The Talisman by Stephen King

back and forth until the flame expired in a curl of smoke.

“Devils?” Jack asked.

“Strange square things—I believe the devils are contained

therein. Sometimes how they spit and spark! I shall show this to ye, Lord Jason.”

Without another word he swept toward the door, the warm

glow of the candle momentarily erasing the wrinkles from his face. Jack followed him outside into the sweetness and ampli-tude of the deep Territories. He remembered a photograph on the wall of Speedy Parker’s office, a photograph even then

filled with an inexplicable power, and realized that he was actually near the site of that photograph. Far off rose a familiar-looking mountain. Down the little knoll the fields of grain rolled away in all directions, waving in smooth, wide patterns.

Richard Sloat moved hesitantly beside Jack, rubbing his forehead. The silvery bands of metal, out of key with the rest of the landscape, stretched inexorably west.

“The shed is in back, my Lord,” Anders said softly, and al-

most shyly turned away toward the side of The Depot. Jack

took another glance at the far-off mountain. Now it looked

less like the mountain in Speedy’s photograph—newer—a

western, not an eastern, mountain.

“What’s with that Lord Jason business?” Richard whis-

pered right into his ear. “He thinks he knows you.”

“It’s hard to explain,” Jack said.

Richard tugged at his bandanna, then clamped a hand on

Jack’s biceps. The old Kansas City Clutch. “What happened

to the school, Jack? What happened to the dogs? Where are

we?”

“Just come along,” Jack said. “You’re probably still dream-

ing.”

“Yes,” Richard said in the tone of purest relief. “Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? I’m still asleep. You told me all that crazy stuff about the Territories, and now I’m dreaming about it.”

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“Yeah,” Jack said, and set off after Anders. The old man

was holding up the enormous candle like a torch and drifting down the rear side of the knoll toward another, slightly larger, octagonal wooden building. The two boys followed him

through the tall yellow grass. Light spilled from another of the transparent globes, revealing that this second building was open at opposite ends, as if two matching faces of the octagon had been neatly sliced away. The silvery train tracks ran

through these open ends. Anders reached the large shed and

turned around to wait for the boys. With the flaring, sputtering, upheld candle, his long beard and odd clothes, Anders resembled a creature from legend or faery, a sorcerer or wizard.

“It sits here, as it has since it came, and may the demons

drive it hence.” Anders scowled at the boys, and all his wrinkles deepened. “Invention of hell. A foul thing, d’ye ken.” He looked over his shoulder when the boys were before him. Jack saw that Anders did not even like being in the shed with the train. “Half its cargo is aboard, and it, too, stinks of hell.”

Jack stepped into the open end of the shed, forcing Anders

to follow him. Richard stumbled after, rubbing his eyes. The little train sat pointing west on the tracks—an odd-looking engine, a boxcar, a flatcar covered with a straining tarp. From this last car came the smell Anders so disliked. It was a wrong smell, not of the Territories, both metallic and greasy.

Richard immediately went to one of the interior angles of

the shed, sat down on the floor with his back to the wall, and closed his eyes.

“D’ye ken its workings, my Lord?” Anders asked in a low

voice.

Jack shook his head and walked up along the tracks to the

head of the train. Yes, there were Anders’s “demons.” They

were box batteries, just as Jack had supposed. Sixteen of

them, in two rows strung together in a metal container sup-

ported by the cab’s first four wheels. The entire front part of the train looked like a more sophisticated version of a deliv-eryboy’s bicycle-cart—but where the bicycle itself should

have been was a little cab which reminded Jack of something else . . . something he could not immediately identify.

“The demons talk to the upright stick,” Anders said from

behind him.

Jack hoisted himself up into the little cab. The “stick” An-

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ders had mentioned was a gearshift set in a slot with three notches. Then Jack knew what the little cab resembled. The

whole train ran on the same principle as a golf cart. Battery-powered, it had only three gears: forward, neutral, and re-

verse. It was the only sort of train that might possibly work in the Territories, and Morgan Sloat must have had it specially constructed for him.

“The demons in the boxes spit and spark, and talk to the

stick, and the stick moves the train, my Lord.” Anders hovered anxiously beside the cab, his face contorting into an astonish-ing display of wrinkles.

“You were going to leave in the morning?” Jack asked the

old man.

“Aye.”

“But the train is ready now?”

“Yes, my Lord.”

Jack nodded, and jumped down. “What’s the cargo?”

“Devil-things,” Anders said grimly. “For the bad Wolfs. To

take to the black hotel.”

I’d be a jump ahead of Morgan Sloat if I left now, Jack

thought. And looked uneasily over at Richard, who had man-

aged to put himself asleep again. If it weren’t for pig-headed, hypochondriacal Rational Richard, he would never have

stumbled onto Sloat’s choo-choo; and Sloat would have been

able to use the “devil-things”—weapons of some kind,

surely—against him as soon as he got near the black hotel.

For the hotel was the end of his quest, he was sure of that now.

And all of that seemed to argue that Richard, as helpless and annoying as he now was, was going to be more important to

his quest than Jack had ever imagined. The son of Sawyer and the son of Sloat: the son of Prince Philip Sawtelle and the son of Morgan of Orris. For an instant the world wheeled above

Jack and he snagged a second’s insight that Richard might

just be essential to whatever he was going to have to do in the black hotel. Then Richard snuffled and let his mouth drop

open, and the feeling of momentary comprehension slipped

away from Jack.

“Let’s have a look at those devil-things,” he said. He

whirled around and marched back down the length of the

train, along the way noticing for the first time that the floor of

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the octagonal shed was in two sections—most of it was one

round circular mass, like an enormous dinner plate. Then

there was a break in the wood, and what was beyond the

perimeter of the circle extended to the walls. Jack had never heard of a roundhouse, but he understood the concept: the circular part of the floor could turn a hundred and eighty de-

grees. Normally, trains or coaches came in from the east, and returned in the same direction.

The tarpaulin had been tied down over the cargo with thick

brown cord so hairy it looked like steel wool. Jack strained to lift an edge, peered under, saw only blackness. “Help me,” he said, turning to Anders.

The old man stepped forward, frowning, and with one

strong, deft motion released a knot. The tarpaulin loosened and sagged. Now when Jack lifted its edge, he saw that half of the flatcar held a row of wooden boxes stencilled MACHINE

PARTS. Guns, he thought: Morgan is arming his rebel Wolfs.

The other half of the space beneath the tarp was occupied by bulky rectangular packages of a squashy-looking substance

wrapped in layers of clear plastic sheeting. Jack had no idea what this substance might be, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t Wonder Bread. He dropped the tarpaulin and stepped back,

and Anders pulled at the thick rope and knotted it again.

“We’re going tonight,” Jack said, having just decided this.

“But my Lord Jason . . . the Blasted Lands . . . at night . . .

d’ye ken—”

“I ken, all right,” Jack said. “I ken that I’ll need all the surprise I can whip up. Morgan and that man the Wolfs call He

of the Lashes are going to be looking for me, and if I show up twelve hours before anybody is expecting this train, Richard and I might get away alive.”

Anders nodded gloomily, and again looked like an over-

size dog accommodating itself to unhappy knowledge.

Jack looked at Richard again—asleep, sitting up with his

mouth open. As if he knew what was in Jack’s mind, Anders,

too, looked toward sleeping Richard. “Did Morgan of Orris

have a son?” Jack asked.

“He did, my Lord. Morgan’s brief marriage had issue—a

boy child named Rushton.”

“And what became of Rushton? As if I couldn’t guess.”

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“He died,” Anders said simply. “Morgan of Orris was not