The Hundred: Fall of the Wents (28 page)

There was a heat ahead of them—a great heat. They could feel it, and they ran toward it. It warmed Deressema and gave her strength. She flew from Bax’s shoulder and forged ahead. The snake had also loosened himself from around Natty’s neck and was now streaming over the rocky floor. She could see him bathed in a flickering light coming from somewhere ahead of them. Nizz was in the lead of the group, flying with mad haste toward the heat that would save them from this terrible cold.

The children were a few paces behind them, staggering along; the cold had weakened them. Natty wanted to call out “wait” to the others, but even her voice seemed frozen. She pulled Bax by the arm and found his skin to be colder than ice. She could no longer feel her feet. She stumbled and then fell. She felt Bax fall as well, and knew that they would never have the energy to rise again.

Then suddenly there was a shearing, rending noise, and Deressema and Copernicus and the bee felt their bodies hurtled, turning them end over end, tumbling them against one another in the darkness and blinding them to all sensation. And then they were in the Great Room of Pomplemys. The children, however, were not.

In the darkness of the hallway, the only light came from Aarvord’s glowing appendage, dangling from his forehead over the little wooden box. Aarvord grunted and his body was cloaked in sweat. Tully and Elutia were also awash in fear. It had been some time now and Aarvord had not succeeded in repairing the broken hinge. He applied all the strength in his supple fingers, curved and gnarled to resemble metal tools. The hinges seemed to resist his every effort.

He had, however, been able to smooth the dented edges and remove the dings in the wooden exterior—an effort that Tully thought was a big waste of time. Who cared if the box looked pretty? It just had to work. But Aarvord was a perfectionist in his craft, and they dare not insult what he was doing in case he might lose heart. These cosmetic fixes took only a moment of his time, after all, and he seemed to take pleasure in seeing the box regain its luster and smooth edges.

“There’s something we’re not doing!” cried Elutia. “This isn’t like ordinary boxes, is it? Everything about it is magic. Will it take magic to fix it?”

“If it did, wouldn’t Pomplemys have fixed it himself?” shot back Tully. The close quarters and the darkness and the fear had started to unravel his composure. At any moment the old Eft would wake up or his minions would come and find them. Then there would be no pretense. They would be enemies, indeed, and perhaps confined to some awful dungeon.

Aarvord paused. “She’s right,” he said heavily. “Someone with great magic made this box. We don’t have that magic. All we have are dull tools.” He held up ten fingers, each in the shape of a different mechanism.

“Great magic,” thought Tully, “which Hindrance had commanded.” But she had not shared how or why.

“We just have to shut the box to bring them back,” said Tully. He tried to force the lid but it would not bend. He felt like crying with frustration.

“There is more than one way to alter a hinge,” said Aarvord grimly, and he snatched the box from Tully’s hand and headed back to the main room, where the fire still burned. They quickly followed. He stood before the great mantel with the tusk of the Ele-Fant, and traded the box from paw to paw, contemplating.

“Don’t!” said Elutia, seeing what Aarvord was about. “The fire will just burn the box, not melt the hinge.”

“Yes, but there is something curious about this fire,” said the Grout. “You see how it burns and burns with no wood added, no fuel at all? This fire is no ordinary thing. It burns hot—enough to warm the sky and the gardens and make this place feel like endless summer. You see?”

Pomplemys snurfled in his sleep and gave a loud barking cry of “No! No!” which seemed to galvanize Aarvord. He configured two fingers on his right hand into the shape of tongs, and extended the box into the fire with the hinge dipped into the fiery heart of the flames. The fire licked at the wood of the box, but it was unharmed. The hinge grew white-hot. Aarvord pulled it from the fire and, with all the pressure of one of his huge, muscled arms, pressed the lid tight and firm. There was a wrenching sound in the air and the box blistered and broke apart completely. The wood shards shot out from under Aarvord’s arm, as if fired from a gun, and the lid ricocheted off one wall and into a cabinet, shattering the glass. Aarvord gave a yell of astonishment, for there on the hearth were sitting the three missing travelers: Copernicus, Nizz, and Deressema. Aarvord reached for his friend and clutched him close, squeezing the snake a bit too tight for comfort.

“Hands off!” shouted Copernicus, clearly disoriented. Deressema seemed well aware of what had happened, for she took flight immediately and shot down the darkened hallway into hiding. Nizz just lay there, as if dead.

