Ravenspell Book 2: The Wizard of Ooze by David Farland Read Free Book Online

in the stories I heard,” Ben said, “it was rats that he killed.”
    “Ah,” Lady Blackpool said, “stories change over time, and often the truth is twisted or lost. It was mice that the Piper summoned. Do you know the end of the tale?”
    “The Pied Piper just disappeared,” Ben said.
    “He didn’t just disappear,” Lady Blackpool said. “He went to war against all of mousekind, and he slew many. But one night, after he had spent a day in drunken revelry, a mouse came and stole his magic ring, gnawing it from his evil finger.
    “Far the brave mouse did carry the ring, taking it to a ship and bearing it across the waters, where its powers would not be known. At the very last, old and exhausted, the mouse hurled it into a deep crevasse, hoping that it would never be found again.”
    “But it has been found again!” Thorn shouted. Ben and Lady Blackpool hadn’t noticed that Thorn and Amber had woken up and were now listening to their conversation.
    “Yes, this worm must have discovered the ring,” Lady Blackpool said. “In the hands of a commoner, it would be little more than a piece of costume jewelry. But obviously this is a wizard of great power.”
    “What can we do?” Amber asked.
    “The ring must be taken from him,” Lady Blackpool said, “and destroyed.”
    “Wow!” Ben said. “This sounds kind of like a movie I saw. There was this magic ring—”
    “How did they get rid of it?” Amber asked.
    “I don’t know,” Ben said. “I just saw the first episode.”
    “This is no silly fable,” Lady Blackpool said. “The danger here is all too real.”
    The mice fell silent as each of them pondered the difficult task that lay before them.
    Soon after that, Lady Blackpool curled up and fell into an uneasy sleep, and the others followed, so Ben took over guard duty at the lip of the bird’s nest, peering this way and that, gripping his spear in his paws.
    His tiny claws needed clipping, so he gnawed at them for a while.
    Once, far in the distance, he thought he heard singing, a strange haunting melody that seemed to call him. He put his paws over his ears. In an instant the melody was gone.
    Was it really wormsong, he wondered, or just a daydream?
    He would never be sure.
    In the late afternoon, they hopped down from the bush into a pile of leaves, foraged for a dinner of wild peas and dandelion greens, and then began their journey home.
    In the darkness, under the starlight, Ben spotted many worms on the ground, and those worried him more than the hungry songs of coyotes or the fearsome cries of owls.
    It was a couple of hours before dawn when Lady Blackpool called a halt.
    “It has been almost three days since your battle with Nightwing,” she told Amber. “Now it is time to see if your magic powers have returned. I propose that you try a small spell, something of an experiment.”
    “All right,” Amber agreed. “My tail is feeling more like normal. I’ll give it a try. What should I do?”
    “How about if you make Thorn smart?” Lady Blackpool said.
    Thorn, who had been humming something hauntingly similar to the wormsong all morning, suddenly whirled and grinned widely. “Cool! If I was smart, I’d figure a way out of this mess. I really would!”
    “Hmmm . . .” Amber said. “How smart should I make him? As smart as me?”
    “How about,” Ben suggested, “you make him as smart as Albert Einstein?”
    “Who is Albert Einstein?” Amber asked.
    “He’s the smartest human who ever lived,” Ben said. “He invented the Theory of Relatives, or something like that.”
    “Well,” Amber said, “if I’m going to go to all of that trouble, why don’t I make him smarter than Albert Einstein?”
    “Oh boy!” Thorn shouted, hopping up and down with excitement.
    Amber waved a paw toward Thorn dramatically, and shouted, “Thorn, I wish that you were smarter than Albert Einstein!”
    Thorn was still leaping about wildly in the air when suddenly a bolt of purple lightning roared