Gregor and the Marks of Secret-4 Read Free Page A

heard a scuffling in the adjacent tunnel. The sound startled him. No one was ever down here except him and Ripred.

    "I told you to stay put!" Ripred barked in the direction of the tunnel.

    There was a slight pause, as if the creature was considering retreat. Then came a sullen reply: "I smelled food." On the word "food" the low-pitched voice broke into a squeak. Gregor thought of his cousin Rodney, who everybody had teased when he'd become a teenager and his voice kept cracking between his kid voice and what was to be his man's voice.

    "Who's that?" asked Gregor.

    "That's your little friend the Bane," said Ripred. "After he maimed his last two babysitters, the job fell to me."

    "The Bane?" said Gregor in surprise. He had not seen the Bane in months. He remembered the soft bundle of white fur that had huddled in his arms in fear. Last December, Gregor had been sent on a mission to kill him, but when he'd discovered the Bane was only a baby, he simply couldn't do it. He'd delivered the pup to Ripred instead.

    "Can I come in?" the voice said from the tunnel.

    "Oh, why not?" said Ripred. "Come on in and you can personally thank the warrior for saving your life."

    Gregor turned his flashlight beam to the mouth of the tunnel, expecting a slightly larger version of the rat baby. Instead, he found himself looking up at an eight-foot mountain of white fur.

    ***

CHAPTER 2
    Gregor's mouth dropped open. "Geez!" In a matter of months, the Bane had gone from a pup Gregor could carry to the massive rat before him.

    "And he's not even full-grown yet," said Ripred. "We're expecting another two to four feet by Christmas."

    "Like snow," Gregor thought. "'We're expecting another two to four feet to pile up on that big white mountain.'"

    "You've met, but allow me to reintroduce you." Ripred pointed to Gregor with his tail.
    "This is Gregor the Overlander, the warrior who refused to kill you when he had a chance." Then Ripred gestured to the Bane. "And this is the rat we call the Bane, although his mother gave him a much sweeter name ... Pearlpelt." Because his pelt, his coat, was white as a pearl. It did have a strange iridescent quality, like a pearl, too. When patches of it caught the light, Gregor saw glimpses of color, pink and blue and green. In the Underland, it was not uncommon for mice and even bats to have white coats. But there was only one white rat. That's how everyone had known Pearlpelt was the snowy rat mentioned in "The Prophecy of Bane."

    "Hey," said Gregor to the mountain.

    The white rat shifted uneasily but didn't answer.

    "So, what do you like to be called?" Gregor asked.

    "It doesn't matter what I like to be called. Everyone just calls me Bane or the Bane except Ripred. He makes fun of my name," said the Bane. "Calls me Pearlpet or Pearliegirlie."

    Ripred just shrugged. "It's a hard name to say, Pearlpelt. Practically a tongue twister. Try to say it three times fast. Go on. Pearlpelt, Pullpet, Purput. See? It's impossible."

    "Pearlpelt, Pearlpelt, Pearlpelt," said the Bane rapidly. He locked eyes with Ripred. "He can say it. He just wants to humiliate me."

    Gregor knew the Bane was right about that. Ripred was a master of humiliation. He hadn't been too bad to Gregor until that trip in the jungle, but he'd been awful then and it had continued right through the echolocation lessons. If the Bane was with Ripred full-time, he was probably a constant target. Gregor felt a twinge of sympathy.

    "Ignore him. That's what I do," said Gregor.

    "It's different for you. You're a rager," said the Bane. "I wish I was a rager. Or at least full-grown. Things would be different then."

    "And tell us, please, how things will change when you're full-grown," yawned Ripred.

    "I'll be king, for one thing," shot back the Bane.

    Gregor felt a stab of uneasiness at the words. The reason he had been ordered to kill the Bane was to keep the white rat from coming to power. A prophecy had warned of the Bane's potential for evil.