“Why would he want me?”
KahEesha shrugged. “He’s examined everyone else. You’re the only one left.”
When JaRed entered the family chamber behind KahEesha, he knew instantly something terrible was about to happen. He almost wished Scritch and Klogg had killed him back in the Dark Forest.
It’s true, JaRed thought when he saw the old white mouse lurking in the corner. He’s come to make me his apprentice.
Mother seemed glad to see him, though fear stood plainly on her face. Father’s scowl betrayed his shame at JaRed’s presence, as though being small were a crime as terrible as treason or murder. Brother KeeRed licked his paws in open disgust; Berry and Merry yawned with boredom; KahEesha stared breathlessly. Horrid glared at him with a look of pure malice.
“Runt,” Father bellowed, his voice loud in the silence, “we have a guest.”
“Yes, sir.” JaRed tried to ignore the force of Father’s whiplike voice snapping in the air. He willed himself taller, stronger, and fiercer, though he knew it was useless. Whenever he tried to make himself look bigger, he only succeeded in making his legs look skinny.
TaMir stirred on his haunches and shuffled closer. His white fur stood thin and flat against his body, as though even his skin were tired. Weariness gathered in the white sheet of his folded flesh. His legs wobbled on knobby joints, little stony hills that jabbed pain through his face with every step.
“You have a given name, Runt?” TaMir spoke JaRed’s nickname delicately, as though it might break.
“JaRed. Sir.”
“JaRed, yes.” TaMir stroked his whiskers. His eyes turned upward to focus on nothing in particular, and he exhaled slowly, until JaRed began to wonder if the old mouse would ever breathe again.
Mother stepped forward, dared to place one paw on TaMir’s mountainous shoulder. “Forgive me for asking, but is JaRed the one you came to see?”
TaMir looked at her and nodded. “Yes,” he said, as though to himself. “He is the one.”
Horrid drew a sharp breath, his face hardening into an unreadable mask.
Father glanced around the room at JaRed’s brothers. “Are you sure? How can you know you haven’t made a mistake?”
TaMir scowled. “Am I sure?” he snorted. “What kind of a fool’s question is that? I am never sure. And mistakes? I could not recount half my blunders in a winter’s telling. But I am not here on my own. I told you: ElShua sent me. And he, dear ReDemec, does not make mistakes.”
Father recoiled from the rebuke. “Quite sure,” he conceded, nodding agreeably. “Just asking.”
JaRed’s heart sank. He had been holding on to the thin hope that TaMir would go away without saying that JaRed was “the one.” TaMir never took back his words.
JaRed’s life was over. He saw it in his brother’s eyes. Horrid would make his life an unending misery of fear, derision, and torment. All because JaRed had achieved, without even trying, an honor the others could not possibly have wanted. An honor JaRed didn’t want himself.
JaRed felt the unfairness of everything rising to swallow him whole. Red would hate him, and Merry and Berry would hate him. Horrid, who already hated him, would hate him even worse. And Father would hate him for humiliating his family.
Unless. A thought leapt into JaRed’s mind, bearing with it a tiny seed of hope. Unless being apprenticed to TaMir is such a lofty position even Horrid would not dare to touch me.
Was such a thing possible? Was there really a safe place in the universe after all? A place where neither Horrid nor the Great Owl dared to go?
The old seer shuffled closer to JaRed. “You have always been considered according to your size, haven’t you? But there is one who does not judge by outward things, by great strength or an oiled coat or a quick leap. You have been chosen from all of Tira-Nor, from all the world. ElShua’s breath is on you.”
TaMir’s breath was on him as well, for the old mouse now stood so close to JaRed their noses touched. The seer’s fur smelled of damp earth, and his short yellow teeth jutted from his mouth like kernels of dried corn. But JaRed did not fear him. Rather, he felt a strange sense of awe. TaMir exuded a kind of surging gentleness. This was not at all what JaRed had expected from a legendary prophet. On the contrary, TaMir seemed ... nice.
