The Hundred: Fall of the Wents (3 page)

Aarvord lived alone in the dank grotto that he called home, for he was the last remaining member of his family. He was a full fifteen years of age, almost sixteen, and he had been on his own for the last two years since his parents had passed on. He made do very well, for he had an older cousin who checked in on his welfare and made sure he had everything he needed. On more than one occasion the cousin, Hen-Hen, had invited Aarvord to come and live with him. But Aarvord preferred his freedom.

On his own, he could do whatever he liked at any time he liked. No one waited to see if he came home safely. No one told him what to eat or when to go to sleep. He had done much exploring of the city’s vast nooks and crannies on his own and with his closest friends, Copernicus and Tully.

Aarvord padded out to his kitchen to get himself a snack—toasted Dull Bees on salt-water cracker—and ate it with one quick flick of his tongue. The Dull Bees were cousin to the Boring Bees and supposedly lacked even the slightest whisper of intelligence. Boring Bees, on the other hand, were not food. No one with any sense would ever try to eat one, especially on a cracker.

A rustling sound alerted Aarvord. He turned and glanced down to see Copernicus wriggle in under the door crack.

“Don’t you ever knock?” said Aarvord imperiously.

“Can’t knock,” said Copernicus. “No hands.”

“Hrumph!” said Aarvord. A knock came at the door and he flung it open to reveal Tully. Aarvord wrapped him in a moist embrace.

“Tully! Recovered!” shouted Aarvord. “Did you get my gift? You looked so dreadful. Your scales were dull. And you were all pale and thin. Not fat, like Aarvord here.” Aarvord patted his substantial tummy.

“It was a nice rock,” said Tully, trying to put some enthusiasm in his voice. Clearly, Aarvord had forgotten all about the fight.

“Shiny,” said Aarvord. “Looked for hours. Found it in the Wildethorne Stream.”

“Ah,” said Tully. “Really thoughtful.”

“Hungry?” said Aarvord. “Dull Bee cracker for you?”

“No, thanks,” said Tully, who found the stingers of Dull Bees to be rough, tasteless, and difficult to swallow. Aarvord’s room was stiflingly hot; Fantastic Grouts adored the heat, and liked to drip with sweat. Tully found himself weak and faint again, but leaning on either of his friends for support (one fat and moist, the other a snake) was unlikely. Physical affection was rare between the three of them. So he slumped onto one of Aarvord’s low chairs and bent over, head in hands.

“Hoy there!” shouted Aarvord. “Still sick, eh?”

“A bit,” whispered Tully.

“But we have to find out where Tully’s Wents have gone,” said Copernicus. “That’s what I’m wondering, anyway.”

“Wents? Gone? What’s this?” said Aarvord very loudly.

“It’s true,” said Tully.

“Let us see if any messengers are about,” said Aarvord. He padded over to the window. The air was thick with dumb insects, skittering and wheeling against the sun. But then a cluster of Ells flew by and Aarvord reached out and beckoned them with his great paw. Most of the group flew on, but one young and breathless Ell lit on the windowsill.

“We have heard something of missing Wents,” said Aarvord. “Do you know anything about this?”

The Ell, her iridescent blue wings fluttering, looked behind her as if she expected something to jump up and snatch her clean out of the air. Aarvord held out a fat paw and she jumped a
top it.

“I am Hoa,” she said. “The Ells received a message. The Wents were in great danger. We were to bring them to the Mayhew Crossing at the center of Circadie so that they could mass against this threat. We all spread the message.” Her voice was a thin tremor.

“The Wents gathered. There were many there—all that the city contains and more, from the surrounding countryside. There was much excitement and confusion. But then a terrible shadow came—and they were eaten up as if they had never been. I saw other Ells crushed in the crowd—crushed, destroyed, do you hear me? Now it is coming for all of us.”

She looked about nervously.

“I must fly,” she said. “Hide yourselves, or the shadow will come for you as well.” Before they could ask her for more details she was out the window, winging northward to catch up with the glistening blue cloud of fellow Ells.

“This is disturbing,” hissed Copernicus. He did not think much of Ells, as they were flighty and anxious and the stupidest member of the Trilings, in his estimation. They were pollen carriers, messengers, nothing more. However, this Ell had told a troublesome story.

“I don’t like it either,” said Tully nervously. “What does she mean?” The thought of the shadow made him feel sick and weak. There were no enemies that he knew of who could take on such a form.

