The Hundred: Fall of the Wents (29 page)

When the glass smashed, the bones inside met the air and immediately turned to dust—a yellow, fine dust that rose into the air and clogged Tully’s nose and seared his eyes. He heard Pomplemys shout out behind him. But he did not stop.

Tully hurried to another cabinet that contained a strange device made of metal, covered with knobs and tubes. He had seen Pomplemys glance at it earlier. The glass on this was tougher and would not break easily. But, to his delight and surprise, there was Aarvord beside him, with a finger white-hot like a blade. Aarvord’s finger seared through the glass in this cabinet in quick, straight lines, and it fell out onto the thick carpet beneath. Tully snatched the device and held it under his arm. It was heavy and he wished that their remaining companions were larger than a snake and a bee.

Copernicus had sensed what they were about. Not knowing much about what Pomplemys valued, he began tearing at the leather and fur-covered chairs with his fangs. Deressema fluttered above in a state of agitation.

Tully held out the device. “I will smash it!” he cried. “Unless you give us these children you have caught and let us leave.”

To his surprise, Pomplemys smiled in a slow, languid fashion. “Very well,” said the old Eft. “Smash it if you must, young one. But then I will smash this.” And he held up the very same jar that he had used to trap Deressema. Inside it was Nizz. The bee, still weak, buzzed helplessly up at the lid of the jar. Pomplemys had been very quick. They had underestimated him, yet again.

Pomplemys smiled again at the discomfiture of the companions. Deressema was pleased; she had never liked the bee. She lit on Pomplemys shoulder again to clearly align herself with him, as well as to protect herself from any further outrages of the group.

Nizz waved an antennae weakly at Tully, in an effort to let him know that his life was of no consequence. Nizz sensed that he had not long to live. He tried to speak out but he was too weak, and no one could see his small gesture.

They were at a complete stalemate. Tully, Aarvord, and Copernicus stood together, facing Pomplemys who held the jar in his ha
nd. He seemed ready to hurl it to the ground at a movement from the trio. Aarvord had taken the heavy device from Tully and cradled it in one big palm.

The snake had wrapped himself around Tully’s ankle and was gazing at Pomplemys with beady-eyed malice. So this was the “friend” that Deressema had praised back in the older world! Deressema now sat on his shoulder, preening herself in a haughty manner. She cast one scornful look at the little snake and flipped her wings up at him in a rude gesture that Ells were known to use. Copernicus resolved that he would never again trust one of her kind, or the horrible old grizzled Eft. Blasted Trilings…but then, of course, Tully was a Triling Eft, and Tully was loyal and good. More than all of this, though, Copernicus was still concerned for the two children. He longed to see them again and to know that they were safe.

They stood in this way for many long moments, no one saying a word. Pomplemys continued to smile, secure in his cleverness. Let them think that he had many guards at the ready prepared to come and capture them, Pomplemys thought. He had long ago lost them all to a wasting disease that had entered his compound accidentally. He had allowed a visitor in out of the cold—in those days he had been more trusting. The visitor had been ill and had infected his entire group of servants. No, not only the servants. Everyone he cared about. He would not think of them. They had all died within days. His mind had not been the same since that dark time.

But then he had made Snell, and his loyal Wents. The process had been long and arduous, but it had resulted in a servant who was as like him as any being could be. Snell was entirely loyal and strong. The Wents were true to him, but stupid and lacking any gifts that true Wents would have had. He had intended to make more beings like Snell, but he had not acted quickly enough; that he regretted. But, Snell and his own magic were all that he needed.

Then Snell entered the room. He was alone.

“Master,” said Snell, sniveling with fury and sorrow. “There are no children down there.”

Pomplemys turned quickly as if to smite Deressema from his shoulder or trap her in his grip, but she was too fast. She flew up to the ceiling and hovered there, knowing that she had done something wrong and that now she would pay for it.

“Must there be traitors everywhere I turn!” shouted Pomplemys, the feathery antennae on top of his head bristling with impotent rage. He gestured at the small Ell, who was fluttering this way and that, as if she could escape him and his magic curses. “You turned. You turned against me,” he said coldly.

“I didn’t! I didn’t!” squeaked Deressema, darting from corner to corner as his eyes followed her. “I did everything you asked. It all went perfectly to plan.”

“Clearly it did not or the children would be here!” roared Pomplemys. “You have wasted my time!” He glanced down at the captive bee within the jar and clutched it as if he might squeeze it into shards. There was a small and brilliant flash of light. Then Deressema was in the jar as well, trapped with Nizz.

“Now if he is smashed, you are smashed too,” said Pomplemys very coldly. “You would do well to tell me exactly what you did, and the foolish mistakes you made.”

“I did everything,” sobbed Deressema. She was acutely aware that everyone in the room hated her now—from her recent mentor, to the snake, to the bee inside the jar with her who gazed at her with protuberant eyes that were filled with pity, and something else: disdain.

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 roar 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.