Wizard and Glass

1

True love, like any other strong and addicting drug, is boring-once the tale of encounter and discovery is told, kisses quickly grow stale and caresses tiresome… except, of course, to those who share the kisses, who give and take the caresses while every sound and color of the world seems to deepen and brighten around them. As with any other strong drug, true first love is really only interesting to those who have become its prisoners.

And, as is true of any other strong and addicting drug, true first love is dangerous.

2

Some called Huntress the last moon of summer; some called it the first of fall. Whichever it was, it signaled a change in the life of the Barony. Men put out into the bay wearing sweaters beneath their oilskins as the winds began to turn more and more firmly into autumn’s east-west alley, and to sharpen as they turned. In the great Barony orchards north of Hambry (and in smaller orchards owned by John Croydon, Henry Wertner, Jake White, and the morose but wealthy Coral Thorin), the pickers began to appear in the rows, carrying their odd, off-kilter ladders; they were followed by horse-drawn carts full of empty barrels. Downwind of the cider-houses-especially downwind of the great Barony cider-mansion a mile north of Seafront-the breezy air was filled with the sweet tang of blems being pressed by the basketload. Away from the shore of the Clean Sea, the days remained warm as the Huntress waxed, skies were clear day and night, but summer’s real heat had departed with the Peddler. The last cutting of hay began and was finished in the run of a week-that last one was always scant, and ranchers and freeholders alike would curse it, scratching their heads and asking themselves why they even bothered… but come rainy, blowsy old March, with the bam lofts and bins rapidly emptying, they always knew. In the Barony’s gardens-the great ones of the ranchers, the smaller ones of the freeholders, and the tiny backyard plots of the townsfolk-men and women and children appeared in their old clothes and boots, their sombreros and sombreros. They came with the legs of their pants tied down firmly at the ankles, for in the time of the Huntress, snakes and scorpions in plentiful numbers wandered east from the desert. By the time old Demon Moon began to fatten, a line of rattlers would hang from the hitching posts of both the Travellers’ Rest and the mercantile across the street. Other businesses would similarly decorate their hitching posts, but when the prize for the most skins was given on Reaping Day, it was always the inn or the market that won it. In the fields and gardens, baskets to pick into were cast along the rows by women with their hair tied up in kerchiefs and reap-charms hidden in their bosoms. The last of the tomatoes were picked, the last of the cucumbers, the last of the corn, the last of the parey and mingo. Waiting behind them, as the days sharpened and the autumn storms began to near, would come squash, sharproot, pumpkins, and potatoes. In Mejis the time of reaping had begun, while overhead, clearer and clearer on each starry night, the Huntress pulled her bow and looked east over those strange, watery leagues no man or woman of Mid-World had ever seen.

3

Those in the grip of a strong drug-heroin, devil grass, true love-often find themselves trying to maintain a precarious balance between secrecy and ecstasy as they walk the tightrope of their lives. Keeping one’s balance on a tightrope is difficult under the soberest circumstances; doing so while in a state of delirium is all but impossible. Completely impossible, in the long run.

Roland and Susan were delirious, but at least had the thin advantage of knowing it. And the secret would not have to be kept forever, but only until Reaping Day Fair, at the very longest. Things might end even sooner than that, if the Big Coffin Hunters broke cover. The actual first move might be made by one of the other players, Roland thought, but no matter who moved first, Jonas and his men would be there, a part of it. The part apt to be most dangerous to the three boys.

Roland and Susan were careful-as careful as delirious people could be, at any rate. They never met in the same place twice in a row, they never met at the same time twice in a row, they never skulked on their way to their trysts. In Hambry, riders were common but skulkers were noticed. Susan never tried to cover her “riding out” by enlisting the help of a friend (although she had friends who would have done her this service); people who needed alibis were people keeping secrets. She had a sense that Aunt Cord was growing increasingly uneasy about her rides- particularly the ones she took in the early evenings-but so far she accepted Susan’s oft-repeated reason for them: she needed time to be solitary, to meditate on her promise and to accept her responsibility. Ironically, these suggestions had originally come from the witch of the Coos.

They met in the willow grove, in several of the abandoned boathouses which stood crumbling at the northern hook of the bay, in a herder’s hut far out in the desolation of the Coos, in an abandoned squatter’s shack hidden in the Bad Grass. The settings were, by and large, as sordid as any of those in which addicts come together to practice their vice, but Susan and Roland didn’t see the rotting walls of the shack or the holes in the roof of the hut or smell the mouldering nets in the comers of the old soaked boathouses. They were drugged, stone in love, and to them, every scar on the face of the world was a beauty-mark.

Twice, early on in those delirious weeks, they used the red rock in the wall at the back of the pavilion to arrange meetings, and then some deep voice spoke inside Roland’s head, telling him there must be no more of it-the rock might have been just the thing for children playing at secrets, but he and his love were no longer children; if they were discovered, banishment would be the luckiest punishment they could hope for. The red rock was too conspicuous, and writing things down-even messages that were unsigned and deliberately vague-was horribly dangerous.

Using Sheemie felt safer to both of them. Beneath his smiling light-mindedness there was a surprising depth of… well, discretion. Roland had thought long and hard before settling on that word, and it was the right word: an ability to keep silent that was more dignified than mere cunning. Cunning was out of Sheemie’s reach in any case, and always would be-a man who couldn’t tell a lie without shifting his eyes away from yours was a man who would never be considered cunning.

They used Sheemie half a dozen times over the five weeks when their physical love burned at its hottest-three of those times were to make meetings, two were to change meeting-places, and one was to cancel a tryst when Susan spied riders from the Piano Ranch sweeping for strays near the shack in the Bad Grass.

That deep, warning voice never spoke to Roland about Sheemie as it had about the dangers of the red rock… but his conscience spoke to him, and when he finally mentioned this to Susan (the two of them wrapped in a saddle-blanket and lying naked in each other’s arms), he found that her conscience had been troubling her, as well. It wasn’t fair to put the boy in the way of their possible trouble. After coming to that conclusion, Roland and Susan arranged their meetings strictly between the two of them. If she could not meet him, Susan said, she would hang a red shirt over the sill of her window, as if to dry. If he could not meet her, he was to leave a white stone in the northeast comer of the yard, diagonally across the road from Hockey’s Livery, where the town pump stood. As a last resort, they would use the red rock in the pavilion, risky or not, rather than bringing Sheemie into their affairs-their affair-again.

Cuthbert and Alain watched Roland’s descent into addiction first with disbelief, envy, and uneasy amusement, then with a species of silent horror. They had been sent to what was supposed to have been safety and had discovered a place of conspiracy, instead; they had come to take census in a Barony where most of the aristocracy had apparently switched its allegiance to the Affiliation’s bitterest enemy; they had made personal enemies of three hard men who had probably killed enough folks to populate a fair-sized graveyard. Yet they had felt equal to the situation, because they had come here under the leadership of their friend, who had attained near-mythic status in their minds by besting Cort-with a hawk as his weapon!-and becoming a gunslinger at the unheard-of age of fourteen. That they had been given guns themselves for this mission had meant a great deal to them when they set out from Gilead, and nothing at all by the time they began to realize the scope of what was going on in Hambry-town and the Barony of which it was a part. When that realization came, Roland was the weapon they counted on. And now-

“He’s like a revolver cast into water!” Cuthbert exclaimed one evening, not long after Roland had ridden away to meet Susan. Beyond the bunkhouse porch, Huntress rose in her first quarter. “Gods know if it’ll ever fire again, even if it’s fished out and dried off.”

“Hush, wait,” Alain said, and looked toward the porch rail. Hoping to jolly Cuthbert out of his bad temper (a task that was quite easy under ordinary circumstances), Alain said: “Where’s the lookout? Gone to bed early for once, has he?”

This only irritated Cuthbert more. He hadn’t seen the rook’s skull in days-he couldn’t exactly say how many-and he took its loss as an ill omen. “Gone, but not to bed,” he replied, then looked balefully to the west, where Roland had disappeared aboard his big old galoot of a horse. “Lost, I reckon. Like a certain fellow’s mind and heart and good sense.”

“He’ll be all right,” Alain said awkwardly. “You know him as well as I do, Bert-known him our whole lives, we have. He’ll be all right.”

Quietly, without even a trace of his normal good humor, Cuthbert said: “I don’t feel I know him now.”

They had both tried to talk to Roland in their different ways; both received a similar response, which was no real response at all. The dreamy (and perhaps slightly troubled) look of abstraction in Roland’s eyes during these one-sided discussions would have been familiar to anyone who has ever tried to talk sense to a drug addict. It was a look that said Roland’s mind was occupied by the shape of Susan’s face, the smell of Susan'-s skin, the feel of Susan’s body. And occupied was a silly word for it, one that fell short. It wasn’t an occupation but an obsession.

“I hate her a little for what she’s done,” Cuthbert said, and there was a note in his voice Alain had never heard before-a mixture of jealousy, frustration, and fear. “Perhaps more than a little.”

“You mustn’t!” Alain tried not to sound shocked, but couldn’t help it. “She isn’t responsible for-”

“Is she not? She went out to Citgo with him. She saw what he saw. God knows how much else he’s told her after they’ve finished making the beast with two backs. And she’s all the way around the world from stupid. Just the way she’s managed her side of their affair shows that.” Bert was thinking, Alain guessed, of her tidy little trick with the corvette. “She must know she’s become part of the problem herself. She must know that!”

Now his bitterness was fiighteningly clear. He’s jealous of her for stealing his best friend, Alain thought, but it doesn’t stop there. He’s jealous of his best friend, as well, because his best friend has won the most beautiful girl any of us have ever seen.

Alain leaned over and grasped Cuthbert’s shoulder. When Bert turned away from his morose examination of the dooryard to look at his friend, he was startled by the grimness on Alain’s face. “It’s ka,” Alain said.

Cuthbert almost sneered. “If I had a hot dinner for every time someone blamed theft or lust or some other stupidity on ka-”

Alain’s grip tightened until it became painful. Cuthbert could have pulled away but didn’t. He watched Alain closely. The joker was, temporarily, at least, gone. “Blame is exactly what we two can’t afford,” Alain said. “Don’t you see that? And if it’s ka that’s swept them away, we needn’t blame. We can’t blame. We must rise above it. We need him. And we may need her, too.”

Cuthbert looked into Alain’s eyes for what seemed to be a very long time. Alain saw Bert’s anger at war with his good sense. At last (and perhaps only for the time being), good sense won out.

“All right, fine. It’s ka, everybody’s favorite whipping-boy. That’s what the great unseen world’s for, after all, isn’t it? So we don’t have to take the blame for our acts of stupidity? Now let go of me, Al, before you break my shoulder.”

Alain let go and sat back in his chair, relieved. “Now if we only knew what to do about the Drop. If we don’t start counting there soon-”

“I’ve had an idea about that, actually,” Cuthbert said. “It just needs a little working out. I’m sure Roland could help… if either of us can get his attention for a few minutes, that is.”

They sat for awhile without speaking, looking out at the dooryard. Inside the bunkhouse, the pigeons-another bone of contention between Roland and Bert these days-cooed. Alain rolled himself a smoke. It was slow work, and the finished product looked rather comical, but it held together when he lit it.

“Your father would stripe you raw if he saw that in your hand,” Cuthbert remarked, but he spoke with a certain admiration. By the time the following year’s Huntress came around, all three of them would be confirmed smokers, tanned young men with most of the boyhood slapped out of their eyes.

Alain nodded. The strong Outer Crescent tobacco made him swimmy in the head and raw in the throat, but a cigarette had a way of calming his nerves, and right now his nerves could use some calming. He didn’t know about Bert, but these days he smelled blood on the wind. Possibly some of it would be their own. He wasn’t exactly frightened-not yet, at least- but he was very, very worried.

4

Although they had been honed like hawks toward the guns since early childhood, Cuthbert and Alain still carried an erroneous belief common to many boys their age: that their elders were also their betters, at least in such matters as planning and wit; they actually believed that grownups knew what they were doing. Roland knew better, even in his love-sickness, but his friends had forgotten that in the game of Castles, both sides wear the blindfold. They would have been surprised to find that at least two of the Big Coffin Hunters had grown extremely nervous about the three young men from In-World, and extremely tired of the waiting game both sides had been playing.

One early morning, as the Huntress neared the half, Reynolds and Depape came downstairs together from the second floor of the Travellers’ Rest. The main public room was silent except for various snores and phlegmy wheezings. In Hambry’s busiest bar, the party was over for another night.

Jonas, accompanied by a silent guest, sat playing Chancellors’ Patience at Coral’s table to the left of the batwing doors. Tonight he was wearing his duster, and his breath smoked faintly as he bent over his cards. It wasn’t cold enough to frost-not quite yet-but the frost would come soon. The chill in the air left no doubt of that.

The breath of his guest also smoked. Kimba Rimer’s skeletal frame was all but buried in a gray serape lit with faint bands of orange. The two of them had been on the edge of getting down to business when Roy and Clay (Pinch and Jilly, Rimer thought) showed up, their plowing and planting in the second-floor cribs also apparently over for another night.

“Eldred,” Reynolds said, and then: “Sai Rimer.”

Rimer nodded back, looking from Reynolds to Depape with thin distaste. “Long days and pleasant nights, gentlemen.” Of course the world had moved on, he thought. To find such low culls as these two in positions of importance proved it. Jonas himself was only a little better.

“Might we have a word with you, Eldred?” Clay Reynolds asked. “We’ve been talking, Roy and I-”

“Unwise,” Jonas remarked in his wavery voice. Rimer wouldn’t be surprised to find, at the end of his life, that the Death Angel had such a voice. “Talking can lead to thinking, and thinking’s dangerous for such as you boys. Like picking your nose with bullet-heads.”

Depape donkeyed his damned hee-haw laughter, as if he didn’t realize the joke was on him.

“Jonas, listen,” Reynolds began, and then looked uncertainly at Rimer.

“You can talk in front of sai Rimer,” Jonas said, laying out a fresh line of cards. “He is, after all, our chief employer. I play at Chancellors’ Patience in his honor, so I do.”

Reynolds looked surprised. “I thought… that is to say, I believed that Mayor Thorin was…”

“Hart Thorin wants to know none of the details of our arrangement with the Good Man,” Rimer said. “A share of the profits is all he requires in that line, Mr. Reynolds. The Mayor’s chief concern right now is that the Reaping Day Fair go smoothly, and that his arrangements with the young lady be… smoothly consummated.”

“Aye, that’s a diplomatic turn o’ speech for ye,” Jonas said in a broad Mejis accent. “But since Roy looks a little perplexed, I’ll translate. Mayor Thorin spends most of his time in the jakes these days, yanking his willy-pink and dreaming his fist is Susan Delgado’s box. I’m betting that when the shell’s finally opened and her pearl lies before him, he’ll never pluck it-his heart’ll explode from excitement, and he’ll drop dead atop her, so he will. Yar!”

More donkey laughter from Depape. He elbowed Reynolds. “He’s got it down, don’t he, Clay? Sounds just like em!”

Reynolds grinned, but his eyes were still worried. Rimer managed a smile as thin as a scum of November ice, and pointed at the seven which had just popped out of the pack. “Red on black, my dear Jonas.”

“I ain’t your dear anything,” Jonas said, putting the seven of diamonds on an eight of shadows, “and you’d do well to remember that.” Then, to Reynolds and Depape: “Now what do you boys want? Rimer ’ me was just going to have us a little palaver.”

“Perhaps we could all put our heads together,” Reynolds said, putting a hand on the back of a chair. “Kind of see if our thinking matches up.”

“I think not,” Jonas said, sweeping his cards together. He looked irritated, and Clay Reynolds took his hand off the back of the chair in a hurry. “Say your say and be done with it. It’s late.”

“We was thinking it’s time to go on out there to the Bar K,” Depape said. “Have a look around. See if there’s anything to back up what the old fella in Ritzy said.”

“And see what else they’ve got out there,” Reynolds put in. “It’s getting close now, Eldred, and we can’t afford to take chances. They might have-”

“Aye? Guns? Electric lights? Fairy-women in bottles? Who knows? I’ll think about it. Clay.”

“But-”

“I said I’ll think about it. Now go on upstairs, the both of you, back to your own fairy-women.”

Reynolds and Depape looked at him, looked at each other, then backed away from the table. Rimer watched them with his thin smile.

At the foot of the stairs, Reynolds turned back. Jonas paused in the act of shuffling his cards and looked at him, tufted eyebrows raised.

“We underestimated em once and they made us look like monkeys. I don’t want it to happen again. That’s all.”

“Your ass is still sore over that, isn’t it? Well, so is mine. And I tell you again, they’ll pay for what they did. I have the bill ready, and when the time comes, I’ll present it to them, with all interest duly noted. In the meantime, they aren’t going to spook me into making the first move. Time is on our side, not theirs. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“Will you try to remember it?”

“Yes,” Reynolds repeated. He seemed satisfied.

“Roy? Do you trust me?”

“Aye, Eldred. To the end.” Jonas had praised him for the work he had done in Ritzy, and Depape had rolled in it the way a male dog rolls in the scent of a bitch.

“Then go on up, the both of you, and let me palaver with the boss and be done with it. I’m too old for these late nights.”

When they were gone, Jonas dealt out a fresh line of cards, then looked around the room. There were perhaps a dozen folks, including Sheb the piano-player and Barkie the bouncer, sleeping it off. No one was close enough to listen to the low-voiced conversation of the two men by the door, even if one of the snoring drunkards was for some reason only shamming sleep. Jonas put a red queen on a black knight, then looked up at Rimer. “Say your say.”

“Those two said it for me, actually. Sai Depape will never be embarrassed by a surplus of brains, but Reynolds is fairly smart for a gunny, isn’t he?”

“Clay’s trig when the moon’s right and he’s had a shave,” Jonas agreed. “Are you saying you came all the way from Seafront to tell me those three babbies need a closer looking at?”

Rimer shrugged.

“Perhaps they do, and I’m the man to do it, if so-right enough. But what’s there to find?”

“That’s to be seen,” Rimer said, and tapped one of Jonas’s cards. “There’s a Chancellor.”

“Aye. Near as ugly as the one I’m sitting with.” Jonas put the Chancellor-it was Paul-above his run of cards. The next draw uncovered Luke, whom he put next to Paul. That left Peter and Matthew still lurking in the bush. Jonas looked at Rimer shrewdly. “You hide it better than my pals, but you’re as nervous as they are, underneath. You want to know what’s out at that bunkhouse? I’ll tell you: extra boots, pictures of their mommies, socks that stink to high heaven, stiff sheets from boys who’ve been taught it’s low-class to chase after the sheep… and guns hidden somewhere. Under the floorboards, like enough.”

“You really think they have guns?”

“Aye, Roy got the straight of that, all right. They’re from Gilead, they’re likely from the line of Eld or from folk who like to think they’re from it, and they’re likely 'prentices to the trade who’ve been sent on with guns they haven’t earned yet. I wonder a bit about the tall one with the I-don’t-give-a-shit look in his eyes-he might already be a gunslinger, I suppose-but is it likely? I don’t think so. Even if he is, I could take him in a fair go. I know it, and he does, too.”

“Then why have they been sent here?”

“Not because those from the Inner Baronies suspect your treason, sai Rimer-be easy on that score.”

Rimer’s head poked out of his serape as he sat up straight, and his face stiffened. “How dare you call me a traitor? How dare you?”

Eldred Jonas favored Hambry’s Minister of Inventory with an unpleasant smile. It made the white-haired man look like a wolverine. “I’ve called things by their right names my whole life, and I won’t stop now. All that needs matter to you is that I’ve never double-crossed an employer.”

“If I didn’t believe in the cause of-”

“To hell with what you believe! It’s late and I want to go to bed. The folk in New Canaan and Gilead haven’t the foggiest idea of what does or doesn’t go on out here on the Crescent; there aren’t many of em who’ve ever been here, I’d wager. Them are too busy trying to keep everything from falling down around their ears to do much travelling these days. No, what they know is all from the picturebooks they was read out of when they 'us babbies themselves: happy cowboys galloping after stock, happy fishermen pulling whoppers into their boats, folks clogging at bam-raisings and drinking big pots o’ graf in Green Heart pavilion. For the sake of the Man Jesus, Rimer, don’t go dense on me-I deal with that day in and day out.”

“They see Mejis as a place of quiet and safety.”

“Aye, bucolic splendor, just so, no doubt about it. They know that their whole way o’ life-all that nobility and chivalry and ancestor-worship-is on fire. The final battle may take place as much as two hundred wheels northwest of their borders, but when Farson uses his fire-carriages and robots to wipe out their army, trouble will come south fast. There are those from the Inner Baronies who’ve smelled this coming for twenty years or more. They didn’t send these brats here to discover your secrets, Rimer; folks such as these don’t send their babbies into danger on purpose. They sent em here to get em out of the way, that’s all. That doesn’t make em blind or stupid, but for the sake of the gods, let’s be sane. They’re kiddies;'

“What else might you find, should you go out there?”

“Some way of sending messages, mayhap. A heliograph’s the most likely. And out beyond Eyebolt, a shepherd or maybe a freeholder susceptible to a bribe-someone they’ve trained to catch the message and either flash it on or carry it afoot. But before long it’ll be too late for messages to do any good, won’t it?”

“Perhaps, but it’s not too late yet. And you’re right. Kiddies or not, they worry me.”

“You’ve no cause, I tell you. Soon enough, I’ll be wealthy and you’ll be downright rich. Mayor yourself, if you want. Who’d stand to stop you? Thorin? He’s a joke. Coral? She’d help you string him up, I wot. Or perhaps you’d like to be a Baron, if such offices be revived?” He saw a momentary gleam in Rimer’s eyes and laughed. Matthew came out of the deck, and Jonas put him up with the other Chancellors. “Yar, I see that’s what you’ve got your heart set on. Gems is nice, and for gold that goes twice, but there’s nothing like having folk bow and scrape before ye, is there?”

Rimer said, “They should have been on the cowboy side by now.”

Jonas’s hands stopped above the layout of cards. It was a thought that had crossed his own mind more than once, especially over the last two weeks or so.

“How long do you think it takes to count our nets and boats and chart out the fish-hauls?” Rimer asked. “They should be over on the Drop, counting cows and horses, looking through barns, studying the foal-charts. They should have been there two weeks ago, in fact. Unless they already know what they’d find.”

Jonas understood what Rimer was implying, but couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it. Not such a depth of slyness from boys who only had to shave once a week.

“No,” he said. “That’s your own guilty heart talking to you. They’re just so determined to do it right that they’re creeping along like old folks with bad eyes. They’ll be over on the Drop soon enough, and counting their little hearts out.”

“And if they’re not?”

A good question. Get rid of them somehow, Jonas supposed. An ambush, perhaps. Three shots from cover, no more babbies. There’d be ill feeling afterward-the boys were well liked in town-but Rimer could handle that until Fair Day, and after the Reap it wouldn’t matter. Still-

“I’ll have a look around out at the Bar K,” Jonas said at last. “By myself-I won’t have Clay and Roy tramping along behind me.”

“That sounds fine.”

“Perhaps you’d like to come and lend a hand.”

Kimba Rimer smiled his icy smile. “I think not.”

Jonas nodded, and began to deal again. Going out to the Bar K would be a bit risky, but he didn’t expect any real problem-especially if he went alone. They were only boys, after all, and gone for much of each day.

“When may I expect a report, sai Jonas?”

“When I’m ready to make it. Don’t crowd me.”

Rimer lifted his thin hands and held them, palms out, to Jonas. “Cry your pardon, sai,” he said.

Jonas nodded, slightly mollified. He flipped up another card. It was Peter, Chancellor of Keys. He put the card in the top row and then stared at it, combing his fingers through his long white hair as he did. He looked from the card to Rimer, who looked back, eyebrows raised.

“You smile,” Rimer said.

“Yar!” Jonas said, and began to deal again. “I’m happy! All the Chancellors are out. 1 think I’m going to win this game.”

5

For Rhea, the time of the Huntress had been a time of frustration and unsatisfied craving. Her plans had gone awry, and thanks to her cat’s hideously mistimed leap, she didn’t know how or why. The young cull who’d taken Susan Delgado’s cherry had likely stopped her from chopping her scurf… but how? And who was he really? She wondered that more and more, but her curiosity was secondary to her fury. Rhea of the Coos wasn’t used to being balked.

She looked across the room to where Musty crouched and watched her carefully. Ordinarily he would have relaxed in the fireplace (he seemed to like the cool drafts that swirled down the chimney), but since she had singed his fur. Musty preferred the woodpile. Given Rhea’s mood, that was probably wise. “You’re lucky I let ye live, ye warlock,” the old woman grumbled.

She turned back to the ball and began to make passes above it, but the glass only continued to swirl with bright pink light-not a single image appeared. Rhea got up at last, went to the door, threw it open, and looked out on the night sky. Now the moon had waxed a little past the half, and the Huntress was coming clear on its bright face. Rhea directed the stream of foul language she didn’t quite dare to direct at the glass (who knew what entity might lurk inside it, waiting to take offense at such talk?) up at the woman in the moon. Twice she slammed her bony old fist into the door-lintel as she cursed, dredging up every dirty word she could think of, even the potty-mouth words children throw at each other in the dust of the play yard. Never had she been so angry. She had given the girl a command, and the girl, for whatever reasons, had disobeyed. For standing against Rhea of the Coos, the bitch deserved to die.

“But not right away,” the old woman whispered. “First she should be rolled in the dirt, then pissed on until the dirt’s mud and her fine blonde hair’s full of it. Humiliated… hurt… spat on…”

She slammed her fist against the door’s side again, and this time blood flew from the knuckles. It wasn’t just the girl’s failure to obey the hypnotic command. There was another matter, related but much more serious: Rhea herself was now too upset to use the glass, except for brief and unpredictable periods of time. The hand-passes she made over it and the incantations she muttered to it were, she knew, useless; the words and gestures were just the way she focused her will. That was what the glass responded to-will and concentrated thought. Now, thanks to the trollop of a girl and her boy lover, Rhea was too angry to summon the smooth concentration needed to part the pink fog which swirled inside the ball. She was, in fact, too angry to see.

“How can I make it like it was?” Rhea asked the half-glimpsed woman in the moon. “Tell me! Tell me!” But the Huntress told her nothing, and at last Rhea went back inside, sucking at her bleeding knuckles.

Musty saw her coming and squeezed into the cobwebby space between the woodpile and the chimney.

1

Now the Huntress “filled her belly,” as the old-timers said-even at noon she could be glimpsed in the sky, a pallid vampire woman caught in bright autumn sunlight. In front of businesses such as the Travellers’ Rest and on the porches of such large ranch houses as Lengyll’s Rocking B and Renfrew’s Lazy Susan, stuffy-guys with heads full of straw above their old overalls began to appear. Each wore his sombrero; each held a basket of produce cradled in his arms; each looked out at the emptying world with stitched white-cross eyes.

Wagons filled with squashes clogged the roads; bright orange drifts of pumpkins and bright magenta drifts of sharproot lay against the sides of barns. In the fields, the potato-carts rolled and the pickers followed behind. In front of the Hambry Mercantile, reap-charms appeared like magic, hanging from the carved Guardians like wind-chimes.

All over Mejis, girls sewed their Reaping Night costumes (and sometimes wept over them, if the work went badly) as they dreamed of the boys they would dance with in the Green Heart pavilion. Their little brothers began to have trouble sleeping as they thought of the rides and the games and the prizes they might win at the carnival. Even their elders sometimes lay awake in spite of their sore hands and aching backs, thinking about the pleasures of the Reap.

Summer had slipped away with a final flirt of her greengown; harvest-time had arrived.

2

Rhea cared not a fig for Reaping dances or carnival games, but she could no more sleep than those who did. Most nights she lay on her stinking pallet until dawn, her skull thudding with rage. On a night not long after Jonas’s conversation with Chancellor Rimer, she determined to drink herself into oblivion. Her mood was not improved when she found that her graf barrel was almost empty; she blistered the air with her curses.

She was drawing in breath for a fresh string of them when an idea struck her. A wonderful idea. A brilliant idea. She had wanted Susan Delgado to cut off her hair. That hadn’t worked, and she didn’t know why… but she did know something about the girl, didn’t she? Something interesting, aye, so it was, wery interesting, indeed.

Rhea had no desire to go to Thorin with what she knew; she had a fond (and foolish, likely) hope that the Mayor had forgotten about his wonderful glass ball. But the girl’s aunt, now… suppose Cordelia Delgado were to discover that not only was her niece’s virginity lost, the girl was well on her way to becoming a practiced trollop? Rhea didn’t think Cordelia would go to the Mayor, either-the woman was a prig but not a fool-yet it would set the cat among the pigeons just the same, wouldn’t it?

“Waow!”

Thinking of cats, there was Musty, standing on the stoop in the moonlight, looking at her with a mixture of hope and mistrust. Rhea, grinning hideously, opened her arms. “Come to me, my precious! Come, my sweet one!”

Musty, understanding all was forgiven, rushed into his mistress’s arms and began to purr loudly as Rhea licked along his sides with her old and yellowing tongue. That night the Coos slept soundly for the first time in a week, and when she took the glass ball into her arms the following morning, its mists cleared for her at once. She spent the day in thrall to it, spying on people she detested, drinking little and eating nothing. Around sunset, she came out of her trance enough to realize she had as yet done nothing about the saucy little jade. But that was all right; she saw how it could be done… and she could watch all the results in the glass! All the protests, all the shouting and recriminations! She would see Susan’s tears. That would be the best, to see her tears.

“A little harvest of my own,” she said to Ermot, who now came slithering up her leg toward the place where she liked him best. There weren’t many men who could do you like Ermot could do you, no indeed. Sitting there with a lapful of snake, Rhea began to laugh.

3

“Remember your promise,” Alain said nervously as they heard the approaching beat of Rusher’s hoofs. “Keep your temper.”

“I will,” Cuthbert said, but he had his doubts. As Roland rode around the long wing of the bunkhouse and into the yard, his shadow trailing out in the sunset light, Cuthbert clenched his hands nervously. He willed them to open, and they did. Then, as he watched Roland dismount, they rolled themselves closed again, the nails digging into his palms.

Another go-round, Cuthbert thought. Gods, but I’m sick of them. Sick to death.

Last night’s had been about the pigeons-again. Cuthbert wanted to use one to send a message back west about the oil tankers; Roland still did not. So they had argued. Except (here was another thing which infuriated him, that rubbed against his nerves like the sound of the thinny) Roland did not argue. These days Roland did not deign to argue. His eyes always kept that distant look, as if only his body was here. The rest of him- mind, soul, spirit, ka-was with Susan Delgado.

“No,” he had said simply. “It’s too late for such.”

“You can’t know that,” Cuthbert had argued. “And even if it’s too late for help to come from Gilead, it’s not too late for advice to come from Gilead. Are you so blind you can’t see that?”

“What advice can they send us?” Roland hadn’t seemed to hear the rawness in Cuthbert’s voice. His own voice was calm. Reasonable. And utterly disconnected, Cuthbert thought, from the urgency of the situation.

“If we knew that,” he had replied, “we wouldn’t have to ask, Roland, would we?”

“We can only wait and stop them when they make their move. It’s comfort you’re looking for, Cuthbert, not advice.”

You mean wait while you fuck her in as many ways and in as many places as you can imagine, Cuthbert thought. Inside, outside, rightside up and upside down.

“You’re not thinking clearly about this,” Cuthbert had said coldly. He’d heard Alain’s gasp. Neither of them had ever said such a thing to Roland in their lives, and once it was out, he’d waited uneasily for whatever explosion might follow.

None did. “Yes,” Roland replied, “I am.” And he had gone into the bunkhouse without another word.

Now, watching Roland uncinch Rusher’s girths and pull the saddle from his back, Cuthbert thought: You ’re not, you know. But you better think clearly about this. By all the gods, you ’d better.

“Hile,” he said as Roland carried the saddle over to the porch and set it on the step. “Busy afternoon?” He felt Alain kick his ankle and ignored it.

“I’ve been with Susan,” Roland said. No defense, no demur, no excuse. And for a moment Cuthbert had a vision of shocking clarity: he saw the two of them in a hut somewhere, the late afternoon sun shining through holes in the roof and dappling their bodies. She was on top, riding him. Cuthbert saw her knees on the old, spongy boards, and the tension in her long thighs. He saw how tanned her arms were, how white her belly. He saw how Roland’s hands cupped the globes of her breasts, squeezing them as she rocked back and forth above him, and he saw how the sun lit her hair, turning it into a fine-spun net.

Why do you always have to be first? he cried at Roland in his mind. Why does it always have to be you? Gods damn you, Roland! Gods damn you!

“We were on the docks,” Cuthbert said, his tone a thin imitation of his usual brightness. “Counting boots and marine tools and what are called clam-drags. What an amusing time of it we’ve had, eh, Al?”

“Did you need me to help you do that?” Roland asked. He went back to Rusher, and took off the saddle-blanket. “Is that why you sound angry?”

“If I sound angry, it’s because most of the fishermen are laughing at us behind our backs. We keep coming back and coming back. Roland, they think we’re fools.”

Roland nodded. “All to the good,” he said.

“Perhaps,” Alain said quietly, “but Rimer doesn’t think we’re fools- it’s in the way he looks at us when we pass. Nor does Jonas. And if they don’t think we’re fools, Roland, what do they think?”

Roland stood on the second step, the saddle-blanket hanging forgotten over his arm. For once they actually seemed to have his attention, Cuthbert thought. Glory be and will wonders never cease.

“They think we’re avoiding the Drop because we already know what’s there,” Roland said. “And if they don’t think it, they soon will.”

“Cuthbert has a plan.”

Roland’s gaze-mild, interested, already starting to be not there again-shifted to Cuthbert. Cuthbert the joker. Cuthbert the 'prentice, who had in no way earned the gun he’d carried east to the Outer Crescent. Cuthbert the virgin and eternal second. Gods, I don’t want to hate him. I don’t, but now it’s so easy.

“We two should go and see Sheriff Avery tomorrow,” Cuthbert said. “We will present it as a courtesy visit. We have already established ourselves as three courteous, if slightly stupid, young fellows, have we not?”

“To a fault,” Roland agreed, smiling.

“We’ll say that we’ve finally finished with the seacoast side of Hambry, and we hope to be every bit as meticulous on the farm and cowboy side. But we certainly don’t want to cause trouble or be in anyone’s way. It is, after all, the busiest time of year-for ranchers as well as farmers- and even citified fools such as ourselves will be aware of that. So we’ll give the good Sheriff a list-”

Roland’s eyes lit up. He tossed the blanket over the porch rail, grabbed Cuthbert around the shoulders, and gave him a rough hug. Cuthbert could smell a lilac scent around Roland’s collar and felt an insane but powerful urge to clamp his hands around Roland’s throat and try to strangle him. Instead, he gave him a perfunctory clap on the back in return.

Roland drew away, grinning widely. “A list of the ranches we’ll be visiting,” he said. “Aye! And with forewarning, they can move any stock they’d like us not to see on to the next ranch, or the last one. The same for tack, feed, equipment… it’s masterful, Cuthbert! You’re a genius!”

“Far from that,” Cuthbert said. “I’ve just spared a little time to think about a problem that concerns us all. That concerns the entire Affiliation, mayhap. We need to think. Wouldn’t you say?”

Alain winced, but Roland didn’t seem to notice. He was still grinning. Even at fourteen, such an expression on his face was troubling. The truth was that when Roland grinned, he looked slightly mad. “Do you know, they may even move in a fair number of muties for us to look at, just so we’ll continue to believe the lies they’ve already told about the impurity of their stocklines.” He paused, seeming to think, and then said: “Why don’t you and Alain go and see the Sheriff, Bert? That would do very well, I think.”

At this point Cuthbert nearly threw himself at Roland, wanting to scream Yes, why not? Then you could spend tomorrow morning pronging her as well as tomorrow afternoon! You idiot! You thoughtless lovestruck idiot!

It was Al who saved him-saved them all, perhaps.

“Don’t be a fool,” he said sharply, and Roland wheeled toward him, looking surprised. He wasn’t used to sharpness from that quarter. “You’re our leader, Roland-seen that way by Thorin, by Avery, by the townsfolk. Seen that way by us as well.”

“No one appointed me-”

“No one needed to!” Cuthbert shouted. “You won your guns! These folk would hardly believe it-I hardly believe it myself just lately-but you are a gunslinger. You have to go! Plain as the nose on your face! It doesn’t matter which of us accompanies you, but you have to go!” He could say more, much more, but if he did, where would it end? With their fellowship broken beyond repair, likely. So he clamped his mouth shut- no need for Alain to kick him this time-and once again waited for the explosion. Once again, none came.

“All right,” Roland said in his new way-that mild it-doesn’t-much-matter way that made Cuthbert feel like biting him to wake him up. “Tomorrow morning. You and I, Bert. Will eight suit you?”

“Down to the ground,” Cuthbert said. Now that the discussion was over and the decision made, Bert’s heart was beating wildly and the muscles in his upper thighs felt like rubber. It was the way he’d felt after their confrontation with the Big Coffin Hunters.

“We’ll be at our prettiest,” Roland said. “Nice boys from the Inners with good intentions but not many brains. Fine.” And he went inside, no longer grinning (which was a relief) but smiling gently.

Cuthbert and Alain looked at each other and let out their breath in a mutual rush. Cuthbert cocked his head toward the yard, and went down the steps. Alain followed, and the two boys stood in the center of the dirt rectangle with the bunkhouse at their backs. To the east, the rising full moon was hidden behind a scrim of clouds. '

“She’s tranced him,” Cuthbert said. “Whether she means to or not, she’ll kill us all in the end. Wait and see if she don’t.”

“You shouldn’t say such, even in jest.”

“All right, she’ll crown us with the jewels of Eld and we’ll live forever.”

“You have to stop being angry at him, Bert. You have to.”

Cuthbert looked at him bleakly. “I can’t.”

4

The great storms of autumn were still a month or more distant, but the following morning dawned drizzly and gray. Roland and Cuthbert wrapped themselves in scrapes and headed for town, leaving Alain to the few home place chores. Tucked in Roland’s belt was the schedule of farms and ranches-beginning with the three small spreads owned by the Barony-the three of them had worked out the previous evening. The pace this schedule suggested was almost ludicrously slow-it would keep them on the Drop and in the orchards almost until Year’s End Fair-but it conformed to the pace they had already set on the docks.

Now the two of them rode silently toward town, both lost in their own thoughts. Their way took them past the Delgado house. Roland looked up and saw Susan sitting in her window, a bright vision in the gray light of that fall morning. His heart leaped up and although he didn’t know it then, it was how he would remember her most clearly forever after-lovely Susan, the girl at the window. So do we pass the ghosts that haunt us later in our lives; they sit undramatically by the roadside like poor beggars, and we see them only from the comers of our eyes, if we see them at all. The idea that they have been waiting there for us rarely if ever crosses our minds. Yet they do wait, and when we have passed, they gather up their bundles of memory and fall in behind, treading in our footsteps and catching up, little by little.

Roland raised a hand to her. It went toward his mouth at first, wanting to send her a kiss, but that would be madness. He lifted the hand before it could touch his lips and ticked a finger off his forehead instead, offering a saucy little salute.

Susan smiled and returned it in kind. None saw Cordelia, who had gone out in the drizzle to check on the last of her squash and sharproot. That lady stood where she was, a sombrero yanked down on her head almost to the eyeline, half-hidden by the stuffy-guy guarding the pumpkin patch. She watched Roland and Cuthbert pass (Cuthbert she barely saw; her interest was in the other one). From the boy on horseback she looked up to Susan, sitting there in her window, humming as blithely as a bird in a gilded cage.

A sharp splinter of suspicion whispered its way into Cordelia’s heart. Susan’s change of temperament-from alternating bouts of sorrow and fearful anger to a kind of dazed but mainly cheerful acceptance-had been so sudden. Mayhap it wasn’t acceptance at all.

“Ye’re mad,” she whispered to herself, but her hand remained tight on the haft of the machete she held. She dropped to her knees in the muddy garden and abruptly began chopping sharproot vines, tossing the roots themselves toward the side of the house with quick, accurate throws. “There’s nothing between em. I’d know. Children of such an age have no more discretion than… than the drunks in the Rest.”

But the way they had smiled. The way they had smiled at each other.

“Perfectly normal,” she whispered, chopping and throwing. She cut a sharproot nearly in half, ruining it, not noticing. The whispering was a habit she’d picked up only recently, as Reap Day neared and the stresses of coping with her brother’s troublesome daughter mounted. “Folks smile at each other, that’s all.”

The same for the salute and Susan’s returning wave. Below, the handsome cavalier, acknowledging the pretty maid; above, the maid herself, pleased to be acknowledged by such as he. It was youth calling to youth, that was all. And yet…

The look in his eyes… and the look in hers.

Nonsense, of course. But-

But you saw something else.

Yes, perhaps. For a moment it had seemed to her that the young man was going to blow Susan a kiss… then had remembered himself at the last moment and turned it into a salute, instead.

Even if ye did see such a thing, it means nothing. Young cavaliers are saucy, especially when out from beneath the gaze of their fathers. And these three already have a history, as ye well know.

All true enough, but none of it removed that chilly splinter from her heart.

5

Jonas answered Roland’s knock and let the two boys into the Sheriff’s office. He was wearing a Deputy’s star on his shirt, and looked at them with expressionless eyes. “Boys,” he said. “Come in out of the wet.”

He stepped back to allow them entrance. His limp was more pronounced than Roland had ever seen it; the wet weather was playing it up, he supposed.

Roland and Cuthbert stepped in. There was a gas heater in the corner-tilled from “the candle” at Citgo, no doubt-and the big room, which had been cool on the day they had first come here, was stuporously hot. The three cells held five woeful-looking drunks, two pairs of men and a woman in the center cell by herself, sitting on the bunk with her legs spread wide, displaying a broad expanse of red drawers. Roland feared that if she got her finger any farther up her nose, she might never retrieve it. Clay Reynolds was leaning against the notice-board, picking his teeth with a broomstraw. Sitting at the rolltop desk was Deputy Dave, stroking his chin and frowning through his monocle at the board which had been set up there. Roland wasn’t at all surprised to see that he and Bert had interrupted a game of Castles.

“Well, look here, Eldred!” Reynolds said. “It’s two of the In-World boys! Do your mommies know you’re out, fellas?”

“They do,” Cuthbert said brightly. “And you’re looking very well, sai Reynolds. The wet weather’s soothed your pox, has it?”

Without looking at Bert or losing his pleasant little smile, Roland shot an elbow into his friend’s shoulder. “Pardon my friend, sai. His humor regularly transgresses the bounds of good taste; he doesn’t seem able to help it. There’s no need for us to scratch at one another-we’ve agreed to let bygones be bygones, haven’t we?”

“Aye, certainly, all a misunderstanding,” Jonas said. He limped back across to the desk and the game-board. As he sat down on his side of it, his smile turned to a sour little grimace. “I’m worse than an old dog,” he said. “Someone ought to put me down, so they should. Earth’s cold but painless, eh, boys?”

He looked back at the board and moved a man around to the side of his Hillock. He had begun to Castle, and was thus vulnerable… although not very, in this case, Roland thought; Deputy Dave didn’t look like much in the way of competition.

“I see you’re working for the Barony salt now,” Roland said, nodding at the star on Jonas’s shirt.

“Salt’s what it amounts to,” Jonas said, companionably enough. “A fellow went leg-broke. I’m helping out, that’s all.”

“And sai Reynolds? Sai Depape? Are they helping out as well?”

“Yar, I reckon,” Jonas said. “How goes your work among the fisher-folk? Slow, I hear.”

“Done at last. The work wasn’t so slow as we were. But coming here in disgrace was enough for us-we have no intention of leaving that way. Slow and steady wins the race, they say.”

“So they do,” Jonas agreed. “Whoever 'they' are.”

From somewhere deeper in the building there came the whoosh of a water-stool flushing. All the comforts of home in the Hambry Sheriff’s, Roland thought. The flush was soon followed by heavy footsteps descending a staircase, and a few moments later, Herk Avery appeared. With one hand he was buckling his belt; with the other he mopped his broad and sweaty forehead. Roland admired the man’s dexterity.

“Whew!” the Sheriff exclaimed. “Them beans I ate last night took the shortcut, I tell ye.” He looked from Roland to Cuthbert and then back to Roland. “Why, boys! Too wet for net-counting, is it?”

“Sai Dearborn was just saying that their net-counting days are at an end,” Jonas said. He combed back his long hair with the tips of his fingers. Beyond him, Clay Reynolds had resumed his slouch against the notice-board, looking at Roland and Cuthbert with open dislike.

“Aye? Well, that’s fine, that’s fine. What’s next, youngsters? And is there any way we here can help ye? For that’s what we like to do best, lend a hand where a hand’s needed. So it is.”

“Actually, you could help us,” Roland said. He reached into his belt and pulled out the list. “We have to move on to the Drop, but we don’t want to inconvenience anyone.”

Grinning hugely, Deputy Dave slid his Squire all the way around his own Hillock. Jonas Castled at once, ripping open Dave’s entire left flank. The grin faded from Dave’s face, leaving a puzzled emptiness. “How’d ye manage that?”

“Easy.” Jonas smiled, then pushed back from the desk to include the others in his regard. “You want to remember, Dave, that I play to win. I can’t help it; it’s just my nature.” He turned his full attention to Roland. His smile broadened. “Like the scorpion said to the maiden as she lay dying, 'You knowed I was poison when you picked me up.'”

6

When Susan came in from feeding the livestock, she went directly to the cold-pantry for the juice, which was her habit. She didn’t see her aunt standing in the chimney comer and watching her, and when Cordelia spoke, Susan was startled badly. It wasn’t just the unexpectedness of the voice; it was the coldness of it.

“Do ye know him?”

The juice-jug slipped in her fingers, and Susan put a steadying hand beneath it. Orange juice was too precious to waste, especially this late in the year. She turned and saw her aunt by the woodbox. Cordelia had hung her sombrero on a hook in the entryway, but she still wore her serape and muddy boots. Her cuchillo lay on top of the stacked wood, with green strands of sharproot vine still trailing from its edge. Her tone was cold, but her eyes were hot with suspicion.

A sudden clarity filled Susan’s mind and all of her senses. If you say “No,” you’re damned, she thought. If you even ask who, you may be damned. You must say-

“I know them both,” she replied in offhand fashion. “I met them at the party. So did you. Ye frightened me, Aunt.”

“Why did he salute ye so?”

“How can I know? Perhaps he just felt like it.”

Her aunt bolted forward, slipped in her muddy boots, regained her balance, and seized Susan by the arms. Now her eyes were blazing. “Be'n’t insolent with me, girl! Be'n’t haughty with me, Miss Oh So Young and Pretty, or I’ll-”

Susan pulled backward so hard that Cordelia staggered and might have fallen again, if the table had not been handy to grab. Behind her, muddy foot-tracks stood out on the clean kitchen floor like accusations. “Call me that again and I’ll… I’ll slap thee!” Susan cried. “So I will!”

Cordelia’s lips drew back from her teeth in a dry, ferocious smile. “Ye’d slap your father’s only living blood kin? Would ye be so bad?”

“Why not? Do ye not slap me, Aunt?”

Some of the heat went out of her aunt’s eyes, and the smile left her mouth. “Susan! Hardly ever! Not half a dozen times since ye were a toddler who would grab anything her hands could reach, even a pot of boiling water on the-”

“It’s with thy mouth thee mostly hits nowadays,” Susan said. “I’ve put up with it-more fool me-but am done with it now. I’ll have no more. If I’m old enough to be sent to a man’s bed for money, I’m old enough for ye to keep a civil tongue when ye speak to me.”

Cordelia opened her mouth to defend herself-the girl’s anger had startled her, and so had her accusations-and then she realized how cleverly she was being led away from the subject of the boys. Of the boy.

“Ye only know him from the party, Susan? It’s Dearborn I mean.” As I think ye well know.

“I’ve seen him about town,” Susan said. She met her aunt’s eyes steadily, although it cost her an effort; lies would follow half-truths as dark followed dusk. “I’ve seen all three of them about town. Are ye satisfied?” No, Susan saw with mounting dismay, she was not. “Do ye swear to me, Susan-on your father’s name-that ye’ve not been meeting this boy Dearborn?”

All the rides in the late afternoon, Susan thought. All the excuses. All the care that no one should see us. And it all comes down to a careless wave on a rainy morning. That easily all’s put at risk. Did we think it could be otherwise? Were we that foolish?

Yes… and no. The truth was they had been mad. And still were. Susan kept remembering the look of her father’s eyes on the few occasions when he had caught her in a fib. That look of half-curious disappointment. The sense that her fibs, innocuous as they might be, had hurt him like the scratch of a thorn.

“I will swear to nothing,” she said. “Ye’ve no right to ask it of me.” “Swear!” Cordelia cried shrilly. She groped out for the table again and grasped it, as if for balance. “Swear it! Swear it! This is no game of jacks or tag or Johnny-jump-my-pony! Thee’s not a child any longer! Swear to me! Swear that thee’re still pure!”

“No,” Susan said, and turned to leave. Her heart was beating madly, but still that awful clarity informed the world. Roland would have known it for what it was: she was seeing with gunslinger’s eyes. There was a glass window in the kitchen, looking out toward the Drop, and in it she saw the ghostly reflection of Aunt Cord coming toward her, one arm raised, the hand at the end of it knotted into a fist. Without turning, Susan put up her own hand in a halting gesture. “Raise that not to me,” she said. “Raise it not, ye bitch.”

She saw the reflection’s ghost-eyes widen in shock and dismay. She saw the ghost-fist relax, become a hand again, fall to the ghost-woman’s side.

“Susan,” Cordelia said in a small, hurt voice. “How can ye call me so? What’s so coarsened your tongue and your regard for me?”

Susan went out without replying. She crossed the yard and entered the bam. Here the smells she had known since childhood-horses, lumber, hay-filled her head and drove the awful clarity away. She was tumbled back into childhood, lost in the shadows of her confusion again. Pylon turned to look at her and whickered. Susan put her head against his neck and cried.

7

“There!” Sheriff Avery said when sais Dearborn and Heath were gone. “It’s as ye said-just slow is all they are; just creeping careful.” He held the meticulously printed list up, studied it a moment, then cackled happily. “And look at this! What a beauty! Har! We can move anything we don’t want em to see days in advance, so we can.”

“They’re fools,” Reynolds said… but he pined for another chance at them, just the same. If Dearborn really thought bygones were bygones over that little business in the Travellers’ Rest, he was way past foolishness and dwelling in the land of idiocy.

Deputy Dave said nothing. He was looking disconsolately through his monocle at the Castles board, where his white army had been laid waste in six quick moves. Jonas’s forces had poured around Red Hillock like water, and Dave’s hopes had been swept away in the flood.

“I’m tempted to wrap myself up dry and go over to Seafront with this,” Avery said. He was still gloating over the paper, with its neat list of farms and ranches and proposed dates of inspection. Up to Year’s End and beyond it ran. Gods!

“Why don’t ye do that?” Jonas said, and got to his feet. Pain ran up his leg like bitter lightning.

“Another game, sai Jonas?” Dave asked, beginning to reset the pieces.

“I’d rather play a weed-eating dog,” Jonas said, and took malicious pleasure at the flush that crept up Dave’s neck and stained his guileless fool’s face. He limped across to the door, opened it, and went out on the porch. The drizzle had become a soft, steady rain. Hill Street was deserted, the cobbles gleaming wetly.

Reynolds had followed him out. “Eldred-”

“Get away,” Jonas said without turning.

Clay hesitated a moment, then went back inside and closed the door.

What the hell’s wrong with you? Jonas asked himself.

He should have been pleased at the two young pups and their list-as pleased as Avery was, as pleased as Rimer would be when he heard about this morning’s visit. After all, hadn’t he told Rimer not three days ago that the boys would soon be over on the Drop, counting their little hearts out? Yes. So why did he feel so unsettled? So fucking jittery? Because there ^Bt still hadn’t been any contact from Parson’s man, Latigo? Because Reynolds came back empty from Hanging Rock on one day and Depape came back empty the next? Surely not. Latigo would come, along with a goodly troop of men, but it was still too soon for them, and Jonas knew it. Reaping was still almost a month away.

So is it just the bad weather working on your leg, stirring up that old wound and making you ugly?

No. The pain was bad, but it had been worse before. The trouble was his head. Jonas leaned against a post beneath the overhang, listened to the rain plinking on the tiles, and thought how, sometimes in a game of Castles, a clever player would peek around his Hillock for just a moment, then duck back. That was what this felt like-it was so right it smelled wrong. Crazy idea, but somehow not crazy at all.

“Are you trying to play Castles with me, sprat?” Jonas murmured. “If so, you’ll soon wish you’d stayed home with your mommy. So you will.”

8

Roland and Cuthbert headed back to the Bar K along the Drop-there would be no counting done today. At first, in spite of the rain and the gray skies, Cuthbert’s good humor was almost entirely restored.

“Did you see them?” he asked with a laugh. “Did you see them, Roland… Will, I mean? They bought it, didn’t they? Swallowed that honey whole, they did!”

“Yes.”

“What do we do next? What’s our next move?”

Roland looked at him blankly for a moment, as if startled out of a doze. “The next move is theirs. We count. And we wait.”

Cuthbert’s good cheer collapsed in a puff, and he once more found himself having to restrain a flood of recrimination, all whirling around two basic ideas: that Roland was shirking his duty so he could continue to wallow in the undeniable charms of a certain young lady, and-more important-that Roland had lost his wits when all of Mid-World needed them the most.

Except what duty was Roland shirking? And what made him so sure Roland was wrong? Logic? Intuition? Or just shitty old catbox jealousy? Cuthbert found himself thinking of the effortless way Jonas had ripped up Deputy Dave’s army when Deputy Dave had moved too soon. But life was not like Castles… was it? He didn’t know. But he thought he had at least one valid intuition: Roland was heading for disaster. And so they all were.

Wake up, Cuthbert thought. Please, Roland, wake up before it’s too late.

1

There followed a week of the sort of weather that makes folk apt to crawl back into bed after lunch, take long naps, and wake feeling stupid and disoriented. It was far from flood-weather, but it made the final phase of the apple-picking dangerous (there were several broken legs, and in Seven-Mile Orchard a young woman fell from the top of her ladder, breaking her back), and the potato-fields became difficult to work; almost as much time was spent freeing wagons stuck in the gluey rows as was spent actually picking. In Green Heart, what decorations had been done for the Reaping Fair grew sodden and had to be pulled down. The work volunteers waited with increasing nervousness for the weather to break so they could begin again.

It was bad weather for young men whose job it was to take inventory, although they were at least able to begin visiting barns and counting stock. It was good weather for a young man and young woman who had discovered the joys of physical love, you would have said, but Roland and Susan met only twice during the run of gray weather. The danger of what they were doing was now almost palpable.

The first time was in an abandoned boathouse on the Seacoast Road. The second was in the far end of the crumbling building below and to the east of Citgo-they made love with furious intensity on one of Roland’s saddle-blankets, which was spread on the floor of what had once been the oil refinery’s cafeteria. As Susan climaxed, she shrieked his name over and over. Startled pigeons filled the old, shadowy rooms and crumbling hallways with their soft thunder.

2

Just as it seemed that the drizzle would never end and the grinding sound of the thinny in the still air would drive everyone in Hambry insane, a strong wind-almost a gale-blew in off the ocean and puffed the clouds away. The town awoke one day to a sky as bright as blue steel and a sun that turned the bay to gold in the morning and white fire in the afternoon. That sense of lethargy was gone. In the potato fields the carts rolled with new vigor. In Green Heart an army of women began once more to bedeck with flowers the podium where Jamie McCann and Susan Delgado would he acclaimed this year’s Reaping Lad and Girl.

Out on the part of the Drop closest to Mayor’s House, Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain rode with renewed purpose, counting the horses which ran with the Barony brand on their flanks. The bright skies and brisk winds filled them with energy and good cheer, and for a course of days-three, or perhaps four-they galloped together in a whooping, shouting, laughing line, their old good fellowship restored.

On one of these brisk and sunny days, Eldred Jonas stepped out of the Sheriff’s office and walked up Hill Street toward Green Heart. He was free of both Depape and Reynolds this morning-they had ridden out to Hanging Rock together, looking for Latigo’s outriders, who must come soon, now-and Jonas’s plan was simple: to have a glass of beer in the pavilion, and watch the preparations that were going on there: the digging of the roasting-pits, the laying of faggots for the bonfire, the arguments over how to set the mortars that would shoot off the fireworks, the ladies flowering the stage where this year’s Lad and Girl would be offered for the town’s adulation. Perhaps, Jonas thought, he might take a likely-looking flower-girl off for an hour or two of recreation. The maintenance of the saloon whores he left strictly to Roy and Clay, but a fresh young flower-girl of seventeen or so was a different matter.

The pain in his hip had faded with the damp weather; the painful, lurching stride with which he had moved for the last week or so had become a mere limp again. Perhaps just a beer or two in the open air would be enough, but the thought of a girl wouldn’t quite leave his head. Young, clear-skinned, high-breasted. Fresh, sweet breath. Fresh, sweet lips-

“Mr. Jonas? Eldred?”

He turned, smiling, to the owner of the voice. No dewy-complexioned flower-girl with wide eyes and moist, parted lips stood there, but a skinny woman edging into late middle age-flat chest, flat bum, tight pale lips, hair scrooped so tight against her skull that it fair screamed. Only the wide eyes corresponded with his daydream. I believe I’ve made a conquest, Jonas thought sardonically.

“Why, Cordelia!” he said, reaching out and taking one of her hands in both of his. “How lovely you look this morning!”

Thin color came up in her cheeks and she laughed a little. For a moment she looked forty-five instead of sixty. And she’s not sixty, Jonas thought. The lines around her mouth and the shadows under her eyes… those are new.

“You’re very kind,” she said, “but I know better. I haven’t been sleeping, and when women my age don’t sleep, they grow old rapidly.”

“I’m sorry to hear you’re sleeping badly,” he said. “But now that the weather’s changed, perhaps-”

“It’s not the weather. Might I speak to you, Eldred? I’ve thought and thought, and you’re the only one I dare turn to for advice.”

