Read The Beggar King for Free Online

and had no handle. He considered his surroundings. He couldn’t imagine why it was forbidden to come this way; he did, however, understand why a person might not want to come here. The floor and walls were covered in a thin sheen of frost, and it was unnaturally quiet, as if everything nearby had died.
    He pressed his hands against the brass plate to see if it might give way. With a start he realized it was warm. He could feel engravings beneath his fingertips, and knelt to study them. They were unfamiliar shapes. He thought of his father, who had a fondness for ancient script — he might be able to read the runes upon this door, but Jordan couldn’t. Elliott . . . he would be home by now. The widow Merralee would have told him she hadn’t seen Jordan. He would be worried. Blast it anyway, he should never have come up here.
    Jordan traced the script with his fingertips, as if somehow these shapes might have an answer to his predicament. Slowly, slowly, his eyes closed and his breathing calmed. From somewhere came a shadow, perhaps of a man, though he couldn’t be sure. The shadow was calling to him in a strange language, an old language. Jordan seemed to know the words to respond and as they came out of his mouth, something opened. He could not have explained what it was — not a door or even a window. More like a passageway, or a possibility.
    When he opened his eyes, the brass plate was ajar, as if indeed it were a door. He stared at it, dumbfounded. Perhaps this was a way out. He had to remain on his knees in order to see inside. But there was no inside to speak of. It didn’t lead out, but it wasn’t a room either.
    He leaned forward. There was something unusual and electric in the air, the way it felt outside when a storm approached. There was power, and all Jordan could think of was glorious darkness , and it was dizzying and he wanted it, he wanted to hold it in his hands. Something sounded around his head, like the flapping of a thousand wings.
    And then he came back to himself in a jolt and backed away, slamming the brass plate shut. He ran to the first wooden door he could find, wrenched on its handle with all of his strength until the door came open with a lurch that threw him to the floor. Picking himself up quickly, he sprang forward and shut the door behind him. He leaned against it, breathing hard. His hands were shaking.
    The room in which he stood was stacked from floor to ceiling with scrolls. He’d found the library archives. Into one wall was cut a small door that must have led to the larger part of the library, but Jordan moved instead to the back of the long room until he spied the opening that Ophira had generously called a window. It was so narrow that he had to press his head to one side in order to squeeze through, and his ears scraped against the stone sill.
    Once outside, it took Jordan a minute to get his bearings. He had landed in a small weedy courtyard surrounded by a low stone wall, over which he scrambled into yet another larger enclosure. He crossed it at a clipped walk, letting himself out through a metal grated gate, and then took the rest of the route home at a run.
    When he burst through the front door, his father was sitting in an armchair resting his head in his hands, the reading room darkened.
    Elliott looked up with a frown. “Where have you been? Feirhaven Merralee said . . . ”
    â€œThey’ve been taken somewhere,” Jordan interrupted, hurling himself into the chair next to his father. “High Priestess Arrabel, Mom, I don’t even know who else. There are Landguards with daggers and sticks and tall black boots. One of Arrabel’s mystery keepers. . . . ” He couldn’t continue. The thought of the hanging man and the hungry crows above him filled Jordan with dread. He bowed his head and closed his eyes.
    Elliott’s large rough hand was on Jordan’s back and he leaned against it, exhausted. When at last he