by Robin Jarvis
Suddenly, within the cavern, a frightful groan reverberated above their heads as the maleficent frost invaded the root's hallowed core and the immensity of its prehistoric existence was finally ravaged and destroyed.
Beneath their feet the ground shuddered, and a jagged crack fractured the breadth of the chamber, cleaving the encircling walls and splitting the carved animals with a wide, forking fissure, through which rained a torrent of rubble.
Within the frozen, devastated centre of Nirinel, the fibres of its polluted timbers exploded, and the rumble of its death thundered through the deepest regions of the earth. From the enormous, arching mass, huge flaking sheets of stinking bark toppled. Out of the darkness they came tumbling, to crash into reeking fragments upon the quaking floor.
Pulling Josh away from the wellhead, where chunks of diseased wood and cascading rubble deluged down, Neil dragged the four-year-old back to the metal gates and stared at the cataclysmic scene before them.
The evil vision of their father tore his arm free of the mortal wound the ice lord had slashed in the root's decayed grandeur. From those cruel fingers there now splashed a phosphorescent lymph that swiftly congealed and fell, shivering, to the juddering ground, where it smashed into sparkling diamond dust.
Flinching before the ominous creaks which travelled through the surrounding stone, Neil saw the caretaker hiss with laughter. But the dying throes of Nirinel drowned out any other noise.
Shaking violently, the scorched stone dais of the well tilted and shook. Over its surface the body of Quoth went lurching through the ashes, plummeting down into the chasm of the central shaft until it disappeared into the fathomless, empty dark.
Staggering to her feet, Ursula Webster lumbered over the buckling floor, staring with unbelieving horror up into the impenetrable shadows from which the avalanche of fetid debris came falling.
'Nirinel!' she screamed bleakly. 'Forgive me, I did this! Through the obsession of my hatred, this evil bore its malevolent fruit. I have failed you—I am sorry!'
'Ursula!' Edie squealed, darting through the tumultuous downpour of rock and ulcerous timber. 'We gotta get out! It's goin' to smash on top of us! It'll kill us!' But the old woman stumbled further into the crashing cataract, where vast segments of bark dropped perilously from the gloom.
'Quick!' the girl screeched, tugging at her arm.
Swaying unsteadily as the entire chamber shook around them, Miss Ursula glanced down at her, then through the teeming dirt and disease, to where Woden clung to the wellhead.
In the desert of her grief a spark of hope was fanned into flame and she gripped Edie tightly. 'There is still a chance!' she yelled above the din. 'The end is not upon us—not yet!'
At that moment, a tremendous splintering tore through the destructing turmoil above, and they both gazed up to the black space directly over their heads, where a colossal tonnage of festering timber came spinning into view. There was no time to think; if they remained where they stood, it would crush them utterly.
With a ruinous crash, the mighty fragment of Nirinel collided with the ground, and a choking cloud of dirt was hurled into the churning atmosphere.
Coughing and wiping her eyes, Edie Dorkins hobbled back to the well and glanced about her for Miss Ursula. But in jumping to safety they had leaped in opposite directions, and the old woman was now on the far side of the momentous section of cancerous bark.
Edie called to her, but even as the last of the Fates tottered over the crumbling mass, there came a sound more terrible than anything she had ever heard. It was more than sound; that catastrophic, upheaving din possessed an almost solid substance, and everyone present felt it slamming into them.
Through the very essence of the girl's existence, the ghastly tidal wave of noise vibrated, jarring her bones and ripping into her mind as the harrowing force threw her to the pitching ground.
Utterly consumed by penetrating, slaughterous frost, the primeval fibres of Yggdrasill's last surviving root snapped and shredded, and the horrisonous, rolling uproar screamed in Edie's soul.
No longer able to support the monumental glory of its straddling size, the putrid, ancient timbers ripped and sundered, and the full, awful might of Nirinel finally came collapsing down.
'Ursula!' Edie cried, but it was too late. A black, engulfing shade hurtled over the mistress of The Wyrd Museum, and there was nothing the girl could do.
At her side, Woden glared up at the cataclysm which descended. 'Flee, child!' he commanded fiercely and, with his cloak billowing about him, the Gallows God rushed forward.
