The mice shut their eyes against the agony of the universe. Against the twisting nausea that coursed through their bodies. Against wave after wave of hopelessness.
When the mice opened their eyes again they understood all at once. Behold! The black magic of the netherworld had worked! Wroth had made them huge and strong. New muscles stretched beneath oily fur. New fat padded their bellies. And yet …
What was this? What had happened to their tails? What had happened to their dignity? Where, by thunder, was the hair?
But Wroth had fulfilled his promise that they would never hunger. Wasn’t the chamber filled with food? Didn’t it contain all that those first terrified servants of Wroth could hope to eat? The stuff stood in piles around the cave. Mushy berries. Fuzzy nuts. Dripping greens.
Wroth had given them an appetite for garbage, for rottenness, for decay. He had remade his slaves into his own image. No longer would they be called mice. Now they would be called “little Wroths,” which, in the diminutive, was pronounced “raths.”
They were rats. Now and forever.
The voice came again, echoing its high, horrible, mocking laughter: “You’ll regret this!”
As the first rats stared in horror at their naked tails. As they gazed at one another in sudden understanding. As the first irresistible cravings for garbage began to grip them.
JaRed had come to this hall to do something important. He had to go on.
He felt the presence again. And though the whisper of common sense that had been telling him to go back still screamed in his heart, it sounded hollow now.
Just beyond Wroth’s chamber, he stopped abruptly. A shape like a smear of black ink loomed ahead of him in the darkness of the tunnel. He recognized its death smell instantly. And just as instantly, he knew the shape saw him.
“Little one,” the snake said. “Why do you tremble ssso?” Its tongue flicked out in a silent stream. “Are you frightened?”
It was a king snake that loomed before him in the darkness. A female, by the gentle lilt of her voice.
“I saw you coming,” JaRed said.
“Sssaw me?” Curiosity edged her voice.
“In a dream. I thought you were an omen. Or a symbol. But now I see you are real.”
“Yesss. Real as hunger.”
“Have you a name?”
“I am called Black, little one. And you?”
He thought about that for a moment. “I am called Runt.”
“Ah, yesss. Because you are ssso sssmall. No more than a morsel, really. A sssnack. Not a meal.” As Black spoke she came closer, not as snakes move in an open field, for there wasn’t room for her to move quickly. She came inch by inch, her side-to-side motion constrained in the narrow tunnel.
JaRed took a step back. “No, I am not a meal. But I know where you can find one.” He paused. “If you are willing.”
She stopped moving. “Why should I bargain with a moussse?”
“Because this tunnel is booby–trapped.”
“I can get past your puny traps without your help.” Black’s voice rang with self-confidence. “I found you, didn’t I?”
“No, I found you. And I saw the Great Owl go before you.”
Her tongue flicked out again, and JaRed wondered if mentioning the Great Owl had been a mistake. Owls were as much an enemy of the snake as of the mouse.
“I’m lissstening.”
JaRed took a deep breath, his heart pounding like a clenched fist. “My enemies inside Tira-Nor can be your supper.”
“Your life for theirs?”
“Yes.”
Black edged closer. “What’s to prevent me from dining on you now?”
He took two steps backward. “You are slow in the tunnel. You haven’t the space to move quickly. And I know where the passages narrow, where they fall into dead-ends and pits from which you will not be able to escape.”
She stopped and considered. “What are your terms?”
JaRed crouched low in the darkness. He thought of home, and realized that in spite of everything he loved his family. The thought bore with it an idea. “I know a chamber with seven fat mice sleeping soundly. I will pass by it, but I will not enter it. Follow me, but do not come too close or I will run and sound the alarm.”
She flicked her tongue. “You will guide me through the tunnel if I promise to eat your seven fat friends instead of you?”
“But you must eat only the seven.” She could probably live for months with seven mice in her belly, but what would prevent her from curling up in the Great Hall forever? “And you must promise to leave Tira-Nor afterward.”
