The Hundred: Fall of the Wents

by Prescott, Jennifer

  Snell’s face was suffused with rage. Like his master, he was clearly mad. But his madness lacked the gifted intelligence of Pomplemys. He had no ability to control it.

  In pain as he was, Tully would not stop. “A Dualing is what you are and will always be. A weaker, lesser thing. Everyone knows that the Dualings are stupid and can never hope to achieve the great things that the Trilings have. Your master doesn’t respect you. He thinks of you as an animal.”

  Tully had said the worst thing imaginable. No sentient being called another an “animal” unless it meant a fight to the death. Animals were from a time long ago, when many beasts had not sense or language. Animals were the skins and bones that decorated Pomplemys’ chambers.

  “I am no animal,” roared Snell, rushing at Tully so that his bony forehead struck into Tully’s thin chest. Tully gulped for air. Aarvord was looking at him with a pained and grim expression. Every word that Tully had said was a personal insult to him as well. Aarvord fought hard to recognize that Tully was playing a game with the UnderGrout—a game for their very lives. Very well, he would participate.

  Snell had stood back and was breathing heavily.

  “You want to kill me, don’t you?” asked Tully. “But I am an Eft, made in the same shape as your own beloved master. Do you want to kill him as well? Has he mistreated you?”

  “I love my master!” bellowed Snell. “He has made me what I am.”

  Now Aarvord spoke: “If he had made you better, you would have been a Fantastic Grout such as I am, capable of many strange and wondrous things. Or a Frothsome Grout, as my cousin Hen-Hen, gifted with superior intelligence and power. He made you lesser—an UnderGrout, so that you would better serve him.”

  This last sally seemed to strike Snell to the quick, for he visibly deflated. But then he was angrier than ever, and rushed at Aarvord with a hot piece of steaming scrap from the fire. Aarvord ducked his head to ward off the blow, but when Snell was within a foot of the big Grout two large and fearsome appendages formed from his hips and caught Snell in an iron grip. They had pierced the skin of the UnderGrout, who sobbed and cried most fearfully. Tully was aghast; he had never seen Aarvord produce anything of the sort, nor anything with such violent potential.

  “Oh, the pain!” shrieked Snell. “Let me go! Let me go!”

  “I will not!” said Aarvord. “Until you release us. Use the keys and free me.”

  Snell did as he was told, sobbing pitifully. Aarvord had pinioned him so that his legs dangled above the stony floor of the cave. He could barely work the keys to release the manacles, as reaching behind Aarvord to free the big Grout’s paws caused him terrible anguish. After several tense minutes he had achieved it and, once released, Aarvord clenched his paws before him to bring the blood back into them.

  Snell still hung trapped in those cruel appendages extending from Aarvord’s hips. He had gone slack with pain and terror.

  “Release me,” he moaned. “Let me go, and I will trouble you no more.”

  Aarvord had a thought to throw Snell into the fire, but the Grout was technically one of his own kind and the thought repulsed him. Instead, he pulled back the knife-like appendages in one quick stroke, and Snell fell to the floor, bleeding from the dual wounds in his abdomen. He would likely die from the injuries, but there was no time to worry about him.

  Aarvord freed Tully with grim determination. Neither could look the other in the eye. Tully was distraught at the violence he had witnessed and Aarvord was wounded by all the statements Tully had made about the superiority of the Trilings. Their friendship was once again on a difficult footing, but they had to be allies no matter what.

  Copernicus had recovered and was quite alert.

  “We should kill him,” said the snake. In his estimation, dangerous beings were not best left alive to trouble them again.

  “No,” said Aarvord. “We will not be those kinds of creatures. I fear he will die from his wounds anyway.”

  Snell lay on the ground near his forge, clutching at the two awful wounds inflicted by Aarvord’s grasp. Tully almost felt sorry for him. He was one of Pomplemys’ pawns and had not wished this life for himself.

  “If he does die,” hypothesized Tully, “I think that Pomplemys will know it at the moment it happens. They are as one. We should go.”

