The Hundred: Fall of the Wents

by Prescott, Jennifer

  “You’ve made a terrible mistake,” she told her brother. “They won’t let me go, and they won’t let you go either. The Shrikes are not to be trusted. Have you forgotten this?”

  “We met a Shrike,” said Aarvord. “He seemed different. And they gave me their word.”

  “A Shrike’s word is as useless as a fresh fall of snow in this place,” said Justice. “Just more of the same cold nothingness. No doubt they bewitched you with their shrieking, and to your ears it sounded like sweet entreaties. They are evil things.”

  Aarvord could not remember how it had taken place. One moment he was barraged by the clacking horror of a horde of Shrikes, and the next they had come to seem kind and generous. “We will help you,” they whispered, “If you will only do a small thing for us.” It had seemed quite reasonable at the time. But Aarvord could not remember clearly. It was like a dream.

  The two Grouts were in a small, stone room with a door barred by a thick piece of iron from the outside, and contained nothing that Aarvord could manipulate with his various tools. The stone was resistant to anything he tried on it. The room was cold and lit only by a small globe in the ceiling that emitted a dull and wan light.

  Since Aarvord had been thrust into the room with his sister, time had seemed to stand still. He could not tell if he’d been there hours or minutes, only that the room seemed to grow colder the longer he stayed there. She had told him her story. The story must have taken some time to tell, but Aarvord was disoriented and wracked with guilt. It all seemed unreal. And he found he barely knew his elder sister who had been the subject of many family discussions and grief. Even his memory of her appearance was built on family paintings.

  The Shrikes had always been known to take unwary slaves—those who would be most useful to them. A Fantastic Grout was highly prized because of its ability to create and use tools, and Justice was no exception. She had been taken one night when she was but a girl. Aarvord was a small and rambunctious Grout at the time, and he had distracted their parents to the extent that they didn’t realize Justice was gone until it was too late. Curfew was imposed in those days because enemies had been rampant in the city. But Justice had broken curfew because of a young Grout named Forgish who wanted to meet her by the Windermere and, with her, view the stars and the annual meteor shower that happened every year in late summer. It was a new moon and the night was very dark. The stars were brilliant and meteors fled toward the earth in streams of light and were extinguished. Justice could see the lights reflected in the water of the mere.

  Justice waited by the edge of the Windermere, and heard the plash of oars in the dark. Someone was out there in a small boat. Was it Forgish? She stepped down to the water and peered into the blackness. She heard him call out her name: “Justice. It’s me.”

  But when the boat beached, Justice was taken by rough paws and pulled into the craft. She could see now the small forms of many Shrikes, and they bound her roughly and pushed her to the bottom of the boat. There, also a prisoner, was Forgish. He looked at her, but could say nothing. He had betrayed her, having no other choice. The Shrikes had forced him into service.

  Justice and Forgish were taken by boat, and then cart—drawn by strong Veldstack in the slavery of the Shrikes—and then to another undersea boat bearing north. There were many other prisoners aboard the boat, most of them Grouts, but also a few miserable Ells and Efts and other creatures. Along the way, Justice and Forgish had barely spoken. Justice did manage to ask him, holding back her fury, where he thought they might be headed and to what purpose. Forgish said that he didn’t know. Another Grout who was near them had collapsed in terror, saying they were all certain to be killed. But others said that they were much too valuable to be wasted. All of them were young and strong, and they believed they had been taken for a purpose.

  Once the boats had reached the cold northern lands, Justice and Forgish had been quickly separated. She had not seen him since that day. Her group of Grouts had been herded into a dark warehouse where they were lined up and each tagged on the ear with an identification ticket. (At this, Justice fingered the tag that still dangled from her ear like an absurd little earring, and winced at the memory.)

  Justice had ideas of what the other prisoners were asked to do, but she had little contact with others outside her group. She knew by word of mouth that some had been forced to build undersea craft, flying machines, and sledges that whisked the Shrikes over the heavy snows. There was an entire industry here based on the talents of the Fantastic Grouts.

