The Hundred: Fall of the Wents

by Prescott, Jennifer

  The rest of the company in the room was still frozen, unsure of what to do or how to intervene. If they made a move, both Deressema and Nizz would be destroyed.

  “Tell me,” said Pomplemys. “Tell me what you did, so that we may fix it—if we can even fix something that your stupidity ruined.”

  Deressema flinched. She had been good and loyal, and this was her reward? To be trapped in a jar like a common criminal with the dreadful bee. There was nothing she could do but tell her story and hope that Pomplemys would show her some mercy. She wracked her memory for something she had done wrong, but she could not find it. She had done everything he had asked. That was all she could rely on; she would stick to it stubbornly.

  Deressema began to tell her story:

  “We arrived at the rock,” she began. “At first we did not know how to get to it, but we found a rocky bridge under the water. The bee and I flew, of course. The snake took a ride on the neck of the girl.”

  Here Deressema gave Copernicus a look of rank dislike that startled him. He could feel her enmity through the glass of the jar. What had he ever done to inspire such hatred? She hadn’t even used his name. He was now “the snake” to her.

  “When we reached the rock,” continued Deressema, “There was no wind.”

  “Go on,” said Pomplemys coldly.

  “Then came The Hundred,” gulped Deressema. “And they brought with them the wind. And so the stone turned and it rose and revealed the portal. And we went in. That is all.”

  “It cannot be all!” shouted Pomplemys, shaking the jar so that Deressema and Nizz tumbled over one another and bruised themselves on the smooth glass sides.

  “It is,” said Deressema, when she had recovered. One of her wings was bent and damaged. “The shadow would have eaten us alive if we had not fled into the portal.”

  “Fool,” said Pomplemys. “You did something. My fault, my fault. I left the task to a flighty and stupid Ell.”

  “No, no!” said Deressema, trying to recover herself. “I did everything. I am not magic. I did the best I could do.” Pomplemys was silent.

  “No,” said Pomplemys. “You have no magic. And no sense, either. But go on.” And now he smiled a bit at her. “Tell me what happened next.”

  Deressema whispered: “The children climbed down into the hollow underneath the rock. We flew down with them. The shadow-things were about to follow us, so we hurried.”

  Here she looked at Nizz as if daring him to refute her rendition of the events, but Nizz was silent.

  “The children became scared, then,” said Deressema. “They were very cold. We were frightened and we flew on ahead of them. Even the loyal snake abandoned them. We took the tunnel to the left, just as you had said.”

  “The first tunnel to the left, or the second tunnel that led to the left?” asked Pomplemys carefully.

  “The first,” whimpered Deressema, knowing that she had made an error. “And then something happened. I do not know what it was. It was a dreadful shearing noise, as if the rock was collapsing within itself. I turned back to look, and the children were lying on the ground. That is when everything went silent,” said Deressema. “The bee and the snake and I were here, and we knew no more of that other world.”

  “Something sealed the portal,” said Pomplemys. “Something ended the process before it was finished. Yet, if you had been quicker—” and here he stared at Dee through the glass. “If you had been better at the task, the children would be here now. And, if you did not care so much for your own self, you would have turned back to save them. You abandoned them in that tunnel, poor things. Who knows which of the Hells they are in now?”

  He smiled very coldly and cruelly. Tully felt a stab of horror. What did Pomplemys mean?

  “The first tunnel to the left led here, into my chambers,” Pomplemys continued. “The tunnel you were supposed to take, foolish Ell, led to Snell’s forge. The difference is of little consequence, but it further proves your stupidity.”

  “It was what we did,” said Tully. “We tore the box apart. It was not she.”

  “I know that well,” said Pomplemys, “and I will deal with you soon enough. So, two mistakes. One of hers, and one of yours. And I have no human children to show for it.”

  “Their mistake!” shrieked Deressema. “I did everything, everything!”

  Without warning, Pomplemys took the glass jar in his hands and threw it with great force into the fire. Even though Snell had not been tending it, the flames were still high and hot. The glass popped and broke, and Nizz and Deressema were consumed. Nizz was gone in an instant, as if he had never existed. But they could hear Dee’s small cries of anguish as the flames caught her. It was but a few moments, and then she had burned up like a flimsy piece of tissue.