  He looked down at Snell with pity. Then he bent down to say a few words of comfort to the Grout, as was traditional whenever a Triling passed from the earth. He wished he had had the time to speak the same words to Nizz, and even to Deressema.

  “May your ancestors comfort you,” Tully began the traditional litany. “May you find a guide through the valley of death, and may you—”

  But Snell stopped him.

  “I have no ancestors,” said the Grout painfully. “I was made, not born. There is nowhere for me to go or find a home. But you—” and here he attempted to lean up and clutch at Tully. “What I said about the humans is truth. You are linked to them forever. There are things that I know and I know this.”

  “We must go,” beckoned Aarvord. “Pomplemys will not wait.” Aarvord gestured toward the dark tunnel and Tully, casting a last glance back at the dying Grout, followed.

  They paced on, always looking back to see if they were being pursued. Once Pomplemys discovered their escape, he would no doubt send his hellish magic after them. Who knew what form it would come in? Tully fully expected the tunnel to be flooded with water for he could hear it outside the walls at every step. In that case he would live, at least for a time, but his friends would drown. Some underground river must be tumbling just feet from where they stood and its proximity increased their thirst and desire for freedom. The bauble around Tully’s neck had finally cooled, although the patch of scales where it had rested against his chest was painful.

  After another thirty minutes or so they paused in their descent down the tunnel, for there was a small chamber off to the left. Tully paused; something in the chamber seemed to call out to him. He must see what it was. Aarvord put out a great paw to stop him and Tully shivered at the menace in his friend’s attitude.

  “We have no time,” said the Fantastic Grout.

  “Snell was guarding many important things,” argued Tully. “We should not abandon them. Perhaps it is another prisoner, like us?”

  Copernicus agreed, reluctant to leave another soul in the clutches of the mad old Eft. Aarvord agreed to let them explore the chamber, albeit reluctantly. He would stand guard in the tunnel and alert them to the least sign of trouble.

  Tully, with Copernicus still about his neck, stepped into the chamber. It was lit with an eerie and phosphorescent glow. They could at first not guess the source of the light, for it flickered and shimmered on the walls of the chamber, cast from many directions. The chamber seemed perfectly round until they realized that they were looking at some kind of spherical craft that almost filled the chamber entirely. It was round and was built of dark metal riveted together in thick seams, and a glass dome on the side facing them allowed them to see the intricate workings inside. There was a type of steering mechanism, a chair that would be just the right size for an Eft, and a dashboard of knobs and buttons.

  Through this glass they could see another glass dome on the opposite side of the ship, and through that they could see a shoal of bright and glowing fish swimming. They, and other creatures that slowly tumbled by in the watery gloom, were responsible for the greenish light that lit up the interior of the craft. The group must be at the very face of the ocean.

  “Oh,” said Copernicus slowly. “What could it be?”

  “It is a craft to explore the ocean,” said Tully. “A Bathysphere. My Wents told me that such things existed. Only scientists have them, of course—but then Pomplemys would have wanted one.”

  “So far from his home?” murmured Copernicus. They both instinctively looked up, and sure enough there was a wide hole with a ladder in it, rising straight up from the roof of the chamber. For all they knew they could have been travelin
g in wide circles this past hour and a half, and Pomplemys could come down that ladder at any moment.

  “How does it get out?” said Copernicus, craning his neck around the chamber.

  Tully pointed to the entryway to the chamber, where they could see metal doors that lay flush with the edge.

  “No doubt those shut, and another opens, and then the sea rushes in,” said Tully.

  In another instant, they both gasped, for in the far window of the Bathysphere had appeared an eye. The eye was larger than any they had ever seen—inky black, with deep furrowed lines above and below it, as if it were very old indeed.

  This was enough. Tully turned and ran, Copernicus flapping around his neck in much consternation. That thing with the eye was too terrible, far worse than the devilish old Eft who could be coming down the ladder at any moment, to fill the chamber with sea water, to feed them to the thing with the eye.

