"The world is merely wallpaper. Hide behind it. "
At last Jordan Elliott has a gift. He can disappear...but at what price? The Beggar King never gives without taking. Jordan is about to discover that everything has an underside: even magic, even him.
A political coup on Jordan's fifteenth birthday brings the disappearance of many Cirrans, including his mother. Brinnian guards have imprisoned them at an unknown location.
The time is also coming for Jordan to choose a vocation and take his robes, and not a single talent has revealed itself besides a gift for mischief. On his sixteenth birthday he risks everything in a defiant act punishable by hanging. The guards spot him; he is doomed.
When the Beggar King offers him the gift of disappearing, he has no choice but to accept. Who is this man, anyway? No one believes there's such thing as a Beggar King.
But there is, and he means to bring back the undermagic, a dangerous dark power from long ago. Jordan needs this power to save his mother, so he agrees to help the sorcerer. But he discovers that the undermagic is difficult to give up once you've tried it. And there is always a price, a terrible price, which the Beggar King does not name in advance.
About the Author:
Michelle Barker lives in Penticton with her husband and family. Her poetry has been published in literary reviews around the world, including the 2011 Best Canadian Poetry anthology. A chapbook of her poems, "Old Growth, Clear Cut: Poems of Haida Gwaii," has just been published by Leaf Press in 2012. Michelle? short fiction has been published in several journals. She has also published non-fiction in magazines, newspapers and literary reviews, and she won a National Magazine Award in personal journalism. Michelle is an editor and leads creative writing workshops. She is studying for her Master 's degree in creative writing at UBC 's optional-residency program.