“We ought to go see Hen-Hen and find out what this is all about,” said Aarvord. “He lives at the Mayhew Crossing and he will know what has sent the messengers into such fear.”

Copernicus flicked his tail. “We’d best travel beneath,” he hissed. “If this ssshadow is abroad we don’t want it to snatch us up.”

“Just my thing,” said Aarvord, who was fond of the grit and slime in the city’s vast Underbelly. “And faster, too.”

“But the Bonedogs?” asked Tully in a shaky voice. “Haven’t there been Bonedogs seen down there?” He’d heard nightmarish stories repeated by other young Efts and Ells, with nothing more on their mind than a good scare. Pilau, an Ell his age, was one for telling horrid stories; she liked to get a good reaction.

And Kellen told the worst stories of all.

“Nonsense!” shouted Aarvord. “It’s a fine place, the Underbelly. All damp and dark and warm. I’ve heard a few things in the darkness, moving about, but I never
saw
anything. Probably not Bonedogs at all! Probably harmless little Spider-Bats.”

Tully wasn’t sure that this made him feel any better at all. In fact, he felt decidedly worse.

Like all Fantastic Grouts, Aarvord came equipped from birth with various clever tools. By clenching his paw, he could produce a respectable serrated edge that functioned as a saw. And by pointing one long, gnarled toe, he could fasten any screw or bolt. Now, as they moved through a pitch-black tunnel of the Underbelly, Aarvord lit the way with a dangling lobe of phosphorescence that protruded from his forehead. The light was green and sickly, and Tully could barely make out the quick form of Copernicus as he whipped his way along the stone passageway. But it was better than the inky darkness. He knew that Aarvord could produce a brighter light, but that took a lot of his strength and energy.

Aarvord seemed right at home. Occasionally the bobbing light tickled his nose and he slapped it aside, sending weird shadows dancing over the tunnel walls.

“I hear these tunnels were built by humans,” said Copernicus, his small voice amplified in the space. “Some of them fled here when the Great Cataclysm came, but it couldn’t save them. None of their hidey-holes did.”

“Humans! I’m sure they found it cozy and lovely,” said Tully, shivering. “How do you know that
humans
built this place, anyway? You don’t know a thing about them.”

“My father told me,” said Copernicus. “He knew things, he did. He knew about humans and cats and elephants and books and other things. Humans didn’t leave much behind thems, though.” Coper had a snakelike way of introducing an “
s
” when none was needed, a habit which irritated Aarvord to no end.

“Them, them. Them!” Aarvord shouted. His voice boomed down the tunnel and echoed back at them.

“Don’t you think we should be quieter?” asked Tully. “Who knows what’s down here?”

By Aarvord’s light, they saw that they were entering a cavernous space; the light seemed wan in the spacious darkness.

“Do you know where we are, yes?” said Copernicus, who had explored the tunnels before. “Is this the great room beneath the Mayhew Crossings?”

“There is only one Crossing,” snapped Aarvord. “But this doesn’t look right. It’s possible we took a wrong turn.”

Suddenly a great chittering, clacking noise began to fill the space, coming from what seemed like all directions. Copernicus wrapped himself in an instant around Tully’s ankle. Aarvord’s light winked out.

“Bonedogs….” sniffed Copernicus. “That sound is Bonedogs. And the smell.”

“Light!” squeaked Tully. “They don’t like light.”

Aarvord brightened the lobe of phosphorescence that protruded from his skull until it became a fierce spotlight. Under the light were what seemed like hundreds of Bonedogs, feeding on mushrooms and other detritus that lined the cavern floors. More were crawling out of tunnels with their wings folded tight against their carapaces, claws clacking, maws opening toothlessly. They were shaped like large, flat crabs, with domed blackish-green shells and beaks with two curving mandibles that met in the center. Their shells were covered with mottled oily-looking patches that met in a diamond-shaped pattern.

Tully had been warned from a very young age to avoid these rapacious creatures. He knew well how cruel they could be. Skakell, the Eft who had once raised him, had fought and killed a Bonedog during the outset of the Small War, twelve years ago almost to the day. Just before Skakell drove the killing blow, however, the thing had latched on and bitten him deeply on the arm, searing the flesh with its acidic mandibles.