His smile widened. He placed her hand through his arm, then covered it with his own. Now her blush was like fire. With all that blood in her head, she might talk for hours. And Jonas had an idea that every word would be interesting.

3

With women of a certain age and temperament, tea was more effective than wine when it came to loosening the tongue. Jonas gave up his plans for a lager (and, perhaps, a flower-girl) without so much as a second thought. He seated sai Delgado in a sunny comer of the Green Heart pavilion (it was not far from a red rock Roland and Susan knew well), and ordered a large pot of tea; cakes, too. They watched the Reaping Fair preparations go forward as they waited for the food and drink. The sunswept park was full of hammering and sawing and shouts and bursts of laughter.

“All Fair-Days are pleasant, but Reaping turns us all into children again, don’t you find?” Cordelia asked.

“Yes, indeed,” said Jonas, who hadn’t felt like a child even when he had been one.

“What I still like best is the bonfire,” she said, looking toward the great pile of sticks and boards that was being constructed at the far end of the park, eater-corner from the stage. It looked like a large wooden tepee. “I love it when the townsfolk bring their stuffy-guys and throw them on. Barbaric, but it always gives me such a pleasant shiver.”

“Aye,” Jonas said, and wondered if it would give her a pleasant shiver to know that three of the stuffy-guys thrown onto the Reap Night bonfire this year were apt to smell like pork and scream like harpies as they burned. If his luck was in, the one that screamed the longest would be the one with the pale blue eyes.

The tea and cakes came, and Jonas didn’t so much as glance at the girl’s full bosom when she bent to serve. He had eyes only for the fascinating sai Delgado, with her nervous little shifting movements and odd, desperate look.

When the girl was gone, he poured out, put the teapot back on its trivet, then covered her hand with his. “Now, Cordelia,” he said in his warmest tone. “I can see something troubles you. Out with it. Confide in your friend Eldred.”

Her lips pressed so tightly together that they almost disappeared, but not even that effort could stop their trembling. Her eyes filled with tears; swam with them; overspilled. He took his napkin and, leaning across the table, wiped the tears away.

“Tell me,” he said tenderly.

“I will. I must tell somebody or go mad. But you must make one promise, Eldred.”

“Of course, molly.” He saw her blush more furiously than ever at this harmless endearment, and squeezed her hand. “Anything.”

“You mustn’t tell Hart. That disgusting spider of a Chancellor, either, but especially not the Mayor. If I’m right in what I suspect and he found out, he could send her west!” She almost moaned this, as if comprehending it as a real fact for the first time. “He could send us both west!”

Maintaining his sympathetic smile, he said: “Not a word to Mayor Thorin, not a word to Kimba Rimer. Promise.”

For a moment he thought that she wouldn’t take the plunge… or perhaps couldn’t. Then, in a low, gaspy voice that sounded like ripping cloth, she said a single word. “Dearborn.”

He felt his heart take a bump as the name that had been so much in his mind now passed her lips, and although he continued to smile, he could not forbear a single hard squeeze of her fingers that made her wince.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that you startled me a little. Dearborn… a well-spoken enough lad, but 1 wonder if he’s entirely trustworthy.”

“I fear he’s been with my Susan.” Now it was her turn to squeeze, but Jonas didn’t mind. He hardly felt it, in fact. He continued to smile, hoping he did not look as flabbergasted as he felt. “I fear he’s been with her… as a man is with a woman. Oh, how horrible this is!”

She wept with a silent bitterness, taking little pecking peeks around as she did to make sure they were not being observed. Jonas had seen coyotes and wild dogs look around from their stinking dinners in just that fashion. He let her get as much of it out of her system as he could-he wanted her calm; incoherencies wouldn’t help him-and when he saw her tears slackening, he held out a cup of tea. “Drink this.”

“Yes. Thank you.” The tea was still hot enough to steam, but she drank it down greedily. Her old throat must be lined with slate, Jonas thought. She set the cup down, and while he poured out fresh, she used her frilly panuelo to scrub the tears almost viciously from her face.

“I don’t like him,” she said. “Don’t like him, don’t trust him, none of those three with their fancy In-World bows and insolent eyes and strange ways of talking, but him in particular. Yet if anything’s gone on betwixt the two of em (and I’m so afraid it has), it comes back to her, doesn’t it? It’s the woman, after all, who must refuse the bestial impulses.”

He leaned over the table, looking at her with warm sympathy. “Tell me everything, Cordelia.”

She did.

4

Rhea loved everything about the glass ball, but what she especially loved was the way it unfailingly showed her people at their vilest. Never in its pink reaches did she see one child comforting another after a fall at play, or a tired husband with his head in his wife’s lap, or old people supping peacefully together at the end of the day; these things held no more interest for the glass, it seemed, than they did for her.

Instead she had seen acts of incest, mothers beating children, husbands beating wives. She had seen a gang of boys out west'rds of town (it would have amused Rhea to know these swaggering eight-year-olds called themselves the Big Coffin Hunters) go about enticing stray dogs with a bone and then cutting off their tails for a lark. She had seen robberies, and at least one murder: a wandering man who had stabbed his companion with a pitchfork after some sort of trivial argument. That had been on the first drizzly night. The body still lay mouldering in a ditch beside the Great Road West, covered with a layer of straw and weeds. It might be discovered before the autumn storms came to drown another year; it might not.

She also glimpsed Cordelia Delgado and that hard gun, Jonas, sitting in Green Heart at one of the outside tables and talking about… well, of course she didn’t know, did she? But she could see the look in the spinster bitch’s eyes. Infatuated with him, she was, all pink in the face. Gone all hot and sweet over a backshooter and failed gunslinger. It was comical, aye, and Rhea thought she would keep an eye on them, from time to time. Wery entertaining, it would likely be.

After showing her Cordelia and Jonas, the glass veiled itself once more. Rhea put it back in the box with the eye on the lock. Seeing Cordelia in the glass had reminded the old woman that she had unfinished business regarding Cordelia’s sluttish niece. That Rhea still hadn’t done that business was ironic but understandable-as soon as she had seen how to fix the young sai’s wagon, Rhea’s mind and emotions had settled again, the images in the ball had reappeared, and in her fascination with them Rhea had temporarily forgotten that Susan Delgado was alive. Now, however, she remembered her plan. Set the cat among the pigeons. And speaking of cats-

“Musty! Yoo-hoo, Musty, where are ye?”

The cat came oiling out of the woodpile, eyes glowing in the dirty dimness of the hut (when the weather turned fine again, Rhea had pulled her shutters to), forked tail waving. He jumped into her lap.

“I’ve an errand for ye,” she said, bending over to lick the cat. The entrancing taste of Musty’s fur filled her mouth and throat.

Musty purred and arched his back against her lips. For a six-legged mutie cat, life was good.

5

Jonas got rid of Cordelia as soon as he could-although not as soon as he would have liked, because he had to keep the scrawny bint sweetened up. She might come in handy another time. In the end he had kissed her on the comer of her mouth (which caused her to turn so violently red he feared she might have a brain-storm) and told her that he would check into the matter which so concerned her.

“But discreetly!” she said, alarmed.

Yes, he said, walking her home, he would be discreet; discretion was his middle name. He knew Cordelia wouldn’t-couldn’t-be eased until she knew for sure, but he guessed it would turn out to be nothing but vapor. Teenagers loved to dramatize, didn’t they? And if the young lass saw that her aunt was afraid of something, she might well feed auntie’s fears instead of allaying them.

Cordelia had stopped by the white picket fence that divided her garden-plot from the road, an expression of sublime relief coming over her face. Jonas thought she looked like a mule having its back scratched with a stiff brush.

“Why, I never thought of that… yet it’s likely, isn’t it?”

“Likely enough,” Jonas had said, “but I’ll still check into it most carefully. Better safe than sorry.” He kissed the comer of her mouth again. “And not a word to the fellows at Seafront. Not a hint.”

“Thank'ee, Eldred! Oh, thank'ee!” And she had hugged him before hurrying in, her tiny breasts pressing like stones against the front of his shirt. “Mayhap I’ll sleep tonight, after all!”

She might, but Jonas wondered if he would.

He walked toward Hockey’s stable, where he kept his horse, with his head down and his hands locked behind his back. A gaggle of boys came racing up the other side of the street; two of them were waving severed dog’s tails with blood clotted at the ends.

“Coffin Hunters! We’re Big Coffin Hunters just like you!” one called impudently across to him.

Jonas drew his gun and pointed it at them-it was done in a flash, and for a moment the terrified boys saw him as he really was: with his eyes blazing and his lips peeled back from his teeth, Jonas looked like a white-haired wolf in man’s clothes.

“Get on, you little bastards!” he snarled. “Get on before I blow you loose of your shoes and give your fathers cause to celebrate!”

For a moment they were frozen, and then they fled in a howling pack. One had left his trophy behind; the dog’s tail lay on the board sidewalk like a grisly fan. Jonas grimaced at the sight of it, bolstered his gun, locked his hands behind him again, and walked on, looking like a parson meditating on the nature of the gods. And what in gods’ name was he doing, pulling iron on a bunch of young hellions like that?

Being upset, he thought. Being worried.

He was worried, all right. The titless old biddy’s suspicions had upset him greatly. Not on Thorin’s account-as far as Jonas was concerned, Dearborn could fuck the girl in the town square at high noon of Reaping Fair Day-but because it suggested that Dearborn might have fooled him about other things.

Crept up behind you once, he did, and you swore it ’d never happen again. But if he’s been diddling that girl, it has happened again. Hasn’t it?

Aye, as they said in these parts. If the boy had had the impertinence to begin an affair with the Mayor’s gilly-in-waiting, and the incredible sly-ness to get away with it, what did that do to Jonas’s picture of three In-World brats who could barely find their own behinds with both hands and a candle?

We underestimated em once and they made us look like monkeys, Clay had said. I don’t want it to happen again.

Had it happened again? How much, really, did Dearborn and his friends know? How much had they found out? And who had they told? If Dearborn had been able to get away with pronging the Mayor’s chosen… to put something that large over on Eldred Jonas… on everyone…

“Good day, sai Jonas,” Brian Hookey said. He was grinning widely, all but kowtowing before Jonas with his sombrero crushed against his broad blacksmith’s chest. “Would ye care for fresh graf, sai? I’ve just gotten the new pressing, and-”

“All I want is my horse,” Jonas said curtly. “Bring it quick and stop your quacking.”

“Aye, so I will, happy to oblige, thankee-sai.” He hurried off on the errand, taking one nervous, grinning look back over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t going to be shot out of hand.

Ten minutes later Jonas was headed west on the Great Road. He felt a ridiculous but nevertheless strong desire to simply kick his horse into a gallop and leave all this foolishness behind him: Thorin the graying goat-boy, Roland and Susan with their no-doubt mawkish teenage love, Roy and Clay with their fast hands and slow wits. Rimer with his ambitions, Cordelia Delgado with her ghastly visions of the two of them in some bosky dell, him likely reciting poetry while she wove a garland of flowers for his brow.

He had ridden away from things before, when intuition whispered; plenty of things. But there would be no riding away this time. He had vowed vengeance on the brats, and while he had broken a bushel of promises made to others, he’d never broken one made to himself.

And there was John Farson to consider. Jonas had never spoken to the Good Man himself (and never wanted to; Farson was reputed to be whimsically, dangerously insane), but he had had dealings with George Latigo, who would probably be leading the troop of Farson’s men that would arrive any day now. It was Latigo who had hired the Big Coffin Hunters in the first place, paying a huge cash advance (which Jonas hadn’t yet shared with Reynolds and Depape) and promising an even larger piece of war-spoil if the Affiliation’s major forces were wiped out in or around the Shaved Mountains.

Latigo was a good-sized bug, all right, but nothing to the size of the bug trundling along behind him. And besides, no large reward was ever achieved without risk. If they delivered the horses, oxen, wagons of fresh vegetables, the tack, the oil, the glass-most of all the wizard’s glass-all would be well. If they failed, it was very likely that their heads would end up being whacked about by Farson and his aides in their nightly polo games. It could happen, and Jonas knew it. No doubt someday it would happen. But when his head finally parted company from his shoulders, the divorce wouldn’t be caused by any such smarms as Dearborn and his friends, no matter whose bloodline they had descended from.

But if he’s been having an affair with Thorin ’s autumn treat… if he’s been able to keep such a secret as that, what others has he been keeping? Perhaps he is playing Castles with you.

If so, he wouldn’t play for long. The first time young Mr. Dearborn poked his nose around his Hillock, Jonas would be there to shoot it off for him.

The question for the present was where to go first. Out to the Bar K, to take a long overdue look at the boys’ living quarters? He could; they would be counting Barony horses on the Drop, all three of them. But it wasn’t over horses that he might lose his head, was it? No, the horses were just a small added attraction, as far as the Good Man was concerned.

Jonas rode for Citgo instead.

6

First he checked the tankers. They were just as had been and should be- lined up in a neat row with their new wheels ready to roll when the time came, and hidden behind their new camouflage. Some of the screening pine branches were turning yellow at the tips, but the recent spell of rain had kept most admirably fresh. There had been no tampering that Jonas could see.

Next he climbed the hill, walking beside the pipeline and pausing more and more frequently to rest; by the time he reached the rotting gate between the slope and the oilpatch, his bad leg was paining him severely. He studied the gate, frowning over the smudges he saw on the top rung. They might mean nothing, but Jonas thought someone might have climbed over the gate rather than risk opening it and having it fall off its hinges.

He spent the next hour strolling around the derricks, paying especially close attention to those that still worked, looking for sign. He found plenty of tracks, but it was impossible (especially after a week of wet weather) to read them with any degree of accuracy. The In-World boys might have been out here; that ugly little band of brats from town might have been out here; Arthur Eld and the whole company of his knights might have been out here. The ambiguity put Jonas in a foul temper, as ambiguity (other than on a Castles board) always did.

He started back the way he’d come, meaning to descend the slope to his horse and ride back to town. His leg was aching like fury, and he wanted a stiff drink to quiet it down. The bunkhouse at the Bar K could wait another day.

He got halfway to the gate, saw the weedy spur track tying Citgo to the Great Road, and sighed. There would be nothing on that little strip of road to see, but now that he’d come all the way out here, he supposed he should finish the job.

Bugger finishing the job, I want a damned drink.

But Roland wasn’t the only one who sometimes found his wishes overruled by training. Jonas sighed, rubbed at his leg, then walked back to the weedy twin ruts. Where, it seemed, there was something to find after all.

It lay in the grassy ditch less than a dozen paces from the place where the old road joined the Great Road. At first he saw only a smooth white shape in the weeds and thought it was a stone. Then he saw a black round-ness that could only be an eyehole. Not a stone, then; a skull.

Grunting, Jonas knelt and fished it out while the few living derricks continued to squeal and thump behind him. A rook’s skull. He had seen it before. Hell, he suspected most of the town had. It belonged to the showoff, Arthur Heath… who, like all showoffs, needed his little props.

“He called it the lookout,” Jonas murmured. “Put it on the horn of his saddle sometimes, didn’t he? And sometimes wore it around his neck like a pendant.” Yes. The youngster had been wearing it so that night in the Travellers’ Rest, when-

Jonas turned the bird’s skull. Something rattled inside like a last lonely thought. Jonas tilted it, shook it over his open palm, and a fragment of gold chain dropped out. That was how the boy had been wearing it. At some point the chain had broken, the skull had fallen in the ditch, and sai Heath had never troubled to go looking for it. The thought that someone might find it had probably never crossed his mind. Boys were careless. It was a wonder any ever grew up to be men.

Jonas’s face remained calm as he knelt there examining the bird’s skull, but behind the unlined brow he was as furious as he had ever been in his life. They had been out here, all right-it was another thing he would have scoffed at just yesterday. He had to assume they had seen the tankers, camouflage or no camouflage, and if not for the chance of finding this skull, he never would have known for sure, one way or the other.

“When I finish with em, their eyesockets’ll be as empty as yours. Sir Rook. I’ll gouge em clean myself.”

He started to throw the skull away, then changed his mind. It might come in handy. Carrying it in one hand, he started back to where he’d left his horse.

7

Coral Thorin walked down High Street toward the Travellers’ Rest, her head thumping rustily and her heart sour in her breast. She had been up only an hour, but her hangover was so miserable it felt like a day already. She was drinking too much of late and she knew it-almost every night now-but she was very careful not to take more than one or two (and always light ones) where folks could see. So far, she thought no one suspected. And as long as no one suspected, she supposed she would keep on. How else to bear her idiotic brother? This idiotic town? And, of course, the knowledge that all of the ranchers in the Horsemen’s Association and at least half of the large landowners were traitors? “Fuck the Affiliation,” she whispered. “Better a bird in the hand.”

But did she really have a bird in the hand? Did any of them? Would 1-arson keep his promises-promises made by a man named Latigo and passed on by their own inimitable Kimba Rimer? Coral had her doubts; despots had such a convenient way of forgetting their promises, and birds in the hand such an irritating way of pecking your fingers, shitting in your palm, and then flying away. Not that it mattered now; she had made her bed. Besides, folks would always want to drink and gamble and rut, regardless of who they bowed their knees to or in whose name their taxes were collected.

Still, when the voice of old demon conscience whispered, a few drinks helped to still its lips.

She paused outside Craven’s Undertaking Parlor, looking upstreet at the laughing boys on their ladders, hanging paper lanterns from high poles and building eaves. These gay lamps would be lit on the night of the Reap Fair, filling Hambry’s main street with a hundred shades of soft, conflicting light.

For a moment Coral remembered the child she had been, looking at the colored paper lanterns with wonder, listening to the shouts and the rattle of fireworks, listening to the dance-music coming from Green Heart as her father held her hand… and, on his other side, her big brother Hart’s hand. In this memory, Hart was proudly wearing his first pair of long trousers.

Nostalgia swept her, sweet at first, then bitter. The child had grown into a sallow woman who owned a saloon and whorehouse (not to mention a great deal of land along the Drop), a woman whose only sexual partner of late was her brother’s Chancellor, a woman whose chief goal upon arising these days was getting to the hair of the dog that bit her as soon as possible. How, exactly, had things turned out so? This woman whose eyes she used was the last woman the child she had been would have expected to become.

“Where did I go wrong?” she asked herself, and laughed. “Oh dear Man Jesus, where did this straying sinner-child go wrong? Can you say hallelujah.” She sounded so much like the wandering preacher-woman that had come through town the year before-Pittston, her name had been, Sylvia Pittston-that she laughed again, this time almost naturally. She walked on toward the Rest with a better will.

Sheemie was outside, tending to the remains of his silkflowers. He waved to her and called a greeting. She waved back and called something in return. A good enough lad, Sheemie, and although she could have found another easily enough, she supposed she was glad Depape hadn’t killed him.

The bar was almost empty but brilliantly lit, all the gas-jets flaring. It was clean, as well. Sheemie would have emptied the spittoons, but Coral guessed it was the plump woman behind the bar who had done all the rest. The makeup couldn’t hide the sallowness of that woman’s cheeks, the hollow-ness of her eyes, or the way her neck had started to go all crepey (seeing that sort of lizardy skin on a woman’s neck always made Coral shiver inside).

It was Pettie the Trotter tending bar beneath The Romp’s stem glass gaze, and if allowed to do so, she would continue until Stanley appeared and banished her. Pettie had said nothing out loud to Coral-she knew better-but had made her wants clear enough just the same. Her whoring days were almost at an end. She desperately desired to go to work tending bar. There was precedent for it, Coral knew-a female bartender at Forest Trees in Pass o’ the River, and there had been another at Glencove, up the coast in Tavares, until she had died of the pox. What Pettie refused to see was that Stanley Ruiz was younger by fifteen years and in far better health. He would be pouring drinks under The Romp long after Pettie was rotting (instead of Trotting) in a pauper’s grave.

“Good even, sai Thorin,” Pettie said. And before Coral could so much as open her mouth, the whore had put a shot glass on the bar and filled it full of whiskey. Coral looked at it with dismay. Did they all know, then?

“I don’t want that,” she snapped. “Why in Eld’s name would I? Sun isn’t even down! Pour it back into the bottle, for yer father’s sake, and then get the hell out of here. Who d'ye think yer serving at five o’ the clock, anyway? Ghosts?”

Pettie’s face fell a foot; the heavy coat other makeup actually seemed to crack apart. She took the funnel from under the bar, stuck it in the neck of the bottle, and poured the shot of whiskey back in. Some went onto the bar in spite of the funnel; her plump hands (now ringless; her rings had been traded for food at the mercantile across the street long since) were shaking. “I’m sorry, sai. So I am. I was only-”

“I don’t care what ye was only,” Coral said, then turned a bloodshot eye on Sheb, who had been sitting on his piano-bench and leafing through old sheet-music. Now he was staring toward the bar with his mouth hung open. “And what are you looking at, ye frog?”

“Nothing, sai Thorin. I-”

“Then go look at it somewhere else. Take this pig with'ee. Give her a bounce, why don’t ye? It’ll be good for her skin. It might even be good for yer own.”

“I-”

“Get out! Are ye deaf? Both of ye!”

Pettie and Sheb went away toward the kitchen instead of the cribs upstairs, but it was all the same to Coral. They could go to hell as far as she was concerned. Anywhere, as long as they were out of her aching face.

She went behind the bar and looked around. Two men playing cards over in the far comer. That hardcase Reynolds was watching them and sipping a beer. There was another man at the far end of the bar, but he was staring off into space, lost in his own world. No one was paying any especial attention to sai Coral Thorin, and what did it matter if they were? If Pettie knew, they all knew.

She ran her finger through the puddle of whiskey on the bar, sucked it, ran it through again, sucked it again. She grasped the bottle, but before she could pour, a spidery monstrosity with gray-green eyes leaped, hissing, onto the bar. Coral shrieked and stepped back, dropping the whiskey bottle between her feet… where, for a wonder, it didn’t break. For a moment she thought her head would break, instead-that her swelling, throbbing brain would simply split her skull like a rotten eggshell. There was a crash as the card-players overturned their table getting up. Reynolds had drawn his gun.

“Nay,” she said in a quavering voice she could hardly recognize. Her eyeballs were pulsing and her heart was racing. People could die of fright, she realized that now. “Nay, gentlemen, all’s well.”

The six-legged freak standing on the bar opened its mouth, bared its needle fangs, and hissed again.

Coral bent down (and as her head passed below the level of her waist, she was once more sure it was going to explode), picked up the bottle, saw that it was still a quarter full, and drank directly from the neck, no longer caring who saw her do it or what they thought.

As if hearing her thought, Musty hissed again. He was wearing a red collar this afternoon-on him it looked baleful rather than jaunty. Beneath it was tucked a white scrap of paper.

“Want me to shoot it?” a voice drawled. “I will if you like. One slug and won’t be nothing left but claws.” It was Jonas, standing just inside the batwings, and although he looked not a whole lot better than she felt, Coral had no doubt he could do it.

“Nay. The old bitch’ll turn us all into locusts, or something like, if ye kill her familiar.”

“What bitch?” Jonas asked, crossing the room.

“Rhea Dubativo. Rhea of the Coos, she’s called.”

“Ah! Not the bitch but the witch.”

“She’s both.”

Jonas stroked the cat’s back. It allowed itself to be petted, even arching against his hand, but he only gave it the single caress. Its fur had an unpleasant damp feel.

“Would you consider sharing that?” he asked, nodding toward the bottle. “It’s early, but my leg hurts like a devil sick of sin.”

“Your leg, my head, early or late. On the house.”

Jonas raised his white eyebrows.

“Count yer blessings and have at it, cully.”

She reached toward Musty. He hissed again, but allowed her to draw the note out from under his collar. She opened it and read the five words that were printed there:

“Might I see?” Jonas asked. With the first drink down and warming his belly, the world looked better.

“Why not?” She handed him the note. Jonas looked, then handed it back. He had almost forgotten Rhea, and that wouldn’t have done at all. Ah, but it was hard to remember everything, wasn’t it? Just lately Jonas felt less like a hired gun than a cook trying to make all nine courses of a state dinner come out at the same time. Luckily, the old hag had reminded him of her presence herself. Gods bless her thirst. And his own, since it had landed him here at the right time.

“Sheemie!” Coral bawled. She could also feel the whiskey working; she felt almost human again. She even wondered if Eldred Jonas might be interested in a dirty evening with the Mayor’s sister… who knew what might speed the hours?

Sheemie came in through the batwings, hands grimy, pink sombrera bouncing on his back at the end of its cuerda. “Aye, Coral Thorin! Here I be!”

She looked past him, calculating the sky. Not tonight, not even for Rhea; she wouldn’t send Sheemie up there after dark, and that was the end of it.

“Nothing,” she said in a voice that was gentler than usual. “Go back to yer flowers, and see that ye cover them well. It bids frosty.”

She turned over Rhea’s note and scrawled a single word on it: tomorrow.

This she folded and handed to Jonas. “Stick it under that stink’s collar for me, will ye? I don’t want to touch him.”

Jonas did as he was asked. The cat favored them with a final wild green look, then leaped from the bar and vanished beneath the batwings.

“Time is short,” Coral said. She hadn’t the slightest idea what she meant, but Jonas nodded in what appeared to be perfect understanding. “Would you care to go upstairs with a closet drunk? I’m not much in the looks department, but I can still spread em all the way to the edge of the bed, and I don’t just lie there.”

He considered, then nodded. His eyes were gleaming. This one was as thin as Cordelia Delgado… but what a difference, eh? What a difference! “All right.”

“I’ve been known to say some nasty things-fair warning.”

“Dear lady, I shall be all ears.”

She smiled. Her headache was gone. “Aye. I’ll just bet ye will.”

“Give me a minute. Don’t move a step.” He walked across to where Reynolds sat.

“Drag up a chair, Eldred.”

“I think not. There’s a lady waiting.”

Reynolds’s gaze flicked briefly toward the bar. “You’re joking.”

“I never joke about women, Clay. Now mark me.”

Reynolds sat forward, eyes intent. Jonas was grateful this wasn’t Depape. Roy would do what you asked, and usually well enough, but only after you’d explained it to him half a dozen times.

“Go to Lengyll,” he said. “Tell him we want to put about a dozen men-no less than ten-out at yon oilpatch. Good men who can get their heads down and keep them down and not snap the trap too soon on an ambush, if ambushing’s required. Tell him Brian Hockey’s to be in charge.He’s got a level head, which is more than can be said for most of these poor things.”

Reynolds’s eyes were hot and happy. “You expect the brats?”

“They’ve been out there once, mayhap they’ll be out again. If so, they’re to be crossfired and knocked down dead. At once and with no warning. You understand?”

“Yar! And the tale after?”

“Why, that the oil and the tankers must have been their business,” Jonas said with a crooked smile. “To be taken to Farson, at their command and by confederates unknown. We’ll be carried through the streets on the town’s shoulders, come Reap. Hailed as the men who rooted out the traitors. Where’s Roy?”

“Gone back to Hanging Rock. I saw him at noon. He says they’re coming, Eldred; says when the wind swings into the east, he can hear approaching horse.”

“Maybe he only hears what he wants to hear.” But he suspected Depape was right. Jonas’s mood, at rock bottom when he stepped into the Travellers’ Rest, was now very much on the rebound.

“We’ll start moving the tankers soon, whether the brats come or not. At night, and two by two, like the animals going on board Old Pa’s Ark.” He laughed at this. “But we’ll leave some, eh? Like cheese in a trap.”

“Suppose the mice don’t come?”

Jonas shrugged. “If not one way, another. I intend to press them a little more tomorrow. I want them angry, and I want them confused. Now go on about your business. I have yon lady waiting.”

“Better you than me, Eldred.”

Jonas nodded. He guessed that half an hour from now, he would have forgotten all about his aching leg. “That’s right,” he said. “You she’d eat like fudge.”

He walked back to the bar, where Coral stood with her arms folded. Now she unfolded them and took his hands. The right she put on her left breast. The nipple was hard and erect under his fingers. The forefinger of his left hand she put in her mouth, and bit down lightly.

“Shall we bring the bottle?” Jonas asked.

“Why not?” said Coral Thorin.

8

If she’d gone to sleep as drunk as had been her habit over the last few months, the creak of the bedsprings wouldn’t have awakened her-a bomb-blast wouldn’t have awakened her. But although they’d brought the bottle, it still stood on the night-table of the bedroom she maintained at the Rest (it was as big as any three of the whores’ cribs put together), the level of the whiskey unchanged. She felt sore all over her body, but her head was clear; sex was good for that much, anyway.

Jonas was at the window, looking out at the first gray traces of daylight and pulling his pants up. His bare back was covered with crisscrossed scars. She thought to ask him who had administered such a savage flogging and how he’d survived it, then decided she’d do better to keep quiet.

“Where are ye off to?” she asked.

“I believe I’m going to start by finding some paint-any shade will do-and a street-mutt still in possession of its tail. After that, sai, I don’t think you want to know.”

“Very well.” She lay down and pulled the covers up to her chin. She felt she could sleep for a week.

Jonas yanked on his boots and went to the door, buckling his gunbelt. He paused with his hand on the knob. She looked at him, grayish eyes already half-filled with sleep again.

“I’ve never had better,” Jonas said.

Coral smiled. “No, cully,” she said. “Nor I.”

1

Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain came out onto the porch of the Bar K bunkhouse almost two hours after Jonas had left Coral’s room at the Travellers’ Rest. By then the sun was well up over the horizon. They weren’t late risers by nature, but as Cuthbert put it, “We have a certain In-World image to maintain. Not laziness but lounginess.”

Roland stretched, arms spread toward the sky in a wide Y, then bent and grasped the toes of his boots. This caused his back to crackle.

“I hate that noise,” Alain said. He sounded morose and sleepy. In fact, he had been troubled by odd dreams and premonitions all night-things which, of the three of them, only he was prey to. Because of the touch, perhaps-with him it had always been strong.

“That’s why he does it,” Cuthbert said, then clapped Alain on the shoulder. “Cheer up, old boy. You’re too handsome to be downhearted.”

Roland straightened, and they walked across the dusty yard toward the stables. Halfway there, he came to a stop so sudden that Alain almost ran into his back. Roland was looking east. “Oh,” he said in a funny, bemused voice. He even smiled a little.

“Oh?” Cuthbert echoed. “Oh what, great leader? Oh joy, I shall see the perfumed lady anon, or oh rats, I must work with my smelly male companions all the livelong day?”

Alain looked down at his boots, new and uncomfortable when they had left Gilead, now sprung, trailworn, a little down at the heels, and as comfortable as workboots ever got. Looking at them was better than looking at his friends, for the time being. There was always an edge to Cuthbert’s teasing these days; the old sense of fun had been replaced by something that was mean and unpleasant. Alain kept expecting Roland to flash up at one of Cuthbert’s jibes, like steel that has been struck by sharp flint, and knock Bert sprawling. In a way, Alain almost wished for it. It might clear the air.

But not the air of this morning.

“Just oh,” Roland said mildly, and walked on.

“Cry your pardon, for I know you’ll not want to hear it, but I’d speak a further word about the pigeons,” Cuthbert said as they saddled their mounts. “I still believe that a message-”

“I’ll make you a promise,” Roland said, smiling.

Cuthbert looked at him with some mistrust. “Aye?”

“If you still want to send by flight tomorrow morning, we’ll do so. The one you choose shall be sent west to Gilead with a message of your devising banded to its leg. What do you say, Arthur Heath? Is it fair?”

Cuthbert looked at him for a moment with a suspicion that hurt Alain’s heart. Then he also smiled. “Fair,” he said. “Thank you.”

And then Roland said something which struck Alain as odd and made that prescient part of him quiver with disquiet. “Don’t thank me yet.”

2

“I don’t want to go up there, sai Thorin,” Sheemie said. An unusual expression had creased his normally smooth face-a troubled and fearful frown. “She’s a scary lady. Scary as a beary, she is. Got a wart on her nose, right here.” He thumbed the tip of his own nose, which was small and smooth and well molded.

Coral, who might have bitten his head off for such hesitation only yesterday, was unusually patient today. “So true,” she said. “But Sheemie, she asked for ye special, and she tips. Ye know she does, and well.”

“Won’t help if she turns me into a beetle,” Sheemie said morosely. “Beetles can’t spend coppers.”

Nevertheless, he let himself be led to where Caprichoso, the inn’s pack-mule, was tied. Barkie had loaded two small tuns over the mule’s back. One, filled with sand, was just there for balance. The other held a fresh pressing of the graf Rhea had a taste for.

“Fair-Day’s coming,” Coral said brightly. “Why, it’s not three weeks now.”

“Aye.” Sheemie looked happier at this. He loved Fair-Days passionately-the lights, the firecrackers, the dancing, the games, the laughter. When Fair-Day came, everyone was happy and no one spoke mean.

“A young man with coppers in his pocket is sure to have a good time at the Fair,” Coral said.

“That’s true, sai Thorin.” Sheemie looked like someone who has just discovered one of life’s great principles. “Aye, truey-true, so it is.”

Coral put Caprichoso’s rope halter into Sheemie’s palm and closed the fingers over it. “Have a nice trip, lad. Be polite to the old crow, bow yer best bow… and make sure ye’re back down the hill before dark.”

“Long before, aye,” Sheemie said, shivering at the very thought of still being up in the Coos after nightfall. “Long before, sure as loaves ’ fishes.”

“Good lad.” Coral watched him off, his pink sombrero now clapped on his head, leading the grumpy old pack-mule by its rope. And, as he disappeared over the brow of the first mild hill, she said it again: “Good lad.”

3

Jonas waited on the flank of a ridge, belly-down in the tall grass, until the brats were an hour gone from the Bar K. He then rode to the ridgetop and picked them out, three dots four miles away on the brown slope. Off to do their daily duty. No sign they suspected anything. They were smarter than he had at first given them credit for… but nowhere near as smart as they thought they were.

He rode to within a quarter mile of the Bar K-except for the bunk-house and stable, a burned-out hulk in the bright sunlight of this early autumn day-and tethered his horse in a copse of cottonwoods that grew around the ranch house spring. Here the boys had left some washing to dry. Jonas stripped the pants and shirts off the low branches upon which they had been hung, made a pile of them, pissed on them, and then went back to his horse.

The animal stamped the ground emphatically when Jonas pulled the dog’s tail from one of his saddlebags, as if saying he was glad to be rid of it. Jonas would be glad to be rid of it, too. It had begun giving off an unmistakable aroma. From the other saddlebag he took a small glass jar of red paint, and a brush. These he had obtained from Brian Hockey’s eldest son, who was minding the livery stable today. Sai Hookey himself would be out to Citgo by now, no doubt.

Jonas walked to the bunkhouse with no effort at concealment… not that there was much in the way of concealment to be had out here. And no one to hide from, anyway, now that the boys were gone.

One of them had left an actual book- Mercer’s Homilies and Meditations- on the seat of a rocking chair on the porch. Books were things of exquisite rarity in Mid-World, especially as one travelled out from the center. This was the first one, except for the few kept in Seafront, that Jonas had seen since coming to Mejis. He opened it. In a firm woman’s hand he read: To my dearest son, from his loving MOTHER. Jonas tore j (Ins page out, opened his jar of paint, and dipped the tips of his last two lingers inside. He blotted out the word MOTHER with the pad of his third linger, then, using the nail of his pinky as a makeshift pen, printed CUNT above MOTHER. He poked this sheet on a rusty nailhead where it was sure to be seen, then tore the book up and stamped on the pieces. Which boy had it belonged to? He hoped it was Dearborn’s, but it didn’t really matter.

The first thing Jonas noticed when he went inside was the pigeons, cooing in their cages. He had thought they might be using a helio to send (heir messages, but pigeons! My! That was ever so much more trig!

“I’ll get to you in a few minutes,” he said. “Be patient, darlings; peck and shit while you still can.”

He looked around with some curiosity, the soft coo of the pigeons soothing in his ears. Lads or lords? Roy had asked the old man in Ritzy. The old man had said maybe both. Neat lads, at the very least, from the way they kept their quarters, Jonas thought. Well trained. Three bunks, all made. Three piles of goods at the foot of each, stacked up just as neat. In each pile he found a picture of a mother-oh, such good fellows they were-and in one he found a picture of both parents. He had hoped for names, possibly documents of some kind (even love letters from the girl, mayhap), but there was nothing like that. Lads or lords, they were careful enough. Jonas removed the pictures from their frames and shredded them. The goods he scattered to all points of the compass, destroying as much as he could in the limited time he had. When he found a linen handkerchief in the pocket of a pair of dress pants, he blew his nose on it and then spread it carefully on the toes of the boy’s dress boots, so that the green splat would show to good advantage. What could be more aggravating- more unsettling-than to come home after a hard day spent tallying stock and find some stranger’s snot on one of your personals?

The pigeons were upset now; they were incapable of scolding like jays or rooks, but they tried to flutter away from him when he opened their cages. It did no good, of course. He caught them one by one and twisted their heads off. That much accomplished, Jonas popped one bird beneath the strawtick pillow of each boy.

Beneath one of these pillows he found a small bonus: paper strips and a storage-pen, undoubtedly kept for the composition of messages. He broke the pen and flung it across the room. The strips he put in his own pocket. Paper always came in handy.

With the pigeons seen to, he could hear better. He began walking slowly back and forth on the board floor, head cocked, listening.

4

When Alain came riding up to him at a gallop, Roland ignored the boy’s strained white face and burning, frightened eyes. “I make it thirty-one on my side,” he said, “all with the Barony brand, crown and shield. You?”

“We have to go back,” Alain said. “Something’s wrong. It’s the touch. I’ve never felt it so clear.”

“Your count?” Roland asked again. There were times, such as now, when he found Alain’s ability to use the touch more annoying than helpful.

“Forty. Or forty-one, I forget. And what does it matter? They’ve moved what they don’t want us to count. Roland, didn’t you hear me? We have to go back! Something’s wrong! Something’s wrong at our place /”

Roland glanced toward Bert, riding peaceably some five hundred yards away. Then he looked back at Alain, his eyebrows raised in a silent question.

“Bert? He’s numb to the touch and always has been-you know it. I’m not. You know I’m not! Roland, please! Whoever it is will see the pigeons! Maybe find our guns!” The normally phlegmatic Alain was nearly crying in his excitement and dismay. “If you won’t go back with me, give me leave to go back by myself! Give me leave, Roland, for your father’s sake!”

“For your father’s sake, I give you none,” Roland said. “My count is thirty-one. Yours is forty. Yes, we’ll say forty. Forty’s a good number- good as any, I wot. Now we’ll change sides and count again.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Alain almost whispered. He was looking at Roland as if Roland had gone mad.

“Nothing.”

“You knew! You knew when we left this morning!”

“Oh, I might have seen something,” Roland said. “A reflection, perhaps, but… do you trust me, Al? That’s what matters, I think. Do you trust me, or do you think I lost my wits when I lost my heart? As he does?” He jerked his head in Cuthbert’s direction. Roland was looking at Alain with a faint smile on his lips, but his eyes were ruthless and distant it was Roland’s over-the-horizon look. Alain wondered if Susan Delgado had seen that expression yet, and if she had, what she made of it.

“I trust you.” By now Alain was so confused that he didn’t know for Mire if that was a lie or the truth.

“Good. Then switch sides with me. My count is thirty-one, mind.”

“Thirty-one,” Alain agreed. He raised his hands, then dropped them hack to his thighs with a slap so sharp his normally stolid mount laid his cars back and jigged a bit under him. “Thirty-one.”

“I think we may go back early today, if that’s any satisfaction to you,” Roland said, and rode away. Alain watched him. He’d always wondered what went on in Roland’s head, but never more than now.

5

Creak. Creak-creak.

Here was what he’d been listening for, and just as Jonas was about to give up the hunt. He had expected to find their hidey-hole a little closer to their beds, but they were trig, all right.

He went to one knee and used the blade of his knife to pry up the board which had creaked. Under it were three bundles, each swaddled in dark strips of cotton cloth. These strips were damp to the touch and smelled fragrantly of gun-oil. Jonas took the bundles out and unwrapped each, curious to see what sort of calibers the youngsters had brought. The answer turned out to be serviceable but undistinguished. Two of the bundles contained single five-shot revolvers of a type then called (for no reason I know) “carvers.” The third contained two guns, six-shooters of higher quality than the carvers. In fact, for one heart-stopping moment, Jonas thought he had found the big revolvers of a gunslinger-true-blue steel barrels, sandalwood grips, bores like mineshafts. Such guns he could not have left, no matter what the cost to his plans. Seeing the plain grips was thus something of a relief. Disappointment was never a thing you looked for, but it had a wonderful way of clearing the mind.

He rewrapped the guns and put them back, put the board back as well. A gang of ne'er-do-well clots from town might possibly come out here, and might possibly vandalize the unguarded bunkhouse, scattering what they didn’t tear up, but find a hiding place such as this? No, my son. Not likely.

Do you really think they’ll believe it was hooligans from town that did this?

They might; just because he had underestimated them to start with didn’t mean he should turn about-face and begin overestimating them now. And he had the luxury of not needing to care. Either way, it would make them angry. Angry enough to rush full-tilt around their Hillock, perhaps. To throw caution to the wind… and reap the whirlwind.

Jonas poked the end of the severed dog’s tail into one of the pigeon-cages, so it stuck up like a huge, mocking feather. He used the paint to write such charmingly boyish slogans as

and

on the walls. Then he left, standing on the porch for a moment to verify he still had the Bar K to himself. Of course he did. Yet for a blink or two, there at the end, he’d felt uneasy-almost as though he’d been scented. By some sort of In-World telepathy, mayhap.

There is such; you know it. The touch, it’s called.

Aye, but that was the tool of gunslingers, artists, and lunatics. Not of boys, be they lords or just lads.

Jonas went back to his horse at a near-trot nevertheless, mounted, and rode toward town. Things were reaching the boil, and there would be a lot to do before Demon Moon rose full in the sky.

6

Rhea’s hut, its stone walls and the cracked guijarros of its roof slimed with moss, huddled on the last hill of the Coos. Beyond it was a magnificent view northwest-the Bad Grass, the desert, Hanging Rock, Eyebolt Canyon-but scenic vistas were the last thing on Sheemie’s mind as he led Capriccioso cautiously into Rhea’s yard not long after noon. He’d been hungry for the last hour or so, but now the pangs were gone. He hated this place worse than any other in Barony, even more than Citgo with its big towers always going creakedy-creak and clangety-clang.

“Sai?” he called, leading the mule into the yard. Capi balked as they neared the hut, planting his feet and lowering his neck, but when Sheemie tugged the halter, he came on again. Sheemie was almost sorry.

“Ma’am? Nice old lady that wouldn’t hurt a fly? You therey-air? It’s good old Sheemie with your graf.” He smiled and held out his free hand, palm up, to demonstrate his exquisite harmlessness, but from the hut there was still no response. Sheemie felt his guts first coil, then cramp. For a moment he thought he was going to shit in his pants just like a babby; then he passed wind and felt a little better. In his bowels, at least.

He walked on, liking this less at every step. The yard was rocky and the straggling weeds yellowish, as if the hut’s resident had blighted the very earth with her touch. There was a garden, and Sheemie saw that the vegetables still in it-pumpkins and sharproot, mostly-were muties. Then he noticed the garden’s stuffy-guy. It was also a mutie, a nasty thing with two straw heads instead of one and what appeared to be a stuffed hand in a woman’s satin glove poking out of the chest area.

Sai Thorin’ll never talk me up here again, he thought. Not for all the pennies in the world.

The hut’s door stood open. To Sheemie it looked like a gaping mouth. A sickish dank smell drifted out.

Sheemie stopped about fifteen paces from the house, and when Capi nuzzled his bottom (as if to ask what was keeping them), the boy uttered a brief screech. The sound of it almost set him running, and it was only by exercising all his willpower that he was able to stand his ground. The day was bright, but up here on this hill, the sun seemed meaningless. This wasn’t his first trip up here, and Rhea’s hill had never been pleasant, but it was somehow worse now. It made him feel the way the sound of the thinny made him feel when he woke and heard it in the middle of the night. As if something awful was sliding toward him-something that was all insane eyes and red, reaching claws.

“S-S-Sai? Is anyone here? Is-”

“Come closer.” The voice drifted out of the open door. “Come to where I can see you, idiot boy.”

Trying not to moan or cry, Sheemie did as the voice said. He had an idea that he was never going back down the hill again. Capriccioso, perhaps, but not him. Poor old Sheemie was going to end up in the cookpot-hot dinner tonight, soup tomorrow, cold snacks until Year’s End. That’s what he would be.

He made his reluctant way to Rhea’s stoop on rubbery legs-if his knees had been closer together, they would have knocked like castanets. She didn’t even sound the same.

“S-Sai? I’m afraid. So I a-a-am.”

“So ye should be,” the voice said. It drifted and drifted, slipping out into the sunlight like a sick puff of smoke. “Never mind, though-just do as I say. Come closer, Sheemie, son of Stanley.”

Sheemie did so, although terror dragged at every step he took. The mule followed, head down. Capi had honked like a goose all the way up here-honked ceaselessly-but now he had fallen silent.

“So here ye be,” the voice buried in those shadows whispered. “Here ye be, indeed.”

She stepped into the sunlight falling through the open door, wincing for a moment as it dazzled her eyes. Clasped in her arms was the empty graf barrel. Coiled around her throat like a necklace was Ermot.

Sheemie had seen the snake before, and on previous occasions had never failed to wonder what sort of agonies he might suffer before he died if he happened to be bitten by such. Today he had no such thoughts. Compared to Rhea, Ermot looked normal. The old woman’s face had sunken at the cheeks, giving the rest of her head the look of a skull. Brown spots swarmed out of her thin hair and over her bulging brow like an army of invading insects. Below her left eye was an open sore, and her grin showed only a few remaining teeth.

“Don’t like the way I look, do’ee?” she asked. “Makes yer heart cold, don’t it?”

“N-No,” Sheemie said, and then, because that didn’t sound right: “I mean yes!” But gods, that sounded even worse. “You’re beautiful, sai!” he blurted.

She chuffed nearly soundless laughter and thrust the empty tun into his arms almost hard enough to knock him on his ass. The touch of her fingers was brief, but long enough to make his flesh crawl.

“Well-a-day. They say handsome is as handsome does, don’t they?

And that suits me. Aye, right down to the ground. Bring me my graf, idiot child.”

“Y-yes, sai! Right away, sai!” He took the empty tun back to the mule, set it down, then fumbled loose the cordage holding the little barrel of graf. He was very aware of her watching him, and it made him clumsy, hut finally he got the barrel loose. It almost slid through his grasp, and there was a nightmarish moment when he thought it would fall to the stony ground and smash, but he caught his grip again at the last second. He took it to her, had just a second to realize she was no longer wearing the snake, then felt it crawling on his boots. Ermot looked up at him, hissing and baring a double set of fangs in an eerie grin.

“Don’t move too fast, my boy. 'Twouldn’t be wise-Ermot’s grumpy today. Set the barrel just inside the door, here. It’s too heavy for me. Missed a few meals of late, I have.”

Sheemie bent from the waist (bow yer best bow, Sai Thorin had said, and here he was, doing just that), grimacing, not daring to ease the pressure on his back by moving his feet because the snake was still on them. When he straightened, Rhea was holding out an old and stained envelope. The flap had been sealed with a blob of red wax. Sheemie dreaded to think what might have been rendered down to make wax such as that.

“Take this and give it to Cordelia Delgado. Do ye know her?”

“A-Aye,” Sheemie managed. “Susan-sai’s auntie.”

“That’s right.” Sheemie reached tentatively for the envelope, but she held it back a moment. “Can’t read, can ye, idiot boy?”

“Nay. Words ’ letters go right out of my head.”

“Good. Mind ye show this to no one who can, or some night ye’ll find Ermot waiting under yer pillow. I see far, Sheemie, d'ye mark me? I see far”

It was just an envelope, but it felt heavy and somehow dreadful in Sheemie’s fingers, as if it were made out of human skin instead of paper. And what sort of letter could Rhea be sending Cordelia Delgado, anyway? Sheemie thought back to the day he’d seen sai Delgado’s face all covered with cobwebbies, and shivered. The horrid creature lurking before him in the doorway of her hut could have been the very creature who’d spun those webs.

“Lose it and I’ll know,” Rhea whispered. “Show my business to another, and I’ll know. Remember, son of Stanley, I see far.”

“I’ll be careful, sai.” It might be better if he did lose the envelope, but he wouldn’t. Sheemie was dim in the head, everyone said so, but not so dim that he didn’t understand why he had been called up here: not to deliver a barrel of graf, but to receive this letter and pass it on.

“Would ye care to come in for a bit?” she whispered, and then pointed a ringer at his crotch. “If I give ye a little bit of mushroom to eat-special to me, it is-I can look like anyone ye fancy.”

“Oh, I can’t,” he said, clutching his trousers and smiling a huge broad smile that felt like a scream trying to get out of his skin. “That pesky thing fell off last week, that did.”

For a moment Rhea only gawped at him, genuinely surprised for one of the few times in her life, and then she once more broke out in chuffing bursts of laughter. She held her stomach in her waxy hands and rocked back and forth with glee. Ermot, startled, streaked into the house on his lengthy green belly. From somewhere in its depths, her cat hissed at it.

“Go on,” Rhea said, still laughing. She leaned forward and dropped three or four pennies into his shirt pocket. “Get out of here, ye great galoophus! Don’t ye linger, either, looking at flowers!”

“No, sai-”

Before he could say more, the door clapped to so hard that dust puffed out of the cracks between the boards.

7

Roland surprised Cuthbert by suggesting at two o’ the clock that they go back to the Bar K. When Bert asked why, Roland only shrugged and would say nothing more. Bert looked at Alain and saw a queer, musing expression on the boy’s face.

As they drew closer to the bunkhouse, a sense of foreboding filled Cuthbert. They topped a rise, and looked down at the Bar K. The bunk-house door stood open.

“Roland!” Alain cried. He was pointing to the cottonwood grove where the ranch’s spring was. Their clothes, neatly hung to dry when they left, were now scattered hell-to-breakfast.

Cuthbert dismounted and ran to them. Picked up a shirt, sniffed it, flung it away. “Pissed on!” he cried indignantly.

“Come on,” Roland said. “Let’s look at the damage.”

8

There was a lot of damage to look at. As you expected, Cuthbert thought, gazing at Roland. Then he turned to Alain, who appeared gloomy but not really surprised. As you both expected.

Roland bent toward one of the dead pigeons, and plucked at something so fine Cuthbert at first couldn’t see what it was. Then he straightened up and held it out to his friends. A single hair. Very long, very white. He opened the pinch of his thumb and forefinger and let it waft to the floor. There it lay amid the shredded remains of Cuthbert Allgood’s mother and father.

“If you knew that old corbie was here, why didn’t we come back and end his breath?” Cuthbert heard himself ask.

“Because the time was wrong,” Roland said mildly.

“He would have done it, had it been one of us in his place, destroying his things.”

“We’re not like him,” Roland said mildly.

“I’m going to find him and blow his teeth out the back of his head.”

“Not at all,” Roland said mildly.

If Bert had to listen to one more mild word from Roland’s mouth, he would run mad. All thoughts of fellowship and ka-tet left his mind, which sank back into his body and was at once obliterated by simple red fury. Jonas had been here. Jonas had pissed on their clothes, called Alain’s mother a cunt, torn up their most treasured pictures, painted childish obscenities on their walls, killed their pigeons. Roland had known… done nothing… intended to continue doing nothing. Except fuck his gilly-girl. He would do plenty of that, aye, because now that was all he cared about.

But she won’t like the look of your face the next time you climb into the saddle, Cuthbert thought. I’ll see to that.

He drew back his fist. Alain caught his wrist. Roland turned away and began picking up scattered blankets, as if Cuthbert’s furious face and cocked fist were simply of no account to him.

Cuthbert balled up his other fist, meaning to make Alain let go of him, one way or the other, but the sight of his friend’s round and honest face, so guileless and dismayed, quieted his rage a little. His argument wasn’t with Alain. Cuthbert was sure the other boy had known something bad was happening here, but he was also sure that Roland had insisted Alain do nothing until Jonas was gone.

“Come with me,” Alain muttered, slinging an arm around Bert’s shoulders. “Outside. For your father’s sake, come. You have to cool off. This is no time to be fighting among ourselves.”

“It’s no time for our leader’s brains to drain down into his prick, either,” Cuthbert said, making no effort to lower his voice. But the second time Alain tugged him, Bert allowed himself to be led toward the door.

I’ll stay my rage at him this one last time, he thought, but I think-I know-that is all I can manage. I’ll have Alain tell him so.

The idea of using Alain as a go-between to his best friend-of knowing that things had come to such a pass-filled Cuthbert with an angry, despairing rage, and at the door to the porch he turned back to Roland. “She has made you a coward,” he said in the High Speech. Beside him, Alain drew in his breath sharply.

Roland stopped as if suddenly turned to stone, his back to them, his arms full of blankets. In that moment Cuthbert was sure Roland would turn and rush toward him. They would fight, likely until one of them was dead or blind or unconscious. Likely that one would be him, but he no longer cared.

But Roland never turned. Instead, in the same speech, he said: “He came to steal our guile and our caution. With you, he has succeeded.”

“No,” Cuthbert said, lapsing back into the low speech. “I know that part of you really believes that, but it’s not so. The truth is, you’ve lost your compass. You’ve called your carelessness love and made a virtue of irresponsibility. I-”

“For gods’ sake, come!” Alain nearly snarled, and yanked him out the door.

9

With Roland out of sight, Cuthbert felt his rage veering toward Alain in spite of himself; it turned like a weathervane when the wind shifts. The two of them stood facing each other in the sunshiny dooryard, Alain looking unhappy and distracted, Cuthbert with his hands knotted into fists so tight they trembled at his sides.

“Why do you always excuse him? Why?”

“Out on the Drop, he asked if I trusted him. I said I did. And I do.”

“Then you’re a fool.”

“And he’s a gunslinger. It he says we must wait longer, we must.”

“He’s a gunslinger by accident! A freak! A mutie!”

Alain stared at him in silent shock.

“Come with me, Alain. It’s time to end this mad game. We’ll find Jonas and kill him. Our ka-tet is broken. We’ll make a new one, you and I.”

“It’s not broken. If it does break, it’ll be you responsible. And for that I’ll never forgive you.”

Now it was Cuthbert’s turn to be silent.

“Go for a ride, why don’t you? A long one. Give yourself time to cool off. So much depends on our fellowship-”

“Tell him that!”

“No, I’m telling you. Jonas wrote a foul word about my mother. Don’t you think I’d go with you just to avenge that, if I didn’t think that Roland was right? That it’s what Jonas wants? For us to lose our wits and come charging blindly around our Hillock?”

“That’s right, but it’s wrong, too,” Cuthbert said. Yet his hands were slowly unrolling, fists becoming fingers again. “You don’t see and I don’t have the words to explain. If I say that Susan has poisoned the well of our ka-tet, you would call me jealous. Yet I think she has, all unknowing and unmeaning. She’s poisoned his mind, and the door to hell has opened. Roland feels the heat from that open door and thinks it’s only his feeling for her… but we must do better, Al. We must think better. For him as well as for ourselves and our fathers.”

“Are you calling her our enemy?”

“No! It would be easier if she was.” He took a deep breath, let it out, took another, let it out, took a third and let it out. With each one he felt a little saner, a little more himself. “Never mind. There’s no more to say on’t for now. Your advice is good-I think I will take a ride. A long one.”

Bert started toward his horse, then turned back.

“Tell him he’s wrong. Tell him that even if he’s right about waiting, he’s right for the wrong reasons, and that makes him all the way wrong.” He hesitated. “Tell him what I said about the door to hell. Say that’s my piece of the touch. Will you tell him?”

“Yes. Stay away from Jonas, Bert.”

Cuthbert mounted up. “I promise nothing.”

“You’re not a man.” Alain sounded sorrowful; on the point of tears, in fact. “None of us are men.”

“You better be wrong about that,” Cuthbert said, “because men’s work is coming.”

He turned his mount and rode away at a gallop.

10

He went far up the Seacoast Road, to begin with trying not to think at all. He’d found that sometimes unexpected things wandered into your head if you left the door open for them. Useful things, often.

This afternoon that didn’t happen. Confused, miserable, and without a fresh idea in his head (or even the hope of one), Bert at last turned back to Hambry. He rode the High Street from end to end, waving or speaking to people who hiled him. The three of them had met a lot of good people here. Some he counted as friends, and he rather felt the common folk of Hambrytown had adopted them-young fellows who were far from their own homes and families. And the more Bert knew and saw of these common folk, the less he suspected that they were a part of Rimer’s and Jonas’s nasty little game. Why else had the Good Man chosen Hambry in the first place, if not because it provided such excellent cover?

There were plenty of folk out today. The farmers’ market was booming, the street-stalls were crowded, children were laughing at a Pinch and Jilly show (Jilly was currently chasing Pinch back and forth and bashing the poor old longsuffering fellow with her broom), and the Reaping Fair decorations were going forward at speed. Yet Cuthbert felt only a little joy and anticipation at the thought of the Fair. Because it wasn’t his own, wasn’t Gilead Reaping? Perhaps… but mostly just because his mind and heart were so heavy. If this was what growing up was like, he thought he could have skipped the experience.

He rode on out of town, the ocean now at his back, the sun full in his face, his shadow growing ever longer behind him. He thought he’d soon veer off the Great Road and ride across the Drop to the Bar K. But before he could, here came his old friend, Sheemie, leading a mule. Sheemie’s head was down, his shoulders slumped, his pink 'brera askew, his boots dusty. To Cuthbert he looked as though he had walked all the way from the tip of the earth.

“Sheemie!” Cuthbert cried, already anticipating the boy’s cheery grin and loony patter. “Long days and pleasant nights! How are y-”

Sheemie lifted his head, and as the brim of his sombrero came up, Cuthbert fell silent. He saw the dreadful fear on the boy’s face-the pale checks, the haunted eyes, the trembling mouth.

11

Sheemie could have been at the Delgado place two hours ago, if he’d wanted, but he had trudged along at a turtle’s pace, the letter inside his shirt seeming to drag at his every step. It was awful, so awful. He couldn’t even think about it, because his thinker was mostly broken, so it was.

