How to Save a Kingdom

by Bill Allen

  Save a kingdom? Seriously?

  Twelve-year-old Greg Hart can barely save himself from an overgrown class bully, much less save a kingdom. And then only by running and hiding.

  But six months ago, Greg played a role in an unlikely prophecy foretold on the magical world of Myrth. Against all odds he managed to survive. Now a second prophecy has been revealed, one featuring the “Hero Who Slayed Ruuan,” and Greg is once again pulled into Myrth.

  Only Greg and a small band of friends know Ruuan still lives and Greg is no hero. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Canaraza warriors will soon gather outside Pendegrass Castle to settle a score with King Peter and his army. Greg will be there too. With three generals battling by his side, he is expected to fight with the strength of ten men and make the difference that will lead the king to victory.

  It seems impossible, but Greg should have learned from his first trip to Myrth that just because it’s impossible doesn’t mean everyone won’t expect him to succeed. After all, everyone already knows he’s a hero and prophecies are never wrong.

  How to Save a Kingdom

  JOURNALS OF MYRTH

  Book Two

  Bill Allen

  Bell Bridge Books

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead,) events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Bell Bridge Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-106-7

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-091-6

  Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2012 by Bill Allen

  Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.

  Visit our websites – www.BelleBooks.com and www.BellBridgeBooks.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover design: Debra Dixon

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo credits:

  Kingdom (Manipulated) © Annnmei | Dreamstime.com

  Background: Debra Dixon

  :Eshk:01:

  A Hart Day at School

  Short of a valley full of purring shadowcats, nothing could drain away a boy’s consciousness faster than one of Mrs. Beasley’s seventh-grade algebra lectures.

  “Did you not get enough sleep last night, Mr. Hart?”

  “Wha-huh?” Greg’s head snapped up and tottered about in a fair imitation of a bobblehead doll. Greg had once faced an ogre in an enchanted forest, a mysterious witch in the gloom of her decrepit shack and a dragon at the center of its white-hot lair. None offered the same level of intimidation as Mrs. Beasley could muster.

  Eventually, the snickering of his classmates reached Greg’s ears. He ran his fingers through his hair, but the unruly nest, now bent further back off his forehead from resting his head in his arms, refused to lie flat. “Oh, no ma’am . . . I mean, yes . . . er, I’m fine.”

  Mrs. Beasley peered at him over her spectacles, her lips scrunched up smaller than a dime. Rumor was, the woman possessed no sense of humor, but before that could be proved, she would have to listen to at least one thing a student had to say. Her cold stare never wavered as she spoke, and her voice dug under Greg’s skin like a rusty knife.

  “Why don’t you come to the board, Mr. Hart, show us all how to solve this equation?”

  Greg’s stomach knotted even tighter than Mrs. Beasley’s lips. The laughs took up again, which was bad enough, but one booming chortle lingered long after all others died away. Greg turned to see Manny Malistino, or Manny Malice, as he was better known, sneering one row over and two seats back.

  Slouched as deep in his chair as he could go, his knees propped high into the air, Manny looked as though he was trying to lie on his back and suck in his stomach so he could strap on his desk like a belt buckle. He was an anomaly, way more mass than any one boy his age ought to have, or any two grown men for that matter, and all of it seemingly bent on making each day of Greg’s life more miserable than the last.

  “What are you laughing about, Mr. Malistino?” Mrs. Beasley’s shrill voice rang out. “Perhaps you’d like to demonstrate your keen wit for us instead?”

  The usual murmuring ceased, as not a single boy or girl in class dared make fun of Manny Malice. Manny’s eyes darted toward Greg for an instant, but Greg wisely chose that moment to wipe up the large puddle of drool on his notes.

  “I’m waiting,” said Mrs. Beasley.

  “Uh, no, ma’am,” said Manny.

  “I mean, I’m waiting for you to come to the board.”

  Throughout the room students threw hands over their mouths or raised books in front of their noses. It was the type of silence that could make ears bleed.

  With a grunt, Manny slid upright in his chair and screeched around the hardwood floor, struggling to pry himself loose from his desk. By the time he broke free, the unnatural silence had grown so thick it was a wonder Manny managed to wade through it. Greg was afraid to smile for fear Manny might somehow hear him. Still, it was all he could do not to stab out a foot as Manny passed.

  Mrs. Beasley’s voice pushed past Greg’s smugness. “And you can help him, please, Mr. Hart.”

  As if a floodgate had been opened, the entire class erupted. Greg winced. He glanced across the room to see if Kristin Wenslow was among those laughing. As crushes went, the one he had on Kristin could have flattened just about anything, maybe even a brute like Manny. She caught his eye and swept a strand of light brown hair from in front of her face. Greg’s breath caught in his throat.

  “We don’t have all day, Mr. Hart.”

  “Sure seemed like it when you were lecturing,” Greg said too softly for anyone to hear.

  “What was that?” Mrs. Beasley’s voice rang out. The woman could hear a feather drop at fifty paces.

