The Hundred: Fall of the Wents (39 page)

“Elutia,” whispered Hindrance. “That was her name?”

“What is wrong?” asked Tully, for Hindrance seemed to have gone into her mind and shut tight like a shell.

“The creature has passed on,” gestured Hatch, breaking the moment. They all looked up and could see Aarvord with the body of the Shrike-Grout slung over his shoulder, ascending the cliff to find a resting place. Aarvord walked woodenly and slowly under the weight, and after some moments he disappeared over the next pitch.

Hindrance began to sing in a low, sweet tone. It was a song of mourning for the Shrike-Grout, for Elutia whom she had never met, and for all the Wents that had been lost. The others were quiet as they listened. Tully did not know the words for he had never heard Hindrance sing it before; she had never lost anyone in his lifetime.

Beyond the forests, beyond the sea,

I will build for you a bower.

And in this place all things may grow

The tree, the root, the flower.

Your life was sweet, your life was good

And I shall not forget thee
.

The world has lost the songs you sing

But your spirit now is free.

Will we come to meet once more

Before the crystal fountain?

Will your blossoms harvest sun

In the shadows of the mountain?

“Very pretty,” said Hatch. “The Shrikes have no songs at all. I have learned all I know of music from my small friend.” He gestured at Fangor. The louse shimmied with pride.

“Thank you,” said Hindrance. “But I did not compose this song. It is an old song of the Wents.”

Aarvord appeared then over the rise without the Shrike-Grout, and they all ducked their heads down to avoid his gaze. His eyes were so bright with unshed tears and his rage so palpable that they could not look at him.

He came to join them and looked out over the bay, saying nothing.

Hindrance finally spoke. “Are there many dead of the Wents near the water’s edge?”

“None,” said Tully. “None that we could see.”

“We must look for them,” said Hindrance. “It isn’t right that any should lie unnoticed on the rocks below.”

They all rose and began the long descent again to the shore. The air was terribly still, and almost warm. The sea, also, was still. There was neither sign of life nor any sign of the dead.

When they reached the shore, they saw a disturbance in the water. First there were bubbles rising, and then a dark shape growing closer and closer to the air. They could see it darkening the water for a great span.

“A Shrike vessel!” called Tully, and they looked for a place to hide. But it was too late.

It broke through the water’s surface and they could see most of its length now. Whatever it was, it was alive, for it was made of skin and not metal. The water gleamed on its thick, bluish exterior.

“It is a monster come to eat us!” shouted Fangor. In the terror of the moment he laughed aloud, somewhat hysterically. The notion of this great thing opening its jaws to eat him, a louse, was quite absurd. Fangor could not stop giggling in a nervous, high tremor, and they all wished that he would be silent.

The head of the beast was now visible, and Tully could see its black and sad eye gazing at them. Its head was rounded, and its mouth vast and open.

It spoke: “So, you have come. You, the bearer of the bells. I have heard them ringing.”

“Bells?” said Tully. “We have no bells. Who or what are you?”

“I am one of the few living whales,” said the creature. “Call me a Whale Becoming, for in truth I am not yet a whale. Our kind died long ago, soon after the Great Cataclysm. Our bodies and bones drifted to the ocean’s deeps. But every piece of a great thing has memories. There are ways to become a thing of beauty again, or a thing of terror.”

“A whale!” breathed Copernicus. “I never thought I would live to see one.” Whales were creatures of legend. Over the years there had been talk of pod sightings, and reports from some of the ocean-bound creatures that they had even spoken to whales. The whales were coming back from the dead, some said. Here was one before them.

“By Lice and glories,” said Fangor. “It is too large to be alive, it is!” He giggled nervously again.

The whale shot a wash of spray from somewhere near the top of his head and it arced into the air and cascaded down. The droplets splashed them where they stood. They were cold and refreshing and tasted of salt. Aarvord, who still had said nothing since the death of the Shrike-Grout, closed his eyes and shivered in the wash of water.

The whale sighed heavily. “You must forgive me, for I am made of things that are old, and I do not come to the air much.” His voice was deep, with a throaty hum that seemed to make the air around them vibrate.

