The Hundred: Fall of the Wents (19 page)

It was the next day for Tully and his companions. With the Veldstacks, they had determined to cross the river before more Shrike-craft were sent to intercept them. The crossing was difficult and frightening for Elutia. Tully, however, could stand the shocking cold of it easily, for he was born to live in all temperatures of water and felt quite at home in its spray. The water beaded effortlessly off the Kepper-Root fabric and barely touched his skin.

The Veldstacks plunged into the foam undeterred, keeping their footing as long as they were able. Then, untethered to the rocky river bottom, they began to swim with great surging motions, holding their heads high against the waves. While Elutia was splashed with icy water, she drew her legs up as high as she was able. Aarvord, being larger, could not escape the water’s grasp on his long legs, and his face was grim with the cold. He hated such temperatures but could withstand them.

At least Aarvord could hang on tightly with his clever adaptations. At every moment Tully and Elutia feared that they would be tossed into the river by the Veldstacks’ plunging, lunging motions. Even Tully would have been swept away in the strong current, and he worried on Elutia’s behalf. Into this same water, thought Tully, Copernicus had fallen, maybe to his death? Into a new world? Tully hoped the water had been warmer for the snake than it was now.

“Hold tight,” said Hollingworth, her gentle voice now strained and roughened by the experience of crossing the water.

The Ell that they had captured from the fallen craft was with them, and she was frightened and silent. Because she was injured and could not fly, she rode before Aarvord on the back of Burgess, clinging to the Veldstack’s mane with her six sticky legs. She barely took up any room at all.

The Veldstacks ignored her. Once they had determined that she was an unwilling assailant and a slave of the Shrikes, they had left her alone. Yet she was not terribly welcomed. So the Ell found herself in the strange terrain of being neither friend nor foe. She was a non-entity.

This she had become when the Hundred took over her life and body, leaving her a husk with a shred of individual soul left behind. But neither the Veldstacks nor Tully and his companions knew that the Ell was true to the Hundred. She would carry out their wishes, whatever those wishes were. She could still hear their buzzing, strident voices, telling her that she was loyal and brave and an honorable servant.

Eventually, her new companions would come to accept her, and even to like her. She would find a way. Then she would be of great use to the Hundred. She hung onto Burgess’ mane like death, and her expression was serene and remote. Aarvord studied the back of her head but could not find a suitable way to make conversation with her.

“Almost there,” murmured Burgess, as the Veldstacks once again found footing on the far side of the river. They strained to reach the edge and came out on the snowy bank, tossing the droplets from their coats and nickering with the cold.

“You will be safer here. The Shrikes don’t like to cross the water,” said Hollingworth. “They cannot fly or swim.” Tully saw that Elutia was stricken with cold. He remembered the heat-candles just in time, and gave her his own so she could tuck it under her robe to warm her legs. He saw that ice crystals were forming on the small tendrils that had grown from Elutia’s feet during her time as a prisoner. After some time, the Veldstacks carried on through the snow.

The tendrils did freeze. Elutia reached down and snapped them off like icicles, her face betraying neither pain nor emotion.

“That’s done with, then,” she said, half-smiling at Tully.

The other side of the river was flatter and the ground less rough, and the Veldstacks picked up speed to a rough canter, steam flurrying from their nostrils. It seemed that they were eager to be rid of the group that had brought them unwanted attention from their enemies.

Eventually in the distance they were able to see a golden spire outlined against the whiteness. It rose smooth and rounded, and then tapered at the top to a fine point. The spire was built above a squat, white dome that blended in perfectly with the snowy environment.

“Is that it?” asked Tully, and pointed.

“Yes, that is the home of Pomplemys,” said Hollingworth.

Another Eft! Tully felt a sudden longing to see one of his own kind, although he had been raised among Wents and had barely known Skakell, his own father. He had a jarring memory of the vision he had seen of Skakell imprisoned in his own cell. But, like all dreams, the vividness of it was blurred and faded.