  “I said, ‘I’m coming.’”

  Greg glanced one last time at Kristin, climbed out of his chair with un-Manny-like grace and trudged toward the front of the room, where Manny stood staring dumbly at the whiteboard. The mutant boy’s frame rose like a mountain, growing higher and higher the nearer Greg approached, until finally Greg reached the board and Manny’s navel turned to greet him.

  “I’ll get you for this, Hart.”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “I don’t see anyone writing,” observed Mrs. Beasley.

  Manny stared at the board as if it were covered with hieroglyphics. Greg watched him struggle a few seconds, then snatched up a marker and scribbled the answer to the problem Mrs. Beasley had posed the class.

  “Not bad, Mr. Hart,” said Mrs. Beasley. It was possibly the nicest thing she’d ever said to him. She turned then and asked if everyone understood Greg’s solution. Greg suspected she was hoping they didn’t.

  “You tryin’ to make me look stupid, Hart?” whispered Manny.

  “No need for that.”

  Manny couldn’t have possibly picked up the insult, yet his single brow bent itself into a vee. “After school,” he growled. “I’ll be waiting outside.”

  Mrs. Beasley whipped around and glared over her spectacles at the two of them, her eyes wide a
nd calculating. Greg stared back, afraid to move. Finally her frown began to straighten. Soon Greg barely recognized her.

  “You may sit down,” she informed them both. She then walked to the board, scratched out another problem and directed her wrath at another student.

  Greg exhaled slowly and returned to his seat, preoccupied now with the clock. Time passed so slowly, he half expected to witness the hands creeping backward, but in the end, the bell rang and Mrs. Beasley granted everyone permission to leave. Even so, Greg stayed put while the others packed up their books and spilled out of the room. Math was the last period of the day, and Manny was sure to be waiting outside.

  “Aren’t you going home?”

  Greg’s eyes snapped forward, where Kristin Wenslow’s freckled face hovered high above him. His heart lifted. For a second he forgot Manny was waiting to pulverize him. “Kristin?”

  “The bell rang. Didn’t you hear?”

  “Yeah, I . . . uh . . . just wanted to finish jotting down some notes before I left.”

  “But your books are all packed up.”

  “Huh? Oh, right. I’m done now.”

  Kristin continued to stare down at him, the overhead lights framing her soft hair like a halo. Greg considered reaching up and touching her cheek, but stopped when he imagined her shrieking and knocking over desks trying to lurch out of his reach.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Well what?”

  “Are you going to leave or what?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Greg. “I mean, no. I just remembered I need to jot down a few more notes first. Don’t worry. I’ll make the bus.”

  Kristin bit her lip in the cutest way. “If you say so. I . . . um . . . guess I’ll see you later.” And just like that, she wriggled her shoulders to center her backpack, offered a confused smile and ambled out of the room.

  Greg stared dumbfounded at the door. He’d have given anything to go with her—anything at all—but if he had to be flattened by Manny Malice, he could at least do it without Kristin watching. Again he checked the clock. Three forty. He’d need to leave soon or miss his bus and have to walk home. On the other hand, if he stayed put, at least he’d be able to walk . . .

  Finally he arrived at a decision. He reached behind his chair for his backpack and jumped when something coarse and wet streaked across his knuckles.

  “Rake. You scared me.”

  Displaying the same reluctance Greg had been feeling, a small creature never before seen in Mrs. Beasley’s classroom peered out from the pack and gradually emerged to explore Greg’s fingers with its tiny pink tongue. Greg nearly smiled in spite of his impending doom.

  Roughly the size of a squirrel, but with shimmering blue-black fur and a long tail that could easily wrap twice around its body, Rake was a shadowcat, the only one of its kind on Earth. More importantly, he was Greg’s closest friend. The two had spent nearly every moment together since they first met six months ago on the distant world of Myrth, a land of monsters and magic where Greg had once gone to slay a dragon.

  Okay, technically Greg didn’t go to Myrth to slay a dragon. He went because he was too slow to react when the magicians there opened a rift between worlds and snatched him out of the woods behind his house. But they had done so with the intention of having him slay a dragon, so Greg felt that should count for something. If nothing else, it made for a better story—or at least it would have, if he could have ever risked telling anyone. He’d tiptoed around the subject with Kristin once, but quit when she felt his forehead and asked him to lie down until she could bring the school nurse.

  Still, it was the only time she’d ever touched him, and Greg couldn’t say he hated the feeling. In fact, he’d give anything to feel it again.

  Telling her more about Rake just probably wasn’t the best way to go about it.

  “Come on, Rake,” Greg said with a sigh, “get in the pack. We don’t want to be late for our beating.”

  The shadowcat stared at him quizzically, leaned forward and smashed a furry cheek into Greg’s hand.

  “Not now. We’re going to miss our bus.”

  As if understanding, Rake crawled obediently into the pack. Greg quickly cinched up the straps. If anyone were to ever see Rake . . . well, Greg didn’t know what he’d do. Then again, if he didn’t figure out a way to slip past Manny Malice and onto his bus, what difference would it make? Just because he was going to die didn’t mean the secret of the shadowcat had to die with him.