Cuthbert was off his horse in a flash, and hurrying to Sheemie. He put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “What’s wrong? Tell your old pal. He won’t laugh, not a bit.”

At the sound of “Arthur Heath’s” kind voice and the sight of his concerned face, Sheemie began to weep. Rhea’s strict command that he should tell no one flew out of his head. Still sobbing, he recounted everything that had happened since that morning. Twice Cuthbert had to ask him to slow down, and when Bert led the boy to a tree in whose shade the two of them sat together, Sheemie was finally able to do so. Cuthbert listened with growing unease. At the end of his tale, Sheemie produced an envelope from inside his shirt.

Cuthbert broke the seal and read what was inside, his eyes growing large.

12

Roy Depape was waiting for him at the Travellers’ Rest when Jonas returned in good spirits from his trip to the Bar K. An outrider had finally shown up, Depape announced, and Jonas’s spirits rose another notch. Only Roy didn’t look as happy about it as Jonas would have expected. Not happy at all.

“Fellow’s gone on to Seafront, where I guess he’s expected,” Depape said. “He wants you right away. I wouldn’t linger here to eat, not even a popkin, if I were you. I wouldn’t take a drink, either. You’ll want a clear head to deal with this one.”

“Free with your advice today, ain’t you, Roy?” Jonas said. He spoke in a heavily sarcastic tone, but when Pettie brought him a tot of whiskey, he sent it back and asked for water instead. Roy had a bit of a look to him, Jonas decided. Too pale by half, was good old Roy. And when Sheb sat down at his piano-bench and struck a chord, Depape jerked in that direction, one hand dropping to the butt of his gun. Interesting. And a little disquieting.

“Spill it, son-what’s got your back hair up?”

Roy shook his head sullenly. “Don’t rightly know.”

“What’s this fellow’s name?”

“I didn’t ask, he didn’t say. He showed me Farson’s sigul, though. You know.” Depape lowered his voice a little. “The eye.”

Jonas knew, all right. He hated that wide-open staring eye, couldn’t imagine what had possessed Farson to pick it in the first place. Why not a mailed fist? Crossed swords? Or a bird? A falcon, for instance-a falcon would have made a fine sigul. But that eye-

“All right,” he said, finishing the glass of water. It went down better than whiskey would have done, anyway-dry as a bone, he’d been. “I’ll find out the rest for myself, shall I?”

As he reached the batwing doors and pushed them open, Depape called his name. Jonas turned back.

“He looks like other people,” Depape said. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t hardly know.” Depape looked embarrassed and bewildered… but dogged, too. Sticking to his guns. “We only talked five minutes in all, but once I looked at him and thought it was the old bastard from Ritzy- the one I shot. Little bit later I th'ow him a glance and think, 'Hellfire, it’s my old pa standin there.' Then that went by, too, and he looked like himself again.”

“And how’s that?”

“You’ll see for yourself, I reckon. I don’t know if you’ll like it much, though.”

Jonas stood with one batwing pushed open, thinking. “Roy, ’twasn’t Farson himself, was it? The Good Man in some sort of disguise?” Depape hesitated, frowning, and then shook his head. “No.” “Are you sure? We only saw him the once, remember, and not close-to.” Latigo had pointed him out. Sixteen months ago that had been, give or take.

“I’m sure. You remember how big he was?”

Jonas nodded. Farson was no Lord Perth, but he was six feet or more, and broad across at both brace and basket.

“This man’s Clay’s height, or less. And he stays the same height no matter who he looks like.” Depape hesitated a moment and said: “He laughs like a dead person. 1 could barely stand to hear him do it.”

“What do you mean, like a dead person?”

Roy Depape shook his head. “Can’t rightly say.”

13

Twenty minutes later, Eldred Jonas was riding beneath come in peace mid into the courtyard of Seafront, uneasy because he had expected Latigo… and unless Roy was very much mistaken, it wasn’t Latigo he was getting.

Miguel shuffled forward, grinning his gummy old grin, and took the reins of Jonas’s horse.

“Reconocimiento.”

“Por nada, jefe.”

Jonas went in, saw Olive Thorin sitting in the front parlor like a forlorn ghost, and nodded to her. She nodded back, and managed a wan smile.

“Sai Jonas, how well you look. If you see Hart-”

“Cry your pardon, lady, but it’s the Chancellor I’ve come to see,” Jonas said. He went on quickly upstairs toward the Chancellor’s suite of rooms, then down a narrow stone hall lit (and not too well) with gas-jets.

When he reached the end of the corridor, he rapped on the door waiting there-a massive thing of oak and brass set in its own arch. Rimer didn’t care for such as Susan Delgado, but he loved the trappings of power; that was what took the curve out of his noodle and made it straight. Jonas rapped.

“Come in, my friend,” a voice-not Rimer’s-called. It was followed by a tittery laugh that made Jonas’s flesh creep. He laughs like a dead person, Roy had said.

Jonas pushed open the door and stepped in. Rimer cared for incense no more than he cared for the hips and lips of women, but there was incense burning in here now-a woody smell that made Jonas think of court at Gilead, and functions of state in the Great Hall. The gas-jets were turned high. The draperies-purple velvet, the color of royalty, Rimer’s absolute favorite-trembled minutely in the breath of sea breeze coming in through the open windows. Of Rimer there was no sign. Or of anyone else, come to that. There was a little balcony, but the doors giving on it were open, and no one was out there.

Jonas stepped a little farther into the room, glancing into a gilt-framed mirror on the far side to check behind him without turning his head. No one there, either. Ahead and to the left was a table with places set for two and a cold supper in place, but no one in either chair. Yet someone had spoken to him. Someone who’d been directly on the other side of the door, from the sound. Jonas drew his gun.

“Come, now,” said the voice which had bid him enter. It came from directly behind Jonas’s left shoulder. “No need for that, we’re all friends here. All on the same side, you know.”

Jonas whirled on his heels, suddenly feeling old and slow. Standing there was a man of medium height, powerfully built from the look of him, with bright blue eyes and the rosy cheeks of either good health or good wine. His parted, smiling lips revealed cunning little teeth which must have been filed to points-surely such points couldn’t be natural. He wore a black robe, like the robe of a holy man, with the hood pushed back. Jonas’s first thought, that the fellow was bald, had been wrong, he saw. The hair was simply cropped so stringently that it was nothing but fuzz.

“Put the beanshooter away,” the man in black said. “We’re friends here, I tell you-absolutely palsy-walsy. We’ll break bread and speak of many things-oxen and oil-tankers and whether or not Frank Sinatra really was a better crooner than Der Bingle.”

“Who? A better what?”

“No one you know; nothing that matters.” The man in black tittered again. It was, Jonas thought, the sort of sound one might expect to hear drifting through the barred windows of a lunatic asylum.

He turned. Looked into the mirror again. This time he saw the man in black standing there and smiling at him, big as life. Gods, had he been there all along?

Yes, but you couldn’t see him until he was ready to be seen. I don’t know if he’s a wizard, but he’s a glamor-man, all right. Mayhap even Farson ’s sorcerer.

He turned back. The man in the priest’s robe was still smiling. No pointed teeth now. But they had been pointed. Jonas would lay his watch and warrant on it.

“Where’s Rimer?”

“I sent him away to work with young sai Delgado on her Reaping Day catechisms,” the man in black said. He slung a chummy arm around Jonas’s shoulders and began leading him toward the table. “Best we palaver alone, I think.”

Jonas didn’t want to offend Farson’s man, but he couldn’t bear the touch of that arm. He couldn’t say why, but it was unbearable. Pestilential. He shrugged it off and went on to one of the chairs, trying not to shiver. No wonder Depape had come back from Hanging Rock looking pale. No damned wonder.

Instead of being offended, the man in black tittered again (Yes, Jonas thought, he does laugh like the dead, very like, so he does). For one moment Jonas thought it was Fardo, Cort’s father, in this room with him- that it was the man who had sent him west all those years ago-and he reached for his gun again. Then it was just the man in black, smiling at him in an unpleasantly knowing way, those blue eyes dancing like the flame from the gas-jets.

“See something interesting, sai Jonas?”

“Aye,” Jonas said, sitting down. “Eats.” He took a piece of bread and popped it into his mouth. The bread stuck to his dry tongue, but he chewed determinedly all the same.

“Good boy.” The other also sat, and poured wine, filling Jonas’s glass first. “Now, my friend, tell me everything you’ve done since the three troublesome boys arrived, and everything you know, and everything you have planned. I would not have you leave out a single jot.”

“First show me your sigul.”

“Of course. How prudent you are.”

The man in black reached inside his robe and brought out a square of metal-silver, Jonas guessed. He tossed it onto the table, and it clattered across to Jonas’s plate. Engraved on it was what he had expected-that hideous staring eye.

“Satisfied?”

Jonas nodded.

“Slide it back to me.”

Jonas reached for it, but for once his normally steady hand resembled his reedy, unstable voice. He watched the fingers tremble for a moment, then lowered the hand quickly to the table.

“I… I don’t want to.”

No. He didn’t want to. Suddenly he knew that if he touched it, the engraved silver eye would roll… and look directly at him.

The man in black tittered and made a come-along gesture with the fingers of his right hand. The silver buckle (that was what it looked like to Jonas) slid back to him… and up the sleeve of his homespun robe.

“Abracadabra! Bool! The end! Now,” the man in black went on, sipping his wine delicately, “if we have finished the tiresome formalities…”

“One more,” Jonas said. “You know my name; I would know yours.”

“Call me Walter,” the man in black said, and the smile suddenly fell off his lips. “Good old Walter, that’s me. Now let us see where we are, and where we’re going. Let us, in short, palaver.”

14

When Cuthbert came back into the bunkhouse, night had fallen. Roland and Alain were playing cards. They had cleaned the place up so that it looked almost as it had (thanks to turpentine found in a closet of the old foreman’s office, even the slogans written on the walls were just pink ghosts of their former selves), and now were deeply involved in a game of Casa Fuerte, or Hotpatch, as it was known in their own part of the world. Either way, it was basically a two-man version of Watch Me, the card-game which had been played in barrooms and bunkhouses and around campfires since the world was young.

Roland looked up at once, trying to read Bert’s emotional weather. Outwardly, Roland was as impassive as ever, had even played Alain to a draw across four difficult hands, but inwardly he was in a turmoil of pain and indecision. Alain had told him what Cuthbert had said while the two of them stood talking in the yard, and they were terrible things to hear from a friend, even when they came at second hand. Yet what haunted him more was what Bert had said just before leaving: You’ve called your carelessness love and made a virtue of irresponsibility. Was there even a chance he had done such a thing? Over and over he told himself no-that the course he had ordered them to follow was hard but sensible, the only course that made sense. Cuthbert’s shouting was just so much angry wind, brought on by nerves… and his fury at having their private place defiled so outrageously. Still…

Tell him he’s right for the -wrong reasons, and that makes him all the way wrong.

That couldn’t be. Could it?

Cuthbert was smiling and his color was high, as if he had galloped most of the way back. He looked young, handsome, and vital. He looked happy, in fact, almost like the Cuthbert of old-the one who’d been capable of babbling happy nonsense to a rook’s skull until someone told him lo please, please shut up.

But Roland didn’t trust what he saw. There was something wrong with the smile, the color in Bert’s cheeks could have been anger rather than good health, and the sparkle in his eyes looked like fever instead of humor. Roland showed nothing on his own face, but his heart sank. He’d hoped the storm would blow itself out, given a little time, but he didn’t think it had. He shot a glance at Alain, and saw that Alain felt the same.

Cuthbert, it will be over in three weeks. If only I could tell you that.

The thought which returned was stunning in its simplicity: Why can’t you?

He realized he didn’t know. Why had he been holding back, keeping his own counsel? For what purpose? Had he been blind? Gods, had he?

“Hello, Bert,” he said, “did you have a nice r-”

“Yes, very nice, a very nice ride, an instructive ride. Come outside. I want to show you something.”

Roland liked the thin glaze of hilarity in Bert’s eyes less and less, but he laid his cards in a neat facedown fan on the table and got up.

Alain pulled at his sleeve. “No!” His voice was low and panicky. “Do you not see how he looks?”

“I see,” Roland said. And felt dismay in his heart.

For the first time, as he walked slowly toward the friend who no longer looked like a friend, it occurred to Roland that he had been making decisions in a state close akin to drunkenness. Or had he been making decisions at all? He was no longer sure.

“What is it you’d show me, Bert?”

“Something wonderful,” Bert said, and laughed. There was hate in the sound. Perhaps murder. “You’ll want a good close look at this. I know you will.”

“Bert, what’s wrong with you?” Alain asked.

“Wrong with me? Nothing wrong with me, Al-I’m as happy as a dart at sunrise, a bee in a flower, a fish in the ocean.” And as he turned away to go back through the door, he laughed again.

“Don’t go out there,” Alain said. “He’s lost his wits.”

“If our fellowship is broken, any chance we might have of getting out of Mejis alive is gone,” Roland said. “That being the case, I’d rather die at the hands of a friend than an enemy.”

He went out. After a moment of hesitation, Alain followed. On his face was a look of purest misery.

15

Huntress had gone and Demon had not yet begun to show his face, but the sky was powdered with stars, and they threw enough light to see by. Cuthbert’s horse, still saddled, was tied to the hitching rail. Beyond it, the square of dusty dooryard gleamed like a canopy of tarnished silver.

“What is it?” Roland asked. They weren’t wearing guns, any of them. That was to be grateful for, at least. “What would you show me?”

“It’s here.” Cuthbert stopped at a point midway between the bunk-house and the charred remains of the home place. He pointed with great assurance, but Roland could see nothing out of the ordinary. He walked over to Cuthbert and looked down.

“I don’t see-”

Brilliant light-starshine times a thousand-exploded in his head as Cuthbert’s fist drove against the point of his chin. It was the first time, except in play (and as very small boys), that Bert had ever struck him. Roland didn’t lose consciousness, but he did lose control over his arms and legs. They were there, but seemingly in another country, flailing like the limbs of a rag doll. He went down on his back. Dust puffed up around him. The stars seemed strangely in motion, running in arcs and leaving milky trails behind them. There was a high ringing in his ears.

From a great distance he heard Alain scream: “Oh, you fool! You stupid fool!”

By making a tremendous effort, Roland was able to turn his head. He saw Alain start toward him and saw Cuthbert, no longer smiling, push him away. “This is between us, Al. You stay out of it.”

“You sucker-punched him, you bastard!” Alain, slow to anger, was now building toward a rage Cuthbert might well regret. I have to get up, Roland thought. I have to get between them before something even worse happens. His arms and legs began to swim weakly in the dust.

“Yes-that’s how he’s played us,” Cuthbert said. “I only returned the favor.” He looked down. “That’s what I wanted to show you, Roland.

That particular piece of ground. That particular puff of dust in which you are now lying. Get a good taste of it. Mayhap it’ll wake you up.”

Now Roland’s own anger began to rise. He felt the coldness that was seeping into his thoughts, fought it, and realized he was losing. Jonas ceased to matter; the tankers at Citgo ceased to matter; the supply conspiracy they had uncovered ceased to matter. Soon the Affiliation and the ka-tet he had been at such pains to preserve would cease to matter as well.

The surface numbness was leaving his feet and legs, and he pushed himself to a sitting position. He looked up calmly at Bert, his tented hands on the ground, his face set. Starshine swam in his eyes.

“I love you, Cuthbert, but I’ll have no more insubordination and jealous tantrums. If I paid you back for all, I reckon you’d finish in pieces, so I’m only going to pay you for hitting me when I didn’t know it was coming.”

“And I’ve no doubt ye can, cully,” Cuthbert said, falling effortlessly into the Hambry patois. “But first ye might want to have a peek at this.” Almost contemptuously, he tossed a folded sheet of paper. It hit Roland’s chest and bounced into his lap.

Roland picked it up, feeling the fine point of his developing rage lose its edge. “What is it?”

“Open and see. There’s enough starlight to read by.”

Slowly, with reluctant fingers, Roland unfolded the sheet of paper and read what was printed there.

He read it twice. The second time was actually harder, because his hands had begun to tremble. He saw every place he and Susan had met- the boathouse, the hut, the shack-and now he saw them in a new light, knowing someone else had seen them, too. How clever he had believed they were being. How confident of their secrecy and their discretion. And yet someone had been watching all the time. Susan had been right. Someone had seen.

I’ve put everything at risk. Her life as well as our lives.

Tell him what I said about the doorway to hell.

And Susan’s voice, too: Ka like a wind… if you love me, then love me.

So he had done, believing in his youthful arrogance that everything would turn out all right for no other reason-yes, at bottom he had believed this-than that he was he, and ka must serve his love.

“I’ve been a fool,” he said. His voice trembled like his hands.

“Yes, indeed,” Cuthbert said. “So you have.” He dropped to his knees in the dust, facing Roland. “Now if you want to hit me, hit away. Hard as you want and as many as you can manage. I’ll not hit back. I’ve done all I can to wake you up to your responsibilities. If you still sleep, so be it. Either way, I still love you.” Bert put his hands on Roland’s shoulders and briefly kissed his friend’s cheek.

Roland began to cry. They were partly tears of gratitude, but mostly those of mingled shame and confusion; there was even a small, dark part of him that hated Cuthbert and always would. That part hated Cuthbert more on account of the kiss than because of the unexpected punch on the jaw; more for the forgiveness than the awakening.

He got to his feet, still holding the letter in one dusty hand, the other ineffectually brushing his cheeks and leaving damp smears there. When he staggered and Cuthbert put out a hand to steady him, Roland pushed him so hard that Cuthbert himself would have fallen, if Alain hadn’t caught hold of his shoulders.

Then, slowly, Roland went back down again-this time in front of Cuthbert with his hands up and his head down.

“Roland, no!” Cuthbert cried.

“Yes,” Roland said. “I have forgotten the face of my father, and cry your pardon.”

“Yes, all right, for gods’ sake, yes!” Cuthbert now sounded as if he were crying himself. “Just… please get up! It breaks my heart to see you so!”

And mine to be so, Roland thought. To be humbled so. But I brought it on myself, didn’t I? This dark yard, with my head throbbing and my heart full of shame and fear. This is mine, bought and paid for.

They helped him up and Roland let himself be helped. “That’s quite a left, Bert,” he said in a voice that almost passed for normal.

“Only when it’s going toward someone who doesn’t know it’s coming,” Cuthbert replied.

“This letter-how did you come by it?”

Cuthbert told of meeting Sheemie, who had been dithering along in his own misery, as if waiting for ka to intervene… and, in the person of “Arthur Heath,” ka had.

“From the witch,” Roland mused. “Yes, but how did she know? For she never leaves the Coos, or so Susan has told me.”

“I can’t say. Nor do I much care. What I’m most concerned about right now is making sure that Sheemie isn’t hurt because of what he told me and gave me. After that, I’m concerned that what old witch Rhea has tried to tell once she doesn’t try to tell again.”

“I’ve made at least one terrible mistake,” Roland said, “but I don’t count loving Susan as another. That was beyond me to change. As it was beyond her. Do you believe that?”

“Yes,” Alain said at once, and after a moment, almost reluctantly, Cuthbert said, “Aye, Roland.”

“I’ve been arrogant and stupid. If this note had reached her aunt, she could have been sent into exile.”

“And we to the devil, by way of hangropes,” Cuthbert added dryly. “Although I know that’s a minor matter to you by comparison.”

“What about the witch?” Alain asked. “What do we do about her?” Roland smiled a little, and turned toward the northwest. “Rhea,” he said. “Whatever else she is, she’s a first-class troublemaker, is she not? And troublemakers must be put on notice.”

He started back toward the bunkhouse, trudging with his head down. Cuthbert looked at Alain, and saw that Al was also a little teary-eyed. Bert put out his hand. For a moment Alain only looked at it. Then he nodded-to himself rather than to Cuthbert, it seemed-and shook it.

“You did what you had to,” Alain said. “I had my doubts at first, but not now.”

Cuthbert let out his breath. “And I did it the way I had to. If I hadn’t surprised him-”

“-he would have beaten you black and blue.”

“So many more colors than that,” Cuthbert said. “I would have looked like a rainbow.”

“The Wizard’s Rainbow, even,” Alain said. “Extra colors for your penny.”

That made Cuthbert laugh. The two of them walked back toward the bunkhouse, where Roland was unsaddling Bert’s horse.

Cuthbert turned in that direction to help, but Alain held him back. “Leave him alone for a little while,” he said. “It’s best you do.”

They went on ahead, and when Roland came in ten minutes later, he found Cuthbert playing his hand. And winning with it.

“Bert,” he said.

Cuthbert looked up.

“We have a spot of business tomorrow, you and I. Up on the Coos.” “Are we going to kill her?”

Roland thought, and thought hard. At last he looked up, biting his lip. “We should.”

“Aye. We should. But are we going to?”

“Not unless we have to, I reckon.” Later he would regret this decision-if it was a decision-bitterly, but there never came a time when he did not understand it. He had been a boy not much older than Jake Chambers during that Mejis fall, and the decision to kill does not come easily or naturally to most boys. “Not unless she makes us.”

“Perhaps it would be best if she did,” Cuthbert said. It was hard gunslinger talk, but he looked troubled as he said it.

“Yes. Perhaps it would. It’s not likely, though, not in one as sly as her. Be ready to get up early.”

“All right. Do you want your hand back?”

“When you’re on the verge of knocking him out? Not at all.”

Roland went past them to his bunk. There he sat, looking at his folded hands in his lap. He might have been praying; he might only have been thinking hard. Cuthbert looked at him for a moment, then turned back to his cards.

16

The sun was just over the horizon when Roland and Cuthbert left the next morning. The Drop, still drenched with morning dew, seemed to bum with orange fire in the early light. Their breath and that of their horses puffed frosty in the air. It was a morning neither of them ever forgot. For the first time in their lives they went forth wearing bolstered revolvers; for the first time in their lives they went into the world as gunslingers.

Cuthbert said not a word-he knew that if he started, he’d do nothing but babble great streams of his usual nonsense-and Roland was quiet by nature. There was only one exchange between them, and it was brief.

“I said I made at least one very bad mistake,” Roland told him. “One that this note”-he touched his breast pocket-“brought home to me. Do you know what that mistake was?”

“Not loving her-not that,” Cuthbert said. “You called that ka, and I call it the same.” It was a relief to be able to say this, and a greater one to believe it. Cuthbert thought he could even accept Susan herself now, not us his best friend’s lover, a girl he had wanted himself the first time he saw her, but as a part of their entwined fate.

“No,” Roland said. “Not loving her, but thinking that love could somehow be apart from everything else. That I could live two lives-one with you and Al and our job here, one with her. I thought that love could lilt me above ka, the way a bird’s wings can take it above all the things that would kill it and eat it, otherwise. Do you understand?”

“It made you blind.” Cuthbert spoke with a gentleness quite foreign to the young man who had suffered through the last two months.

“Yes,” Roland said sadly. “It made me blind… but now I see. Come on, a little faster, if you please. I want to get this over.”

17

They rode up the rutty cart-track along which Susan (a Susan who had known a good deal less about the ways of the world) had come singing “Careless Love” beneath the light of the Kissing Moon. Where the track opened into Rhea’s yard, they stopped.

“Wonderful view,” Roland murmured. “You can see the whole sweep of the desert from here.”

“Not much to say about the view right here in front of us, though.”

That was true. The garden was full of unpicked mutie vegetables, the stuffy-guy presiding over them either a bad joke or a bad omen. The yard supported just one tree, now moulting sickly-looking fall leaves like an old vulture shedding its feathers. Beyond the tree was the hut itself, made of rough stone and topped by a single sooty pot of a chimney with a hex-sign painted on it in sneering yellow. At the rear comer, beyond one overgrown window, was a woodpile.

Roland had seen plenty of huts like it-the three of them had passed any number on their way here from Gilead-but never one that felt as powerfully wrong as this. He saw nothing untoward, yet there was a feeling, too strong to be denied, of a presence. One that watched and waited.

Cuthbert felt it, too. “Do we have to go closer?” lie swallowed. “Do we have to go in? Because… Roland, the door is open. Do you see?”

He saw. As if she expected them. As if she was inviting them in, wanting them to sit down with her to some unspeakable breakfast.

“Stay here.” Roland gigged Rusher forward.

“No! I’m coming!”

“No, cover my back. If I need to go inside, I’ll call you to join me… but if I need to go inside, the old woman who lives here will breathe no more. As you said, that might be for the best.”

At every slow step Rusher took, the feeling of wrongness grew in Roland’s heart and mind. There was a stench to the place, a smell like rotten meat and hot putrefied tomatoes. It came from the hut, he supposed, but it also seemed to come wafting out of the very ground. And at every step, the whine of the thinny seemed louder, as if the atmosphere of this place somehow magnified it.

Susan came up here alone, and in the dark, he thought. Gods, I’m not sure I could have come up here in the dark with my friends for company.

He stopped beneath the tree, looking through the open door twenty paces away. He saw what could have been a kitchen; the legs of a table, the back of a chair, a filthy hearthstone. No sign of the lady of the house. But she was there. Roland could feel her eyes crawling on him like loathsome bugs.

I can’t see her because she’s used her art to make herself dim… but she’s there.

And just perhaps he did see her. The air had a strange shimmer just inside the door to the right, as if it had been heated. Roland had been told that you could see someone who was dim by turning your head and looking from the comer of your eye. He did that now.

“Roland?” Cuthbert called from behind him.

“Fine so far, Bert.” Barely paying attention to the words he was saying, because… yes! That shimmer was clearer now, and it had almost the shape of a woman. It could be his imagination, of course, but…

But at that moment, as if understanding he’d seen her, the shimmer moved farther back into the shadows. Roland glimpsed the swinging hem of an old black dress, there and then gone.

No matter. He had not come to see her but only to give her her single warning… which was one more than any of their fathers would have given her, no doubt.

“Rhea!” His voice rolled in the harsh tones of old, stem and commanding. Two yellow leaves fell from the tree, as if shivered loose by that voice, and one fell in his black hair. From the hut came only a waiting, listening silence… and then the discordant, jeering yowl of a cat.

“Rhea, daughter of none! I’ve brought something back to you, woman! Something you must have lost!” From his shirt he took the folded letter and tossed it to the stony ground. “Today I’ve been your friend, Rhea-if this had gone where you had intended it to go, you would have paid with your life.”

He paused. Another leaf drifted down from the tree. This one landed in Pusher’s mane.

“Hear me well, Rhea, daughter of none, and understand me well. I have come here under the name of Will Dearborn, but Dearborn is not my name and it is the Affiliation I serve. More, ’tis all which lies behind the Affiliation-'tis the power of the White. You have crossed the way of our ka, and I warn you only this once: do not cross it again. Do you understand?”

Only that waiting silence.

“Do not touch a single hair on the head of the boy who carried your had-natured mischief hence, or you’ll die. Speak not another word of those things you know or think you know to anyone-not to Cordelia Delgado, nor to Jonas, nor to Rimer, nor to Thorin-or you’ll die. Keep your peace and we will keep ours. Break it, and we’ll still you. Do you understand?”

More silence. Dirty windows peering at him like eyes. A puff of breeze sent more leaves showering down around him, and caused the stuffy-guy to creak nastily on his pole. Roland thought briefly of the cook, Hax, twisting at the end of his rope.

“Do you understand?”

No reply. Not even a shimmer could he see through the open door now.

“Very well,” Roland said. “Silence gives consent.” He gigged his horse around. As he did, his head came up a little, and he saw something green shift above him among the yellow leaves. There was a low hissing sound.

“Roland look out! Snake!” Cuthbert screamed, but before the second word had left his mouth, Roland had drawn one of his guns.

He fell sideways in the saddle, holding with his left leg and heel as Rusher jigged and pranced. He fired three times, the thunder of the big gun smashing through the still air and then rolling back from the nearby hills. With each shot the snake flipped upward again, its blood dotting red across a background of blue sky and yellow leaves. The last bullet tore off its head, and when the snake fell for good, it hit the ground in two pieces. From within the hut came a wail of grief and rage so awful that Roland’s spine turned to a cord of ice.

“You bastard!” screamed a woman’s voice from the shadows. “Oh, you murdering cull! My friend! My friend!”

“If it was your friend, you oughtn’t to have set it on me,” Roland said. “Remember, Rhea, daughter of none.”

The voice uttered one more shriek and fell silent. Roland rode back to Cuthbert, bolstering his gun. Bert’s eyes were round and amazed. “Roland, what shooting! Gods, what shooting!” “Let’s get out of here.”

“But we still don’t know how she knew!”

“Do you think she’d tell?” There was a small but minute shake in Roland’s voice. The way the snake had come out of the tree like that, right at him… he could still barely believe he wasn’t dead. Thank gods for his hand, which had taken matters over.

“We could make her talk,” Cuthbert said, but Roland could tell from his voice that Bert had no taste for such. Maybe later, maybe after years of trail-riding and gunslinging, but now he had no more stomach for torture than for killing outright.

“Even if we could, we couldn’t make her tell the truth. Such as her lies as other folks breathe. If we’ve convinced her to keep quiet, we’ve done enough for today. Come on. I hate this place.”

18

As they rode back toward town, Roland said: “We’ve got to meet.”

“The four of us. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I want to tell everything I know and surmise. I want to tell you my plan, such as it is. What we’ve been waiting for.”

“That would be very good indeed.”

“Susan can help us.” Roland seemed to be speaking to himself. Cuthbert was amused to see that the lone, crown like leaf was still caught in his dark hair. “Susan was meant to help us. Why didn’t I see that?”

“Because love is blind,” Cuthbert said. He snorted laughter and clapped Roland on the shoulder. “Love is blind, old son.”

19

When she was sure the boys were gone, Rhea crept out of her door and into the hateful sunshine. She hobbled across to the tree and fell on her knees by the tattered length of her snake, weeping loudly.

“Ermot, Ermot!” she cried. “See what’s become of ye!”

There was his head, the mouth frozen open, the double fangs still dripping poison-clear drops that shone like prisms in the day’s strengthening light. The glazing eyes glared. She picked Ermot up, kissed the scaly mouth, licked the last of the venom from the exposed needles, crooning and weeping all the while.

Next she picked up the long and tattered body with her other hand, moaning at the holes which had been torn into Ermot’s satiny hide; the holes and the ripped red flesh beneath. Twice she put the head against the body and spoke incantations, but nothing happened. Of course not. Ermot had gone beyond the aid of her spells. Poor Ermot.

She held his head to one flattened old dug, and his body to the other. Then, with the last of his blood wetting the bodice of her dress, she looked in the direction the hateful boys had gone.

“I’ll pay ye back,” she whispered. “By all the gods that ever were, I’ll pay ye back. When ye least expect it, there Rhea will be, and your screams will break your throats. Do you hear me? Your screams will break your throats!”

She knelt a moment longer, then got up and shuffled back toward her hut, holding Ermot to her bosom.

1

On an afternoon three days after Roland’s and Cuthbert’s visit to the Coos, Roy Depape and Clay Reynolds walked along the upstairs hallway of the Travellers’ Rest to the spacious bedroom Coral Thorin kept there. Clay knocked. Jonas called for them to come in, it was open.

The first thing Depape saw upon entering was sai Thorin herself, in a rocker by the window. She wore a foamy nightdress of white silk and a red bufanda on her head. She had a lapful of knitting. Depape looked at her in surprise. She offered him and Reynolds an enigmatic smile, said “Hello, gents,” and returned to her needlework. Outside there was a rattle of firecrackers (young folks could never wait until the big day; if they had crackers in their hands, they had to set match to them), the nervous whinny of a horse, and the raucous laughter of boys.

Depape turned to Reynolds, who shrugged and then crossed his arms to hold the sides of his cloak. In this way he expressed doubt or disapproval or both.

“Problem?”

Jonas was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, wiping shaving soap from his face with the end of the towel laid over his shoulder. He was bare to the waist. Depape had seen him that way plenty of times, but the old white crisscrossings of scars always made him feel a little sick to his stomach.

“Well… I knew we was using the lady’s room, I just didn’t know the lady came with it.”

“She does.” Jonas tossed the towel into the bathroom, crossed to the bed, and took his shirt from where it hung on one of the footposts. Beyond him, Coral glanced up, gave his naked back a single greedy look, then went back to her work once more. Jonas slipped into his shirt. “How arc things at Citgo, Clay?”

“Quiet. But it’ll get noisy if certain young vagabundos poke their nosy noses in.”

“How many are out there, and how do they set?” “Ten in the days. A dozen at night. Roy or I are out once every shift, but like I say, it’s been quiet.”

Jonas nodded, but he wasn’t happy. He’d hoped to draw the boys out to Citgo before now, just as he’d hoped to draw them into a confrontation by vandalizing their place and killing their pigeons. Yet so far they still hid behind their damned Hillock. He felt like a man in a field with three young bulls. He’s got a red rag, this would-be torero, and he’s napping it for all he’s worth, and still the toros refuse to charge. Why? “The moving operation? How goes that?”

“Like clockwork,” Reynolds said. “Four tankers a night, in pairs, the last four nights. Renfrew’s in charge, him of the Lazy Susan. Do you still want to leave half a dozen as bait?”

“Yar,” Jonas said, and there was a knock at the door. Depape jumped. “Is that-”

“No,” Jonas said. “Our friend in the black robe has decamped. Perhaps he goes to offer comfort to the Good Man’s troops before battle.”

Depape barked laughter at that. By the window, the woman in the nightgown looked down at her knitting and said nothing. “It’s open!” Jonas called.

The man who stepped in was wearing the sombrero, scrape, and sandalias of a farmer or vaquero, but the face was pale and the lock of hair peeking out from beneath the sombrero’s brim was blond. It was Latigo. A hard man and no mistake, but a great improvement over the laughing man in the black robe, just the same.

“Good to see you, gentlemen,” he said, coming in and closing the door. His face-dour, frowning-was that of a man who hasn’t seen anything good in years. Maybe since birth. “Jonas? Are you well? Do things march?”

“I am and they do,” Jonas said. He offered his hand. Latigo gave it a quick, dry shake. He didn’t do the same for Depape or Reynolds, but glanced at Coral instead.

“Long days and pleasant nights, lady.”

“And may you have twice the number, sai Latigo,” she said without looking up from her knitting.

Latigo sat on the end of the bed, produced a sack of tobacco from beneath his scrape, and began rolling a cigarette.

“I won’t stay long,” he said. He spoke in the abrupt, clipped tones of northern In-World, where-or so Depape had heard-reindeer-fucking was still considered the chief sport. If you ran slower than your sister, that was. “It wouldn’t be wise. I don’t quite fit in, if one looks closely.”

“No,” Reynolds said, sounding amused. “You don’t.”

Latigo gave him a sharp glance, then returned his attention to Jonas. “Most of my party is camped thirty wheels from here, in the forest west of Eyebolt Canyon… what is that wretched noise inside the canyon, by the way? It frightens the horses.”

“A thinny,” Jonas said.

“It scares the men, too, if they get too close,” Reynolds said. “Best to stay away, cap'n.”

“How many are you?” Jonas asked.

“A hundred. And well armed.”

“So, it’s said, were Lord Perth’s men.”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“Have they seen any fighting?”

“Enough to know what it is,” Latigo said, and Jonas knew he was lying. Farson had kept his veterans in their mountain boltholes. Here was a little expeditionary force where no doubt only the sergeants were able to do more with their cocks than run water through them.

“There are a dozen at Hanging Rock, guarding the tankers your men have brought so far,” Latigo said.

“More than needed, likely.”

“I didn’t risk coming into this godforsaken shitsplat of a town in order to discuss my arrangements with you, Jonas.”

“Cry your pardon, sai,” Jonas replied, but perfunctorily. He sat on the floor next to Coral’s rocker and began to roll a smoke of his own. She put her knitting aside and began to stroke his hair. Depape didn’t know what there was about her that Eldred found so fascinating-when he himself looked he saw only an ugly bitch with a big nose and mosquito-bump tittles.

“As to the three young men,” Latigo said with the air of a fellow going directly to the heart of the matter. “The Good Man was extremely disturbed to learn there were visitors from In-World in Mejis. And now you tell me they aren’t what they claim to be. So, just what are they?”

Jonas brushed Coral’s hand away from his hair as though it were ii troublesome insect. Undisturbed, she returned to her knitting. “They’re not young men but mere boys, and if their coming here is ka-about which I know Farson concerns himself deeply-then it may be our ka rather than the Affiliation’s.”

“Unfortunately, we’ll have to forgo enlightening the Good Man with your theological conclusions,” Latigo said. “We’ve brought radios, but they’re either broken or can’t work at this distance. No one knows which. I hate all such toys, anyway. The gods laugh at them. We’re on our own, my friend. For good or ill.”

“No need for Farson to worry unnecessarily,” Jonas said. “The Good Man wants these lads treated as a threat to his plans. I expect Walter told you the same thing.”

“Aye. And I haven’t forgotten a word. Sai Walter is an unforgettable sort of man.”

“Yes,” Latigo agreed. “He’s the Good Man’s underliner. The chief reason he came to you was to underline these boys.”

“And so he did. Roy, tell sai Latigo about your visit to the Sheriff day before yesterday.”

Depape cleared his throat nervously. “The sheriff… Avery-”

“I know him, fat as a pig in Full Earth, he is,” Latigo said. “Go on.” “One of Avery’s deputies carried a message to the three boys as they counted horse on the Drop.” “What message?”

“Stay out of town on Reaping Day; stay off the Drop on Reaping Day; best to stay close to your quarters on Reaping Day, as Barony folk don’t enjoy seeing outlanders, even those they like, when they keep their festivals.”

“And how did they take it?”

“They agreed straight away to keep to themselves on Reaping,” Depape said. “That’s been their habit all along, to be just as agreeable as pie when something’s asked of em. They know better, course they do-there’s no more a custom here against outlanders on Reaping than there is anyplace else. In fact, it’s quite usual to make strangers a part of the merrymaking, as I’m sure the boys know. The idea-”

“-is to make them believe we plan to move on Fair-Day itself, yes, yes,” Latigo finished impatiently. “What I want to know is are they convinced? Can you take them on the day before Reaping, as you’ve promised, or will they be waiting?”

Depape and Reynolds looked at Jonas. Jonas reached behind him and put his hand on Coral’s narrow but not uninteresting thigh. Here it was, he thought. He would be held to what he said next, and without grace. If he was right, the Big Coffin Hunters would be thanked and paid… perhaps bonused, as well. If he was wrong, they would likely be hung so high and hard that their heads would pop off when they hit the end of the rope.

“We’ll take them easy as birds on the ground,” Jonas said. “Treason the charge. Three young men, all high-bom, in the pay of John Parson. Shocking stuff. What could be more indicative of the evil days we live in?”

“One cry of treason and the mob appears?”

Jonas favored Latigo with a wintry smile. “As a concept, treason might be a bit of a reach for the common folk, even when the mob’s drunk and the core’s been bought and paid for by the Horsemen’s Association. Murder, though… especially that of a much loved Mayor-”

Depape’s startled eyes flew to the Mayor’s sister.

“What a pity it will be,” that lady said, and sighed. “I may be moved to lead the rabble myself.”

Depape thought he finally understood Eldred’s attraction: here was a woman every bit as cold-blooded as Jonas himself.

“One other matter,” Latigo said. “A piece of the Good Man’s property was sent with you for safekeeping. A certain glass ball?”

Jonas nodded. “Yes, indeed. A pretty trifle.”

“I understand you left it with the local bruja.”

“Yes.”

“You should take it back. Soon.”

“Don’t teach your grandpa to suck eggs,” Jonas said, a bit testily. “I’m waiting until the brats are jugged.”

Reynolds murmured curiously, “Have you seen it yourself, sai Latigo?”

“Not close up, but I’ve seen men who have.” Latigo paused. “One such ran mad and had to be shot. The only other time I saw anyone in such condition was thirty years ago, on the edge of the big desert. ’twas a hut-dweller who’d been bitten by a rabid coyote.”

“Bless the Turtle,” Reynolds muttered, and tapped his throat three times. He was terrified of rabies.

“You won’t bless anything if the Wizard’s Rainbow gets hold of you,” Latigo said grimly, and swung his attention back to Jonas. “You’ll want to be even more careful taking it back than you were in giving it over. The old witch-woman’s likely under its glam by now.”

“I intend to send Rimer and Avery. Avery ain’t much of a shake, but Rimer’s a trig boy.”

“I’m afraid that won’t do,” Latigo said.

“Won’t it?” Jonas said. His hand tightened on Coral’s leg and he smiled unpleasantly at Latigo. “Perhaps you could tell your 'umble servant why it won’t do?”

It was Coral who answered. “Because,” said she, “when the piece of the Wizard’s Rainbow Rhea holds is taken back into custody, the Chancellor will be busy accompanying my brother to his final resting place.”

“What’s she talking about, Eldred?” Depape asked.

“That Rimer dies, too,” Jonas said. He began to grin. “Another foul crime to lay at the feet of John Farson’s filthy spyboys.”

Coral smiled in sweet agreement, put her hands over Jonas’s, moved it higher on her thigh, and then picked up her knitting again.

2

The girl, although young, was married.

The boy, although fair, was unstable.

She met him one night in a remote place to tell him their affair, sweet as it had been, must end. He replied that it would never end, it was written in the stars. She told him that might be, but at some point the constellations had changed. Perhaps he began to weep. Perhaps she laughed-out of nervousness, very likely. Whatever the cause, such laughter was disastrously timed. He picked up a stone and dashed out her brains with it. Then, coming to his senses and realizing what he had done, he sat down with his back against a granite slab, drew her poor battered head into his lap, and cut his own throat as an owl looked on from a nearby tree. He died covering her face with kisses, and when they were found, their lips were sealed together with his life’s blood and with hers.

An old story. Every town has its version. The site is usually the local lovers’ lane, or a secluded stretch of riverbank, or the town graveyard. Once the details of what actually happened have been distorted enough to please the morbidly romantic, songs are made. These are usually sung by yearning virgins who play guitar or mando badly and cannot quite stay on key. Choruses tend to include such lachrymose refrains as My-di-I-de-I-de-o, There they died together-o.

The Hambry version of this quaint tale featured lovers named Robert and Francesca, and had happened in the old days, before the world had moved on. The site of the supposed murder-suicide was the Hambry cemetery, the stone with which Francesca’s brains had been dashed out was a slate marker, and the granite wall against which Robert had been leaning when he clipped his blowpipe had been the Thorin mausoleum. (It was doubtful there had been any Thorins in Hambry or Mejis five generations back, but folk-tales are, at best, generally no more than lies set in rhyme.)

True or untrue, the graveyard was considered haunted by the ghosts of the lovers, who could be seen (it was said) walking hand-in-hand among the markers, covered with blood and looking wistful. It was thus seldom visited at night, and was a logical spot for Roland, Cuthbert, Alain, and Susan to meet.

By the time the meeting took place, Roland had begun to feel increasingly worried… even desperate. Susan was the problem-or, more properly put, Susan’s aunt. Even without Rhea’s poisonous letter to help the process along, Cordelia’s suspicions of Susan and Roland had hardened into a near certainty. On a day less than a week before the meeting in the cemetery, Cordelia had begun shrieking at Susan almost as soon as she stepped through the house door with her basket over her arm.

“Ye’ve been with him! Ye have, ye bad girl, it’s written all over yer face!”

Susan, who had that day been nowhere near Roland, could at first only gape at her aunt. “Been with who?”

“Oh, be not coy with me, Miss Oh So Young and Pretty! Be not coy, I pray! Who does all but wiggle his tongue at ye when he passes our door? Dearborn, that’s who! Dearborn! Dearborn! I’ll say it a thousand times! Oh, shame on ye! Shame! Look at yer trousers! Green from the grass the two of ye have been rolling in, they are! I’m surprised they’re not torn open at the crutch as well!” By then Aunt Cord had been nearly shrieking. The veins in her neck stood out like rope.

Susan, bemused, had looked down at the old khaki pants she was wearing.

“Aunt, it’s paint-don’t you see it is? Chetta and I’ve been making Fair-Day decorations up at Mayor’s House. What’s on my bottom got there when Hart Thorin- not Dearborn but Thorin-came upon me in the shed where the decorations and fireworks are stored. He decided it was as good a time and place as any to have another little wrestle. He got on top of me, shot his squirt into his pants again, and went off happy. Humming, he was.” She wrinkled her nose, although the most she felt for Thorin these days was a kind of sad distaste. Her fear of him had passed.

Aunt Cord, meanwhile, had been looking at her with glittery eyes. For the first time, Susan found herself wondering consciously about Cordelia’s sanity.

“A likely story,” Cordelia whispered at last. There were little beads of perspiration above her eyebrows, and the nestles of blue veins at her temples ticked like clocks. She even had a smell, these days, no matter if she bathed or not-a rancid, acrid one. “Did ye work it out together as ye cuddled afterward, thee and him?”

Susan had stepped forward, grabbed her aunt’s bony wrist, and clapped it to the stain on one of her knees. Cordelia cried out and tried to pull away, but Susan held fast. She then raised the hand to her aunt’s face, holding it there until she knew Cordelia had smelled what was on her palm.

“Does thee smell it. Aunt? Paint! We used it on rice-paper for colored lanterns!”

The tension had slowly gone out of the wrist in Susan’s hand. The eyes looking into hers regained a measure of clarity. “Aye,” she had said at last. “Paint.” A pause. “This time.”

Since then, Susan had all too often turned her head to see a narrow-hipped figure gliding after her in the street, or one of her aunt’s many friends marking her course with suspicious eyes. When she rode on the Drop, she now always had the sensation of being watched. Twice before the four of them came together in the graveyard, she had agreed to meet Roland and his friends. Both times she had been forced to break off, the second at the very last moment. On that occasion she had seen Brian Hockey’s eldest son watching her in an odd, intent way. It had only been intuition… but strong intuition.

What made matters worse for her was that she was as frantic for a meeting as Roland himself, and not just for palaver. She needed to see his face, and to clasp one of his hands between both of hers. The rest, sweet as it was, could wait, but she needed to see him and touch him; needed to make sure he wasn’t Just a dream spun by a lonely, frightened girl to comfort herself.

In the end, Maria had helped her-gods bless the little maid, who perhaps understood more than Susan could ever guess. It was Maria who had gone to Cordelia with a note saying that Susan would be spending the night in the guest wing at Seafront. The note was from Olive Thorin, and in spite of all her suspicions, Cordelia could not quite believe it a forgery. As it was not. Olive had written it, listlessly and without questions, when Susan asked.

“What’s wrong with my niece?” Cordelia had snapped. “She tired, sai. And with the dolor de garganta.”

“Sore throat? So close before Fair-Day? Ridiculous! I don’t believe it! Susan’s never sick!”

“Dolor de garganta,” Maria repeated, impassive as only a peasant woman can be in the face of disbelief, and with that Cordelia had to be satisfied. Maria herself had no idea what Susan was up to, and that was just the way Susan liked it.

She’d gone over the balcony, moving nimbly down the fifteen feet of tangled vines growing up the north side of the building, and through the rear servants’ door in the wall. There Roland had been waiting, and after two warm minutes with which we need not concern ourselves, they rode double on Rusher to the graveyard, where Cuthbert and Alain waited, full of expectation and nervous hope.

3

Susan looked first at the placid blond one with the round face, whose name was not Richard Stockworth but Alain Johns. Then at the other one-he from whom she had sensed such doubt of her and perhaps even anger at her. Cuthbert Allgood was his name.

They sat side by side on a fallen gravestone which had been overrun with ivy, their feet in a little brook of mist. Susan slid from Rusher’s back and approached them slowly. They stood up. Alain made an In-World bow, leg out, knee locked, heel stiffly planted. “Lady,” he said. “Long days-”

Now the other was beside him-thin and dark, with a face that would have been handsome had it not seemed so restless. His dark eyes were really quite beautiful.

“- and pleasant nights,” Cuthbert finished, doubling Alain’s bow. I he two of them looked so like comic courtiers in a Fair-Day sketch that Susan laughed. She couldn’t help herself. Then she curtseyed to them deeply, spreading her arms to mime the skirts she wasn’t wearing. “And may you have twice the number, gentlemen.”

Then they simply looked at each other, three young people who were uncertain exactly how to proceed. Roland didn’t help; he sat astride K usher and only watched carefully.

Susan took a tentative step forward, not laughing now. There were still dimples at the comers of her lips, but her eyes were anxious.

“I hope you don’t hate me,” she said. “I’d understand it if you did- I’ve come into your plans… and between the three of you, as well-but I couldn’t help it.” Her hands were still out at her sides. Now she raised them to Alain and Cuthbert, palms up. “I love him.”

“We don’t hate you,” Alain said. “Do we, Bert?”

For a terrible moment Cuthbert was silent, looking over Susan’s shoulder, seeming to study the waxing Demon Moon. She felt her heart stop. Then his gaze returned to her and he gave a smile of such sweetness that a confused but brilliant thought (If I’d met this one first-, it began) shot through her mind like a comet.

“Roland’s love is my love,” Cuthbert said. He reached out, took her hands, and drew her forward so she stood between him and Alain like a sister with her two brothers. “For we have been friends since we wore cradle-clothes, and we’ll continue as friends until one of us leaves the path and enters the clearing.” Then he grinned like a kid. “Mayhap we’ll all find the end of the path together, the way things are going.”

“And soon,” Alain added.

“Just so long,” Susan Delgado finished, “as my Aunt Cordelia doesn’t come along as our chaperone.”

4

“We are ka-tet,” Roland said. “We are one from many.”

He looked at each in turn, and saw no disagreement in their eyes. They had repaired to the mausoleum, and their breath smoked from their mouths and noses. Roland squatted on his hunkers, looking at the other three, who sat in a line on a stone meditation bench flanked by skeletal bouquets in stone pots. The floor was scattered with the petals of dead roses. Cuthbert and Alain, on either side of Susan, had their arms around her in quite unselfconscious fashion. Again Roland thought of one sister and two protective brothers.

“We’re greater than we were,” Alain said. “I feel that very strongly.”

“I do, too,” Cuthbert said. He looked around. “And a fine meeting-place, as well. Especially for such a ka-tet as ours.”

Roland didn’t smile; repartee had never been his strong suit. “Let’s talk about what’s going on in Hambry,” he said, “and then we’ll talk about the immediate future.”

“We weren’t sent here on a mission, you know,” Alain said to Susan. “We were sent by our fathers to get us out of the way, that’s all. Roland excited the enmity of a man who is likely a cohort of John Parson’s-”

“Excited the enmity of,'” Cuthbert said. “That’s a good phrase. Round. I intend to remember it and use it at every opportunity.”

“Control yourself,” Roland said. “I’ve no desire to be here all night.”

“Cry your pardon, O great one,” Cuthbert said, but his eyes danced in a decidedly unrepentant way.

“We came with carrier pigeons for the sending and receiving of messages,” Alain went on, “but I think the pigeons were laid on so our parents could be sure we were all right.”

“Yes,” Cuthbert said. “What Alain’s trying to say is that we’ve been caught by surprise. Roland and I have had… disagreements… about how to go on. He wanted to wait. I didn’t. I now believe he was right.”

“But for the wrong reasons,” Roland said in a dry tone. “In any case, we’ve settled our differences.”

Susan was looking back and forth between them with something like alarm. What her gaze settled upon was the bruise on Roland’s lower left jaw, clearly visible even in the faint light which crept through the half-open sepultura door. “Settled them how?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Roland said. “Farson intends a battle, or perhaps a series of them, in the Shaved Mountains, to the northwest of Gilead. To the forces of the Affiliation moving toward him, he will seem trapped. In a more ordinary course of things, that might even have been true. Farson intends to engage them, trap them, and destroy them with the weapons of the Old People. These he will drive with oil from Citgo. The oil in the tankers we saw, Susan.”

“Where will it be refined so Farson can use it?”

“Someplace west of here along his route,” Cuthbert said. “We think very likely the Vi Castis. Do you know it? It’s mining country.”

“I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never actually been out of Hambry in my life.” She looked levelly at Roland. “I think that’s to change soon.”

“There’s a good deal of machinery left over from the days of the Old People in those mountains,” Alain said. “Most is up in the draws and canyons, they say. Robots and killer lights-razor-beams, such are called, because they’ll cut you clean in half if you run into them. The gods know what else. Some of it’s undoubtedly just legend, but where there’s smoke, there’s often fire. In any case, it seems the most likely spot for refining.”

“And then they’d take it on to where Farson’s waiting,” Cuthbert said. “Not that that part matters to us; we’ve got all we can handle right here in Mejis.”

“I’ve been waiting in order to get it all,” Roland said. “Every bit of their damned plunder.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, our friend is just a wee nubbin ambitious,” Cuthbert said, and winked.

Roland paid no attention. He was looking in the direction of Eyebolt Canyon. There was no noise from there this night; the wind had shifted onto its autumn course and away from town. “If we can fire the oil, the rest will go up with it… and the oil is the most important thing, anyway. I want to destroy it, then I want to get the hell out of here. The four of us.”

“They mean to move on Reaping Day, don’t they?” Susan asked.

“Oh yes, it seems so,” Cuthbert said, then laughed. It was a rich, infectious sound-the laughter of a child-and as he did it, he rocked back and forth and held his stomach as a child would.

Susan looked puzzled. “What? What is it?”

“I can’t tell,” he said, chortling. “It’s too rich for me. I’ll laugh all the way through it, and Roland will be annoyed. You do it, Al. Tell Susan about our visit from Deputy Dave.”

“He came out to see us at the Bar K,” Alain said, smiling himself. “Talked to us like an uncle. Told us Hambry-folk don’t care for outsiders at their Fairs, and we’d best keep right to our place on the day of the full moon.”

“That’s insane!” Susan spoke indignantly, as one is apt to when one hears one’s hometown unjustly maligned. “We welcome strangers to our fairs, so we do, and always have! We’re not a bunch of… of savages!”

“Soft, soft,” Cuthbert said, giggling. “We know that, but Deputy Dave don’t know we know, do he? He knows his wife makes the best white tea for miles around, and after that Dave’s pretty much at sea. Sheriff Herk knows a leetle more, I sh’d judge, but not much.”

“The pains they’ve taken to warn us off means two things,” Roland said. “The first is that they intend to move on Reaping Fair-Day, just as you said, Susan. The second is that they think they can steal Parson’s goods right out from under our noses.”

“And then perhaps blame us for it afterward,” Alain said.

She looked curiously from one to the other, then said: “What have you planned, then?”

“To destroy what they’ve left at Citgo as bait of our own and then to strike them where they gather,” Roland said quietly. “That’s Hanging Rock. At least half the tankers they mean to take west are there already. They’ll have a force of men. As many as two hundred, perhaps, although I think it will turn out to be less. I intend that all these men should die.”

“If they don’t, we will,” Alain said.

“How can the four of us kill two hundred soldiers?”

“We can’t. But if we can start one or two of the clustered tankers burning, we think there’ll be an explosion-mayhap a fearful one. The surviving soldiers will be terrified, and the surviving leaders infuriated. They’ll see us, because we’ll let ourselves be seen…”

Alain and Cuthbert were watching him breathlessly. The rest they had either been told or had guessed, but this part was the counsel Roland had, until now, kept to himself.

“What then?” she asked, frightened. “What then?”

“I think we can lead them into Eyebolt Canyon,” Roland said. “I think we can lead them into the thinny.”

5

Thunderstruck silence greeted this. Then, not without respect, Susan said:

“You’re mad.”

“No,” Cuthbert said thoughtfully. “He’s not. You’re thinking about that little cut in the canyon wall, aren’t you, Roland? The one just before the jog in the canyon floor.”

Roland nodded. “Four could scramble up that way without too much trouble. At the top, we’ll pile a fair amount of rock. Enough to start a landslide down on any that should try following us.”

“That’s horrible,” Susan said.

“It’s survival,” Alain replied. “If they’re allowed to have the oil and put it to use, they’ll slaughter every Affiliation man that gets in range of their weapons. The Good Man takes no prisoners.”

“I didn’t say wrong, only horrible.”

They were silent for a moment, four children contemplating the murders of two hundred men. Except they wouldn’t all be men; many (perhaps even most) would be boys roughly their own ages.

At last she said, “Those not caught in your rockslide will only ride back out of the canyon again.”

“No, they won’t.” Alain had seen the lay of the land and now understood the matter almost completely. Roland was nodding, and there was a trace of a smile on his mouth.

“Why not?”

“The brush at the front of the canyon. We’re going to set it on fire, aren’t we, Roland? And if the prevailing winds are prevailing that day… the smoke…”

“It’ll drive them the rest of the way in,” Roland agreed. “Into the thinny.”

“How will you set the brush-pile alight?” Susan asked. “I know it’s dry, but surely you won’t have time to use a sulfur match or your flint and steel.”

“You can help us there,” Roland said, “just as you can help us set the tankers alight. We can’t count on touching off the oil with just our guns, you know; crude oil is a lot less volatile than people might think. And Sheemie’s going to help you, I hope.”

“Tell me what you want.”

6

They talked another twenty minutes, refining the plan surprisingly little- all of them seemed to understand that if they planned too much and things changed suddenly, they might freeze. Ka had swept them into this; it was perhaps best that they count on ka-and their own courage-to sweep them back out again.

Cuthbert was reluctant to involve Sheemie, but finally went along- the boy’s part would be minimal, if not exactly low-risk, and Roland agreed that they could take him with them when they left Mejis for good. A party of rive was as fine as a party of four, he said.

“All right,” Cuthbert said at last, then turned to Susan. “It ought to be you or me who talks to him.”

“I will.”

“Make sure he understands not to tell Coral Thorin so much as a word,” Cuthbert said. “It isn’t that the Mayor’s her brother; I just don’t trust that bitch.”

“I can give ye a better reason than Hart not to trust her,” Susan said. “My aunt says she’s taken up with Eldred Jonas. Poor Aunt Cord! She’s had the worst summer of her life. Nor will the fall be much better, I wot. Folk will call her the aunt of a traitor.”

“Some will know better,” Alain said. “Some always do.”

“Mayhap, but my Aunt Cordelia’s the sort of woman who never hears good gossip. No more does she speak it. She fancied Jonas herself, ye ken.”

