as if the hotel had winked at him, secretly amused to find him at last so near. A dim figure seemed to glide away from the window: a second later the reflection of a cloud swam across the glass.
From somewhere inside, the Talisman trilled out its song only Jack could hear.
3
“I think it grew,” Richard breathed. He had forgotten to scratch since he had seen the hotel floating past the final hill. Tears ran over and through the raised red bumps on his cheeks, and Jack saw that his eyes were now completely encased by the raised rash—Richard didn’t have to squint to squint anymore. “It’s impossible, but the hotel used to be smaller, Jack. I’m sure of it.”
“Right now, nothing’s impossible,” Jack said, almost unnecessarily—they had long ago passed into the realm of the impossible. And the Agincourt was so large, so dominating, that it was wildly out of scale with the rest of the town.
The architectural extravagance of the black hotel, all the turrets and brass weathervanes attached to fluted towers, the cupolas and gambrels which should have made it a playful fantasy, instead made it menacing, nightmarish. It looked as though it belonged in some kind of anti-Disneyland where Donald Duck had strangled Huey, Dewey, and Louie and Mickey shot Minnie Mouse full of heroin.
“I’m afraid,” Richard said; and JASON COME NOW, sang out the Talisman.
“Just stick close to me, pal, and we’ll go through that place like grease through a goose.”
JASON COME NOW!
The clump of Territories trees just ahead rustled as Jack stepped forward.
Richard, frightened, hung back—it might have been, Jack realized, that Richard was nearly blind by now, deprived of his glasses and with his eyes gradually being squeezed shut. He reached behind him and pulled Richard forward, feeling as he did so how thin Richard’s hand and wrist had become.
Richard came stumbling along. His skinny wrist burned in Jack’s hand. “Whatever you do, don’t slow down,” Jack said. “All we have to do is get by them.”
“I can’t,” Richard sobbed.
“Do you want me to carry you? I’m being serious, Richard. I mean, this could be a lot worse. I bet if we hadn’t blown so many of his troops away back there, he’d have guards every fifty feet.”
“You couldn’t move fast enough if you carried me. I’d slow you down.”
He jerked Richard’s arm and began sprinting past the trees. Richard stumbled, gasped, then managed to right himself and keep on moving without falling down. Geysers of dust appeared at the base of the trees, a commotion of shredding earth and scrambling things that looked like enormous beetles, shiny as shoe polish. A small brown bird took off out of the weeds near the clump of conspiring trees, and a limber root like an elephant’s trunk whipped out of the dust and snatched it from the air.
Another root snaked toward Jack’s left ankle, but fell short. The mouths in the coarse bark howled and screamed.
Jack clenched his teeth together and tried to force Richard Sloat to fly. The heads of the complicated trees had begun to sway and bow. Whole nests and families of roots were slithering toward the white line, moving as though they had independent wills. Richard faltered, then unambiguously slowed as he turned his head to look past Jack toward the reaching trees.
“Move!” Jack yelled, and yanked at Richard’s arm. The red lumps felt like hot stones buried beneath the skin. He hauled away at Richard, seeing too many of the whickering roots crawl gleefully toward them across the white line.
Jack put his arm around Richard’s waist at the same instant that a long root whistled through the air and wrapped itself around Richard’s arm.
“Jesus!” Richard yelled. “Jason! It got me! It got me!”
In horror Jack saw the tip of the root, a blind worm’s head, lift up and stare at him. It twitched almost lazily in the air, then wound itself once again around Richard’s burning arm. Other roots came sliding toward them across the road.
Jack yanked Richard back as hard as he could, and gained another six inches. The root around Richard’s arm grew taut. Jack locked his arms around Richard’s waist and hauled him mercilessly backward. Richard let out an unearthly, floating scream. For a second, Jack was afraid that Richard’s shoulder had separated, but a voice large within him said
Then they both nearly went tumbling into a nest of crawling roots, for the single tendril around Richard’s arm had neatly snapped. Jack stayed on his feet only by back-pedalling frantically, bending over at the waist to keep Richard, too, off the road. In this way they got past the last of the trees just as they heard the rending, snapping sounds they had heard once before. This time, Jack did not have to tell Richard to run for it.
The nearest tree came roaring up out of the ground and fell with a ground-shaking thud only three or four feet behind Richard. The others crashed to the surface of the road behind it, waving their roots like wild hair.
“You saved my life,” Richard said. He was crying again, more from weakness and exhaustion and shock than from fear.
“From now on, my old pal, you ride piggyback,” Jack said, panting, and bent down to help Richard get on his back.
4
“I should have told you,” Richard was whispering. His face burned against Jack’s neck, his mouth against Jack’s ear. “I don’t want you to hate me, but I wouldn’t blame you if you did, really I wouldn’t. I know I should have told you.” He seemed to weigh no more than the husk of himself, as if nothing were left inside him.
“About what?” Jack settled Richard squarely in the center of his back, and again had the unsettling feeling that he was carrying only an empty sack of flesh.