Whether a true whale or an illusion, he was majestic, and they all wondered if they should make some gesture of obeisance to a thing so large. Should they bow down? Should they avert their eyes? None knew what to do but Hindrance.

“I greet you, whale,” said Hindrance. “I will call you whale, whatever you are, for in your becoming a whale you seem very like what the true thing might be. It seems that you seek us. Why?”

“I greet you as well. As I said, you bear the bells, do you not?” asked the whale. It stared right at Hindrance and she clutched a hand to her chest. She brought something out of her white shift and held it forth. It was a metal sphere very like Tully’s own, also encased in a woven sack.

“This?” she said, her voice shaking a bit, for the si
ze of the creature was unlike anything she had ever seen in the past or present. Among the living beings of the Earth, only Frothsome Grouts had grown to the uncommon height of ten feet. Veldstacks were also large, but they were rare. Most creatures were smaller than she was herself.

“Yes,” said the whale. “And the other?”

Tully reached over and clasped Hindrance’s necklace in his hand. It was indeed the same weight and the same shape as the bauble that he wore around his own neck.

Tully stared at Hindrance and she stared back at him. He slowly released the necklace until it hung against her chest. Then he took out his own and looked at it.

“They are the same,” said Tully. “How?”

“Yes,” said Hindrance. “They are made of the same metal, born of the same fire. I could not carry both so I gave one of them to you. I stitched the bags myself. But the metal within, I did not make. It is not mine, Tully Swift, nor is it yours. We have carried them each safely to their destiny.”

“What destiny?” whispered Tully.

“Do you not hear the bells ring?” said the whale. “Every time you move they peal.”

They shook their heads. The group glanced around at one another. None of them had heard a bell.

“Perhapsss this whale is mad?” whispered Copernicus into Tully’s ear. “He does not even know if he is a whale or not a whale! What isss he, then?”

“Ah,” said the whale, jetting out another cloud of spray as he spoke. The wetness scattered down around them again and Hatch stepped back from it. He did not care to be soaked. Besides, the whale was making him nervous. The Shrikes had never hunted creatures so large, although their size and loneliness might suggest that their unhappiness would be a rare food indeed.

“Your ears cannot hear them, then,” said the whale, and his tone suggested that he had heard every word that the snake had whispered to Tully. “A pity, for the ringing they make is the most sweet and lovely sound—apart from the songs of the whales in long-ago days.” He gazed at Hatch with that great black eye, and the Shrike stepped back a little farther on the rocky beach. He wondered if the whale could read his hungry mind, and he felt the familiar shame course through him again. How he hated his people now! How he wished that he bore any aspect than that of a Shrike. He would gladly change his appearance for that of the snake or even the louse.

“These make sound?” asked Tully, shaking the necklace. Hindrance shook hers as well, but they heard nothing.

The whale said: “Yes, they are sounding. One bell is of the highest sweet tone you may imagine. It is hers. And yours is of a low, deep tone. Alone they might be cruel sounds, with the power to injure. But together they are the sweetest music. Perhaps the tones are too high and too low for your small ears to hear. But I have heard them ringing for weeks now, very small and distant to me where I lay under the water’s surface. I have waited until the sounds drew closer. I knew you were here, then.”

Tully was suddenly transported in his memory back to the Plain of Bellerol, when the prophecy had been spoken. It had not made sense then. But now it did. He turned to Copernicus.

“Do you remember?” asked Tully.

“I do,” said the snake. “I remember all of it.” Copernicus spoke aloud:

“
Two bells must ring, one low, one high

Within the ocean’s deeps

Two bells will make the oceans rain

And pull the Hundred down to sleep.”

Copernicus pronounced the last word, “sleep,” with a hissy intonation that made the end of the prophecy sound ominous and final.

“We have been speaking to each other, though we did not know it,” said Hindrance to Tully. He nodded in wonder.

“It is true,” he said. “How did you come to have these bells?”

“That is another story for another time,” she said. “But I think that the whale knows much of this, and will tell of it.”

“The Hundred,” said Tully, addressing the whale now. “What do these bells, if they are truly bells, have to do with the Hundred? I was told that if I swallowed this thing, I would live forever, and have great powers. Is that true?”