The shrieking noise that the box had made when it was broken had woken Pomplemys, but only for an instant. His eyes shot open and they were bleary and bloodshot. He looked around and murmured, and then fell back into his stupor.

Tully then noticed Elutia, who was making small noises of distress. Her hands were fluttering around her midriff, and when she pulled them away he could see that one of the wooden shards of the box had struck her and embedded itself within her flesh. Her white clothing was stained with a greenish sap and Tully realized with horror that this was her blood. He had never seen a Went injured before, not in all his years with the four who had been his constant companions. He rushed to her side and helped her to sit, and then called for Aarvord. The Grout flung the snake around his neck and bent over to assess the wound.

Copernicus was now coming to his senses. “My friends!” he said. “Where are we? What is this place? What happened to the children?”

“What children? They were with you?” asked Tully, holding Elutia’s small hand in his own. She was trembling. He glanced over at Nizz before the fire, but there was nothing he could do for the bee now. It lay on its back, its legs curled up above it. It was surely dead or hideously damaged, and he could not bear to take his attention away from Elutia. She was growing paler by the second, and her eyes were very wide and dark.

“What have we done?” said Aarvord. “What have I done?” His big flat paws hesitated and trembled before the shard of wood, not sure if removing it would do Elutia further damage.

“Can you help her?” asked Tully. It was impossible, he thought, that Elutia could receive a mortal wound from something that Hindrance had imbued with her own magic.

“I hear such pretty music,” said Elutia suddenly, and smiled. “And oh! There is the river. But there is no snow, anymore. It’s all flowers and bright grass.”

“She’s there!” said Copernicus excitedly. “She’s where I was. Do you see the mountains in the distance?”

“I see them. I’m flying to them now. I can see the river below me,” said Elutia dreamily. “This is what it’s like to fly.”

“Do you see the children?” asked Copernicus.

“Yes!” said Elutia. “They are waiting for me. I can see them. A little boy and a little girl.”

“That’s Bax and Natty,” said Copernicus eagerly.

“Bax and Natty,” said Elutia, with a worried frown. “But they are in trouble. They are trapped in a dark place. It’s getting darker and…I can’t see the su
nlight anymore.”

“Please,” said Tully to Aarvord, “you must get the shard out. Wake Pomplemys if you have to! He may know what to do!” Tully rose to his feet, about to roust the old Eft into wakefulness.

“Don’t,” said Copernicus suddenly. “I don’t like the looks of the fellow. He smells like something bad. Like death.” Copernicus’ eyes flicked to Nizz, lying prone and still by the fireplace. He whipped off Aarvord’s neck like a slick rope and slid to Nizz, poking at the bee’s body gently with his snout.

“No,” said Copernicus. “It can’t be.”

Tully was glad to have the snake’s attention distracted, although he was sorry for his pain and wondered if Copernicus and Nizz had become fast friends in that other world.

It was too late for Elutia, however. The Went had folded in on herself—like a dying blossom—and her head drooped over the wound with the awful sharp shard protruding from it. Tully did not think. He placed his hand on the shard and, with one swift movement, drew it out of her. With that, at that very moment, she vanished entirely from the room. There was a brief sigh, an exhalation, like mist. Tully groped for where Elutia had been, just a moment before, but there was nothing left of her at all. He clutched the shard to his chest, and Aarvord gave a curse of pain and despair.

“She’s gone,” said Tully. “What have I done?”

“Take heart,” said Aarvord. “She isn’t dead. She’s gone to that other world. She can come back.”

“How?” said Tully, holding the shard out in his palm. “How, when the box is broken forever?”

In the midst of their confusion and misery, something good happened: Nizz began to stir, and waved his legs gently in the air.

“Look!” said Copernicus. “Nizz is alive!”

But then Copernicus turned from Nizz and hissed loudly, for a stranger had entered the room. It was an UnderGrout, who had been tending the fire earlier, and he did not look half as stupid as they had originally supposed. In fact, he looked as sly and brimming with intelligence as Pomplemys himself. If it were not for the fact that they were different species altogether, one might have thought that the UnderGrout and the old Eft were related. Their facial features were astonishingly similar, from the shapes of the eyes to the twist of the mouth. With a shudder, Tully wondered if the UnderGrout was the result of some kind of scientific experiment—a clone made in the old Eft’s image. It would be like Pomplemys to have the hubris to try such a thing.

