F Wilson - The Dark at the End

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?”