Across the dividing gulf, the age-old enemy of the Fates ran, his strident voice yelling defiantly. In that same instant, recognising her doom, Miss Ursula shouted.
'The Loom, Edith! The Loom! Nothing else can save you!'
Through that tumbling chaos, Edie Dorkins caught a last glimpse of Ursula Webster, as Woden reached out to her and, united in that final moment, their resentments were utterly forsaken.
Before the ending came, Edie thought she saw the Captain of Askar as he was in the vigour of his youth. A tall silver helm gleamed upon his head, and his mail-clad frame was wrapped in a sable mantle. Before him, a beautiful, serene-faced woman, whose auburn tresses were banded by a circlet of gold, gathered him into her arms as the pulverising, obliterating blow came.
Down on to the floor of the chamber, the tortured magnitude of Nirinel went thundering. The world tipped in revolt and Edie was flung across the cavern. When the metal gates too were thrown down, Neil and Joshua Chapman were sent reeling.
In that disharmony of despair, the voice of the Frost Giant blared his loathsome victory because, at last, the end of all that was good had come.
Chapter 24 - Three Times More Extreme
Outside The Wyrd Museum, the bronze figure which surmounted the Victorian entrance quivered within the mantle of ice that smothered it. Splitting thunderously, that third image fractured above the scrolling sign and, out over the frozen alleyway, a thousand splintered fragments of metal exploded.
Deep below the foundations, lying across the mangled gates, Neil Chapman warily raised his pounding head. The air was a choking maelstrom of seething soil and spores of rotten wood. Into his eyes and mouth the swirling filth blasted as he desperately called to his brother, searching the rioting gloom with his fumbling fingers.
'Josh!' he croaked, spitting the stale dust from his tongue. 'Where are you?' A timid whimper answered him, and Neil crawled anxiously towards that meek, fretful noise, until his blindly-seeking hands touched the toddler's shoulder.
'You hurt?' he cried.
Josh mumbled wretchedly in response.
'Can you stand?' Neil pressed.
'Think so.'
Taking his young brother's hand, Neil Chapman hauled himself to his feet and stared back into the cloying cloud. Nearly all of the torches had been quenched in Nirinel's plunging ruin but, here and there, around the broken walls, a meagre few still guttered and flared in the perdition of that terror-filled chamber.
Amongst that whirling reek of glacial death, haloes of dun light glowed in the suffocating, swarthy murk, and gradually Neil perceived the complete devastation that had been wrought. Within that broken world, he could just make out the round dais of the wellhead, surrounded by a sea of splintered destruction. Beyond that, and rising like a hill of darkness, was the toppled wreckage of Nirinel.
It was as if a mountain had fallen into the cavern. Neil could not begin to see the extent of that stupefying devastation. The immense, crippled shadow rose like a ruptured wall into the gloom, stretching as far as the light allowed, and he nervously swallowed the gritty, soil-clogged spit in his mouth.
'Where's Dad?' Josh asked feebly, voicing his own fears.
Neil squeezed his hand. 'I don't know,' he murmured, hopeless and afraid.
Then, from that curdling, umber effluvium, a shape came staggering, a burning torch held high above its head. Out under the fractured entrance, clambering over the twisted gates, Edie Do
rkins emerged, her face black with grime and glistening with tears.
'They're dead!' she sobbed, stumbling over to where Neil and his brother stood. 'Ursula's gone. They're both back there—under all that...!'
Straining his eyes, Neil tried to pierce the turbulent, dirt-ridden ether.
'It's settling,' he whispered, as the heavier particles started to float downward. Gradually, the drifting, obscuring veils were lifted, and further into that catastrophic vision the boy peered.
Then he saw him.
Knee-deep in rubble and blackened splinters, the shape of a tall, awkward man was floundering through the chamber—a long spear clenched in his hand.
'It's Dad!' Neil cried. 'He's all right! Josh, he's all right!'
His shoulders bowed and his head slumped forward, Brian Chapman waded with difficulty through the tide of debris which swamped that hell-torn cavern.
'DAD!' the boy yelled, waving his arms wildly. 'DAD!'