Cuthbert was thunderstruck. “Fancied Jonas! By all the fiddling gods! Can you imagine it! Why, if they hung folk for bad taste in love, your auntie would go early, wouldn’t she?”

Susan giggled, hugged her knees, and nodded.

“It’s time we left,” Roland said. “If something chances that Susan needs to know right away, we’ll use the red stone in the rock wall at Green Heart.”

“Good,” Cuthbert said. “Let’s get out of here. The cold in this place eats into the bones.”

Roland stirred, stretching life back into his legs. “The important thing is that they’ve decided to leave us free while they round up and run. That’s our edge, and it’s a good one. And now-”

Alain’s quiet voice stopped him. “There’s another matter. Very important.”

Roland sank back down on his hunkers, looking at Alain curiously.

“The witch.”

Susan started, but Roland only barked an impatient laugh. “She doesn’t figure in our business, Al-I can’t see how she could. I don’t believe she’s a part of Jonas’s conspiracy-”

“Neither do I,” Alain said.

“-and Cuthbert and I persuaded her to keep her mouth shut about Susan and me. If we hadn’t, her aunt would have raised the roof by now.”

“But don’t you see?” Alain asked. “Who Rhea might have told isn’t really the question. The question is how she knew in the first place.”

“It’s pink,” Susan said abruptly. Her hand was on her hair, fingers touching the place where the cut ends had begun to grow out.

“What’s pink?” Alain asked.

“The moon,” she said, and then shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Brainless as Pinch and Jilly, I am… Roland? What’s wrong? What ails thee?”

For Roland was no longer hunkering; he had collapsed into a loose sitting position on the petal-strewn stone floor. He looked like a young man trying not to faint. Outside the mausoleum there was a bony rattle of fall leaves and the cry of a nightjar.

“Dear gods,” he said in a low voice. “It can’t be. It can’t be true.” His eyes met Cuthbert’s.

All the humor had washed out of the latter young man’s face, leaving a ruthless and calculating bedrock his own mother might not have recognized… or might not have wanted to.

“Pink,” Cuthbert said. “Isn’t that interesting-the same word your father happened to mention just before we left, Roland, wasn’t it? He warned us about the pink one. We thought it was a joke. Almost.”

“Oh!” Alain’s eyes flew wide open. “Oh, fuck!” he blurted. He realized what he had said while sitting leg-to-leg with his best friend’s lover and clapped his hands over his mouth. His cheeks flamed red.

Susan barely noticed. She was staring at Roland in growing fear and confusion. “What?” she asked. “What is it ye know? Tell me! Tell me!”

“I’d like to hypnotize you again, as I did that day in the willow grove,” Roland said. “I want to do it right now, before we talk of this more and drag mud across what you remember.”

Roland had reached into his pocket while she was speaking. Now he took out a shell, and it began to dance across the back of his hand once more. Her eyes went to it at once, like steel drawn to a magnet.

“May I?” he asked. “By your leave, dear.”

“Aye, as ye will.” Her eyes were widening and growing glassy. “I don’t know why ye think this time should be any different, but… “She stopped talking, her eyes continuing to follow the dance of the shell across Roland’s hand. When he stopped moving it and clasped it in his fist, her eyes closed. Her breath was soft and regular.

“Gods, she went like a stone,” Cuthbert whispered, amazed. “She’s been hypnotized before. By Rhea, I think.” Roland paused. Then: “Susan, do you hear me?”

“Aye, Roland, I hear ye very well.” “I want you to hear another voice, too.” “Whose?”

Roland beckoned to Alain. If anyone could break through the block in Susan’s mind (or find a way around it), it would be him.

“Mine, Susan,” Alain said, coming to Roland’s side. “Do you know it?” She smiled with her eyes closed. “Aye, you’re Alain. Richard Stock-worth that was.”

“That’s right.” He looked at Roland with nervous, questioning eyes- What shall I ask her?-but for a moment Roland didn’t reply. He was in two other places, both at the same time, and hearing two different voices.

Susan, by the stream in the willow grove: She says, “Aye, lovely, just so, it’s a good girl y’are,” then everything’s pink.

His father, in the yard behind the Great Hall: It’s the grapefruit. By which I mean it’s the pink one. The pink one.

7

Their horses were saddled and loaded; the three boys stood before them, outwardly stolid, inwardly feverish to be gone. The road, and the mysteries that lie along it, calls out to none as it calls to the young.

They were in the courtyard which lay east of the Great Hall, not far from where Roland had bested Cort, setting all these things in motion. It was early morning, the sun not yet risen, the mist lying over the green fields in gray ribbons. At a distance of about twenty paces, Cuthbert’s and Alain’s fathers stood sentry with their legs apart and their hands on the butts of their guns. It was unlikely that Marten (who had for the time being absented himself from the palace, and, so far as any knew, from Gilead itself) would mount any sort of attack on them-not here-but it wasn’t entirely out of the question, either.

So it was that only Roland’s father spoke to them as they mounted up to begin their ride east to Mejis and the Outer Arc.

“One last thing,” he said as they adjusted their saddle girths. “I doubt you’ll see anything that (ouches on our interests-not in Mejis-but I’d have you keep an eye out for a color of the rainbow. The Wizard’s Rain-how, that is.” He chuckled, then added: “It’s the grapefruit. By which I mean it’s the pink one.”

“Wizard’s Rainbow is just a fairy-tale,” Cuthbert said, smiling in response to Steven’s smile. Then-perhaps it was something in Steven Deschain’s eyes-Cuthbert’s smile faltered. “Isn’t it?”

“Not all the old stories are true, but I think that of Maerlyn’s Rainbow is,” Steven replied. “It’s said that once there were thirteen glass balls in it-one for each of the Twelve Guardians, and one representing the nexus-point of the Beams.”

“One for the Tower,” Roland said in a low voice, feeling gooseflesh. “One for the Dark Tower.”

“Aye, Thirteen it was called when I was a boy. We’d tell stories about the black ball around the fire sometimes, and scare ourselves silly… unless our fathers caught us at it. My own da said it wasn’t wise to talk about Thirteen, for it might hear its name called and roll your way. But Black Thirteen doesn’t matter to you three… not now, at least. No, it’s the pink one. Maerlyn’s Grapefruit.”

It was impossible to tell how serious he was… or if he was serious at all.

“If the other balls in the Wizard’s Rainbow did exist, most are broken now. Such things never stay in one place or one pair of hands for long, you know, and even enchanted glass has a way of breaking. Yet at least three or four bends o’ the Rainbow may still be rolling around this sad world of ours. The blue, almost certainly. A desert tribe of slow mutants-the Total Hogs, they called themselves-had that one less than fifty years ago, although it’s slipped from sight again since. The green and the orange are reputed to be in Lud and Dis, respectively. And, just maybe, the pink one.”

“What exactly do they do?” Roland asked. “What are they good for?”

“For seeing. Some colors of the Wizard’s Rainbow are reputed to look into the future. Others look into the other worlds-those where the demons live, those where the Old People are supposed to have gone when they left our world. These may also show the location of the secret doors which pass between the worlds. Other colors, they say, can look far in our own world, and see things people would as soon keep secret. They never see the good; only the ill. How much of this is true and how much is myth no one knows for sure.”

He looked at them, his smile fading.

“But this we do know: John Farson is said to have a talisman, something that glows in his tent late at night… sometimes before battles, sometimes before large movements of troop and horse, sometimes before momentous decisions are announced. And it glows pink.”

“Maybe he has an electric light and puts a pink scarf over it when he prays,” Cuthbert said. He looked around at his friends, a little defensively. “I’m not joking; there are people who do that.”

“Perhaps,” Roland’s father said. “Perhaps that’s all it is, or something like. But perhaps it’s a good deal more. All I can say of my own knowledge is that he keeps beating us, he keeps slipping away from us, and he keeps turning up where he’s least expected. If the magic is in him and not in some talisman he owns, gods help the Affiliation.”

“We’ll keep an eye out, if you like,” Roland said, “but Parson’s in the north or west. We’re going east.” As if his father did not know this.

“If it’s a bend o’ the Rainbow,” Steven replied, “it could be anywhere-east or south’s as likely as west. He can’t keep it with him all the time, you see. No matter how much it would ease his mind and heart to do so. No one can.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re alive, and hungry,” Steven said. “One begins using em; one ends being used by em. If Farson has a piece of the Rainbow, he’ll send it away and call it back only when he needs it. He understands the risk of losing it, but he also understands the risk of keeping it too long.”

There was a question which the other two, constrained by politeness, couldn’t ask. Roland could, and did. “You are serious about this. Dad? It’s not just a leg-pull, is it?”

“I’m sending you away at an age when many boys still don’t sleep well if their mothers don’t kiss them goodnight,” Steven said. “I expect to see all three of you again, alive and well-Mejis is a lovely, quiet place, or was when I was a boy-but I can’t be sure of it. As things are these days, no one can be sure of anything. I wouldn’t send you away with a joke and a laugh. I’m surprised you think it.”

“Cry your pardon,” Roland said. An uneasy peace had descended between him and his father, and he would not rupture it. Still, he was wild to be off. Pusher jigged beneath him, as if seconding that.

“I don’t expect you boys to see Maerlyn’s glass… but I didn’t expect to be seeing you off at fourteen with revolvers tucked in your bedrolls, either. Ka’s at work here, and where ka works, anything is possible.”

Slowly, slowly, Steven took off his hat, stepped back, and swept them a bow. “Go in peace, boys. And return in health.”

“Long days and pleasant nights, sai,” Alain said.

“Good fortune,” Cuthbert said.

“I love you,” Roland said.

Steven nodded. “Thankee-sai-I love you, too. My blessings, boys.” He said this last in a loud voice, and the other two men-Robert Allgood and Christopher Johns, who had been known in the days of his savage youth as Burning Chris-added their own blessings.

So the three of them rode toward their end of the Great Road, while summer lay all about them, breathless as a gasp. Roland looked up and saw something that made him forget all about the Wizard’s Rainbow. It was his mother, leaning out of her apartment’s bedroom window: the oval of her face surrounded by the timeless gray stone of the castle’s west wing. There were tears coursing down her cheeks, but she smiled and lifted one hand in a wide wave. Of the three of them, only Roland saw her.

He didn’t wave back.

8

“Roland!” An elbow struck him in the ribs, hard enough to dispel these memories, brilliant as they were, and return him to the present. It was Cuthbert. “Do something, if you mean to! Get us out of this deadhouse before I shiver the skin right off my bones!”

Roland put his mouth close by Alain’s ear. “Be ready to help me.”

Alain nodded.

Roland turned to Susan. “After the first time we were together an-tet, you went to the stream in the grove.”

“Aye.”

“You cut some of your hair.”

“Aye.” That same dreaming voice. “So I did.”

“Would you have cut it all?”

“Aye, every lick and lock.”

“Do you know who told you to cut it?”

A long pause. Roland was about to turn to Alain when she said, “Rhea.” Another pause. “She wanted to fiddle me up.”

“Yes, but what happened later? What happened while you stood in the doorway?”

“Oh, and something else happened before.”

“What?”

“I fetched her wood,” said she, and said no more.

Roland looked at Cuthbert, who shrugged. Alain spread his hands. Roland thought of asking the latter boy to step forward, and judged it still wasn’t quite time.

“Never mind the wood for now,” he said, “or all that came before. We’ll talk of that later, mayhap, but not just yet. What happened as you were leaving? What did she say to you about your hair?”

“Whispered in my ear. And she had a Jesus-man.”

“Whispered what?”

“I don’t know. That part is pink.”

Here it was. He nodded to Alain. Alain bit his lip and stepped forward. He looked frightened, but as he took Susan’s hands in his own and spoke to her, his voice was calm and soothing.

“Susan? It’s Alain Johns. Do you know me?”

“Aye-Richard Stockworth that was.”

“What did Rhea whisper in your ear?”

A frown, faint as a shadow on an overcast day, creased her brow. “I can’t see. It’s pink.”

“You don’t need to see,” Alain said. “Seeing’s not what we want right now. Close your eyes so you can’t do it at all.”

“They are closed,” she said, a trifle pettishly. She’s frightened, Roland thought. He felt an urge to tell Alain to stop, to wake her up, and restrained it.

“The ones inside,” Alain said. “The ones that look out from memory. Close those, Susan. Close them for your father’s sake, and tell me not what you see but what you hear. Tell me what she said.”

Chillingly, unexpectedly, the eyes in her face opened as she closed those in her mind. She stared at Roland, and through him, with the eyes of an ancient statue. Roland bit back a scream.

“You were in the doorway, Susan?” Alain asked.

“Aye. So we both were.”

“Be there again.”

“Aye.” A dreaming voice. Faint but clear. “Even with my eyes closed I can see-the moon’s light. ’tis as big as a grapefruit.”

It’s the grapefruit, Roland thought. By which I mean, it’s the pink one.

“And what do you hear? What does she say?”

“No, I say.” The faintly petulant voice of a little girl. “First I say, Alain. I say 'And is our business done?' and she says 'Mayhap there’s one more little thing,' and then… then…”

Alain squeezed gently down on her hands, using whatever it was he had in his own, his touch, sending it into her. She tried feebly to pull back, but he wouldn’t let her. “Then what? What next?”

“She has a little silver medal.”

“Yes?”

“She leans close and asks if I hear her. I can smell her breath. It reeks o’ garlic. And other things, even worse.” Susan’s face wrinkled in distaste. “I say I hear her. Now I can see. I see the medal she has.”

“Very well, Susan,” Alain said. “What else do you see?”

“Rhea. She looks like a skull in the moonlight. A skull with hair.”

“Gods,” Cuthbert muttered, and crossed his arms over his chest.

“She says I should listen. I say I will listen. She says I should obey. I say I will obey. She says ‘Aye, lovely, just so, it’s a good girl y’are.’ She’s stroking my hair. All the time. My braid.” Susan raised a dreaming, drowning hand, pale in the shadows of the crypt, to her blonde hair. “And then she says there’s something I’m to do when my virginity’s over. ‘Wait,’ she says, ‘until he’s asleep beside ye, then cut yer hair off yer head. Every strand. Right down to yer very skull.’”

The boys looked at her in mounting horror as her voice became Rhea’s-the growling, whining cadences of the old woman of the Coos. Even the face-except for the coldly dreaming eyes-had become a hag’s face.

“Cut it all, girl, every whore’s strand of it, aye, and go back to him as bald as ye came from yer mother! See how he likes ye then!”

She fell silent. Alain turned his pallid face to Roland. His lips were trembling, but still he held her hands.

“Why is the moon pink?” Roland asked. “Why is the moon pink when you try to remember?”

“It’s her glam.” Susan seemed almost surprised, almost gay. Confiding. “She keeps it under her bed, so she does. She doesn’t know I saw it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Aye,” Susan said, then added simply: “She would have killed me if she knew.” She giggled, shocking them all. “Rhea has the moon in a box under her bed.” She lilted this in the singsong voice of a small child.

“A pink moon,” Roland said.

“Aye.”

“Under her bed.”

“Aye.” This time she did pull her hands free of Alain’s. She made a circle with them in the air, and as she looked up at it, a dreadful expression of greed passed over her face like a cramp. “I should like to have it, Roland. So I should. Lovely moon! I saw it when she sent me for the wood. Through her window. She looked… young.” Then, once again: “I sh’d like to have such a thing.”

“No-you wouldn’t. But it’s under her bed?”

“Aye, in a magic place she makes with passes.”

“She has a piece of Maerlyn’s Rainbow,” Cuthbert said in a wondering voice. “The old bitch has what your da told us about-no wonder she knows all she does!”

“Is there more we need?” Alain asked. “Her hands have gotten very cold. I don’t like having her this deep. She’s done well, but…”

“I think we’re done.”

“Shall I tell her to forget?”

Roland shook his head at once-they were ka-tet, for good or ill. He took hold of her fingers, and yes, they were cold.

“Susan?”

“Aye, dear.”

“I’m going to say a rhyme. When I finish, you’ll remember everything, as you did before. All right?”

She smiled and closed her eyes again. “Bird and bear and hare and fish…”

Smiling, Roland finished, “Give my love her fondest wish.”

Her eyes opened. She smiled. “You,” she said again, and kissed him. “Still you, Roland. Still you, my love.”

Unable to help himself, Roland put his arms around her.

Cuthbert looked away. Alain looked down at his boots and cleared his throat.

9

As they rode back toward Seafront, Susan with her arms around Roland’s waist, she asked: “Will you take the glass from her?”

“Best leave it where it is for now. It was left in her safekeeping by Jonas, on behalf of Parson, I have no doubt. It’s to be sent west with the rest of the plunder; I’ve no doubt of that, either. We’ll deal with it when we deal with the tankers and Parson’s men.”

“Ye’d take it with us?”

“Take it or break it. I suppose I’d rather take it back to my father, but that has its own risks. We’ll have to be careful. It’s a powerful glam.”

“Suppose she sees our plans? Suppose she warns Jonas or Kimba Rimer?”

“If she doesn’t see us coming to take away her precious toy, I don’t think she’ll mind our plans one way or the other. I think we’ve put a scare into her, and if the ball has really gotten a hold on her, watching in it’s what she’ll mostly want to do with her time now.”

“And hold onto it. She’ll want to do that, too.”

“Aye.”

Rusher was walking along a path through the seacliff woods. Through the thinning branches they could glimpse the ivied gray wall surrounding Mayor’s House and hear the rhythmic roar of waves breaking on the shingle below.

“You can get in safe, Susan?”

“No fear.”

“And you know what you and Sheemie are to do?”

“Aye. I feel better than I have in ages. It’s as if my mind is finally clear of some old shadow.”

“If so, it’s Alain you have to thank. I couldn’t have done it on my own.”

“There’s magic in his hands.”

“Yes.” They had reached the servants’ door. Susan dismounted with fluid ease. He stepped down himself and stood beside her with an arm around her waist. She was looking up at the moon.

“Look, it’s fattened enough so you can see the beginning of the Demon’s face. Does thee see it?”

A blade of nose, a bone of grin. No eye yet, but yes, he saw it.

“It used to terrify me when I was little.” Susan was whispering now, mindful of the house behind the wall. “I’d pull the blind when the Demon was full. I was afraid that if he could see me, he’d reach down and take me up to where he was and eat me.” Her lips were trembling. “Children are silly, aren’t they?”

“Sometimes.” He hadn’t been afraid of Demon Moon himself as a small child, but he was afraid of this one. The future seemed so dark, and the way through to the light so slim. “I love thee, Susan. With all my heart, I do.”

“I know. And I love thee.” She kissed his mouth with gentle open lips. Put his hand on her breast for a moment, then kissed the warm palm. He held her, and she looked past him at the ripening moon.

“A week until the Reap,” she said. “Fin de ano is what the vaqueros and labradoros call it. Do they call it so in your land?”

“Near enough,” Roland said. “It’s called closing the year. Women go about giving preserves and kisses.”

She laughed softly against his shoulder. “Perhaps I’ll not find things so different, after all.”

“You must save all your best kisses for me.”

“I will.”

“Whatever comes, we’ll be together,” he said, but above them, Demon Moon grinned into the starry dark above the Clean Sea, as if he knew a different future.

1

So now comes to Mejis fin de ano, known in toward the center of Mid-World as closing the year. It comes as it has a thousand times before… or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand. No one can tell for sure; the world has moved on and time has grown strange. In Mejis their saying is “Time is a face on the water.”

In the fields, the last of the potatoes are being picked by men and women who wear gloves and their heaviest scrapes, for now the wind has turned firmly, blowing east to west, blowing hard, and always there’s the smell of salt in the chilly air-a smell like tears. Los campesinos harvest the final rows cheerfully enough, talking of the things they’ll do and the capers they’ll cut at Reaping Fair, but they feel all of autumn’s old sadness in the wind; the going of the year. It runs away from them like water in a stream, and although none speak of it, all know it very well.

In the orchards, the last and highest of the apples are picked by laughing young men (in these not-quite-gales, the final days of picking belong only to them) who bob up and down like crow’s nest lookouts. Above them, in skies which hold a brilliant, cloudless blue, squadrons of geese fly south, calling their rusty adieux.

The small fishing boats are pulled from the water; their hulls are scraped and painted by singing owners who mostly work stripped to the waist in spite of the chill in the air. They sing the old songs as they work-

I am a man of the bright blue sea,

All I see, all I see,

I am a man of the Barony,

All I see is mine-o!

I am a man of the bright blue hay,

All I say, all I say,

Until my nets are full I stay

All I say is fine-o!

–and sometimes a little cask of graf is tossed from dock to dock. On the bay itself only the large boats now remain, pacing about the big circles which mark their dropped nets as a working dog may pace around a flock of sheep. At noon the bay is a rippling sheet of autumn fire and the men on the boats sit cross-legged, eating their lunches, and know that all they see is theirs-o… at least until the gray gales of autumn come swarming over the horizon, coughing out their gusts of sleet and snow.

Closing, closing the year.

Along the streets of Hambry, the Reap-lights now bum at night, and the hands of the stuffy-guys are painted red. Reap-charms hang everywhere, and although women often kiss and are kissed in the streets and in both marketplaces-often by men they do not know-sexual intercourse has come to an almost complete halt. It will resume (with a bang, you might say) on Reap-Night. There will be the usual crop of Full Earth babies the following year as a result.

On the Drop, the horses gallop wildly, as if understanding (very likely they do) that their time of freedom is coming to an end. They swoop and then stand with their faces pointing west when the wind gusts, showing their asses to winter. On the ranches, porch-nets are taken down and shutters rehung. In the huge ranch kitchens and smaller farmhouse kitchens, no one is stealing Reap-kisses, and no one is even thinking about sex. This is the time of putting up and laying by, and the kitchens fume with steam and pulse with heat from before dawn until long after dark. There is the smell of apples and beets and beans and sharproot and curing strips of meat. Women work ceaselessly all day and then sleepwalk to bed, where they lie like corpses until the next dark morning calls them back to their kitchens.

Leaves are burned in town yards, and as the week goes on and Old Demon’s face shows ever more clearly, red-handed stuffy-guys are thrown on the pyres more and more frequently. In the fields, cornshucks flare like torches, and often stuffies bum with them, their red hands and white-cross eyes rippling in the heat. Men stand around these fires, not speaking, their faces solemn. No one will say what terrible old ways and unspeakable old gods are being propitiated by the burning of the stuffy-guys, but they all know well enough. From time to time one of these men will whisper two words under his breath: charyou tree.

They are closing, closing, closing the year.

The streets rattle with firecrackers-and sometimes with a heftier “big-hang” that makes even placid carthorses rear in their traces-and echo with the laughter of children. On the porch of the mercantile and across the street at the Travellers’ Rest, kisses-sometimes humidly open and with much sweet lashing of tongues-are exchanged, but Coral Thorin’s whores (“cotton-gillies” is what the airy-fairy ones like Gert Moggins like to call themselves) are bored. They will have little custom this week.

This is not Year’s End, when the winterlogs will bum and Mejis will be bam-dances from one end to the other… and yet it is. This is the real year’s end, charyou tree, and everyone, from Stanley Ruiz standing at the bar beneath The Romp to the farthest of Fran Lengyll’s vaqueros out on the edge of the Bad Grass, knows it. There is a kind of echo in the bright air, a yearning for other places in the blood, a loneliness in the heart that sings like the wind.

But this year there’s something else, as well: a sense of wrongness that no one can quite voice. Folks who never had a nightmare in their lives will awake screaming with them during the week of fin de ano; men who consider themselves peaceful will find themselves not only in fist-fights but instigating them; discontented boys who would only have dreamed of running away in other years will this year actually do it, and most will not come back after the first night spent sleeping raw.

There is a sense-inarticulate but very much there-that things have gone amiss this season. It is the closing of the year; it is also the closing of the peace. For it is here, in the sleepy Out-World Barony of Mejis, that Mid-World’s last great conflict will shortly begin; it is from here that the blood will begin to flow. In two years, no more, the world as it has been will be swept away. It starts here. From its field of roses, the Dark Tower cries out in its beast’s voice. Time is a face on the water.

2

Coral Thorin was coming down the High Street from the Bayview Hotel when she spied Sheemie, leading Caprichoso and heading in the opposite direction. The boy was singing “Careless Love” in a voice both high and sweet. His progress was slow; the barrels slung over Capi’s back were half again as large as the ones he had carried up to the Coos not long before.

Coral hailed her boy-of-all-work cheerily enough. She had reason to be cheery; Eldred Jonas had no use for fin de ano abstinence. And for a man with a bad leg, he could be very inventive.

“Sheemie!” she called. “Where go ye? Seafront?”

“Aye,” Sheemie said. “I’ve got the graf them asked for. All parties come Reaping Fair, aye, tons of em. Dance a lot, get hot a lot, drink graf to cool off a lot! How pretty you look, sai Thorin, cheeks all pinky-pink, so they are.”

“Oh, law! How kind of you to say, Sheemie!” She favored him with a dazzling smile. “Go on, now, you flatterer-don’t linger.”

“Noey-no, off I go.”

Coral stood watching after him and smiling. Dance a lot, get hot a lot, Sheemie had said. About the dancing Coral didn’t know, but she was sure this year’s Reaping would be hot, all right. Very hot indeed.

3

Miguel met Sheemie at Seafront’s archway, gave him the look of lofty contempt he reserved for the lower orders, then pulled the cork from first one barrel and then the other. With the first, he only sniffed from the bung; at the second, he stuck his thumb in and then sucked it thoughtfully. With his wrinkled cheeks hollowed inward and his toothless old mouth working, he looked like an ancient bearded baby.

“Tasty, ain’t it?” Sheemie asked. “Tasty as a pasty, ain’t it, good old Miguel, been here a thousand years?”

Miguel, still sucking his thumb, favored Sheemie with a sour look. “Andale. Andale, simplon.”

Sheemie led his mule around the house to the kitchen. Here the breeze off the ocean was sharp and shiversome. He waved to the women in the kitchen, but not a one waved back; likely they didn’t even see him. A pot boiled on every trink of the enormous stove, and the women- working in loose long-sleeved cotton garments like shifts and wearing their hair tied up in brightly colored clouts-moved about like phantoms glimpsed in fog.

Sheemie took first one barrel from Capi’s back, then the other. Grunting, he carried them to the huge oak tank by the back door. He opened the tank’s lid, bent over it, and then backed away from the eye-wateringly strong smell of elderly graf.

“Whew!” he said, hoisting the first barrel. “Ye could get drunk just on the smell o’ that lot!”

He emptied in the fresh graf, careful not to spill. When he was finished, the tank was pretty well topped up. That was good, for on Reaping Night, apple-beer would flow out of the kitchen taps like water.

He slipped the empty barrels into their carriers, looked into the kitchen once more to be sure he wasn’t being observed (he wasn’t; Coral’s simple-minded tavern-boy was the last thing on anyone’s minds that morning), and then led Capi not back the way they’d come but along a path which led to Seafront’s storage sheds.

There were three of them in a row, each with its own red-handed stuffy-guy sitting in front. The guys appeared to be watching Sheemie, and that gave him the shivers. Then he remembered his trip to crazy old bitch-lady Rhea’s house. She had been scary. These were just old duds stuffed full of straw.

“Susan?” he called, low. “Are ye here?”

The door of the center shed was ajar. Now it trundled open a little. “Come in!” she called, also low. “Bring the mule! Hurry!”

He led Capi into a shed which smelled of straw and beans and tack… and something else. Something sharper. Fireworks, he thought. Shooting-powder, too.

Susan, who had spent the morning enduring final fittings, was dressed in a thin silk wrapper and large leather boots. Her hair was done up in curling papers of bright blue and red.

Sheemie tittered. “You look quite amusing, Susan, daughter of Pat. Quite a chuckle for me, I think.”

“Yes, I’m a picture for an artist to paint, all right,” Susan said, looking distracted. “We have to hurry. I have twenty minutes before I’m missed. I’ll be missed before, if that randy old goat is looking for me…let’s be quick!”

They lifted the barrels from Capi’s back. Susan took a broken horse-bit from the pocket of her wrapper and used the sharp end to pry off one of the tops. She tossed the bit to Sheemie, who pried off the other. The apple-tart smell of graf filled the shed.

“Here!” She tossed Sheemie a soft cloth. “Dry it out as well as you can. Doesn’t have to be perfect, they’re wrapped, but it’s best to be safe.”

They wiped the insides of the barrels, Susan stealing nervous glances at the door every few seconds. “All right,” she said. “Good. Now… there’s two kinds. I’m sure they won’t be missed; there’s enough stuff back there to blow up half the world.” She hurried back into the dimness of the shed, holding the hem of her wrapper up with one hand, her boots clomping. When she came back, her arms were full of wrapped packages.

“These are the bigger ones,” she said.

He stored them in one of the casks. There were a dozen packages in all, and Sheemie could feel round things inside, each about the size of a child’s fist. Big-bangers. By the time he had finished packing and putting the top back on the barrel, she had returned with an armload of smaller packages. These he stored in the other barrel. They were the little 'uns, from the feel, the ones that not only banged but flashed colored fire.

She helped him resling the barrels on Capi’s back, still shooting those little glances at the shed door. When the barrels were secured to Caprichoso’s sides, Susan sighed with relief and brushed her sweaty forehead with the backs of her hands. “Thank the gods that part’s over,” she said. “Now ye know where ye’re to take them?”

“Aye, Susan daughter of Pat. To the Bar K. My friend Arthur Heath will put em safe.”

“And if anyone asks what ye’re doing out that way?” “Taking sweet graf to the In-World boys, 'cause they’ve decided not to come to town for the Fair… why won’t they, Susan? Don’t they like Fairs?”

“Ye’ll know soon enough. Don’t mind it now, Sheemie. Go on-best be on your way.”

Yet he lingered.

“What?” she asked, trying not to be impatient. “Sheemie, what is it?”

“I’d like to take a fin de ano kiss from ye, so I would.” Sheemie’s face had gone an alarming shade of red.

Susan laughed in spite of herself, then stood on her toes and kissed the comer of his mouth. With that, Sheemie floated out to the Bar K with his load of fire.

4

Reynolds rode out to Citgo the following day, galloping with a scarf wrapped around his face so only his eyes peered out. He would be very glad to get out of this damned place that couldn’t decide if it was ranch-land or seacoast. The temperature wasn’t all that low, but after coming in over the water, the wind cut like a razor. Nor was that all-there was a brooding quality to Hambry and all of Mejis as the days wound down toward the Reap; a haunted feeling he didn’t care for a bit. Roy felt it, too. Reynolds could see it in his eyes.

No, he’d be glad to have those three baby knights so much ash in the wind and this place just a memory.

He dismounted in the crumbling refinery parking lot, tied his horse to the bumper of a rusty old hulk with the mystery-word chevrolet barely readable on its tailboard, then walked toward the oilpatch. The wind blew hard, chilling him even through the ranch-style sheepskin coat he wore, and twice he had to yank his hat down around his ears to keep it from blowing off. On the whole, he was glad he couldn’t see himself; he probably looked like a fucking farmer.

The place seemed fine, though… which was to say, deserted. The wind made a lonely soughing sound as it combed through the firs on either side of the pipe. You’d never guess that there were a dozen pairs of eyes looking out at you as you strolled.

“Hai!” he called. “Come on out here, pard, and let’s have some palaver.”

For a moment there was no response; then Hiram Quint of the Piano Ranch and Barkie Callahan of the Travellers’ Rest came ducking their way out through the trees. Holy shit, Reynolds thought, somewhere between awe and amusement. There ain’t that much beef in a butcher shop.

There was a wretched old musketoon stuck into the waistband of Quint’s pants; Reynolds hadn’t seen one in years. He thought that if Quint was lucky, it would only misfire when he pulled the trigger. If he was unlucky, it would blow up in his face and blind him.

“All quiet?” he asked.

Quint replied in Mejis bibble-babble. Barkie listened, then said: “All well, sai. He say he and his men grow impatient.” Smiling cheerfully, his face giving no indication of what he was saying, Barkie added: “If brains was blackpowder, this ijit couldn’t blow his nose.”

“But he’s a trustworthy idiot?”

Barkie shrugged. It might have been assent.

They went through the trees. Where Roland and Susan had seen almost thirty tankers, there were now only half a dozen, and of those six, only two actually had oil in them. Men sat on the ground or snoozed with their sombreros over their faces. Most had guns that looked about as trustworthy as the one in Quint’s waistband. A few of the poorer vaqs had bolas. On the whole, Reynolds guessed they would be more effective.

“Tell Lord Perth here that if the boys come, it’s got to be an ambush, and they’ll only have one chance to do the job right,” Reynolds said to Barkie.

Barkie spoke to Quint. Quint’s lips parted in a grin, revealing a scarifying picket of black and yellow fangs. He spoke briefly, then put his hands out in front of them and closed them into huge, scarred fists, one above the other, as if wringing the neck of an invisible enemy. When Barkie began to translate, Clay Reynolds waved it away. He had caught only one word, but it was enough: muerto.

5

All that pre-Fair week, Rhea sat in front of the glass, peering into its depths. She had taken time to sew Ermot’s head back onto his body with clumsy stitches of black thread, and she sat with the decaying snake around her neck as she watched and dreamed, not noticing the stench that began to arise from the reptile as time passed. Twice Musty came nigh, mewing for food, and each time Rhea batted the troublesome thing away without so much as a glance. She herself grew more and more gaunt, her eyes now looking like the sockets of the skulls stored in the net by the door to her bedroom. She dozed occasionally as she sat with the ball in her lap and the stinking snakeskin looped about her throat, her head down, the sharp point of her chin digging at her chest, runners of drool hanging from the loose puckers of her lips, but she never really slept. There was too much to see, far too much to see.

And it was hers for the seeing. These days she didn’t even have to pass her hands above the glass to open its pink mists. All the Barony’s meanness, all its petty (and not so petty) cruelties, all its cozening and lying lay before her. Most of what she saw was small and demeaning stuff-masturbating boys peeking through knotholes at their undressed sisters, wives going through husbands’ pockets, looking for extra money or tobacco, Sheb the piano-player licking the seat of the chair where his favorite whore had sat for awhile, a maid at Seafront spitting into Kimba Rimer’s pillowcase after the Chancellor had kicked her for being slow in getting out of his way.

These were all things which confirmed her opinion of the society she had left behind. Sometimes she laughed wildly; sometimes she spoke to the people she saw in the glass ball, as if they could hear her. By the third day of the week before Reaping, she had ceased her trips to the privy, even though she could carry the ball with her when she went, and the sour stench of urine began to rise from her.

By the fourth day, Musty had ceased coming near her. Rhea dreamed in the ball and lost herself in her dreams, as others had done before her; deep in the petty pleasures of far seeing, she was unaware that the pink ball was stealing the wrinkled remains of her anima. She likely would have considered it a fair trade if she had known. She saw all the things people did in the shadows, and they were the only things she cared for, and for them she almost certainly would have considered her life’s force a fair trade.

6

“Here,” the boy said, “let me light it, gods damn you.” Jonas would have recognized the speaker; he was the lad who had waved a severed dog’s tail across the street at Jonas and called, We’re Big Coffin Hunters just like you!

The boy to whom this charming child had spoken tried to hold onto the piece of liver they had copped from the knacker’s behind the Low Market. The first boy seized his ear and twisted. The second boy howled and held the chunk of liver out, dark blood running down his grimy knuckles as he did.

“That’s better,” the first boy said, taking it. “You want to remember who the capataz is, round here.”

They were behind a bakery stall in the Low Market. Nearby, drawn by the smell of hot fresh bread, was a mangy mutt with one blind eye. He stared at them with hungry hope.

There was a slit in the chunk of raw meat. Poking out of it was a green big-bang fuse. Below the fuse, the liver bulged like the stomach of a pregnant woman. The first boy took a sulfur match, stuck it between his protruding front teeth, and lit it.

“He won’t never!” said a third boy, in an agony of hope and anticipation.

“Thin as he is?” the first boy said. “Oh yes he will. Bet ye my deck of cards against yer hosstail.”

The third boy thought it over and shook his head.

The first boy grinned. “It’s a wise child ye are,” he said, and lit the big-bang’s fuse. “Hey, cully!” he called to the dog. “Want a bite o’ sumpin good? Here ye go!”

He threw the chunk of raw liver. The scrawny dog never hesitated at the hissing fuse, but lunged forward with its one good eye fixed on the first decent food it had seen in days. As it snatched the liver out of the air, the big-bang the boys had slipped into it went off. There was a roar and a flash. The dog’s head disintegrated from the jaws down. For a moment it continued to stand there, dripping, staring at them with its one good eye, and then it collapsed.

“Toadjer!” the first boy jeered. “Toadjer he’d take it! Happy Reap to us, eh?”

“What are you boys doing?” a woman’s voice called sharply. “Get out of there, ye ravens!”

The boys fled, cackling, into the bright afternoon. They did sound like ravens.

7

Cuthbert and Alain sat their horses at the mouth of Eyebolt. Even with the wind blowing the sound of the thinny away from them, it got inside your head and buzzed there, rattling your teeth.

“I hate it,” Cuthbert said through clenched teeth. “Gods, let’s be quick.”

“Aye,” Alain said. They dismounted, bulky in their ranch-coats, and tied their horses to the brush which lay across the front of the canyon. Ordinarily, tethering wouldn’t have been necessary, but both boys could see the horses hated the whining, grinding sound as much as they did. Cuthbert seemed to hear the thinny in his mind, speaking words of invitation in a groaning, horribly persuasive voice.

Come on, Bert. Leave all this foolishness behind: the drums, the pride, the fear of death, the loneliness you laugh at because laughing’s all you can think to do. And the girl, leave her, too. You love her, don’t you? And even if you don’t, you want her. It’s sad that she loves your friend instead of you, but if you come to me, all that will stop bothering you very soon. So come on. What are you waiting for?

“What am I waiting for?” he muttered.

“Huh?”

“I said, what are we waiting for? Let’s get this done and get the holy hell out of here.”

From their saddlebags they each took a small cotton bag. These contained gunpowder extracted from the smaller firecrackers Sheemie had brought them two days before. Alain dropped to his knees, pulled his knife, and began to crawl backward, digging a trench as far under the roll of brush as he could.

“Dig it deep,” Cuthbert said. “We don’t want the wind to blow it away.”

Alain gave him a look which was remarkably hot. “Do you want to do it? Just so you can make sure it’s done right?”

It’s the thinny, Cuthbert thought. It’s working on him, too.

“No, Al,” he said humbly. “You’re doing fine for someone who’s both blind and soft in the head. Go on.”

Alain looked at him fiercely a moment longer, then grinned and resumed the trench under the brush. “You’ll die young, Bert.”

“Aye, likely.” Cuthbert dropped to his own knees and began to crawl after Alain, sprinkling gunpowder into the trench and trying to ignore the buzzy, cajoling voice of the thinny. No, the gunpowder probably wouldn’t blow away, not unless there was a full gale. But if it rained, even the rolls of brush wouldn’t be much protection. If it rained-

Don’t think of that, he told himself. That’s ka.

They finished loading gunpowder trenches under both sides of the brush barrier in only ten minutes, but it felt longer. To the horses as well, it seemed; they were stamping impatiently at the far end of their tethers, their ears laid back and their eyes rolling. Cuthbert and Alain untied them and mounted up. Cuthbert’s horse actually bucked twice… except it felt more to Cuthbert as if the poor old thing were shuddering.

In the middle distance, bright sunshine twanged of bright steel. The tankers at Hanging Rock. They had been pulled in as light to the sandstone outcrop as possible, but when the sun was high, most of the shadow disappeared, and concealment disappeared with it.

“I really can’t believe it,” Alain said as they started back. It would be a long ride, including a wide swing around Hanging Rock to make sure they weren’t seen. “They must think we’re blind.”

“It’s stupid they think we are,” Cuthbert said, “but I suppose it comes to the same.” Now that Eyebolt Canyon was falling behind them, he felt almost giddy with relief. Were they going in there a few days from now? Actually going in, riding to within mere yards of where that cursed puddle started? He couldn’t believe it… and he made himself stop thinking about it before he could start believing it.

“More riders heading out to Hanging Rock,” Alain said, pointing back toward the woods beyond the canyon. “Do you see them?”

They were small as ants from this distance, but Bert saw them very well. “Changing the guard. The important thing is that they don’t see us- you don’t think they can, do you?”

“Over here? Not likely.”

Cuthbert didn’t think so, either.

“They’ll all be down come Reap, won’t they?” Alain asked. “It won’t do us much good to only catch a few.”

“Yes-I’m pretty sure they all will.”

“Jonas and his pals?”

“Them, too.”

Ahead of them, the Bad Grass grew closer. The wind blew hard in their faces, making their eyes water, but Cuthbert didn’t mind. The sound of the thinny was down to a faint drone behind him, and would soon be gone completely. Right now that was all he needed to make him happy.

“Do you think we’ll get away with it, Bert?”

“Dunno,” Cuthbert said. Then he thought of the gunpowder trenches lying beneath the dry rolls of brush, and grinned. “But I’ll tell you one thing, Al: they’ll know we were here.”

8

In Mejis, as in every other Barony of Mid-World, the week before a Fair-Day was a political week. Important people came in from the farther corners of the Barony, and there were a good many Conversationals leading up to the main Conversational on Reaping Day. Susan was expected to be present at these-mostly as a decorative testimony to the Mayor’s continuing puissance. Olive was also present, and, in a cruelly comic dumb-show that only the women truly appreciated, they sat on either side of the aging cockatoo, Susan pouring the coffee, Olive passing the cake, both of them gracefully accepting compliments on food and drink they’d had no hand in preparing.

Susan found it almost impossible to look at Olive’s smiling, unhappy face. Her husband would never lie with Pat Delgado’s daughter… but sai Thorin didn’t know that, and Susan couldn’t tell her. She had only to glimpse the Mayor’s wife from the comer other eye to remember what Roland had said that day on the Drop: For a moment I thought she was my mother. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Olive Thorin was nobody’s mother. That was what had opened the door to this horrible situation in the first place.

There had been something much on Susan’s mind to do, but with the round of activities at Mayor’s House, it was but three days to Reaping before she got the chance. Finally, following this latest Conversational, she was able to slip out of Pink Dress with Applique (how she hated it! how she hated them all!) and jump back into jeans, a plain riding shirt, and a ranch-coat. There was no time to braid her hair, as she was expected back for Mayor’s Tea, but Maria tied it back for her and off she had gone to the house she would shortly be leaving forever.

Her business was in the back room of the stable-the room her father had used as an office-but she went into the house first and heard what she’d hoped to hear: her aunt’s ladylike, whistling snores. Lovely.

Susan got a slice of bread and honey and took it out to the barn-stable, protecting it as best she could from the clouds of dust that blew across the yard in the wind. Her aunt’s stuffy-guy rattled on his post in the garden.

She ducked into the sweet-smelling shadows of the barn. Pylon and Felicia nickered hello, and she divided what she hadn’t eaten between them. They seemed pleased enough to get it. She made especially of Felicia, whom she would soon be leaving behind.

She had avoided the little office since her father died, afraid of exactly the sort of pang that struck her when she lifted the latch and went in. The narrow windows were now covered with cobwebs, but they still let in autumn’s bright light, more than enough for her to be able to see the pipe in the ashtray-the red one, his favorite, the one he called his thinking-pipe- and a bit of tack laid over the back of his desk chair. He had probably been mending it by gaslight, had put it by thinking to finish the next day… then the snake had done its dance under Foam’s hoofs and there had never been a next day. Not for Pat Delgado.

“Oh, Da,” she said in a small and broken voice. “How I do miss thee.”

She crossed to the desk and ran her fingers along its surface, leaving trails of dust. She sat down in his chair, listened to it creak under her as it had always creaked under him, and that pushed her over the edge. For the next five minutes she sat there and wept, screwing her fists into her eyes as she had as a wee shim. Only now, of course, there was no Big Pat to come upon her and jolly her out of it, taking her on his lap and kissing her in that sensitive place under her chin (especially sensitive to the bristles on his upper lip, it had been) until her tears turned to giggles. Time was a face on the water, and this time it was the face of her father.

At last her tears tapered to sniffles. She opened the desk drawers, one after another, finding more pipes (many rendered useless by his constant stem-chewing), a hat, one of her own dolls (it had a broken arm Pat had apparently never gotten around to putting right), quill-pens, a little flask- empty but with a faint smell of whiskey still present around its neck. The only item of interest was in the bottom drawer: a pair of spurs. One still had its star rowel, but the other had been broken off. These were, she was almost positive, the spurs he had been wearing on the day he died.

If my da was here, she had begun that day on the Drop. But he’s not, Roland had said. He’s dead.

A pair of spurs, a broken-off rowel.

She bounced them in her hand, in her mind’s eye seeing Ocean Foam rear, spilling her father (one spur catches in a stirrup; the rowel breaks free), then stumbling sideways and falling atop him. She saw this clearly, but she didn’t see the snake Fran Lengyll had told them about. That she didn’t see at all.

She put the spurs back where she had found them, got up, and looked at the shelf to the right of the desk, handy to Pat Delgado’s smart hand. Here was a line of leather-bound ledgers, a priceless trove of books in a society that had forgotten how to make paper. Her father had been the man in charge of the Barony’s horse for almost thirty years, and here were his stockline books to prove it.

Susan took down the last one and began to page through it. This time she almost welcomed the pang that struck her as she saw her father’s familiar hand-the labored script, the steep and somehow more confident numbers.

Born of HENRIETTA, (2) foals both well

Stillborn of DELIA, a roan (MUTANT)

Born of YOLANDA, a THOROUGHBRED, a GOOD MALE COLT

And, following each, the date. So neat, he had been. So thorough. So…

She stopped suddenly, aware that she had found what she was looking for even without any clear knowledge of what she was doing in here. I he last dozen pages of her da’s final stockline book had been torn out.

Who had done it? Not her father; a largely self-taught man, he revered paper the way some people revered gods or gold.

And why had it been done?

That she thought she knew: horses, of courses. There were too many on the Drop. And the ranchers-Lengyll, Croydon, Renfrew-were lying about the threaded quality of the stockline. So was Henry Wertner, the man who had succeeded to her father’s job.

If my da was here-

But he’s not. He’s dead.

She had told Roland she couldn’t believe Fran Lengyll would lie about her father’s death… but she could believe it now.

Gods help her, she could believe it now.

“What are ye doing in here?”

She gave a little scream, dropped the book, and whirled around. Cordelia stood there in one of her rusty black dresses. The top three buttons were undone, and Susan could see her aunt’s collarbones sticking out above the plain white cotton of her shift. It was only on seeing those protruding bones that Susan realized how much weight Aunt Cord had lost over the last three months or so. She could see the red imprint of the pillow on her aunt’s left cheek, like the mark of a slap. Her eyes glittered from dark, bruised-looking hollows of flesh.

“Aunt Cord! You startled me! You-”

“What are ye doing in here?” Aunt Cord repeated.

Susan bent and picked up the book. “I came to remember my father,” she said, and put the book back on the shelf. Who had torn those pages out? Lengyll? Rimer? She doubted it. She thought it more likely that the woman standing before her right now had done it. Perhaps for as little as a single piece of red gold. Nothing asked, nothing told, so all is well, she would have thought, popping the coin into her money-box, after first biting its edge to make sure it was true.

“Remember him? It’s ask his forgiveness, ye should do. For ye’ve forgotten his face, so ye have. Most grievous have ye forgotten it, Sue.”

Susan only looked at her.

“Have ye been with him today?” Cordelia asked in a brittle, laughing voice. Her hand went to the red pillow-mark on her cheek and began rubbing it. She had been getting bad by degrees, Susan realized, but had become ever so much worse since the gossip about Jonas and Coral Thorin had started. “Have ye been with sai Dearborn? Is yer crack still dewy from his spend? Here, let me see for myself!”

Her aunt glided forward-spectral in her black dress, her bodice open, her slippered feet peeping-and Susan pushed her back. In her fright and disgust, she pushed hard. Cordelia struck the wall beside the cobwebbed window.

“Ye should ask forgiveness yerself,” Susan said. “To speak to his daughter so in this place. In this place.” She let her eyes turn to the shelf of ledgers, then return to her aunt. The look of frightened calculation she saw on Cordelia Delgado’s face told her all she wanted or needed to know. She hadn’t been a party to her brother’s murder, that Susan could not believe, but she had known something of it. Yes, something.

“Ye faithless bitch,” Cordelia whispered.

“No,” Susan said, “I have been true.”

And so, she realized, she had been. A great weight seemed to slip off her shoulders at the thought. She walked to the door of the office and turned back to her aunt. “I’ve slept my last night here,” she said. “I’ll not listen to more such as this. Nor look at ye as ye are now. It hurts my heart and steals the love I’ve kept for ye since I was little, when ye did the best ye could to be my ma.”

Cordelia clapped her hands over her face, as if looking at Susan hurt her.

“Get out, then!” she screamed. “Go back to Seafront or wherever it is thee rolls with that boy! If I never see thy trollop’s face again, I’ll count my life good!”

Susan led Pylon from the stable. When she got him into the yard, she was sobbing almost too hard to mount up. Yet mount she did, and she couldn’t deny that there was relief in her heart as well as sorrow. When she turned onto the High Street and booted Pylon into a gallop, she didn’t look back.

9

In a dark hour of the following morning, Olive Thorin crept from the room where she now slept to the one she had shared for almost forty years with her husband. The floor was cold under her bare feet and she was shivering by the time she reached the bed… but the chilly floor wasn’t the only reason she was shivering. She slid in beside the gaunt, snoring man in the nightcap, and when he turned away from her (his knees and back crackling loudly as he did), she pressed against him and hugged him tightly. There was no passion in this, but only a need to share a bit of his warmth. His chest-narrow but almost as well-known to her as her own plump one-rose and fell under her hands, and she began to quiet a little. He stirred, and she thought for a moment he would wake and find her sharing his bed for the first time in gods knew how long.

Yes, wake, she thought, do. She didn’t dare wake him of her own-all her courage had been exhausted just getting here, creeping through the dark following one of the worst dreams she had ever had in her life-but if he woke, she would take it as a sign and tell him she had dreamed of a vast bird, a cruel golden-eyed roc that flew above the Barony on wings that dripped blood.

Wherever its shadow fell, there was blood, she would tell him, and its shadow fell everywhere. The Barony ran with it, from Hambry all the way out to Eyebolt. And I swelled big fire in the wind. I ran to tell you and you were dead in your study, sitting by the hearth with your eyes gouged out and a skull in your lap.

But instead of waking, in his sleep he took her hand, as he had used to, do before he had begun to look at the young girls-even the serving-wenches-when they passed, and Olive decided she would only lie here, and be still and let him hold her hand. Let it be like the old days for a bit, when everything had been right between them.

She slept a little herself. When she woke, dawn’s first gray light was creeping in through the windows. He had dropped her hand- had, in fact, scooted away from her entirely, to his edge of the bed. It wouldn’t do for him to wake and find her here, she decided, and the urgency of her nightmare was gone. She turned back the covers, swung her feet out, then looked at him once more. His nightcap had come askew. She put it right, her hands smoothing the cloth and the bony brow beneath. He stirred again. Olive waited until he had quieted, then got up. She slipped back to her own room like a phantom.

10

The midway booths opened in Green Heart two days before Reaping-Fair, and the first folks came to try their luck at the spinning wheel and the bottle-toss and the basket-ring. There was also a pony-train-a cart filled with laughing children, pulled along a figure eight of narrow-gauge rails.

(“Was the pony named Charlie?” Eddie Dean asked Roland.

(“I think not,” Roland said. “We have a rather unpleasant word that sounds like that in the High Speech.”

(“What word?” Jake asked.

(“The one,” said the gunslinger, “that means death.”)

Roy Depape stood watching the pony plod its appointed rounds for a couple of turns, remembering with some nostalgia his own rides in such a cart as a child. Of course, most of his had been stolen.

When he had looked his fill, Depape sauntered on down to the Sheriff’s office and went in. Herk Avery, Dave, and Frank Claypool were cleaning an odd and fantastical assortment of guns. Avery nodded at Depape and went back to what he was doing. There was something strange about the man, and after a moment or two Depape realized what it was: the Sheriff wasn’t eating. It was the first time he’d ever come in here that the Sheriff didn’t have a plate of grub close at hand.

“All ready for tomorrow?” Depape asked.

Avery gave him a half-irritated, half-smiling look. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

“One that Jonas sent me to ask,” Depape said, and at that Avery’s queer, nervy smile faltered a little.

“Aye, we’re ready.” Avery swept a meaty arm over the guns. “Don’t ye see we are?”

Depape could have quoted the old saying about how the proof of the pudding was in the eating, but what was the point? Things would work out if the three boys were as fooled as Jonas thought they were; if they weren’t fooled, they would likely carve Herk Avery’s fat butt off the top of his legs and feed it to the handiest pack of wolverines. It didn’t make much never mind to Roy Depape one way or the other.

“Jonas also ast me to remind you it’s early.”

“Aye, aye, we’ll be there early,” Avery agreed. “These two and six more good men. Fran Lengyll’s asked to go along, and he’s got a machine-gun.” Avery spoke this last with ringing pride, as if he himself had invented the machine-gun. Then he looked at Depape slyly. “What about you, coffin-hand? Want to go along? Won’t take me more’n an eyeblink to deputize ye.”

“I have another chore. Reynolds, too.” Depape smiled. “There’s plenty of work for all of us. Sheriff-after all, it’s Reaping.”

11

That afternoon, Susan and Roland met at the hut in the Bad Grass. She told him about the book with the torn-out pages, and Roland showed her what he’d left in the hut’s north corner, secreted beneath a mouldering pile of skins.

She looked first at this, then at him with wide and frightened eyes. “What’s wrong? What does thee suspect is wrong?”

He shook his head. Nothing was wrong… not that he could tell, anyway. And yet he had felt a strong need to do what he’d done, to leave what he’d left. It wasn’t the touch, nothing like it, but only intuition.

“I think everything is all right… or as right as things can be when the odds may turn out fifty of them for each of us. Susan, our only chance is to take them by surprise. You’re not going to risk that, are you? Not planning to go to Lengyll, waving your father’s stockline book around?”

She shook her head. If Lengyll had done what she now suspected, he’d get his payback two days from now. There would be reaping, all right. Reaping aplenty. But this… this frightened her, and she said so.

“Listen.” Roland took her face in his hands and looked into her eyes. “I’m only trying to be careful. If things go badly-and they could- you’re the one most likely to get away clean. You and Sheemie. If that happens, Susan, you-thee-must come here and take my guns. Take them west to Gilead. Find my father. He’ll know thee are who thee says by what thee shows. Tell him what happened here. That’s all.”

“If anything happens to thee, Roland, I won’t be able to do anything. Except die.”

His hands were still on her face. Now he used them to make her head shake slowly, from side to side. “You won’t die,” he said. There was a coldness in his voice and eyes that struck her not with fear but awe. She thought of his blood-of how old it must be, and how cold it must sometimes flow. “Not with this job undone. Promise me.”

“I… I promise, Roland. I do.”

“Tell me aloud what you promise.”

“I’ll come here. Get yer guns. Take them to yer da. Tell him what happened.”

He nodded and let go of her face. The shapes of his hands were printed faintly on her cheeks.

“Ye frightened me,” Susan said, and then shook her head. That wasn’t right. “Ye do frighten me.”

“I can’t help what I am.”

“And I wouldn’t change it.” She kissed his left cheek, his right cheek, his mouth. She put her hand inside his shirt and caressed his nipple. It grew instantly hard beneath the tip of her finger. “Bird and bear and hare and fish,” she said, now making soft butterfly kisses all over his face. “Give your love her fondest wish.”

After, they lay beneath a bearskin Roland had brought along and listened to the wind sough through the grass.

“I love that sound,” she said. “It always makes me wish I could be part of the wind… go where it goes, see what it sees.”

“This year, if ka allows, you will.”

“Aye. And with thee.” She turned to him, up on one elbow. Light fell through the ruined roof and dappled her face. “Roland, I love thee.” She kissed him… and then began to cry.

He held her, concerned. “What is it? Sue, what troubles thee?”

“I don’t know,” she said, crying harder. “All I know is that there’s a shadow on my heart.” She looked at him with tears still flowing from her eyes. “Thee’d not leave me, would ye, dear? Thee’d not go without Sue, would ye?”

“No.”

“For I’ve given all I have to ye, so I have. And my virginity’s the very least of it, thee knows.”

“I’d never leave you.” But he felt cold in spite of the bearskin, and the wind outside-so comforting a moment ago-sounded like beast’s breath. “Never, I swear.”

“I’m frightened, though. Indeed I am.”

“You needn’t be,” he said, speaking slowly and carefully… for suddenly all the wrong words wanted to come tumbling out of his mouth. We’ll leave this, Susan-not day after tomorrow, on Reaping, but now, this minute. Dress and we’ll go crosswise to the wind; it’s south we’ll ride and never look back. We’ll be-

–haunted.

That’s what they would be. Haunted by the faces of Alain and Cuthbert; haunted by the faces of all the men who might die in the Shaved Mountains, massacred by weapons torn from the armory-crypts where they should have been left. Haunted most of all by the faces of their fathers, for all the rest of their lives. Not even the South Pole would be far enough to escape those faces.

“All you need do day after tomorrow is claim indisposition at lunch.” They had gone over all this before, but now, in his sudden, pointless fright, it was all he could think of to say. “Go to your room, then leave as you did on the night we met in the graveyard. Hide up a little. Then, when it’s three o’ the clock, ride here, and look under the skins in yon comer. If my guns are gone-and they will be, I swear they will-then everything’s all right. You’ll ride to meet us. Come to the place above the canyon, the one we told you of. We’ll-”

“Aye, I know all that, but something’s wrong.” She looked at him, touched the side of his face. “I fear for thee and me, Roland, and know not why.”

“All will work out,” he said. “Ka-”

“Speak not to me of ka!” she cried. “Oh please don’t! Ka like a wind, my father said, it takes what it will and minds the plea of no man or woman. Greedy old ka, how I hate it!”

“Susan-”

“No, say no more.” She lay back and pushed the bearskin down to her knees, exposing a body that far greater men than Hart Thorin might have given away kingdoms for. Beads of sunlight ran over her bare skin like rain. She held her arms out to him. Never had she looked more beautiful to Roland than she did then, with her hair spread about her and that haunted look on her face. He would think later: She knew. Some part of her knew.