  As for her group, they were sent to a large rock—balanced on a ledge in the middle of an ocean bay—in the bitter cold. They were told that they must use any tools at their disposal to break it apart. Given nothing, the Fantastic Grouts had tried to make do with saws and chippers that they fashioned from their own bodies. They hardened the bones in their hands and pawed at the rock in an attempt to open a crack. Some grew horns and plunged their own heads at the rock. Despite their efforts, the most they could achieve was some small rock shards and dust. A pile of smaller rocks that lay around the large one on the ledge had been taken back to the Shrike stronghold, and various experiments were done to make those break apart as well. All attempts failed. The stone was made of something that resisted time and water and wind.

  This did not please the Shrikes, who demanded—in their strident, awful voices—that the rocks be cleaved in two, and they threatened the Grouts with terrible dreams while they slept in a drafty warehouse after dark. The dreams were indeed dreadful, but no worse than the day-to-day lives that the Grouts already led.

  “But to what purpose?” asked Aarvord at this point. “Why break this rock apart?” He recalled the prophecy that had been spoken to them on the plain of Bellerol: When the rock is split asunder.

  Justice didn’t know. No rock had ever been broken.

  “All I remember,” she said, “was how important to them it was. They were being driven by something else. There was another master, but one that we never saw. I could tell that the Shrikes were afraid of disappointing this master who drove on their anger and vengefulness against us when we failed.”

  After some time, the Shrikes brought heavy, golden tools to them—tools that seemed to gleam of magic and mystery in the cold northern light. But these tools failed as well. Day after day, the Grouts struggled to please their captors. Some did not make it, said Justice, shaking her head. The cold was too much for them. After a failed uprising, during which a team of ten Grouts had attempted to turn the tools into weapons against the Shrikes, more had disappeared. Those she had befriended were long gone. It was only through a stroke of luck that she was still here at all.

  One day, while slashing at the rock with a flat blade and taking some comfort from the sparks that flew with each blow, Justice had noticed that, when tilted at a precise angle to the setting sun, the blade seemed to reveal some strange words. She realized that it was in a language she had known as a baby: the singsong mother tongue of the Grouts that was used only inside the home, but which was generally forgotten as one ventured out into the world. Female Grouts alone used it with their young; it had been a dying tradition. The way of the world now was to speak the one universal language so as to make commerce with all creatures. Some Grouts had been taught to pass on the language. Justice was one of these, and the author of the sword was another.

  The words were poorly spelled, but Justice could understand it. Whoever had made this beautiful tool was another Grout, a female, no doubt a prisoner somewhere near. The words read: “Take heart. Their leader is weak. We are ready at dawn after the next full moon.”

  “I don’t remember this language,” interrupted Aarvord.

  “You were a male child,” said Justice, with sympathy. “It was spoken only to me.”

  Aarvord felt the old stirrings of jealousy. His sister had always been best beloved and now it seemed she had secrets she had never shared with him. Indeed, she had been a beautiful young creature, and winsome, but her perf
ect fatness was gone. She was quite possibly ill, he noticed for the first time, and ill in mind as well as in body. Aarvord’s jealousy shrank back inside him.

  “So what then?” he asked.

  “I passed on the word,” said Justice. “I used the secret language to do so. Those around me took heart. The females shared the news with the males. We were very careful.”

  She coughed: a dry, brittle sound that echoed in the small cell. Aarvord waited as she caught her breath.

  “Someone betrayed us,” said Justice. “Or so we think. The dawn after the new moon came, and we waited for our messenger to come to us and give us direction. But no one ever came. On the next day, the Shrikes gathered us together and told us we had failed. They seemed very nervous. We were told we were no longer useful. They looked us over and picked out the few that they would keep as slaves. I was chosen. Little did they know that I had been instrumental in planning the rebellion. The rest they…they took away.”

  “For what?” demanded Aarvord.

  “They would find out how we worked,” said Justice. “How and why we are tool bearers. They wanted to—take us apart. Like machines.”

