by Robin Jarvis
Miss Ursula unclasped the large, glittering locket and inspected the nugget-shaped, chalky substance it contained. 'Why, to inspire faith and trust,' she enthused. 'Throughout the slow ticking of eternity I have been compelled to assume new guises, for the building above was always evolving. Those different roles were a taxing responsibility—one had to immerse oneself wholly into each character and age. Did I not tell you as much at the festivities we held to celebrate the birth of the Princess Elizabeth, Mr Pickering, where you danced the Horse's Bransle?'
The old man studied her warily. ‘I think you might have said something along those lines,' he responded. 'I'm not sure.'
'Not sure?' Miss Ursula exclaimed. 'Can this be the fastidious psychic detective speaking? The one who jots down everything in his little notebook? The man from the north with his meticulously arranged ghost strings, and his tape measure and thermometer always at the ready?'
‘I really don't know what game you're playing,' he bluffed. 'But after everything we've just gone through—'
'Games!' she cried. The sudden, stinging force of her voice lashed violently from her tongue, and the hairs on Neil's neck prickled as he glimpsed for the first time the full might of Miss Ursula's divine and dreadful power.
'There have been enough games played already!' she shrieked. 'And here—at the fount of all things—is where this last charade will cease!'
Dumbfounded at the intensity of Miss Ursula's outburst, Edie glanced from her to Austen Pickering.
The ghost hunter was glowering at the old woman. His cheeks flushed as he puffed and blustered, preparing to deny any accusation she hurled at him. Then, even as Edie stared, a change occurred. An inexplicable calm descended over Mr Pickering, and all traces of that righteous anger and injured dignity dissolved completely.
Returning Miss Ursula's condemning gaze, a look of resignation stole over that craggy, grizzle-haired mask. ‘I thought the part had been played well,' he uttered in an arrogant voice that did not belong to the retiring Austen Pickering. 'When did you suspect?'
Neil and Edie stared at him with round eyes, and the girl's face crinkled in loathing as she understood.
Miss Ursula laughed bitterly. 'Suspect?' she declared.
'Vanity was always your weakness and that unbridled conceit inflates you still! Are you so enamoured of yourself and your squalid plots that you imagine I was ever deceived?'
'You knew?' he murmured, that vaunting voice shaken by the revelation.
'I have always known!' she proclaimed fiercely. 'From the very beginning when first you returned, long after the rout which destroyed your forces. When your wounds had been licked and part of your strength renewed, I was aware of you. Do you still not perceive the over-reaching folly of your actions? Are you still so blind?'
Inflamed with anger, Edie Dorkins darted forward to claw and bite the old man, but Miss Ursula seized her arm and held the girl back before she could reach him. 'Let go!' she yelled. 'It's Him—He killed Veronica and Celandine!'
Neil turned a ghastly, blanched face upon him. 'I don't... what does she mean?' he stammered. 'Mr Pickering, answer me!'
'He's Woden!' Edie bawled. 'It were always Him!'
The boy edged backwards. 'No,' he muttered, not wanting to believe it. 'Tell them it isn't true—tell them!'
Consigning his spectacles into the pocket of his mackintosh, the figure of Austen Pickering had nothing to say to him.
'All those lies,' Neil whispered, numbed by the awful realisation. 'From the start, everything you ever said, it was all lies. Tick-Tock Jack, that disgusting... that killer—he was working for you all along...'
Tears suddenly sprang to the boy's eyes, and his face was wrung with anguish and resentment as the full bitterness of the inhuman betrayal smote him. 'You... you murdered Quoth!' he wept. 'Why? What sort of a monster are you?'
'Keep a hold on your tongue, boy,' the Gallows God spat, angrily pointing a threatening finger, 'before you join that treasonous bird in death!'
Neil lunged at him in furious outrage, but the eyes of Woden blazed out of the pensioner's face and the boy's temper was utterly extinguished. He recoiled as though struck by an invisible fist. Against the Captain of Askar, he who had hung from the World Tree and rode into battle against the Frost Giants, the caretaker's eldest son was as nothing, and his young, defiant spirit was utterly cowed.
This was a matter far beyond the reach of his mortal comprehension. Here was the final confrontation between the Mistress of Destiny and the Allfather—and an eleven-year-old boy was certainly no part of that.