She didn’t answer for a long time. JaRed knew her answer would be a lie, but the snake was clever. She seemed reluctant to offer such a promise, as though she considered her word binding.
“You asssk no trifling thing,” Black said at last. “But for seven swallows I will make that promissse.”
“Say it,” JaRed insisted.
Her tongue flicked out. “Very well. I promissse to leave after I am finished eating.”
This was just the sort of deception JaRed expected. She had promised to leave when she was finished eating, not after she’d eaten the seven. If his plan didn’t work, she would not be “finished” until she devoured all of Tira-Nor.
JaRed forced himself to smile and slipped away.
Black the snake followed.
When JaRed came to the false wall at the north end of the Chamber of Wroth, he scurried into the room and waited at the far end. Black’s enormous face came soon afterward, filling the space between the gnawed column and the real wall.
“The tunnel narrows here, just before it opens into this worship chamber,” JaRed said.
Black pushed forward, but there wasn’t enough space for her to pass. The wide spade of her jaws stuck fast between the column and the wall.
“You will have to push. The tunnel widens here where I am.”
Black pushed. As she did, the pillar bowed outward. JaRed imagined the roof shifting above him, and he knew there were only two possibilities once the snake had broken the beam. Either the roof would collapse and kill them both, or it would not collapse at all, and he would be left facing her wrath.
“Little one, have you betrayed me?” The pillar bulged as Black strained through the space between her and the wall. “It will not go well with you if you have.”
“What do you mean?”
She stopped thrusting forward. “I can smell you. And I can smell air moving. There is another opening into this chamber. Do not think you have outwitted me today. I will find you when I come back.”
She tried to back out, not knowing how close the other way into the chamber was. JaRed could see the crack in the false wall that was letting air circulate faintly through the room.
She wouldn’t take long to figure out the trick. When she followed the air to the crack and pressed against the false wall, JaRed would be doomed. She would push through the thin strip of mud on the other side of the column and there would be nothing to stop her from eating all of Tira-Nor.
JaRed felt a sense of hopelessness, the same feeling that had struck him when King SoSheth said ElShua was a mere fantasy. But the old stories were true, weren’t they? Good and evil weren’t just ideas. They were real. Doing the right thing mattered, and the old promises of the city mattered, and the reality of the one who made the promises mattered.
Or was JaRed just hiding from the awful truth that Tira-Nor and its mice stood alone in an evil world? The truth that JaRed, Runt, stood alone now in an indifferent city?
What if the only other presence in this black and bloody room was the one seeking his destruction?
Wroth’s statue sneered at him. The spiked jaws seemed to close; the mouse in his teeth seemed to twitch.
JaRed flung these thoughts from his mind and stepped closer to the pillar. “I’m right here. What are you so afraid of?”
“Afraid? Of a mouse?”
“Well, you were taking so long, I w
ondered if perhaps you were giving up. You wouldn’t be the first of the great enemies to decide it was hopeless to attack Tira-Nor.”
“Hopeless? I will show you hopeless.” Her face appeared in the opening, her mouth stretching into a sneer as she pushed.
JaRed stepped back, turning his face away from the fetid air that blasted from her nostrils. Pieces of the false wall crumbled as her heaving sides strained outward. “I knew you weren’t strong enough. I should have found a bigger snake.”
Black cursed JaRed, his family, and mice in general. She fumed and threatened. Strong enough! She would show him strong enough!
He thought of TaMir’s stories in the Great Hall, remembered the old seer’s face in the center of a crowd of awe-struck kits. “If you ever encounter an angry serpent,” TaMir had said once, “you must remember that they are angriest when they are afraid. The more they bluster, curse, and threaten you, the more fearful they are.”
A sound like bones breaking pierced the room. The false wall collapsed in a choking swirl of dust as part of Black’s glistening fat stomach heaped into the room. But Black did not seem to notice. She was still straining to push forward around the pillar. “Kill you I will!”
JaRed fled.
