The Twyning (2 page)

This time it was a young apprentice whose past was a mystery, whose future was uncertain, but whose present was always trouble. He was considered by many in the court to be too undisciplined to be a successful taster, too small to be a warrior, too restless to work in the dustier Courts of History, Translation, Strategy, or Prophecy. He was something of an outsider even among the other rats of his age.

It was said that his father had escaped from a prison in the world above. Certainly the dash of white between his ears, like the crest of a bird, suggested that some rogue blood, a hint of fragility, ran through his veins.

Yet there was nothing fearful or weak about this apprentice. He had the oddity of a fragile but none of its dependence on other rats.

Alpa, who had mothered many ratlings, had learned that there was no fighting a wild spirit. Her bones aching, she sat up on her hind legs and peered over the multitude. Raising her eyes, she caught sight of a smudge of white on a ledge high above her head.

— Efren! Efren!

She revealed with all her strength, but it was too late.

From my perch on high, I looked down on her without moving a muscle.

There was no going back.

I, Efren of the kingdom, wanted to find out more.

. . . shining over the rooftops.

Home.

Autumn night.

Sound of water.

Horse and cart on the road above.

Ahead, the doctor has seen something. He lays down the walking stick he is carrying. He crouches on his knees, like a man in church.

“Rats.”

He looks around and sees me on the path.

“Rats have been here, Dogboy. We are in luck.”

He walks on, his stick tapping the path.

The cage is heavy in my hand.

He waits on the path, until I am near to him.

He shakes his head and sighs.

“Is there anything happening in that head of yours, Dogboy Smith?” he says.

Then, continuing his walk, he murmurs to himself, “I fear not.”

. . . I waited, my young heart thumping fast within my breast. My captain, I knew, would prefer me to be with the other ratlings, but I avoided her stare.

The feelings of duty within me — respect for my elders, loyalty to my court, obedience to Alpa — were at that moment little more than a distant niggle at the base of my spine. I knew of course that all good ratlings should be with their court when the kingdom gathered. And I was obviously aware that it was right and natural that we young rats should be quiet and respectful, catching only glimpses of the ceremony beyond the adult rats that were in front of us.

By this time in my life, though, I had already discovered that as far as other rats were concerned, I was not good, nor right, nor perhaps even natural. There was a stronger urge within me than that of obeying my elders.

Curiosity. A hunger to know, to understand.

I wanted to see the shape of the ceremony through my own eyes, hear through my own ears. I wanted to feel for myself, not as part of a crowd.

Many times Alpa had told me that I was too selfish for my own good. Old and wise rats of the Tasting Court saw the way I was and said that I suffered from a weakness of character that almost certainly would lead me to an early death.

But I had no choice. It was just life. The life that I, Efren, wanted to live.

Below me, the sharp smell of excitement rose up from the restless bodies of the congregation, pricking my nostrils. From an entrance behind the Rock of State, members of the Court of Governance filed out, one after another, forming an arc at the top of the steps. Moments later, from beneath the brick arch under which the river ran into the Great Hollow, there was a movement. At first I thought it was some great fish, making its way beneath the murky waters, leaving a trail of silvery ripples behind it. Then I saw that each ripple was a rat from the Court of Warriors, swimming slowly and in perfect time.

As the procession glided into the Great Hollow, the gathering grew still and silent so that only the rhythmic chatter of the teeth of the Twyning could be heard. Then a stout branch of oak, with a warrior on each side and one behind it, came into view. Upon the wood there lay the still presence of a single mighty rat.

It was the first time in my young life that I had heard the sound of a plaining, and it seemed to reach into me, making every muscle tremble. The kingdom replied. At first it was like a general whisper, caressing the senses, but soon it grew in volume until it echoed off the high ceiling and around the glistening walls of the Great Hollow.

King Tzuriel, upon his royal raft, was being acclaimed for the last time by his subjects.

The king, old and dying, stirred, raising his gray head, which seemed bonier and older than the rest of his body, so that his subjects could see him.

The acclamation grew until it seemed that the earth itself was breathing its loyalty and love for the king. From my ledge, I felt the sound enter my being, making me stronger. My blood felt hot and thick in my veins. Now, involuntarily, my teeth began to chatter, like those of the thousands of rats below me.