Dismissing his insignificant presence, the outward aspect of Austen Pickering shimmered with shadow, and the figure rippled as Woden brought an end to the masquerade of the ghost hunter, and the facade was torn from him. About his shoulders the colour of the mackintosh deepened, and the fabric reached to the ground as the old man's sharpening, wizened features retreated into the concealing darkness of a heavy cowl.
There stood the true appearance of the Gallows God, and he turned his hidden face upon the woman he had waited so long to overthrow and destroy. In her grasp, Edie Dorkins still squirmed, longing to let fly at him. Seeing her fierce loathing, the enemy laughed coldly.
'Your adopted daughter has not yet discerned the truth,' he observed in a disdainful whisper. 'How very like you she is. Headstrong, and hearing only what she wishes. Did you not mark the import of Urdr's words, child? From the very beginning she was aware of me, long before I entered her precious museum. It was to her tune alone that I danced.'
Edie growled at him, and then, all at once, she grasped his meaning and stopped her wrathful struggles. 'Ursula...' she breathed in horror.
Woden chuckled darkly. 'Now you see,' he told her. 'Now you know the iniquitous depths to which she has fallen.'
'Get off me!' Edie screamed, recommencing her wriggling efforts. But this time she was desperate to escape from Miss Ursula.
An expression as blighted as Nirinel took possession of Miss Ursula's face and, avoiding the girl's eyes, she released her.
Edie bolted as though scalded, and raced around the wellhead until the broad ring of scorched stone stood between them.
'You knew!' she denounced her. 'You did this—all of it. You knew what He was up to and you let Him! You let Him kill Veronica and Celandine! I hate you—I hate you!'
Like a pillar of rock beset by a squalling tempest, the last of the ruling Fates, those Three of Mortal Destiny, endured Edie Dorkins' blistering abuse until the overwrought child could no longer continue, and threw herself down into the ashes where she sobbed wretchedly.
'Yes, I knew,' Miss Ursula's unrepentant confession cut through Edie's consuming grief and shock. 'I admit all and regret nothing. The Gallows God had returned, as I knew one day He would, and already He was hatching His schemes, summoning the Valkyries back from the darkness. I could not allow the possibility of His victory'
'But Celandine and Veronica!' Edie wept, lifting her face from the soot. 'Why?'
The old woman reared her head. 'Need you ask that?' she demanded archly. 'My sisters were mindless and I, Urdr, was soon to accompany them into the detritus of their dementia. When the time came for Him to assail us, our enemy would discover that the Loom Maidens were no more than three senile, gibbering hags!'
'And so you used me,' Woden's voice rang out, 'as you always used everyone.'
Taking the heel bone of Achilles from the locket, Miss Ursula dropped it into the earthenware beaker. At once the water began to fizz and foam.
'Towards this end, everything was planned,' she said with pride. 'When I saw in my sisters the Doom which awaited me, I set about the weaving of all that has since transpired. Do not think I undertook the task lightly, for I did not. Into that web I spun a terrible Destiny, cutting the strands of my poor sisters' undying lives, but there was no other way—none. If The Cessation was to come, then it would be of my contrivance, not yours.'
The voice of the Gallows God bristled with revu
lsion. 'You manipulated me in order to bring about the deaths of Verdandi and Skuld,' he cursed. 'In your hated web you entangled me, and your sisters you sent like cattle to be slaughtered. Was there ever a harder or a colder heart? It was true what they whispered in the palace court.'
Miss Ursula winced at that, then steeled herself and brought the brimming beaker over to him. 'Your time is ended,' she told him. 'This day your immortality is severed; so it is woven in the Cloth of Doom, and from that you know there is no escaping. One drink of this and your Godhead will be revoked, and the spells which knit your undying flesh will fail.'
The shadows beneath the hood stared at the frothing liquid she offered him, and he raised his hand to dash the vessel from her grasp.
'Accept your Doom!' she commanded. 'The death you have cheated these thousands of years will claim you at last. It is the hour set down and here, in the place you so ached to conquer, you will die by my hand!'
Slowly, the cloaked figure lowered his arm.