“You would have lived, yes, and you would have been more powerful than you can imagine. But you would have become a thing of darkness and rage, and would have no longer known your friends or yourself. Those who eat the Hundredstone are condemned to an eternity of anguish.”

Tully shuddered at how close he had come to listening to the false words of Hen-Hen.

“The bells were forged before the Great Cataclysm,” continued the whale. “They are ancient indeed. To know how they were made, you would have to know the story of the humans.”

“You know the story? You know how they died?” asked Tully.

“I do know. The old whales were alive at that time, and we were not dumb animals. The terror that rained down on earth also rained on us, and it told stories of sadness and heartbreak. Many creatures disappeared entirely from our planet and were not seen again. But the truth is, young Eft, that the humans were not among them. Their species did not die at all.”

“
Didn’t die?” asked Tully. “But surely they did. There are no humans alive on this earth now. Except for the Hundred, who are here with us now—somewhere. Whatever they truly are.” The Eft looked toward the sky with apprehension.

“How do you remember things that happened before you were born?” asked Copernicus. “Can you have lived forever?”

“I remember,” said the whale. “I bear all the memories of the whales, and the memories of those who came before them—mother to grandfather to father to grandmother. When we lived in truth in our natural forms, in the time of the humans, we were scarce. They tried to kill us at every opportunity, although we found secret passages in the deep and we tricked them with cunning, as long as we could. We did not care for the humans.

“Then the day came when a great
burning stone fell from the sky. The humans knew it was coming, long before it fell. They knew they would not survive.

“They could save but a few. Here, one hundred chosen children would be hidden in the rock until enough time had passed and the planet was safe again. For yes, the humans had found this portal—this portal in this bay. They knew there was dark magic here. They would use it to cheat death itself.”

“Here!” said Copernicus, surprised.

“Indeed,” said the whale. “Only this was not a bay then, not at all. The water rushed in to fill this space after the Great Cataclysm. Once the great rock stood above a gorge of jagged rocks like itself. Now those hide beneath the water’s surface.”

“What happened” asked Tully. “What of the chosen children?”

“The children were brought here in secret at the appointed time. Fifty female girls and fifty male boys, for they were Dualing creatu
res. But news of the plan escaped. And many did not think it fair that only a few should be spared. They were angry and they stormed the portal. They came by the hundreds, by the thousands.”

“And the children?” squeaked Fangor. He was curious enough about their fate to speak directly to the huge whale.

“They came to enter the portal and were torn back by hungry crowds,” said the whale. “Many were dashed on the rocks below. Then the humans crowded in and fought and pushed and clawed in their terror such that there could be no breath or room for any of them. So in their greed they crushed one another. And the hordes who waited on the rocks below still pushed forward and clamored for their own safety. And they too were crushed in the frenzy. And those who waited beyond them pushed forward to take their place, and more beyond them, and when the portal was sealed it was sealed with the dead inside it.”

Hindrance closed her eyes.

“And then the great stone came, and all was dark and silent. And the humans were not seen on this Earth again—never as they were. The whales saw their bodies washed out to sea.”

“Did none survive then?” whispered Tully.

“A few, a very few perhaps, were barely alive when they were entombed with the dead—murderers and murdered alike. And when the Earth was green and wild again they awoke and came from the portal and made life again.”

“And they were followed,” said Hindrance quietly. “Were they not?”

The whale blinked at her in assent.

“The dead within the portal were not dead as we might know it,” it said. “They were trapped between times in a timeless
place. They had wanted to be the saved. They had wanted to be the hundred chosen ones. And so the portal preserved them and they did indeed become the Hundred—the angry ghosts that could neither die nor live. Always repenting what they had done, yet still filled with rage and bitterness.”

Tully could feel Copernicus’ body go taut around his neck.

“Natty and Bax—were they some of the saved?” said the snake quietly. “Were they chosen children? They could not have been
murderers.
”

The whale hissed and blew water, and shimmered on the surface as if he was breaking up into a thousand parts of dark, living material. Then he was there again, whole, and they blinked their eyes, unsure whether they had seen a vision or not. Fangor closed his eyes, reminded of clouds of bees and dark things coming to sweep him away. Hatch’s feeding had not quite left his memory, and never would. He felt he was in the midst of a bad dream.