They drew ever closer to the golden home, but their eyes were tricked and made snow-blind by the landscape. In what seemed a miracle, the sun broke through the clouds and illuminated the harsh land, although fog and mists still swirled and obscured their passage. The golden dome of Pomplemys’ home burned ever brighter, making the companions think of warm fires and food and laughter. Tully found himself repeating the name of Pomplemys like a mantra, placing into that name all the hope he had of fulfilling the mission that Hen-Hen had set for him: finding Hindrance and rescuing the Wents.

Then he remembered that Pomplemys was supposedly quite mad. What if he didn’t want them there? What if he sent them away again? Tully didn’t think that Elutia, for one, would even survive. She had torn off all the frozen tendrils by now, with stoic indifference, even though they had been her only means of getting food. Surely she had to have suffered and would continue to do so.

It was too late to wonder much more, for the Veldstacks had brought them to the gates of Pomplemys’ home. There was a thick stone wall surrounding the property, broken only by a large evergreen tree that had taken root amidst the stones and had grown up and pushed them aside to make a gap—or perhaps had been there before the wall was constructed. But the trunk of the tree was tightly wedged within the wall, and there was no entrance to be found here. The Veldstacks circled the perimeter looking for a gate. There was none to be found, as the stone wall was smoothly fashioned and appeared impenetrable.

“We must have to climb the tree,” barked Aarvord. “That I can do.” He jumped down off the back of Burgess and began testing the limbs for strength. The tree was thick with branches. Some were low enough for Aarvord’s stretching arms to reach. While he was clambering up, however, he cried out in pain and fell back into the snow. The tree had exuded some stinging sap that had burned hot divots into his flesh, and he rubbed snow on them to cool them. It seemed that Pomplemys did not care for visitors.

They debated for a while on the safety of climbing the wall, but the stones were so smooth there was nowhere for anyone to get a foothold. Tully tried to make some progress up the sheer face, but there was not even a crack into which he could wedge his thin fingers.

“I can go over,” said the little Ell, almost inaudibly. “I can fly over the wall. At least I can try, if I am healed enough.”

Tully glanced at her; she was hardly the appropriate ambassador for their group.

“We don’t even know your name,” he said suddenly. “What is it?”

The Ell looked stupefied and didn’t answer. Tully searched her face. It almost seemed to him that she had forgotten, although that seemed impossible.

“It is Deressema,” she said at last. “My name is Deressema. My friends called me Dee.”

She seemed to be lost in memory upon the speaking of her own nickname.

Tully felt a pang as she spoke her name, so like Desidere, his lost Ell-parent. This little creature even looked like Desidere; her face had the same sweet and pointed chin, and her wings were the same shade of blue.

“Very well, Dee,” said Tully. “You can fly over and see if there is a better way in. But we can’t be responsible for your safety once you leave us. It could be dangerous inside there.”

“I’m not concerned,” said Deressema. “I can fly very quickly.”

“When you’re not injured,” said Elutia sharply.

Deressema ignored the remark and flew off from the back of Burgess, in tight, erratic circles, testing her wings for strength. She favored her left side rather badly, but her wings were serviceable enough to get her over the wall and back again. The Veldstacks, whinnying with the cold and impatient for the lack of movement, watched her suspiciously.

All the while the little Ell was thinking hard. She did not know of this Pomplemys but if he was in service to the Hundred as well and she could make first contact with him, her work could be one step advanced. With this sort of protection around his home, he was evidently a wise and powerful creature. Such a creature could be a friend to Deressema.

She rested on Burgess’ back and gathered her strength again.

“You are sure?” asked Tully. “Just go quickly and report back what you see.”

The Ell nodded and, with some effort, flew up to the edge of the wall, and up, and up. A sharp buzzing crack was heard as she reached the pinnacle and she vanished entirely.

“What’s happened to her?” boomed Aarvord.