  Tully started forward with a cry of anger and dismay. Copernicus, in horror, coiled himself tight around Tully’s ankle and shut his eyes so that he would not see his friend and his once-friend, false as she had been, destroyed. Aarvord, with his hands that could be shaped into hard and fire-resistant tools, reached into the fire to try to rescue Nizz and, perhaps, even Dee, but all he came up with was a shard of glass. It cut him as he curled his fingers around it, and a few drops of his blood welled up and spilled onto the stones.

  Tully was filled with rage. “How could you do that?” he shouted. “Our friend was innocent!” He thought of all the lengths he had gone to save Nizz from the cold. That the bee should now die by fire was a cruel joke.

  “If he were so innocent,” said Pomplemys, “you should have taken care not to destroy the things I cared about.” He gestured to the cabinet where the old bones—now dust—had lately rested.

  “We may have destroyed your musty old bones. But you took my box!” shouted Tully.

  “Ah, the box was yours? How curious!” said Pomplemys. “Hardly yours, if it was lying in the snow by the riverbank for millennia—until I found it!”

  “It was mine,” said Tully stubbornly. “Hindrance gave it to me. It must have fallen through another time portal; that’s how you found it. It was never yours.”

  “Really!” said Pomplemys. “Then this Hindrance must be very clever indeed. I will have to look her up one day. A most clever Went, eh?”

  Tully shook his head stubbornly, and out of the corner of his eye noticed Snell moving to the fire. The UnderGrout tossed a fine grey powder into the flames from a bag he carried on his shoulder. “What purpose could this act have—to bury the dead?” thought Tully.

  “Now you may hand over the device,” said Pomplemys. “Or others will be smashed as well.” He looked hard at Copernicus who shivered down the length of his body. He was small enough to be trapped in a jar like the one that had entombed Dee and Nizz.

  Aarvord could not bear to hand it to him, but he reluctantly placed it on one of the hide-covered ottomans and stepped back.

  “There, take it, whatever it is,” Tully said. “And now let us go.”

  Aarvord was so filled with anger that he seemed twice his size. In another moment he would lunge forward and snatch up the old Eft. His hands had formed into two axe-like appendages and his face was a dark and mottled green. Pomplemys, slight though he was, hardly seemed worried.

  “Snell,” he commanded. “Take them below while I decide what to do with them. Though I fear they will have little use to me, I suspect that the Hundred will want to meet them.”

  Snell advanced toward Aarvord first, and the Fantastic Grout made as if to slap him away. But Aarvord found that strangely his arms felt like logs, uselessly dangling at his sides. His brain felt woolen and muddy. Something was very wrong.

  Tully also felt suddenly sleepy and stuporous. His vision was blurred, and he gazed down to see Copernicus weakly lying on the floor at his feet. Before it got worse, he snatched up the snake and hung him about his neck. He saw Aarvord staggering and clutching for Pomplemys’ neck. But Aarvord stumbled and missed. Snell caught his wrists with thick manacles and secured him. The Grout tried to roa
r in anger, but he was limp and weak. Tully hardly felt the manacles being placed on his wrists. If only he could sleep! He felt Snell give him a heavy kick, right in the small of his back. He stumbled forward. Once again, they were prisoners. In fact, they had been prisoners all along—they just hadn’t accepted it.

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Snell’s Forge

  Tully awoke with a throbbing head. He was dreadfully hot. His arms hurt terribly and he realized that they were pinioned behind him. He was standing, chained to a wall. He felt what seemed to be a rope around his neck, and then realized it was the limp form of Copernicus. No one had bothered to remove the snake; they had left him for dead. But Tully could feel the faint flutter of Copernicus’ heartbeat on his neck. Chained to the wall next to him was Aarvord. The Grout was alert and awake. Clearly, whatever poison Snell had thrown on the fire affected the smaller creatures more.

