The Beggar King (6 page)

“Bravo, Malthazar,” Mama Bintou said quietly, as three guards moved in on the healer.

Rabellus raised one hand. “Leave him.” He turned his attention back to the assembly. “Cirrans, tell me, have you seen this Great Light? And pray, what has become of your burning tree? It seems to have stopped working.” He let out a snort. “Any circus fire breather could do as much.”

The entire room seemed to hold its breath.

“Your holy tree has been visited by crows, the birds that feast on death. And I understand Cir is a land that loves its birds.” Rabellus waved over one of the guards who carried a large book. “Behold,” taunted Rabellus, “one of your so-called mysteries.” He took the book and flipped roughly through its fragile yellowed pages until he came to the one he was after. No sparks of light issued from the parchment in his hands.

“Prayer for the Feast of the Great Light,” he read as if he were bored. “Blessed is the Great Light, light of all lands of Katir-Cir, light of our path. We pay homage to the holy tree, light of our darkness, lamp to the world.”

“The Book of What Is” was the phrase that raced around the room as everyone recognized the holy words. The Cirrans were spellbound. Every land in Katir-Cir possessed such a book, though its content and usage varied from one place to another. But there was one thing common to them all: they were each symbolic of their land's very identity.

Elliott whispered, “How could he have gotten his hands on that?”

Rabellus had stopped reading. “There are no mysteries. As of this moment, you are Brinnians.” Without warning, he threw the book into the fire.

“No!” yelled several people at once. Malthazar bounded towards the central font, but this time Rabellus did not call off the Landguards.

“Put him in prison,” he commanded. They seized the healer and dragged him, shouting and struggling, out of the Meditary.

For the first time Jordan noticed just how many guards there were in the room. More must have arrived while Rabellus had been speaking. The Cirrans were sorely outnumbered.

“You see that?” shouted Mama Manjuza. “Ye don't need magic or skill to destroy mystery. Ye just need muscle.”

“Bravo, Mr. Mucky-Muck,” called Petsane. “You and your black-booted boobies are doin' a fine job.”

“Who said that?” Rabellus bellowed. But no one would ever have suspected shrunken Manjuza and fat Petsane. The guards strode right past the veiled women, unable to find the culprits.

Elliott's face was drawn, his jaw clenched.

“It couldn't have been the real book,” Jordan said. He touched his father's arm and found that Elliott was trembling.

“Oh yes, it was,” said Mama Manjuza. “I saw the wax seal on the cover.”

Rabellus's arms were raised, golden staff in one hand. “Let there be fire!” he proclaimed, and the guards cheered. “Let there be feasting!”

Two Landguards appeared with long skewers of some kind of meat. Then more guards carried in a small deer trussed to a stick. When they placed the sacred animal onto the font flame, Jordan gasped, and a woman nearby fainted. The Meditary filled with the acrid smell of its burning flesh. People pushed towards the eastern archway, covering their mouths and nostrils with their hands. Jordan was about to follow when his father stopped him.

“We must try to understand,” Elliott said. “It may be our only way to find Tanny.”

A few Cirrans took pieces of skewered deer flesh and placed them into their mouths, chewing hesitantly at first and then with greater relish.

“How could they?” Jordan asked.

“It only takes a single act to make the unthinkable possible,” replied his father.

“'Tis the work of the Beggar King,” said an older man nearby. “Didn't cross the bridge on Great Light's Feast, now, did he? The evil wasn't chased away. And what've we got ourselves now?”

Mama Manjuza wheeled around to grip his wrist with her strong age-spotted hand. “Foolishness!” she spat. “You make evil into a man and ignore the truth. Every one of us got the darkness in us sure as we got the light.”

“Not just the Brinnians be killers,” added Mama Petsane. “Not just the Cirrans be good.” She moved towards the archway and Manjuza followed, steering Ophira away.

Jordan's breath had quickened and he almost gagged at the smell of roasting deer flesh. He eyed the exit, but his father had now stopped to speak to an undercat who wore the emerald and black zigzag robes of a scribe. Jordan recognized the grey of his furry face, the sly golden eyes, and the way he spoke with his hands fluttering about. It was Sarmillion, scribe to the great scholar Balbadoris.

