The Tasters Guild

by Susannah Appelbaum

  Rowan!

  But how was this possible?

  Her friend smiled his particular welcoming smile and proceeded to fold his wings. Ivy realized Rowan had somehow managed to secrete away a pair of springform wings, made from familiar linen and tensed wire.

  “What fun!” he confided, heart beating a rapid song in his chest. “I’d been waiting to try these out since the forest!” He would, eventually, tell her how his flight against the thunderheads, soaring over the somber city of Rocamadour, had been the achievement of his dreams. But for now, he had seen from his bird’s-eye vantage point a collection of scarlet Watchmen and Outriders disgorge itself from the Library, and he knew time was pressing.

  Indeed, a sharp sound of approaching footsteps was heard, and turning, the pair ran on, Ivy never releasing her grasp on Dumbcane’s stolen parchment. Finally, the two arrived in the low-slung Warming Room.

  They skidded to a halt.

  In preparation for Dumbcane’s ink-making enterprise, the vast chamber was ablaze with an immense fire—the heat hit the children’s faces like a scorching breath. Everywhere lay piles of litter and filth. The great firepit was smoking with thick brush, and an enormous bellows fanned the embers. Clinking, monstrous chains guided the assembly line. Outriders—more than Ivy thought was possible—patrolled the workshop, and Hemsen Dumbcane wandered about testing the contents of various cauldrons, readying coils of copper tubing and enormous sweaty beakers. Now and then the scribe would mutter and call for assistance, beckoning an Outrider to procure more water or produce more heat.

  Ivy and Rowan watched the bony calligrapher as he peered into a small vial of gluey green syrup. Swirling it, he then sniffed at it tentatively and scowled. Cursing, Dumbcane threw the tube against a nearby wall, shattering it.

  “What is he doing?” Rowan whispered.

  Ivy shook her head. Axle would know, she thought. Axle—still a captive of the awful Director. Her heart sank.

  Rowan beckoned her away from the light, and with their backs against the smooth wall, they inched around the horrible operation. Her ever-present fireflies, a halo atop her head, were mere sparks before the bonfire.

  Along the sunken hall they crept, and ahead, their destination—the simple steps leading down into hallowed ground. Waiting to guide them belowground—just as Breaux had indicated in his bouquet—was Peps.

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  The Crypt

  The ribbon of gloamwort was still there, tacked to the wall as Axle had left it. It was little trouble at all to follow it, even behind Peps’s hesitant steps (because what trestleman in his right mind would return to the land of the dead?). For Ivy, the trip into the darkness was marked by the unnatural brightness of the gloamwort. The string bobbed and weaved, tensed and sagged—seemingly beckoning her along in a dancing line—sometimes taut, sometimes slack. Finally, the threesome arrived deep below the Tasters’ Guild, at the oldest part of the maze beneath the city.

  “I’m sure glad something good comes from passing this way,” Peps murmured in the dark. “Breaux paid a visit to Malapert,” he explained. “The Librarian told him he hid the few books he saved right here.”

  “Where?” Rowan asked.

  “Breaux’s … bouquet … had … hedge mustard,” Ivy blurted. Her head was clearing slightly, but Ivy’s words were still coming too slowly for her liking. Especially now, in their haste. “But … then it was … vague. Bryony. Buckbean.” She took a deep breath, concentrating.

  “Hidden, enclosed room?” Rowan quoted the definitions.

  “Yes.”

  “Caulwort, de-thorned.”

  “What does it mean when it’s de-thorned?” Rowan asked impatiently.

  Ivy felt in her robes.

  Axle’s impressive Field Guide details some of the history of the catacombs beneath the Tasters’ Guild, but there were no known maps of the twisting tunnels. They were in the oldest part of the maze, and there was simply nothing listed about their current location. Ivy knew this because she held in her hand her copy of the book. Yet it was still the best reference for deciphering the more obscure elements of Flower Code—and she bent over her Guide.

  “De-thorned … caulwort,” she muttered, paging through the long lists at her fingertips. “Um … here we … go. Oh.” She paused, rereading the passage. “Oh, no—” Ivy straightened, looking about the underground chamber aghast.