  Aarvord could not speak. What she had said was horrible.

  “Perhaps to improve upon us,” continued Justice bitterly. “And do better than we could at breaking the infernal rocks.” She paused. “But,” she added proudly, “no Grout gave up a single secret. They all died honorably. And from it the Shrikes have learned nothing. Nothing at all, I am sure.”

  “So if they won’t free us. You and me, I mean,” said Aarvord gruffly, staring down at the floor. “Why do they want me?”

  “I can’t tell,” said Justice. “But I do know that they forced your betrayal of your friends for no purpose other than to torment and divide you. Perhaps to throw fear into the young Eft. The Shrikes didn’t need you to imprison your friends. I could have told you that, if I’d had the chance. All useless. Wasted.” And here Justice gave that raspy, barking cough again, which sounded like a laugh.

  Aarvord felt more miserable than he had ever felt. He had succeeded in alienating and angering his friends, and for what? Justice was still a prisoner. He was a prisoner, too. Would Tully and Copernicus ever forgive him? Even little Fangor hated him, now. But he had tried. Justice was his only true family. He had had to try.

  Later, when Aarvord had run out of things to tell Justice about what things were like back in the city, and how their aunts and uncles and cousins were doing, and how their parents had passed away peacefully (one spring after another, on the very same date), he tried to sleep. As soon as he had drifted away, the clacking, stammering voices of the Shrikes began to invade his dreams.

  “On your feet!” shrieked a voice.

  Aarvord stood obediently, unused to being a prisoner. Justice merely lay there sleeping, as if she were no longer afraid of the Shrikes and what they could do to her. He wondered that she did not even wince at their terrible, strident voices.

  “You have outlasted your purpose,” said the Shrike. “You must come with us.”

  Aarvord was uncaged and led away. As he followed his captors down the long, dark hallway, he had the unsettling feeling of being unsure of whether this was a dream or not. He knew of what Shrikes were capable: It was exactly this confusion. And the dreams they spun could seem to last for days. He turned back to look for Justice, but she had already disappeared in the gloom.

  *

  While Aarvord was roiling in his own misery, Copernicus was driven on by anger. He whipped down the hallway silently, hissing under his breath in as tiny a voice as he could muster. “Bite thossse ssshrikes in their sssleep!” he cursed, and he thought of biting his old friend Aarvord, too. Aarvord who was friend no more and could not be forgiven. But why, thought Copernicus, did Aarvord lead them into a trap that need never have been sprung? The Shrikes could just as easily have taken them while they slept and recovered from their fall through the snow. Why use Aarvord for their foul purposes? It made no sense. The more Copernicus pondered it, the more his anger was replaced by a cold determination.

  Snakes such as Copernicus were easy to anger, but just as quick to drop a grudge and to have hot emotions cool precipitously. They were logical creatures by nature. Copernicus’ inherent logic told him that the Aarvord he knew would never betray them, not for anything. Aarvord had been tricked and used. If Aarvord was meant to seem like an enemy, it was because the Shrikes wanted him to be. The group, divided, could not defeat the enemy if they were caught in their own anger and hatred. That was it. Copernicus felt burned by this knowledge, yet cleansed. Aarvord had been his friend for a very long time, and he could not let that go so easily. Snakes were loyal, and Copernicus was no exception.

  He had been born the eighth in a litter of snakes—the smallest, the runt. Unlike Ells, Efts, and Wents, snakes had two parents only. To them, the Trilings were an inescapable oddity of nature, as much as plants that spawned young without any parents at all. Trilings were a mystery that intrigued the scientists and baffled the others.

  Copernicus had always remained small. His four sisters and three brothers grew fast and large, and tempted him into antics that amused them and left him in precarious situations. The time that he had tied himself into a small knot in the garden, and had been left there after dark, was a painful memory that had softened with time; he could even laugh about it now. There was also a game they would play called “Whip the Snake,” in which they would grasp his tail in their mouths and fling him around until he shot like an arrow over the hedges.

