The Road's End

by Daniel Kirk

  “My name is Jar—”

  “Not you, not yet,” the Queen interrupted. “Your Human companion, in the hallway—tell us her name, first.”

  “Rebecca, Your Highness. But why is that important? She doesn’t even merit an audience with you!”

  “The Mage chooses to keep her distance from Humans,” the Queen said. “But she will not be able to make the appropriate psychic readings without having the girl nearby.”

  The Queen turned her head and stared at something lying next to her throne, something almost hidden in shadows. Jardaine peered into the gloom. She hadn’t noticed before, but there was a figure—no, two figures lying on a mound of cushions. One hand reached up. The fingers were thin, brittle-looking claws with nails that curled around one another like the gnarled roots of a tree. Jardaine gulped when she realized that there was only one Elf lying on the mound, but that halfway up the body, the figure divided into two. It was impossible … two torsos, two heads, one set of legs and arms. Conjoined twins. One of the heads was smooth, like a charcoal drawing where the features have been rubbed away. The other was creased and wrinkled like an old apple. Neither of the heads appeared to have eyes: the creature was surely blind. Stranger still, the figure was dressed in the silver cloak of a Mage.

  The old Queen smiled. “The Mage of Hunaland speaks from two opposing poles, one of them logic and reason, represented by Sacred Numbers, and the other the language of feelings, using words to communicate and interpret the Sacred Numbers, so that you may understand. The world we live in, you see, is dual. There is north and south, east and west, right and wrong, up and down, brave and cowardly, alone and together, life and death, Faerie and Human. In the next world, the world of spirit, there is one, where all duality is transcended in love.”

  On the smooth, featureless head, a tongue darted from the black gash of a mouth. It licked the lipless rim and slipped back inside, like a snake into a hole. Blind eyes stared. “Nine,” said the thing. “Eighteen, nine. One and eight, nine. Not twenty-seven, not thirty-six, forty-five, fifty-four, sixty-three, seventy-two, eighty-one, ninety. Eighteen, nine, nine.”

  The head fell back on its pillow. After a moment the other head of the Mage began to speak. The voice was smooth and cultured. “The cornerstone reveals much. R is nine, the eighteenth letter of the alphabet. Nine knows how to find the heart in the world, and to share comfort and understanding.”

  The wrinkled head of the Mage looked through her sightless eyes as if into a land of wonder, as if she were seeing worlds of possibility unfold in the dark chamber of her own mind. Slowly her expression began to take a new shape. “R is nine, the number of satisfaction, of accomplishment, of ultimate attainment, of influence for the entire world. Nine is realization, the fruition of work and dreams. The shadow side of nine is selfishness, lack of compassion, and cruelty, but I see no shadows here.” The face was beaming now. “Nine is also the number of completion, and it may bring with it loss, and death. Death, that leads to rebirth. Nine is immortality!”

  “Very well,” said the Queen. She turned her gaze on Nick. “Now what is your name, young Troll?”

  “Nicholas,” he answered. “I mean, Nicholas, Your Highness!”

  “Is that the name you were given at birth?”

  Nick’s face froze. He hung his head. “Nooo. My given name is … Dalk.”

  Jardaine’s eyes were wide with surprise as she stared at the Troll. She couldn’t picture him as a Dalk. And who would have thought he had it in him to make up a new name? The first of the Mage’s heads rose slightly from the pillow, and she opened her slit of a mouth. “Four,” she croaked. “Not thirteen, twenty-two, thirty-one, forty, fifty-eight, sixty-seven, seventy-six, eighty-five, or ninety-four. Four, alone, thirteen equals four.”

  The head fell back and the other one craned its neck as if to stare at the Troll, as if she had eyes to see. “Four is the cornerstone, D, the fourth letter of the alphabet, the physical manifestation of the number four. Four is stable and grounded; four is the square. Four longs for order, reason, sense. Four must persist and endure.”

  Once again, the Mage paused. Her features rearranged themselves like shapes in clouds, drifting through a troubled sky. Nick pressed his hands together to stop their trembling, afraid of what the two-headed crone might next say about him. He hoped it would not be something too bad. “The shadow side of four is rigidity, conformity, stubbornness, imbalance. The shadow side of four is rageful and violent.”