“Listen to my words.” TaMir knelt, wincing as he bowed his great weight, and gathered one of the JaRed’s paws into his own. “You have been appointed by the Maker of tails and teeth, by the bringer of snow and song, by the source of wind and wisdom, to be a fang for his venom and a feast in the house of famine. You will pluck his enemies from the grass with a crushing beak. You will summon the talons of the Great Owl.”
JaRed listened with a growing sense of fear and anticipation. Could it really be true?
Only Mother seemed glad. “Oh, please, Master TaMir. Didn’t you always speak in riddles? I must know. Have you come to take my little JaRed away?” Her words spilled out all at once, like grain from a broken jar. “I always knew he was special. But when will you take him as your apprentice? Is it to be now? Or is there a coming of age?”
JaRed closed his eyes, fighting back anger. My little JaRed? He wanted to scream. Why must I always be thought of as little?
TaMir looked up. “Apprentice? I said nothing about taking an apprentice.”
The hope in JaRed’s heart died instantly. I should have known it was too good to be true.
Horrid’s face registered surprise and exultation.
“Isn’t that what you’ve come for?” Father asked. “To choose an apprentice?”
TaMir shook his head. “I told you. I do not do the choosing. I have come for one reason only: to announce ElShua’s decision.” He turned back to JaRed. “Have you not understood?” His voice flowed through the room like sand, stretching out to all of them. “JaRed, you are the next king of Tira-Nor.”
TaMir’s words hung in the air like smoke: majestic, heavy, suffocating.
“We already have a king,” Horrid whispered through clenched teeth. He crouched in the corner like a coiled serpent, and JaRed knew with gut-shredding certainty that Horrid would find a way to turn TaMir’s words into trouble.
“I did not say JaRed would usurp King SoSheth,” TaMir said. “Only that he would succeed him.”
But JaRed knew what they were all thinking, because he was thinking the same thing. This is treason. King SoSheth has a son. Won’t Prince JoHanan have something to say about who takes the throne after his father?
Horrid’s eyes glittered like tiny jewels.
“I can’t be king,” JaRed said. “I’m not even strong.”
TaMir looked through him, behind him, at nothing. “He will hate you for what I have done. But the words are not mine.” His voice was as quiet as a dragonfly’s wings beating the air. For just a moment the room filled with warmth and peace and majesty, as though someone of immense power had entered and was watching, listening.
“It is not might that makes right, in spite of what people say. It is right that makes might.”
The mice of Tira-Nor tell a story about those first months on Earth after Wroth came dripping from the waves. It is said the first mice, the Mice of the Sea Caves, took pity on him and brought him back to their communal home beneath the cliffs.
At first they did not know what to make of Wroth. For one thing, he was twice the size of the biggest among them. For another thing, his tail was completely bald. For a third thing, his nose shot as long and sharp as a needle from his forehead.
Some said he was not a mouse at all, that he was some different sort of creature. But others pointed to the obvious similarities between Wroth and themselves.
And so the Sea Cave Mice took pity on Wroth and tried to nurse him back to health. They gave him the best cave to sleep in. They brought him strawberries and nuts and sunflower seeds, though after the first berry he never ate any more. They oiled and perfumed his fur as he lay still in the center of his cave.
They decided, eventually, that he
must be suffering some kind of delirium. For day and night he shrieked the same thing over and over: “You’ll regret this!”
Portending doom rhythmically, like a siren. Hour after hour.
“You’ll regret this!”
The Sea Cave Mice had never encountered evil, so they did not know the meaning of the word regret. Nor did they recognize Wroth’s wicked heart for the black and empty thing it was.
They did not even know a heart could be black and empty, for their hearts were still mostly the way ElShua had made them.
Mostly. Though the Voice had already begun to work its destruction.
They assumed Wroth merely lay ill, and they tried harder and harder to help him. They brought him more food, all of which went uneaten. They left it in piles in his cave, afraid to linger there. Wroth’s body began to waste away, until his ribs poked grimly through his oily skin and his eyes bulged in their sockets like empty wells.