  “Ivy?” Rowan asked, worried.

  “I think … Malapert hid the books … there,” Ivy announced, pointing, seemingly, at Peps. It was a great relief to talk sensibly again.

  Confused, the trestleman frowned, touching his chest. “Surely you don’t mean—” Peps began, but stopped himself just as quickly. He paused, turning slowly, and peered into the shadows. Stepping away, Ivy and Rowan were now treated to what lay behind him. A gaping hole in the masonry hidden in shadow and flanked on either side by two lumbering urns.

  A tomb.

  A giant keystone hung low in the ruined portal. No plaque to mark the dead within. Just a faint breeze, a slight sucking sound of the wind.

  Peps cleared his throat. “Couldn’t Malapert have just found a nice, snug cupboard to store them in?”

  Rowan dislodged the ancient cobwebs and paused on the threshold.

  “Wait!” Ivy called. She clutched the tattered ouroboros parchment in one hand, advancing unsteadily.

  Rowan gripped the small torch Peps had provided, and, holding hands, he and Ivy walked up the three uneven steps to the opening. Together they entered the darkness of the hallowed ground.

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Hallowed Ground

  At first Ivy thought it was a trick of the poison within her—making the room lurch as if a dark field of grain were swaying in the wind. But Rowan noticed it, too, as soon as his eyes adjusted.

  “What is this? What grows beneath the earth, without the sun?” he asked.

  But just as quickly, he knew the answer. He had seen, at Malapert’s, things grow in impossible conditions. But these plants were not cinquefoils and brought with them none of the uplifting joy that the golden flower possessed, the lightness of heart or being. Nor were there blossoms, or buds. Just velvety black spikes and oddly curling leaves that rustled in the ill wind. Their smell at once beckoned and repulsed.

  “Oh, Rowan,” Ivy whispered.

  “Tell me it’s not what I think it is.”

  “It’s a tomb. It grows on hallowed ground.…”

  “No!” he practically moaned.

  “Just find the book—and quickly.” Ivy looked about. “And then we need to replace the page that Dumbcane stole—the ouroboros page. But whatever you do, don’t touch the weed!” Her head reeled—the awful growth was coaxing her, beckoning. It seemed to pulse, summoning her.

  The books were there—stacked haphazardly in several dark recesses built to hold bones. There appeared to be a few dozen—Malapert had been overcome with regret and saved many more than they thought possible. Their enormous covers were singed, the pages darkened with smoke. Standing on tiptoe, Ivy could just reach them.

  “Sweet pea and inverted heather,” Ivy recited for Rowan, who hadn’t gotten a proper look at Breaux’s Flower Code.

  “Sweet pea, that’s easy. Small, right?”

  Ivy agreed.

  “Hmm. Inverted heather. Heather means clarity, but when it’s upside down, it’s—what is it?”

  “Disguise.”

  “So,” Rowan continued eagerly now, “small and disguise.”

  “I think Breaux wants us to look for the smallest book in the collection,” Ivy guessed. “It might be disguised.”

  “They’re all the same size!” Rowan moaned. “Look!”

  Ivy inspected the Verdigris tomes. They were as she expected—enormous, leather-bound journals with stenciled titles upon their spines, each written in the old tongue. None could be remotely described as small.

  Desperately, she looked around the crypt. The floor was a carpet of scourge br
acken. Deep in the tomb’s recesses, there was only shadow. Shadow, and more of the ossuaries within the walls.

  “Stay here,” Ivy ordered.

  “What are you doing?” Rowan’s voice nearly cracked.

  Taking a deep breath, Ivy planted one foot in front of her, entering the dismal growth.

  “Ivy?” Rowan called desperately—but she was determined. “You said not to touch it!”

  “There is another book over there,” Ivy replied. Although her voice was calm, she was anything but. Both legs were now entrenched in the dark plot of scourge bracken, and it rose sickeningly around her to mid-thigh. “Besides, I will be fine—I survived eating it in Irresistible Meals, didn’t I? This could hardly be any worse.”