“The little ones?” said the whale. “Too young, much too young. They are descendants of what was saved. It is good that they lived. Or perhaps some of us might not be here today.”

Tully remembered the cruel words of Snell. They had been burned into his memory: “No, my little Eftling. The humans did not die. They just evolved. They transformed into Trilings. They became you
.
”

How had the UnderGrout known of such things? If what the whale was telling were true, then it was possible that the few humans left behind in the wake of the Great Cataclysm had slowly but surely, over many millions of years, become Efts.

Natty and Bax, the little children, were the only ones left. And I hope Elutia lives, and cares for them, thought Tully. Then, another thought, far more jarring: If they do not live, will I cease to exist as well? For could they be what one day will become me?

Then he felt a sickness overcome him, and his eyesight went starry and dark. For a moment he staggered on the stones of the beach and clutched at his neck where Copernicus lay. Nothing in the world seemed real anymore—not his friends, not the ocean, not the sky.

Tully sat down on the stones and held his head in his hands. “Ah,” he thought. “I have died, sometime before this time, in the Shrike stronghold or in Pomplemys’ cave at the hands of Snell, or with the Veldstacks during the attack of the Shrikes’ craft. And everything after has been an illusion. I am surely in The Hells.”

He heard his friends’ concerned voices,
but they sounded distant.

He took a deep breath and stared at his own hands. The scales on them shimmered in the light, dull as it was, and he felt his body alive, and he felt the stones rough beneath him. Copernicus slid down and cradled his hands together with his length. The snake noticed that the little Eft was shaking, as if the fever had returned.

“Coper,” said Tully. “What does it all mean? Help me now. I do not feel well at all, anymore.”

“Hush,” said Copernicus, unnerved as Tully by the whale’s revelations but still in control of his emotions. “This is not the time to lose our minds to fear. We are still ourselves.”

Then Hindrance was there before him, her hand warm on his head.

Tully looked up at her and she was glowing with a beauty that he had never seen before. It was too much to bear. The world was more great and awful than he had known. He ducked his head down and shut his eyes again.

“And the bells?” asked Hindrance, turning to the whale. “What of the bells?” Tully could hear her voice as if through a dark tunnel. It sounded strong and clear.

“Yes,” said the whale. “These bells are forged of the self-same metal that forms the portal and the rock that guards it. It is called Hundredstone now. How come you by these bells?” And he turned a dark and inquisitive eye upon the Went.

“I cannot tell you now,” she said, and gave a quick gesture to the sky in the south.

The whale turned its eye upwards and, to their horror, they could see the cloud of Hundred flying north toward the ocean bay. No doubt they had been circling southward to see what lay there and had returned to the place of their escape into this world.

“They come again to this place,” said the whale. “They must be drawn by the power of the metal within the bells, or the portal that birthed them. And so we must act.”

“What do we do?” said Aarvord gruffly. He was weary, and ready for this adventure to be over. He would go home and mourn his sister and the Shrike-Grout and all the things that had happened.

“You must up-end the seas,” said the whale. “The rain must rise toward the sky, where it will eat the Hundred and bring them down into the waters. Our hope is that this will end them, but we cannot be sure.”

“Hope?” squealed Copernicus. “Just a hope? And who are the others who believe such as you?”

The whale turned in the water so that his liquid eye was once again visible to them on the shore. “Every creature in this landlocked sea is a part of this plan. We are not stupid things, and we know of the mysteries happening in the air above. There are Efts here,” he reminded them, “who know of the terrible awakening of the Hundred.”

Tully rose from his crouch and he could see the Hundred’s approach, and it seemed that his entire short life had been leading to this one moment. He was but a little animal, his arms and legs and compact small body swallowed in the great bowl of air above them and the sea before them, and every sound of the waves gently lapping the shore sounded harsh and strident. The world overwhelmed him for a moment and he was lost. He felt the hug of Copernicus snaking up his arm and it gave him fresh strength. Yes, these things were good and true and would not change, would never change. Something was coursing inside him—a strange sense of power.

