The Dark at the End

by F. Paul Wilson

  He made a cut - again the blue glow along the edges, again no healing.

  Weezy's face had gone white, Glaeken looked concerned, but the Lady seemed unperturbed.

  "That skin is not me," she said.

  "But it used to be yours. "

  She used to be able to appear in many guises. Jack had known her as Anya when she'd been stripped of this piece of skin - or rather, stripped of everything but this skin.

  That had been her first death . . . caused by creatures not of this Earth.

  Then her second death, caused by the Fhinntmanchca, also not of this Earth.

  And now the Gaijin Masamune . . . would that cause her third and final death?

  "Still, it is not me. " She held out her hand. "I know this sword. You showed it to me. "

  "Yes. Last year. " He handed it to her. "Remember what you said?"

  "Of course. " She held the katana by the handle and studied the pierced, pitted blade. "I said I sensed something significant, something of great import about it . . . that it would be a means to a momentous end. "

  Jack raised his eyebrows. "Your end?"

  She shook her head. "I don't believe so. "

  Without warning, she held out her left arm and slashed at it. Blue light flared and her cry of pain mixed with Weezy's cry of alarm as the blade sliced through her wrist and embedded itself in the tabletop.

  But the hand remained attached.

  "Jeez," Jack whispered. "What the hell?"

  "The blade can cause me pain," the Lady said. "But it cannot damage me. "

  Jack leaned in for a closer look - not even a line to mark the blade's passing.

  "Swell. But how about a little warning before you pull something like that?"

  "Th-that was your wrist," Weezy said, still visibly shaken. "What if it pierces a vital organ?"

  The Lady rose. "Like this?"

  Before Jack could stop her, she turned, placed the butt of the handle against the wall, and impaled herself on the blade. She yelped in pain as pale blue light flashed and the point emerged from her upper back.

  She turned and faced them, her expression pained as she looked down at the sword protruding from her chest.

  "Could someone help, please?"

  Jack was already halfway there. He stepped up to her, gripped the handle and, after a heartbeat's hesitation, yanked it free. No blood, not even moisture on the blade.

  "Thank you," she said.

  Jack couldn't help but be angry. "Are you crazy? That could have killed you. "

  But the Lady was looking at Weezy. "No fear of piercing my vital organs, dear. I have none. I am all of a piece. "

  Weezy opened her mouth but couldn't speak.

  Jack could. He held up the sword. "Remember what else you told me about this?"

  "I believe I said it might be used for good or ill. "

  "No, I mean what you told me to do with it. "

  She nodded. "I said to throw it into the sea. "

  "You went further than that. I believe you suggested getting on a boat and dropping it into the Hudson Canyon. "

  She nodded. "Yes, I did. "

  "Well, that's exactly what I'm going to do. " He glanced at Glaeken. "Unless you object. "

  The old man frowned. "Why would I object?"

  "Well, it's sort of yours. You supplied Masamune with the original 'metal from the sky. ' I figure you should have some say. "

  Glaeken shook his head. "I lay no claim to that blade. "

  "Then it goes. "

  "Thank God," Weezy said. "When?"

  "ASAP. "

  "Good or ill," the Lady said. "You never know. "

  "I know the ill it can do. That's enough. " He turned to Weezy. "How deep is the Hudson Canyon?"

  She shrugged. "Depends on how far out you go. It's four hundred miles long. Go out about a hundred and the canyon floor is probably a mile from the surface. "

  "A mile sounds good. "

  "Hire a tuna boat captain to take care of it for you on his next trip. "

  He shook his head as he sheathed the sword in its curved scabbard. The Gaijin Masamune was a collector's item. Couldn't risk somebody finding out and getting greedy.

  "This needs the personal touch. "

  He'd hire a boat, have it take him out over the canyon, and when they reached a point where the depth finder read a mile, he'd discard the scabbard, unwind the handle, and drop the blade over the side.

  Not even Rasalom would be able to find it in the muck a mile down.

  "Need some company?" she said.

