Pursued - Entire book

Chapter 42

The bizarre behavior of the little rodents caught his eye. He hadn't noticed their behavior last night when he arrived at the abandoned shelter after leaving the forest the day before. The mice didn't run in straight lines as they darted from cover to cover, as one would expect, but in erratic darts, moving unsettlingly about the room—gave him pause.

Something about them reminded him of Koova's forest.

So how were are they alike?

The room was vacant except for a number of partially eaten bags of grain and some old crates. Who would leave grain in an abandoned house? The high volume of vermin in the room was explained by an easy source for food. Did someone leave the grain for the mice?

That's stupid.

Klair leaned against the wall and closed his eyes to concentrate. Sometimes extending his senses could provide the necessary hint behind the strange behavior.

The answer was almost immediate. One mouse sat still enough among some refuse he could sense an irritation within it. It's been altered in some way, Klair guessed. The change tormented the creature to distraction. Upon scrutiny, something inside the mouse bore the same aura as the woodworms back in Koova. Which meant—

Intentional infection.

Here, they're using mice to hurt Ronta Township. Had they infected the whole nation the same way, using some variant of the same spell? He stiffened. He remembered the weight of logs upon his chest soon followed by the memory of the worm eating inside his leg.

He had foresters helping me in Koova, what could he do alone here?

He leaned against the wall. I'm so tired, he thought. He had rested though the whole night before and couldn't understand why weariness still plagued him.

All he wanted to do was go to Petta and see if Bejja would...

Several old blankets on the far of the room looked too dusty and rotten to make comfortable bedding.

Why mice? What was the city's major export?

The answer came readily enough from the conversations of the Kindred in his mother's parlor. Some of the women traveled as frequently as Klair and his mother. They export grain. With that thought, came the reason for the mice. If the mice were to get into the storehouses and infect the grain the infestation could be transported to other cities.

It could corrupt the entire nation's food supply.

He was startled out of his thoughts by a yowl from the far corner. Studying the shadows, he watched a cat pounced on a mouse and began eating it and studied the room to claim another. Having such an easy source of food, as well as the dusty fur of her coat, Klair suspected she'd been eating here for days. She wasn't sick, so apparently what effected the mice did not influence cats.

He needed was a nation of cats to consume a nation of mice.

Great, another problem. With it came a darker thought, how was I drawn to this warehouse amongst all those within the city?

The cat was in heat. She yowled in complaint. Soon enough there would be males wanting to take a turn with her. He needed the mice killed and cats can do that, He needed to get the cats to eat the affected mice. Was it safe?

Felines could usually sense what was safe to eat.

He also noticed that the spell in Koova forest and now here, seemed to specifically geared for a certain target: worms and mice.