Above the throne, rising like the pipes of a mighty medieval organ, were thirteen great cylinders, each pulsing a different color. Each, that was, save for the pipe which ran directly down in back of the throne’s center. That one was black as midnight and as still as death.

“Hey!” Susannah shouted from her chair. “Anyone here?”

At the sound of her voice, the pipes flashed so brilliantly that Jake had to shield his eyes. For a moment the entire throneroom glared like an exploding rainbow. Then the pipes went out, went dark, went dead, just as the wizard’s glass in Roland’s story had done when the glass (or the force inhabiting the glass) decided to shut up for awhile. Now there was only the column of blackness, and the steady green pulse of the empty throne.

Next, a somehow tired humming sound, as of a very old servomechanism being called into use one final time, began to whine its way into their ears. Panels, each at least six feet long and two feet wide, slid open in the arms of the throne. From the black slots thus revealed, a rosecolored smoke began to drift out and up. As it rose, it darkened to a bright red. And in it, a terribly familiar zigzag line appeared. Jake knew what it was even before the words

(Lud Candleton Rilea The Falls of the Hounds Dasherville Topeka)

appeared, glowing smoke-bright.

It was Blaine’s route-map.

Roland could say all he wanted about how things had changed, how Jake’s feeling of being trapped in a nightmare

(this is the worst nightmare of my life, and that is the truth)

was just an illusion created by his confused mind and frightened heart, but Jake knew better. This place might look a little bit like the throneroom of Oz the Great and Terrible, but it was really Blaine the Mono. They were back aboard Blaine, and soon the riddling would begin all over again.

Jake felt like screaming.

5

Eddie recognized the voice that boomed out of the smoky route-map hanging above the green throne, but he believed it was Blaine the Mono no more than he believed it was the Wizard of Oz. Some wizard, perhaps, but this wasn’t the Emerald City, and Blaine was just as dead as dogshit. Eddie had sent him home with a fuckin rupture.

“HELLO THERE AGAIN, LITTLE TRAILHANDS!”

The smoky route-map pulsed, but Eddie no longer associated it with the voice, although he guessed they were supposed to. No, the voice was coming from the pipes.

He glanced down, saw Jake’s paper-white face, and knelt beside him. “It’s crap, kid,” he said.

“N-No... it’s Blaine... not dead...”

“He’s dead, all right. This is nothing but an amplified version of the after-school announcements... who’s got detention and who’s supposed to report to Room Six for Speech Therapy. You dig?”

“What?” Jake looked up at him, lips wet and trembling, eyes dazed. “What do you—”