  It was a reunion of sorts. Although Dumbcane had extracted the worst elements of the weed and concentrated them in his inks a thousandfold, the scourge bracken beneath her feet made Ivy feel as if she had been thrown down a deep well—the world of shadows again reared up on her. Snaith’s paunchy visage swam before her eyes. A look of triumph played across his face as he sharpened his awful knife.

  The smell was stronger, of course, and as she made her way through, she wisely held her breath. It was the smell of decay, coming impossibly from something alive. And its touch was sticky, soft, and velvety. A deadly caress.

  Her halo of fireflies was rejuvenated, dancing around the room—but this time they lit her way. Against the far wall, with the purple-tinged light from the insects, she saw it.

  A lone book. But what book was this? It appeared to be an outdated instruction manual for barrel-making.

  “Foxglove,” Ivy gasped. It was the last element to the bouquet.

  “Foxglove?” Rowan repeated. “Foxglove is … what is it?”

  Ivy steadied herself. She needed to breathe and wondered if she dared.

  “Foxglove: false and insincere!” Rowan cried out. “A small book …” He puzzled. “A small book, disguised under a false cover!”

  Ivy grabbed the manual and sprinted back.

  “It’s about the right size,” Rowan assessed as Ivy caught her breath.

  Its binding was sagging, the gold-stamped letters of its title twinkling in the light of Peps’s torch. Ivy reached for a better look. She blew away years of dust, revealing a plain, nondescript cover.

  “Let’s see,” she said, unfurling the ouroboros parchment beside it to compare.

  She opened the book tentatively, and as she did, a shower of golden petals rained down upon the tomb’s entrance. They tinkled like crystal, tiny amber stained-glass windows as they touched the stone floor.

  “Cinquefoils!” Ivy and Rowan said together.

  The book was filled with the dried, pressed flower of the King.

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  The Pimcaux Doorway

  They emerged quickly with the book to the comparatively bright tunnel, where Peps nervously waited.

  Although the cover promised to teach the many intricacies of cask construction, the inner pages told another story. It read:

  BOOK OF THE OUROBOROS

  Inside, the text was written in the tiniest of letters, and although the book itself was broad and wide, the script remained so small that there was little hope of deciphering it. Ivy examined the inner binding carefully and, looking up, nodded.

  “I think this is where it goes,” she said, finding the spot for the stolen page from Dumbcane’s shop.

  She took a deep breath and turned to the trestleman.

  “Peps.” Her voice wavered. “Are you coming?”

  “To Pimcaux?” he asked, and indeed, it was as if the thought had not presented itself to the trestleman until now. “No,” he said, more gruffly than he meant.

  Ivy nodded.

  “I made a promise to myself—I will not leave this infernal city without my brother.”

  Both Ivy and Rowan knew there was no breaking a promise to a trestleman. Her eyes were filling with tears—darkly splashing on the parchment in her hand.

  “But I would so appreciate it if, should you see my Wilhelmina”—he pointed at the charm that hung from Ivy’s neck—“you tell her Peps is waiting for her.”

  “Of course!” Ivy managed a smile.

  “Well, then.” He waved his hand about in a show of impatience. “Off you go!”

  Ivy looked at Rowan, who was a shade paler than usual. The two remembered the power of the magic in the Good King’s books, having seen it for themselves in Axle’s study. Rowan nodded. He was ready.

  Ivy smoothed Dumbcane’s pilfered paper, inspecting the gleaming ring of the serpent swallowing its own tail. She thought of its ancient meaning—not Taste, as the Guild proclaimed, but Renewal, Healing. The ouroboros, she realized, was now a symbol for her own journey. King Verdigris awaited her somewhere on the other side of this door. He awaited healing.

  She held her breath. There was more to the page than she had seen at the scribe’s shop—a mere copy that Dumbcane had abandoned incomplete. The text was written in a golden ink that even in the dimness blazed like a liquid star. And among the ancient curlicues and flourishes of the Good King’s hand were a roiling sea, ships lolling, a lighthouse’s beacon.

  “Cover your eyes,” she warned her friends.