Raising his head, the caretaker looked over to where the warped gates lay buckled below the entrance and, even across that sundering distance, Neil could see the glitter of his wintry eyes.
'The Frost Giant's still in him!' Edie exclaimed.
'God, no,' Neil breathed. ‘I thought it was over.'
The bitter smile, which contorted Brian Chapman's pallid face, disappeared as the white ice of his eyes stabbed through the curtaining swathes of dust—blazing with intense and deadly cold.
'Why are my brethren not released from their wasteland stronghold?' its hideous, scathing voice demanded. 'The third and final root hath been destroyed. No trace of Yggdrasill remains to forbid our return, no sap bleedest through vein or stem. Why hath the darkness not yet descended above ground? Answer me! Answer!'
Dragging his host's feet from the heaped destruction, the ice lord clambered on to the larger fragments of withered wood which sat like rafts upon that solid ocean. Leaping from piece to piece, its frost-bearded mouth snarled in murderous rage.
'He's coming after us!' Neil uttered anxiously. 'What should we do?'
Holding the flaming torch above her, Edie darted into the dark of the connecting cavern. 'Don't be stupid!' she cried. 'Leg it!'
Dragging Josh with him, Neil pelted after. The unclean abomination that bounded towards the broken gates called after them, and the sound of that supreme malice was a whip to his heels. Through the caves and grottoes which led to the spiralling stairs, Edie Dorkins fled, the fiery torchlight streaming behind her in a ribbon of flame.
'Can it be that apiece of the World Tree doth yet exist?' the Frost Giant's dreadful shrieks resounded in the caverns they had just raced through. 'Where is the Loom fashioned from the first hewn bough? Doth the fluid of life flow through the timber of its accursed frame? It must be discovered—it, too, must be destroyed!3
At last, the children reached the steps and, not pausing to catch their breath, they instantly commenced the arduous climb. With the aid of the torchlight, their ascent was much swifter than the blind journey down had been, and they took the treacherously worn stairs two and three at a time. As they climbed, however, Neil realised that the echoing snarls which drifted up the ponderous shaft were growing fainter.
'That foul thing's not chasing us any more,' he declared in astonished relief.
Not pausing in her stretching stride, Edie grunted. 'It's huntin' through the other caves,' she said incisively.
'For the Loom?'
'Yes. Ursula always said it'd got broke, but I never believed her and she knew it. It's our only hope now—she said it were. But that fright'll never find it down there; it's lookin' in all the wrong places.'
'You know where it is?'
"Course I does.' And with that, she quickened her pace, and Neil had to carry Josh to keep up with her.
Ever upwards they rushed until, eventually, the studded door appeared above them. On to that last step they laboured, puffing to ease their spent lungs, whilst their legs cramped and burned with fatigue.
Wrapping her grubby fingers about the bronze handle, Edie gave it a sharp twist, and the stout oaken door was pulled open. Over the threshold, out of the claustrophobic dark, all three children barged. But they were not prepared for the sight which met their eyes beyond and they blinked like small owls brought into the sun.
Inside The Wyrd Museum, all was chaos and confusion. At their feet, the unconscious body of Jack Timms still lay stretched across the ground, the ivory foot of the headless statue pressed firmly upon his back. But they were the only recognisable features of this insane and disorientating world.
Flicking in and out of existence, the panelled walls pulsed and trembled, their outlines fading and melting, then jolting back into solid reality once more. About the stone archway which led to the secret stairs, an ever-shifting patchwork of the building's history careered. The great hall of a Norman manor, with its small, slitted windows and impressive oriel, crackled momentarily before them, only to be replaced by the painted plaster of a Roman temple in which a large golden urn stood. The livid green stream of smoke which coiled from its smouldering incense lingered on the air long after that aspect was snatched away.
Staring beyond the inconstant, wraith-like walls, the children saw the surrounding landscape quiver through the fluxing centuries. Dark, intractable forests switched into neatly trimmed pleasure gardens, with manicured lawns and brooding yews, clipped to form geometrical symmetry. Then, devouring marsh consumed all, and in the sky, where the sun and the stars vied for supremacy, the towering beams of wartime searchlights blazed.
