The Talisman

gloves. The specter’s hot glare fell through the slit in its helmet. It seemed to slice blood from Jack’s upturned face in a horizontal line across the bridge of his nose.
    That chuffing sound of laughter again – not heard with his ears, because he knew this suit of armor was as empty as the rest, nothing but a steel jacket for an undead spirit, but heard inside his head. You’ve lost, boy – did you really think that puny little thing could get you past me?
    The mace whistled down again, this time slicing on a diagonal, and Jack tore his eyes away from that red gaze just in time to duck low – he felt the head of the mace pass through the upper layer of his long hair a second before it ripped away a four-foot section of bannister and sent it sailing out into space.
    A scraping clack of metal as the knight leaned toward him, its cocked helmet somehow a hideous and sarcastic parody of solicitude – then the mace drew back and up again for another of those portentous swings.
    Jack, you didn’t need no magic juice to git ovah, and you don’t need no magic pick to pull the chain on this here coffee can, neither!
    The mace came blasting through the air again – wheeeeossshhhh! Jack lurched backward, sucking in his stomach; the web of muscles in his shoulders screamed as they pulled around the punctures the spiked gloves had left.
    The mace missed the skin of his chest by less than an inch before passing beyond him and swiping through a line of thick mahogany balusters as if they had been toothpicks. Jack tottered on emptiness, feeling Buster Keatonish and absurd. He snatched at the ragged ruins of the bannister on his left and got splinters under two of his fingernails instead. The pain was so wire-thin excruciating that he thought for a moment that his eyeballs would explode with it. Then he got a good hold with his right hand and was able to stabilize himself and move away from the drop.
    All the magic’s in YOU, Jack! Don’t you know that by now?
    For a moment he only stood there, panting, and then he started up the stairs again, staring at the blank iron face above him.
    ‘Better get thee gone, Sir Gawain.’
    The knight cocked its great helmet again in that strangely delicate gesture – Pardon, my boy . . . can you actually be speaking to me? Then it swung the mace again.
    Perhaps blinded by his fear, Jack hadn’t noticed until now how slow its setup for those swings was, how clearly it telegraphed the trajectory of each portentous blow. Maybe its joints were rusted, he thought. At any rate, it was easy enough for him to dive inside the circle of its swing now that his head was clear again.
    He stood on his toes, reached up, and seized the black helmet 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 inside a carved pumpkin, and suddenly the weight of the helmet – fifteen pounds at least – was all in Jack’s hands, because 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 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,