  They burst back into the tunnel where Aarvord was waiting.

  “What did you find” Aarvord gruffed.

  “Run,” said Tully shortly, and Aarvord did not wait for an explanation. They fled with all haste down the tunnel and toward what they hoped was safety, and light, and air.

  Chapter Twenty-Six: The Pods

  Hindrance had been asleep for many days now. Or was it weeks? Her sleep was troubled and brought her no comfort. At times she had moments of lucidity and could remember the passage of events that had brought her here. But then she would be overcome by a sensation of lightheadedness, as if her head were not attached to her feet. She would feel she was falling, or drowning in the air, and only her strong mind kept her sane. “I will not fall,” she thought every time this happened. “I cannot fall, for I have been through worse valleys of death and have lived. Someone somewhere is counting on me to remember who I am.”

  As ill luck would have it, Kellen had also been swept up in the group that had been brought into the inner chambers. They had quickly seen that they were not the first Wents to have been brought to this place. In neat rows, all up and down the dark room they were in, Wents were stationed in curious pods. Each pod, made of a smooth white material, was rounded at the base like a bowl and reached halfway up the height of each Went. The pods looked like the eggs of Scratchlings or Snakes, but shorn in half cleanly.

  Hindrance and the others stepped closer, and could see to their horror that each Went had been planted in a pot of earth, which formed the base of each pod, to both trap and nourish her. The Wents’ manners seemed catatonic, as if they had lost all caring.

  Hindrance’s gaze swept the chamber. A few Efts were prisoners there as well and were enclosed in a large tank of water, floating listlessly on the surface. She would have thought them dead except that she could see the gleam in their eyes and the flicker of movement as they turned their heads languidly to gaze at the new arrivals. Above, in the air, a group of tiny Ells wove their way among the pods, pausing to alight among the petals of the Wents, tuck inside, and then emerge. The Ells seemed desolate as well, and performed their duty with the barest energy.

  Hindrance recoiled when she realized that this chamber of horrors was nothing more than a breeding chamber. They were making Trilings here. For what purpose? Within a few days, at most, all these Wents would have given birth to their young—either a Went, an Eft, or an Ell.

  In the world, it was a miraculous and haphazard process. The Went and the Eft who made a Triling child need not even meet; the Ells who carried the pollens from one to the other made their strange biology possible. But more often than not, family units were formed of these connections, with the three-part parenting structure making the young Triling’s life richer and filled with caring and wisdom.

  This place had none of the miracles and none of the gentleness that was found in the Trilings’ natural biological process. It was a cold factory, with each member of the Trilings performing its role like an automaton. This was how Shrikes were made, Hindrance had heard. They had no parents and no love to speak of. But what purpose could they have in making more Trilings? Shrikes had no love of Trilings, or of Dualings, for that matter.

  There was no time to ponder it. There were plenty of open pods within the rows waiting for their arrival. Hindrance had just enough time to bring out one of the weapons in her arsenal. It was a little vial filled with a fluid, and she drank down half quickly. The rest she passed to Kellen.

  “Whatever they make from us,” explained Hindrance, “it will not forget our own memories. It will be as we are. Drink deep and we will have allies. Any children we bear in this place will be ours, and not theirs.”

  “I will,” said Kellen. “What of your other weapons?”

  “I have only some cimmaron petals that blind when tossed,” said Hindrance. “But their effects are temporary. We will never get out of here in time—not through those doors. But I will save them in case of need.”

  There was no more time to talk. Their captors had come to take them to the pods. Hindrance and Kellen were rudely separated and marched in different directions. They gave each other one last glance, for this might be the last time they saw each other. Their lives, as they had known them, seemed to be at an end. Before she was given a shot of something in the arm from a rough Shrike, and knew no more, Hindrance saw a newborn Went being pulled from one of the pods. It was a sweet young thing and it lifted its head. It gazed at her with an expression that froze the life-fluid in her veins. It was not a good thing; it was something the Shrikes had made.