  Ivy, with her shadowy, distorted scourge-bracken vision, placed the paper in its housing, reuniting the torn edges and charred corners in a seam of little sparks. The ragged fibers of the binding knitted themselves back together, a small, tidy zipper. The shining knocker grew remarkably lifelike and, as at Axle’s, Ivy reached forward and lifted the thing, knocking.

  And as the scorching light poured out of the ancient tome upon the young girl and her traveling companion, even the somber catacombs were illuminated by the glory of the golden sun.

  Part III

  Pimcaux

  There are creatures who exist in the element of pure air—birds, for one. Coasting, soaring, buoyant like light itself. Then there are those of the waters—fish, frogs. Each are separate kingdoms: air the kingdom of the Winds, and water the Alewives.

  —The History and Magic of Alewives

  Axlerod D. Roux

  (Quoted here from the lost manuscript.)

  Chapter Seventy

  Not Pimcaux

  The golden atmosphere twinkled and faded away.

  Great, drifting shadows lurked above Ivy, lashing about with an awful hissing—wretched scratchings of stone against stone. In the dimness, she felt at once restless and diminished.

  This was not a world of light.

  Slowly, the thick, plaguing fog cleared somewhat. In its absence there was a harrowing ruin, a once-great folly, and a royal-looking garden, only it appeared as if it had endured a flash fire. Yet she knew it, although it was greatly changed. Black, unharvested stalks stood about in odd clusters, blighted growths turning their silhouettes into unfriendly figures. A wrecked iron gate clanged dejectedly. This was the garden of Dumbcane’s abecedarium, the garden she had seen when she cured Peps, the one where she had inexplicably found herself after eating scourge bracken.

  Ivy looked around. It was now so much bigger, as if, in giving itself over to the land of shadow, it had spread out wildly. A hunched gardener was at work on a bald hedge, clipping the dead thing uselessly. As she watched his progress, an anxiety welled up inside her, and when the pale man turned, she was shocked to see the forger Dumbcane toiling in the charred remains.

  You have come.

  Ivy gasped upon hearing the voice—it was not that of the hopeless Dumbcane, who seemed completely unaware of her. It was a voice of inflection, rich with malevolence, and raspy with the effects of scourge bracken.

  It was the voice of Vidal Verjouce.

  She spun around the ruined garden, only to realize the voice had been directionless, in her head. The speaker was nowhere, and everywhere.

  At her feet, she felt a familiar matted warmth and, looking down, saw Six, purring loudly and rubbing his chin against her shin. Her attire had changed, th
ough. Gone were the robes of the Tasters’ Guild she’d worn, and in their place an intricate lace dress, as black as night and possessing in its spidery pattern no distinct design—as if the despair of the growth around her had infiltrated the chaotic weave.

  She shut her eyes and, steadied by Six’s presence, asked a reasonable question.

  Where am I?

  You are a guest, Ivy, in my Mind Garden.

  You call this a garden? Her eyes flew open.

  Dumbcane was now busying himself nearby, and Six let loose an offending growl at the scribe.

  Why have you brought me here? With a jolt, she thought of the catacombs, of the book that served as a Doorway to Pimcaux. Of Rowan.

  From behind a charred trellis with crumbling vines, Ivy finally saw Verjouce emerge.

  It was not I who brought you here. You are drawn to Kingmaker just as I am.

  That is a lie!

  With horror Ivy saw the man approach. Six had settled into an indifferent preen atop a pile of dead coals. As Verjouce closed in, his hood fell away. Here, in the retreat of his own devising, he was free to imagine himself at an earlier juncture. In his Mind Garden, the blind Director had orchestrated the return of his eyes. They were there, just as on the day he was born, no scars, no awful pits. He stared at her with them.

  How nice to see you, Ivy.

  Ivy felt a cold surge of fear at his transformation.

  You possess an enviable gift. Dominion over nature. You infuse all plants with their former glory, their true selves. You make them infinitely more powerful. Just think of your effect on Kingmaker! With you by my side, I shall have more power than I ever thought possible!

  Kingmaker does not grow. It is extinct. Ivy tried her best to be convincing.

  We both know that is not so.