Just as he shot into the mouth of the tunnel, the pillar snapped with a sound like thunder. Black’s enormous face shot forward and her jaws opened.
The escape tunnel disappeared. The chamber of Wroth vanished. A great wall of rock slammed down into the earth, sealing the tunnel in a dead end as complete as any devised by mouse or prairie dog in the history of Tira-Nor.
JaRed stood suddenly, stunningly, alone. Black was gone. The Chamber of Wroth was gone. Both of them miraculously replaced by a solid wall of blank rock a whisker’s distance from his trembling nose.
He stared at the new rock wall, his heart pounding, a cold sweat pouring down his face. His breath came in great heaving gasps.
He stepped back, slumped against the far wall of the tunnel, and slid slowly to the floor.
What he needed now was a long drink of cool water and his very own sleeping chamber.
In a moment he would get up and begin the long walk home.
After his legs stopped shaking.
Chapter Five
Serpent Killer
JaRed awoke to the sound of GrouSer’s voice.
“What have you done, you rapscallion? Eh? What mischief have you worked to shake old GrouSer’s bones?”
JaRed blinked and held up a paw against the light of the glowstone GrouSer was shoving in his face.“No mischief.”
“What, then? An earthquake? A comet? A herd of bison dancing a jig over GrouSer’s head?”
Two sentries from the kingsguard appeared, wearing stern expressions. JaRed spilled his story slowly, but the sentries clearly didn’t believe a word of it.
“A snake?” said the older one, glancing at the wall of rock that had once been a chamber opening.
“I don’t smell anything,” said the other. “More likely you destroyed the chamber yourself and invented the snake to get out of it.”
“But I didn’t!” JaRed protested, noticing that the presence he had felt earlier was now gone. “There was a snake. I didn’t have any choice!”
“Either way,” the older sentry said, “the king will want to see you.”
King SoSheth flew into a sputtering rage when the sentries brought him news of the escape tunnel’s collapse. The stress of the rat sightings—coupled with the effects of the drought—had taken a toll on his already depleted patience. Now he was awake again in the middle of the night, jarred into reality from a shallow sleep that had been miserable to begin with.
“It’s not enough I must have nightmares,” the king bellowed. “I cannot even have them in peace!” He paced in front of the royal dais, his voice rising with his temper. “And now I learn one of the most ancient of Tira-Nor’s defenses has been destroyed by a kit!” He stopped in front of JaRed, who stared at the floor.
“Well, mouse? What do you have to say for yourself?”
JaRed drew a deep breath. “I dreamed of a snake …”
“Oh. So it was a dream,” muttered one of the guards.
Trembling, JaRed told his story for the second time. As he spoke, the royal advisers arrived, including the powerful and suspicious YuLooq.
When JaRed came to the part about waking up and sensing the presence of ElShua, he heard someone say, “The insolent pup,” as though JaRed were making it all up.
YuLooq snorted. TaMir raised one eyebrow.
“So I kept going past the chamber of Wroth and found the—well, the snake …”
“No!” YuLooq interrupted. “How did it get past the switchback? Past the double-turns? Past the fool’s errand?”
JaRed stared from face to face. None of them believed him. A few looked as if they expected the king to order his execution. “I don’t know,” he managed at last. “Perhaps it dug its way. Perhaps Lord Wroth led it as ElShua led me.”
“Lord Wroth!” YuLooq spat, his voice thick with contempt. “Don’t give us such nonsense.”
JaRed’s face burned. “Perhaps ElShua led the snake there for a purpose. Perhaps the tunnel was meant to be closed.”
“Quiet,” the king snarled. He glared at JaRed for a long moment. Then, with terrible calmness, he said, “You have destroyed one of our most ancient defenses, JaRed.”
The fact that the king used his name sent a shiver of fear down JaRed’s spine.
“Did I not say,” TaMir said, “that you should not trust the tunnel?”
The king turned. “What are you talking about?”
TaMir hunched forward slowly, his great white bulk ominous. “Perhaps it was not the boy who closed the tunnel after all. Perhaps ElShua has made your decision for you, Majesty.”