Into this cauldron of bubbling ages, indistinct shadow figures darted between the folding years, ripped from their rightful times to invade and rampage throughout tormented generations. Saxon warriors went charging over Tarmac roads; knights in gleaming armour did battle with Roman legionaries; a plague cart toiled towards the infirmary doors as children from the orphanage played around the wheels.
Eventually wresting his gaze from that jumbled anarchy, Neil turned to the girl at his side. 'Why's it like this?' he cried. 'Woden's dead. Why isn't it back the way it should be?'
Edie nibbled her bottom lip as she considered the bloated figure of Tick-Tock Jack, who lay before the archway. 'That's the reason,' she announced, nudging the warder with the toe of her shoe. 'Woden put his power into 'im—the museum's still feedin' off it.'
An eruption of flame abruptly blossomed behind the Jacobean garden's high, screening wall, and a searing stream of anti-aircraft fire spouted up into the beleaguered heavens. Edie's eyes sparkled as she revelled in that familiar sight, and it seemed to inspire courage and hope within her.
'We've got to get upstairs,' she said with grim determination. 'That's where the Loom is!'
Neil stared across the bewildering, unravelled ages to where the carpeted stairs rose to the landing. But, even as he looked, the steps vanished and a great slab of granite, supported by three smaller, roughly-hewn blocks, took their place. Beneath that dolmen, the floor became sprinkled with tiny tiles, as a mosaic depicting a flowering tree tessellated into being, and the boy knew they would never be able to find their way through that galloping madness.
'The stairs'll disappear under us,' he told Edie. 'The museum's out of control. If we don't wind up lost in the past, we'll probably get an arrow in our backs.'
'But we've got to get up there!' she insisted.
'How?'
A frustrated scowl crinkled the girl's filthy face as she concentrated, trying to force the stairs to return and solidify. The silver threads glinted in her pixie hood, and she ground her teeth together as her compelling will summoned and conjured.
Another bomb erupted, this time in the immeasurable forest, which was suddenly hidden from view by the cloistered walkway of a convent. It was no use; all her efforts were futile and the pandemonium continued to rage around her. The glittering strands within the gift of the Fates dimmed, and she looked in dejection at the alabaster figure which stood close by.
All at once, th
e disappointment fell from her face and Edie let out an excited squeal. 'There's a way!' she cried. 'We can do it—we can!'
Shooing the boys back into the darkness beneath the archway, Edie gave Neil the burning torch and held out her hand towards the statue. 'Come with us,' she implored. ‘I needs you.'
The sculpture stirred and outstretched its one ivory arm, placing the delicate-looking fingers upon the girl's open palm.
'In 'ere,' Edie invited.
To the stone portal the mutilated figure strode, its dainty feet pulverising the grass that had sprung up through the now flagged floor of the entrance hall. Under the arch the statue stepped, to where the flame-lit gloom of the secret stair delved down into the earth.
Displaced from the topmost step, Neil and his brother looked up at the lustrous alabaster which glimmered in the torchlight, its hacked, towering frame dwarfing the small, eight-year-old girl who guided it further inside.
'What are you doing?' he demanded. 'That thing won't be any use against the Frost Giant—you saw what it did to Ursula and Woden.'
'I don't want to go down there again!' Josh wailed miserably. 'Dad scares me.'
Edie growled at them. 'We won't be ploddin' back all the way'
'Hope you know what you're doing,' Neil muttered.
'You got yerself a plan then, have you?' she replied. 'Right, so shut it and get movin'.' Down the plunging stair the children picked their path and, behind them, the sculpture made by Pumiyathon came.
With his cratered face pressed into the tufting grass, Jack Timms uttered a dismal groan. The crushing weight of the statue was finally lifted from his back, but the cracked cheekbone caused by its punch sang an agonising dirge inside his head. From his red-lipped mouth, a frothing string of bloody saliva trickled on to the soil and, sucking the air through his rotten teeth, he blearily opened one ratty eye.
Into the black depths below the foundations of The Wyrd Museum, the children retraced their steps, with the statue stomping after them. All the while, Edie Dorkins peered at the rocky wall around her, anxiously hunting for the signs and clues that she remembered.