Sarmillion was the reason why Elliott T. Elliott possessed so many beautiful volumes of the old tales, for the undercat often made copies for Jordan's father. They would sit together in Elliott's reading room, talking late into the night over tall glasses of billy beer, their faces aglow with candlelight. Jordan had overheard them, sometimes discussing their work, sometimes arguing over ancient runes.

“I don't know what's become of your wife,” the undercat was saying into Elliott's ear. He was taller than Jordan but not as tall as Elliott, and so had to strain on his toes in order for the larger man to hear him. “I wasn't here last night,” he continued. “I was out — with a friend.” His shoulders sagged as if he was embarrassed and Jordan noticed he, too, had taken off his golden slippers despite the guards' command to leave them on. “Few of Arrabel's people remain. That scoundrel Rabellus wants me to stay on as his scribe but I can't bear it. I'll be gone before morning.”

“Rabellus said Theophen and his guards surrendered,” said Elliott.

“Ha!” cried Sarmillion. “That's one way of putting it. Another way is to say that the Brinnians offered Theophen a deal.”

“Theophen would have given his life to protect this city,” said Jordan. “What kind of deal would he have accepted?”

“One like this,” said Sarmillion. “Give up, or we'll kill everyone who's hiding in the palace. Including the high priestess.”

Including my mother
, thought Jordan.

“Thank goodness Theophen wasn't too proud,” said Elliott. “It must have been hard for him to back down.”

“Indeed,” said Sarmillion. “And now they've been taken away, and no one knows where. It is wickedness; it's an outrage. He chose our feast day for his coup.”

“The one time when no one would be on their guard,” said Elliott. He looked up at one of the rounded windows. “Where will you go?”

The undercat sighed. “Omar, perhaps. Some folk are headed north to Circassic but that's too far for my tastes. I intend to fight back.” He pressed a pointed tooth against his bottom lip. “I fear the worst for our old tales,” he said, his voice cracking. “I shall smuggle as many as I can out of the palace library.”

The library.
Jordan's thoughts turned to that strange brass door he'd found near the library archives. He scanned the Meditary for the wild-haired grandma who was now a door-maker but she must have left. Maybe Sarmillion would know more about that door.

“Can I bring the parchments to you?” the undercat was saying to Jordan's father.

“Of course. It would be my pleasure to protect them.” Elliott hunched towards him. “I can't help but wonder how that Rabellus character ever got hold of our Book of What Is. You told me the high priestess keeps it under lock and key.”

Sarmillion coughed so hard he was nearly choking. It took him a minute to compose himself. “Brinnians,” he hissed. “Long have they wanted to control Cir. I can't fathom how they managed to cross the mountains.”

Elliott shook his head. “Not everyone will want to chase them away, you know. Some are ready to abandon the traditions. The Brinnian ways will appeal to them.”

“Well! Do you know what the Brinnian word for ‘foreigner' translates to in the Cirran tongue? Underling. Cirrans aren't fools. Even the ones with a modern bent will sense their loss before long. And no one will put up with such brutality.” Sarmillion's whiskers curled into a frown. “I shall keep my ears open for any news.”

They took leave of each other in the traditional way, and then Sarmillion touched Jordan lightly upon the cheek. Jordan was surprised. The undercat had always been friendly but never affectionate.

Jordan attached his sandals and followed his father out of the Meditary and across the palace courtyard. Neither of them dared to speak until they were on the cobblestone road leading down the mountain.

Finally Jordan tried to say what was on his mind. “Do you think, I mean, is it even possible that they're — ?”

“We have to believe they're all right, Son,” Elliott said. “They're all right, and they'll come home.”

Jordan's mother had often said that while it was Elliott's sharp tools that cut wood, it was his voice that smoothed them into works of art. Jordan took comfort in that gentle tone now.

“What will happen to Malthazar?” he asked.

“I don't know. But the high priestess named the year well. Year of the magpie.”

The twin moons were still full — though not true-full anymore. They looked like two round eyes, watching Jordan. And then something struck him. “Has Maelstrom's moon gotten darker?”