Wroth did not sleep. And, strangely, he did not get hoarse. If anything, his voice grew louder. It boomed through the caves like a thunderclap. It stabbed into the ears of the Sea Cave Mice when they rested and when they worked. It twisted their dreams and shattered their morning-songs. It scratched the life out of every lullaby.
A few of the Sea Cave Mice slipped way in darkness, without saying good-bye. These became the Inland Mice, the ancestors of the mice of Earth.
But such desertion took great courage, and not many made it safely to the warm fields and bright sunshine. For just as a mouse had worked up the courage to run—perhaps even as he or she slipped through the darkness of night to the moonlit shore—the voice of Wroth would come poisonously from above.
“You’ll regret this!”
Then a mouse would probably stop. For who knew? The Voice seemed to be speaking to just that one mouse in the whole world. And the Voice wanted the mouse to stop and come back.
By then of course the word “regret” had indeed taken on both sound and meaning.
Wroth’s voice had become a knife, ripping apart their souls. Every word stung like a lash.
Until at last their minds were as dead and barren as sand, and all anyone ever thought about was the sound of Wroth’s screaming.
HaRed did not sleep that night. He lay curled into a ball in his sleeping chamber and stared through the opening at the ghost-blue haze of a glowstone misting the outer tunnel. Occasionally he flicked his tongue across the dry flesh of his lips, but for the most part he lay very still and thought of ways to murder Runt.
He could not kill the little flea-scratcher himself. He must find someone else to do it.
Rage, hot and dry as the summer dust, smoldered in his chest. If there had ever been any doubt Runt was Mother’s favorite, that doubt was gone. What was it she had said? I always knew he was special.
The words sizzled and popped in his memory like grease spattering hot coals. My little JaRed. Her voice twisted in his mind, jeering him. She was so pleased with her favorite son. And HaRed? HaRed was just another whisker in the portal.
Father’s favorite had always been KeeRed because he was the eldest. Merry and Berry favored each other, as twins usually do. But how was it possible Mother had loved the smaller son, the weakling, over the stronger one?
Mother despised HaRed’s ambition. His aggressiveness. His intelligence. At least she’d finally admitted it.
His tongue spread a thin line of spittle across his teeth. Runt was nothing. A festering boil. A piece of dung. Yet they would make him greater than me!
HaRed slid from his chamber and crept catlike into the larger room. Fury animated his limbs, kept his tail straight. He nosed into JaRed’s sleeping hole and was surprised to find the little waste-of-air awake.
HaRed pressed his face near JaRed’s ear. “Runt,” he hissed. “Special,” he mocked. His words flowed cool and smooth as silver. “Do not forget who you are, Runt. King SoSheth will hear of your treason. And then rats will eat Mother’s precious little Runt for supper!”
Chapter Three
Before the King
IaRed did not sleep during the slow night that followed the seer’s proclamation. Horrid’s words burned a hole through his heart, leaving a black tunnel of fear.
In the morning a runner from the palace brought a message from King SoSheth: JaRed was to appear before the king in the Royal Hall at noon.
After the runner left, the ReDemec family said nothing to him, but JaRed knew what they were thinking. Could TaMir have been right?
JaRed’s heart pounded so fiercely he thought everyone must hear it. Had Horrid already made good his threat to report JaRed as a traitor?
The morning stretched into eternity, made worse by the fact that neither he nor Horrid nor any of his brothers had drawn foraging duty. The silent persecution turned into vicious taunting as noon approached.
“If it isn’t King Runt,” KeeRed said, poking his face into JaRed’s chamber. “What will his highness have for tea today?”
“Yes, Majesty,” Horrid said. “Wouldst thou like some royal grain to give thee size?”
“Or raisins from thy storehouse?” BeRed said.
“Or peanut cream?” added MaRed.
And so it went. Do this, Runt. Do that, Runt. Hurry up, little brother Runt. That is, if it doesn’t tax thy royal strength!
At last JaRed slipped away and headed through the Commons and past the outer chambers of the Great Hall to the section of Tira-Nor that housed the kingsguard.
