“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?”
Jack got a funny look in his eyes. “Coming along fine. Just fine.” He turned to the Lady. “Did the noosphere come up with a place you can hide from him?”
The Lady nodded. “A possibility.”
“Where?”
“Very near where the two of you grew up.”
A shock zapped through Weezy. “Johnson?”
Jack too looked surprised. “I know there’s a nexus point in the Barrens-”
The Lady shook her head. “Not there.” She looked at Glaeken. “There is a structure on your land-”
“The pyramid?” Weezy said.
She nodded. “There is a good possibility I will be shielded from his awareness if I stay there.”
Weezy tapped the Compendium. “I found something once-of course, I can’t find it again-that mentioned a pyramidal structure and hinted it had some sort of ‘power of occultation.’ And typical of Srem, she didn’t explain.”
“Occultation,” Jack said. “Fancy word for hiding. How? It’s not even enclosed.”
“Srem said.”
“That was once a cage, wasn’t it?” Jack glanced at her. “At least we figured it was.”
Glaeken nodded. “Yes. Once a very famous place in the world of the Ancient Fraternal Septimus Order when it wasn’t quite so ancient. They built it to house the last q’qr.”
Weezy pounded a fist on the table. “I knew it!” She pointed at Jack. “That thing that chased us in the lost town-that was a q’qr. The last q’qr.” She looked at Glaeken. “Is that possible?”
He shrugged. “Well, after all, they live until they are killed, so I suppose it could be.”
Weezy had been finding references to q’qrs in the Compendium and Glaeken had filled in the gaps: Q’qrs were created by the Otherness back in the First Age-genetically retrofitted from humans-as savage soldiers in its war against the Ally. Dark, hairy bipeds with two arms and two tentaclelike appendages sprouting from their armpits.
“But why New Jersey, of all places?”
“I believe the cage-or pyramid, as you’ve called it-was erected in the late Archaic period. The Order had preserved a good deal of knowledge after the cataclysm that ended the First Age, but never shared it. The ‘New World’ was not the least bit new to them. They penned the last q’qr near their first Lodge in North America.”
“The one in Johnson?” Jack said, his expression baffled. “Why?”
“The Pine Barrens, in what would eventually become New Jersey, were convenient to the coast via rivers and streams, and even more isolated then. The woods presented a good buffer against the natives.”
“But why not someplace warmer-like the Carolinas?”
“The location of the Johnson lodge isn’t random. It lies on a convergence near a particularly powerful nexus point. A settlement sprang up around it long before Columbus or even the Vikings found this continent, and eventually became the Old Town section of Johnson. You probably can’t pronounce its First Age name, but because of the presence of the last q’qr, it was referred to as Q’qret-which translates as Q’qr Home. As English became the dominant local language-”
Weezy saw where he was going. “Q’qret was bastardized into Quakerton.”
Glaeken nodded. “Which remained the town’s name until President Andrew Johnson decided to spend the night there. Members of the Order had largely moved on by then, leaving only the Lodge as a permanent holding. I knew the cage was empty and assumed the last q’qr was dead, but I bought the land around it to prevent development. Who knew what trouble people might unearth if they started digging?”