Depending on the creature’s particular brand of poison, the bite of a Bonedog was mild at first, but the poison would spread and multiply in the blood until, months or even years later, the victim would grow suddenly weak and susceptible to the slightest touch. Even a drop of rain on the skin would become exquisitely painful. Skakell had not been able to hold his young Eft near the end, for Tully’s exuberant kicks and hugs were unbearable. Skakell could barely sleep, or eat, or endure a stiff breeze.

In the end, Skakell and Desidere, his tiny Ell companion, had flown away in a small craft to search for a cure, when Tully was not yet two years old. They had never returned. Tully sometimes imagined that Skakell had been made well and that he and Desidere lived on the far side of the world, and that one day they would find their way back to him. But Kellen had always told him not to hope for foolish things.

As Tully watched these Bonedogs in the Underbelly he realized very quickly that these were not like the others that Kellen had told such dour stories of around the fireside. They seemed not to see the trio at all.

“They’ve lost their eyes,” whispered Aarvord, for once appropriately quiet. “They’re blind as bats. The light doesn’t hurt them.”

All Bonedogs were blind by nature, but for thousands of years most had developed a symbiotic relationship with a breed of emerald beetle. The beetles clustered on their shells in thick rows, and used their multifaceted eyes to see for the creatures. These Bonedogs had lost their clever little eyes, and were as blind as nature had made them.

But Aarvord’s whisper stopped the creatures in their tracks, and they all as one ceased their eating and wiggled their antennae in the air. Tully’s own antennae twitched in sympathetic repulsion. The three travelers stood silent, pressed against the cavern wall. They waited, while the crab-things twitched. Then, one by one, the Bonedogs returned to their feasting.

Copernicus shot up Tully’s leg and up his body and whispered in his ear, as silent as only a snake could be. “This way,” he said, flicking his tongue toward a nearby tunnel that was, as yet, uninhabited by Bonedogs. They moved, step by step, while watching the creatures, which seemed too intent on their task to note the subtle sounds they made.

Down the next tunnel they went, into deeper shadow unlit by the shaft of light that had illuminated the Bonedogs’ cavern. Aarvord’s little glow light swung down and switched on. Tully had often wanted to ask him how he managed to command it in that way. It would be like asking one’s hair or scales to grow an inch, he thought. But now was not the time to ask. It seemed that they were lost.

“By the time we get there,” Tully complained, “there’ll be no sign of the Wents at all. Why couldn’t we just travel on the streets?”

“If you’re looking for someone to blame,” huffed Aarvord. “Don’t blame me. It was the worm’s idea.”

“Not a worm!” shrieked Copernicus. “I is a snakessss.”

“Am! Am, am, am!” bellowed Aarvord.

“Please stop,” begged Tully, who had begun to feel dizzy. He regretted coming on this adventure at all. He wanted to be back in bed. “I just want to find a way out of here, please. I want to get Hindrance back.” He clutched the little sphere of metal that dangled from his neck.

The tunnel seemed much narrower; in fact, it
was
getting narrower. Aarvord, in the lead, suddenly found himself at a standstill. He could wedge his bulk no farther.

“I can fit!” said Copernicus, and slithered up the rock face into the narrow space, which sloped upward.

“Very good for you, but what about the rest of us?” snorted Aarvord.

“Some light?” asked Copernicus.

“As you wish,” said Aarvord, and extended his wand of light out as far as it could stretch. He brightened the light, too, and Tully could hear him huffing with the effort. The light craned into the narrow hole, and Copernicus followed the beam. His tail whipped out of sight, and Tully and Aarvord waited. Copernicus was gone for a full five minutes. The gloom seemed to settle on them like dust while the light craned up the hole to guide Copernicus’ way. Suddenly, they heard a low hiss, and Aarvord retracted his light and held it over the now wet, shivering snake. Copernicus twisted himself up on the stone floor and wrung out the water.

“Never been so soaked in my life, yes!” he said.

“I thought water ran off a snake’s back!” said Aarvord.

“Scratchling’s back,” corrected Tully.

“There’s enough water through there to drown a snake, or either of you,” snorted Copernicus, sneezing out a great cloud of spray.

They listened while he told them of his discoveries, punctuated by little sneezing fits and coughs and exclamations of “yes!” peppered throughout. It seemed that, after a brief and narrow gap, the tunnel opened out into a great underground river that was flowing past with a rapid current. Copernicus had tried to battle his way upstream to gain some sense of where they might be, but he was almost swept away in the water. He had only narrowly managed to fling himself up to the crack and retreat to tell them his story.

