She was going mad, she thought. It was the only possible explanation. It galled her slightly that in her last desperate moments of life, she should have to endure visions of Nat Parson and Adam Scattergood, but if things went according to plan, she thought, then at least she wouldn’t have to see them for very much longer.

“With that?” said the Nameless, and began to laugh. Ten thousand dead laughed with it, and their voices were like a flock of carrion birds rising into the gunmetal sky.

But Maddy’s gaze stayed straight and true.

“You need my body unharmed,” she said. “If I die here, my spirit stays in Hel, and the rest of me just goes to dust. I can’t kill you, but I can do this…”

And she raised the knife to her own throat.

5

Once again there was silence in Hel. Everyone watched Maddy, standing in the circle of gods and Folk with the clasp knife held to her own throat.

Loki watched from Netherworld, and in spite of his peril, he grinned.

Thor watched and thought, That’s my girl.

Odin did not watch, but he knew, all the same.

Balder watched and saw the solution clearly for the first time: not a battle, nor even a war, but a sacrifice-

“Maddy! No!” the Nameless howled, and ten thousand voices echoed its cry. “Think what I’m offering-Worlds, Maddy-”

Maddy took a deep breath. It would have to be a clean blow-there might not be time for another, she thought. She pictured her blood-a necklace of it-spraying out onto the sand…

Her hand was shaking a little, she saw. She tried to steady it-

And found that neither hand would move.

It was too late. She was paralyzed; at last the Book of Invocations had done its work. And now all she could do was watch in despair as the Nameless closed in, exultant, its poisonous voice whispering in her ears, promising:

Worlds, Maddy. What else is there?

Nat Parson gave a strangled cry. He had no idea what he was doing; no thought of danger crossed his mind. All he could think of was the wretched girl, the girl who had foiled him at every turn, the girl who had laughed at him, thwarted him, ridiculed him, and was now about to take what he himself had longed for: the Word that was rightfully his…

“No!” He hurtled toward her, knife in hand, head lowered like a charging boar. “She never wanted it! Give it to me!” And, grabbing Maddy by the hair, remembering those hunting parties with his father so many years ago, he pulled back her head to cut her throat.

Sugar reached the discarded Head and, grasping it in both arms, began to run furiously across the open sand. It burned his skin like a sulfur stone, but Sugar held on, dodging and running for all he was worth, eyes squinting almost shut in concentration.

Find it, the Captain had said. And throw it into the deepest part…

Well, all of it looked deep enough. The question was, could he reach it in time?

He scuttled through Nat Parson’s legs, going Ouch-ouch-ouch from his blistered hands, and, looking for all the Worlds like a squirrel carrying a baked apple, he ran as fast as his short legs would go (which was faster than you might expect, and very quick for his size) toward the river Dream.

Nat was taken by surprise. All his attention had been on the girl, and when the goblin shot between his legs, he tripped and half fell forward onto the sand. He dropped the knife, bent to retrieve it, and found himself face to face with something that hissed and crackled and gleamed and seethed with fury and thwarted ambition. Nat did not pause for a second to think; instead he opened his arms and clasped it, howling, to his chest.

The Nameless had not seen the parson approach, had not given the little party of Folk more than a second’s thought. But first had come this mad creature scuttling in between it and the girl, and now here was the fool parson flailing out of the desert, eyes staring, mouth twisted and shouting, “No! Take me!”-reaching out hands already stiffened and blackening from its touch as-

Ten thousand or so troops cried out in alarm and still the parson begged, “Take me!”-arching, reaching, yearning, burning for Communion, his mouth agape in an O of horror and amazement as the Nameless struggled to free itself and the Word blossomed like an early rose…

To Nat it felt like tumbling into a pit of snakes. The Nameless’s mind was nothing like that of Elias Rede-Rede at least had once been human, with human thoughts and aspirations. But there was nothing human-nor even godlike-about the Nameless. No pity, no love; nothing but a sump of hate and fury.

No human consciousness could survive such a blast, and in a second Nat fell to the ground, bleeding from his nose and ears. For if the Word had been violent at a distance, here, at the source, it was cataclysmic. The force made the ventings from the Whisperer’s fire pit seem like nothing more than a milk pan boiling over on the fire; the aftershock knocked the living from their feet and dispersed the dead like motes of dust.

The Nameless gave a howl of rage. Robbed of its victim, suddenly finding itself in the body of the wrong person-a man with neither glam nor training-it acted without thought or restraint. Its first instinct was to annihilate the interloper, its second to regain the safety of its original vessel-

But the stone Head that had contained it since the beginning of the Elder Age was no longer lying on the ground. The Nameless gave another howl-of desperation this time. Without a suitable vessel, it knew, it would be no more than another soul in Hel-Hel’s property and Hel’s slave. Robbed of a leader, its army would disperse like the dust it was; its great plan would remain unfulfilled. Ten thousand troops echoed its cry as the Nameless focused every particle of its glam on a single, frantic, all-important objective:

To possess the girl. Once and for all.

It was then that the river burst its banks. The Word, unleashed and uncontrolled, multiplied by ten thousand and flung out toward the rift in the Worlds, had finally proven too much to contain.

The thing that had been the Ancient of Days wailed aloud-“Not yet-not yet!”-as the river Dream, a tidal wave, came rushing across the desert toward them.

Ethel Parson knew what it meant. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did, just as she knew that the only hope of the Nine Worlds was beyond that river and that they were almost out of time.

Sugar heard it and dropped the Head before setting off, no less urgently, in the opposite direction.

Odin heard it and thought, At last.

Across the plain the Vanir heard it and braced themselves for the End of All Things.

In Netherworld the Æsir heard it as the blackbird shadow began once more to descend. Still clinging to the spur of rock-now the only piece of solid matter as far as their eyes could see-they felt the approach of Chaos like a shrieking black wind and fell back once again, still flinging mindbolts into the thing’s lightless maw, until they were actually pressing against the gate dividing World from World, feeling its texture hard at their backs.

Loki had time to think, Damn gate should be charging me rent by now, when suddenly it gave way and he tumbled backward into the flow.

Hel’s living eye shot open in sudden comprehension to rest upon the hands of the deathwatch as they now began to move together once more. She had just enough time to think, Gods, what have I done? when the tidal wave hit and all at once the desert was submerged in Dream.