  His parents had been a strangely besotted pair, so concerned with gazing into one another’s unblinking eyes that they failed to notice what their young were up to. Copernicus’ father wrote terrible love poetry to his mother, and she reciprocated by singing equally horrible songs in her hissy, atonal voice. After a dinner of raw Dull Crickets, they would entertain the children with sinuous dances that, often as not, ended in one of the dreadful songs or poems.

  One day, Copernicus’ mother had discovered something odd in the nest. It was a book made of papers bound together by reeds, hidden under the soft fluff and leaves that lined their sleeping quarters. She pulled it out with her jaws and flicked it open.

  Copernicus’ mother, whose name was Slithellesse, could not read. It was not a shameful thing among the simpler beings. Dualing scholars and scientists were well-read and educated, and could write in the universal language. Slithellesse was a simple sort of creature who kept to herself, not given to worldly knowledge.

  Most Dualings did not write nor care to write; everything was passed by word of mouth alone. A universal language allowed them to communicate from species to species, and it was considered the greatest advance of the modern era, for long ago separate languages had flourished. Now only a few small pockets of isolated creatures spoke their own unique languages, and did not know the universal speech.

  Among all the species, stories were told, and retold, and there was a common knowledge of what creatures populated the earth, and which ones were dangerous to one’s own kind. Dualings had wise memories that spanned generations, and constructing a code to record their ideas and stories seemed superfluous. Very few could imagine a time when their words would be needed as permanent record, for wasn’t every small snake a bearer of memories of all that had gone before him? Wasn’t every Grout the sum of everything that had preceded her?

  Slithellesse did not know what the book was. She barely knew to call it a book. Instead, it seemed a delightfully compact way to construct a soft nest. She tore it apart with her strong jaws and made scraplets of bedding from the leaves, which seemed to her to have a buttery softness that actual tree leaves did not possess. She liked that the pages were covered with a rich and varied design of black upon white—the only colors that snakes could see—and so stark! Slithellesse was pleased.

  But when her husband found out what Slithellesse had done he was enraged and devastated. He came into the nest one night and saw the scrap
s of paper covered with carefully handwritten words, and flew into a rage. Why had she taken it? Did she know what it was, even? Slithellesse could not answer. “Besides,” she had said, “it is a foolish little thing, and no one can understand what it says.”

  Copernicus’ father had told her the book was his. He had made it. He had learned to write the symbols, in secret, using a writing tool clenched in his jaws. And he had made a book. It told his own unique life story. It was to be the genius of the Dualings, and to make him famous and admired. He was but a snake, but he could be bigger and better than his people expected.

  “But why?” asked Slithellesse, genuinely puzzled. “Why try to become like the wise scientists and thinkers? Those symbols are theirs, not ours. What use do we have for them?”

  “You’re a stupid creature,” he had said, and from then on the mood around the nest grew sour. The poetry and songs ceased. Copernicus tended to think of the time “Before the book” as a happy, playful time, and “After the book” as a time that was dour and filled with sadness. His father was often silent and preoccupied, and disappeared for long stretches at a time. They all assumed he was off working secretly on another book to replace the one he’d lost. He never produced one; or, if he did, he never shared it with them. Slithellesse could never understand why what she had done was so unforgivable, and so she grew petulant and querulous. She harangued the young snakes until, one by one, they left the nest to start their own families. All except for Copernicus. He stayed and took care of her as she grew crabbed and bent, despite his increasing resentment of her demands and moods.

  He rarely spoke of his family around his friends, except for Aarvord. Aarvord knew the truth and never mocked or commented, despite the Grout’s propensity for opinionated outbursts.

  Copernicus wondered if his mother was thinking of him now, and if she felt abandoned. Maybe in his absence his father was being kind to her again, although he doubted it. The old snake was hardly the type to change his mind once he’d set it. He was unusual among his kind for this lack of forgiveness—a trait that no one had suspected he had until the moment when the book was discovered destroyed. But why a book? What had his father intended to say with it, that he could not say out loud or through the gifts of memory?