F Wilson - The Dark at the End

“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.

“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.”