“No more talking,” she said. “Talking’s done. If you love me, then love me.”

And for the last time, Roland did. They rocked together, skin to skin and breath to breath, and outside the wind roared into the west like a tidal wave.

12

That evening, as the grinning Demon rose in the sky, Cordelia left her house and walked slowly across the lawn to her garden, detouring around the pile of leaves she had raked that afternoon. In her arms was a bundle of clothes. She dropped them in front of the pole to which her stuffy-guy was bound, then looked raptly up at the rising moon: the knowing wink of the eye, the ghoul’s grin; silver as bone was that moon, a white button against violet silk.

It grinned at Cordelia; Cordelia grinned back. Finally, with the air of a woman awakening from a trance, she stepped forward and pulled the stuffy-guy off its pole. His head lolled limply against her shoulder, like the head of a man who has found himself too drunk to dance. His red hands dangled.

She stripped off the guy’s clothes, uncovering a bulging, vaguely humanoid shape in a pair of her dead brother’s longhandles. She took one of the things she had brought from the house and held it up to the moonlight. A red silk riding shirt, one of Mayor Thorin’s presents to Miss Oh So Young and Pretty. One of those she wouldn’t wear. Whore’s clothes, she had called them. And what did that make Cordelia Delgado, who had taken care of her even after her bullheaded da had decided he must stand against the likes of Fran Lengyll and John Croydon? It made her a whorehouse madam, she supposed.

This thought led to an image of Eldred Jonas and Coral Thorin, naked and striving while a honky-tonk piano planked out “Red Dirt Boogie” below them, and Cordelia moaned like a dog.

She yanked the silk shirt over the stuffy’s head. Next came one of Susan’s split riding skirts. After the skirt, a pair of her slippers. And last, replacing the sombrero, one of Susan’s spring bonnets.

Presto! The stuffy-guy was now a stuffy-gal.

“And caught red-handed ye are,” she whispered. “I know. Oh yes, I know. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

She carried the stuffy from the garden to the pile of leaves on the lawn. She laid it close by the leaves, then scooped some up and pushed them into the bodice of the riding shirt, making rudimentary breasts. That done, she took a match from her pocket and struck it alight.

The wind, as if eager to cooperate, dropped. Cordelia touched the match to the dry leaves. Soon the whole pile was blazing. She picked the stuffy-gal up in her arms and stood with it in front of the fire. She didn’t hear the rattling firecrackers from town, or the wheeze of the steam-organ in Green Heart, or the mariachi band playing in the Low Market; when a burning leaf rose and swirled past her hair, threatening to set it alight, she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were wide and blank.

When the fire was at its height, she stepped to its edge and threw the stuffy on. Flame whumped up around it in bright orange gusts; sparks and burning leaves swirled skyward in a funnel.

“So let it be done!” Cordelia cried. The firelight on her face turned her tears to blood. “Charyou tree! Aye, just so!”

The thing in the riding clothes caught fire, its face charring, its red hands blazing, its white-cross eyes turning black. Its bonnet flared; the face began to bum.

Cordelia stood and watched, fists clenching and unclenching, heedless of the sparks that lit on her skin, heedless of the blazing leaves that swirled toward the house. Had the house caught tire, she would likely have ignored that as well.

She watched until the stuffy dressed in her niece’s clothes was nothing but ashes lying atop more ashes. Then, as slowly as a robot with rust in its works, she walked back to the house, lay down on the sofa, and slept like the dead.

13

It was three-thirty in the morning of the day before Reaping, and Stanley Ruiz thought he was finally done for the night. The last music had quit twenty minutes ago-Sheb had outlasted the mariachis by an hour or so, and now lay snoring with his face in the sawdust. Sai Thorin was upstairs, and there had been no sign of the Big Coffin Hunters; Stanley had an idea those were up to Seafront tonight. He also had an idea there was black work on offer, although he didn’t know that for sure. He looked up at the glassy, two-headed gaze of The Romp. “Nor want to, old pal,” he said. “All I want is about nine hours of sleep-tomorrow comes the real party, and they won’t leave till dawn. So-”

A shrill scream rose from somewhere behind the building. Stanley jerked backward, thumping into the bar. Beside the piano, Sheb raised his head briefly, muttered “Wuzzat?” and dropped it back with a thump.

Stanley had absolutely no urge to investigate the source of the scream, but he supposed he would, just the same. It had sounded like that sad old bitch Pettie the Trotter. “I’d like to trot your saggy old ass right out of town,” he muttered, then bent down to look under the bar. There were two stout ashwood clubs here, The Calmer and The Killer. The Calmer was smooth buried wood, guaranteed to put out the lights for two hours any time you tapped some boisterous cull’s head in the right place with it.

Stanley consulted his feelings and took the other club. It was shorter than The Calmer, wider at the top. And the business end of The Killer was studded with nails.

Stanley went down to the end of the bar, through the door, and across a dim supply-room stacked with barrels smelling of graf and whiskey. At the rear was a door giving on the back yard. Stanley approached it, took a deep breath, and unlocked it. He kept expecting Pettie to voice another head-bursting scream, but none came. There was only the sound of the wind.

Maybe you got lucky and she’s kilt, Stanley thought. He opened the door, stepping back and raising the nail-studded club at the same time.

Pettie wasn’t kilt. Dressed in a stained shift (a Pettie-skirt, one might say), the whore was standing on the path which led to the back privy, her hands clutched together above the swell of her bosom and below the drooping turkey-wattles of her neck. She was looking up at the sky.

“What is it?” Stanley asked, hurrying down to her. “Near scared ten years off my life, ye did.”

“The moon, Stanley!” she whispered. “Oh, look at the moon, would ye!”

He looked up, and what he saw set his heart thumping, but he tried to speak reasonably and calmly. “Come now, Pettie, it’s dust, that’s all. Be reasonable, dear, ye know how the wind’s blown these last few days, and no rain to knock down what it carries; it’s dust, that’s all.”

Yet it didn’t look like dust.

“I know what I see,” whispered Pettie.

Above them, Demon Moon grinned and winked one eye through what appeared to be a shifting scrim of blood.

1

While a certain whore and certain bartender were still gaping up at the bloody moon, Kimba Rimer awoke sneezing.

Damn, a cold for Reaping, he thought. As much as I have to be out over the next two days, I’ll be lucky if it doesn’t turn into-

Something fluffed the end of his nose, and he sneezed again. Coming out of his narrow chest and dry slot of a mouth, it sounded like a small-caliber pistol-shot in the black room.

“Who’s there?” he cried.

No answer. Rimer suddenly imagined a bird, something nasty and bad-tempered, that had gotten in here in daylight and was now flying around in the dark, fluttering against his face as he slept. His skin crawled-birds, bugs, bats, he hated them all-and he fumbled so energetically for the gas-lamp on the table by his bed that he almost knocked it off onto the floor.

As he drew it toward him, that flutter came again. This time puffing at his cheek. Rimer screamed and recoiled against the pillows, clutching the lamp to his chest. He turned the switch on the side, heard the hiss of gas, then pushed the spark. The lamp lit, and in the thin circle of its radiance, he saw not a fluttering bird but Clay Reynolds sitting on the edge of the bed. In one hand Reynolds held the feather with which he had been tickling Mejia’s Chancellor. His other was hidden in his cloak, which lay in his lap.

Reynolds had disliked Rimer from their first meeting in the woods far west of town-those same woods, beyond Eyebolt Canyon, where Far-son’s man Latigo now quartered the main contingent of his troops. It had been a windy night, and as he and the other Coffin Hunters entered the little glade where Rimer, accompanied by Lengyll and Croydon, were sitting by a small fire, Reynolds’s cloak swirled around him. “Sai Manto,” Rimer had said, and the other two had laughed. It had been meant as a harmless joke, but it hadn’t seemed harmless to Reynolds. In many of the lands where he had travelled, manto meant not “cloak” but “leaner” or “bender.” It was, in fact, a slang term for homosexual. That Rimer (a provincial man under his veneer of cynical sophistication) didn’t know this never crossed Reynolds’s mind. He knew when people were making small of him, and if he could make such a person pay, he did so.

For Kimba Rimer, payday had come.

“Reynolds? What are you doing? How did you get in h-”

“You got to be thinking of the wrong cowboy,” the man sitting on the bed replied. “No Reynolds here. Just Senor Manto.” He took out the hand which had been under his cloak. In it was a keenly honed cuchillo. Reynolds had purchased it in Low Market with this chore in mind. He raised it now and drove the twelve-inch blade into Rimer’s chest. It went all the way through, pinning him like a bug. A bedbug, Reynolds thought.

The lamp fell out of Rimer’s hands and rolled off the bed. It landed on the foot-runner, but did not break. On the far wall was Kimba Rimer’s distorted, struggling shadow. The shadow of the other man bent over it like a hungry vulture.

Reynolds lifted the hand which had held the knife. He turned it so the small blue tattooed coffin between thumb and forefinger was in front of Rimer’s eyes. He wanted it to be the last thing Rimer saw on this side of the clearing.

“Let’s hear you make fun of me now,” Reynolds said. He smiled. “Come on. Let’s just hear you.”

2

Shortly before five o'clock, Mayor Thorin woke from a terrible dream. In it, a bird with pink eyes had been cruising slowly back and forth above the Barony. Wherever its shadow fell, the grass turned yellow, the leaves fell shocked from the trees, and the crops died. The shadow was turning his green and pleasant Barony into a waste land. It may be my Barony, but it’s my bird, too, he thought just before awakening, huddled into a shuddery ball on one side of his bed. My bird, I brought it here, I let it out of its cage. There would be no more sleep for him this night, and Thorin knew it. He poured himself a glass of water, drank it, then walked into his study, absently picking his nightgown from the cleft of his bony old ass as he went. The puff on the end of his nightcap bobbed between his shoulder blades; his knees cracked at every step.

As for the guilty feelings expressed by the dream… well, what was done was done. Jonas and his friends would have what they’d come for (and paid so handsomely for) in another day; a day after that, they’d be gone. Fly away, bird with the pink eyes and pestilent shadow; fly away to wherever you came from and take the Big Coffin Boys with you. He had an idea that by Year’s End he’d be too busy dipping his wick to think much about such things. Or to dream such dreams.

Besides, dreams without visible sign were just dreams, not omens.

The visible sign might have been the boots beneath the study drapes- just the scuffed tips of them showing-but Thorin never looked in that direction. His eyes were fixed on the bottle beside his favorite chair. Drinking claret at five in the morning was no sort of habit to get into, but this once wouldn’t hurt. He’d had a terrible dream, for gods’ sake, and after all-

“Tomorrow’s Reaping,” he said, sitting in the wing-chair on the edge of the hearth. “I guess a man can jump a fence or two, come Reap.”

He poured himself a drink, the last he’d ever take in this world, and coughed as the fire hit his belly and then climbed back up his throat, warming it. Better, aye, much. No giant birds now, no plaguey shadows. He stretched out his arms, laced his long and bony fingers together, and cracked them viciously.

“I hate it when you do that, you scrawny git,” spoke a voice directly into Thorin’s left ear.

Thorin jumped. His heart took its own tremendous leap in his chest. The empty glass flew from his hand, and there was no foot-runner to cushion its landing. It smashed on the hearth.

Before Thorin could scream, Roy Depape brushed off the mayoral nightcap, seized the gauzy remains of the mayoral mane, and yanked the mayoral head back. The knife Depape held in his other hand was much humbler than the one Reynolds had used, but it cut the old man’s throat efficiently enough. Blood sprayed scarlet in the dim room. Depape let go of Thorin’s hair, went back to the drapes he had been hiding behind, and picked something up off the floor. It was Cuthbert’s lookout. Depape brought it back to the chair and put it in the dying Mayor’s lap.

“Bird…” Thorin gargled through a mouthful of blood. “Bird!”

“Yar, old fella, and trig o’ you to notice at a time like this, I will say.” Depape pulled Thorin’s head back again and took the old man’s eyes out with two quick flips of his knife. One went into the dead fireplace; the other hit the wall and slid down behind the fire-tools. Thorin’s right foot trembled briefly and was still.

One more job to do.

Depape looked around, saw Thorin’s nightcap, and decided the ball on the end would serve. He picked it up, dipped it in the puddle of blood in the Mayor’s lap, and drew the Good Man’s sigul-

–on the wall.

“There,” he murmured, standing back. “If that don’t finish em, nothing on earth will.”

True enough. The only question left unanswered was whether or not Roland’s ka-tet could be taken alive.

3

Jonas had told Fran Lengyll exactly where to place his men, two inside the stable and six more out, three of these latter gents hidden behind rusty old implements, two hidden in the burnt-out remains of the home place, one-Dave Hollis-crouched on top of the stable itself, spying over the roofpeak. Lengyll was glad to see that the men in the posse took their job seriously. They were only boys, it was true, but boys who had on one occasion come off ahead of the Big Coffin Hunters.

Sheriff Avery gave a fair impression of being in charge of things until they got within a good shout of the Bar K. Then Lengyll, machine-gun slung over one shoulder (and as straight-hacked in the saddle as he had been at twenty), took command. Avery, who looked nervous and sounded out of breath, seemed relieved rather than offended.

“I’ll tell ye where to go as was (old to me, for it’s a good plan, and I’ve no quarrel with it,” Lengyll had told his posse. In the dark, their faces were little more than dim blurs. “Only one thing I’ll say to ye on my own hook. We don’t need em alive, but it’s best we have em so-it’s the Barony we want to put paid to em, the common folk, and so put paid to this whole business, as well. Shut the door on it, if ye will. So I say this: if there’s cause to shoot, shoot. But I’ll flay the skin off the face of any man who shoots without cause. Do ye understand?”

No response. It seemed they did.

“All right,” Lengyll had said. His face was stony. “I’ll give ye a minute to make sure your gear’s muffled, and then on we go. Not another' word from here on out.”

4

Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain came out of the bunkhouse at quarter past six that morning, and stood a-row on the porch. Alain was finishing his coffee. Cuthbert was yawning and stretching. Roland was buttoning his shirt and looking southwest, toward the Bad Grass. He was thinking not of ambushes but of Susan. Her tears. Greedy old ka, how I hate it, she had said.

His instincts did not awake; Alain’s touch, which had sensed Jonas on the day Jonas had killed the pigeons, did not so much as quiver. As for Cuthbert-

“One more day of quiet!” that worthy exclaimed to the dawning sky. “One more day of grace! One more day of silence, broken only by the lover’s sigh and the tattoo of horses’ hoofs!”

“One more day of your bullshit,” Alain said. “Come on.”

They set off across the dooryard, sensing the eight pairs of eyes on them not at all. They walked into the stable past the two men flanking the door, one hidden behind an ancient harrow, the other tucked behind an untidy stack of hay, both with guns drawn.

Only Rusher sensed something was wrong. He stamped his feet, rolled his eyes, and, as Roland backed him out of his stall, tried to rear.

“Hey, boy,” he said, and looked around. “Spiders, I reckon. He hates them.”

Outside, Lengyll stood up and waved both hands forward. Men moved silently toward the front of the stable. On the roof, Dave Hollis stood with his gun drawn. His monocle was tucked away in his vest pocket, so it should blink no badly timed reflection.

Cuthbert led his mount out of the stable. Alain followed. Roland came last, short-leading the nervous, prancy gelding.

“Look,” Cuthbert said cheerily, still unaware of the men standing directly behind him and his friends. He was pointing north. “A cloud in the shape of a bear! Good luck for-”

“Don’t move, cullies,” Fran Lengyll called. “Don’t so much as shuffle yer god-pounding feet.”

Alain did begin to turn-in startlement more than anything else-and there was a ripple of small clicking sounds, like many dry twigs all snapping at once. The sound of cocking pistols and musketoons.

“No, Al!” Roland said. “Don’t move! Don’t!” In his throat despair rose like poison, and tears of rage stung at the comers of his eyes… yet he stood quiet. Cuthbert and Alain must stand quiet, too. If they moved, they’d be killed. “Don’t move!” he called again. “Either of you!”

“Wise, cully.” Lengyll’s voice was closer now, and accompanied by several pairs of footfalls. “Put yer hands behind ye.”

Two shadows flanked Roland, long in the first light. Judging by the bulk of the one on his left, he guessed it was being thrown by Sheriff Avery. He probably wouldn’t be offering them any white tea this day. Lengyll would belong to the other shadow.

“Hurry up, Dearborn, or whatever yer name may be. Get em behind ye. Small of yer back. There’s guns pointed at your pards, and if we end up taking in only two of yer instead of three, life’ll go on.”

Not taking any chances with us, Roland thought, and felt a moment of perverse pride. With it came a taste of something that was almost amusement. Bitter, though; that taste continued very bitter.

“Roland!” It was Cuthbert, and there was agony in his voice. “Roland, don’t!”

But there was no choice. Roland put his hands behind his back. Rusher uttered a small, reproving whinny as if to say all this was highly improper-and trotted away to stand beside the bunkhouse porch.

“You’re going to feel metal on your wrists,” Lengyll said. “Esposas.”

Two cold circles slipped over Roland’s hands. I here was a click and suddenly the arcs of the handcuffs were tight against his wrists.

“All right,” said another voice. “Now you, son,”

“Be damned if I will!” Cuthbert’s voice wavered on the edge of hysteria

There was a thud and a muffled cry of pain. Roland turned around and saw Alain down on one knee, the heel of his left hand pressed against his forehead. Blood ran down his face.

“Ye want me to deal him another 'un?” Jake White asked. He had an old pistol in his hand, reversed so the butt was forward. “I can, you know; my arm is feeling wery limber for this early in the day.”

“No!” Cuthbert was twitching with horror and something like grief. Ranged behind him were three armed men, looking on with nervous avidity.

“Then be a good boy an' get yer hands behind yer.”

Cuthbert, still fighting tears, did as he was told. Esposas were put on him by Deputy Bridger. The other two men yanked Alain to his feet. He reeled a little, then stood firm as he was handcuffed. His eyes met Roland’s, and Al tried to smile. In some ways it was the worst moment of that terrible ambush morning. Roland nodded back and made himself a promise: he would never be taken like this again, not if he lived to be a thousand years old.

Lengyll was wearing a trailscarf instead of a string tie this morning, but Roland thought he was inside the same box-tail coat he’d worn to the Mayor’s welcoming party, all those weeks ago. Standing beside him, puffing with excitement, anxiety, and self-importance, was Sheriff Avery.

“Boys,” the Sheriff said, “ye’re arrested for transgressing the Barony. The specific charges are treason and murder.”

“Who did we murder?” Alain asked mildly, and one of the posse uttered a laugh either shocked or cynical, Roland couldn’t tell which.

“The Mayor and his Chancellor, as ye know quite well,” Avery said. “Now-”

“How can you do this?” Roland asked curiously. It was Lengyll to whom he spoke. “Mejis is your home place; I’ve seen the line of your fathers in the town cemetery. How can you do this to your home place, sai Lengyll?”

“I’ve no intention of standing out here and making palaver with ye,” Lengyll said. He glanced over Roland’s shoulder. “Alvarez! Get his horse! Boys as trig as this bunch should have no problem riding with their hands behind their-”

“No, tell me,” Roland interposed. “Don’t hold back, sai Lengyll- these are your friends you’ve come with, and not a one who isn’t inside your circle. How can you do it? Would you rape your own mother if you came upon her sleeping with her dress up?”

Lengyll’s mouth twitched-not with shame or embarrassment but momentary prudish distaste, and then the old rancher looked at Avery. “They teach em to talk pretty in Gilead, don’t they?”

Avery had a rifle. Now he stepped toward the handcuffed gunslinger with the butt raised. “I’ll teach 'im how to talk proper to a man of the gentry, so I will! Knock the teef straight out of his head, if you say aye, Fran!”

Lengyll held him back, looking tired. “Don’t be a fool. I don’t want to bring him back laying over a saddle unless he’s dead.”

Avery lowered his gun. Lengyll turned to Roland.

“Ye’re not going to live long enough to profit from advice, Dearborn,” he said, “but I’ll give'ee some, anyway: stick with the winners in this world. And know how the wind blows, so ye can tell when it changes direction.”

“You’ve forgotten the face of your father, you scurrying little maggot,” Cuthbert said clearly.

This got to Lengyll in a way Roland’s remark about his mother had not-it showed in the sudden bloom of color in his weathered cheeks.

“Get em mounted!” he said. “I want em locked up tight within the hour!”

5

Roland was boosted into Rusher’s saddle so hard he almost flew off on the other side-would have, if Dave Hollis had not been there to steady him and then to wedge Roland’s boot into the stirrup. Dave offered the gunslinger a nervous, half-embarrassed smile.

“I’m sorry to see you here,” Roland said gravely.

“It’s sorry I am to be here,” the deputy said. “If murder was your business, I wish you’d gotten to it sooner. And your friend shouldn’t have been so arrogant as to leave his calling-card.” He nodded toward Cuthbert.

Roland hadn’t the slightest idea what Deputy Dave was referring to, but it didn’t matter. It was just part of the frame, and none of these men believed much of it, Dave likely included. Although, Roland supposed, they would come to believe it in later years and tell it to their children and grandchildren as gospel. The glorious day they’d ridden with the posse and taken down the traitors.

The gunslinger used his knees to turn Rusher… and there, standing by the gate between the Bar K’s dooryard and the lane leading to the Great Road, was Jonas himself. He sat astride a deep-chested bay, wearing a green felt drover’s hat and an old gray duster. There was a rifle in the scabbard beside his right knee. The left side of the duster was pulled back to expose the butt of his revolver. Jonas’s white hair, untied today, lay over his shoulders.

He doffed his hat and held it out to Roland in courtly greeting. “A good game,” he said. “You played very well for someone who was taking his milk out of a tit not so long ago.”

“Old man,” Roland said, “you’ve lived too long.”

Jonas smiled. “You’d remedy that if you could, wouldn’t you? Yar, I reckon.” He flicked his eyes at Lengyll. “Get their toys, Fran. Look specially sharp for knives. They’ve got guns, but not with em. Yet I know a bit more about those shooting irons than they might think. And funny boy’s slingshot. Don’t forget that, for gods’ sake. He like to take Roy’s head off with it not so long ago.”

“Are you talking about the carrot-top?” Cuthbert asked. His horse was dancing under him; Bert swayed back and forth and from side to side like a circus rider to keep from tumbling off. “He never would have missed his head. His balls, maybe, but not his head.”

“Probably true,” Jonas agreed, watching as the spears and Roland’s shortbow were taken into custody. The slingshot was on the back of Cuthbert’s belt, tucked into a holster he had made for it himself. It was very well for Roy Depape that he hadn’t tried Bert, Roland knew-Bert could take a bird on the wing at sixty yards. A pouch holding steel shot hung at the boy’s left side. Bridger took it, as well.

While this was going on, Jonas fixed Roland with an amiable smile. “What’s your real name, brat? Fess up-no harm in telling now; you’re going to ride the handsome, and we both know it.”

Roland said nothing. Lengyll looked at Jonas, eyebrows raised. Jonas shrugged, then jerked his head in the direction of town. Lengyll nodded and poked Roland with one hard, chapped finger. “Come on, boy. Let’s ride.”

Roland squeezed Rusher’s sides; the horse trotted toward Jonas. And suddenly Roland knew something. As with all his best and truest intuitions, it came from nowhere and everywhere-absent at one second, all there and fully dressed at the next.

“Who sent you west, maggot?” he asked as he passed Jonas. “Couldn’t have been Cort-you’re too old. Was it his father?”

The look of slightly bored amusement left Jonas’s face-flew from his face, as if slapped away. For one amazing moment the man with the white hair was a child again: shocked, shamed, and hurt.

“Yes, Cort’s da-I see it in your eyes. And now you’re here, on the Clean Sea… except you’re really in the west. The soul of a man such as you can never leave the west.”

Jonas’s gun was out and cocked in his hand with such speed that only Roland’s extraordinary eyes were capable of marking the movement. There was a murmur from the men behind them-partly shock, mostly awe.

“Jonas, don’t be a fool!” Lengyll snarled. “You ain’t killin em after we took the time and risk to hood em and tie their hooks, are ye?”

Jonas seemed to take no notice. His eyes were wide; the comers of his seamed mouth were trembling. “Watch your words, Will Dearborn,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “You want to watch em ever so close. I got two pounds of pressure on a three-pound trigger right this second.”

“Fine, shoot me,” Roland said. He lifted his head and looked down at Jonas. “Shoot, exile. Shoot, worm. Shoot, you failure. You’ll still live in exile and die as you lived.”

For a moment he was sure Jonas would shoot, and in that moment Roland felt death would be enough, an acceptable end after the shame of being caught so easily. In that moment Susan was absent from his mind. Nothing breathed in that moment, nothing called, nothing moved. The shadows of the men watching this confrontation, both on foot and on horseback, were printed depthless on the dirt.

Then Jonas dropped the hammer of his gun and slipped it back into its holster.

“Take em to town and jug em,” he said to Lengyll. “And when I show up, I don’t want to see one hair harmed on one head. If I could keep from killing this one, you can keep from hurting the rest. Now go on.”

“Move,” Lengyll said. His voice had lost some of its bluff authority. It was now the voice of a man who realizes (too late) that he has bought chips in a game where the stakes are likely much too high.

They rode. As they did, Roland turned one last time. The contempt Jonas saw in those cool young eyes stung him worse than the whips that had scarred his back in Garlan years ago.

6

When they were out of sight, Jonas went into the bunkhouse, pulled up the board which concealed their little armory, and found only two guns. The matched set of six-shooters with the dark handles-Dearborn’s guns, surely-were gone.

You ’re in the west. The soul of a man such as you can never leave the west. You’ll live in exile and die as you lived.

Jonas’s hands went to work, disassembling the revolvers Cuthbert and Alain had brought west. Alain’s had never even been worn, save on the practice-range. Outside, Jonas threw the pieces, scattering them every which way. He threw as hard as he could, trying to rid himself of that cool blue gaze and the shock of hearing what he’d believed no man had known. Roy and Clay suspected, but even they hadn’t known for sure.

Before the sun went down, everyone in Mejis would know that Eldred Jonas, the white-haired regulator with the tattooed coffin on his hand, was nothing but a failed gunslinger.

You’ll live in exile and die as you lived.

“P'raps,” he said, looking at the burned-out ranch house without really seeing it. “But I’ll live longer than you, young Dearborn, and die long after your bones are rusting in the ground.”

He mounted up and swung his horse around, sawing viciously at the reins. He rode for Citgo, where Roy and Clay would be waiting, and he rode hard, but Roland’s eyes rode with him.

7

“Wake up! Wake up, sai! Wake up! Wake up!”

At first the words seemed to be coming from far away, drifting down by some magical means to the dark place where she lay. Even when the voice was joined by a rudely shaking hand and Susan knew she must wake up, it was a long, hard struggle.

It had been weeks since she’d gotten a decent night’s sleep, and she had expected more of the same last night… especially last night. She had lain awake in her luxurious bedchamber at Seafront, tossing from side to side, possibilities-none good-crowding her mind. The nightgown she wore crept up to her hips and bunched at the small of her back. When she got up to use the commode, she took the hateful thing off, hurled it into a comer, and crawled back into bed naked.

Being out of the heavy silk nightgown had done the trick. She dropped off almost at once… and in this case, dropped off was, exactly right: it was less like falling asleep than falling into some thoughtless, dreamless crack in the earth.

Now this intruding voice. This intruding arm, shaking her so hard that her head rolled from side to side on the pillow. Susan tried to slide away from it, pulling her knees up to her chest and mouthing fuzzy protests, but the arm followed. The shaking recommenced; the nagging, calling voice never stopped.

“Wake up, sai! Wake up! In the name of the Turtle and the Bear, wake up!”

Maria’s voice. Susan hadn’t recognized it at first because Maria was so upset. Susan had never heard her so, or expected to. Yet it was so; the maid sounded on the verge of hysteria.

Susan sat up. For a moment so much input-all of it wrong-crashed in on her that she was incapable of moving. The duvet beneath which she had slept tumbled into her lap, exposing her breasts, and she could do no more than pluck weakly at it with the tips of her fingers.

The first wrong thing was the light. It flooded through the windows more strongly than it ever had before… because, she realized, she had never been in this room so late before. Gods, it had to be ten o’ the clock, perhaps later.

The second wrong thing was the sounds from below. Mayor’s House was ordinarily a peaceful place in the morning; until noon one heard little but casa vaqueros leading the horses out for their morning exercise, the whicker-whicker-whick of Miguel sweeping the courtyard, and the constant boom and shush of the waves. This morning there were shouts, curses, galloping horses, the occasional burst of strange, jagged laughter. Somewhere outside her room-perhaps not in this wing, but close- Susan heard the running thud of booted feet.

The wrongest thing of all was Maria herself, cheeks ashy beneath her olive skin-tone, and her usually neat hair tangled and unbound. Susan would have guessed only an earthquake could make her look so, if that.

“Maria, what is it?”

“You have to go, sai. Seafront maybe not safe for you just now. Your own house maybe better. When I don’t see you earlier, I think you gone there already. You chose a bad day to sleep late.”

“Go?” Susan asked. Slowly, she pulled the duvet all the way up to her nose and stared at Maria over it with wide, puffy eyes. “What do you mean, go?”

“Out the back.” Maria plucked the duvet from Susan’s sleep-numbed hands again and this time stripped it all the way down to her ankles. “Like you did before. Now, missy, now! Dress and go! Those boys put away, aye, but what if they have friends? What if they come back, kill you, too?”

Susan had been getting up. Now all the strength ran out of her legs and she sat back down on the bed again. “Boys?” she whispered. “Boys kill who? Boys kill who?”

This was a good distance from grammatical, but Maria took her meaning.

“Dearborn and his pinboys,” she said.

“Who are they supposed to have killed?”

“The Mayor and the Chancellor.” She looked at Susan with a kind of distracted sympathy. “Now get up, I tell you. And get gone. This place gone loco.”

“They didn’t do any such thing,” Susan said, and only just restrained herself from adding, It wasn’t in the plan.

“Sai Thorin and sai Rimer jus’ as dead, whoever did it.” There were more shouts below, and a sharp little explosion that didn’t sound like a firecracker. Maria looked in that direction, then began to throw Susan her clothes. “The Mayor’s eyes, they gouged right out of his head.”

“They couldn’t have! Maria, I know them-”

“Me, I don’t know nothing about them and care less-but I care about you. Get dressed and get out, I tell you. Quick as you can.”

“What’s happened to them?” A terrible thought came to Susan and she leaped to her feet, clothes falling all around her. She seized Maria by the shoulders. “They haven’t been killed?” Susan shook her. “Say they haven’t been killed!”

“I don’t think so. There’s been a t'ousan' shouts and ten t'ousan' rumors go the rounds, but I think jus’ jailed. Only…”

There was no need for her to finish; her eyes slipped from Susan’s, and that involuntary shift (along with the confused shouts from below) told all the rest. Not killed yet, but Hart Thorin had been greatly liked, and from an old family. Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain were strangers.

Not killed yet… but tomorrow was Reaping, and tomorrow night was Reaping Bonfire.

Susan began to dress as fast as she could.

8

Reynolds, who had been with Jonas longer than Depape, took one look at the figure cantering toward them through the skeletal oil derricks, and turned to his partner. “Don’t ask him any questions-he’s not in any mood for silly questions this morning.”

“How do you know?”

“Never mind. Just keep your ever-fucking gob shut.”

Jonas reined up before them. He sat slumped in his saddle, pale and thoughtful. His look prompted one question from Roy Depape in spite of Reynolds’s caution. “Eldred, are you all right?”

“Is anyone?” Jonas responded, then fell silent again. Behind them, Citgo’s few remaining pumpers squalled tiredly.

At last Jonas roused himself and sat a little straighter in the saddle. “The cubs’ll be stored supplies by now. I told Lengyll and Avery to fire a double set of pistol-shots if anything went wrong, and there hasn’t been any shooting like that.”

“We didn’t hear none, either, Eldred,” Depape said eagerly. “Nothing atall like that.”

Jonas grimaced. “You wouldn’t, would you? Not out in this noise.

Fool!”

Depape bit his lip, saw something in the neighborhood of his left stirrup that needed adjusting, and bent to it.

“Were you boys seen at your business?” Jonas asked. “This morning, I mean, when you sent Rimer and Thorin off. Even a chance either of you was seen?”

Reynolds shook his head for both of them.” ’twas clean as could be.”

Jonas nodded as if the subject had been of only passing interest to him, then turned to regard the oilpatch and the rusty derricks. “Mayhap folks are right,” he said in a voice almost too low to hear. “Mayhap the Old People were devils.” He turned back to them. “Well, we’re the devils now. Ain’t we. Clay?”

“Whatever you think, Eldred,” Reynolds said.

“I said what I think. We’re the devils now, and by God, that’s how we’ll behave. What about Quint and that lot down there?” He cocked his head toward the forested slope where the ambush had been laid.

“Still there, pending your word,” Reynolds said.

“No need of em now.” He favored Reynolds with a dark look. “That Dearborn’s a coozey brat. I wish I was going to be in Hambry tomorrow night just so I could lay a torch between his feet. I almost left him cold and dead at the Bar K. Would’ve if not for Lengyll. Coozey little brat is what he is.”

Slumping as he spoke. Face growing blacker and blacker, like storm clouds drifting across the sun. Depape, his stirrup fixed, tossed Reynolds a nervous glance. Reynolds didn’t answer it. What point? If Eldred went crazy now (and Reynolds had seen it happen before), there was no way they could get out of his killing-zone in time.

“Eldred, we got quite a spot more to do.”

Reynolds spoke quietly, but it got through. Jonas straightened. He took off his hat, hung it on his saddle as if the horn were a coathook, and brushed absently through his hair with his fingers.

“Yar-quite a spot is right. Ride down there. Tell Quint to send for oxen to pull those last two full tankers out to Hanging Rock. He sh’d keep four men with him to hook em up and take em on to Latigo. The rest can go on ahead.”

Reynolds now judged it safe to ask a question. “When do the rest of Latigo’s men get there?”

“Men?” Jonas snorted. “Don’t we wish, cully! The rest of Latigo’s boys’ll ride out to Hanging Rock by moonlight, pennons no doubt flying for all the coyotes and other assorted desert-dogs to see and be awed by. They’ll be ready to do escort duty by ten tomorrow, I sh’d think… although if they’re the sort of lads I’m expecting, fuck-ups are apt to be the rule of the day. The good news is that we don’t much need em, anyway. Things look well in hand. Now go down there, get them about their business, and then ride back to me, just as fast’s you can.”

Jonas turned and looked toward the lumpy swell of hills to the northwest.

“We have business of our own,” he said. “Soonest begun, boys, soonest done. I want to shake the dust of fucking Mejis off my hat and boots as soon as I can. I don’t like the way it feels anymore. Not at all.”

9

The woman, Theresa Maria Dolores O’shyven, was forty years old, plump, pretty, mother of four, husband of Peter, a vaquero of laughing temperament. She was also a seller of rugs and draperies in the Upper Market; many of the prettier and more delicate appointments at Seafront had passed through Theresa O’shyven’s hands, and her family was quite well-to-do. Although her husband was a range-rider, the O’shyven clan was what would have been called middle-class in another place and time. Her two oldest children were grown and gone, one right out o’ Barony. The third eldest was sparking and hoping to marry his heart’s delight at Year’s End. Only the youngest suspected something was wrong with Ma, and this one had no idea how close Theresa was to complete obsessional madness.

Soon, Rhea thought, watching Theresa avidly in the ball. She’ll start doing it soon, but first she’s got to get rid of the brat.

There was no school at Reaptide, and the stalls opened only for a few hours in the afternoon, so Theresa sent her youngest daughter off with a pie. A Reaptide gift to a neighbor, Rhea surmised, although she couldn’t hear the soundless instructions the woman gave her daughter as she pulled a knitted cap down over the girl’s ears. And ’twouldn’t be a neighbor too close, either; she’d want time, would Theresa Maria Dolores O’shyven, time to be a-choring. It was a good-sized house, and there were a lot of corners in it that needed cleaning.

Rhea chuckled; the chuckle turned into a hollow gust of coughing. In the corner, Musty looked at the old woman hauntedly. Although far from the emaciated skeleton that his mistress had become, Musty didn’t look good at all.

The girl was shown out with the pie under her arm; she paused to give her mother a single troubled look, and then the door was shut in her face.

“Now!” Rhea croaked. “Them comers is waitin! Down on yer knees, woman, and get to business!”

First Theresa went to the window. When she was satisfied with what she saw-her daughter out the gate and down the High Street, likely-she turned back to her kitchen. She walked to the table and stood there, looking dreamy-eyed into space.

“No, none o’ that, now!” Rhea cried impatiently. She no longer saw her own filthy hut, she no longer smelled either its rank aromas or her own. She had gone into the Wizard’s Rainbow. She was with Theresa O’shyven, whose cottage had the cleanest comers in all Mejis. Mayhap in all Mid-World.

“Hurry, woman!” Rhea half-screamed. “Get to yer housework!”

As if hearing, Theresa unbuttoned her housedress, stepped out of it, and laid it neatly over a chair. She pulled the hem of her clean, mended shift up over her knees, went to the comer, and got down on all fours. “That’s it, my corazon!” Rhea cried, nearly choking on a phlegmy mixture of coughing and laughter. “Do yer chores, now, and do em wery pert!”

Theresa O’shyven poked her head forward to the full length of her neck, opened her mouth, stuck out her tongue, and began to lick the corner. She lapped it as Musty lapped his milk. Rhea watched this, slapping her knee and whooping, her face growing redder and redder as she rocked from side to side. Oh, Theresa was her favorite, aye! No doubt! For hours now she would crawl about on her hands and knees with her ass in the air, licking into the comers, praying to some obscure god-not even the Man-Jesus God-for forgiveness of who knew what as she did this, her penance. Sometimes she got splinters in her tongue and had to pause to spit blood into the kitchen basin. Up until now some sixth sense had always gotten her to her feet and back into her dress before any of her family returned, but Rhea knew that sooner or later the woman’s obsession would take her too far, and she would be surprised. Perhaps today would be the day-the little girl would come back early, perhaps for a coin to spend in town, and discover her mother down on her knees and licking the comers. Oh, what a spin and raree! How Rhea wanted to see it! How she longed to-

Suddenly Theresa O’shyven was gone. The interior of her neat little cottage was gone. Everything was gone, lost in curtains of shifting pink light. For the first time in weeks, the wizard’s glass had gone blank.

Rhea picked the ball up in her scrawny, long-nailed fingers and shook it. “What’s wrong with you, plaguey thing? What’s wrong?”

The ball was heavy, and Rhea’s strength was fading. After two or three hard shakes, it slipped in her grip. She cradled it against the deflated remains of her breasts, trembling.

“No, no, lovey,” she crooned. “Come back when ye’re ready, aye, Rhea lost her temper a bit but she’s got it back now, she never meant to shake ye and she’d never ever drop ye, so ye just-”

She broke off and cocked her head, listening. Horses approaching. No, not approaching; here. Three riders, by the sound. They had crept up on her while she was distracted.

The boys? Those plaguey boys?

Rhea held the ball against her bosom, eyes wide, lips wet. Her hands were now so thin that the ball’s pink glow shone through them, faintly illuminating the dark spokes that were her bones.

“Rhea! Rhea of the Coos!”

No, not the boys.

“Come out here, and bring what you were given!”

Worse.

“Farson wants his property! We’ve come to take it!”

Not the boys but the Big Coffin Hunters.

“Never, ye dirty old white-haired prick,” she whispered. “Ye’ll never take it.” Her eyes moved from side to side in small, shooting peeks. Scraggle-headed and tremble-mouthed, she looked like a diseased coyote driven into its final arroyo.

She looked down at the ball and a whining noise began to escape her. Now even the pink glow was gone. The sphere was as dark as a corpse’s eyeball.

10

A shriek came from the hut.

Depape turned to Jonas with wide eyes, his skin prickling. The thing which had uttered that cry hardly sounded human.

“Rhea!” Jonas called again. “Bring it out here now, woman, and hand it over! I’ve no time to play games with you!”

The door of the hut swung open. Depape and Reynolds drew their guns as the old crone stepped out, blinking against the sunlight like something that’s spent its whole life in a cave. She was holding John Farson’s favorite toy high over her head. There were plenty of rocks in the dooryard she could throw it against, and even if her aim was bad and she missed them all, it might smash anyway.

This could be bad, and Jonas knew it-there were some people you just couldn’t threaten. He had focused so much of his attention on the brats (who, ironically, had been taken as easy as milk) that it had never occurred to him to worry much about this part of it. And Kimba Rimer, the man who had suggested Rhea as the perfect custodian for Maerlyn’s Rainbow, was dead. Couldn’t lay it at Rimer’s doorstep if things went wrong up here, could he?

Then, just to make things a little worse when he’d have thought they’d gone as far west as they could without dropping off the cold end of the earth, he heard the cocking sound of Depape drawing the hammer of his gun.

“Put that away, you idiot!” he snarled.

“But look at her!” Depape almost moaned. “Look at her, Eldred!”

He was. The thing inside the black dress appeared to be wearing the corpse of a putrefying snake around its throat for a necklace. She was so scrawny that she resembled nothing so much as a walking skeleton. Her peeling skull was only tufted with hair; the rest had fallen out. Sores clustered on her cheeks and brow, and there was a mark like a spider-bite on the left side of her mouth. Jonas thought that last might be a scurvy-bloom, but he didn’t really care one way or another. What he cared about was the ball upraised in the dying woman’s long and shivering claws.

11

The sunlight so dazzled Rhea’s eyes that she didn’t see the gun pointed at her, and when her vision cleared, Depape had put it away again. She looked at the men lined up across from her-the bespectacled redhead, the one in the cloak, and Old White-Hair Jonas-and uttered a dusty croak of laughter. Had she been afraid of them, these mighty Coffin Hunters? She supposed she had, but for gods’ sake, why? They were men, that was all, just more men, and she had been beating such all her life. Oh, they thought they ruled the roost, all right-nobody in Mid-World accused anyone of forgetting the face of his mother-but they were poor things, at bottom, moved to tears by a sad song, utterly undone by the sight of a bare breast, and all the more capable of being manipulated simply because they were so sure they were strong and tough and wise.

The glass was dark, and as much as she hated that darkness, it had cleared her mind.

“Jonas!” she cried. “Eldred Jonas!”

“I’m here, old mother,” he said. “Long days and pleasant nights.”

“Never mind yer sops, time’s too short for em.” She came four steps farther and stopped with the ball still held over her head. Near her, a gray chunk of stone jutted from the weedy ground. She looked at it, then back at Jonas. The implication was unspoken but unmistakable.

“What do you want?” Jonas asked.

“The ball’s gone dark,” she said, answering from the side. “All the time I had it in my keeping, it was lively-aye, even when it showed nothing I could make out, it was passing lively, bright and pink-but it fell dark almost at the sound of yer voice. It doesn’t want to go with ye.”

“Nevertheless, I’m under orders to take it.” Jonas’s voice became soft and conciliating. It wasn’t the tone he used when he was in bed with Coral, but it was close. “Think a minute, and you’ll see my situation. Far-son wants it, and who am I to stand against the wants of a man who’ll be the most powerful in Mid-World when Demon Moon rises next year? If I come back without it and say Rhea of the Coos refused me it, I’ll be killed.”

“If ye come back and tell him I broke it in yer ugly old face, ye’ll be killed, too,” Rhea said. She was close enough for Jonas to see how far her sickness had eaten into her. Above the few remaining tufts of her hair, the wretched ball was trembling back and forth. She wouldn’t be able to hold it much longer. A minute at most. Jonas felt a dew of sweat spring out on his forehead.

“Aye, mother. But d'you know, given a choice of deaths, I’d choose to take the cause of my problem with me. That’s you, darling.”

She croaked again-that dusty replica of laughter-and nodded appreciatively.” 'Twon’t do Farson any good without me in any case,” she said. “It’s found its mistress, I wot-that’s why it went dark at the sound of yer voice.”

Jonas wondered how many others had believed the ball was just for them. He wanted to wipe the sweat from his brow before it ran in his eyes, but kept his hands in front of him, folded neatly on the horn of his saddle.

He didn’t dare look at either Reynolds or Depape. and could only hope they would leave the play to him. She was balanced on both a physical and mental knife-edge; the smallest movement would send her tumbling off in one direction or the other.

“Found the one it wants, has it?” He thought he saw a way out of this. If he was lucky. And it might be lucky for her, as well. “What should we do about that?”

“Take me with ye.” Her face twisted into an expression of gruesome greed; she looked like a corpse that is trying to sneeze. She doesn’t realize she’s dying, Jonas thought. Thank the gods for that. “Take the ball, but take me, as well. I’ll go with ye to Farson. I’ll become his soothsayer, and nothing will stand before us, not with me to read the ball for him. Take me with ye!”

“All right,” Jonas said. It was what he had hoped for. “Although what Farson decides is none o’ mine. You know that?”

“Aye.”

“Good. Now give me the ball. I’ll give it back into your keeping, if you like, but I need to make sure it’s whole.”

She slowly lowered it. Jonas didn’t think it was entirely safe even cradled in her arms, but he breathed a little easier when it was, all the same. She shuffled toward him, and he had to control an urge to gig his horse back from her.

He bent over in the saddle, holding his hands out for the glass. She looked up at him, her old eyes still shrewd behind their crusted lids. One of them actually drew down in a conspirator’s wink. “I know yer mind, Jonas. Ye think, 'I’ll take the ball, then draw my gun and kill her, what harm?' Isn’t that true? Yet there would be harm, and all to you and yours. Kill me and the ball will never shine for Farson again. For someone, aye, someday, mayhap; but not for him… and will he let ye live if ye bring his toy back and he discovers it’s broken?”

Jonas had already considered this. “We have a bargain, old mother. You go west with the glass… unless you die beside the trail some night. You’ll pardon me for saying so, but you don’t look well.”

She cackled. “I’m better'n I look, oh yar! Years left 'fore this clock o’ mine runs down!”

I think you may be wrong about that, old mother, Jonas thought. But he kept his peace and only held his hands out for the ball.

For a moment longer she held it. Their arrangement was made and agreed to on both sides, but in the end she could barely bring herself to ungrasp the ball. Greed shone in her eyes like moonlight through fog.

He held his hands out patiently, saying nothing, waiting for her mind to accept reality-if she let go, there was some chance. If she held on, very likely everyone in this stony, weedy yard would end up riding the handsome before long.

With a sigh of regret, she finally put the ball in his hands. At the instant it passed from her to him, an ember of pink light pulsed deep in the depths of the glass. A throb of pain drove into Jonas’s head… and a shiver of lust coiled in his balls.

As from a great distance, he heard Depape and Reynolds cocking their pistols.

“Put those away,” Jonas said. “But-” Reynolds looked confused.

“They thought'ee was going to double-cross Rhea,” the old woman said, cackling. “Good thing ye’re in charge rather than them, Jonas… mayhap you know summat they don’t.”

He knew something, all right-how dangerous the smooth, glassy thing in his hands was. It could take him in a blink, if it wanted. And in a month, he would be like the witch: scrawny, raddled with sores, and too obsessed to know or care.

“Put them away!” he shouted.

Reynolds and Depape exchanged a glance, then reholstered their guns. “There was a bag for this thing,” Jonas said. “A drawstring bag laid inside the box. Get it.”

“Aye,” Rhea said, grinning unpleasantly at him. “But it won’t keep the ball from takin ye if it wants to. Ye needn’t think it will.” She surveyed the other two, and her eye fixed on Reynolds. “There’s a cart in my shed, and a pair of good gray goats to pull it.” She spoke to Reynolds, but her eyes kept turning back to the ball, Jonas noticed… and now his damned eyes wanted to go there, too.

“You don’t give me orders,” Reynolds said.

“No, but I do,” Jonas said. His eyes dropped to the ball, both wanting and fearing to see that pink spark of life deep inside. Nothing. Cold and dark. He dragged his gaze back up to Reynolds again. “Get the cart.”

12

Reynolds heard the buzzing of flies even before he slipped through the shed’s sagging door, and knew at once that Rhea’s goats had finished their days of pulling. They lay bloated and dead in their pen, legs sticking up and the sockets of their eyes squirming with maggots. It was impossible to know when Rhea had last fed and watered them, but Reynolds guessed at least a week, from the smell.

Too busy watching what goes on in that glass ball to bother, he thought. And what’s she wearing that dead snake around her neck for?

“I don’t want to know,” he muttered from behind his pulled-up neckerchief. The only thing he did want right now was to get the hell out of here.

He spied the cart, which was painted black and overlaid with cabalistic designs in gold. It looked like a medicine-show wagon to Reynolds; it also looked a bit like a hearse. He seized it by the handles and dragged it out of the shed as fast as he could. Depape could do the rest, by gods. Hitch his horse to the cart and haul the old woman’s stinking freight to… where? Who knew? Eldred, maybe.

Rhea came tottering out of her hut with the drawstring bag they’d brought the ball in, but she stopped, head cocked, listening, when Reynolds asked his question.

Jonas thought it over, then said: “Seafront to begin, I guess. Yar, that’ll do for her, and this glass bauble as well, I reckon, until the party’s over tomorrow.”

“Aye, Seafront, I’ve never been there,” Rhea said, moving forward again. When she reached Jonas’s horse (which tried to shy away from her), she opened the bag. After a moment’s further consideration, Jonas dropped the ball in. It bulged round at the bottom, making a shape like a teardrop.

Rhea wore a sly smile. “Mayhap we’ll meet Thorin. If so, I might have something to show him in the Good Man’s toy that’d interest him ever so much.”

“If you meet him,” Jonas said, getting down to help hitch Depape’s horse to the black cart, “it’ll be in a place where no magic is needed to see far.”

She looked at him, frowning, and then the sly smile slowly resurfaced. “Why, I b'lieve our Mayor’s met wiv a accident!”

“Could be,” Jonas agreed.

She giggled, and soon the giggle turned into a full-throated cackle. She was still cackling as they drew out of the yard, cackling and sitting in the little black cart with its cabalistic decorations like the Queen of Black Places on her throne.

1

Panic is highly contagious, especially in situations when nothing is known and everything is in flux. It was the sight of Miguel, the old mozo, that started Susan down its greased slope. He was in the middle of Seafront’s courtyard, clutching his broom of twigs against his chest and looking at the riders who passed to and fro with an expression of perplexed misery. His sombrero was twisted around on his back, and Susan observed with something like horror that Miguel-usually brushed and clean and neat as a pin-was wearing his serape inside out. There were tears on his cheeks, and as he turned this way and that, following the passing riders, trying to hile those he recognized, she thought of a child she had once seen toddle out in front of an oncoming stage. The child had been pulled back in time by his father; who would pull Miguel back?

She started for him, and a vaquero aboard a wild-eyed spotted roan galloped so close by her that one stirrup ticked off her hip and the horse’s tail flicked her forearm. She voiced a strange-sounding little chuckle. She had been worried about Miguel and had almost been run down herself! Funny!

She looked both ways this time, started forward, then drew back again as a loaded wagon came careering around the comer, tottering on two wheels at first. What it was loaded with she couldn’t see-the goods in the wagonbed were covered with a tarp -but she saw Miguel move toward it, still clutching his broom. Susan thought of the child in front of the stage again and shrieked an inarticulate cry of alarm. Miguel cringed back at the last moment and the cart flew by him, bounded and swayed across the courtyard, and disappeared out through the arch.

Miguel dropped his broom, clapped both hands to his cheeks, fell to his knees, and began to pray in a loud, lamenting voice. Susan watched him for a moment, her mouth working, and then sprinted for the stables, no longer taking care to keep against the side of the building. She had caught the disease that would grip almost all of Hambry by noon, and although she managed to do a fairly apt job of saddling Pylon (on any other day there would have been three stable-boys vying for the chance to help the pretty sai), any ability to think had left her by the time she heel-kicked the startled horse into a run outside the stable door.

When she rode past Miguel, still on his knees and praying to the bright sky with his hands upraised, she saw him no more than any other rider had before her.

2

She rode straight down the High Street, thumping her spurless heels at Pylon’s sides until the big horse was fairly flying. Thoughts, questions, possible plans of action… none of those had a place in her head as she rode. She was but vaguely aware of the people milling in the street, allowing Pylon to weave his own path through them. The only thing she was aware of was his name-Roland, Roland, Roland!-ringing in her head like a scream. Everything had gone upside down. The brave little ka-tet they had made that night at the graveyard was broken, three of its members jailed and with not long to live (if they even were still alive), the last member lost and confused, as crazy with terror as a bird in a barn.

If her panic had held, things might have turned out in a much different fashion. But as she rode through the center of town and out the other side, her way took her toward the house she had shared with her father and her aunt. That lady had been watching for the very rider who now approached.

As Susan neared, the door flew open and Cordelia, dressed in black from throat to toe, rushed down the front walk to the street, shrieking with either horror or laughter. Perhaps both. The sight of her cut through the foreground haze of panic in Susan’s mind… but not because she recognized her aunt.

“Rhea!” she cried, and drew back on the reins so violently that the horse skidded, reared, and almost tilted them over backward. That would likely have crushed the life out of his mistress, but Pylon managed to keep at least his back feet, pawing at the sky with his front ones and whinnying loudly. Susan slung an arm around his neck and hung on for dear life.

Cordelia Delgado, wearing her best black dress and a lace mantilla over her hair, stood in front of the horse as if in her own parlor, taking no notice of the hooves cutting the air less than two feet in front other nose. In one gloved hand she held a wooden box.

Susan belatedly realized that this wasn’t Rhea, but the mistake really wasn’t that odd. Aunt Cord wasn’t as thin as Rhea (not yet, anyway), and more neatly dressed (except for her dirty gloves-why her aunt was wearing gloves in the first place Susan didn’t know, let alone why they looked so smudged), but the mad look in her eyes was horribly similar.

“Good day t'ye, Miss Oh So Young and Pretty!” Aunt Cord greeted her in a cracked, vivacious voice that made Susan’s heart tremble. Aunt Cord curtseyed one-handed, holding the little box curled against her chest with the other. “Where go ye on this fine autumn day? Where go ye so speedy? To no lover’s arms, that seems sure, for one’s dead and the other ta'en!”

Cordelia laughed again, thin lips drawing back from big white teeth. Horse teeth, almost. Her eyes glared in the sunlight.

Her mind’s broken, Susan thought. Poor thing. Poor old thing.

“Did thee put Dearborn up to it?” Aunt Cord asked. She crept to Pylon’s side and looked up at Susan with luminous, liquid eyes. “Thee did, didn’t thee? Aye! Perhaps thee even gave him the knife he used, after runnin yer lips o’er it for good luck. Ye’re in it together-why not admit it? At least admit thee’s lain with that boy, for I know it’s true. I saw the way he looked at ye the day ye were sitting in the window, and the way ye looked back at him!”

Susan said, “If ye’ll have truth, I’ll give it to ye. We’re lovers. And we’ll be man and wife ere Year’s End.”

Cordelia raised one dirty glove to the blue sky and waved it as if saying hello to the gods. She screamed with mingled triumph and laughter as she waved. “And t'be wed, she thinks! Ooooo! Ye’d no doubt drink the blood of your victims on the marriage altar, too, would ye not? Oh, wicked! It makes me weep!” But instead of weeping she laughed again, a howl of mirth into the blind blue face of the sky.

“We planned no murders,” Susan said, drawing-if only in her own mind-a line of difference between the killings at Mayor’s House and the trap they had hoped to spring on Parson’s soldiers. “And he did no murders. No, this is the business of your friend Jonas, I wot. His plan, his filthy work.”

Cordelia plunged her hand into the box she held, and Susan understood at once why the gloves she wore were dirty: she had been grubbing in the stove.

“I curse thee with the ashes!” Cordelia cried, flinging a black and gritty cloud of them at Susan’s leg and the hand which held Pylon’s reins. “I curse thee to darkness, both of thee! Be ye happy together, ye faithless! Ye murderers! Ye cozeners! Ye liars! Ye fornicators! Ye lost and renounced!”

With each cry, Cordelia Delgado threw another handful of ashes. And with each cry, Susan’s mind grew clearer, colder. She held fast and allowed her aunt to pelt her; in fact, when Pylon, feeling the gritty rain against his side, attempted to pull away, Susan gigged him set. There were spectators now, avidly watching this old ritual of renunciation (Sheemie was among them, eyes wide and mouth quivering), but Susan barely noticed. Her mind was her own again, she had an idea of what to do, and for that alone she supposed she owed her aunt some sort of thanks.

“I forgive ye, Aunt,” she said.

The box of stove-ashes, now almost empty, tumbled from Cordelia’s hands as if Susan had slapped her. “What?” she whispered. “What does thee say?”

“For what ye did to yer brother and my father,” Susan said. “For what ye were a part of.”

She rubbed a hand on her leg and bent with the hand held out before her. Before her aunt could pull away, Susan had wiped ashes down one of her cheeks. The smudge stood out there like a wide, dark scar. “But wear that, all the same,” she said. “Wash it off if ye like, but I think ye’ll wear it in yer heart yet awhile.” She paused. “I think ye already do. Goodbye.”

“Where does thee think thee’s going?” Aunt Cord was pawing at the soot-mark on her face with one gloved hand, and when she lunged forward in an attempt to grasp Pylon’s reins, she stumbled over the box and almost fell. It was Susan, still bent over to her aunt’s side, who grasped her shoulder and held her up. Cordelia pulled back as if from the touch of an adder. “Not to him! Ye’ll not go to him now, ye mad goose!”

Susan turned her horse away. “None of yer business. Aunt. This is the end between us. But mark what I say: we’ll be married by Year’s End. Our firstborn is already conceived.”

“Thee’ll be married tomorrow night if thee goes nigh him' Joined in smoke, wedded in fire, bedded in the ashes! Bedded in the ashes, do ye hear me?”

The madwoman advanced on her, railing, but Susan had no more time to listen. The day was fleeting. There would be time to do the things that needed doing, but only if she moved at speed.

“Goodbye,” she said again, and then galloped away. Her aunt’s last words followed her: In the ashes, do ye hear me?