  The heat was oppressive. But Tully could hear a low boom, boom, boom noise from somewhere deep within the rock. The sound made him salivate a bit, and he realized that it was water, striking at the rock. He longed to swim, suddenly—to be surrounded by water.

  “Where is the UnderGrout?” he asked Aarvord.

  “He thought I was still asleep from the poison he threw on the fire,” said his friend. “But my eyes were open and I watched him. He went down that passageway, there.”

  There was a dark tunnel leading off into the gloom, just tall enough for Snell to pass. It might be an escape passage for them, although it would be difficult for Aarvord to crouch that low. Through the passage, Tully could smell the clear, salty scent of the ocean. They must have been brought some distance in their stupor, but he could not think how Snell had dragged them both, unless it was through another form of evil magic. The smell of the water renewed him and gave him hope. Out there somewhere was an exit and freedom.

  The source of the heat, however, was of much greater concern. Before them was a pit or a forge of some kind, burning white-hot with a contained fury. It was not fueled by wood, but by some internal source of energy that bubbled up from the ground. Tully could not see deeply into it to gauge whatever was fueling it, but he found himself mesmerized by the white-hot flares and bursts on the surface of the bubbling pit.

  Strangely, the bauble around his neck began to grow uncomfortably hot, as if in sympathy with whatever was burning and brewing inside the forge. It grew hotter still and he longed to tear it away from his chest; only the fabric bag kept it from searing his scales. His antennae tingled. He noticed that the pit of fire gave off a light that danced off his scales—he could see pinpricks of light dashing around the cave when he moved his head from side to side.

  “What is this place?” he said to Aarvord.

  The Grout grunted in return and jerked his head to the side.

  “Go to sleep again,” he said. “I hear Snell returning. Maybe we can learn something.”

  Aarvord’s ears were much more finely-tuned than Tully’s. He shut his eyes quickly, hearing the plod, plod, plod of Snell’s steps finally emerge from the tunnel. After a minute, he carefully opened one eye.

  Snell had his back to the prisoners and was throwing something into the blazing pit. Whatever it was, it made the heat flare up even more, and Tully gasped involuntarily. He felt he would be burned alive just by his proximity to the fire. Breathing had become difficult; he felt that he could not get a breath to the bottom of his lungs. And the bauble burned him so! It had never been exposed to such heat before. He would have torn it off gladly if he could, though he was thankful that his hands were not free for he would have felt great remorse to let his necklace out of his care. Again, he longed for the water, which was so close, yet out of reach. Fortunately, the heat would be more pleasant to Aarvord than it was to him.

  Snell did not turn around, but Tully almost sensed him smiling unpleasantly.

  “Hot, isn’t it?” said the UnderGrout, who seemed aware that they were alert and listening. “It’s a terrible way to die, by fire, yes? Your friends would attest to that. But they cannot! They cannot speak; for they are gone. Burned and gone.”

  Tully opened his eyes. Then Snell turned and the vicious little smile that Tully had imagined was indeed on his cruel face.

  “This fire was made for the human children,” he said. “It is a source of power for the Hundred, and it has never gone out—not in the years that I have been in my master’s service. We have been building it and keeping it over time.”

  “Why?” said Tully, although it had become hard to speak.

  “Why, it is a fire of life!” said Snell. “Can’t you feel the power within it? The life force? The energy?”

  Tully could feel only the all-consuming heat, so he shook his head.

  “It will give the Hundred the power they need,” said Snell. “Then they will beome our most perfect masters indeed. They will reward us.”

  “You’re mad,” said Tully. “The Hundred are supposed to be nothing but shadows. Shadows that will eat you.”

  “The Hundred take many forms,” said Snell mysteriously. “Some of air, some of stone. Perhaps even some of water?”

  “The Hundred!” boomed Aarvord, no longer feigning sleep. “You go on so about them. Why do you and your master care for them so much? What power could they have over you? Why does it matter?”

  “The humans have been dead and gone these millions of years,” added Tully. “Do you not think that it was supposed to be this way?”

  Snell ignored Aarvord and turned on Tully with a vicious crouching motion.