“I did not want my decision made for me.”
“Even if it was the wrong decision?” TaMir asked.
“Are you suggesting this mouse may be telling the truth?”
TaMir sniffed. “There is one way to find out.” He looked at the guards. “Did either of you cheese-forbrains bother to send a patrol round to the tunnel’s other end to see if evidence of a snake could be found?”
As they waited for the patrol to return, JaRed’s Father and Mother arrived. Horrid came in just behind them. He leered when he saw JaRed restrained between two of the kingsguard.
Father sidled up to JaRed, muttering something about youthful indiscretions. Up close he asked, “What have you done, JaRed?”
“Yes,” Horrid asked. “What have you done?”
Father spun and clapped Horrid across the ear. “For once in your life, HaRed, hold your silly tongue!”
Horrid’s face turned crimson.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” JaRed said.
Father sighed and looked away. Was he concerned about his son’s safety? Or merely worried about news of “Runt’s Folly” spreading through the city?
Horrid leaned in close. “Maybe,” he whispered, “I won’t have to tell the king about your treason after all. Maybe he’ll see for himself what a fraud you are.”
King SoSheth paced the dais, balling one fist into an open palm. “If there really was a snake, how did it get in? What does this say about our other defenses? If the double-backs can be easily breached, are they useful against rats? Or was the snake in league with them? No, No. That’s too much for anyone to believe.”
Too much for anyone to believe? JaRed thought. What does the king believe in?
JaRed imagined himself in the Dark Forest. The cool black shadows, the trees spreading their green canopy overhead, the chirping of crickets. Countless places to hide. Black caverns and sunless hollows and fallen trees. And no one to know that JaRed son of ReDemec even existed. He could really live there, not just exist. He could be free.
There would be water too. The forest was dotted with hidden pools, all green with algae and rippling under the dance of mosquitoes and water-skimmers. If you went f
ar enough into the trees you’d eventually find a stream that poured into a long glassy pond; both stream and pond were unfouled by sulfur and went down the throat as cool as winter rain. That’s what the storytellers said anyway. No one JaRed knew had gone far enough into the Dark Forest to see these things for themselves, for not even the kingsguard went more than a half day’s march into the trees. But the stories of the Ancients were clear.
The royal prosecutor, a tall, thin mouse with narrow eyes and a neck like a bent twig, said, “Captain Blang’s scouts tell me the rats are led by an enormous rat as quick as a ferret and with the teeth of a fox. Fearless. They say it killed a cat.”
King SoSheth inhaled slowly, then turned back to his pacing. “Rumors. Nothing more. They’re just rats. Slow, lumbering, stupid rats.”
Just before dawn a young patrol officer knelt in the royal chamber. The king and the prosecutor gathered around to hear his report.
“The scent of snake is very strong around the opening, Majesty. I went in and followed the smell.” The officer spoke slowly, and the others exchanged respectful glances. It would have taken profound courage for even a member of the kingsguard to follow a snake into a hole. Only TaMir gazed at JaRed without expression.
“The scent followed the double-turn, then came back. At the extreme length something horrible blocked the passage. A serpent’s tail, Highness. Black and very long.” The officer glanced at JaRed. “It is not moving.”
Silence filled the room.
After a long time SoSheth said to TaMir, “Without the tunnel we shall have to prepare for a siege.”
TaMir bowed. “Your Majesty knew all along it would come to this.”
“Yes, I knew.” SoSheth turned to Captain Blang, his face resolved. “Tomorrow, you will have your engineers close the last of the great holes and redouble your efforts to stock the supply rooms. Narrow all exits with caked mud. Construct new traps, double-backs, and hidden chambers. Activate the reserve militia and begin formal training of all eligible mice. In short, prepare Tira-Nor for battle. I want the city ready for a fight, if fight we must.”
Runt the Brave: Bravery in the Midst of a Bully Society (Legends of Tira-Nor) Page 5