3

On her way out of town along the Great Road, Susan saw riders coming toward her, and got off the highway. This would not, she felt, be a good time to meet pilgrims. There was an old granary nearby; she rode Pylon behind it, stroked his neck, murmured for him to be quiet.

It took the riders longer to reach her position than she would have expected, and when they finally got there, she saw why. Rhea was with them, sitting in a black cart covered with magical symbols. The witch had been scary when Susan had seen her on the night of the Kissing Moon, but still recognizably human; what the girl saw passing before her now, rocking from side to side in the black cart and clutching a bag in her lap, was an unsexed, sore-raddled creature that looked more like a troll than a human being. With her were the Big Coffin Hunters.

“To Seafront!” the thing in the cart screamed. “Hie you on, and at full speed! I’ll sleep in Thorin’s bed tonight or know the reason why! Sleep in it and piss in it, if I take a notion! Hie you on, I say!”

Depape-it was to his horse that the cart had been harnessed-turned around and looked at her with distaste and fear. “Still your mouth.”

Her answer was a fresh burst of laughter. She rocked from side to side, holding a bag on her lap with one hand and pointing at Depape with the twisted, long-nailed index finger of the other. Looking at her made Susan feel weak with terror, and she felt the panic around her again, like some dark fluid that would happily drown her brain if given half a chance.

She worked against the feeling as best she could, holding onto her mind, refusing to let it turn into what it had been before and would be again if she let it-a brainless bird trapped in a barn, bashing into the walls and ignoring the open window through which it had entered.

Even when the cart was gone below the next hill and there was nothing left of them but dust hanging in the air, she could hear Rhea’s wild cackling.

4

She reached the hut in the Bad Grass at one o’ the clock. For a moment she just sat astride Pylon, looking at it. Had she and Roland been here hardly twenty-four hours ago? Making love and making plans? It was hard to believe, but when she dismounted and went in, the wicker basket in which she had brought them a cold meal confirmed it. It still sat upon the rickety table.

Looking at the hamper, she realized she hadn’t eaten since the previous evening-a miserable supper with Hart Thorin that she’d only picked at, too aware of his eyes on her body. Well, they’d done their last crawl, hadn’t they? And she’d never have to walk down another Seafront hallway wondering what door he was going to come bursting out of like Jack out of his box, all grabbing hands and stiff, randy prick.

Ashes, she thought. Ashes and ashes. But not us, Roland. I swear, my darling, not us.

She was frightened and tense, trying to put everything she now must do in order-a process to be followed just as there was a process to be followed when saddling a horse-but she was also sixteen and healthy. One look at the hamper and she was ravenous.

She opened it, saw there were ants on the two remaining cold beef sandwiches, brushed them off, and gobbled the sandwiches down. The bread had gotten rather stiff, but she hardly noticed. There was a half jar of sweet cider and part of a cake, as well.

When she had finished everything, she went to the north comer of the hut and moved the hides someone had begun to cure and then lost interest in. There was a hollow beneath. Within it, wrapped in soft leather, were Roland’s guns.

If things go badly, thee must come here and take them west to Gilead. Find my father.

With faint but genuine curiosity, Susan wondered if Roland had really expected she would ride blithely off to Gilead with his unborn child in her belly while he and his friends were roasted, screaming and red-handed, on the Reap-Night bonfire.

She pulled one of the guns out of its holster. It took her a moment or two to sec how to get the revolver open, hut then the cylinder rolled out and she saw that each chamber was loaded. She snapped it back into place and checked the other one.

She concealed them in the blanket-roll behind her saddle, just as Roland had, then mounted up and headed east again. But not toward town. Not yet. She had one more stop to make first.

5

At around two o’ the clock, word that Fran Lengyll would be speaking at the Town Gathering Hall began to sweep through the town of Mejis. No one could have said where this news (it was too firm and specific to be a rumor) began, and no one much cared; they simply passed it on.

By three o’ the clock, the Gathering Hall was full, and two hundred or more stood outside, listening as Lengyll’s brief address was relayed back to them in whispers. Coral Thorin, who had begun passing the news of Lengyll’s impending appearance at the Travellers’ Rest, was not there. She knew what Lengyll was going to say; had, in fact, supported Jonas’s argument that it should be as simple and direct as possible. There was no need for rabble-rousing; the townsfolk would be a mob by sundown of

Reaping Day, a mob always picked its own leaders, and it always picked the right ones.

Lengyll spoke with his hat held in one hand and a silver reap-charm hanging from the front of his vest. He was brief, he was rough, and he was convincing. Most folks in the crowd had known him all their lives, and didn’t doubt a word he said.

Hart Thorin and Kimba Rimer had been murdered by Dearborn, Heath, and Stockworth, Lengyll told the crowd of men in denim and women in faded gingham. The crime had come home to them because of a certain item-a bird’s skull-left in Mayor Thorin’s lap.

Murmurs greeted this. Many of Lengyll’s listeners had seen the skull, either mounted on the horn of Cuthbert’s saddle or worn jauntily around his neck. They had laughed at his prankishness. Now they thought of how he had laughed back at them, and realized he must have been laughing at a different joke all along. Their faces darkened.

The weapon used to slit the Chancellor’s throat, Lengyll continued, had belonged to Dearborn. The three young men had been taken that morning as they prepared to flee Mejis. Their motivations were not entirely clear, but they were likely after horses. If so, they would be for John Farson, who was known to pay well for good nags, and in cash. They were, in other words, traitors to their own lands and to the cause of the Affiliation.

Lengyll had planted Brian Hockey’s son Rufus three rows back. Now, exactly on time, Rufus Hookey shouted out: “Has they confessed?”

“Aye,” Lengyll said. “Confessed both murders, and spoke it most proud, so they did.”

A louder murmur at this, almost a rumble. It ran backward like a wave to the outside, where it went from mouth to mouth: most proud, most proud, they had murdered in the dark of night and spoke it most proud.

Mouths were tucked down. Fists clenched.

“Dearborn said that Jonas and his friends had caught on to what they were doing, and took the word to Rimer. They killed Chancellor Rimer to shut him up while they finished their chores, and Thorin in case Rimer had passed word on.”

This made little sense, Latigo had argued. Jonas had smiled and nodded. No, he had said, not a mite of sense, but it doesn’t matter.

Lengyll was prepared to answer questions, but none were asked. There was only the murmur, the dark looks, the muted click and clink of reap-charms as people shifted on their feet.

The boys were in jail. Lengyll made no statement concerning what would happen to them next, and once again he was not asked. He said that some of the activities scheduled for the next day-the games, the rides, the turkey-run, the pumpkin-carving contest, the pig-scramble, the riddling competition, and the dance-had been cancelled out of respect for the tragedy. The things that really mattered would go on, of course, as they always had and must: the cattle and livestock judging, the horse-pull, the sheep-shearing, the stockline meetings, and the auctions: horse, pig, cow, sheep. And the bonfire at moonrise. The bonfire and the burning of the guys. Charyou tree was the end of Reaping Fair-Day, and had been since time out of mind. Nothing would stop it save the end of the world.

“The bonfire will bum and the stuffy-guys will bum on it,” Eldred Jonas had told Lengyll. “That’s all you’re to say. It’s all you need to say.”

And he’d been right, Lengyll saw. It was on every face. Not just the determination to do right, but a kind of dirty eagerness. There were old ways, old rites of which the red-handed stuffy-guys were one surviving remnant. There were los ceremoniosos: Charyou tree. It had been generations since they had been practiced (except, every once and again, in secret places out in the hills), but sometimes when the world moved on, it came back to where it had been.

Keep it brief, Jonas had said, and it had been fine advice, fine advice indeed. He wasn’t a man Lengyll would have wanted around in more peaceful times, but a useful one in times such as these.

“Gods give you peace,” he said now, stepping back and folding his arms with his hands on his shoulders to show he had finished. “Gods give us all peace.”

“Long days and peaceful nights,” they returned in a low, automatic chorus. And then they simply turned and left, to go wherever folks went on the afternoon before Reaping. For a good many of them, Lengyll knew, it would be the Travellers’ Rest or the Bayview Hotel. He raised a hand and mopped his brow. He hated to be out in front of people, and never so much as today, but he thought it had gone well. Very well, indeed.

6

The crowd streamed away without speaking. Most, as Lengyll had foreseen, headed for the saloons. Their way took them past the jail, but few looked at it… and those few who did, did so in tiny, furtive glances. The porch was empty (save for a plump red-handed stuffy sprawled in Sheriff Avery’s rocker), and the door stood ajar, as it usually did on warm and sunny afternoons. The boys were inside, no doubt about that, but there was no sign that they were being guarded with any particular zeal.

If the men passing on their way downhill to the Rest and the Bayview had banded together into one group, they could have taken Roland and his friends with no trouble whatsoever. Instead, they went by with their heads down, walking stolidly and with no conversation to where the drinks were waiting. Today was not the day. Nor tonight.

Tomorrow, however-

7

Not too far from the Bar K, Susan saw something on the Barony’s long slope of grazing-land that made her rein up and simply sit in the saddle with her mouth open. Below her and much farther east of her position, at least three miles away, a band of a dozen cowboys had rounded up the biggest herd of Drop-runners she had ever seen: perhaps four hundred head in all. They ran lazily, going where the vaqs pointed them with no trouble.

Probably think they’re going in for the winter, Susan thought. But they weren’t headed in toward the ranches running along the crest of the Drop; the herd, so large it flowed on the grass like a cloud-shadow, was headed west, toward Hanging Rock.

Susan had believed everything Roland said, but this made it true in a personal way, one she could relate directly to her dead father. Horses, of courses.

“You bastards,” she murmured. “You horse-thieving bastards.” She turned Pylon and rode for the burned-out ranch. To her right, her shadow was growing long. Overhead, the Demon Moon glimmered ghostly in the daylight sky.

8

She had worried that Jonas might have left men at the Bar K-although why he would’ve she didn’t really know, and the fear turned out to be groundless in any case. The ranch was as empty as it had been for the five or six years between the fire that had put paid to it and the arrival of the boys from In-World. She could see signs of that morning’s confrontation, however, and when she went into the bunkhouse where the three of them had slept, she at once saw the gaping hole in the floorboards. Jonas had neglected to close it up again after taking Alain’s and Cuthbert’s guns.

She went down the aisle between the bunks, dropped to one knee, and looked into the hole. Nothing. Yet she doubted if what she had come for had been there in the first place-the hole wasn’t big enough.

She paused, looking at the three cots. Which was Roland’s? She supposed she could find out-her nose would tell her, she knew the smell of his hair and skin very well-but she thought she would do better to put such soft impulses behind her. What she needed now was to be hard and quick-to move without pausing or looking back.

Ashes, Aunt Cord whispered in her head, almost too faintly to hear. Susan shook her head impatiently, as if to clear that voice away, and walked out back.

There was nothing behind the bunkhouse, nothing behind the privy or to either side of it. She went around to the back of the old cook-shack next, and there she found what she’d come looking for, placed casually and with no attempt at concealment: the two small barrels she had last seen slung over Caprichoso’s back.

The thought of the mule summoned the thought of Sheemie, looking down at her from his man’s height and with his hopeful boy’s face. I’d like to take a fin de ano kiss from ye, so I would.

Sheemie, whose life had been saved by “Mr. Arthur Heath.” Sheemie, who had risked the wrath of the witch by giving Cuthbert the note meant for her aunt. Sheemie, who had brought these barrels up here. They had been smeared with soot to partially camouflage them, and Susan got some on her hands and the sleeves of her shirt as she took off the tops- more ashes. But the firecrackers were still inside: the round, fist-sized big-bangers and the smaller ladyfingers.

She took plenty of both, stuffing her pockets until they bulged and carrying more in her arms. She stowed them in her saddlebags, then looked up at the sky. Three-thirty. She wanted to get back to Hambry no earlier than twilight, and that meant at least an hour to wait. There was a little time to be soft, after all.

Susan went back into the bunkhouse and found the bed which had been Roland’s easily enough. She knelt beside it like a child saying bedtime prayers, put her face against his pillow, and inhaled deeply.

“Roland,” she said, her voice muffled. “How I love thee. How I love thee, dear.”

She lay on his bed and looked toward the window, watching the light drain away. Once she raised her hands in front of her eyes, examining the barrel-soot on her fingers. She thought of going to the pump in front of the cookhouse and washing, but decided not to. Let it stay. They were ka-tet, one from many-strong in purpose and strong in love.

Let the ashes stay, and do their worst.

9

My Susie has'er faults, but she’s always on time. Pat Delgado used to say. Fearful punctual, that girl.

It was true on the night before Reap. She skirted her own house and rode up to the Travellers’ Rest not ten minutes after the sun had finally gone behind the hills, filling the High Street with thick mauve shadows.

The street was eerily deserted, considering it was the night before Reap; the band which had played in Green Heart every night for the last week was silent; there were periodic rattles of firecrackers, but no yelling, laughing children; only a few of the many colored lamps had been lit.

Stuffy-guys seemed to peer from every shadow-thickened porch. Susan shivered at the sight of their blank white-cross eyes.

Doings at the Rest were similarly odd. The hitching-rails were crowded (even more horses had been tied at the rails of the mercantile across the street) and light shone from every window-so many windows and so many lights that the inn looked like a vast ship on a darkened sea-but there was none of the usual riot and jubilation, all set to the jagtime tunes pouring out of Sheb’s piano.

She found she could imagine the customers inside all too well- a hundred men, maybe more-simply standing around and drinking. Not talking, not laughing, not chucking the dice down Satan’s Alley and cheering or groaning at the result. No bottoms stroked or pinched; no Reap-kisses stolen; no arguments started out of loose mouths and finished with hard fists. Just men drinking, not three hundred yards from where her love and his friends were locked up. The men who were here wouldn’t do anything tonight but drink, though. And if she was lucky… brave and lucky…

As she drew Pylon up in front of the saloon with a murmured word, a shape rose out of the shadows. She tensed, and then the first orangey light of the rising moon caught Sheemie’s face. She relaxed again-even laughed a little, mostly at herself. He was a part of their ka-tet; she knew he was. Was it surprising that he should know, as well?

“Susan,” he murmured, taking off his sombrero and holding it against his chest. “I been waiting for'ee.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Cause I knew ye’d come.” He looked back over his shoulder at the Rest, a black bulk spraying crazy light toward every point of the compass. “We’re going to let Arthur and them free, ain’t we?”

“I hope so,” she said.

“We have to. The folks in there, they don’t talk, but they don’t have to talk. I knows, Susan, daughter of Pat. I knows.”

She supposed he did. “Is Coral inside?”

Sheemie shook his head. “Gone up to Mayor’s House. She told Stanley she was going to help lay out the bodies for the funeral day after tomorrow, but I don’t think she’ll be here for the funeral. I think the Big Coffin Hunters is going and she’ll go with ’em.” He raised a hand and swiped at his leaking eyes. “Your mule, Sheemie-” “All saddled, and I got the long halter.” She looked at him, open-mouthed. “How did ye know-” “Same way I knew ye’d be coming, Susan-sai. I just knew.” He shrugged, then pointed vaguely. “Capi’s around the back. I tied him to the cook’s pump.”

“That’s good.” She fumbled in the saddlebag where she had put the smaller firecrackers. “Here. Take some of these. Do’ee have a sulfur or two?”

“Aye.” He asked no questions, simply stuffed the firecrackers into his front pocket. She, however, who had never been through the bat-wing doors of the Travellers’ Rest in her whole life, had another question for him.

“What do they do with their coats and hats and scrapes when they come in, Sheemie? They must take em off; drinking’s warm work.”

“Oh, aye. They puts em on a long table just inside the door. Some fights about whose is whose when they’re ready to go home.”

She nodded, thinking hard and fast. He stood before her, still holding his sombrero against his chest, letting her do what he could not… at least not in the conventionally understood way. At last she raised her head again.

“Sheemie, if you help me, you’re done in Hambry… done in Mejis… done in the Outer Arc. You go with us if we get away. You have to understand that. Do you?”

She saw he did; his face fairly shone with the idea. “Aye, Susan! Go with you and Will Dearborn and Richard Stockworth and my best friend, Mr. Arthur Heath! Go to In-World! We’ll see buildings and statues and women in gowns like fairy princesses and-”

“If we’re caught, we’ll be killed."

He stopped smiling, but his eyes didn’t waver. “Aye, killed we’ll be if ta'en, most like.”

“Will you still help me?”

“Capi’s all saddled,” he repeated. Susan reckoned that was answer enough. She took hold of the hand pressing the sombrero to Sheemie’s chest (the hat’s crown was pretty well crushed, and not for the first time). She bent, holding Sheemie’s fingers with one hand and the horn of her saddle with the other, and kissed his cheek. He smiled up at her.

“We’ll do our best, won’t we?” she asked him.

“Aye, Susan daughter of Pat. We’ll do our best for our friends. Our very best.”

“Yes. Now listen, Sheemie. Very carefully.”

She began to talk, and Sheemie listened.

10

Twenty minutes later, as the bloated orange moon struggled above the buildings of the town like a pregnant woman climbing a steep hill, a lone vaquero led a mule along Hill Street in the direction of the Sheriff’s office. This end of Hill Street was a pit of shadows. There was a little light around Green Heart, but even the park (which would have been thronged, noisy, and brilliantly lit in any other year) was mostly empty. Nearly all the booths were closed, and of those few that remained open, only the fortune-teller was doing any business. Tonight all fortunes were bad, but still they came-don’t they always?

The vaquero was wearing a heavy serape; if this particular cowboy had the breasts of a woman, they were concealed. The vaq wore a large, sweat-stained sombrero; if this cowboy had the face of a woman, it was likewise concealed. Low, from beneath that hat’s broad brim, came a voice singing “Careless Love.”

The mule’s small saddle was buried under the large bundle which had been roped to it-cloth or clothes of some kind, it might have been, although the deepening shadows made it impossible to say for sure. Most amusing of all was what hung around the mule’s neck like some peculiar reap-charm: two sombreros and a drover’s hat strung on a length of rope.

As the vaq neared the Sheriff’s office, the singing ceased. The place might have been deserted if not for the single dim light shining through one window. In the porch rocker was a comical stuffy-guy wearing one of Herk Avery’s embroidered vests and a tin star. There were no guards; absolutely no sign that the three most hated men in Mejis were sequestered within. And now, very faintly, the vaquero could hear the strum of a guitar.

It was blotted out by a thin rattle of firecrackers. The vaq looked over one shoulder and saw a dim figure. It waved. The vaquero nodded, waved back, then tied the mule to the hitching-post-the same one where Roland and his friends had tied their horses when they had come to introduce themselves to the Sheriff, on a summer day so long ago.

11

The door opened-no one had bothered to lock it-while Dave Hollis was trying, for about the two hundredth time, to play the bridge of “Captain Mills, You Bastard.” Across from him, Sheriff Avery sat rocked back in his desk chair with his hands laced together on his paunch. The room flickered with mild orange lamplight.

“You keep it up, Deputy Dave, and there won’t have to be any execution,” Cuthbert Allgood said. He was standing at the door of one of the cells with his hands wrapped around the bars. “We’ll kill ourselves. In self-defense.”

“Shut up, maggot,” Sheriff Avery said. He was half-dozing in the wake of a four-chop dinner, thinking of how he would tell his brother (and his brother’s wife, who was killing pretty) in the next Barony about this heroic day. He would be modest, but he would still get it across to them that he’d played a central role; that if not for him, these three young ladrones might have-

“Just don’t sing,” Cuthbert said to Dave. “I’ll confess to the murder of Arthur Eld himself if you just don’t sing.”

To Bert’s left, Alain was sitting cross-legged on his bunk. Roland was lying on his with his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling. But at the moment the door’s latch clicked, he swung to a sitting position. As if he’d only been waiting.

“That’ll be Bridger,” Deputy Dave said, gladly putting his guitar aside. He hated this duty and couldn’t wait to be relieved. Heath’s jokes were the worst. That he could continue to joke in the face of what was going to happen to them tomorrow.

“I think it’s likely one of them,” Sheriff Avery said, meaning the Big Coffin Hunters.

In fact, it was neither. It was a cowboy all but buried in a serape that looked much too big for him (the ends actually dragged on the boards as he clumped in and shut the door behind him), and wearing a hat that came way down over his eyes. To Herk Avery, the fellow looked like somebody’s idea of a cowboy stuffy.

“Say, stranger!” he said, beginning to smile… for this was surely someone’s joke, and Herk Avery could take a joke as well as any man. Especially after four chops and a mountain of mashed. “Howdy! What business do ye-”

The hand which hadn’t closed the door had been under the scrape. When it came out, it was clumsily holding a gun all three of the prisoners recognized at once. Avery stared at it, his smile slowly fading. His hands unlaced themselves. His feet, which had been propped up on his desk, came down to the floor.

“Whoa, partner,” he said slowly. “Let’s talk about it.”

“Get the keys off the wall and unlock the cells,” the vaq said in a hoarse, artificially deep voice. Outside, unnoticed by all save Roland, more firecrackers rattled in a dry, popping string.

“I can’t hardly do that,” Avery said, easing open the bottom drawer of his desk with his foot. There were several guns, left over from that morning, inside. “Now, I don’t know if that thing’s loaded, but I don’t hardly think a traildog like you-”

The newcomer pointed the gun at the desk and pulled the trigger. The report was deafening in the little room, but Roland thought-hoped-that with the door shut, it would sound like just another firecracker. Bigger than some, smaller than others.

Good girl, he thought. Oh, good girl-but be careful. For gods’ sake, Sue, be careful.

All three of them standing in a line at the cell doors now, eyes wide and mouths tight.

The bullet struck the comer of the Sheriff’s rolltop and tore off a huge splinter. Avery screamed, tilted back in his chair again, and went sprawling. His foot remained hooked under the drawer-pull; the drawer shot out and overturned, spilling three ancient firearms across the board floor.

“Susan, look out!” Cuthbert shouted, and then: “No, Dave!”

At the end of his life, it was duty and not fear of the Big Coffin Hunters which propelled Dave Hollis, who had hoped to be Sheriff of Mejis himself when Avery retired (and, he sometimes told his wife, Judy, a better one than Fatso had ever dreamed of being). He forgot that he had serious questions about the way the boys had been taken as well as about what they might or might not have done. All he thought of then was that they were prisoners o’ the Barony, and such would not be taken if he could help it.

He lunged for the cowboy in the too-big clothes, meaning to tear the gun out of his hands. And shoot him with it, if necessary.

12

Susan was staring at the yellow blaze of fresh wood on the comer of the Sheriff’s desk, forgetting everything in her amazement-so much damage inflicted by the single twitch of a finger!-when Cuthbert’s desperate shout awakened her to her position.

She shrank back against the wall, avoiding Dave’s first swipe at the oversized serape, and, without thinking, pulled the trigger again. There was another loud explosion, and Dave Hollis-a young man only two years older than she herself-was flung backward with a smoking hole in his shirt between two points of the star he wore. His eyes were wide and unbelieving. His monocle lay by one outstretched hand on its length of black silk ribbon. One of his feet struck his guitar and knocked it to the floor with a thrum nearly as musical as the chords he had been trying to make.

“Dave,” she whispered. “Oh Dave, I’m sorry, what did I do?”

Dave tried once to get up, then collapsed forward on his face. The hole going into the front of him was small, but the one she was looking at now, the one coming out the back, was huge and hideous, all black and red and charred edges of cloth… as if she had run him through with a blazing hot poker instead of shooting him with a gun, which was supposed to be merciful and civilized and was clearly neither one.

“Dave,” she whispered. “Dave, I…”

“Susan look out!” Roland shouted.

It was Avery. He scuttled forward on his hands and knees, seized her around the calves, and yanked her feet out from under her. She came down on her bottom with a tooth-rattling crash and was face to face with him-his frog-eyed, large-pored face, his garlic-smelling hole of a mouth.

“Gods, ye’re a girl,” he whispered, and reached for her. She pulled the trigger of Roland’s gun again, setting the front of her serape on fire and blowing a hole in the ceiling. Plaster dust drifted down. Avery’s ham sized hands settled around her throat, cutting off her wind. Somewhere far away, Roland shrieked her name.

She had one more chance.

Maybe.

One’s enough, Sue, her father spoke inside of her head. One’s all ye need, my dear.

She cocked Roland’s pistol with the side of her thumb, socked the muzzle deep into the flab hanging from the underside of Sheriff Herk Avery’s head, and pulled the trigger.

The mess was considerable.

13

Avery’s head dropped into her lap, as heavy and wet as a raw roast. Above it, she could feel growing heat. At the bottom edge of her vision was the yellow flicker of fire.

“On the desk!” Roland shouted, yanking the door of his cell so hard it rattled in its frame. “Susan, the water-pitcher! For your father’s sake!”

She rolled Avery’s head out of her lap, got to her feet, and staggered to the desk with the front of the serape burning. She could smell its charred stench and was grateful in some far comer of her mind that she’d had time, while waiting for dusk, to tie her hair behind her.

The pitcher was almost full, but not with water; she could smell the sweet-sour tang of graf. She doused herself with it, and there was a brisk hissing as the liquid hit the flames. She stripped the serape off (the oversized sombrero came with it) and threw it on the floor. She looked at Dave again, a boy she had grown up with, one she might even have kissed behind the door of Hockey’s, once upon an antique time.

“Susan!” It was Roland’s voice, harsh and urgent. “The keys! Hurry!”

Susan grabbed the keyring from the nail on the wall. She went to Roland’s cell first and thrust the ring blindly through the bars. The air was thick with smells of gunsmoke, burned wool, blood. Her stomach clenched helplessly at every breath.

Roland picked the right key, reached back through the bars with it, and plunged it into the lockbox. A moment later he was out, and hugging her roughly as her tears broke. A moment after that, Cuthbert and Alain were out, as well.

“You’re an angel!” Alain said, hugging her himself.

“Not I,” she said, and began to cry harder. She thrust the gun at Roland. It felt filthy in her hand; she never wanted to touch one again. “Him and me played together when we were berries. He was one of the good ones-never a braid-puller or a bully-and he grew up a good one. Now I’ve ended him, and who’ll tell his wife?”

Roland took her back into his arms and held her there for a moment. “You did what you had to. If not him, then us. Does thee not know it?”

She nodded against his chest. “Avery, him I don’t mind so much, but Dave…”

“Come on,” Roland said. “Someone might recognize the gunshots for what they were. Was it Sheemie throwing firecrackers?”

She nodded. “I’ve got clothes for you. Hats and scrapes.”

Susan hurried back to the door, opened it, peeked out in either direction, then slipped into the growing dark.

Cuthbert took the charred serape and put it over Deputy Dave’s face. “Tough luck, partner,” he said. “You got caught in between, didn’t you? I reckon you wasn’t so bad.”

Susan came back in, burdened with the stolen gear which had been tied to Capi’s saddle. Sheemie was already off on his next errand without having to be told. If the inn-boy was a halfwit, she’d known a lot of folks in her time who were running on quarters and eighths.

“Where’d you get this stuff?” Alain asked.

“The Travellers’ Rest. And I didn’t. Sheemie did.” She held the hats out. “Come on, hurry.”

Cuthbert took the headgear and passed it out. Roland and Alain had already slipped into the scrapes; with the hats added and pulled well down over their faces, they could have been any Drop-vaqs in Barony.

“Where are we going?” Alain asked as they stepped out onto the porch. The street was still dark and deserted at this end; the gunshots had attracted no attention.

“Hockey’s, to start with,” Susan said. “That’s where your horses are.”

They went down the street together in a little group of four. Capi was gone; Sheemie had taken the mule along. Susan’s heart was thudding rapidly and she could feel sweat standing out on her brow, but she still felt cold. Whether or no what she had done was murder, she had ended two lives this evening, and crossed a line that could never be recrossed in the other direction. She had done it for Roland, for her love, and simply knowing she could have done no different now offered some consolation.

Be happy together, ye faithless, ye cozeners, ye murderers. I curse thee with the ashes.

Susan seized Roland’s hand, and when he squeezed, she squeezed back. And as she looked up at Demon Moon, its wicked face now draining from choleric red-orange to silver, she thought that when she had pulled the trigger on poor, earnest Dave Hollis, she had paid for her love with the dearest currency of all-had paid with her soul. If he left her now, her aunt’s curse would be fulfilled, for only ashes would remain.

1

As they stepped into the stable, which was lit by one dim gas lamp, a shadow moved out of one of the stalls. Roland, who had belted on both guns, now drew them. Sheemie looked at him with an uncertain smile, holding a stirrup in one hand. Then the smile broadened, his eyes flashed with happiness, and he ran toward them.

Roland bolstered his guns and made ready to embrace the boy, but Sheemie ran past him and threw himself into Cuthbert’s arms.

“Whoa, whoa,” Cuthbert said, first staggering back comically and then lifting Sheemie off his feet. “You like to knock me over, boy!”

“She got ye out!” Sheemie cried. “Knew she would, so I did! Good old Susan!” Sheemie looked around at Susan, who stood beside Roland. She was still pale, but now seemed composed. Sheemie turned back to Cuthbert and planted a kiss directly in the center of Bert’s forehead.

“Whoa!” Bert said again. “What’s that for?”

“Cause I love you, good old Arthur Heath! You saved my life!”

“Well, maybe I did,” Cuthbert said, laughing in an embarrassed way (his borrowed sombrero, too large to begin with, now sat comically askew on his head), “but if we don’t get a move on, I won’t have saved it for long.”

“Horses are all saddled,” Sheemie said. “Susan told me to do it and I did. I did it just right. I just have to put this stirrup on Mr. Richard Stock-worth’s horse, because the one on there’s 'bout worn through.”

“That’s a job for later,” Alain said, taking the stirrup. He put it aside, then turned to Roland. “Where do we go?”

Roland’s first thought was that they should return to the Thorin mausoleum.

Sheemie reacted with instant horror. “The boneyard? And with Demon Moon at the full?” He shook his head so violently that his sombrero came off and his hair flew from side to side. “They’re dead in there, sai Dearborn, but if ye tease em during the time of the Demon, they’s apt to get up and walk!”

“It’s no good, anyway,” Susan said. “The women of the town’ll be lining the way from Seafront with flowers, and filling the mausoleum, too. Olive will be in charge, if she’s able, but my aunt and Coral are apt to be in the company. Those aren’t ladies we want to meet.”

“All right,” Roland said. “Let’s mount up and ride. Think about it, Susan. You too, Sheemie. We want a place where we can hide up until dawn, at least, and it should be a place we can get to in less than an hour. Off the Great Road, and in any direction from Hambry but northwest.”

“Why not northwest?” Alain asked.

“Because that’s where we’re going now. We’ve got a job to do… and we’re going to let them know we’re doing it. Eldred Jonas most of all.” He offered a thin blade of smile. “I want him to know the game is over. No more Castles. The real gunslingers are here. Let’s see if he can deal with them.”

2

An hour later, with the moon well above the trees, Roland’s ka-tet arrived at the Citgo oilpatch. They rode out parallel to the Great Road for safety’s sake, but, as it happened, the caution was wasted: they saw not one rider on the road, going in either direction. It’s as if Reaping’s been cancelled this year, Susan thought… then she thought of the red-handed stuffies, and shivered. They would have painted Roland’s hands red tomorrow night, and still would, if they were caught. Not just him, either. All of us.

Sheemie, too.

They left the horses (and Caprichoso, who had trotted ill-temperedly but nimbly behind them on a tether) tied to some long-dead pumping equipment in the southeastern comer of the patch, and then walked slowly toward the working derricks, which were clustered in the same area. They spoke in whispers when they spoke at all. Roland doubted if that was necessary, but whispers here seemed natural enough. To Roland, Citgo was far spookier than the graveyard, and while he doubted that the dead in that latter place awoke even when Old Demon was full, there were some very unquiet corpses here, squalling zombies that stood rusty-weird in the moonlight with their pistons going up and down like marching feet.

Roland led them into the active part of the patch, nevertheless, past a sign which read how’s your hardhat? and another reading we produce oil, we refine safety. They stopped at the foot of a derrick grinding so loudly that Roland had to shout in order to be heard.

“Sheemie! Give me a couple of those big-bangers!”

Sheemie had taken a pocketful from Susan’s saddlebag and now handed a pair of them over. Roland took Bert by the arm and pulled him forward. There was a square of rusty fencing around the derrick, and when the boys tried to climb it, the horizontals snapped like old bones. They looked at each other in the running shadows combined of machinery and moonlight, nervous and amused.

Susan twitched Roland’s arm. “Be careful!” she shouted over the rhythmic whumpa-whumpa-whumpa of the derrick machinery. She didn’t look frightened, he saw, only excited and alert.

He grinned, pulled her forward, and kissed the lobe of her ear. “Be ready to run,” he whispered. “If we do this right, there’s going to be a new candle here at Citgo. A hellacious big one.”

He and Cuthbert ducked under the lowest strut of the rusty derrick tower and stood next to the equipment, wincing at the cacophony. Roland wondered that it hadn’t torn itself apart years ago. Most of the works were housed in rusty metal blocks, but he could see a gigantic turning shaft of some kind, gleaming with oil that must be supplied by automated jets. Up this close, there was a gassy smell that reminded him of the jet that flared rhythmically on the other side of the oilpatch.

“Giant-farts!” Cuthbert shouted.

“What?”

“I said it smells like… aw, never mind! Let’s do it if-we can… can we?”

Roland didn’t know. He walked toward the machinery crying out beneath metal cowls which were painted a faded, rusting green. Bert followed with some reluctance. The two of them slid into a short aisle, smelly and baking hot, that took them almost directly beneath the derrick. Ahead of them, the shaft at the end of the piston turned steadily, shedding oily teardrops down its smooth sides. Beside it was a curved pipe- almost surely an overflow pipe, Roland thought. An occasional drop of crude oil fell from its lip, and there was a black puddle on the ground beneath. He pointed at it, and Cuthbert nodded.

Shouting would do no good in here; the world was a roaring, squealing din. Roland curled one hand around his friend’s neck and pulled Cuthbert’s ear to his lips; he held a big-bang up in front of Bert’s eyes with the other.

“Light it and run,” he said. “I’ll hold it, give you as much time as I can. That’s for my benefit as much as for yours. I want a clear path back through that machinery, do you understand?”

Cuthbert nodded against Roland’s lips, then turned the gunslinger’s head so he could speak in the same fashion. “What if there’s enough gas here to bum the air when I make a spark?”

Roland stepped back. Raised his palms in a “How-do-I-know?” gesture. Cuthbert laughed and drew out a box of sulfur matches which he had scooped off Avery’s desk before leaving. He asked with his eyebrows if Roland was ready. Roland nodded.

The wind was blowing hard, but under the derrick the surrounding machinery cut it off and the flame from the sulfur rose straight. Roland held out the big-banger, and had a momentary, painful memory of his mother: how she had hated these things, how she had always been sure that he would lose an eye or a finger to one.

Cuthbert tapped his chest above his heart and kissed his palm in the universal gesture of good luck. Then he touched the flame to the fuse. It began to sputter. Bert turned, pretended to bang off a covered block of machinery-that was Bert, Roland thought; he would joke on the gallows-and then dashed back down the short corridor they’d used to get here.

Roland held the round firework as long as he dared, then lobbed it into the overflow pipe. He winced as he turned away, half-expecting what Bert was afraid of: that the very air would explode. It didn’t. He ran down the short aisle, came into the clear, and saw Cuthbert standing just outside the broken bit of fencing. Roland flapped both hands at him-Go, you idiot, go!-and then the world blew up behind him.

The sound was a deep, belching thud that seemed to shove his eardrums inward and suck the breath out of his throat. The ground rolled under his feet like a wave under a boat, and a large, warm hand planted itself in the center of his back and shoved him forward. He thought he ran with it for a step-maybe even two or three steps-and then he was lifted off his feet and hurled at the fence, where Cuthbert was no longer standing; Cuthbert was sprawled on his back, staring up at something behind Roland. The boy’s eyes were wide and wondering; his mouth hung open. Roland could see all this very well, because Citgo was now as bright as in full daylight. They had lit their own Reaping bonfire, it seemed, a night early and much brighter than the one in town could ever hope to be.

He went skidding on his knees to where Cuthbert lay, and grabbed him under one arm. From behind them came a vast, ripping roar, and now chunks of metal began to fall around them. They got up and ran toward where Alain stood in front of Susan and Sheemie, trying to protect them.

Roland took a quick look back over his shoulder and saw that the remains of the derrick-about half of it still stood-were glowing blackish red, like a heated horseshoe, around a flaring yellow torch that ran perhaps a hundred and fifty feet into the sky. It was a start. He didn’t know how many other derricks they could fire before folk began arriving from town, but he was determined to do as many as possible, no matter what the risks might be. Blowing up the tankers at Hanging Rock was only half the job. Farson’s source had to be wiped out.

Further firecrackers dropped down further overflow pipes turned out not to be necessary. There was a network of interconnected pipes under the oilpatch, most filled with natural gas that had leaked in through ancient, decaying seals. Roland and Cuthbert had no more than reached the others when there was a fresh explosion, and a fresh tower of flame erupted from a derrick to the right of the one they had set afire. A moment later, a third derrick-this one sixty full yards away from the first two- exploded with a dragon’s roar. The ironwork tore free of its anchoring concrete pillars like a tooth pulled from a decayed gum. It rose on a cushion of blazing blue and yellow, attained a height of perhaps seventy feet, then heeled over and came crashing back down, spewing sparks in every direction.

Another. Another. And yet another.

The five young people stood in their comer, stunned, holding their hands up to shield their eyes from the glare. Now the oilpatch flared like a birthday cake, and the heat baking toward them was enormous.

“Gods be kind,” Alain whispered.

If they lingered here much longer, Roland realized, they would be popped like corn. There were the horses to consider, too; they were well away from the main focus of the explosions, but there was no guarantee that the focus would stay where it was; already he saw two derricks that hadn’t even been working engulfed in flames. The horses would be terrified.

Hell, he was terrified.

“Come on!” he shouted.

They ran for the horses through shifting yellow-orange brilliance.

3

At first Jonas thought it was going on in his own head-that the explosions were part of their lovemaking.

Lovemaking, yar. Lovemaking, horseshit. He and Coral made love no more than donkeys did sums. But it was something. Oh yes indeed it was.

He’d been with passionate women before, ones who took you into a kind of oven-place and then held you there, staring with greedy intensity as they pumped their hips, but until Coral he’d never been with a woman that sparked such a powerfully harmonic chord in himself. With sex, he had always been the kind of man who took it when it came and forgot it when it didn’t. But with Coral he only wanted to take it, take it, and take it some more. When they were together they made love like cats or ferrets, twisting and hissing and clawing; they bit at each other and cursed at each other, and so far none of it was even close to enough. When he was with her, Jonas sometimes felt as if he were being fried in sweet oil.

Tonight there had been a meeting with the Horsemen’s Association, which had pretty much become the Farson Association in these latter days. Jonas had brought them up to date, had answered their idiotic questions, and had made sure they understood what they’d be doing the next day. With that done, he had checked on Rhea, who had been installed in Kimba Rimer’s old suite. She hadn’t even noticed Jonas peering in at her. She sat in Rimer’s high-ceilinged, book-lined study-behind Rimer’s ironwood desk, in Rimer’s upholstered chair, looking as out of place as a whore’s bloomers on a church altar. On Rimer’s desk was the Wizard’s Rainbow. She was passing her hands back and forth above it and muttering rapidly under her breath, but the ball remained dark.

Jonas had locked her in and had gone to Coral. She had been waiting for him in the parlor where tomorrow’s Conversational would have been held. There were plenty of bedrooms in that wing, but it was to her dead brother’s that she had led him… and not by accident, either, Jonas was sure. There they made love in the canopied bed Hart Thorin would never share with his gilly.

It was fierce, as it had always been, and Jonas was approaching his orgasm when the first oil derrick blew. Christ, she’s something, he thought. There’s never in the whole damned world been a woman like-

Then two more explosions, in rapid succession, and Coral froze for a moment beneath him before beginning to thrust her hips again. “Citgo,” she said in a hoarse, panting voice.

“Yar,” he growled, and began to thrust with her. He had lost all interest in making love, but they had reached the point where it was impossible to stop, even under threat of death or dismemberment.

Two minutes later he was striding, naked, toward Thorin’s little lick of a balcony, his half-erect penis wagging from side to side ahead of him like some halfwit’s idea of a magic wand. Coral was a step behind him, as naked as he was.

“Why now?” she burst out as Jonas thrust open the balcony door. “I could have come three more times!”

Jonas ignored her. The countryside looking northwest was a moon-gilded darkness… except where the oilpatch was. There he saw a fierce yellow core of light. It was spreading and brightening even as he watched; one thudding explosion after another hammered across the intervening miles.

He felt a curious darkening in his mind-that feeling had been there ever since the brat, Dearborn, by the some febrile leap of intuition, had recognized him for who and what he was. Making love to the energetic Coral melted that feeling a little, but now, looking at the burning tangle of fire which had five minutes ago been the Good Man’s oil reserves, it came back with debilitating intensity, like a swamp-fever that sometimes quits the flesh but hides in the bones and never really leaves. You ’re in the west, Dearborn had said. The soul of a man such as you can never leave the west. Of course it was true, and he hadn’t needed any such titmonkey as Will Dearborn to tell him… but now that it had been said, there was a part of his mind that couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Fucking Will Dearborn. Where, exactly, was he now, him and his pair of good-mannered mates? In Avery’s culabozo? Jonas didn’t think so. Not anymore.

Fresh explosions ripped the night. Down below, men who had run and shouted in the wake of the early morning’s assassinations were running and shouting again.

“It’s the biggest Reaping firework that ever was,” Coral said in a low voice.

Before Jonas could reply, there was a hard hammering on the bedroom door. It was thrown open a second later, and Clay Reynolds came clumping across the room, wearing a pair of blue jeans and nothing else. His hair was wild; his eyes were wilder.

“Bad news from town, Eldred,” he said. “Dearborn and the other two In-World brats”

Three more explosions, falling almost on top of each other. From the blazing Citgo oilpatch a great red-orange fireball rose lazily into the black of night, faded, disappeared. Reynolds walked out onto the balcony and stood between them at the railing, unmindful of their nakedness. He stared at the fireball with wide, wondering eyes until it was gone. As gone as the brats. Jonas felt that curious, debilitating gloom trying to steal over him again.

“How did they get away?” he asked. “Do you know? Does Avery?”

“Avery’s dead. The deputy who was with him, too. ’twas another deputy found em, Todd Bridger… Eldred, what’s going on out there? What happened?”

“Oh, that’s your boys,” Coral said. “Didn’t take em long to start their own Reaping party, did it?”

How much heart do they have? Jonas asked himself. It was a good question-maybe the only one that mattered. Were they now done making trouble… or just getting started?

He once more wanted to be out of here-out of Seafront, out of Hambry, out of Mejis. Suddenly, more than anything, he wanted to be miles and wheels and leagues away. He had bounded around his Hillock, it was too late to go back, and now he felt horribly exposed.

“Clay.”

“Yes, Eldred?”

But the man’s eyes-and his mind-were still on the conflagration at Citgo. Jonas took his shoulder and turned Reynolds toward him. Jonas felt his own mind starting to pick up speed, ticking past points and details, and welcomed the feeling. That queer, dark sense of fatalism faded and disappeared.

“How many men are here?” he asked.

Reynolds frowned, thought about it. “Thirty-five.” he said. “Maybe.”

“How many armed?”

“With guns?”

“No, with pea-blowers, you damned fool.”

“Probably… “Reynolds pulled his lower lip, frowning more fiercely than ever. “Probably a dozen. That’s guns likely to work, you ken.”

“The big boys from the Horsemen’s Association? Still all here?”

“I think so.”

“Get Lengyll and Renfrew. At least you won’t have to wake em up; they’ll all be up, and most of em right down there.” Jonas jerked a thumb at the courtyard. “Tell Renfrew to put together an advance party. Armed men. I’d like eight or ten, but I’ll take five. Have that old woman’s cart harnessed to the strongest, hardiest pony this place has got. Tell that old fuck Miguel that if the pony he chooses dies in the traces between here and Hanging Rock, he’ll be using his wrinkled old balls for earplugs.”

Coral Thorin barked brief, harsh laughter. Reynolds glanced at her, did a double-take at her breasts, then looked back at Jonas with an effort.

“Where’s Roy?” Jonas asked.

Reynolds looked up. “Third floor. With some little serving maid.”

“Kick him out,” Jonas said. “It’s his job to get the old bitch ready to ride.”

“We’re going?”

“Soon as we can. You and me first, with Renfrew’s boys, and Lengyll behind, with the rest of the men. You just make sure Hash Renfrew’s with us, Clay; that man’s got sand in his craw.”

“What about the horses out on the Drop?”

“Never mind the everfucking horses.” There was another explosion at Citgo; another fireball floated into the sky. Jonas couldn’t see the dark clouds of smoke which must be rushing up, or smell the oil; the wind, out of the east and into the west, would be carrying both away from town.

“But-”

“Just do as I say.” Jonas now saw his priorities in clear, ascending order. The horses were on the bottom-Farson could find horses damned near anywhere. Above them were the tankers gathered at Hanging Rock. They were more important than ever now, because the source was gone. Lose the tankers, and the Big Coffin Hunters could forget going home.

Yet most important of all was Parson’s little piece of the Wizard’s Rainbow. It was the one truly irreplaceable item. If it was broken, let it be broken in the care of George Latigo, not that of Eldred Jonas.

“Get moving,” he told Reynolds. “Depape rides after, with Lengyll’s men. You with me. Go on. Make it happen.”

“And me?” Coral asked.

He reached out and tugged her toward him. “I ain’t forgot you, darlin,” he said.

Coral nodded and reached between his legs, oblivious of the staring Clay Reynolds. “Aye,” she said. “And I ain’t forgot you.”

4

They escaped Citgo with ringing ears and slightly singed around the edges but not really hurt, Sheemie riding double behind Cuthbert and Caprichoso clattering after, at the end of his long lead.

It was Susan who came up with the place they should go, and like most solutions, it seemed completely obvious… once someone had thought of it. And so, not long after Reaping Eve had become Reaping Mom, the five of them came to the hut in the Bad Grass where Susan and Roland had on several occasions met to make love.

Cuthbert and Alain unrolled blankets, then sat on them to examine the guns they had liberated from the Sheriff’s office. They had also found Bert’s slingshot.

“These’re hard calibers,” Alain said, holding one up with the cylinder sprung and peering one-eyed down the barrel. “If they don’t throw too high or wide, Roland, I think we can do some business with them.”

“I wish we had that rancher’s machine-gun,” Cuthbert said wistfully.

“You know what Cort would say about a gun like that?” Roland asked, and Cuthbert burst out laughing. So did Alain.

“Who’s Cort?” Susan asked.

“The tough man Eldred Jonas only thinks he is,” Alain said. “He was our teacher.”

Roland suggested that they catch an hour or two of sleep-the next day was apt to be difficult. That it might also be their last was something he didn’t feel he had to say.

“Alain, are you listening?”

Alain, who knew perfectly well that Roland wasn’t speaking of his ears or his attention-span, nodded.

“Do you hear anything?”

“Not yet.”

“Keep at it.”

“I will… but I can’t promise anything. The touch is flukey. You know that as well as I do.”

“Just keep trying.”

Sheemie had carefully spread two blankets in the comer next to his proclaimed best friend. “He’s Roland… and he’s Alain… who are you, good old Arthur Heath? Who are you really?”

“Cuthbert’s my name.” He stuck out his hand. “Cuthbert Allgood. How do y'do, and how do y'do, and how do y'do again?”

Sheemie shook the offered hand, then began giggling. It was a cheerful, unexpected sound, and made them all smile. Smiling hurt Roland a little, and he guessed that if he could see his own face, he’d observe a pretty good bum from being so close to the exploding derricks.

“Key-youth-bert,” Sheemie said, giggling. “Oh my! Key-youth-bert, that’s a funny name, no wonder you’re such a funny fellow. Key-youth-bert, oh-aha-ha-ha, that’s a pip, a real pip!”

Cuthbert smiled and nodded. “Can I kill him now, Roland, if we don’t need him any longer?”

“Save him a bit, why don’t you?” Roland said, then turned to Susan, his own smile fading. “Will thee walk out with me a bit, Sue? I’d talk to thee.”

She looked up at him, trying to read his face. “All right.” She held out her hand. Roland took it, they walked into the moonlight together, and beneath its light, Susan felt dread take hold of her heart.

5

They walked out in silence, through sweet-smelling grass that tasted good to cows and horses even as it was expanding in their bellies, first bloating and then killing them. It was high-at least a foot taller than Roland’s head-and still green as summer. Children sometimes got lost in the Bad Grass and died there, but Susan had never feared to be here with Roland, even when there were no sky-markers to steer by; his sense of direction was uncannily perfect.

“Sue, thee disobeyed me in the matter of the guns,” he said at last.

She looked at him, smiling, half-amused and half-angry. “Does thee wish to be back in thy cell, then? Thee and thy friends?”

“No, of course not. Such bravery!” He held her close and kissed her. When he drew back, they were both breathing hard. He took her by the arms and looked into her eyes. “But thee mustn’t disobey me this time.”

She looked at him steadily, saying nothing.

“Thee knows,” he said. “Thee knows what I’d tell thee.”

“Aye, perhaps.”

“Say. Better you than me, maybe.”

“I’m to stay at the hut while you and the others go. Sheemie and I are to stay.”

He nodded. “Will you? Will thee?”

She thought of how unfamiliar and wretched Roland’s gun had felt in her hand as she held it beneath the serape; of the wide, unbelieving look in Dave’s eyes as the bullet she’d fired into his chest flung him backward; of how the first time she’d tried to shoot Sheriff Avery, the bullet had only succeeded in setting her own clothing afire, although he had been right there in front of her. They didn’t have a gun for her (unless she took one of Roland’s), she couldn’t use one very well in any case… and, more important, she didn’t want to use one. Under those circumstances, and with Sheemie to think about, too, it was best she just stay out of the way.

Roland was waiting patiently. She nodded. “Sheemie and I’ll wait for thee. It’s my promise.”

He smiled, relieved.

“Now pay me back with honesty, Roland.”

“If I can.”

She looked up at the moon, shuddered at the ill-omened face she saw, and looked back at Roland. “What chance thee’ll come back to me?”

He thought about this very carefully, still holding to her arms. “Far better than Jonas thinks,” he said at last. “We’ll wait at the edge of the Bad Grass and should be able to mark his coming well enough.”

“Aye, the herd o’ horses I saw-”

“He may come without the horses,” Roland said, not knowing how well he had matched Jonas’s thinking, “but his folk will make noise even if they come without the herd. If there’s enough of them, we’ll see them, as well-they’ll cut a line through the grass like a part in hair.”

Susan nodded. She had seen this many times from the Drop-the mysterious parting of the Bad Grass as groups of men rode through it.

“If they’re looking for thee, Roland? If Jonas sends scouts ahead?”

“I doubt he’ll bother.” Roland shrugged. “If they do, why, we’ll kill them. Silent, if we can. Killing’s what we were trained to do; we’ll do it.”

She turned her hands over, and now she was gripping his arms instead of the other way around. She looked impatient and afraid. “Thee hasn’t answered my question. What chance I’ll see thee back?”

He thought it over. “Even toss,” he said at last.

She closed her eyes as if struck, drew in a breath, let it out, opened her eyes again. “Bad,” she said, “yet maybe not as bad as I thought. And if thee doesn’t come back? Sheemie and I go west, as thee said before?”

“Aye, to Gilead. There’ll be a place of safety and respect for you there, dear, no matter what… but it’s especially important that you go if you don’t hear the tankers explode. Thee knows that, doesn’t thee?”

“To warn yer people-thy ka-tet.”

Roland nodded.

“I’ll warn them, no fear. And keep Sheemie safe, too. He’s as much the reason we’ve got this far as anything I’ve done.”

Roland was counting on Sheemie for more than she knew. If he and Bert and Alain were killed, it was Sheemie who would stabilize her, give her reason to go on.

“When does thee leave?” Susan asked. “Do we have time to make love?”

“We have time, but perhaps it’s best we don’t,” he said. “It’s going to be hard enough to leave thee again without. Unless you really want to… “His eyes half-pleaded with her to say yes.

“Let’s just go back and lie down a bit,” she said, and took his hand. For a moment it trembled on her lips to tell him that she was kindled with his child, but at the last moment she kept silent. There was enough for him to think about without that added, mayhap… and she didn’t want to pass such happy news beneath such an ugly moon. It would surely be bad luck.

They walked back through high grass that was already springing together along their path. Outside the hut, he turned her toward him, put his hands on her cheeks, and softly kissed her again.

“I will love thee forever, Susan,” he said. “Come whatever storms.”

She smiled. The upward movement of her cheeks spilled a pair of tears from her eyes. “Come whatever storms,” she agreed. She kissed him again, and they went inside.

6

The moon had begun to descend when a party of eight rode out beneath the arch with come in peace writ upon it in the Great Letters. Jonas and Reynolds were in the lead. Behind them came Rhea’s black wagon, drawn by a trotting pony that looked strong enough to go all night and half the next day. Jonas had wanted to give her a driver, but Rhea refused-“Never was an animal I didn’t get on with better than any man ever could,” she’d told him, and that seemed to be true. The reins lay limp in her lap; the pony worked smart without them. The other five men consisted of Hash Renfrew, Quint, and three of Renfrew’s best vaqueros.

Coral had wanted to come as well, but Jonas had different ideas. “If we’re killed, you can go on more or less as before,” he’d said. “There’ll be nothing to tie you to us.”

“Without ye, I’m not sure there’d be any reason to go on,” she said.

“Ar, quit that schoolgirl shit, it don’t become you. You’d find plenty of reasons to keep staggerin down the path, if you had to put your mind to it. If all goes well-as I expect it will-and you still want to be with me, ride out of here as soon as you get word of our success. There’s a town west of here in the Vi Castis Mountains. Ritzy. Go there on the fastest horse you can swing a leg over. You’ll be there ahead of us by days, no matter how smart we’re able to push along. Find a respectable inn that’ll take a woman on her own… if there is such a thing in Ritzy. Wait. When we get there with the tankers, you just fall into the column at my right hand. Have you got it?”

She had it. One woman in a thousand was Coral Thorin-sharp as Lord Satan, and able to fuck like Satan’s favorite harlot. Now if things only turned out to be as simple as he’d made them sound.

Jonas fell back until his horse was pacing alongside the black cart. The ball was out of its bag and lay in Rhea’s lap. “Anything?” he asked. He both hoped and dreaded to see that deep pink pulse inside it again.

“Nay. It’ll speak when it needs to, though-count on it.”

“Then what good are you, old woman?”

“Ye’ll know when the time comes,” Rhea said, looking at him with arrogance (and some fear as well, he was happy to see).

Jonas spurred his horse back to the head of the little column. He had decided to take the ball from Rhea at the slightest sign of trouble. In truth, it had already inserted its strange, addicting sweetness into his head; he thought about that single pink pulse of light he’d seen far too much.

Balls, he told himself. Battlesweat’s all I’ve got. Once this business is over, I’ll be my old self again.

Nice if true, but…

… but he had, in truth, begun to wonder.

Renfrew was now riding with Clay. Jonas nudged his horse in between them. His dicky leg was aching like a bastard; another bad sign.

“Lengyll?” he asked Renfrew.

“Putting together a good bunch,” Renfrew said, “don’t you fear Fran Lengyll. Thirty men.”

“Thirty! God Harry’s body, I told you I wanted forty! Forty at least!”

Renfrew measured him with a pale-eyed glance, then winced at a particularly vicious gust of the freshening wind. He pulled his neckerchief up over his mouth and nose. The vaqs riding behind had already done so. “How afraid of these three boys are you, Jonas?”

“Afraid for both of us, I guess, since you’re too stupid to know who they are or what they’re capable of.” He raised his own neckerchief, then forced his voice into a more reasonable timbre. It was best he do so; he needed these bumpkins yet awhile longer. Once the ball was turned over to Latigo, that might change. “Though mayhap we’ll never see them.”

“It’s likely they’re already thirty miles from here and riding west as fast as their horses’ll take em,” Renfrew agreed. “I’d give a crown to know how they got loose.”

What does it matter, you idiot? Jonas thought, but said nothing.

“As for Lengyll’s men, they’ll be the hardest boys he can lay hands on-if it comes to a fight, those thirty will fight like sixty.”

Jonas’s eyes briefly met Clay’s. I’ll believe it when I see it, Clay’s brief glance said, and Jonas knew again why he had always liked this one better than Roy Depape.

“How many armed?”

“With guns? Maybe half. They’ll be no more than an hour behind us.”

“Good.” At least their back door was covered. It would have to do. And he couldn’t wait to be rid of that thrice-cursed ball.

Oh? whispered a sly, half-mad voice from a place much deeper than his heart. Oh, can’t you?

Jonas ignored the voice until it stilled. Half an hour later, they turned off the road and onto the Drop. Several miles ahead, moving in the wind like a silver sea, was the Bad Grass.

7

Around the time that Jonas and his party were riding down the Drop, Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain were swinging up into their saddles. Susan and Sheemie stood by the doorway to the hut, holding hands and watching them solemnly.

“Thee’ll hear the explosions when the tankers go, and smell the smoke,” Roland said. “Even with the wind the wrong way, I think thee’ll smell it. Then, no more than an hour later, more smoke. There.” He pointed. “That’ll be the brush piled in front of the canyon’s mouth.”

“And if we don’t see those things?”

“Into the west. But thee will, Sue. I swear thee will.”

She stepped forward, put her hands on his thigh, and looked up at him in the latening moonlight. He bent; put his hand lightly against the back of her head; put his mouth on her mouth.

“Go thy course in safety,” Susan said as she drew back from him.

“Aye,” Sheemie added suddenly. “Stand and be true, all three.” He came forward himself and shyly touched Cuthbert’s boot.

Cuthbert reached down, took Sheemie’s hand, and shook it. “Take care of her, old boy.”

Sheemie nodded seriously. “I will.”

“Come on,” Roland said. He felt that if he looked at her solemn, upturned face again, he would cry. “Let’s go.”

They rode slowly away from the hut. Before the grass closed behind them, hiding it from view, he looked back a final time.

“Sue, I love thee.”