  Then she was planted in a pod. For days after Hindrance dreamed of earth, and gravity pulling down at her, and things in the ground. Her dreams were heavy and drugged.

  *

  She dreamed of a tree growing in the earth. It was a special tree, a magical tree, and it had grown inside the compound where she had been raised by her three Triling parents: Ghrifea, the Ell; Polifero, the Eft; and Brackenspur, the Went. Hindrance had three older siblings, two Efts and an Ell. As the baby of the family, and a rare Went child, she was doted upon and given special treats and privileges.

  They had lived inside the city Circadie in a walled area with many fruit trees and flowers and quiet places to sit. There was even a pond where her Eftish siblings splashed and played. There was even room enough to keep three Axfel Drones so that they made their own cheese, which they traded on market days. It had been a simple and happy life. They had plenty to eat and no enemies. Hindrance understood that her family was better off than most; their compound was spacious and private. But they did not have servants as some well-off families did. Instead they made do themselves. Hindrance did not question her circumstances, for she did not venture much beyond her family compound and had little contact with others who may have had less.

  Hindrance had been born with an unusual gift: she could see into the minds of others and understand exactly what they were thinking. At first it had frightened and surprised her. She overheard the thoughts of her three parents, sometimes even while they slept and dreamed. She knew when she would be asked to perform some tiresome chore ahead of time, and made herself scarce—much to their frustration. She could even see into the dull minds of the Axfel Drones and recognized that they, too, had hidden emotions and a desire for freedom.

  Brackenspur had learned of the gift quite by accident when Hindrance had been too careless. In those days the Small War was three years in the future, but the races shared a mutual hatred, and brief skirmishes had erupted. It was known that packs of Dualings within the city would sometimes spirit away Wents or crush unwary Ells. There was no force of law to put an end to the terror that held the Trilings in its grip. Hindrance’s family felt safe within the walled compound. Scratchlings were the worst of all. Demimonde Hopgood, the Scratchling queen, had issued an edict that all Trilings were not to be trusted and that trade with them would cease. In her daydreams into which Hindrance spied, Brackenspur imagined how she would crush the Scratchlings if she could.

  “Blast her foul claws and rot her eggs,” Hindrance had autom
atically said aloud, and Brackenspur had raised her pretty white face sharply, interrupted in her milking of a Drone.

  “How did you know I was thinking of Hopgood?” the older Went had asked.

  “Not certain,” Hindrance replied. “But I was thinking of her, too.”

  A round of questions ensued, and Hindrance’s secret was out. The family decided as one not to speak of it outside their compound. Wents were to be placid, and Brackenspur did not want her only Went child to bring danger to them.

  This was not the only gift that Hindrance had. It was she who plumbed the mysteries of the Meal-Apple tree in their compound.

  The tree was very, very old. It bore Meal-Apples in the fall—bitter, tough fruit that was suitable for the Axfel Drones but lacked the tenderness or sweetness of the fruits of their other trees. It was gnarled and twisted by the winds and by the endless seasons it had lived. When the winds blew, the tree sometimes made low groaning noises like the sounds of an infant Eft in distress. Long limbs of the tree had bent low near the ground, low enough for Hindrance to sit and climb upon them. One limb hung right over the pond where her Eft siblings often swam and played.

  Wents were not particularly agile by nature and liked to keep their feet safely on the ground, but, as a young Went, Hindrance had been more daring. The tree felt like a kindred spirit to her. Indeed, her ancestors had once been rooted in the ground as much as this tree now was.

  Eventually the day came that she had heard the thoughts of the tree. She had been sitting on the low, curving branch that hung over the pond, gazing out at the high stone walls of her compound and wondering about her next dream day party. It was to be her seventh. She had overheard her parents individually and silently planning the event, making pitiful attempts to avoid her searching mind. Her parties were always wonderful events with many guests and presents. She did not have any particular friends, as she was a shy and rather peculiar young Went; also, her parents had kept her even more enclosed upon discovering her mind-reading gift. Still, the parties were great fun and she enjoyed the attentions showered upon her.