  "Not if you get seasick. "

  "I was thinking of Eddie. We're having lunch later. Wants to talk to me. He hasn't got much else going on. "

  Jack thought about it a sec. "Sure. Why not? I'll see if I can set it up for early tomorrow. "

  She smiled. "Great. We done with the sword?"

  "Yeah. I'll - "

  The Lady held up a finger. "One minor thing. "

  "Yes?"

  "I wish the return of my skin. "

  The request startled him. Since it didn't seem to want to leave him, he'd come to think of it as his skin, his memento of Anya - a grisly one, but a memento nonetheless. Then again, Anya had been simply another manifestation of the Lady.

  "Of course. " He held it out to her.

  She touched it - immediately the two slices Jack had made with the sword sealed up - but she did not take it.

  "I wish it returned to my person. "

  With that she turned and her housedress split, revealing an identical map on her back. Jack would never get used to her clothes not being clothes, but part of her. As she said, I am all of a piece.

  The split also revealed the two tunnels running back to front through her flesh, scars of her first two deaths.

  "Lay it against my back but please align it properly. "

  Jack handed it to Weezy, who was closer, but she backed away, shaking her head. But finally she took it. Gingerly, she aligned the pattern on the Lady's back with that on the flap, and pressed it against the Lady. It blurred, then melted into her. The Lady's back was unchanged, but the flap was gone.

  THURSDAY Chapter 3

  "My turn again," Weezy said when the Lady had reseated herself.

  She watched Jack lean the wrapped katana against a wall, then return to the seat directly opposite her. She wondered at his almost feline grace. When, how had he developed that? He'd been such a gangly kid as a teen.

  She shook off the questions and pointed to the Compendium, still before Glaeken. "Still on the same page?"

  He nodded. "Yes. "

  That was weird, but fortunate. Weezy had come prepared for the opposite. She'd expected the Compendium to lose that page, so she'd uploaded jpegs of last night's photos to her laptop.

  Turned out to be wasted effort. She'd brought the laptop and the Compendium over to the Lady's place, but when she arrived, the book opened to the same page. A virtual miracle, since the Compendium never showed you what you wanted most to see. And it had stayed on the same page.

  She'd been counting on Glaeken to translate the gibberish.

  "I still can't translate this," Glaeken said, staring at the page. "I recognize some of the Old Tongue, the language we spoke in the First Age, but that gibberish in the middle is not any language I've ever seen. "

  Weezy said, "The section I can read talks about 'The Other Name,' but why can't I read the rest? I mean, you've told us about the Seven Other Names and all, but what's this page talking about?"

  Glaeken shrugged. "I wish I could tell you. Each of the Seven had three names, two of which were given, and one chosen. The first given was from their parents and, like everyone else, they had no control over that. The second was one they chose when they aligned themselves with the Otherness. They had to discard their old name as a symbolic way of renouncing everything they were before. The man we know as the Adversary or the One
chose 'Rasalom. '"

  Jack said, "So 'Rasalom' didn't come from the Otherness? He actually chose that? You'd think he'd come up with something better. "

  "Like what?" Weezy said.

  "Like Mordan . . . or Omen . . . or Dethlok. " He smiled, but it had a sour edge. "Or Stimpy. "

  Glaeken didn't seem amused. "He chose Rasalom - which is why he can't seem to let it go. His third name, his Other Name, was, like his first, also given - by the Otherness. Each of the Seven received an Other Name when they were elevated to the group. Each Other Name consists of the same seven characters in a unique arrangement. "

  Weezy tapped the table. "Seven times six, times five, times four, times three, times two, times one gives us five thousand forty permutations. "

  Jack shook his head. "You just did that in your head?"

  Yeah, she had. Without even thinking about it. Just the way her mind worked.

  "It's a gift. And that's a lot of names. "

  "Especially if you don't know the seven characters. And I can guarantee none of them is from our alphabet. "

  Weezy remembered something . . . from 1983. "Remember that little pyramid we found as kids?"