She smiled. It was a beautiful smile. “Bird and bear and hare and fish,” she said.

The next time Roland saw her, she was caught inside the Wizard’s glass.

8

What Roland and his friends saw west of the Bad Grass had a harsh, lonely beauty. The wind was lifting great sheets of sand across the stony desert floor; the moonlight turned these into foot racing phantoms. At moments Hanging Rock was visible some two wheels distant, and the mouth of Eyebolt Canyon two wheels farther on. Sometimes both were gone, hidden by the dust. Behind them, the tall grass made a soughing, singing sound.

“How do you boys feel?” Roland asked. “All’s well?”

They nodded.

“There’s going to be a lot of shooting, I think.”

“We’ll remember the faces of our fathers,” Cuthbert said.

“Yes,” Roland agreed, almost absently. “We’ll remember them very well.” He stretched in the saddle. “The wind’s in our favor, not theirs- that’s one good thing. We’ll hear them coming. We must judge the size of the group. All right?”

They both nodded.

“If Jonas has still got his confidence, he’ll come soon, in a small party-whatever gunnies he can put together on short notice-and he’ll have the ball. In that case, we’ll ambush them, kill them all, and take the Wizard’s Rainbow.”

Alain and Cuthbert sat quiet, listening intently. The wind gusted, and Roland clapped a hand to his hat to keep it from flying off. “If he fears more trouble from us, I think he’s apt to come later on, and with a bigger party of riders. If that happens, we’ll let them pass… then, if the wind is our friend and keeps up, we’ll fall in behind them.”

Cuthbert began to grin. “Oh Roland,” he said. “Your father would be proud. Only fourteen, but cozy as the devil!”

“Fifteen come next moonrise,” Roland said seriously. “If we do it this way, we may have to kill their drogue riders. Watch my signals, all right?”

“We’re going to cross to Hanging Rock as part of their party?” Alain asked. He had always been a step or two behind Cuthbert, but Roland didn’t mind; sometimes reliability was better than quickness. “Is that it?”

“If the cards fall that way, yes.”

“If they’ve got the pink ball with em, you’d better hope it doesn’t give us away,” Alain said.

Cuthbert looked surprised. Roland bit his lip, thinking that sometimes Alain was plenty quick. Certainly he had come up with this unpleasant little idea ahead of Bert… ahead of Roland, too.

“We’ve got a lot to hope for this morning, but we’ll play our cards as they come off the top of the pack.”

They dismounted and sat by their horses there on the edge of the grass, saying little. Roland watched the silver clouds of dust racing each other across the desert floor and thought of Susan. He imagined them married, living in a freehold somewhere south of Gilead. By then Farson would have been defeated, the world’s strange decline reversed (the childish part of him simply assumed that making an end to John Farson would somehow see to that), and his gunslinging days would be over. Less than a year it had been since he had won the right to carry the six-shooters he wore on his hips-and to carry his father’s great revolvers when Steven Deschain decided to pass them on-and already he was tired of them. Susan’s kisses had softened his heart and quickened him, somehow; had made another life possible. A better one, perhaps. One with a house, and kiddies, and-

“They’re coming,” Alain said, snapping Roland out of his reverie.

The gunslinger stood up, Rusher’s reins in one fist. Cuthbert stood tensely nearby. “Large party or small? Does thee… do you know?”

Alain stood facing southeast, hands held out with the palms up. Beyond his shoulder, Roland saw Old Star just about to slip below the horizon. Only an hour until dawn, then.

“I can’t tell yet,” Alain said.

“Can you at least tell if the ball-”

“No. Shut up, Roland, let me listen!”

Roland and Cuthbert stood and watched Alain anxiously, at the same time straining their ears to hear the hooves of horses, the creak of wheels, or the murmur of men on the passing wind. Time spun out. The wind, rather than dropping as Old Star disappeared and dawn approached, blew more fiercely than ever. Roland looked at Cuthbert, who had taken out his slingshot and was playing nervously with the pull. Bert raised one shoulder in a shrug.

“It’s a small party,” Alain said suddenly. “Can either of you touch them?”

They shook their heads.

“No more than ten, maybe only six.”

“Gods!” Roland murmured, and pumped a fist at the sky. He couldn’t help it. “And the ball?”

“I can’t touch it,” Alain said. He sounded almost as though he were sleeping himself. “But it’s with them, don’t you think?”

Roland did. A small party of six or eight, probably travelling with the ball. It was perfect.

“Be ready, boys,” he said. “We’re going to take them.”

9

Jonas’s party made good time down the Drop and into the Bad Grass. The guide-stars were brilliant in the autumn sky, and Renfrew knew them all. He had a click-line to measure between the two he called The Twins, and he stopped the group briefly every twenty minutes or so to use it. Jonas hadn’t the slightest doubt the old cowboy would bring them out of the tall grass pointed straight at Hanging Rock.

Then, about an hour after they’d entered the Bad Grass, Quint rode up beside him. “That old lady, she want to see you, sai. She say it’s important.”

“Do she, now?” Jonas asked.

“Aye.” Quint lowered his voice. “That ball she got on her lap all glowy.”

“Is that so? I tell you what. Quint-keep my old trail-buddies company while I see what’s what.” He dropped back until he was pacing beside the black cart. Rhea raised her face to him, and for a moment, washed as it was in the pink light, he thought it the face of a young girl.

“So,” she said. “Here y’are, big boy. I thought ye’d show up pretty smart.” She cackled, and as her face broke into its sour lines of laughter, Jonas again saw her as she really was-all but sucked dry by the thing in her lap. Then he looked down at it himself… and was lost. He could feel that pink glow radiating into all the deepest passages and hollows of his mind, lighting them up in a way they’d never been lit up before. Even Coral, at her dirty busiest, couldn’t light him up that way.

“Ye like it, don’t ye?” she half-laughed, half-crooned. “Aye, so ye do, so would anyone, such a pretty glam it is! But what do ye see, sai Jonas?”

Leaning over, holding to the saddle-horn with one hand, his long hair hanging down in a sheaf, Jonas looked deeply into the ball. At first he saw only that luscious, labial pink, and then it began to draw apart. Now he saw a hut surrounded by tall grass. The sort of hut only a hermit could love. The door-it was painted a peeling but still bright red-stood open. And sitting there on the stone stoop with her hands in her lap, her blankets on the ground at her feet, and her unbound hair around her shoulders was…

“I’ll be damned!” Jonas whispered. He had now leaned so far out of the saddle that he looked like a trick rider in a circus show, and his eyes seemed to have disappeared; there were only sockets of pink light where they had been.

Rhea cackled delightedly. “Aye, it’s Thorin’s gilly that never was! Dearborn’s lovergirl!” Her cackling stopped abruptly. “Lovergirl of the young proddy who killed my Ermot. And he’ll pay for it, aye, so he will. Look closer, sai Jonas! Look closer!”

He did. Everything was clear now, and he thought he should have seen it earlier.

Everything this girl’s aunt had feared had been true. Rhea had known, although why she hadn’t told anyone the girl had been screwing one of the In-World boys, Jonas didn’t know. And Susan had done more than just screw Will Dearborn; she’d helped him escape, him and his trail-mates, and she might well have killed two lawmen for him, into the bargain.

The figure in the ball swam closer. Watching that made him feel a little dizzy, but it was a pleasant dizziness. Beyond the girl was the hut, faintly lit by a lamp which had been turned down to the barest core of flame. At first Jonas thought someone was sleeping in one comer, but on second glance he decided it was only a heap of hides that looked vaguely human.

“Do’ee spy the boys?” Rhea asked, seemingly from a great distance. “Do’ee spy em, m'lord sai?”

“No,” he said, his own voice seeming to come from that same distant place. His eyes were pinned to the ball. He could feel its light baking deeper and deeper into his brain. It was a good feeling, like a hot fire on a cold night. “She’s alone. Looks as if she’s waiting.”

“Aye.” Rhea gestured above the ball-a curt dusting-off movement of the hands-and the pink light was gone. Jonas gave a low, protesting cry, but no matter; the ball was dark again. He wanted to stretch his hands out and tell her to make the light return-to beg her, if necessary-and held himself back by pure force of will. He was rewarded by a slow return of his wits. It helped to remind himself that Rhea’s gestures were as meaningless as the puppets in a Pinch and Jilly show. The ball did what it wanted, not what she wanted.

Meanwhile, the ugly old woman was looking at him with eyes that were perversely shrewd and clear. “Waiting for what, do’ee suppose?” she asked.

There was only one thing she could be waiting for. Jonas thought with rising alarm. The boys. The three beardless sons of bitches from In-World. And if they weren’t with her, they might well be up ahead, doing their own waiting.

Waiting for him. Possibly even waiting for-

“Listen to me,” he said. “I’ll only speak once, and you best answer true. Do they know about that thing? Do those three boys know about the Rainbow?”

Her eyes shifted away from his. It was answer enough in one way, but not in another. She had had things her way all too long up there on her hill; she had to know who was boss down here. He leaned over again and grabbed her shoulder. It was horrible-like grabbing a bare bone that somehow still lived-but he made himself hold on all the same. And squeeze. She moaned and wriggled, but he held on.

“Tell me, you old bitch! Run your fucking gob!”

“They might know of it,” she whined. “The girl might’ve seen something the night she came to be-am-, let go, ye’re killing me!”

“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.” He took another longing glance at the ball, then sat up straight in the saddle, cupped his hands around his mouth, and called: “Clay! Hold up!” As Reynolds and Renfrew reined back, Jonas raised a hand to halt the vaqs behind him.

The wind whispered through the grass, bending it, rippling it, whipping up eddies of sweet smell. Jonas stared ahead into the dark, even though he knew it was fruitless to look for them. They could be anywhere, and Jonas didn’t like the odds in an ambush. Not one bit.

He rode to where Clay and Renfrew were waiting. Renfrew looked impatient. “What’s the problem? Dawn’ll be breaking soon. We ought to get a move-on.”

“Do you know the huts in the Bad Grass?”

“Aye, most. Why-”

“Do you know one with a red door?”

Renfrew nodded and pointed northish. “Old Soony’s place. He had some sort of religious conversion-a dream or a vision or something. That’s when he painted the door of his hut red. He’s gone to the Manni-folk these last five years.” He no longer asked why, at least; he had seen something on Jonas’s face that had shut up his questions.

Jonas raised his hand, looked at the blue coffin tattooed there for a second, then turned and called for Quint. “You’re in charge,” Jonas told him.

Quint’s shaggy eyebrows shot up. “Me?”

“Yar. But you’re not going on-there’s been a change of plan.”

“What-”

“Listen and don’t open your mouth again unless there’s something you don’t understand. Get that damned black cart turned around. Put your men around it and hie on back the way we came. Join up with Lengyll and his men. Tell them Jonas says wait where you find em until he and Reynolds and Renfrew come. Clear?”

Quint nodded. He looked bewildered but said nothing.

“Good. Get about it. And tell the witch to put her toy back in its bag.” Jonas passed a hand over his brow. Fingers which had rarely shaken before had now picked up a minute tremble. “It’s distracting.”

Quint started away, then looked back when Jonas called his name.

“I think those In-World boys are out here, Quint. Probably ahead of where we are now, but if they’re back the way you’re going, they’ll probably set on you.”

Quint looked nervously around at the grass, which rose higher than his head. Then his lips tightened and he returned his attention to Jonas.

“If they attack, they’ll try to take the ball,” Jonas continued. “And sai, mark me well: any man who doesn’t die protecting it will wish he had.” He lifted his chin at the vaqs, who sat astride their horses in a line behind the black cart. “Tell them that.”

“Aye, boss,” Quint said.

“When you reach Lengyll’s party, you’ll be safe.”

“How long should we wait for yer if ye don’t come?”

“Til hell freezes over. Now go.” As Quint left, Jonas turned to Reynolds and Renfrew. “We’re going to make a little side-trip, boys,” he said.

10

“Roland.” Alain’s voice was low and urgent. “They’ve turned around.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. There’s another group coming along behind them. A much larger one. That’s where they’re headed.”

“Safety in numbers, that’s all,” Cuthbert said.

“Do they have the ball?” Roland asked. “Can you touch it yet?”

“Yes, they have it. It makes them easy to touch even though they’re going the other way now. Once you find it, it glows like a lamp in a mineshaft.”

“Does Rhea still have the keeping of it?”

“I think so. It’s awful to touch her.”

“Jonas is afraid of us,” Roland said. “He wants more men around him when he comes. That’s what it is, what it must be.” Unaware that he was both right and badly out in his reckoning. Unaware that for one of the few times since they had left Gilead, he had lapsed into a teenager’s disastrous certainty.

“What do we do?” Alain asked.

“Sit here. Listen. Wait. They’ll bring the ball this way again if they’re going to Hanging Rock. They’ll have to.”

“Susan?” Cuthbert asked. “Susan and Sheemie? What about them? How do we know they’re all right?”

“I suppose that we don’t.” Roland sat down, cross-legged, with Pusher’s trailing reins in his lap. “But Jonas and his men will be back soon enough. And when they come, we’ll do what we must.”

11

Susan hadn’t wanted to sleep inside-the hut felt wrong to her without Roland. She had left Sheemie huddled under the old hides in the comer and taken her own blankets outside. She sat in the hut’s doorway for a little while, looking up at the stars and praying for Roland in her own fashion. When she began to feel a little better, she lay down on one blanket and pulled the other over her. It seemed an eternity since Maria had shaken her out of her heavy sleep, and the open-mouthed, glottal snores drifting out of the hut didn’t bother her much. She slept with her head pillowed on one arm, and didn’t wake when, twenty minutes later, Sheemie came to the doorway, blinked at her sleepily, and then walked off into the grass to urinate. The only one to notice him was Caprichoso, who stuck out his long muzzle and took a nip at Sheemie’s butt as the boy passed him. Sheemie, still mostly asleep, reached back and pushed the muzzle away. He knew Capi’s tricks well enough, so he did.

Susan dreamed of the willow grove-bird and bear and hare and fish-and what woke her wasn’t Sheemie’s return from his necessary but a cold circle of steel pressing into her neck. There was a loud click that she recognized at once from the Sheriff’s office: a pistol being cocked. The willow grove faded from the eye of her mind.

“Shine, little sunbeam,” said a voice. For a moment her bewildered, half-waking mind tried to believe it was yesterday, and Maria wanted her to get up and out of Seafront before whoever had killed Mayor Thorin and Chancellor Rimer could come back and kill her, as well.

No good. It wasn’t the strong light of midmorning that her eyes opened upon, but the ash-pallid glow of five o'clock. Not a woman’s voice but a man’s. And not a hand shaking her shoulder but the barrel of a gun against her neck.

She looked up and saw a lined, narrow face framed by white hair. Lips no more than a scar. Eyes the same faded blue as Roland’s. Eldred Jonas. The man standing behind him had bought her own da drinks once upon a happier time: Hash Renfrew. A third man, one of Jonas’s ka-tet, ducked into the hut. Freezing terror filled her midsection-some for her, some for Sheemie. She wasn’t sure the boy would even understand what was happening to them. These are two of the three men who tried to kill him, she thought. He’ll understand that much.

“Here you are, Sunbeam, here you come,” Jonas said companionably, watching her blink away the sleepfog. “Good! You shouldn’t be napping all the way out here on your own, not a pretty sai such as yourself. But don’t worry, I’ll see you get back to where you belong.”

His eyes flicked up as the redhead with the cloak stepped out of the hut. Alone. “What’s she got in there. Clay? Anything?”

Reynolds shook his head. “All still on the hoss, I reckon.”

Sheemie, Susan thought. Where are you, Sheemie?

Jonas reached out and caressed one of her breasts briefly. “Nice,” he said. “Tender and sweet. No wonder Dearborn likes you.”

“Get yer filthy blue-marked hand off me, you bastard.”

Smiling, Jonas did as she bid. He turned “his head and regarded the mule. “I know this one; it belongs to my good friend Coral. Along with everything else, you’ve turned livestock thief! Shameful, shameful, this younger generation. Don’t you agree, sai Renfrew?”

But her father’s old associate said nothing. His face was carefully blank, and Susan thought he might be just the tiniest tad ashamed of his presence here.

Jonas turned back to her, his thin lips curved in the semblance of a benevolent smile. “Well, after murder I suppose stealing a mule comes easy, don’t it?”

She said nothing, only watched as Jonas stroked Capi’s muzzle.

“What all were they hauling, those boys, that it took a mule to put it on?”

“Shrouds,” she said through numb lips. “For you and all yer friends. A fearful heavy load it made, too-near broke the poor animal’s back.”

“There’s a saying in the land I come from,” Jonas said, still smiling. “Clever girls go to hell. Ever heard it?” He went on stroking Capi’s nose. The mule liked it; his neck was thrust out to its full length, his stupid little eyes half-closed with pleasure. “Has it crossed your mind that fellows who unload their pack animal, split up what it was carrying, and take the goods away usually ain’t coming back?”

Susan said nothing.

“You’ve been left high and dry, Sunbeam. Fast fucked is usually fast forgot, sad to say. Do you know where they went?”

“Yes,” she said. Her voice was low, barely a whisper.

Jonas looked pleased. “If you was to tell, things might go easier for you. Would you agree, Renfrew?”

“Aye,” Renfrew said. “They’re traitors, Susan-for the Good Man. If you know where they are or what they’re up to, tell us.”

Keeping her eyes fixed on Jonas, Susan said: “Come closer.” Her numbed lips didn’t want to move and it came out sounding like Cung gloser, but Jonas understood and leaned forward, stretching his neck in a way that made him look absurdly like Caprichoso. When he did, Susan spat in his face.

Jonas recoiled, lips twisting in surprise and revulsion. “Arrr! BITCH!” he cried, and launched a full-swung, open-handed blow that drove her to the ground. She landed at full length on her side with black stars exploding across her field of vision. She could already feel her right cheek swelling like a balloon and thought, If he’d hit an inch or two lower, he might’ve broken my neck. Mayhap that would’ve been best. She raised her hand to her nose and wiped blood from the right nostril.

Jonas turned to Renfrew, who had taken a single step forward and then stopped himself. “Put her on her horse and tie her hands in front of her. Tight.” He looked down at Susan, then kicked her in the shoulder hard enough to send her rolling toward the hut. “Spit on me, would you? Spit on Eldred Jonas, would you, you bitch?”

Reynolds was holding out his neckerchief. Jonas took it, wiped the spittle from his face with it, then dropped into a hunker beside her. He took a handful of her hair and carefully wiped the neckerchief with it. Then he hauled her to her feet. Tears of pain now peeped from the comers of her eyes, but she kept silent.

“I may never see your friend again, sweet Sue with the tender little titties, but I’ve got you, ain’t I? Yar. And if Dearborn gives us trouble, I’ll give you double. And make sure Dearborn knows. You may count on it.”

His smile faded, and he gave her a sudden, bitter shove that almost sent her sprawling again.

“Now get mounted, and do it before I decide to change your face a little with my knife.”

12

Sheemie watched from the grass, terrified and silently crying, as Susan spit in the bad Coffin Hunter’s face and was knocked to the ground, hit so hard the blow might have killed her. He almost rushed out then, but something-it could have been his friend Arthur’s voice in his head-told him that would only get him killed.

He watched as Susan mounted. One of the other men-not a Coffin Hunter but a big rancher Sheemie had seen in the Rest from time to time-tried to help, but Susan pushed him away with the sole of her boot. The man stood back with a red face.

Don’t make em mad, Susan, Sheemie thought. Oh gods, don’t do that, they’ll hit ye some more! Oh, yer poor face! And ye got a nosebleed, so you do!

“Last chance,” Jonas told her. “Where are they, and what do they mean to do?”

“Go to hell,” she said.

He smiled-a thin, hurty smile. “Likely I’ll find you there when I arrive,” he said. Then, to the other Coffin Hunter: “You checked the place careful?”

“Whatever they had, they took it,” the redhead answered. “Only thing they left was Dearborn’s punch-bunny.”

That made Jonas laugh meany-mean as he climbed on board his own horse. “Come on,” he said, “let’s ride.”

They went back into the Bad Grass. It closed around them, and it was as if they had never been there… except that Susan was gone, and so was Capi. The big rancher riding beside Susan had been leading the mule.

When he was sure they weren’t going to return, Sheemie walked slowly back into the clearing, doing up the button on top of his pants as he came. He looked from the way Roland and his friends had gone to the one in which Susan had been taken. Which?

A moment’s thought made him realize there was no choice. The grass out here was tough and springy. The path Roland and Alain and good old Arthur Heath (so Sheemie still thought of him, and always would) had taken was gone. The one made by Susan and her captors, on the other hand, was still clear. And perhaps, if he followed her, he could do something for her. Help her.

Walking at first, then jogging as his fear that they might double back and catch him dissipated, Sheemie went in the direction Susan had been taken. He would follow her most of that day.

13

Cuthbert-not the most sanguine of personalities in any situation-grew more and more impatient as the day brightened toward true dawn. It’s Reaping, he thought. Finally Reaping, and here we sit with our knives sharpened and not a thing in the world to cut.

Twice he asked Alain what he “heard.” The first time Alain only grunted. The second time he asked what Bert expected him to hear, with someone yapping away in his ear like that.

Cuthbert, who did not consider two enquiries fifteen minutes apart as “yapping away,” wandered off and sat morosely in front of his horse. After a bit, Roland came over and sat down beside him.

“Waiting,” Cuthbert said. “That’s what most of our time in Mejis has been about, and it’s the thing I do worst.”

“You won’t have to do it much longer,” Roland said.

14

Jonas’s company reached the place where Fran Lengyll’s party had made a temporary camp about an hour after the sun had topped the horizon. Quint, Rhea, and Renfrew’s vaqs were already there and drinking coffee, Jonas was glad to see.

Lengyll started forward, saw Susan riding with her hands tied, and actually drew back a step, as if he wanted to find a comer to hide in. There were no comers out here, however, so he stood fast. He did not look happy about it, however.

Susan nudged her horse forward with her knees, and when Reynolds tried to grab her shoulder, she dipped it to the side, temporarily eluding him.

“Why, Francis Lengyll! Imagine meeting you here!”

“Susan, I’m sorry to see ye so,” Lengyll said. His flush crept closer and closer to his brow, like a tide approaching a seawall. “It’s bad company ye’ve fallen in with, girl… and in the end, bad company always leaves ye to face the music alone.”

Susan actually laughed. “Bad company!” she said. “Aye, ye’d know about that, wouldn’t ye, Fran?”

He turned, awkward and stiff in his embarrassment. She raised one booted foot and, before anyone could stop her, kicked him squarely between the shoulderblades. He went down on his stomach, his whole face widening in shocked surprise.

“No ye don’t, ye bold cunt!” Renfrew shouted, and fetched her a wallop to the side of the head-it was on the left, and at least evened things up a bit, she would think later when her mind cleared and she was capable of thinking. She swayed in the saddle, but kept her seat. And she never looked at Renfrew, only at Lengyll, who had now managed to get to his hands and knees. He wore a deeply dazed expression.

“You killed my father!” she screamed at him. “You killed my father, you cowardly, sneaking excuse for a man!” She looked at the party of ranchers and vaqs, all of them staring at her now. “There he is, Fran Lengyll, head of the Horsemen’s Association, as low a sneak as ever walked! Low as coyote shit! Low as-”

“That’s enough,” Jonas said, watching with some interest as Lengyll scuttled back to his men-and yes, Susan was bitterly delighted to see, it was a full-fledged scuttle-with his shoulders hunched. Rhea was cackling, rocking from side to side and making a sound like fingernails on a piece of slate. The sound shocked Susan, but she wasn’t a bit surprised by Rhea’s presence in this company.

“It could never be enough,” she said, looking from Jonas to Lengyll with an expression of contempt so deep it seemed bottomless. “For him it could never be enough.”

“Well, perhaps, but you did quite well in the time you had, lady-sai. Few could have done better. And listen to the witch cackle! Like salt in his wounds, I wot… but we’ll shut her up soon enough.” Then, turning his head: “Clay!”

Reynolds rode up.

“Think you can get Sunbeam back to Seafront all right?”

“I think so.” Reynolds tried not to show the relief he felt at being sent back east instead of west. He had begun to have a bad feeling about Hanging Rock, Latigo, the tankers… about the whole show, really. God knew why. “Now?”

“Give it another minute,” Jonas said. “Mayhap there’s going to be a spot of killing right here. Who knows? But it’s the unanswered questions that makes it worthwhile getting up in the morning, even when a man’s leg aches like a tooth with a hole in it. Wouldn’t you say so?”

“I don’t know, Eldred.”

“Sai Renfrew, watch our pretty Sunbeam a minute. I have a piece of property to take back.”

His voice carried well-he had meant that it should-and Rhea’s cackles cut off suddenly, as if severed out of her throat with a hooking-knife. Smiling, Jonas walked his horse toward the black cart with its jostling show of gold symbols. Reynolds rode on his left, and Jonas sensed rather than saw Depape fall in on his right. Roy was a good enough boy, really; his head was a little soft, but his heart was in the right place, and you didn’t have to tell him everything.

For every step forward Jonas’s horse took, Rhea shrank back a little in the cart. Her eyes shifted from side to side in their deep sockets, looking for a way out that wasn’t there.

“Keep away from me, ye charry man!” she cried, raising a hand toward him. With the other she clutched the sack with the ball in it ever more tightly. “Keep away, or I’ll bring the lightning and strike ye dead where ye sit yer horse! Yer harrier friends, too!”

Jonas thought Roy hesitated briefly at that, but Clay never did, nor did Jonas himself. He guessed there was a great lot she could do… or that there had been, at one time. But that was before the hungry glass had entered her life.

“Give it up to me,” he said. He reached the side of her wagon and held his hand out for the bag. “It’s not yours and never was. One day you’ll doubtless have the Good Man’s thanks for keeping it so well as you have, but now you must give it up.”

She screamed-a sound of such piercing intensity that several of the vaqueros dropped their tin coffee-cups and clapped their hands over their ears. At the same time she knotted her hand through the drawstring and raised the bag over her head. The curved shape of the ball swung back and forth at the bottom of it like a pendulum.

“I’ll not!” she howled. “I’ll smash it on the ground before I give it up to the likes o’ you!”

Jonas doubted if the ball would break, not hurled by her weak arms onto the trampled, springy mat of the Bad Grass, but he didn’t think he would have occasion to find out, one way or the other.

“Clay,” he said. “Draw your gun.”

He didn’t need to look at Clay to see that he’d done it; he saw the frantic way her eyes shifted to the left, where Clay sat his horse.

“I’m going to have a count,” Jonas said. “Just a short one; if I get to three and she hasn’t passed that bag over, blow her ugly head off.”

“Aye.”

“One,” Jonas said, watching the ball pendulum back and forth at the bottom of the upheld bag. It was glowing; he could see dull pink even through the cloth. “Two. Enjoy hell, Rhea, goodbye. Thr-”

“Here!” she screamed, thrusting it out toward him and shielding her face with the crooked hook of her free hand. “Here, take it! And may it damn you the way it’s damned me!”

“Thankee-sai.”

He grabbed the bag just below the draw top and yanked. Rhea screamed again as the string skinned her knuckles and tore off one of her nails. Jonas hardly heard. His mind was a white explosion of exultation. For the first time in his long professional life he forgot his job, his surroundings, and the six thousand things that could get him killed on any day. He had it; he had it; by all the graves of all the gods, he had the fucking thing!

Mine! he thought, and that was all. He somehow restrained the urge to open the bag and stick his head inside it, like a horse sticking its head into a bag of oats, and looped the drawstring over the pommel of his saddle twice instead. He took in a breath as deep as his lungs would allow, then expelled it. Better. A little.

“Roy.”

“Aye, Jonas.”

It would be good to get out of this place, Jonas thought, and not for the first time. To get away from these hicks. He was sick of aye and ye and so it is, sick to his bones.

“Roy, we’ll give the bitch a ten-count this time. If she isn’t out of my sight by then, you have my permission to blow her ass off. Now, let’s see if you can do the counting. I’ll be listening close, so mind you don’t skip any!”

“One,” Depape said eagerly. “Two. Three. Four.”

Spitting curses, Rhea snatched up the reins of the cart and spanked the pony’s back with them. The pony laid its ears back and jerked the cart forward so vigorously that Rhea went tumbling backward off the cant-board, her feet up, her white and bony shins showing above her ankle-high black shoes and mismatched wool stockings. The vaqueros laughed. Jonas laughed himself. It was pretty funny, all right, seeing her on her back with her pins in the air.

“Fuh-fuh-five,” Depape said, laughing so hard he was hiccupping. “Sih-sih-six!”

Rhea climbed back up, flopped onto the cantboard again with all the grace of a dying fish, and peered around at them, wall-eyed and sneering.

“I curse ye all!” she screamed. It cut through them, stilling their laughter even as the cart bounced toward the edge of the trampled clearing. “Every last one of ye! Ye… and ye… and ye!” Her crooked finger pointed last at Jonas. “Thief! Miserable thief!”

As though it was yours, Jonas marveled (although “Mine!” was the first word to occur to him, once he had taken possession of it). As though such a wonder could ever belong to a back-country reader of rooster-guts such as you.

The cart bounced its way into the Bad Grass, the pony pulling hard with its ears laid back; the old woman’s screams served to drive it better than any whip could have done. The black slipped into the green. They saw the cart flicker like a conjurer’s trick, and then it was gone. For a long time yet, however, they heard her shrieking her curses, calling death down upon them beneath the Demon Moon.

15

“Go on,” Jonas told Clay Reynolds. “Take our Sunbeam back. And if you want to stop on the way and make some use of her, why, be my guest.” He glanced at Susan as he said this, to see what effect it might be having, but he was disappointed-she looked dazed, as if the last blow Renfrew had dealt her had scrambled her brains, at least temporarily. “Just make sure she gets to Coral at the end of all the fun.” “I will. Any message for sai Thorin?”

“Tell her to keep the wench someplace safe until she hears from me. And… why don’t you stay with her. Clay? Coral, I mean-come tomorrow, I don’t think we’ll have to worry about this 'un anymore, but Coral… ride with her to Ritzy when she goes. Be her escort, like.”

Reynolds nodded. Better and better. Seafront it would be, and that was fine. He might like a little taste of the girl once he got her there, but not on the way. Not under the ghostly-full daytime Demon Moon. “Go on, then. Get started.”

Reynolds led her across the clearing, aiming for a point well away from the bent swath of grass where Rhea had made her exit. Susan rode silently, downcast eyes fixed on her bound wrists.

Jonas turned to face his men. “The three young fellows from In-World have broken their way out of jail, with that haughty young bitch’s help,” he said, pointing at Susan’s departing back.

There was a low, growling murmur from the men. That “Will Dearborn” and his friends were free they had known; that sai Delgado had helped them escape they had not… and it was perhaps just as well for her that Reynolds was at that moment leading her into the Bad Grass and out of sight.

“Never mind!” Jonas shouted, pulling their attention back to him. He reached out a stealthy hand and caressed the curve at the bottom of the drawstring bag. Just touching the ball made him feel as if he could do anything, and with one hand tied behind his back, at that.

“Never mind her, and never mind them!” His eyes moved from Lengyll to Wertner to Croydon to Brian Hookey to Roy Depape. “We’re close to forty men, going to join another hundred and fifty. They’re three, and not one a day over sixteen. Are you afraid of three little boys?”

“No!” they cried.

“If we run on em, my cullies, what will we do?”

“KILL THEM!” The shout so loud that it sent rooks rising up into the morning sun, cawing their displeasure as they commenced the hunt for more peaceful surroundings.

Jonas was satisfied. His hand was still on the sweet curve of the ball, and he could feel it pouring strength into him. Pink strength, he thought, and grinned.

“Come on, boys. I want those tankers in the woods west of Eyebolt before the home folks light their Reap-Night Bonfire.”

16

Sheemie, crouched down in the grass and peering into the clearing, was nearly run over by Rhea’s black wagon; the screaming, gibbering witch passed so close to him that he could smell her sour skin and dirty hair. If she had looked down, she couldn’t have missed seeing him and undoubtedly would have turned him into a bird or a bumbler or maybe even a mosquito.

The boy saw Jonas pass custody of Susan to the one in the cloak, and began working his way around the edge of the clearing. He heard Jonas haranguing the men (many of whom Sheemie knew; it shamed him to know how many Mejis cowboys were doing that bad Coffin Hunter’s bidding), but paid no attention to what he was saying. Sheemie froze in place as they mounted up, momentarily scared they would come in his direction, but they rode the other way, west. The clearing emptied almost as if by magic… except it wasn’t entirely empty. Caprichoso had been left behind, his lead trailing on the beaten grass. Capi looked after the departing riders, brayed once-as if to tell them they could all go to hell-then turned and made eye-contact with Sheemie, who was peering out into the clearing. The mule flicked his ears at the boy, then tried to graze. He lipped the Bad Grass a single time, raised his head, and brayed at Sheemie, as if to say this was all the inn-boy’s fault.

Sheemie stared thoughtfully at Caprichoso, thinking of how much easier it was to ride than to walk. Gods, yes… but that second bray decided him against it. The mule might give one of his disgusted cries at the wrong time and alert the man who had Susan.

“You’ll find your way home, I reckon,” Sheemie said. “So long, pal. So long, good old Capi. See you farther down the path.”

He found the path made by Susan and Reynolds, and began to trot after them once more.

17

“They’re coming again,” Alain said a moment before Roland sensed it himself-a brief flicker in his head like pink lightning. “All of them.”

Roland hunkered in front of Cuthbert. Cuthbert looked back at him without even a suggestion of his usual foolish good humor.

“Much of it’s on you,” Roland said, then tapped the slingshot. “And on that.”

“I know.”

“How much have you got in the armory?”

“Almost four dozen steel balls.” Bert held up a cotton bag which had, in more settled times, held his father’s tobacco. “Plus assorted fireworks in my saddlebag.”

“How many big-bangers?”

“Enough, Roland.” Unsmiling. With the laughter gone from them, he had the hollow eyes of just one more killer. “Enough.”

Roland ran a hand down the front of the serape he wore, letting his palm reacquaint itself with the rough weave. He looked at Cuthbert’s, then at Alain’s, telling himself again that it could work, yes, as long as they held their nerve and didn’t let themselves think of it in terms of three against forty or fifty, it could work.

“The ones out at Hanging Rock will hear the shooting once it starts, won’t they?” Al asked.

Roland nodded. “With the wind blowing from us to them, there’s no doubt of that.”

“We’ll have to move fast, then.”

“We’ll go as best we can.” Roland thought of standing between the tangled green hedges behind the Great Hall, David the hawk on his arm and a sweat of terror trickling down his back. I think you die today, he had told the hawk, and he had told it true. Yet he himself had lived, and passed his test, and walked out of the testing corridor facing east. Today it was Cuthbert and Alain’s turn to be tested-not in Gilead, in the traditional place of proving behind the Great Hall, but here in Mejis, on the edge of the Bad Grass, in the desert, and in the canyon. Eyebolt Canyon.

“Prove or die,” Alain said, as if reading the run of the gunslinger’s thoughts. “That’s what it comes down to.”

“Yes. That’s what it always comes down to, in the end. How long before they get here, do you think?”

“An hour at least, I’d say. Likely two.”

“They’ll be running a 'watch-and-go.'”

Alain nodded. “I think so, yes.”

“That’s not good,” Cuthbert said.

“Jonas is afraid of being ambushed in the grass,” Roland said. “Maybe of us setting fire to it around him. They’ll loosen up when they get into the clear.”

“You hope,” Cuthbert said.

Roland nodded gravely. “Yes. I hope.”

18

At first Reynolds was content to lead the girl along the broken backtrail at a fast walk, but about thirty minutes after leaving Jonas, Lengyll, and the rest, he broke into a trot. Pylon matched Reynolds’s horse easily, and just as easily when, ten minutes later, he upped their speed to a light but steady run.

Susan held to the horn of her saddle with her bound hands and rode easily at Reynolds’s right, her hair streaming out behind her. She thought her face must be quite colorful; the skin of her cheeks felt raised at least two inches higher than usual, welted and tender. Even the passing wind stung a little.

At the place where the Bad Grass gave way to the Drop, Reynolds stopped to give the horses a blow. He dismounted himself, turned his back to her, and took a piss. As he did, Susan looked up along the rise of land and saw the great herd, now untended and unravelling at the edges. They had done that much, perhaps. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

“Do you need to do the necessary?” Reynolds asked. “I’ll help you down if you do, but don’t say no now and whine about it later.”

“Ye’re afraid. Big brave regulator that ye are, ye’re scared, ain’t ye? Aye, coffin tattoo and all.”

Reynolds tried a contemptuous grin. It didn’t fit his face very well this morning. “You ort to leave the fortune-telling to those that are good at it, missy. Now do you need a necessary stop or not?”

“No. And ye are afraid. Of what?”

Reynolds, who only knew that his bad feeling hadn’t left him when he left Jonas, as he’d hoped it would, bared his tobacco-stained teeth at her. “If you can’t talk sensible, just shut up.”

“Why don’t ye let me go? Perhaps my friends will do the same for you, when they catch us up.”

This time Reynolds grunted laughter which was almost genuine. He swung himself into his saddle, hawked, spat. Overhead, Demon Moon was a pale and bloated ball in the sky. “You can dream, miss’sai,” he said, “dreaming’s free. But you ain’t never going to see those three again. They’re for the worms, they are. Now let’s ride.”

They rode.

19

Cordelia hadn’t gone to bed at all on Reaping Eve. She sat the night through in her parlor chair, and although there was sewing on her lap, she had put not a single stitch in nor picked one out. Now, as morning’s light brightened toward ten o’ the clock, she sat in the same chair, looking out at nothing. What was there to look at, anyway? Everything had come down with a smash-all her hopes of the fortune Thorin would settle on Susan and Susan’s child, perhaps while he still lived, certainly in his dead-letter; all her hopes of ascending to her proper place in the community; all her plans for the future. Swept away by two wilful young people who couldn’t keep their pants up.

She sat in her old chair with her knitting on her lap and the ashes Susan had smeared on her cheek standing out like a brand, and thought:

They’ll find me dead in this chair, someday-old, poor, and forgotten. That ungrateful child! After all I did for her!

What roused her was a weak scratching at the window. She had no idea how long it had been going on before it finally intruded on her consciousness, but when it did, she laid her needlework aside and got up to see. A bird, perhaps. Or children playing Reaping jokes, unaware that the world had come to an end. Whatever it was, she would shoo it away.

Cordelia saw nothing at first. Then, as she was about to turn away, she spied a pony and cart at the edge of the yard. The cart was a little disquieting-black, with gold symbols overpainted-and the pony in the shafts stood with its head lowered, not grazing, looking as if it had been run half to death.

She was still frowning out at this when a twisted, filthy hand rose in the air directly in front of her and began to scratch at the glass again. Cordelia gasped and clapped both hands to her bosom as her heart took a startled leap in her chest. She backed up a step, and gave a little shriek as her calf brushed the tender of the stove.

The long, dirty nails scratched twice more, then fell away.

Cordelia stood where she was for a moment, irresolute, then went to the door, stopping at the woodbox to pick up a chunk of ash which fitted her hand. Just in case. Then she jerked the door open, went to the comer of the house, drew in a deep, steadying breath, and went around to the garden side, raising the ash-chunk as she did.

“Get out, whoever ye are! Scat before I-”

Her voice was stilled by what she saw: an incredibly old woman crawling through the frost-killed flowerbed next to the house-crawling toward her. The crone’s stringy white hair (what remained of it) hung in her face. Sores festered on her cheeks and brow; her lips had split and drizzled blood down her pointed, warty chin. The corneas of her eyes had gone a filthy gray-yellow, and she panted like a cracked bellows as she moved.

“Good woman, help me,” this specter gasped. “Help me if ye will, for I’m about done up.”

The hand holding the chunk of ash sagged. Cordelia could hardly believe what she was seeing. “Rhea?” she whispered. “Is it Rhea?”

“Aye,” Rhea whispered, crawling relentlessly through the dead silk-flowers, dragging her hands through the cold earth. “Help me.”

Cordelia retreated a step, her makeshift bludgeon now hanging at her knee. “No, I… I can’t have such as thee in my house… I’m sorry to see ye so, but… but I have a reputation, ye ken… folk watch me close, so they do…”

She glanced at the High Street as she said this, as if expecting to see a line of townspeople outside her gate, watching eagerly, avid to fleet their wretched gossip on its lying way, but there was no one there. Hambry was quiet, its walks and byways empty, the customary joyous noise of Reaping Fair-Day stilled. She looked back at the thing which had fetched up in her dead flowers.

“Yer niece… did this… “the thing in the dirt whispered. “All… her fault…”

Cordelia dropped the chunk of wood. It clipped the side of her ankle, but she hardly noticed. Her hands curled into fists before her.

“Help me,” Rhea whispered. “I know… where she is… we… we have work, us two… women’s… work…”

Cordelia hesitated a moment, then went to the woman, knelt, got an arm around her, and somehow got her to her feet. The smell coming off her was reeky and nauseating-the smell of decomposing flesh.

Bony fingers caressed Cordelia’s cheek and the side of her neck as she helped the hag into the house. Cordelia’s flesh crawled, but she didn’t pull away until Rhea collapsed into a chair, gasping from one end and farting from the other.

“Listen to me,” the old woman hissed.

“I am.” Cordelia drew a chair over and sat beside her. At death’s door she might be, but once her eye fell on you, it was strangely hard to look away. Now Rhea’s fingers dipped inside the bodice of her dirty dress, brought out a silver charm of some kind, and began to move it back and forth rapidly, as if telling beads. Cordelia, who hadn’t felt sleepy all night, began to feel that way now.

“The others are beyond us,” Rhea said, “and the ball has slipped my grasp. But she-! Back to Mayor’s House she’s been ta'en, and mayhap we could see to her-we could do that much, aye.”

“You can’t see to anything,” Cordelia said distantly. “You’re dying.”

Rhea wheezed laughter and a trickle of yellowish drool. “Dying? Nay! Just done up and in need of a refreshment. Now listen to me, Cordelia daughter of Hiram and sister of Pat!”

She hooked a bony (and surprisingly strong) arm around Cordelia’s neck and drew her close. At the same time she raised her other hand, twirling the silver medallion in front of Cordelia’s wide eyes. The crone whispered, and after a bit Cordelia began to nod her understanding.

“Do it, then,” the old woman said, letting go. She slumped back in her chair, exhausted. “Now, for I can’t last much longer as I am. And I’ll need a bit o’ time after, mind ye. To revive, like.”

Cordelia moved across the room to the kitchen area. There, on the counter beside the hand-pump, was a wooden block in which were sheathed the two sharp knives of the house. She took one and came back. Her eyes were distant and far, as Susan’s had been when she and Rhea stood in the open doorway of Rhea’s hut in the light of the Kissing Moon.

“Would ye pay her back?” Rhea asked. “For that’s why I’ve come to ye.”

“Miss Oh So Young and Pretty,” Cordelia murmured in a barely audible voice. The hand not holding the knife floated up to her face and touched her ash-smeared cheek. “Yes. I’d be repaid of her, so I would.”

“To the death?”

“Aye. Hers or mine.”

“Twill be hers,” Rhea said, “never fear it. Now refresh me, Cordelia. Give me what I need!”

Cordelia unbuttoned her dress down the front, pushing it open to reveal an ungenerous bosom and a middle which had begun to curve out in the last year or so, making a tidy little potbelly. Yet she still had the vestige of a waist, and it was here she used the knife, cutting through her shift and the top layers of flesh beneath. The white cotton began to bloom red at once along the slit.

“Aye,” Rhea whispered. “Like roses. I dream of them often enough, roses in bloom, and what stands black among em at the end of the world. Come closer!” She put her hand on the small of Cordelia’s back, urging her forward. She raised her eyes to Cordelia’s face, then grinned and licked her lips. “Good. Good enough.”

Cordelia looked blankly over the top of the old woman’s head as Rhea of the Coos buried her face against the red cut in the shift and began to drink.

20

Roland was at first pleased as the muted jingle of harness and buckle drew closer to the place where the three of them were hunkered down in the high grass, but as the sounds drew closer still-close enough to hear murmuring voices as well as soft-thudding hooves-he began to be afraid. For the riders to pass close was one thing, but if they were, through foul luck, to come right upon them, the three boys would likely die like a nest of moles uncovered by the blade of a passing plow.

Ka surely hadn’t brought them all this way to end in such fashion, had it? In all these miles of Bad Grass, how could that party of oncoming riders possibly strike the one point where Roland and his friends had pulled up? But still they closed in, the sound of tack and buckle and men’s voices growing ever sharper.

Alain looked at Roland with dismayed eyes and pointed to the left. Roland shook his head and patted his hands toward the ground, indicating they would stay put. They had to stay put; it was too late to move without being heard.

Roland drew his guns.

Cuthbert and Alain did the same.

In the end, the plow missed the moles by sixty feet. The boys could actually see the horses and riders flashing through the thick grass; Roland easily made out that the party was led by Jonas, Depape, and Lengyll, riding three abreast. They were followed by at least three dozen others, glimpsed as roan flashes and the bright red and green of serapes through the grass. They were strung out pretty well, and Roland thought he and his friends could reasonably hope they’d string out even more once they reached open desert.

The boys waited for the party to pass, holding their horses’ heads in case one of them took it in mind to whicker a greeting to the nags so close by. When they were gone, Roland turned his pale and unsmiling face to his friends.

“Mount up,” he said. “Reaping’s come.”

21

They walked their horses to the edge of the Bad Grass, meeting the path of Jonas’s party where the grass gave way first to a zone of stunted bushes and then to the desert itself.

The wind howled high and lonesome, carrying big drifts of gritty dust under a cloudless dark blue sky. Demon Moon stared down from it like the filmed eye of a corpse. Two hundred yards ahead, the drogue riders backing Jonas’s party were spread out in a line of three, their sombreros jammed down tight on their heads, their shoulders hunched, their scrapes blowing.

Roland moved so that Cuthbert rode in the middle of their trio. Bert had his slingshot in his hand. Now he handed Alain half a dozen steel balls, and Roland another half-dozen. Then he raised his eyebrows questioningly. Roland nodded and they began to ride.

Dust blew past them in rattling sheets, sometimes turning the drogue riders into ghosts, sometimes obscuring them completely, but the boys closed in steadily. Roland rode tense, waiting for one of the drogues to turn in his saddle and see them, but none did-none of them wanted to put his face into that cutting, grit-filled wind. Nor was there sound to warn them; there was sandy hardpack under the horses’ hooves now, and it didn’t give away much.

When they were just twenty yards behind the drogues, Cuthbert nodded-they were close enough for him to work. Alain handed him a ball. Bert, sitting ramrod straight in the saddle, dropped it into the cup of his slingshot, pulled, waited for the wind to drop, then released. The rider ahead on the left jerked as if stung, raised one hand a little, then toppled out of his saddle. Incredibly, neither of his two companeros seemed to notice. Roland saw what he thought was the beginning of a reaction from the one on the right when Bert drew again, and the rider in the middle collapsed forward onto his horse’s neck. The horse, startled, reared up. The rider flopped bonelessly backward, his sombrero tumbling off, and fell. The wind dropped enough for Roland to hear his knee snap as his foot caught in one of his stirrups.

The third rider now began to turn. Roland caught a glimpse of a bearded face-a dangling cigarette, unlit because of the wind, one astonished eye-and then Cuthbert’s sling thupped again. The astonished eye was replaced by a red socket. The rider slid from his saddle, groping for the horn and missing it.

Three gone, Roland thought.

He kicked Rusher into a gallop. The others did the same, and the boys rode forward into the dust a stirrup’s width apart. The horses of the ambushed drogue riders veered off to the south in a group, and that was good. Riderless horses ordinarily didn’t raise eyebrows in Mejis, but when they were saddled-

More riders up ahead: a single, then two side by side, then another single.

Roland drew his knife, and rode up beside the fellow who was now drogue and didn’t know it.

“What news?” he asked conversationally, and when the man turned, Roland buried his knife in his chest. The vaq’s brown eyes widened above the bandanna he’d pulled up outlaw-style over his mouth and nose, and then he tumbled from his saddle.

Cuthbert and Alain spurred past him, and Bert, not slowing, took the two riding ahead with his slingshot. The fellow beyond them heard something in spite of the wind, and swivelled in his saddle. Alain had drawn his own knife and now held it by the tip of the blade. He threw hard, in the exaggerated full-arm motion they had been taught, and although the range was long for such work-twenty feet at least, and in windy air-his aim was true. The hilt came to rest protruding from the center of the man’s bandanna. The vaq groped for it, making choked gargling sounds around the knife in his throat, and then he too dropped from the saddle.

Seven now.

Like the story of the shoemaker and the flies, Roland thought. His heart was beating slow and hard in his chest as he caught up with Alain and Cuthbert. The wind gusted a lonely whine. Dust flew, swirled, then dropped with the wind. Ahead of them were three more riders, and ahead of them the main party.

Roland pointed at the next three, then mimed the slingshot. Pointed beyond them and mimed firing a revolver. Cuthbert and Alain nodded. They rode forward, once again stirrup-to-stirrup, closing in.

22

Bert got two of the three ahead of them clean, but the third jerked at the wrong moment, and the steel ball meant for the back of his head only clipped his earlobe on the way by. Roland had drawn his gun by then, however, and put a bullet in the man’s temple as he turned. That made ten, a full quarter of Jonas’s company before the riders even realized trouble had begun. Roland had no idea if it would be enough of an advantage, but he knew that the first part of the job was done. No more stealth; now it was a matter of raw killing.

“Hile! Hile!” he screamed in a ringing, carrying voice. “To me, gunslingers! To me! Ride them down! No prisoners!”

They spurred toward the main party, riding into battle for the first time, closing like wolves on sheep, shooting before the men ahead of them had any slight idea of who had gotten in behind them or what was happening. The three boys had been trained as gunslingers, and what they lacked in experience they made up for with the keen eyes and reflexes of the young. Under their guns, the desert east of Hanging Rock became a killing-floor.

Screaming, not a single thought among them above the wrists of their deadly hands, they sliced into the unprepared Mejis party like a three-sided blade, shooting as they went. Not every shot killed, but not a one went entirely wild, either. Men flew out of their saddles and were dragged by boots caught in stirrups as their horses bolted; other men, some dead, some only wounded, were trampled beneath the feet of their panicky, rearing mounts.

Roland rode with both guns drawn and tiring, Rusher’s reins gripped in his teeth so they wouldn’t fall overside and trip the horse up. Two men dropped beneath his fire on his left, two more on the right. Ahead of them, Brian Hookey turned in his saddle, his beard-stubbly face long with amazement. Around his neck, a reap-charm in the shape of a bell swung and tinkled as he grabbed for the shotgun which hung in a scabbard over one burly blacksmith’s shoulder. Before he could do more than get a hand on the gunstock, Roland blew the silver bell off his chest and exploded the heart which lay beneath it. Hookey pitched out of his saddle with a grunt.

Cuthbert caught up with Roland on the right side and shot two more men off their horses. He gave Roland a fierce and blazing grin. “Al was right!” he shouted. “These are hard calibers!”

Roland’s talented fingers did their work, rolling the cylinders of the guns he held and reloading at a full gallop-doing it with a ghastly, supernatural speed-and then beginning to fire again. Now they had come almost all the way through the group, riding hard, laying men low on both sides and straight ahead as well. Alain dropped back a little and turned his horse, covering Roland and Cuthbert from behind.

Roland saw Jonas, Depape, and Lengyll reining around to face their attackers. Lengyll was clawing at his machine-gun, but the strap had gotten tangled in the wide collar of the duster he wore, and every time he grabbed for the stock, it bobbed out of his reach. Beneath his heavy gray-blond mustache, Lengyll’s mouth was twisted with fury.

Now, riding between Roland and Cuthbert and these three, holding a huge blued-steel five-shot in one hand, came Hash Renfrew.

“Gods damn you!” Renfrew cried. “Oh, you rotten sister-fuckers!” He dropped his reins and laid the five-shot in the crook of one elbow to steady it. The wind gusted viciously, wrapping him in an envelope of swirling brown grit.

Roland had no thought of retreating, or perhaps jigging to one side or the other. He had, in fact, no thoughts at all. The fever had descended over his mind and he burned with it like a torch inside a glass sleeve. Screaming through the reins caught in his teeth, he galloped toward Hash Renfrew and the three men behind him.

23

Jonas had no clear idea of what was happening until he heard Will Dearborn screaming

(Hile! To me! No prisoners!)

a battle-cry he knew of old. Then it fell into place and the rattle of gunfire made sense. He reined around, aware of Roy doing the same beside him… but most aware of the ball in its bag, a thing both powerful and fragile, swinging back and forth against the neck of his horse.

“It’s those kids!” Roy exclaimed. His total surprise made him look more stupid than ever.

“Dearborn, you bastard!” Hash Renfrew spat, and the gun in his hand thundered a single time.

Jonas saw Dearborn’s sombrero rise from his head, its brim chewed away. Then the kid was firing, and he was good-better than anyone Jonas had ever seen in his life. Renfrew was hammered back out of his saddle with both legs kicking, still holding onto his monster gun, firing it twice at the dusty-blue sky before hitting the ground on his back and rolling, dead, on his side.

Lengyll’s hand dropped away from the elusive wire stock of his speed-shooter and he only stared, unable to believe the apparition bearing down on him out of the dust. “Get back!” he cried. “In the name of the Horsemen’s Association, I tell you-” Then a large black hole appeared in the center of his forehead, just above the place where his eyebrows tangled together. His hands flew up to his shoulders, palms out, as if he were declaring surrender. That was how he died.

“Son of a bitch, oh you little sister-fucking son of a bitch!” Depape howled. He tried to draw and his revolver got caught in his scrape. He was still trying to pull it free when a bullet from Roland’s gun opened his mouth in a red scream almost all the way down to his adam’s apple.

This can’t be happening, Jonas thought stupidly. It can’t, there are too many of us.

But it was happening. The In-World boys had struck unerringly at the fracture-line; were performing what amounted to a textbook example of how gunslingers were supposed to attack when the odds were bad. And Jonas’s coalition of ranchers, cowboys, and town tough-boys had shattered. Those not dead were fleeing to every point of the compass, spurring their horses as if a hundred devils paroled from hell were in pursuit. They were far from a hundred, but they fought like a hundred. Bodies were scattered in the dust everywhere, and as Jonas watched, he saw the one serving as their back door-Stockworth-ride down another man, bump him out of his saddle, and put a bullet in his head as he fell. Gods of the earth, he thought, that was Croydon, him that owns the Piano Ranch!

Except he didn’t own it anymore.

And now Dearborn was bearing down on Jonas with his gun drawn.

Jonas snatched the drawstring looped around the horn of his saddle and unwound it with two fast, hard snaps of the wrist. He held the bag up in the windy air, his teeth bared and his long white hair streaming.

“Come any closer and I’ll smash it! I mean it, you damned puppy! Stay where you are!”

Roland never hesitated in his headlong gallop, never paused to think; his hands did his thinking for him now, and when he remembered all this later, it was distant and silent and queerly warped, like something seen in a flawed mirror… or a wizard’s glass.

Jonas thought: Gods, it’s him! It’s Arthur Eld himself come to take me!

And as the barrel of Roland’s gun opened in his eye like the entrance to a tunnel or a mineshaft, Jonas remembered what the brat had said to him in the dusty dooryard of that burned-out ranch: The soul of a man such as you can never leave the west.

I knew, Jonas thought. Even then I knew my ka had pretty well run out. But surely he won’t risk the ball… he can’t risk the ball, he’s the dinh of this ka-tet and he can’t risk it…

“To me!” Jonas screamed. “To me, boys! They’re only three, for gods’ sake! To me, you cowards!”

But he was alone-Lengyll killed with his idiotic machine-gun lying by his side, Roy a corpse glaring up at the bitter sky, Quint fled, Hookey dead, the ranchers who had ridden with them gone. Only Clay still lived, and he was miles from here.

“I’ll smash it!” he shrieked at the cold-eyed boy bearing down on him like death’s sleekest engine. “Before all the gods, I’ll-”

Roland thumbed back the hammer of his revolver and fired. The bullet struck the center of the tattooed hand holding the drawstring cord and vaporized the palm, leaving only fingers that twitched their random way out of a spongy red mass. For just a moment Roland saw the blue coffin, and then it was covered by downspilling blood.

The bag dropped. And, as Rusher collided with Jonas’s horse and slewed it to the side. Roland caught the bag deftly in the crook of one arm. Jonas, screaming in dismay as the prize left him, grabbed at Roland, caught his shoulder, and almost succeeded in turning the gunslinger out of his saddle. Jonas’s blood rained across Roland’s face in hot drops.

“Give it back, you brat!” Jonas clawed under his serape and brought out another gun. “Give it back, it’s mine!”

“Not anymore,” Roland said. And, as Rusher danced around, quick and delicate for such a large animal, Roland fired two point-blank rounds into Jonas’s face. Jonas’s horse bolted out from under him and the man with the white hair landed spreadeagled on his back with a thump. His arms and legs spasmed, jerked, trembled, then stilled.

Roland looped the bag’s drawstring over his shoulder and rode back toward Alain and Cuthbert, ready to give aid… but there was no need. They sat their horses side by side in the blowing dust, at the end of a scattered road of dead bodies, their eyes wide and dazed-eyes of boys who have passed through fire for the first time and can hardly believe they have not been burned. Only Alain had been wounded; a bullet had opened his left cheek, a wound that healed clean but left a scar he bore until his dying day. He could not remember who had shot him, he said later on, or at what point of the battle. He had been lost to himself during the shooting, and had only vague memories of what had happened after the charge began. Cuthbert said much the same.

“Roland,” Cuthbert said now. He passed a shaky hand down his face. “Hile, gunslinger.”

“Hile.”

Cuthbert’s eyes were red and irritated from the sand, as if he had been crying. He took back the unspent silver slingshot balls when Roland handed them to him without seeming to know what they were. “Roland, we’re alive.”

“Yes.”

Alain was looking around dazedly. “Where did the others go?”

“I’d say at least twenty-five of them are back there,” Roland said, gesturing at the road of dead bodies. “The rest-” He waved his hand, still with a revolver in it, in a wide half-circle. “They’ve gone. Had their fill of Mid-World’s wars, I wot.”

