Jake got to his feet and faced the route-map. In his chest his heartbeat seemed very slow but very hard, each pulse like a fist slamming on a drumhead. Oy crouched between his feet, looking anxiously up into his face.

“Hello, Blaine,” Jake said, and wet his lips.

“HELLO, JAKE OF NEW YORK.” The voice was kindly—the voice, perhaps, of a nice old fellow with a habit of molesting the children he from time to time leads into the bushes. “WOULD YOU TRY ME WITH RIDDLES FROM YOUR BOOK? OUR TIME TOGETHER GROWS SHORT.”

“Yes,” Jake said. “I would try you with these riddles. Give me your understanding of the truth concerning each, Blaine.”

“IT IS FAIRLY SPOKEN, JAKE OF NEW YORK. I WILL DO AS YOU ASK.”

Jake opened the book to the place he had been keeping with his finger. Ten riddles. Eleven, counting Samson’s riddle, which he was saving for last. If Blaine answered them all (as Jake now believed he probably would), Jake would sit down next to Roland, take Oy onto his lap, and wait for the end. There were, after all, other worlds than these.

“Listen, Blaine: In a tunnel of darkness lies a beast of iron. It can only attack when pulled back. What is it?”

“A BULLET.” No hesitation.

“Walk on the living, they don’t even mumble. Walk on the dead, they mutter and grumble. What are they?”

“FALLEN LEAVES.” No hesitation, and if Jake really knew in his heart that the game was lost, why did he feel such despair, such bitterness, such anger?

Because he’s a pain, that’s why. Blaine is a really BIG pain, and I’d like to push his face in it, just once. I think even making him stop is second to that on my wish-list.

Jake turned the page. He was very close to Riddle-De-Dum’s torn-out answer section now; he could feel it under his finger, a kind of jagged lump. Very close to the end of the book. He thought of Aaron Deepneau in the Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind, Aaron Deepneau telling him to come back anytime, play a little chess, and oh just by the way, old fatso made a pretty good cup of coffee. A wave of homesickness so strong it was like dying swept over him. He felt he would have sold his soul for a look at New York; hell, he would have sold it for one deep lung-filling breath of Forty-second Street at rush hour.

He fought it off and went to the next riddle.

“I am emeralds and diamonds, lost by the moon. I am found by the sun and picked up soon. What am I?”

“DEW.”

Still relentless. Still unhesitating.