Free Ravenspell Book 2: The Wizard of Ooze by David Farland Page A

afraid that they’d crash into a duck.
    Their little aircraft suddenly dove and dodged to the left, as Amber tried bravely to avoid a duck that she couldn’t see.
    The tactic saved their lives. Just then, a missile exploded nearby, sending pieces of shrapnel through the garbage can lid. The lawnmower engine blew clear while the propeller turned into a twisted piece of scrap metal, looking sort of like warm taffy that a couple of kids had been fighting over.
    The top of the contraption, the thick turtle bowl, cracked into pieces, and the mice were thrown clear. They went hurtling toward their deaths.
    Ben saw trees below and rocks and a fishing pond, and he screamed as he fell.
    When they were only a dozen feet from land, all of the mice quit tumbling. Instead, they floated down softly, like feathers in the air.
    The F-18 fighter jets roared past, circled, and came back again.
    Ben found himself trembling in terror, his legs so weak that he could hardly stand. It had only been twenty minutes, and already he regretted his decision to follow Amber on her journey.
    “Who are those guys?” Amber demanded. Her jaw had dropped open, partly in fear, partly in awe at the power of the explosion. She watched the circling jets.
    “Those are from the Air Force,” Ben said. “They’re like the Army, a human army that patrols the skies.”
    “And they just shoot down innocent mice?” Thorn asked. “Inconceivable!”
    “Well,” Amber said, “they’re not going to get away with it!” She raised a finger on her front paw, taking aim as if it were a gun.
    “Stop!” Ben shouted. “You can’t just kill people!”
    “Why not?” Amber asked evenly. “They tried to kill me.”
    “But,” Ben said. “That was an accident. They thought you were an enemy ship.”
    “Oh, yeah?” Amber asked. “What about that time a human tried to feed me to a lizard? Huh? What about that!”
    Ben stood there, convicted by his own actions. Amber was right. Humans were mean. They poisoned mice that tried to live in their homes. They bought them to use as snake food.
    Amber watched the jet arc over the treetops, apparently deciding not to blast it into oblivion.
    “I’m adding humans to the list,” Amber said. “They’re the enemies of mice. And when I take over the world, they’re going to have to change their ways!”
    “I’m not your enemy,” Ben apologized, wishing that he could speak for all of mankind.
    * * *
    Amber marched through the undergrowth with the other mice behind, shaken. The blast from the missile had made her brains rattle in her skull, and she wasn’t really certain what she was doing anymore.
    Was she right to want to take over the world?
    Ever since she had been a babe, other mice had told her that she had a great mission in life. She was the Golden One, the mouse destined to free all of the mice in the world.
    That was what her magic powers were for. The Great Master of the Meadows had created the world, and Amber believed that he had given her this power for a reason. Indeed, if Lady Blackpool was right, for Amber to use her powers selfishly was evil.
    But is it evil to want my people to live free of fear? Amber wondered.
    To be a mouse was terrifying. There were so many dangers—animals out to eat you, animals that could step on you. Ben didn’t understand that yet, not really. He had a mouse’s shape, but not a mouse’s pounding heart. He had been born a human. Apparently, life was pretty comfortable for folks up at the top of the food chain.
    Amber just wanted to cut down on the stress in her life, get the terror to a manageable level.
    Was that so wrong?
    They scurried through a blackberry patch. Most of the vines were old, their stems gray and hard and dead. But there were plenty of vibrant new sprouts everywhere. The dead leaves under the mice’s feet were wet and comfortable, but everywhere around them was a forest of thorns, and more than once, Amber found herself getting pricked.
    Ahead of her,