met in both hands. The metal was sickeningly warm—like
hard skin that carried a fever.
“Get you off the skin of this world,” he said in a voice that was low and calm, almost conversational. “In her name I command you.”
The red light in the helmet puffed out like the candle in-
side a carved pumpkin, and suddenly the weight of the
helmet—fifteen pounds at least—was all in Jack’s hands, be-
cause there was nothing else supporting it; beneath the helmet, the suit of armor had collapsed.
“You shoulda killed both of the Ellis brothers,” Jack said, and threw the empty helmet over the landing. It hit the floor far below with a hard bang and rolled away like a toy. The hotel seemed to cringe.
Jack turned toward the broad second-floor corridor, and
here, at last, was light: clean, clear light, like that on the day he had seen the flying men in the sky. The hallway ended in another set of double doors and the doors were closed, but
enough light came from above and below them, as well as
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through the vertical crack where they were latched together, to tell him that the light inside must be very bright indeed.
He wanted very badly to see that light, and the source of
that light; he had come far to see it, and through much bitter darkness.
The doors were heavy and inlaid with delicate scrollwork.
Written above them in gold leaf which had flaked a bit but
which was still perfectly readable for a’ that an’ a’ that, were the words TERRITORIES BALLROOM.
“Hey, Mom,” Jack Sawyer said in a soft, wondering voice
as he walked into that glow. Happiness lit his heart—that feeling was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow. “Hey, Mom, I think I’m
here, I really think I’m here.”
Gently then, and with awe, Jack grasped a handle with
each hand, and pressed them down. He opened the doors, and
as he did, a widening bar of clean white light fell on his upturned, wondering face.
7
Sunlight Gardener happened to be looking back up the beach
at the exact moment Jack dispatched the last of the five
Guardian Knights. He heard a dull boom, as if a low charge of dynamite had gone off somewhere inside the hotel. At the
same moment, bright light flashed from all of the Agincourt’s second-floor windows, and all of the carved brass symbols—
moons and stars and planetoids and weird crooked arrows—
came to a simultaneous stop.
Gardener was decked out like some sort of goony Los An-
geles SWAT squad cop. He had donned a puffy black flak-
vest over his white shirt and carried a radio pack-set on a canvas strap over one shoulder. Its thick, stubby antenna wavered back and forth as he moved. Over his other shoulder
was slung a Weatherbee .360. This was a hunting rifle almost as big as an anti-aircraft gun; it would have made Robert Ru-ark himself drool with envy. Gardener had bought it six years ago, after circumstances had dictated that he must get rid of his old hunting rifle. The Weatherbee’s genuine zebra-skin
case was in the trunk of a black Cadillac, along with his son’s body.
“Morgan!”
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Morgan did not turn around. He was standing behind and
slightly to the left of a leaning grove of rocks that jutted out of the sand like black fangs. Twenty feet beyond this rock and only five feet above the high-tide line lay Speedy Parker, aka Parkus. As Parkus, he had once ordered Morgan of Orris
marked—there were livid scars down the insides of that Mor-
gan’s large white thighs, the marks by which a traitor is
known in the Territories. It had only been through the intercession of Queen Laura herself that those scars had not been made to run down his cheeks instead of his inner thighs,
where they were almost always hidden by his clothes.
Morgan—this one as well as that one—had not loved the
Queen any better for her intercession . . . but his hatred for Parkus, who had sniffed out that earlier plot, had grown expo-nentially.
Now Parkus/Parker lay face-down on the beach, his skull
covered with festering sores. Blood dribbled listlessly from his ears.
Morgan wanted to believe that Parker was still alive, still suffering, but the last discernible rise and fall of his back had been just after he and Gardener arrived down here at these
rocks, some five minutes ago.
When Gardener called, Morgan didn’t turn because he was
rapt in his study of his old enemy, now fallen. Whoever had claimed revenge wasn’t sweet had been so wrong.
“Morgan!” Gardener hissed again.
Morgan turned this time, frowning. “Well? What?”
“Look! The roof of the hotel!”
Morgan saw that all of the weathercocks and roof orna-
ments—beaten brass shapes which spun at exactly the same
speed whether the wind was perfectly calm or howling up a
hurricane—had stopped moving. At the same instant the earth rippled briefly under their feet and then was still again. It was as if a subterranean beast of enormous size had shrugged in its hibernal sleep. Morgan would almost have believed he had imagined it if it had not been for the widening of Gardener’s bloodshot eyes. I’ll bet you wish you never left Indiana, Gard, Morgan thought. No earthquakes in Indiana, right?
Silent light flashed in all of the Agincourt’s windows
again.
“What does it mean, Morgan?” Gardener asked hoarsely.
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His insane fury over the loss of his son had for the first time moderated into fear for himself, Morgan saw. That was a bore, but he could be whipped back into his previous frenzy again, if necessary. It was just that Morgan hated to have to waste energy on anything at this point that didn’t bear directly on the problem of ridding the world— all the worlds—of Jack Sawyer, who had begun as a pest and who had developed into
the most monstrous problem of Sloat’s life.
Gardener’s pack-set squawked.
“Red Squad Leader Four to the Sunlight Man! Come in,
Sunlight Man!”
“Sunlight Man here, Red Squad Leader Four,” Gardener
snapped. “What’s up?”
In quick succession Gardener took four gabbling, excited
reports that were all exactly the same. There was no intelligence the two of them hadn’t seen and felt for themselves—
flashes of light, weathercocks at a standstill, something that might have been a ground-tremblor or possibly an earthquake preshock—but Gardener labored with sharp-eyed enthusiasm
over each report just the same, asking sharp questions, snapping “Over!” at the end of each transmission, sometimes breaking in with “Say again” or “Roger.” Sloat thought he
was acting like a bit player in a disaster movie.
But if it eased him, that was fine with Sloat. It saved him from having to answer Gardener’s question . . . and now that he thought about it, he supposed it was just possible that Gardener didn’t want his question answered, and that was why he was going through this rigmarole with the radio.
The Guardians were dead, or out of commission. That was
why the weathercocks had stopped, and that’s what the flashes of light meant. Jack didn’t have the Talisman . . . at least, not yet. If he got that, things in Point Venuti would really shake, rattle, and roll. And Sloat now thought that Jack would get it . . . that he had always been meant to get it. This did not frighten him, however.
His hand reached up and touched the key around his neck.
Gardener had run out of overs and rogers and ten-fours.
He reshouldered the pack-set and looked at Morgan with
wide, frightened eyes. Before he could say a word, Morgan
put gentle hands on Gardener’s shoulders. If he could feel
love for anyone other than his poor dead son, he felt love—of
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a twisted variety, most certainly—for this man. They went
back a long way, both as Morgan of Orris and Osmond and as
Morgan Sloat and Robert “Sunlight” Gardener.
It had been with a rifle much like the one now slung over
Gardener’s shoulder that Gardener had shot Phil Sawyer in
Utah.
“Listen, Gard,” he said calmly. “We are going to win.”
“Are you sure of that?” Gardener whispered. “I think he’s
killed the Guardians, Morgan. I know that sounds crazy, but I realy think—” He stopped, mouth trembling infirmly, lips
sheened with a thin membrane of spittle.
“We are going to win,” Morgan repeated in that same calm
voice, and he meant it. There was a sense of clear predestination in him. He had waited many years for this; his resolve had been true; it remained true now. Jack would come out
with the Talisman in his arms. It was a thing of immense
power . . . but it was fragile.
He looked at the scoped Weatherbee, which could drop a