Here the entrance tunnel sloped downward through hardened clay that glimmered red in the light of wall-mounted glowstones, so that JaRed seemed to be passing through a shimmering red throat until he came to the public entrance to the palace.
A dark mouse of the kingsguard greeted him. “What’s your business?”
“I’m to see the king,” JaRed said. “He sent for me.”
“Sent for you?” The guard eyed him suspiciously, then turned back toward the guard room. “LaRish?”
An older mouse poked his head into the chamber. He wore the lean, hard look of a fighter, but stared at JaRed with eyes that betrayed a sense of humor. “What is it now, CorKer?” His accent made the name sound like Corkair.
As a kit, JaRed had heard stories of LaRish coming to Tira-Nor from far away and turning the tide in the battle of Cliff’s Edge. Of LaRish single-handedly covering the kingsguard’s retreat on the Day of The Cat. Of LaRish vanquishing the three champions of Renna.
CorKer nodded toward JaRed. “You know anything about a commoner come to see the king?”
“I don’t know anything about anything. I am out of favor this week.”
CorKer turned back to JaRed. “No one said anything to us when we came on duty.”
“I was told to report here at noon,” JaRed said. “Captain Blang’s orders.”
At the mention of Captain Blang, CorKer twitched his nose, like a dog sniffing for trouble. “Captain Blang. Yes. I see.”
LaRish rolled his eyes. “Can you not tell that this one, he is not lying? Do you not see his eyes, Corkair?”
“I see only his breeding.”
LaRish snorted. “Bah! I will take him to the Royal Hall myself.”
CorKer raised one eyebrow. “But the king said—”
“What is the worst he could do to me, eh? Have me keeled? At my age it would not be so great a loss. Besides, he will maybe pat me on the back and congratulate me for my good sense.” He turned his attention to JaRed. “Come ... what is your name?”
JaRed liked this LaRish. And he wanted LaRish to like him. “I am JaRed. Son of ReDemec the Red.”
LaRish thought for a moment. “They call you Runt, yes? Meaning the small one, I think.” He stroked his chin. “This a good name. Sometimes small can be dangerous, like the point of a claw. And sometimes a small thing can be underestimated, which is good for the small thing. Come with me.”
They wound through the lavish perimeter tunnel of the kingsguard level of Tira-Nor, which was lit by glowstones at every turn. Beyon
d another checkpoint the passage dipped and plunged downward, and the air grew cooler. Light fairly blazed from the corridors ahead.
Some of these glowstones could be put to better use in the Commons, JaRed thought, though he didn’t say so out loud.
Outside the Royal Hall they stopped in an antechamber. “Wait here,” LaRish said. He went through the entry into the Royal Hall. When he returned he said, “The king will see you when he feels like it. Right now he is blabbing to Master TaMir, the looker.”
“The looker?” JaRed asked. “You mean the seer?”
“Seer, looker, whatever. Titles are not important. Only what you do, yes?”
LaRish rose up on two legs and leaned his back against the rounded wall of the antechamber. His legs flexed as he scratched his back against the rough texture of the dried mud. “Ah! this is good! Not so good as the royal scratching stones of Frevoirzheis … but not so bad as the dungeons of BarraKog. Would you like to try?”
JaRed shook his head.
“Maybe you are too young to need itching. Wait until you are older. I think then you will itch plenty.”
“Will it be a long time?” JaRed asked.
“Don’t know. I started itching when I was a kit.”
“I meant, will it be a long time before the king sees me?”
“Long, short, who knows? The king can blab like crazy, except when he doesn’t want the talk. Then he make everyone be quiet like snails.” LaRish leaned forward. “There is something I must tell you. Remember this when you speak to him. The king is not one mouse but two.”
JaRed cocked his head to one side. “What do you mean?”
“Tira-Nor, it has two kings. One who is wise and calm and another who is angry and foolish. But they only have one crown and one head. The problem is, you never know when you go to see King SoSheth which one you will meet.”
“You’re saying he is unpredictable?”
Runt the Brave: Bravery in the Midst of a Bully Society (Legends of Tira-Nor) Page 3