It was my first acclamation and, for all I knew, my last. Most rats, I had been told, rarely experience an occasion like this more than once or twice in their lives.

Soon the hammering of my teeth had set my whole body shaking. In that moment I knew that nothing in my life would ever be the same again.

. . . like a blackbird listening for a worm.

“What was that?”

He speaks in a whisper.

“I heard something. In the sewerage.”

We stand.

At that moment, a sound comes from the earth beneath our feet. It is like a ghostly, distant scream.

“It’s them! The rats!”

He kneels on the ground, his frock coat spreading on the path around him.

“They must be in the main sewage chamber. The flushers who work in the drains told me I would find them here. Rats love underground waterways.”

He stands, takes a white handkerchief from his pocket, and wipes the dirt off each hand.

“Let us continue our search.”

I stay, and he looks back.

“What is it, Dogboy? You think it would be better to wait here?”

I nod.

“You’d better be right,” he says.

. . . and bright as the king entered the Great Hollow for the last time.

I imagined the dazzling ache within him. King Tzuriel seemed aware of the presence of his citizens all around him. It was as if we were a single being, staring at him with one pair of eyes, acclaiming him with one set of chattering teeth. Watching him, I felt a surge of sympathy. He looked alone. He looked cold.

The three warrior rats who had been propelling the oak branch forward were slowing now as they approached a step that was a few lengths from the Rock of State.

King Tzuriel looked around him. There had been a smell of respect, of awe, in the air. Now there was something else.

Anticipation?

The king sniffed, his nose nodding upward. It was more than mere expectation.

Excitement?

That, of course. But also a scent that he would not have smelled for years.

Impatience.

Without knowing it, his subjects were eager for newness. He was the past. They had drawn belief and strength from him until now, when there was nothing left within him except death.

By the time the branch was being held fast against the dark brick step, the plaining and the acclamation had slackened, and silence was returning to the Great Hollow.

The king gazed upward for the last time at the place of his greatest glories. At the top of the four steps stood two of his most devoted friends: Quell, slender, elegant, and smoothly powerful; and Grizzlard, the greatest warrior in the kingdom, his pelt marked by the scars of ancient battles. Behind them, arranged in a respectful arc, were members of the Court of Governance.

Painfully, he made his way to the edge of the raft, where he was helped ashore by two warriors. Breathing heavily, he ascended the first step — two, three, four — to reach the Rock of State.

He turned to face the mighty congregation, gazing first at the citizens who waited beyond the rippling water, looking up at him, then raising his eyes to those who were perching birdlike from bricks and timbers around the wall. For just a second, he gazed at me. I could swear it. Perhaps every rat in that Great Hollow felt the same thing.

Tzuriel had never been handsome, but I could see that in his prime there must have been about him a magnificent ugliness that spoke of strength and honesty. Tonight, alone on the Rock of State, he seemed to be gazing at us from the gates of death, reminding even those courtiers who stood in a respectful group behind him of the skeleton beneath skin, of the fate that awaits us all.

Rats live for life, not death. It is why we are strong. No matter what we have been through, however painful a loss, our duty to the kingdom, to our court, to our family, to ourselves, is to survive. That is the simple truth that every citizen understands. It is now that matters, not then.

Go: that was what those thousands of eyes, gazing in silence, were now saying to Tzuriel. Do the kingly thing. Do what you have always done so well. Make us feel better about our world. Your last great duty is to disappear.

With a final surge of strength, the king gave the last revelation of his life.

— My subjects.

It was like a shock coursing through my body. Nothing I had been told had prepared me for the power with which the king’s words entered my brain.

Revelation, you should know, is one of life’s highest skills. It is something humans have never managed: communication through thought. As a young rat, I had the strength to reveal to two or three of my fellows at most. A captain (Alpa, for example) is able to address a group of a hundred or so rats. A king, or a courtier who dreams of being king, can address thousands. His power lies in revelation.

— I am here to bid you a last farewell.

The only sound to be heard was the lapping of the river as it passed through the hollow.

— We live in a time of tumult. The victories of the past, that of the great invasion, our mighty journey across the world above, still course through our veins.

A few of the rats closest to the platform began to chatter in excitement, but a sharp, silent reproof from the king, like a whip-crack in the brain, silenced them.