“What trickery is at work here?” said the Grout, in high tones of disdain and suspicion. His voice even sounded like Pomplemys’ own. “What have you done to my master?”

“Whatever he did,” barked Aarvord, “he did to himself.” And Aarvord gestured at the empty pitcher that had once held the brown, inebriating liquid.

“You’ve poisoned him!” shrieked the Grout, and rushed to his master’s side. He bent down and pulled Pomplemys’ face up by the chin, turning it from side to side. The old Eft groaned and smiled sleepily.

“We’ve done nothing of the sort!” Tully exclaimed.

“Treachery, treachery!” shrieked the Grout. He rushed to one of the many locked cabinets that lined the room and pulled a flask of something from it. This he took to Pomplemys and, prying open his lips, poured a few drops of liquid into the old Eft’s mouth. Pomplemys spluttered and sat up, awake and disgruntled. He clutched at his head and moaned. No doubt his drunkenness was a common occurrence, and this potion was a sort of antidote.

“Master,” whined the Grout. “This group of traitors was up to no good. They have broken into your cabinets and stolen things! They have destroyed a valuable item. See its broken pieces around the fire?”

Pomplemys looked hideously pale for a moment.

“The bones!” he muttered. “Snell! Are the bones safe?”

“They are safe,” said Snell, apparently the name of the UnderGrout. His eyes unconsciously flicked to a tall cabinet, and Tully marked its location. Whatever was inside—these bones—must be very valuable to Pomplemys.

Pomplemys sat up straight in his chair and took in the scene: Copernicus and Nizz by the fireside, Tully with a shard of the box in his palm, Aarvord still drenched in sweat from his exertions.

“Where is the young Went, Elutia?” he said sharply.

“She’s gone,” barked Aarvord. “She fled the house while you were sleeping.”

“A lie,” said Snell. “Nothing escapes these walls.”

“Search for her,” said Pomplemys. “And where did we find the snake and the bee? How do they come to join our merry company?”

Tully and Aarvord stared at him mutely, unwilling to give up the secret.

Pomplemys, now fully sober and recovered, leapt from his chair and wrested the shard from Tully’s grasp. He was surprisingly strong and he had snatched it before Tully could defend himself.

“Snell is right,” said Pomplemys, turning the shard over and over. “You have broken my pretty plaything. Stupid creatures! Your little Ell will never get back now.”

“But she is back,” said Copernicus, who still did not fully understand the significance of everything that was happening. “She came back through, with us. And she flew away.”

“Ah!” said Pomplemys, smiling now. He clapped his hands furiously. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” he said in a wheedling tone.

“She won’t,” thought Copernicus. “She is smarter than that.”

But, much to his surprise, the little Ell came buzzing into the room, hovering near where the wall met the ceiling as if she was afraid of being slapped down by enemy hands. She lit on Pomplemys’ shoulder.

“You were successful?” asked Pomplemys.

Dee preened and shimmied her wings proudly. “Indeed, I was!” she said, as loudly as she could, so that everyone in room could hear. “I delivered the children to the place where you told me.”

“Lovely!” laughed Pomplemys. “Perfect! You will be rewarded indeed. And none of this other nastiness matters. This treacherous group has nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. The children are ours now.” He beckoned to Snell.

“Go to the pit and collect them,” said Pomplemys. “If they are not in the room with us now then they must have been diverted there.”

Snell ran from the room. Deressema wondered for a moment at that. She realized that something had changed. Weren’t the children supposed to be delivered to the Shrike stronghold, not to Pomplemys himself? Suppose she had been tricked in some way? She nervously watched Snell’s exit and looked around for a way out herself, should something go wrong for her.

Tully had but a moment to think. Not only was Pomplemys mad, but also he had good reason to hate them now. It was likely he would trap them forever in some cage, or even kill them. But the mad creature had his weakness: his very valuable and repulsive collection of bones and skins and oddities. Snell had left the room, and Tully saw his chance to wreak havoc.

Tully snatched up one of the drinking goblets and ran to the tall cabinet, raised his arm, and smashed through the glass. Inside the door of this particular case, there were several trays lined with old, matted felt. The fabric looked as if it had been handled repeatedly—by loving or obsessed hands—as it was threadbare in places. In each of the trays there were several yellowish and chipped bones. Nothing was very sizable. All together, they could not have made the skeleton of a single beast or even a very small Eft.