“Y
ou are no whale,” said Tully, and realized he was speaking from a place within himself that had been asleep, and only now had found its voice. His weakness was gone. He felt stronger than he ever had.

“You are wise, Eft,” said the whale, and he broke apart on the sea into an ocean of dark shapes that shimmered and danced on the surface. Tully heard the gasp of his companions. Still they heard the whale’s voice.

“I am the Whale Becoming,” repeated the thing that had been the whale. “One day I may be the true thing, with enough time, and I will be a better and wiser whale than ever swam within the ocean. There are no whales any more, Eft. Only things that remember them, such as we do. The humans ruined them. Know now that the humans gave you life but they can ruin you as well.”

“How, then?” asked Tully. “How do we make it rain from the seas?”

The prophecy once again repeated in his mind, and it seemed to be true. It was all coming true. The Council had not been so false, after all.

“You must go under again,” said the shape that had been the whale. “The Hundredstone will bring them down. The two bells together must ring. The Eft is the one who must do this thing. He will take the two bells and send them into a crevasse of the deeps; they will sound there, and will pull their power with them. Then the seas will turn on the Hundred. Do not hesitate. You have hesitated before, for the right reasons. This is not the time for hesitation. If the Hundred above move on from this place, we will have lost our chance. They must be brought down.”

“I will do it,” said Tully. “What else can I do?” He did not want to give up the bauble that had been around his neck for as long as he could remember—but now that he knew what it was, it repulsed him. He looked at Hindrance, and she willingly unhooked the bell from around her white throat.

*

Aarvord worked the controls, and they Bathysphere went lower, and lower still, past cliffs lit up with weird dancing lights, past Sea Eggs and Kettlefish and a lone and hungry-looking Mistral with a long horn protruding from its skull, past fronds of dancing sea kelp and spinning ocean flowers. There were things here that none of them had ever seen.

“It grows darker!” hissed Copernicus, who had been watching out the window of the Bathysphere.

The craft plunged lower and lower still, until all beyond the window was darkness except for the phosphorescent creatures that hid and flickered. Aarvord’s appendage on his forehead lit up as if in sympathy, and bathed the inside of their craft with an eerie
green light. They could go no farther, for at the bottom of the sea there was a great gash in the ocean floor, and the craft would not fit past.

Aarvord stopped the craft and Tully went into the little annex that would seal shut and allow him to swim free into the water. He looked at Aarvord and Copernicus, and was glad that they were still there with him. Then the door was sealed and he was alone in the small annex chamber. For a moment he thought the dizziness and the nausea that had made the world seem so strange and vast would overtake him again. He fought down the panic. He was strong now. Fear would not harm him.

The door opened and the sea flooded in, and he breathed in the water and swam out. He looked back and could see the faces of his friends, the snake and the Grout, inside the Bathysphere. Copernicus had his nose pressed flat against the glass. Aarvord stood back a bit, his expression grim. Tully smiled at them, to reassure them that all was well. He would succeed at this task. It was why he was here.

The two necklaces with the small metal spheres hung around his neck, drifting gently in the current. Tully could see curious creatures all around him, moving closer to see what he was doing. A pod of phosphorescent eels circled above him, lighting his way.

Then the Whale Becoming was there, out of the darkness, once more formed into the shape of the great animal that it hoped to be again one day. It stared at Tully with its liquid eye and blinked once, as if to say that the time had come. Tully pulled the bells from their fabric bags. The necklaces felt loose and empty without them, bereft of the small weights that had given them purpose.

Tully swam deeply and swiftly down. The pressure at this depth did not hurt him, for an Eft was made to withstand all temperatures and depths of water. On and on he swam, wondering if he had breath enough to complete this mission. Then he felt the pull of some strong current, and backpedaled with his limbs; there was the great gulf before him, barely visible in the light of the eels, and he had narrowly avoided being swept in by some unseen force. There were jagged rocks and ridges all around; these must have once formed the basin into which the chosen children had been dashed. The crevasse was quite wide enough to take him into its yawning mouth. He shuddered, thankful that this was not his course. Nor was it his destiny to have that dark metal inside him, part of him, making him something other than what he was.