  The Mage’s face was quivering now, full of emotion. No longer did she sound charming and refined. Over her sightless eyes her black brows pushed together, like the wings of a bat. “Like you,” she screamed, her face contorted, her head wobbling on her withered neck.

  “Very well,” the Queen said from her throne as the wrinkled head of the Mage sank back against its cushion.

  “But I’m not rageful,” Nick said. “I’m not—”

  “Silence,” said the Queen. “Now your name, Mage of Helfratheim.”

  Jardaine was shocked to hear that the Queen knew who she was, and she felt a thrill of pride at the same time she felt anxiety that the Queen might know too much of her true plans. “Your Highness,” she said respectfully, “I am Jardaine. I have come here in hopes of fulfilling the quest of the ancients who planted the Seed of the Adri at the center of the earth, and saved Elf Realm. I am ready to offer my life in the service of the Goddess. I—”

  “Enough,” said the Queen.

  “One,” came a voice from the Mage’s smooth head. “One from ten, never mind the zero, one on the second level, one.”

  The head lifted and its sightless eyes faced Jardaine. “The first letter of the name is J. This is the cornerstone. Your approach to life is more emotional than rational, as your name begins with the letter J, not A.”

  There was a long pause. “J is self-directing, original, a leader, not a follower. You do not enjoy taking orders. You find your best company is solitude. You believe that you are always right.”

  The features on the face were once again beginning to shift. “There are two sides to every number, the light side and the shadow side. The right side and the wrong side. The good side and the bad side. You, Jardaine, do not embody the light. You are motivated by self-interest. You cling to your desires, and you do not give up until you get what you want.” The Mage was losing control again, it was plain to see. It was hard for Jardaine to imagine how a face so old and withered could express such ferocity. “You are selfish and greedy,” the Mage frothed, “and though you possess a feral intelligence, you are an enemy of the truth!” She reached a gnarled hand toward Jardaine. “You are unworthy to save our Seed!”

  Jardaine swallowed hard. “But I—”

  “You are unworthy, because the relentless pursuit of your own ambition is the thing that brought you here to us, not love for the Goddess or your fellow Elves! Love for yourself! Love for yourself!”

  The two-headed Mage bared her crooked teeth as she fell back against the pillow, her emotion spent. The Queen turned her gaze away and nodded to four strong servants at the back of the chamber. They approached their Master with a canopied pallet, knelt before the throne, and lowered the pallet as the old lame Queen was lifted into its seat. Then the servants hoisted the Queen up to shoulder height and began their march to the door. “Come along,” ordered the Queen, gesturing to Jardaine with a crooked finger.

  Outside in the waiting area, Becky and the remaining monks heard footsteps approaching. “You must go now,” said one of the monks in a tremulous voice. “Back to your quarters!”

  “I wanted to see the Queen,” Becky said. “I wanted to ask her about my brother, I wanted to—”

  The monk made pushing motions with her hands and ordered, “Hurry, hurry! The Queen must not breathe the vapors of a Human!”

  Becky did as she was told and stomped back down the corridor toward her room. When she was out of sight, the door creaked open and the guards squeezed the pallet carefully through t
he frame. “Our Mage is very old,” said the Queen, apologetically, to Jardaine.

  Jardaine wondered which of them was older—the Queen or the Mage. Both of these doddering old Elves seemed far too feeble to lead. “We rely on our Mage for so much,” said the Queen, “but perhaps her judgment can no longer be taken at face value. Time is passing, and the cold grows ever colder. You have arrived prepared to meet the challenge, Jardaine, and there is no one else but you who’s seen fit to answer the call of the Goddess. We have prayed for many, many moons, and she has obviously sent you to us for a reason. Therefore, though you have failed the second test, the evaluation from our Mage, we shall allow you to face the third test. Are you ready?”

  Jardaine’s mind was swimming with possibilities, imagining all the dreadful, embarrassing, or deadly challenges that might still be in store. But what did the old Queen mean, the second test? “What was the first test, Your Highness?”