“Nonsense!” snapped Aarvord. “There’s no underground river here. Hen-Hen would know about it. He knows everything.”

“Ah, but there issss,” said Copernicus. “There is.”

“You smell odd,” said Tully, suddenly. “Not like water at all. Like something else.” Aarvord plunked a flat paw into the puddle left by Copernicus, and licked a finger carefully. “Tastes normal enough,” he muttered.

“I swallowed some of it,” said Copernicus, “and I feel right fine.” But Copernicus suddenly felt a little thread of cold sadness steal into his blood, and he wondered why. He shook it off with the remaining water droplets.

Tully knew, though, that there were things Efts could sense that others couldn’t. Just like Aarvord had his tools and Coper had his smallness and deftness, Tully had his water sense. And water had moods. This water held a great sadness. Tully began to shiver.

“We have to go back,” said Tully suddenly. “Hindrance always said that if something went wrong I should wait at home for them. I should wait until they come back.”

“No,” argued Copernicus. “They won’t be returning. You heard what the little Ell said.”

“It is true,” agreed Aarvord. “They will not be coming back. Unless we go and find them.”

“They would never have left you if not for a reason,” hissed Copernicus.

“Something terrible has happened,” said Tully quietly, and to his great shame he felt his eyes prick and blur with tears, and he knelt down on the rough stone floor of the tunnel. He was cold. He felt Aarvord’s paw heavy on his shoulder.

When Tully finally raised his head he heard Copernicus and Aarvord still arguing as if he wasn’t there at all.

“Still, Mr. Water Snake,” said Aarvord, “You haven’t managed to get us out of this fix.”

“Yes,” agreed Copernicus.

“So we’ll have to retrace our steps,” said Aarvord. “We’ll have to head back toward the Bonedogs.” Even in the dim light, Tully could see the horror on the snake’s little face.

“Do you have a better idea?” Aarvord challenged, and Tully shook his head. Copernicus shook his entire length.

“But maybe there’s another way,” offered Tully, gesturing toward the tunnel. He saw that his hand trembled, so he clasped it tightly with the opposite hand to still it. “Maybe there’s a side tunnel we haven’t tried.”

“A tunnel filled with badness!” squeaked Copernicus.

“I remember a way,” mulled Aarvord. “When my sister and I used to play down here, we found a small passageway that came up under the Windermere.”

“You had a sister?” said Copernicus. “You have never told usss of a sister.”

“And you used to
play
down here?” said Tully.

“I had a sister, yes,” said Aarvord, hesitantly. “A great beauty. Her name was Justice.”

Tully somehow doubted that anyone related to Aarvord could be termed “a great beauty,” but he let that pass in light of the fact that Aarvord had referred to her in the past tense.

“She’s…gone?” he asked instead. “Dead?”

“She might as well be,” said Aarvord. “Oh, she may be alive. But we don’t know. She went away.”

As if to shut the conversation down at once, Aarvord turned and extended his light down the tunnel from which they had come and he lumped off. Tully shrugged at Copernicus and they followed. He was troubled by the mention of a mysterious sister. He had been friends with Aarvord for some years now and had known only that both the Grout’s parents had died of fever within a year of each other. But then again, Aarvord had been alive longer than Tully had. Aarvord had lived for almost six
teen summers, and Tully only twelve. Tully wondered what other secrets the Grout might have.

*

Aarvord was true to his memory this time. Like a blind-walker—one of the Walking Sticks who helped guide those who had lost their vision—he made his way through tunnels, left and right, right and left, until the floor began to slope upward gently. They emerged through some low-hanging fronds of Sassafras root beyond the Windermere—the lake that lay between the city and the far-off mountains. Tully was so glad to see the fresh light again that he felt he could drink it. Or perhaps it was the sight of the placid Windermere, where he and his Wents had spent many happy afternoons in picnics and boating outings.

A small craft was out on the water now, tacking upwind. Small figures—two young Efts and an Ell, he thought—worked the
sails and the tiller. Tully had swum in this lake and had seen young Efts beneath the water, in their Sea Change, gazing up at him through the gloom. He would enter his Sea Change as well, in a few years. It was then that he would spend more of his time within the water than without. He did not look forward to it, as it meant that he would have to make new friends. Most of them would be Efts.