  "Sure. The little black thing with six sides. "

  "Seven if you count the base. And each of those seven faces was carved with a symbol. "

  Jack straightened from his slouch. "Hey. . . "

  Weezy looked at Glaeken. "Do you know the symbols we're talking about? The same ones were on the big pyramid on your property in the Pine Barrens. "

  "I do," he said.

  "Could they be the seven characters in the Other Names?"

  "Who can say? I never saw or heard the One's Other Name or any of the Seven's. But it seems a possibility. "

  Other possibilities flashed through her head as she grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper from her backpack and began drawing. She held up the result and showed it to the other three.

  "That's what they looked like. "

  Jack was staring with an awed expression. "You remember? After all these - " Then he shook himself. "What am I saying? Of course you remember. "

  "So. . . " she said, "if Rasalom's Other Name is composed of these seven characters, we can arrange them in the five thousand forty possible sequences, and know that one of them is his. "

  "So? What does that get us?"

  "Well, if people saying his 'Rasalom' name used to get him worked up, think what saying his Other Name will do?"

  Jack shook his head. "You're talking five thousand possibilities. And even if we do find the right one, how would you pronounce it?"

  That brought Weezy to a screeching halt. "Oh, right. Didn't think about that. "

  "And even if we could antagonize him by spreading his Other name around, what good would it do?"

  "It might bring him out in the open where you could get a bead on him. "

  The smile broadened. "I like the way you think. Make him come to us. "

  "How's the search going, by the way?" she said. "Any luck with the moving people?"

  Jack's smile faded as he shook his head. "Dead end. "

  The Lady pointed to the Compendium. "May I see this mysterious writing that no one knows?"

  She'd fully intended to show the Lady, but she'd been so quiet, Weezy had forgotten she was there. She placed the book before her and pointed to the middle section.

  "That gobbledygook there. Does that make any sense to you?"

  The Lady stared little more than a heartbeat, then nodded. "Of course. I know all the languages of Earth for all time. "

  Of course you would, Weezy thought, chagrined that she hadn't figured that out on her own.

  "Well?" Jack said, sounding more impatient than usual. Weezy guessed he didn't realize that the Lady's responses were very literal at times.

  "What language?" Weezy said, almost as curious about that as the translation.

  "It is the original language of the small folk. "

  Glaeken's eyes lit. "The smithies. "

  Weezy leaned forward. "'Small folk. ' I've seen them mentioned in the Compendium. Like gnomes, elves?"

  "I'm sure they're the source of those tales," Glaeken said. "Tiny people skilled with metals. As soon as I could afford their services, I allowed no one else to make my weapons. " He looked at the Lady. "So this is their tongue. I'd heard them talk among themselves but never saw it written down. "

  "That is because they rarely committed words to paper," the Lady said. She frowned. "If Srem used their tongue for this, she must have wanted it kept secret. "

  A secret passage in a book full of secrets - Weezy could barely contain herself.

  "What does it say - read it, read it, read it. "

  "I already have. It details the ritual of the Other Naming Ceremony. "

  The excitement died - fell off a cliff - and Weezy dropped back into her chair.

  "Oh. Well, that's no help. " She sighed. "I mean, I don't see any of us being given an Other Name soon, so I can't see any use in knowing the naming ceremony. "

  Jack swiveled to face her. "Then why write it down in a language that's effectively code?"

  Good point.

  "Perhaps it has something to do with what Srem added here at the end: 'No two humans may have the same Other Name. The First-named shall be powerless as long as the Second-named lives. The First-named shall hear the Name within the Second and thus be able to resolve the duplication. '"

  "What's that mean?" Jack said.

  Glaeken looked baffled. "I've never heard of any of this. " He glanced at the Lady. "You?"

  She shook her head. "Many things originating with the Otherness are hidden from me. It does, however, offer a reason why they so jealously guarded their Other Names. "

  "'No two humans may have the same Other Name,'" Weezy recited. "We'll probably never know why, so let's just accept that that's the way the Otherness wants it. But the next part is interesting: 'The First-named shall be powerless as long as the Second-named lives. ' Powerless how? Does that mean no longer connected to the Otherness?"

