that man and ye steer clear of that door. Beware the beggar who would be king!”
Jordan’s eyebrows drew together. “What?”
“He’s a scoundrel beyond reckoning, a danger that reaches all the way to the vultures themselves. The undermagic has no place in our world. Its power is too great. Beware the beggar! He’s coming!”
Vultures and undermagic? Jordan stood. “I think it’s time I got home,” he said, though Willa was now speaking in another language altogether.
As he eased himself towards the shed door and slid it open, his eyes fell upon the work she had been doing before he’d arrived. A door lay flat upon sawhorses, swirls of metal and coloured glass set into the wood in ways he hadn’t imagined possible. He turned back to look at her, but she was sitting on a footstool facing the far wall where a variety of tools hung from long rusted hooks.
“Forgive me, feirhaven,” he said quietly, and went outside.
The sudden bright sunlight, combined with a pungent smell of goats, made Jordan feel faint. As he wandered out of Trades Alleyway, he thought of his mother and how she had left him so abruptly. No one but his father was waiting for him in Cir, and the streets of the Holy City were filled with patrols of heavy-footed Landguards.
This was madness, worrying about visions from doors and men who disappeared, Jordan thought as he made his way back through the bazaar. There was danger right at home, and he had better put his mind towards it. Willa’s advice had been straightforward enough: find something to do, and then do it. Maybe he did have a great gift, though he couldn’t dare to think that way. But what he could do was to develop some useful skill that might keep him out of trouble.
He reached the edges of the bazaar where dirt-smeared urchins tended undernourished horses, and baggy-suited traders sold cheap souvenirs. These were the merchants who would chase after customers, their prices falling until you hesitated and they knew they had you. His father hated them, and then just the thought of Elliott sitting alone in the darke
ned reading room with his shoulders hunched made Jordan pick up his pace.
“Present for yer mama?” called an older woman. “Come on now, wouldn’t yer mam like a nice new apron, or a bonnet for her hair?”
“Belts!” cried a man as if he were announcing a word of great wisdom. “Belts! Cheap! Three bronze groder. Alright, my finest belt for two. Two bronze groder.”
Jordan shook his head and kept walking. And then a quiet voice behind him said, “Perhaps we’re looking for a gift.”
The way the man said that last word made it seem as if he didn’t mean an Omarrian souvenir at all, but rather a gift in the Cirran sense, a talent upon which a person built his life. Jordan stopped.
The man who had spoken was smallish, with long grey hair — or was it black? — and he wore dark tattered robes. His face was so pale he looked ill. When he fixed Jordan with fervent eyes, Jordan recognized him as the one who’d been at the holy tree that day — the man Willa was calling the Beggar King.
“Are we inclined to want, then, young feirhart?”
Clearly he was not a merchant. He had no stall, no goods to sell.
“No,” Jordan said, remembering Willa’s warning. “I don’t want anything.”
“Are you sure?” and his smile revealed stained teeth. Jordan noticed a tuft of yellow feathers sticking out of the bulging pocket near his chest, and at once he shivered.
“I’m sure.” He edged away and set off again towards the bridges.
“But you’ve just had a birthday,” said the man from behind him.
At this Jordan wheeled around. “How did you — ” But he was speaking to thin air, for the man was gone. Again. Although this time Jordan couldn’t be sure if he’d really disappeared or had simply stolen away.
He was near the twelve bridges now. The sound of the Balakan River rushed in his ears, but he found himself running instead into Somberholt Forest. He sank to the soft mossy ground and rested his back against one of the enormous cedars. The light was softer in the forest, the wind evident only in the slow movement of branches. As he watched the gentle exchange of light and shadow, his breathing slowed, and the panic seeped away. There was a deer in the distance, her soft brown gaze directed at him. You should run, he thought. This world isn’t safe for you anymore. And she slipped into the protection of the shade.
The Beggar King Page 6