  “The first test was your choice of entry into Hunaland.”

  “Did I pass that test?”

  “Follow me,” said the Queen.

  They made their way through many long passages before they came to the great crystal windows at the entrance to the palace, which lay at the foot of Yggdrasil. Guards opened the doors and they all stepped into the smoky air of the courtyard. In wicker cages lining the perimeters of the entryway, crickets the size of cats rose to attention. They began to saw away with their jagged back legs, performing a song that let all the Elves know that the Queen was in their midst. The townspeople dropped to their knees and pressed their foreheads against the filthy paving stones. Jardaine and Nick grimaced as the smell of incense, wood smoke, and burnt offerings assaulted their noses. Their eyes began to water from the smoke, and their tears froze instantly to their cheeks. “Up there,” said the Queen, pointing over the roof of her curtained pallet.

  Jardaine and Nick peered heavenward. The sky was filled with smoke and ash, though dim sunlight filtered through the soot-flecked atmosphere and cast beams of gold through the high branches of the tree. “I don’t see anything, Your Majesty,” Jardaine said.

  “The fruit is very small, and it hangs from a very high branch. Have faith when I say that it is directly above you. The Seed of Yggdrasil awaits the Savior, Jardaine. When the Savior stands beneath the branch, pure of heart and spirit, the fruit will release itself. Here you must stand, until the Holy Fruit that bears the Seed comes to you.”

  It was truly strange to stare up into the midst of the smoke and branches, for the branches went on as far as the eye could see, and the smoke gave the branches the appearance of disappearing and then appearing again. It was like watching a world born and then fading back into a void, over and over. It would have been hypnotic if the soot and the light didn’t sting the eyes so badly. The Queen of Hunaland cocked her head and her servants turned her pallet back toward the palace. “Wait,” cried Jardaine. “How long will I have to wait, Your Majesty?”

  The Queen ignored Jardaine’s pleas and disappeared in the smoke. “You will be brought before Her Majesty again, once the Seed is in your possession,” said one of the monks. “Until then, you must pray and wait. The fruit will fall when it knows you are ready to receive it.”

  “I’m ready to receive the infernal thing now,” Jardaine muttered under her breath. “Where is the entrance to the Underworld, when I have the Seed in my possession?”

  “There,” said the monk, pointing. “’Tis called the Gate of Hujr. Between those two great roots is the passage that will lead you to your goal.”

  “I don’t see any opening there,” Jardaine said.

  “The passage is sealed, like the skin of a Cord. It must be cut, to enter. Now, Mage of Helfratheim, shall we stay and chant with you?”

  “No,” said Jardaine. “You may go.”

  “What should we do, Jardaine?” Nick whispered, once the monks had gone.

  “Pray and wait, are you deaf? And don’t forget, my name is Astrid. We’ll see the girl again soon enough, and I don’t want you making any mistakes. If she knew that I was the one who abducted her parents near Alfheim, she’d never go along with our plans.”

  “Yes, Astrid,” Nick said. “Pray and wait. What about magick?”

  “No magick,” said Jardaine, though when she stared up into the haze of smoke and branches, she was tempted to try something—a spell, perhaps, to make the fruit come down. “We don’t really know what we’re dealing with here.” She thought and thought of what kind of spell might work, but her mind was blank. If there were a way to do it, it was beyond her. “Pray and wait,” Jardaine said aloud, shivering from the cold. She wished she’d been able to wear some of the thick weatherproof clothing she’d brought from Helfratheim. In their white robes, she and Nick were vulnerable to every breath of winter wind.

  The Elves of Hunaland returned to their sacrifices and offerings once the Queen and her monks disappeared into her palace. Some of the Elves were chanting, some reciting prayers, some openly weeping as they poured jugs of water over hot stones, coals, and blackened branches, gathered from the foot of the mighty tree. The Elves beat the fire with slick sheets of seaweed, sending smoke signals into the air, in an effort to communicate their desires to the Goddess and her kin in Heaven. Other Elves were lost in the ecstasy of trance, dancing and waving lengths of painted cord over their heads to represent both the Cord and the Holy Snake, the Mother of all things.