“She’s disappeared,” murmured the Veldstacks.

“Is she dead?” squealed Henredon, the colt.

“Good riddance,” muttered the old silver Veldstack. He seemed wearier than ever after the river crossing.

Deressema’s small body had not fallen, although they searched the snowy ground for her. If she had dropped, it was on the far side of the wall. They were no further to breaching the walls of Pomplemys than they had been before.

Deressema, meanwhile, was finding herself very uncomfortable indeed. She was trapped inside a clear jar on a high shelf overlooking a dark room lit by a roaring fire. She had no idea how she had been transported there; one moment, she was in the air and, the next, inside the jar. There had been a jolt of electricity throughout her body, which still stung but had not seemed to do any lasting damage. She still felt it humming through her as she looked up at the lid of the jar and found it full of breathing-holes.

The heat of the fire swelled up from below and made the inside of the jar feel very hot and close. Deressema looked out vainly for any sign of life. She was rewarded by the appearance of an old and wizened Eft, who stumped into the room leaning on a silver cane. His hair had been allowed to grow hideously long and it hung like kelp over his thin body. He, like Tully, was wearing j
erkins and vest of sea green, but the scales of his skin were mottled with age. They gave off no lovely glow that matched Tully’s, even in the firelight. He poured himself a mugful of some brown fluid from a jug near the fireside. He observed her shrewdly while he drank.

“A pretty pet for me, eh?” said the Eft. “And what are you doing trying to cross my wall? You and your Veldstack friends, eh?”

“Please,” said Dee, pressing herself up against the glass of the jar so that he could hear her. “It’s very hot in here. May I—?”

“Oh no, no, my dear!” said the Eft. “Pomplemys is no fool. Just because you are small doesn’t mean you don’t have dark magic at your disposal.”

“I am not with the others,” said Deressema, desperately trying her gambit already. “I barely even know them. I was their prisoner!”

“Indeed?” said Pomplemys, taking a deep draught from the mug. “And who are your friends, then?”

“I think you may know their name,” said Deressema cunningly. “Do you?”

“Ha!” laughed Pomplemys. “If you have come to play games then you are well above your head. Or, the lid of the jar is well above your head. I hope the air is acceptable?”

Deressema grew silent and watched him. He drank thirstily from his mug and she discerned that whatever was in his jug had a stupefying effect. He came closer to peer at her. She could see that his large green eyes were drooped and tinged with red.

“Yes,” he said, suddenly. “Yes, you are small enough. You are an Ell, are you not?”

Deressema nodded sullenly.

“I may have use of you, then!” he cackled. “I found something in my travels that requires, shall we say, a very small creature to unlock its secrets.”

Whatever it was, thought Dee, she would do it, just to get out of this infernal jar! Already the heat felt as if it were melting her wings. She nodded again, deciding that silence was the best approach with this old sea-lump. In her former life, she had played with Efts, like Tully, and had been a joyous and flighty thing of the air. That was before the Shrikes had caught her and introduced her to the Hundred. Everything was her enemy that did not serve them.

“Good, then!” shouted Pomplemys. “Tomorrow, I will let you out of the jar. Tonight, you will tell me everything you know about your friends—or not-friends, as you say—that are out beyond my walls.”

Deressema had no compunction about protecting the group, but she was still uncertain as to the loyalty of this Pomplemys to her own master. Without thinking, she blurted out: “They have come to stop the Hundred!”

“Is that so?” said Pomplemys, his green eyes opening very wide. “The Hundred, you say! Very interesting. Very interesting indeed.” He placed his mug down on a table and strode from the room, his cane tap-tapping. Deressema was left in the jar, with no knowledge of whether what she had said would help her cause—or hinder it.

*

Back at the stone wall, the younger Veldstacks had grown cold and huddled under their mothers for warmth as they had done when first born. Henredon was no longer his lively self, and his eyes were brimming with half-frozen tears that he constantly blinked away.