'So,' his rancourous voice hissed, 'here at the very end, you have beaten me. Though armies have battled on both sides, and warriors unnumbered perished in our names, we face each other here, and the outcome has been decided by your woven strands. To rid the world of Fate's binding shackles, and free mankind from the threads of your fatal cloth, was all I craved. Yet now, after everything, Destiny and Fortune will prevail. Greedily will I put that cup to my lips. The contest is done and you may spin what dooms you can—I will be a part of them no longer.'
A grave smile lightened Miss Ursula's face. 'You are mistaken,' she said. 'There will be no more decrees of Fate. Only madness awaits me here. By the evening my sanity will have gone to dust. In that dread tapestry which was woven in secret, my own Doom was spun. This day my life also is severed. When you have supped of your mortality, then I shall die like a princess of the Royal House, and join my sisters upon their journey.'
Turning to Edie, the last of the Fates looked at her adoringly. 'Forgive me,' she entreated. 'The way had to be made clear for you to succeed us. You will grow to understand. Into your care I entrust the guardianship of Nirinel and the exhibits of the museum.'
'What are you going to do?' the girl asked fearfully.
'When the Gallows God has drunk the water of death, and I am certain He is no more, then shall I take up the Spear of Longinus—and plunge it into my breast.'
Edie staggered back aghast. 'Ursula!' she protested. 'No!'
‘I must.'
From the hooded figure a sorrowful breath sighed. 'Then this is, in truth, The Cessation,' he murmured. 'Of the daughters of Askar and the Captain of the palace guard.'
'Our time is over,' she answered wearily. 'The world needs us no more.'
'Then at the final moment of Doom, know this,' he said. 'When we were together in the gardens beneath Yggdrasill, my heart was yours.' Taking the beaker from her, the cloaked figure of Woden lifted a hand in salute, then bowed.
‘I know,' Miss Ursula whispered.
His glittering eyes trained upon her, the Gallows God brought the vessel to his lips. Watching him, the old woman suddenly realised that she could not bear to look and turned quickly away.
'The spear!' she cried bitterly. 'Bring me the spear!'
Forgotten by everyone, including his sons, Brian Chapman was standing before Nirinel, engrossed in running the fingers of one hand over the rotten surface of the bark—as though he were insensible to all else around him. In his other hand he still held the blade of Longinus.
'Hurry!' Miss Ursula demanded.
Yet the caretaker made no answer. He did not turn around but continued to stroke the diseased and gnarled expanse before him.
Even as the lethal liquid wet his lips, Woden hesitated, and his resolve waned when his glance flew to where Neil's father persisted in ignoring her.
'Do you hear me?' the old woman called. 'The spear!'
An empty, biting laugh like the howl of a winter gale resounded in the chamber. At Neil's side, Josh's mouth fell open, but the infant was too afraid to cry. His brother's arms wrapped swiftly around him and Neil spluttered as his despair was finally made complete.
From the decayed root, Brian Chapman turned to look on the others and a strangled shriek sprang from Miss Ursula Webster's throat. Instinctively, Edie Dorkins ran to her whilst, out of Woden's fingers the beaker slipped, to go crashing and shattering upon the ground at his feet.
An abhorrent transformation had stolen over the caretaker of The Wyrd Museum. The eyes which stared out at the horrified group were hideously white and glinted with bright, bitter frost. The grubby, unwashed skin that covered his gawky features had turned deathly pale, and was mottled a ghastly grey. Around his mouth and nose, where the breath blasted out into the stagnant air in clouds of Arctic vapour, crystals of ice had formed to beard his unshaven stubble, and the lank hair that fringed his brow was now dripping with rime.
Out of some vast region of barren, glacial cold, that baneful laugh raged again, ringing chill in every heart.
'Ancient fools? a hollow, echoing voice blistered from cracked blue lips. 'So closeted in thine petty feud wert thee, casting thy nets and steeped in the embroiling of thy layered deceits, thou didst not recognise the true threat when it camel'
'Dad!' Neil howled desolately and he lurched forward, only to be restrained by Woden's powerful hands.
'That is no longer your father,' the hooded figure hissed in an anguished murmur. 'And we are all lost.'