  Creatures had been lured up from the ocean depths and pulled through the ice, then dragged to the exposed roots of Yggdrasil and sacrificed. A huge ocean mammal, bigger than a bus, lay on its back as a group of Elves worked away at the top of the beast, sawing open its belly and heaving out great mounds of blubber. Other creatures of a sickly pink hue, sporting suckered tentacles and bulging, bloated bodies, with preposterously large and glutinous eyes, lay stretched upon the ground. They, too, were being sawed apart for sacrifice to the Goddess. Monks encircled the sacrificial animals, working their magick to prevent contamination from Blood. “I’m cold,” Nick complained.

  “Pray and wait,” Jardaine said.

  Hours passed, and the day faded away. A circle of monks kept a silent vigil around the pair of strangers, waiting to see when the fruit of Yggdrasil fell. Jardaine finally drew Nick aside and whispered in his ear, “I’m going to ask the monks to pray with me. They’ll go into a trance state, and that’ll be your chance to slip away.”

  Nick’s eyes widened. “Slip away?”

  “I want you to climb the tree, and see if you can cut the fruit from the branch. You have your knife on you?”

  “Aye, I do,” Nick said, “but it’s getting dark, and the smoke, and the branches, there are so many—how will I ever be able to find a little fruit on a branch?”

  “Better you should ask what will happen if you don’t find the fruit,” Jardaine hissed. “These Elves will rip us to pieces if the fruit doesn’t fall for us. They’ll know we’re not the Chosen Ones. They’ll know we’re imposters.”

  “They must already suspect,” Nick said. “That horrible two-headed thing in the depths of the palace certainly didn’t help our cause.”

  “But the Queen of this place doesn’t trust her own Mage. That’s why she’s letting us have another chance—her hope is so great she’ll take the risk. She’s practically begging us to steal the Seed, Nick. Now when I get the monks where I want them, you find a way up the trunk of the tree and cut down the fruit.”

  What remained of the sunlight was fading fast when the monks circled around Jardaine and began their chant. Suitably distracted, they entered a trance where their pleas to the Goddess filled their hearts and minds, and Nick slipped away. He hurried toward the dwellings that rose along the trunk of Yggdrasil. He passed bulging roots that rose and twisted from the ground like the backs of giant leviathans, he passed the palace and towers of Hunaland, scaled winding stairways that led from one vertical apartment to another, and slowly ascended the gigantic tree. When he got to the highest point he could
climb, he peered down through the smoke, his teeth chattering from the cold. The buildings fanned out below like distant children’s blocks, and the Elves on the ground seemed no bigger than ants. But when he looked up, the lowest branches of Yggdrasil were still far, far above, and completely out of reach. As clouds of smoke drifted into the air, he thought he could see, far out on one of the high branches, a small cluster of greenish leaves. In the midst of the leaves nested a red, rough-skinned orb. He couldn’t say for sure, but it appeared to be the last remaining fruit of the Adri. There was no way he could reach it. He had no choice but to return and tell his Master the bad news.

  Jardaine was not happy when Nick made his way back down the tree and whispered his failure into her ear. There were no footholds on the branches that Nick could use to scale the tree any higher, so the cause was lost. The heady mix of fury, frustration, and helplessness seemed to trigger something in her mind, though, and a flash of inspiration lit up her thoughts like a golden sun bursting through clouds. The Arvada, she thought.

  She had done it before; that fateful day when she stood in the kitchen of the boy, Matt, and called down a small fleet of Arvada to the dirty field of the construction site near Alfheim. It had taxed her powers to the limit, but perhaps she could command the single Arvada that was moored just outside the gates. If the fruit of the tree was hanging from a branch directly above her, and if she could guide the gigantic Air Sprite through the spaces between the branches, perhaps she could bring down the fruit. And if she couldn’t manage to bring down the fruit in one piece, she would bring the entire branch down with it. “Are you sure it was the fruit?” she asked Nick. “It wasn’t just some figment of your imagination?”