  “You imagine that the Hundred and the humans are the same,” he said. “How foolish you are, to confuse the strong with the weak.”

  “If the humans turned into the Hundred, they are not so weak,” gasped Tully, his throat seared by the heat.

  “The Hundred are the strong ones,” said Snell. “They snatched life from the lesser ones as they should have. And they exist still while the rest of the weak humans sank under the rising seas. Existence is all that matters, is it not?”

  Tully tried to take a deep breath and his lungs felt scorched and flimsy.

  “Of course, the weak little humans do exist in a sense,” said Snell slyly. “Right here, in fact.”

  Tully glanced around but could see nothing; he was relieved to discover that the two children had not suddenly appeared, yet equally as disappointed that Elutia had not.

  “What do you mean?” he said carefully, not daring to hope.

  “Do you think it’s a happy accident that Efts have two arms and two legs and eyes in the middle of their heads?” said Snell, advancing on Tully. “No, my little Eftling. The humans did not die. They just evolved. They transformed into Efts. They became you.”

  Tully shook his head. “No. I want nothing to do with the humans!” he shouted. “I’m not one and I never was. Besides,” he added fiercely, his eyes burning with the heat from the forge and the melting metal in the pit, “Humans were Dualings. We’re Trilings. We’re better.”

  As he said it he felt a wave of guilt and also relief; there was the recognition that he had always believed himself superior to his Dualing friends. It just wasn’t proper to admit it. Yes, he had been special from the day of his birth. It had nothing to do with his love for his friends and his belief that they deserved equal treatment to him. He wouldn’t have hurt them or denied them for the world. But he was better. Yes, wasn’t he?

  Aarvord gave him a pained look and Tully felt terrible for saying what he had said.

  “I didn’t mean it,” he said. “Not you, Aarvord. Not Coper.”

  “The humans thought they were special too,” sneered Snell. “They thought they sat at the top of the evolutionary tree. Look where it got them. A scrap of something that rides inside the Trilings. But nothing left that can be called a ‘human,’ eh? Nothing left anymore, except the almighty and great Hundred.”

  Snell threw some more metallic scrap in the pile and the fumes from the writhing stuff burned in Tully’s throat. His necklac
e was so hot that it must surely be burning a mark above his heart.

  Tully thought about what the Grout had said. Humans and Trilings were too far removed to have ever been part of the same evolutionary branch. But what if he were right?

  What if something the humans had left behind had become him and his own people? He could not bear it. Unlike Copernicus and Nizz, he had not had the pleasure of knowing the human children, and seeing how bright and wonderful they could be. To Tully, the humans and the Hundred were one. Snell’s accusations disgusted him and he tore against his bindings in an effort to reach the loathsome UnderGrout.

  Something that Snell had said stuck with him, though. Snell was supposedly a perfect copy of Pomplemys, a willing servant who would emulate every emotion and passion of his master. Yet Pomplemys was clearly obsessed with the humans, or with the Hundred—which was which, Tully could no longer be sure. Pomplemys longed to have them back. He longed to meet them and serve them—perhaps he longed to add living specimens to his collection. But Snell had his own thoughts and opinions. He did not want the Hundred to supplant him. There might be a weakness here.

  Tully glanced at Aarvord. His friend seemed beaten and depressed. Tully’s words had had an unfortunate impact. He needed Aarvord now, like never before.

  But it was Copernicus, loyal Copernicus, who gave Tully hope.

  “Speak to him more,” whispered the snake. “Anger is his weakness.”

  Copernicus lay slumped against Tully’s neck, as if dead, but his words thrummed through the Eft’s skin and gave him energy.

  “And what are you?” said Tully, disdainfully. “A pitiful UnderGrout, a Dualing! You could only hope to achieve so much as the humans once did. Why, you are but a clone of your master! What? Could he not clone something that would at least resemble a Triling?”

  Snell turned fiercely on Tully and slapped him hard atop the head, where his antennae met the scalp. This was the most sensitive part of an Eft’s body and Tully cried out in pain. His antennae felt as if they could have been snapped in half by the blow. He longed to reach up and caress them but his hands were still pinioned.