  Jack's eyes lit. "Could mean he's mortal and normally vulnerable while someone else has his name. "

  Weezy could almost see the wheels turning in Jack's head, and guess what he was thinking.

  "The last part's a little scary, though: 'The First-named shall hear the Name within the Second and thus be able to resolve the duplication. ' I've got a pretty good idea what 'resolve the duplication' entails, but what does 'hear the name within the Second' mean?"

  Jack said, "Rasalom knows whenever someone speaks his self-given name, so it makes sense he'd know when someone speaks his Other name. But this sounds different. "

  "Right," Weezy said. "'Hear within' doesn't seem quite the same. 'Within' what?"

  "Within the mind," the Lady said. "I recall tales of this. The First-named will know when someone else has adopted his Other Name, because that name will live in the mind of the Second-named. The Second-named need not speak it, merely be conscious of his Other Name for the First-named to be able to home in on it - and 'resolve' the problem. "

  "What if the Second-named forgets the name?" Jack said.

  The Lady gave him a look. "I believe that is unlikely. "

  Weezy shook her head. Jack . . . always looking for a workaround.

  "You know. . . " he said slowly, "this has possibilities. If we figured out his Other Name, you could put me through the naming ceremony and give it to me. "

  Weezy's stomach twisted. "He'd hunt you down and kill you. "

  "He'd try. But I'd be ready for him. Especially since I wouldn't have to waste a lot of time looking for him - he'd come to me. I could choose the battlefield. "

  "Speaking of wasting time," Glaeken said, "you're doing that now. We don't know his Other Name, so there's no point in discussing it. "

  "You could christen me with all of them. "

  "'Christen' is a Christian term," Weezy said
. "I don't think that applies here. And we're talking five-K-plus possibilities. "

  The Lady said, "Whether it applies or would work is irrelevant. Only I can read the text, therefore I am the only one who can perform the ceremony, and I will not - not with one name, not with five thousand. "

  Jack looked offended. "Why not?"

  "It would be tantamount to pronouncing a death sentence. I would not do that to you or anyone else. "

  "It might be Rasalom's death sentence. "

  The Lady folded her arms with grim finality. "I have spoken. "

  And that's that, Weezy thought, relieved.

  "Can we move on to something a little more pressing?" she said.

  Jack said, "What's more pressing than taking out Rasalom?"

  "Protecting the Lady from him. "

  A pause, then a nod. "Well, yeah. There's that. After yesterday, there's no doubt she's still his focus. "

  "Speaking of yesterday," Weezy said, "how's your arm?"

  Jack got a funny look in his eyes. "Coming along fine. Just fine. " He turned to the Lady. "Did the noosphere come up with a place you can hide from him?"

  The Lady nodded. "A possibility. "

  "Where?"

  "Very near where the two of you grew up. "

  A shock zapped through Weezy. "Johnson?"

  Jack too looked surprised. "I know there's a nexus point in the Barrens - "

  The Lady shook her head. "Not there. " She looked at Glaeken. "There is a structure on your land - "

  "The pyramid?" Weezy said.

  She nodded. "There is a good possibility I will be shielded from his awareness if I stay there. "

  Weezy tapped the Compendium. "I found something once - of course, I can't find it again - that mentioned a pyramidal structure and hinted it had some sort of 'power of occultation. ' And typical of Srem, she didn't explain. "

  "Occultation," Jack said. "Fancy word for hiding. How? It's not even enclosed. "

  "Srem said. "

  "That was once a cage, wasn't it?" Jack glanced at her. "At least we figured it was. "

  Glaeken nodded. "Yes. Once a very famous place in the world of the Ancient Fraternal Septimus Order when it wasn't quite so ancient. They built it to house the last q'qr. "

  Weezy pounded a fist on the table. "I knew it!" She pointed at Jack. "That thing that chased us in the lost town - that was a q'qr. The last q'qr. " She looked at Glaeken. "Is that possible?"

  He shrugged. "Well, after all, they live until they are killed, so I suppose it could be. "