  After a few whispered reassurances to his backpack, Greg headed for the side exit, slipped outside and scurried along the wall toward the front of the building, all the while thinking about that one miraculous day last fall when he’d fought Manny Malice and actually won. Using his skill in chikan, an ancient martial art he’d learned on Myrth, Greg had tripped Manny with a stick and sent him cartwheeling into the bushes. For months afterward, Greg had viewed that as the happiest moment of his life. Today it seemed the stupidest. Manny would be ready this time, and Greg didn’t have a stick.

  At the edge of the building, he paused to peer around the corner. The first of the buses, lined up across the lawn about a hundred yards away, was already beginning to pull out from the curb. No problem. The coast was clear, and while he had never thought so at the time, Greg was lucky enough to have spent much of his life as the smallest boy in school, which meant he was far more experienced at running than most boys twice his size, a necessity, since that was normally who he was running from.

  With the same determination he’d once shown when chased by a fifteen-foot-tall ogre, he abandoned the safety of the wall and darted across the lawn. Not a bad effort, really. He made it nearly halfway to the curb before Manny stepped out from behind a large tree trunk to block his way.

  So, this time the ogre is ahead of me.

  Greg managed to grind to a halt an instant before his face collided with Manny’s stomach, but his pack was slower in stopping. Despite a lot of frantic flailing and grabbing, Greg felt the bag fall from his shoulder, tossing a bewildered Rake onto the lawn.

  “Going somewhere, Hart?”

  Greg didn’t hear. His only thought was to dive on top of Rake, who let out a panicked screech not of this Earth.

  “What a baby,” Manny jeered. “You scream like a girl. Get up and fight like a man.”

  With Rake barely hidden beneath one shoulder, Greg didn’t dare get up. He reached blindly backward for his backpack, managed to snag one strap . . .

  Manny casually stepped on the fabric before Greg could reel it in. “What’s the matter? Too weak to wift your wittle backpack?”

  With a maniacal laugh, Manny slid his foot away, taunting Greg to try again. Greg took a deep breath, gripped Rake’s fur and squirmed to his knees, yanking on the pack as he went. This time Manny was less subtle about stomping on it.

  Aw, man.

  Greg stared at the enormous legs before him, fantasizing about how they’d look dangling from a dragon’s jaws. He followed them up to Manny’s even larger torso, where Manny’s giant hands were forming into fists. Before Greg could look much higher, a bright pinpoint of light suddenly split the air behind Manny with a loud sizzling zap.

  Manny’s smile faded. He started to turn to see what Greg was looking at.

  Greg needed only one glance. He had seen this phenomenon twice before. He had an idea Manny shouldn’t be seeing it now. Panicked, he jumped up and reached for Manny’s shoulder.

  He probably should have let go of his bag first.

  The backpack whirled through a wide arc that struck Manny squarely in the ear. Manny let out a yowl befitting his size and dropped to his knees, but Greg took little notice. He barely got out one hysterical screech himself before the space ahead burst wide-open, roaring louder than a dozen angry Manny Malices, and sucked him off his feet.

  A Hart Act to F
ollow

  Greg felt Rake’s rough tongue probe his ear. He opened his eyes to find himself lying on his back, staring toward a ceiling barely visible within the gloom of a cold chamber. The stone floor pressed hard against his shoulders, and shadows flickered from the fires of torches hung in sconces lining the walls.

  Greg knew immediately where he was. He’d been in this room twice before—two more times than he ever wanted. Of course, the second time he’d come here so the magicians of Myrth could send him home, so he supposed being here only once before would have been worse. But now he was here a third time, and that thought made his stomach clench even more than the long, magic tunnel he’d traveled through moments ago.

  “Hey, Greg,” a familiar voice greeted him.

  Greg turned toward a boy’s face beaming beneath a shock of bright red hair. It, too, was familiar, and part of him was happy to see it, but a larger part of him knew he was only seeing it because he had literally landed in a world of trouble.

  “Lucky?”

  “You were expecting someone else?”

  Greg shook his head. The first time he met Lucky Day, the boy had just advised the king’s magicians when to open a portal between this world and Greg’s own. Lucky had been looking for a Greghart, and out of the infinite times and places when and where the portal could have opened, by chance it miraculously picked the exact spot Greg had been standing. Now it looked as if Lucky had proved himself worthy of his nickname again.

  Greg had to wonder if being lucky all the time was a good thing.

  “Sorry for the small welcome,” said Lucky, “but everyone’s really busy, and we just recently found out we needed you again.”

  “Needed me?” Greg asked with the same enthusiasm he’d shown over leaving Mrs. Beasley’s classroom. “For what?”

  “A fight with the Army of the Crown.”

  Greg felt a horror he hadn’t experienced since last leaving Myrth, except possibly for his occasional dealings with Mrs. Beasley. “I don’t want to fight the king’s army.”