Free The Hundred: Fall of the Wents by Jennifer Prescott

ice-encrusted wings beating at the air uselessly. Then they began to die. One by one, their legs curled beneath them and they simply froze or fell over in the snow.
    “No, no,” said Tully, trying to gather a few of them in his hands. The bees had been their friends, he realized. His dream had been misguided. The bees had made the greatest sacrifice. And beyond that, a selfish thought: The bees were possibly their only way home. The ones in his hand seemed to hold out a bit longer, but they eventually died as well. Tully gently placed them down, where the pitiful heat from their bodies melted tiny divots in the snow.
    Tully, Copernicus, and Aarvord looked around. Beyond the bodies of the bees, which peppered the snow in a wide swath that was the vague size and shape of the flying craft that had brought them there, they were the only spots of color and life in an empty, white landscape. They were all very cold now. It had been warmer when the bodies of the bees had protected them. The light was so dull and grey that Tully’s scales gave off no glimmers. Snow had started to gather on his antennae and he shook it off.
    Tully took a moment to give the bees a formal thanks. He started to give the prayer of protection for the dead: “May your ancestors comfort you. May you find a guide through the valley of death, and may you seek those you love along the journey.”
    But Copernicus said: “Boring Bees don’t believe in the journey. They are different from us. You waste your time.”
    Copernicus and other simple Dualings like him had similar beliefs, although their words for these things were different. Most creatures understood that they would undergo a journey upon their death and that their life force would find a new home somewhere in the world. Those who blinded themselves to the journey and ignored the instructions would find themselves lost and homeless…or in the Hells. Tully had always found the Hells impossible to believe in, for nature was large and intricate enough to hold every spirit in its grip and transform it, even those who became confused and lost. Even these bees. Nature was bigger than they were, and it would surely take them.
    Fangor, inside his ear, assented with what Copernicus had said. “They don’t believe in nuffink! They don’t love nuffink!”
    So Tully stopped, afraid of somehow offending the dead souls of the bees, if they had souls at all.
    “We’ve got to move,” said Aarvord. “There’s got to be some kind of shelter. Hen-Hen didn’t send us here just to die.”
    “Tell them that,” said Tully, gesturing toward the corpses of the bees.
    They began to walk—any direction was as good as another. They had not been traveling more than a few minutes when Tully thought he heard a breath of noise in the distance from where they had come. He turned his head, but in the gloom he could see nothing. He strained his eyes to see, and took out his little telescope from the bucket. Indeed, he could see the tail end of some dark shadow, like a stream of smoke, whipping away on the far reaches of the horizon. It was headed east. Without his telescope, he would never have been able to see it at all. Then it was gone, and he wondered if his eyes—and his little sighting tool—were both playing tricks on him.
    “What is it?” asked Aarvord.
    “Nothing,” said Tully. In his heart, he felt a dreadful premonition. It may be that I have seen the Hundred, he thought. But whatever it was, it was moving away from them at a rapid speed. He decided to spare the others the anxiety of something that he may or may not have truly even seen. Much later, he realized that this had been a mistake.
     

Chapter Four: The Shrike Stronghold
     
    As they walked, Copernicus clung to Tully’s chest, inside his vest and well hidden within the robe. Aarvord’s eyes swiveled as they walked, looking for any hint of life or color. And Fangor continued to shiver inside Tully’s ear. Each step became so difficult that