Her clasped hands pressed to her mouth, Miss Ursula realised then the full enormity of her folly. It was she who had opened the way for the true foes of the world to enter her domain. Finally, here at the end of her reign, Urdr had herself been manipulated, and the damning torment of what she, in her blind stupidity, had brought about petrified her.
Those sparkling, ice-crusted eyes pierced into her cringing, terrified soul and, high into the shadows, the discordant laugh blistered with a supreme malevolence.
'Now dost thou see how thine sordid wrangling hath brought about the ruin of all thou holdest dear,’ the entity within Brian Chapman mocked. 'Long hath the rightful lords of the world endured their exile, biding their time for this one chance. When the first of thine sisters didst taste of this sweet blade, we who strode from the boundless oceans in the first darkness and didst clad ourselves in frozen flesh, espied thy weakness and made of it full use.'
The hands which gripped the Spear of Longinus were now more like claws. Even as the others watched, long knives of ice stretched from beneath the fingernails and Edie pressed close to Miss Ursula.
'What's happening to him?' Neil demanded woefully.
In the deep shade of Woden's cowl, the Allfather's eyes narrowed, and the voice with which he replied trembled with dread. 'He is possessed. The lords of the ice and dark have been roused from their everlasting waste—it is one of their voices which speaks.'
'Frost Giants,' Edie Dorkins breathed, shivering from the intense cold which beat out from the apparition that was Neil's father.
'Ages uncounted hath my kind waited on this moment/ the rancourous voice blasted. ‘Now is our forbearance rewarded and the victory complete. The age of light is done, and that which stands betwixt us and our rightful sovereignty must perish,’
'You cannot!' Miss Ursula cried. 'No!'
But there was nothing she or anyone could do. Already weakened by the struggle of their duelling conflict, the last of the Nornir and the Gallows God were no match for the might of the Frost Giants.
The unholy fiend which inhabited the caretaker threw back the man's hoary head and laughed triumphandy, as the arms were raised and the rusted blade of the fatal spear thrust forward with inhuman strength.
'Stop!' Miss Ursula screamed, rushing forward. But her protests were in vain. Before she could attempt to drag Neil's father away from Nirinel, a blizzard of hail stormed from the creature's mouth and she was driven, battered and beaten, back against the wellhead.
Through that tempest Woden
battled, the folds of his great cloak whipping wildly about his tall, wizened figure. But against the ice lord there was no contesting, and he too was catapulted back.
Deep into the blackened, flaking bark of Nirinel the Spear of Longinus stabbed, and the gloating mirth of that hideous presence was terrible to hear. 'Now is the prophecy fulfilled!’ it trumpeted. 'The last drop of living juice shalt cease its trickling flow and the lingering vestige of the hated Yggdrasill wilt die. The reign of everlasting dark is come again!’
In that viciously riven hole, the Frost Giant twisted and ripped the rusted blade—tearing and chopping through decomposing timber until a wide, ugly gash had been hacked. Then, dredging the spear free, it lifted one hand clear, and the glittering spikes which scissored from the man's fingers raked and sliced the air, as the ice lord relished this doom-filled moment to its utmost, malignant degree. ‘Die now, accursed usurper of the first ones!' it bellowed and, with irresistible force, rammed the caretaker's arm deep into that repulsive wound.
In the pale, ice-brindled face, the muscles convulsed. Freezing white vapour gusted from his sleet-drizzling nostrils, as the foul cold of the lords of the ice and dark flooded out through his being. Up into the veins of Nirinel it pushed its murderous, mordant way. Into the innermost depths, where the sacred sap of life yet coursed, in the hale heart of the titanic root, that corroding cold went slicing.
'Nirinel!' Miss Ursula gasped, hot tears streaking down her cheeks, as she felt the agony of that lethal force, pushing and killing up through the gargantuan, arching structure. 'What have I done?'
Edie Dorkins wrapped her arms about the old woman as the last moments of that majestic wonder came. The nightmare vision of Brian Chapman drove the virulent winter into the remaining fibres, rupturing and dealing its venomous death throughout the length of that mammoth, worshipful bulk.
'It's dying!' Miss Ursula sobbed, racked with pain. 'The jewel of the world is dying!'
'Behold the commencement of the new age!' the Frost Giant's voice exulted. 'Yggdrasill hath met its deserved end—eternal night is here!'