Elliott squinted up at the sky. “Maybe it has.”

“Do you think it means something?”

“Who can say?” said his father. “These are dark times.”

“You told me people call it the undermagic moon,” said Jordan. “But the undermagic could never come back to Katir-Cir, could it?”

“Anything can happen if we allow it.”

Jordan glanced back at the holy tree that hadn't burned on the Feast of the Great Light. Its branches were black against the dusky sky — its branches, and the dark outline of a hanging body, had transformed the mystery of this beautiful tree into menace.

Five
L
ADY
D
ESTINY

S
ARMILLION HAD ALWAYS FIGURED HE COULD
tiptoe through life without ever waking Lady Destiny, but she must have heard about the raucous nights of mug-wine parties and decided it was time for some payback. Or maybe she just wanted to test his mettle. Mettle, sure. Rabellus and his men had scarcely mentioned hanging before Sarmillion was pulling out the key kept in a hidden compartment in Balbadoris's study and leading them to Arrabel's onyx chest, which he'd unlocked with trembling hands. An important detail, that: his hands did tremble when he gave up the precious Book of What Is. He'd been aware of the enormity of his treason even as he was committing it.

And then last night there was Mars, one of his closest friends, telling him, “Ye should stay in Cir, underkitty. It'll be the best means of defeating the Brinnians. Only way inside the palace now will be to work there and we're gonna need all the information we can get.”

Mars was staying on as palace gardener. He had nothing to feel guilty about. The hunchback would never have given up the priceless book, not even if they'd tortured him.

“No, can't stay, can't stomach this regime, got to get out,” Sarmillion had said to Mars. He intended to get as far away from this life of parchment and ink as he could. It would be the only way for him to sleep at night.

“Tragic, his burning the Book of What Is,” Mars had said, and Sarmillion had replied, “Oh yes, tragic. Don't know how it could have happened.” It had taken every bit of Sarmillion's willpower not to howl with anguish. There was no telling how great a loss this might be. Some of the prayers and spells were known to Arrabel alone, and she might be dead. Would the magical incantations even work now that the book was destroyed?

At first light Sarmillion packed his belongings into a canvas bag, including Balbadoris's sasapher pipe. He took up the scholar's walking stick, and then turned his long brass key in the door to his apartment one last time. He crossed the tatty rug in Master Mimosa's apartment, went through his private weedy courtyard and out the rusted metal gate, pulling it shut with a gentle squeak. That was the sound of the past, ending. And even though it seemed as if he was pulling a long sack of years behind him as he tramped down the steep Cirran streets, he felt an end as surely as if he'd written it himself after the hard work of a manuscript was done.
The end.

When he arrived on the open-air cobblestone Common, a knot of enthusiastic Cirrans was talking to Mars who was already dressed in his gardening overalls and carried a long pitchfork.

“We'll form the resistance!” cried one.

“We'll thwart every slagging project Rabellus starts,” said another.

“We won't let him get away with nothing!” hollered a third.

Sarmillion's whiskers twitched. He sensed action, heroism, fame and fortune. “I'll join you,” he said. “What can I do?”

Mars eyed him up and down and fingered his canvas bag. “So ye've decided not to stay,” he said, with a short nod of his bald head, and Sarmillion prepared himself for an outburst of scorn. Instead the gardener addressed the others. “This underkitty's got a way in or out of just about anything. Our group of Loyalists has got itself a burglar and a spy.”

Sarmillion clapped his hands. “From scribe to burglar in one morning. Who would have guessed?” and they all laughed.

“Burn your robes!” one of the men shouted, and it occurred to Sarmillion that if he was no longer a Cirran scribe, he might wear real clothes. Imagine, a silk smoking jacket. Mauve. Sarmillion had always fancied a smoking jacket: cocktail hour, candlelight, and a good long pipe of sasapher. The colour would set off his grey fur beautifully.

“Embers and ashes,” he said, pulling the robes up and over his head. “Let the rebellion begin!” He threw them to the ground in a heap and someone lit a piece of parchment and tossed it onto the fabric and there was a poof and the zigzag robes went up in flames.