Roland slipped the drawstring bag off his shoulder, held it before him on the bridge of his saddle for a moment, and then opened it. For a moment the bag’s mouth was black, and then it filled with the irregular pulse of a lovely pink light.

It crept up the gunslinger’s smooth cheeks like fingers and swam in his eyes.

“Roland,” Cuthbert said, suddenly nervous, “I don’t think you should play with that. Especially not now. They’ll have heard the shooting out at Hanging Rock. If we’re going to finish what we started, we don’t have time for-”

Roland ignored him. He slipped both hands into the bag and lifted the wizard’s glass out. He held it up to his eyes, unaware that he had smeared it with droplets of Jonas’s blood. The ball did not mind; this was not the first time it had been blood-touched. It flashed and swirled formlessly for a moment, and then its pink vapors opened like curtains. Roland saw what was there, and lost himself within it.

1

Coral’s grip on Susan’s arm was firm but not painful. There was nothing particularly cruel about the way she was moving Susan along the downstairs corridor, but there was a relentlessness about it that was disheartening. Susan didn’t try to protest; it would have been useless. Behind the two women were a pair of vaqueros (armed with knives and bolas rather than guns; the available guns had all gone west with Jonas). Behind the vaqs, skulking along like a sullen ghost which lacks the necessary psychic energy to fully materialize itself, came the late Chancellor’s older brother, Laslo. Reynolds, his taste for a spot of journey’s-end rape blunted by his growing sense of disquiet, had either remained above or gone off to town.

“I’m going to put ye in the cold pantry until I know better what to do with'ee, dear,” Coral said. “Ye’ll be quite safe there… and warm. How fortunate ye wore a serape. Then… when Jonas gets back…”

“Ye’ll never see sai Jonas again,” Susan said. “He won’t ever-”

Fresh pain exploded in her sensitive face. For a moment it seemed the entire world had blown up. Susan reeled back against the dressed stone wall of the lower corridor, her vision first blurred, then slowly clearing. She could feel blood flowing down her cheek from a wound opened by the stone in Coral’s ring when Coral had backhanded her. And her nose. That cussed thing was bleeding again, too.

Coral was looking at her in a chilly this-is-all-business-to-me fashion, but Susan believed she saw something different in the woman’s eyes. Fear, mayhap.

“Don’t talk to me about Eldred, missy. He’s sent to catch the boys who killed my brother. The boys you set loose.”

“Get off it.” Susan wiped her nose, grimaced at the blood pooled in her palm, and wiped it on the leg of her pants. “I know who killed Hart as well as ye do yerself, so don’t pull mine and I won’t yank yer own.” She watched Coral’s hand rise, ready to slap, and managed a dry laugh. “Go on. Cut my face open on the other side, if ye like. Will that change how ye sleep tonight with no man to warm the other side of the bed?”

Coral’s hand came down fast and hard, but instead of slapping, it seized Susan’s arm again. Hard enough to hurt, this time, but Susan barely felt it. She had been hurt by experts this day, and would suffer more hurt gladly, if that would hasten the moment when she and Roland could be together again.

Coral hauled her the rest of the way down the corridor, through the kitchen (that great room, which would have been all steam and bustle on any other Reaping Day, now stood uncannily deserted), and to the iron-bound door on the far side. This she opened. A smell of potatoes and gourds and sharproot drifted out.

“Get in there. Go smart, before I decide to kick yer winsome ass square.”

Susan looked her in the eye, smiling.

“I’d damn ye for a murderer’s bed-bitch, sai Thorin, but ye’ve already damned yerself. Ye know it, too-'tis written in yer face, to be sure. So I’ll just drop ye a curtsey”-still smiling, she suited action to the words- “and wish ye a very good day.”

“Get in and shut up yer saucy mouth!” Coral cried, and pushed Susan into the cold pantry. She slammed the door, ran the bolt, and turned her blazing eyes upon the vaqs, who stood prudently away from her.

“Keep her well, muchachos. Mind ye do.”

She brushed between them, not listening to their assurances, and went up to her late brother’s suite to wait for Jonas, or word of Jonas. The whey-faced bitch sitting down there amongst the carrots and potatoes knew nothing, but her words

(ye’ll never see sai Jonas again)

were in Coral’s head now; they echoed and would not leave.

2

Twelve o’ the clock sounded from the squat bell-tower atop the Town Gathering Hall. And if the unaccustomed silence which hung over the rest of Hambry seemed strange as that Reap morning passed into afternoon, the silence in the Travellers’ Rest was downright eerie. Better than two hundred souls were packed together beneath the dead gaze of The Romp,, all of them drinking hard, yet there was hardly a sound among them save for the shuffle of feet and the impatient rap of glasses on the bar, indicating that another drink was wanted.

Sheb had tried a hesitant tune on the piano-“Big Bottle Boogie,” everyone liked that one-and a cowboy with a mutie-mark on one cheek had put the tip of a knife in his ear and told him to shut up that noise if he wanted to keep what passed for his brains on the starboard side of his eardrum. Sheb, who would be happy to go on drawing breath for another thousand years if the gods so allowed, quit his piano-bench at once, and went to the bar to help Stanley and Pettie the Trotter serve up the booze.

The mood of the drinkers was confused and sullen. Reaping Fair had been stolen from them, and they didn’t know what to do about it. There would still be a bonfire, and plenty of stuffy-guys to bum on it, but there were no Reap-kisses today and would be no dancing tonight; no riddles, no races, no pig-wrestle, no jokes… no good cheer, dammit! No hearty farewell to the end of the year! Instead of joviality there had been murder in the dark, and the escape of the guilty, and now only the hope of retribution instead of the certainty of it. These folk, sullen-drunk and as potentially dangerous as stormclouds filled with lightning, wanted someone to focus on, someone to tell them what to do.

And, of course, someone to toss on the fire, as in the days of Eld.

It was at this point, not long after the last toll of noon had faded into the cold air, that the batwing doors opened and two women came in. A good many knew the crone in the lead, and several of them crossed their eyes with their thumbs as a ward against her evil look. A murmur ran through the room. It was the Coos, the old witch-woman, and although her face was pocked with sores and her eyes sunk so deep in their sockets they could barely be seen, she gave off a peculiar sense of vitality. Her lips were red, as if she had been eating winterberries.

The woman behind her walked slowly and stiffly, with one hand pressed against her midsection. Her face was as white as the witch-woman’s mouth was red.

Rhea advanced to the middle of the floor, passing the gawking trail-hands at the Watch Me tables without so much as a glance. When she reached the center of the bar and stood directly beneath The Romp’s glare, she turned to look at the silent drovers and townsfolk.

“Most of ye know me!” she cried in a rusty voice which stopped just short of stridency. “Those of ye who don’t have never wanted a love-potion or needed the ram put back in yer rod or gotten tired of a nagging mother-in-law’s tongue. I’m Rhea, the wise-woman of the Coos, and this lady beside me is aunt to the girl who freed three murderers last night… this same girl who murdered yer town’s Sheriff and a good young man- married, he was, and with a kid on the way. He stood before her with 'is defenseless hands raised, pleadin for his life on behalf of his wife and his babby to come, and still she shot 'im! Cruel, she is! Cruel and heartless!”

A mutter ran through the crowd. Rhea raised her twisted old claws and it stilled at once. She turned in a slow circle to see them all, hands still raised, looking like the world’s oldest, ugliest prizefighter.

“Strangers came and ye welcomed em in!” she cried in her rusty crow’s voice. “Welcomed em and gave em bread to eat, and it’s ruin they’ve fed ye in return! The deaths of those ye loved and depended on, spoilage to the time of the harvest, and gods know what curses upon the time to follow fin de ano!”

More murmurs, now louder. She had touched their deepest fear: that this year’s evil would spread, might even snarl the newly threaded stock which had so slowly and hopefully begun to emerge along the Outer Arc.

“But they’ve gone and likely won’t be back!” Rhea continued. “Mayhap just as well-why should their strange blood taint our ground? But there’s this other… one raised among us… a young woman gone traitor to her town and rogue among her own kind.”

Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper on this last phrase; her listeners strained forward to hear, faces grim, eyes big. And now Rhea pulled the pallid, skinny woman in the rusty black dress forward. She stood Cordelia in front other like a doll or a ventriloquist’s dummy, and whispered in her ear… but the whisper travelled, somehow; they all heard it.

“Come, dear. Tell em what ye told me.”

In a dead, carrying voice, Cordelia said: “She said she wouldn’t be the Mayor’s gilly. He wasn’t good enough for such as her, she said. And then she seduced Will Dearborn. The price of her body was a fine position in Gilead as his consort… and the murder of Hart Thorin. Dearborn paid her price. Lusty as he was for her, he paid gladly. His friends helped; they may have had the use of 'er as well, for all I know. Chancellor Rimer must have gotten in their way. Or p'rhaps they just saw him, and felt like doing him, too.”

“Bastards!” Pettie cried. “Sneaking young culls!”

“Now tell cm what’s needed to clarify the new season before it’s sp'iled, dearie,” Rhea said in a crooning voice.

Cordelia Delgado raised her head and looked around at the men. She took a breath, pulling the sour, intermingled smells of gray and beer and smoke and whiskey deep into her spinster’s lungs.

“Take her. Ye must take her. I say it in love and sorrow, so I do.”

Silent. Their eyes.

“Paint her hands.”

The glass gaze of the thing on the wall, looking its stuffed judgment over the waiting room.

“Charyou tree,” Cordelia whispered.

They did not cry their agreement but sighed it, like autumn wind through stripped trees.

3

Sheemie ran after the bad Coffin Hunter and Susan-sai until he could literally run no more-his lungs were afire and the stitch which had formed in his side turned into a cramp. He pitched forward onto the grass of the Drop, his left hand clutching his right armpit, grimacing with pain.

He lay there for some time with his face deep in the fragrant grass, knowing they were getting farther and farther ahead but also knowing it would do him no good to get up and start running again until the stitch was good and gone. If he tried to hurry the process, the stitch would simply come back and lay him low again. So he lay where he was, lifting his head to look at the tracks left by Susan-sai and the bad Coffin Hunter, and he was just about ready to try his feet when Caprichoso bit him. Not a nip, mind you, but a good healthy chomp. Capi had had a difficult twenty-four hours, and he hadn’t much liked to see the author of all his misery lying on the grass, apparently taking a nap.

“Yeee-OWWWW-by-damn!” Sheemie cried, and rocketed to his feet. There was nothing so magical as a good bite on the ass, a man of more philosophic bent might have reflected; it made all other concerns, no matter how heavy or sorrowful, disappear like smoke.

He whirled about. “Why did you do that, you mean old sneak of a Capi?” Sheemie was rubbing his bottom vigorously, and large tears of pain stood out in his eyes. “That hurts like… like a big old sonovabitch!”

Caprichoso extended his neck to its maximum length, bared his teeth in the satanic grin which only mules and dromedaries can command, and brayed. To Sheemie that bray sounded very like laughter.

The mule’s lead still trailed back between his sharp little hoofs. Sheemie reached for it, and when Capi dipped his head to inflict another bite, the boy gave him a good hard whack across the side of his narrow head. Capi snorted and blinked.

“You had that coming, mean old Capi,” Sheemie said. “I’ll have to shit from a squat for a week, so I will. Won’t be able to sit on the damned jakes.” He doubled the lead over his fist and climbed aboard the mule. Capi made no attempt to buck him off, but Sheemie winced as his wounded part settled atop the ridge of the mule’s spine. This was good luck just the same, though, he thought as he kicked the animal into motion. His ass hurt, but at least he wouldn’t have to walk… or try to run with a stitch in his side.

“Go on, stupid!” he said. “Hurry up! Fast as you can, you old sonovabitch!”

In the course of the next hour, Sheemie called Capi “you old sonovabitch” as often as possible-he had discovered, as many others had before him, that only the first cussword is really hard; after that, there’s nothing quite like them for relieving one’s feelings.

4

Susan’s trail cut diagonally across the Drop toward the coast and the grand old adobe that rose there. When Sheemie reached Seafront, he dismounted outside the arch and only stood, wondering what to do next. That they had come here, he had no doubt-Susan’s horse, Pylon, and the bad Coffin Hunter’s horse were tethered side by side in the shade, occasionally dropping their heads and blowing in the pink stone trough that ran along the courtyard’s ocean side.

What to do now? The riders who came and went beneath the arch (mostly white-headed vaqs who’d been considered too old to form a part of Lengyll’s party) paid no attention to the inn-boy and his mule, but Miguel might be a different story. The old mozo had never liked him, acted as if he thought Sheemie would turn thief, given half a chance, and if he saw Coral’s slop-and-carry-boy skulking in the courtyard, Miguel would very likely drive him away.

No, he won’t, he thought grimly. Not today, today I can’t let him boss me. I won’t go even if he hollers.

But if the old man did holler and raised an alarm, what then? The bad Coffin Hunter might come and kill him. Sheemie had reached a point where he was willing to die for his friends, but not unless it served a purpose.

So he stood in the cold sunlight, shifting from foot to foot, irresolute, wishing he was smarter than he was, that he could think of a plan. An hour passed this way, then two. It was slow time, each passing moment an exercise in frustration. He sensed any opportunity to help Susan-sai slipping away, but didn’t know what to do about it. Once he heard what sounded like thunder from the west… although a bright fall day like this didn’t seem right for thunder.

He had about decided to chance the courtyard anyway-it was temporarily deserted, and he might be able to make it across to the main house-when the man he had feared came staggering out of the stables.

Miguel Torres was festooned with reap-charms and was very drunk. He approached the center of the courtyard in rolling side-to-side loops, the tugstring of his sombrero twisted against his scrawny throat, his long white hair flying. The front of his chibosa was wet, as if he had tried to take a leak without remembering that you had to unlimber your dingus first. He had a small ceramic jug in one hand. His eyes were fierce and bewildered.

“Who done this?” Miguel cried. He looked up at the afternoon sky and the Demon Moon which floated there. Little as Sheemie liked the old man, his heart cringed. It was bad luck to look directly at old Demon, so it was. “Who done this thing? I ask that you tell me, senor! Por favor!” A pause, then a scream so powerful that Miguel reeled on his feet and almost fell. He raised his fists, as if he would box an answer out of the winking face in the moon, then dropped them wearily. Corn liquor slopped from the neck of the jug and wet him further. “Maricon,” he muttered. He staggered to the wall (almost tripping over the rear legs of the bad Coffin Hunter’s horse as he went), then sat down with his back against the adobe wall. He drank deeply from the jug, then pulled his sombrero up and settled it over his eyes. His arm twitched the jug, then settled it back, as if in the end it had proved too heavy. Sheemie waited until the old man’s thumb came unhooked from the jughandle and the hand flopped onto the cobbles. He started forward, then decided to wait even a little longer. Miguel was old and Miguel was mean. but Sheemie guessed Miguel might also be tricky. Lots of folks were, especially the mean ones.

He waited until he heard Miguel’s dusty snores, then led Capi into the courtyard, wincing at every clop of the mule’s hooves. Miguel never stirred, however. Sheemie tied Capi to the end of the hitching rail (wincing again as Caprichoso brayed a tuneless greeting to the horses tied there), then walked quickly across to the main door, through which he had never in his life expected to pass. He put his hand on the great iron latch, looked back once more at the old man sleeping against the wall, then opened the door and tiptoed in.

He stood for a moment in the oblong of sun the open door admitted, his shoulders hunched all the way up to his ears, expecting a hand to settle on the scruff of his neck (which bad-natured folk always seemed able to find, no matter how high you hunched your shoulders) at any moment; an angry voice would follow, asking what he thought he was doing here.

The foyer stood empty and silent. On the far wall was a tapestry depicting vaqueros herding horses along the Drop; against it leaned a guitar with a broken string. Sheemie’s feet sent back echoes no matter how lightly he walked. He shivered. This was a house of murder now, a bad place. There were likely ghosts.

Still, Susan was here. Somewhere.

He passed through the double doors on the far side of the foyer and entered the reception hall. Beneath its high ceiling, his footfalls echoed more loudly than ever. Long-dead mayors looked down at him from the walls; most had spooky eyes that seemed to follow him as he walked, marking him as an intruder. He knew their eyes were only paint, but still…

One in particular troubled him: a fat man with clouds of red hair, a bulldog mouth, and a mean glare in his eye, as if he wanted to ask what some halfwit inn-boy was doing in the Great Hall at Mayor’s House.

“Quit looking at me that way, you big old sonuvabitch,” Sheemie whispered, and felt a little better. For the moment, at least.

Next came the dining hall, also empty, with the long trestle tables pushed back against the wall. There was the remains of a meal on one-a single plate of cold chicken and sliced bread, half a mug of ale. Looking at those few bits of food on a table that had served dozens at various fairs and festivals-that should have served dozens this very day-brought the enormity of what had happened home to Sheemie. And the sadness of it, too. Things had changed in Hambry, and would likely never be the same again.

These long thoughts did not keep him from gobbling the leftover chicken and bread, or from chasing it with what remained in the alepot. It had been a long, foodless day.

He belched, clapped both hands over his mouth, eyes making quick and guilty side-to-side darts above his dirty fingers, and then walked on.

The door at the far end of the room was latched but unlocked. Sheemie opened it and poked his head out into the corridor which ran the length of Mayor’s House. The way was lit with gas chandeliers, and was as broad as an avenue. It was empty-at least for the moment-but he could hear whispering voices from other rooms, and perhaps other floors, as well. He supposed they belonged to the maids and any other servants that might be about this afternoon, but they sounded very ghostly to him, just the same. Perhaps one belonged to Mayor Thorin, wandering the corridor right in front of him (if Sheemie could but see him… which he was glad he couldn’t). Mayor Thorin wandering and wondering what had happened to him, what this cold jellylike stuff soaking into his nightshirt might be, who-

A hand gripped Sheemie’s arm just above the elbow. He almost shrieked.

“Don’t!” a woman whispered. “For your father’s sake!”

Sheemie somehow managed to keep the scream in. He turned. And there, wearing jeans and a plain checked ranch-shirt, her hair tied back, her pale face set, her dark eyes blazing, stood the Mayor’s widow.

“S-S-Sai Thorin… I… I… I…”

There was nothing else he could think of to say. Now she’ll call for the guards o’ the watch, if there be any left, he thought. In a way, it would be a relief

“Have ye come for the girl? The Delgado girl?”

Grief had been good to Olive, in a terrible way-had made her face seem less plump, and oddly young. Her dark eyes never left his, and forbade any attempt at a lie. Sheemie nodded.

“Good. I can use your help, boy. She’s down below, in the pantry, and she’s guarded.”

Sheemie gaped, not believing what he was hearing.

“Do you think I believe she had anything to do with Hart’s murder?” Olive asked, as if Sheemie had objected to her idea. “I may be fat and not so speedy on my pins anymore, but I’m not a complete idiot. Come on, now. Seafront’s not a good place for sai Delgado just now-too many people from town know where she is.”

5

“Roland.”

He will hear this voice in uneasy dreams for the rest of his life, never quite remembering what he has dreamed, only knowing that the dreams leave him feeling ill somehow-walking restlessly, straightening pictures in loveless rooms, listening to the call to muzzein in alien town squares.

“Roland of Gilead.”

This voice, which he almost recognizes; a voice so like his own that a psychiatrist from Eddie’s or Susannah’s or Jake’s when-and-where would say it is his voice, the voice of his subconscious, but Roland knows better; Roland knows that often the voices that sound the most like our own when they speak in our heads are those of the most terrible outsiders, the most dangerous intruders.

“Roland, son of Steven.”

The ball has taken him first to Hambry and to Mayor’s House, and he would see more of what is happening there, but then it takes him away- calls him away in that strangely familiar voice, and he has to go. There is no choice because, unlike Rhea or Jonas, he is not watching the ball and the creatures who speak soundlessly within it; he is inside the ball, a part of its endless pink storm.

“Roland, come. Roland, see.”

And so the storm whirls him first up and then away. He flies across the Drop, rising and rising through stacks of air first warm and then cold, and he is not alone in the pink storm which bears him west along the Path of the Beam. Sheb flies past him, his hat cocked back on his head; he is singing “Hey Jude” at the top of his lungs as his nicotine-stained fingers plink keys that are not there-transported by his tune, Sheb doesn’t seem to realize that the storm has ripped his piano away.

“Roland, come,”

the voice says-the voice of the storm, the voice of the glass-and Roland comes. The Romp flies by him, glassy eyes blazing with pink light. A scrawny man in farmer’s overalls goes flying past, his long red hair streaming out behind him. “Life for you, and for your crop,” he says-something like that, anyway-and then he’s gone. Next, spinning like a weird windmill, comes an iron chair (to Roland it looks like a torture device) equipped with wheels, and the boy gunslinger thinks The Lady of Shadows without knowing why he thinks it, or what it means.

Now the pink storm is carrying him over blasted mountains, now over a fertile green delta where a broad river runs its oxbow squiggles like a vein, reflecting a placid blue sky that turns to the pink of wild roses as the storm passes above. Ahead, Roland sees an uprushing column of darkness and his heart quails, but this is where the pink storm is taking him, and this is where he must go.

I want to get out, he thinks, but he’s not stupid, he realizes the truth: he may never get out. The wizard’s glass has swallowed him. He may remain in its stormy, muddled eye forever.

I’ll shoot my way out, if I have to, he thinks, but no-he has no guns. He is naked in the storm, rushing bareass toward that virulent blue-black infection that has buried all the landscape beneath it.

And yet he hears singing.

Faint but beautiful-a sweet harmonic sound that makes him shiver and think of Susan: bird and bear and hare and fish.

Suddenly Sheemie’s mule (Caprichoso, Roland thinks, a beautiful name) goes past, galloping on thin air with his eyes as bright as firedims in the storm’s lumbre fuego. Following him, wearing a sombrera and riding a broom festooned with fluttering reap-charms, comes Rhea of the Coos. “I’ll get you, my pretty!” she screams at the fleeing mule, and then, cackling, she is gone, zooming and brooming.

Roland plunges into the black, and suddenly his breath is gone. The world around him is noxious darkness; the air seems to creep on his skin like a layer of bugs. He is buffeted, boxed to and fro by invisible fists, then driven downward in a dive so violent he fears he will be smashed against the ground: so fell Lord Perth.

Dead fields and deserted villages roll up out of the gloom; he sees blasted trees that will give no shade-oh, but all is shade here, all is death here, this is the edge of End-World, where some dark day he will come, and all is death here.

“Gunslinger, this is Thunderclap.”

“Thunderclap,” he says.

“Here are the unbreathing; the white faces.”

“The unbreathing. The white faces.”

Yes. He knows that, somehow. This is the place of slaughtered soldiers, the cloven helm, the rusty halberd; from here come the pale warriors. This is Thunderclap, where clocks run backward and the graveyards vomit out their dead.

Ahead is a tree like a crooked, clutching hand; on its topmost branch a billy-bumbler has been impaled. It should be dead, but as the pink storm carries Roland past, it raises its head and looks at him with inexpressible pain and weariness. “Oy!” it cries, and then it, too, is gone and not to be remembered for many years.

“Look ahead, Roland-see your destiny.”

Now, suddenly, he knows that voice-it is the voice of the Turtle. He looks and sees a brilliant blue-gold glow piercing the dirty darkness of Thunderclap. Before he can do more than register it, he breaks out of the darkness and into the light like something coming out of an egg, a creature at last being born.

“Light! Let there be light!”

the voice of the Turtle cries, and Roland has to put his hands to his eyes and peek through his fingers to keep from being blinded. Below him is a field of blood-or so he thinks then, a boy of fourteen who has that day done his first real killing. This is the blood that has flowed out of Thunderclap and threatens to drown our side of the world, he thinks, and it will not be for untold years that he will finally rediscover his time inside the ball and put this memory together with Eddie’s dream and tell his com-padres, as they sit in the turnpike breakdown lane at the end of the night, that he was wrong, that he had been fooled by the brilliance, coming as it did, so hard on the heels of Thunderclap ’s shadows. “It wasn’t blood but roses,” he tells Eddie, Susannah, and Jake.

“Gunslinger, look-look there.”

Yes, there it is, a dusty gray-black pillar rearing on the horizon: the Dark Tower, the place where all Beams, all lines of force, converge. In its spiraling windows he sees fitful electric blue fire and hears the cries of all those pent within; he senses both the strength of the place and the wrong-ness of it; he can feel how it is spooling error across everything, softening the divisions between the worlds, how its potential for mischief is growing stronger even as disease weakens its truth and coherence, like a body afflicted with cancer; this jutting arm of dark gray stone is the world’s great mystery and last awful riddle.

It is the Tower, the Dark Tower rearing to the sky, and as Roland rushes toward it in the pink storm, he thinks: I will enter you, me and my friends, if ka wills it so; we will enter you and we will conquer the wrong-ness within you. It may be years yet, but I swear by bird and bear and hare and fish, by all I love that-

But now the sky fills with flaggy clouds which flow out of Thunderclap, and the world begins to go dark; the blue light from the Tower’s rising windows shines like mad eyes, and Roland hears thousands of screaming, wailing voices.

“You will kill everything and everyone you love,”

says the voice of the Turtle, and now it is a cruel voice, cruel and hard.

“and still the Tower will be pent shut against you.”

The gunslinger draws in all his breath and draws together all his force; when he cries his answer to the Turtle, he does so for all the generations of his blood: “NO! IT WILL NOT STAND! WHEN I COME HERE IN MY BODY, IT WILL NOT STAND! I SWEAR ON MY FATHER’S NAME. IT WILL NOT STAND!”

“Then die,” the voice says, and Roland is hurled at the gray-black stone flank of the Tower, to be smashed there like a bug against a rock. But before that can happen-

6

Cuthbert and Alain stood watching Roland with increasing concern. He had the piece of Maerlyn’s Rainbow raised to his face, cupped in his hands as a man might cup a ceremonial goblet before making a toast. The drawstring bag lay crumpled on the dusty toes of his boots; his cheeks and forehead were washed in a pink glow that neither boy liked. It seemed alive, somehow, and hungry.

They thought, as if with one mind: I can’t see his eyes. Where are his eyes?

“Roland?” Cuthbert repeated. “If we’re going to get out to Hanging Rock before they’re ready for us, you have to put that thing away.”

Roland made no move to lower the ball. He muttered something under his breath; later, when Cuthbert and Alain had a chance to compare notes, they both agreed it had been thunderclap.

“Roland?” Alain asked, stepping forward. As gingerly as a surgeon slipping a scalpel into the body of a patient, he slipped his right hand between the curve of the ball and Roland’s bent, studious face. There was no response. Alain pulled back and turned to Cuthbert.

“Can you touch him?” Bert asked.

Alain shook his head. “Not at all. It’s like he’s gone somewhere far away.”

“We have to wake him up.” Cuthbert’s voice was dust-dry and shaky at the edges.

“Vannay told us that if you wake a person from a deep hypnotic trance too suddenly, he can go mad,” Alain said. “Remember? I don’t know if I dare-”

Roland stirred. The pink sockets where his eyes had been seemed to grow. His mouth flattened into the line of bitter determination they both knew well.

“No! It will not stand!” he cried in a voice that made gooseflesh ripple the skin of the other two boys; that was not Roland’s voice at all, at least not as he was now; that was the voice of a man.

“No,” Alain said much later, when Roland slept and he and Cuthbert, sat up before the campfire. “That was the voice of a king.”

Now, however, the two of them only looked at their absent, roaring friend, paralyzed with fright.

“When I come here in my body, it will not stand! I swear on my father’s name, IT WILL NOT STAND!”

Then, as Roland’s unnaturally pink face contorted, like the face of a man who confronts some unimaginable horror, Cuthbert and Alain lunged forward. It was no longer a question of perhaps destroying him in an effort to save him; if they didn’t do something, the glass would kill him as they watched.

In the dooryard of the Bar K, it had been Cuthbert who clipped Roland; this time Alain did the honors, administering a hard right to the center of the gunslinger’s forehead. Roland tumbled backward, the ball spilling out of his loosening hands and the terrible pink light leaving his face. Cuthbert caught the boy and Alain caught the ball. Its heavy pink glow was weirdly insistent, beating at his eyes and pulling at his mind, but Alain stuffed it resolutely into the drawstring bag again without looking at it… and as he pulled the cord, yanking the bag’s mouth shut, he saw the pink light wink out, as if it knew it had lost. For the time being, at least.

He turned back, and winced at the sight of the bruise puffing up from the middle of Roland’s brow. “Is he-”

“Out cold,” Cuthbert said.

“He better come to soon.”

Cuthbert looked at him grimly, with not a trace of his usual amiability. “Yes,” he said, “you’re certainly right about that.”

7

Sheemie waited at the foot of the stairs which led down to the kitchen area, shifting uneasily from foot to foot and waiting for sai Thorin to come back, or to call him. He didn’t know how long she’d been in the kitchen, but it felt like forever. He wanted her to come back, and more than that-more than anything-he wanted her to bring Susan-sai with her. Sheemie had a terrible feeling about this place and this day; a feeling that darkened like the sky, which was now all obscured with smoke in the west. What was happening out there, or if it had anything to do with the thundery sounds he’d heard earlier, Sheemie didn’t know, but he wanted to be out of here before the smoke-hazed sun went down and the real Demon Moon, not its pallid day-ghost, rose in the sky.

One of the swinging doors between the corridor and the kitchen pushed open and Olive came hurrying out… She was alone.

“She’s in the pantry, all right,” Olive said. She raked her fingers through her graying hair. “I got that much out of those two pupuras, but no more. I knew it was going to be that way as soon as they started talking that stupid crunk of theirs.”

There was no proper word for the dialect of the Mejis vaqueros, but “crunk” served well enough among the Barony’s higher-born citizens. Olive knew both of the vaqs guarding the pantry, in the vague way of a person who has once ridden a lot and passed gossip and weather with other Drop-riders, and she knew damned well these old boys could do better than crunk. They had spoken it so they could pretend to misunderstand her, and save both them and her the embarrassment of an outright refusal. She had gone along with the deception for much the same reason, although she could have responded with crunk of her own perfectly well-and called them some names their mothers never used-had she wanted.

“I told them there were men upstairs,” she said, “and I thought maybe they meant to steal the silver. I said I wanted the maloficios turned out. And still they played dumb. No habla, sai. Shit. Shit!”

Sheemie thought of calling them a couple of big old sonuvabitches, and decided to keep silent. She was pacing back and forth in front of him and throwing an occasional burning look at the closed kitchen doors. At last she stopped in front of Sheemie again.

“Turn out your pockets,” she said. “Let’s see what you have for hopes and garlands.”

Sheemie did as she asked, producing a little pocketknife (a gift from Stanley Ruiz) and a half-eaten cookie from one. From the other he brought out three lady-finger firecrackers, a big-banger, and a few sulfur matches.

Olive’s eyes gleamed when she saw these. “Listen to me, Sheemie,” she said.

8

Cuthbert patted Roland’s face with no result. Alain pushed him aside, knelt, and took the gunslinger’s hands. He had never used the touch this way, but had been told it was possible-that one could reach another’s mind, in at least some cases.

Roland! Roland, wake up! Please! We need you!

At first there was nothing. Then Roland stirred, muttered, and pulled his hands out of Alain’s. In the moment before his eyes opened, both of the other two boys were struck by the same fear of what they might see: no eyes at all, only raving pink light.

But they were Roland’s eyes, all right-those cool blue shooter’s eyes.

He struggled to gain his feet, and failed the first time. He held out his hands. Cuthbert took one, Alain the other. As they pulled him up, Bert saw a strange and frightening thing: there were threads of white in Roland’s hair. There had been none that morning; he would have sworn to it. The morning had been a long time ago, however.

“How long was I out?” Roland touched the bruise in the center of his forehead with the tips of his fingers and winced.

“Not long,” Alain said. “Five minutes, maybe. Roland, I’m sorry I hit you, but I had to. It was… I thought it was killing you.”

“Mayhap ’twas. Is it safe?”

Alain pointed wordlessly to the drawstring bag.

“Good. It’s best one of you carry it for now. I might be… “He searched for the right word, and when he found it, a small, wintry smile touched the comers of his mouth-“tempted,” he finished. “Let’s ride for Hanging Rock. We’ve got work yet to finish.”

“Roland…” Cuthbert began.

Roland turned, one hand on the horn of his horse’s saddle.

Cuthbert licked his lips, and for a moment Alain didn’t think he would be able to ask. If you don’t, I will, Alain thought… but Bert managed, bringing the words out in a rush.

“What did you see?”

“Much,” Roland said. “I saw much, but most of it is already fading out of my mind, the way dreams do when you wake up. What I do remember I’ll tell you as we ride. You must know, because it changes everything. We’re going back to Gilead, but not for long.”

“Where after that?” Alain asked, mounting.

“West. In search of the Dark Tower. If we survive today, that is. Come on. Let’s take those tankers.”

9

The two vaqs were rolling smokes when there was a loud bang from upstairs. They both jumped and looked at each other, the tobacco from their works-in-progress sifting down to the floor in small brown flurries. A woman shrieked. The doors burst open. It was the Mayor’s widow again, this time accompanied by a maid. The vaqs knew her well-Maria Tomas, the daughter of an old compadre from the Piano Ranch.

“The thieving bastards have set the place on fire!” Maria cried, speaking to them in crunk. “Come and help!”

“Maria, sai, we have orders to guard-”

“A putina locked in the pantry?” Maria shouted, her eyes blazing. “Come, ye stupid old donkey, before the whole place catches! Then ye can explain to Senor Lengyll why ye stood here using yer thumbs for fart-corks while Seafront burned down around yer ears!”

“Go on!” Olive snapped. “Are you cowards?”

There were several smaller bangs as, above them in the great parlor, Sheemie set off the lady-fingers. He used the same match to light the drapes.

The two viejos exchanged a glance. “Andelay,” said the older of the two, then looked back at Maria. He no longer bothered with the crunk. “Watch this door,” he said.

“Like a hawk,” she agreed.

The two old men bustled out, one gripping the cords of his bolas, the other pulling a long knife from the scabbard on his belt.

As soon as the women heard their footsteps on the stairs at the end of the hall, Olive nodded to Maria and they crossed the room. Maria threw the bolts; Olive pulled the door open. Susan came out at once, looking from one to the other, then smiling tentatively. Maria gasped at the sight of her mistress’s swelled face and the blood crusted around her nose.

Susan took Maria’s hand before the maid could touch her face and squeezed her fingers gently. “Do ye think Thorin would want me now?” she asked, and then seemed to realize who her other rescuer was. “Olive… sai Thorin… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be cruel. But ye must believe that Roland, him ye know as Will Dearborn, would never-”

“I know it well,” Olive said, “and there’s no time for this now. Come on.”

She and Maria led Susan out of the kitchen, away from the stairs ascending to the main house and toward the storage rooms at the far north end of the lower level. In the drygoods storage room, Olive told the two of them to wait. She was gone for perhaps five minutes, but to Susan and Maria it seemed an eternity.

When she came back, Olive was wearing a wildly colored scrape much too big for her-it might have been her husband’s, but Susan thought it looked too big for the late Mayor, as well. Olive had tucked a piece of it into the side of her jeans to keep from stumbling over it. Slung over her arm like blankets, she had two more, both smaller and lighter. “Put these on,” she said. “It’s going to be cold.”

Leaving the drygoods store, they went down a narrow servants’ passageway toward the back courtyard. There, if they were fortunate (and if Miguel was still unconscious), Sheemie would be waiting for them with mounts. Olive hoped with all her heart that they would be fortunate. She wanted Susan safely away from Hambry before the sun went down.

And before the moon rose.

10

“Susan’s been taken prisoner,” Roland told the others as they rode west toward Hanging Rock. “That’s the first thing I saw in the glass.”

He spoke with such an air of absence that Cuthbert almost reined up. This wasn’t the ardent lover of the last few months. It was as if Roland had found a dream to ride through the pink air within the ball, and part of him rode it still. Or is it riding him? Cuthbert wondered.

“What?” Alain asked. “Susan taken? How? By whom? Is she all right?'”

“Taken by Jonas. He hurt her some, but not too badly. She’ll heal… and she’ll live. I’d turn around in a second if I thought her life was in any real danger.”

Ahead of them, appearing and disappearing in the dust like a mirage, was Hanging Rock. Cuthbert could see the sunlight pricking hazy sun-stars on the tankers, and he could see men. A lot of them. A lot of horses, as well. He patted the neck of his own mount, then glanced across to make sure Alain had Lengyll’s machine-gun. He did. Cuthbert reached around to the small of his back, making sure of the slingshot. It was there. Also his deerskin ammunition bag, which now contained a number of the big-bangers Sheemie had stolen as well as steel shot.

He’s using every ounce of his will to keep from going back, anyway, Cuthbert thought. He found the realization comforting-sometimes Roland scared him. There was something in him that went beyond steel. Something like madness. If it was there, you were glad to have it on your side… but often enough you wished it wasn’t there at all. On anybody’s side.

“Where is she?” Alain asked.

“Reynolds took her back to Seafront. She’s locked in the pantry… or was locked there. I can’t say which, exactly, because… “Roland paused, thinking. “The ball sees far, but sometimes it sees more. Sometimes it sees a future that’s already happening.”

“How can the future already be happening?” Alain asked. “I don’t know, and I don’t think it was always that way. I think it’s more to do with the world than Maerlyn’s Rainbow. Time is strange now. We know that, don’t we? How things sometimes seem to… slip. It’s almost as if there’s a thinny everywhere, breaking things down. But Susan’s safe. I know that, and that’s enough for me. Sheemie is going to help her… or is helping her. Somehow Jonas missed Sheemie, and he followed Susan all the way back.”

“Good for Sheemie!” Alain said, and pumped his fist into the air. “Hurrah!” Then: “What about us? Did you see us in this future?”

“No. This part was all quick-I hardly snatched more than a glance before the ball took me away. Flew me away, it seemed. But… I saw smoke on the horizon. I remember that. It could have been the smoke of burning tankers, or the brush piled in front of Eyebolt, or both. I think we’re going to succeed.”

Cuthbert was looking at his old friend in a queerly distraught way. The young man so deeply in love that Bert had needed to knock him into the dust of the courtyard in order to wake him up to his responsibilities… where was that young man, exactly? What had changed him, given him those disturbing strands of white hair?

“If we survive what’s ahead,” Cuthbert said, watching the gunslinger closely, “she’ll meet us on the road. Won’t she, Roland?”

He saw the pain on Roland’s face, and now understood: the lover was here, but the ball had taken away his joy and left only grief. That, and some new purpose-yes, Cuthbert felt it very well-which had yet to be stated.

“I don’t know,” Roland said. “I almost hope not, because we can never be as we were.”

“What?” This time Cuthbert did rein up.

Roland looked at him calmly enough, but now there were tears in his eyes.

“We are fools of ka” the gunslinger said. “Ka like a wind, Susan calls it.” He looked first at Cuthbert on his left, then at Alain on his right. “The Tower is our ka; mine especially. But it isn’t hers, nor she mine. No more is John Parson our ka. We’re not going toward his men to defeat him, but only because they’re in our way.” He raised his hands, then dropped them again, as if to say, What more do you need me to tell you?

“There is no Tower, Roland,” Cuthbert said patiently. “I don’t know what you saw in that glass ball, but there is no Tower. Well, as a symbol, I suppose-like Arthur’s Cup, or the Cross of the man-Jesus-but not as a real thing, a real building-”

“Yes,” Roland said. “It’s real.”

They looked at him uncertainly, and saw no doubt on his face. “It’s real, and our fathers know. Beyond the dark land-I can’t remember its name now, it’s one of the things I’ve lost-is End-World, and in End-World stands the Dark Tower. Its existence is the great secret our fathers keep; it’s what has held them together as ka-tet across all the years of the world’s decline. When we return to Gilead-if we return, and I now think we will-I’ll tell them what I’ve seen, and they’ll confirm what I say.”

“You saw all that in the glass?” Alain asked in an awe-hushed voice.

“I saw much.”

“But not Susan Delgado,” Cuthbert said.

“No. When we finish with yonder men and she finishes with Mejis, her part in our ka-tet ends. Inside the ball, I was given a choice: Susan, and my life as her husband and father of the child she now carries… or the Tower.” Roland wiped his face with a shaking hand. “I would choose Susan in an instant, if not for one thing: the Tower is crumbling, and if it falls, everything we know will be swept away. There will be chaos beyond our imagining. We must go… and we will go.” Above his young and unlined cheeks, below his young and unlined brow, were the ancient killer’s eyes that Eddie Dean would first glimpse in the mirror of an airliner’s bathroom. But now they swam with childish tears.

There was nothing childish in his voice, however.

“I choose the Tower. I must. Let her live a good life and long with someone else-she will, in time. As for me, I choose the Tower.”

11

Susan mounted on Pylon, which Sheemie had hastened to bring around to the rear courtyard after lighting the draperies of the great parlor on fire. Olive Thorin rode one of the Barony geldings with Sheemie double-mounted behind her and holding onto Capi’s lead. Maria opened the back gate, wished them good luck, and the three trotted out. The sun was westering now, but the wind had pulled away most of the smoke that had risen earlier. Whatever had happened in the desert, it was over now… or happening on some other layer of the same present time.

Roland, be thee well, Susan thought. I’ll see thee soon, dear… as soon as I can.

“Why are we going north?” she asked after half an hour’s silent riding.

“Because Seacoast Road’s best.”

“But-”

“Hush! They’ll find you gone and search the house first… if t'asn’t burned flat, that is. Not finding you there, they’ll send west, along the Great Road.” She cast an eye on Susan that was not much like the dithery, slightly confabulated Olive Thorin that folks in Hambry knew… or thought they knew. “If I know that’s the direction you’d choose, so will others we’d do well to avoid.”

Susan was silent. She was too confused to speak, but Olive seemed to know what she was about, and Susan was grateful for that.

“By the time they get around to sniffing west, it’ll be dark. Tonight we’ll stay in one of the sea-cliff caves five miles or so from here. I grew up a fisherman’s daughter, and I know all those caves, none better.” The thought of the caves she’d played in as a girl seemed to cheer her. “Tomorrow we’ll cut west, as you like. I’m afraid you’re going to have a plump old widow as a chaperone for a bit. Better get used to the idea.”

“Thee’s too good,” Susan said. “Ye should send Sheemie and I on alone, sai.”

“And go back to what? Why, I can’t even get two old trailhands on kitchen-duty to follow my orders. Fran Lengyll’s boss of the shooting-match now, and I’ve no urge to wait and see how he does at it. Nor if he decides he’d be better off with me adjudged mad and put up safe in a haci with bars on the windows. Or shall I stay to see how Hash Renfrew does as Mayor, with his boots up on my tables?” Olive actually laughed.

“Sai, I’m sorry.”

“We shall all be sorry later on,” Olive said, sounding remarkably cheery about it. “For now, the most important thing is to reach those caves unobserved. It must seem that we vanished into thin air. Hold up.”

Olive checked her horse, stood in the stirrups, looked around to make sure of her position, nodded, then twisted in the saddle so she could speak to Sheemie.

“Young man, it’s time for ye to mount yer trusty mule and go back to Seafront. If there are riders coming after us, ye must turn em aside with a few well-chosen words. Will'ee do that?”

Sheemie looked stricken. “I don’t have any well-chosen words, sai Thorin, so I don’t. I hardly have any words at all.”

“Nonsense,” Olive said, and kissed Sheemie’s forehead. “Go back at a goodish trot. If'ee spy no one coming after us by the time the sun touches the hills, then turn north again and follow. We shall wait for ye by the signpost. Do ye know where I mean?”

Sheemie thought he did, although it marked the outmost northern boundary of his little patch of geography. “The red 'un? With the sombrero on it, and the arrow pointing back for town?”

“The very one. Ye won’t get that far until after dark, but there’ll be plenty of moonlight tonight. If ye don’t come right away, we’ll wait. But ye must go back, and shift any men that might be chasing us off our track. Do ye understand?”

Sheemie did. He slid off Olive’s horse, clucked Caprichoso forward, and climbed on board, wincing as the place the mule had bitten came down. “So it’ll be, Olive-sai.”

“Good, Sheemie. Good. Off'ee go, then.”

“Sheemie?” Susan said. “Come to me a moment, please.”

He did, holding his hat in front of him and looking up at her worship-fully. Susan bent and kissed him not on the forehead but firmly on the mouth. Sheemie came close to fainting.

“Thankee-sai,” Susan said. “For everything.”

Sheemie nodded. When he spoke, he could manage nothing above a whisper.” ’twas only ka,” he said. “I know that… but I love you, Susan-sai. Go well. I’ll see you soon.”

“I look forward to it.”

But there was no soon, and no later for them, either. Sheemie took one look back as he rode his mule south, and waved. Susan lifted her own hand in return. It was the last Sheemie ever saw of her, and in many ways, that was a blessing.

12

Latigo had set pickets a mile out from Hanging Rock, but the blond boy Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain encountered as they closed in on the tankers looked confused and unsure of himself, no danger to anyone. He had scurvy-blossoms around his mouth and nose, suggesting that the men Farson had sent on this duty had ridden hard and fast, with little in the way of fresh supplies.

When Cuthbert gave the Good Man’s sigul-hands clasped to the chest, left above right, then both held out to the person being greeted-the blond picket did the same, and with a grateful smile.

“What spin and raree back there?” he asked, speaking with a strong In-World accent-to Roland, the boy sounded like a Nordite.

“Three boys who killed a couple of big bugs and then hied for the hills.” Cuthbert replied. He was an eerily good mimic, and gave the boy back his own accent faultlessly. “'I here were a tight. It be over now, but they did fight fearful.”

“What-”

“No time,” Roland said brusquely. “We have dispatches.” He crossed his hands on his chest, then held them out. “Hile! Farson!”

“Good Man!” the blond returned smartly. He gave back the salute with a smile that said he would have asked Cuthbert where he was from and who he was related to, if there had been more time. Then they were past him and inside Latigo’s perimeter. As easy as that.

“Remember that it’s hit-and-run,” Roland said. “Slow down for nothing. What we don’t get must be left-there’ll be no second pass.”

“Gods, don’t even suggest such a thing,” Cuthbert said, but he was smiling. He pulled his sling out of its rudimentary holster and tested its elastic draw with a thumb. Then he licked the thumb and hoisted it to the wind. Not much problem there, if they came in as they were; the wind was strong, but at their backs.

Alain unslung Lengyll’s machine-gun, looked at it doubtfully, then yanked back the slide-cock. “I don’t know about this, Roland. It’s loaded, and I think I see how to use it, but-”

“Then use it,” Roland said. The three of them were picking up speed now, the hooves of their horses drumming against the hardpan. The wind gusted, belling the fronts of their scrapes. “This is the sort of work it was meant for. If it jams, drop it and use your revolver. Are you ready?”

“Yes, Roland.”

“Bert?”

“Aye,” Cuthbert said in a wildly exaggerated Hambry accent, “so I am, so I am.”

Ahead of them, dust puffed as groups of riders passed before and behind the tankers, readying the column for departure. Men on foot looked around at the oncomers curiously but with a fatal lack of alarm.

Roland drew both revolvers. “Gilead!” he cried. “Hile! Gilead!”

He spurred Rusher to a gallop. The other two boys did the same. Cuthbert was in the middle again, sitting on his reins, slingshot in hand, lucifer matches radiating out of his tightly pressed lips.

The gunslingers rode down on Hanging Rock like furies.

13

Twenty minutes after sending Sheemie back south, Susan and Olive came around a sharp bend and found themselves face to face with three mounted men in the road. In the late-slanting sun, she saw that the one in the middle had a blue coffin tattooed on his hand. It was Reynolds. Susan’s heart sank.

The one on Reynolds’s left-he wore a stained white drover’s hat and had a lazily cocked eye-she didn’t know, but the one on the right, who looked like a stony-hearted preacher, was Laslo Rimer. It was Rimer that Reynolds glanced at, after smiling at Susan.

“Why, Las and I couldn’t even get us a drink to send his late brother, the Chancellor of Whatever You Want and the Minister of Thank You Very Much, on with a word,” Reynolds said. “We hadn’t hardly hit town before we got persuaded out here. I wasn’t going to go, but… damn! That old lady’s something. Could talk a corpse into giving a blowjob, if you’ll pardon the crudity. I think your aunt may have lost a wheel or two off her cart, though, sai Delgado. She-”

“Your friends are dead,” Susan told him.

Reynolds paused, shrugged. “Well now. Maybe si and maybe no. Me, I think I’ve decided to travel on without em even if they ain’t. But I might hang around here one more night. This Reaping business… I’ve heard so much about the way folks do it in the Outers. ’specially the bonfire part.”

The man with the cocked eye laughed phlegmily.

“Let us pass,” Olive said. “This girl has done nothing, and neither have I.”

“She helped Dearborn escape,” Rimer said, “him who murdered your own husband and my brother. I wouldn’t call that nothing.”

“The gods may restore Kimba Rimer in the clearing,” Olive said, “but the truth is he looted half of this town’s treasury, and what he didn’t give over to John Farson, he kept for himself.”

Rimer recoiled as if slapped.

“Ye didn’t know I knew? Laslo, I’d be angry at how little any of ye thought of me… except why would I want to be thought of by the likes of you, anyway? I knew enough to make me sick, leave it at that. I know that the man you’re sitting beside-”

“Shut up,” Rimer muttered.

“-was likely the one who cut yer brother’s black heart open; sai Reynolds was seen that early morning in that wing, so I’ve been told-”

“Shut up, you cunt!”

“-and so I believe.”

“Better do as he says, sai, and hold your tongue,” Reynolds said. Some of the lazy good humor had left his face. Susan thought: He doesn’t like people knowing what he did. Not even when he’s the one on top and what they know can’t hurt him. And he’s less without Jonas. A lot less. He knows it, too.

“Let us pass,” Olive said.

“No, sai, I can’t do that.”

“I’ll help ye, then, shall I?”

Her hand had crept beneath the outrageously large serape during the palaver, and now she brought out a huge and ancient pistola, its handles of yellowed ivory, its filigreed barrel of old tarnished silver. On top was a brass powder-and-spark.

Olive had no business even drawing the thing-it caught on her serape, and she had to fight it free. She had no business cocking it, either, a process that took both thumbs and two tries. But the three men were utterly flummoxed by the sight of the elderly blunderbuss in her hands, Reynolds as much as the other two; he sat his horse with his jaw hanging slack. Jonas would have wept.

“Get her!” a cracked old voice shrieked from behind the men blocking the road. “What’s wrong with ye, ye stupid culls? GET HER!”

Reynolds started at that and went for his gun. He was fast, but he had given Olive too much of a headstart and was beaten, beaten cold. Even as he cleared leather with the barrel of his revolver, the Mayor’s widow held the old gun out in both hands, and, squinching her eyes shut like a little girl who is forced to eat something nasty, pulled the trigger.

The spark flashed, but the damp powder only made a weary floop sound and disappeared in a puff of blue smoke. The ball-big enough to have taken Clay Reynolds’s head off from the nose on up, had it fired- stayed in the barrel.

In the next instant his own gun roared in his fist. Olive’s horse reared, whinnying. Olive went off the gelding head over boots, with a black hole in the orange stripe of her serape-the stripe which lay above her heart.

Susan heard herself screaming. The sound seemed to come from very far away. She might have gone on for some time, but then she heard the clop of approaching pony hooves from behind the men in the road… and knew. Even before the man with the lazy eye moved aside to show her, she knew, and her screams stopped.

The galloped-out pony that had brought the witch back to Hambry had been replaced by a fresh one, but it was the same black cart, the same golden cabalistic symbols, the same driver. Rhea sat with the reins in her claws, her head ticking from side to side like the head of a rusty old robot, grinning at Susan without humor. Grinning as a corpse grins.

“Hello, my little sweeting,” she said, calling her as she had all those months ago, on the night Susan had come to her hut to be proved honest. On the night Susan had come running most of the way, out of simple high spirits. Beneath the light of the Kissing Moon she had come, her blood high from the exercise, her skin flushed; she had been singing “Careless Love.”

“Yer pallies and screw-buddies have taken my ball, ye ken,” Rhea said, clucking the pony to a stop a few paces ahead of the riders. Even Reynolds looked down on her with uneasiness. “Took my lovely glam, that’s what those bad boys did. Those bad, bad boys. But it showed me much while yet I had it, aye. It sees far, and in more ways than one. Much of it I’ve forgot… but not which way ye’d come, my sweeting. Not which way that precious old dead bitch laying yonder on the road would bring ye. And now ye must go to town.” Her grin widened, became something unspeakable. “It’s time for the fair, ye ken.”

“Let me go,” Susan said. “Let me go, if ye’d not answer to Roland of Gilead.”

Rhea ignored her and spoke to Reynolds. “Bind her hands before her and stand her in the back of the cart. There’s people that’ll want to see her. A good look is what they’ll want, and a good look is just what they’ll have. If her aunt’s done a proper job, there’ll be a lot of them in town. Get her up, now, and be smart about it.”

14

Alain had time for one clear thought: We could have gone around them- if what Roland said is true, then only the wizard’s glass matters, and we have that. We could have gone around them.

Except, of course, that was impossible. A hundred generations of gunslinger blood argued against it. Tower or no Tower, the thieves must not be allowed to have their prize. Not if they could be stopped.

Alain leaned forward and spoke directly into his horse’s ear. “Jig or rear when I start shooting, and I’ll knock your fucking brains out.”

Roland led them in, outracing the other two on his stronger horse. The clot of men nearest by-five or six mounted, a dozen or more on foot and examining a pair of the oxen which had dragged the tankers out here- gazed at him stupidly until he began to fire, and then they scattered like quail. He got every one of the riders; their horses fled in a widening fan, trailing their reins (and, in one case, a dead soldier). Somewhere someone was shouting, “Harriers! Harriers! Mount up, you fools!”

“Alain!” Roland screamed as they bore down. In front of the tankers, a double handful of riders and armed men were coming together-milling together-in a clumsy defensive line. “Now! Now!”

Alain raised the machine-gun, seated its rusty wire stock in the hollow of his shoulder, and remembered what little he knew about rapid-fire weapons: aim low, swing fast and smooth.

He touched the trigger and the speed-shooter bellowed into the dusty air, recoiling against his shoulder in a series of rapid thuds, shooting bright fire from the end of its perforated barrel. Alain raked it from left to right, running the sight above the scattering, shouting defenders and across the high steel hides of the tankers.

The third tanker actually blew up on its own. The sound it made was like no explosion Alain had ever heard: a guttural, muscular ripping sound accompanied by a brilliant flash of orange-red fire. The steel shell rose in two halves. One of these spun thirty yards through the air and landed on the desert floor in a furiously burning hulk; the other rose straight up into a column of greasy black smoke. A burning wooden wheel spun across the sky like a plate and came back down trailing sparks and burning splinters.

Men fled, screaming-some on foot, others laid flat along the necks of their nags, their eyes wide and panicky.

When Alain reached the end of the line of tankers, he reversed the track of the muzzle. The machine-gun was hot in his hands now, but he kept his finger pressed to the trigger. In this world, you had to use what you could while it still worked. Beneath him, his horse ran on as if it had understood every word Alain had whispered in its ear.

Another! I want another!

But before he could blow another tanker, the gun ceased its chatter- perhaps jammed, probably empty. Alain threw it aside and drew his revolver. From beside him there came the thuppp of Cuthbert’s slingshot, audible even over the cries of the men, the hoofbeats of the horses, the whoosh of the burning tanker. Alain saw a sputtering big-bang arc into the sky and come down exactly where Cuthbert had aimed: in the oil puddling around the wooden wheels of a tanker marked sunoco. For a moment Alain could clearly see the line of nine or a dozen holes in the tanker’s bright side-holes he had put there with sai Lengyll’s speed-shooter-and then there was a crack and a flash as the big-bang exploded. A moment later, the holes running along the bright flank of the tanker began to shimmer. The oil beneath them was on fire.

“Get out!” a man in a faded campaign hat yelled. “She’s gointer blow! They ’re all going to b-”

Alain shot him, exploding the side of his face and knocking him out of one old, sprung boot. A moment later the second tanker blew up. One burning steel panel shot out sidewards, landed in the growing puddle of crude oil beneath a third tanker, and then that one exploded, as well. Black smoke rose in the air like the fumes of a funeral pyre; it darkened the day and drew an oily veil across the sun.

15

All six of Parson’s chief lieutenants had been carefully described to Roland-to all fourteen gunslingers in training-and he recognized the man running for the remuda at once: George Latigo. Roland could have shot him as he ran, but that, ironically, would have made possible a getaway that was cleaner than he wanted.

Instead, he shot the man who ran to meet him.

Latigo wheeled on the heels of his boots and stared at Roland with blazing, hate-filled eyes. Then he ran again, hiling another man, shouting for the riders who were huddled together beyond the burning zone.

Two more tankers exploded, whamming at Roland’s eardrums with dull iron fists, seeming to suck the air back from his lungs like a riptide. The plan had been for Alain to perforate the tankers and for Cuthbert to then shoot in a steady, arcing stream of big-bangers, lighting the spilling oil. The one big-banger he actually shot seemed to confirm that the plan had been feasible, but it was the last slingshot-work Cuthbert did that day.

The ease with which the gunslingers had gotten inside the enemy’s perimeter and the confusion which greeted their original charge could have been chalked up to inexperience and exhaustion, but the placing of the tankers had been Latigo’s mistake, and his alone. He had drawn them tight without even thinking about it, and now they blew tight, one after another. Once the conflagration began, there was no chance of stopping it. Even before Roland raised his left arm and circled it in the air, signalling for Alain and Cuthbert to break off, the work was done. Latigo’s encampment was an oily inferno, and John Farson’s plans for a motorized assault were so much black smoke being tattered apart by the fin de ano wind.

“Ride!” Roland screamed. “Ride, ride, ride!”

They spurred west, toward Eyebolt Canyon. As they went, Roland felt a single bullet drone past his left ear. It was, so far as he knew, the only shot fired at any of them during the assault on the tankers.

16

Latigo was in an ecstasy of fury, a perfect brain-bursting rage, and that was probably merciful-it kept him from thinking of what the Good Man would do when he learned of this fiasco. For the time being, all Latigo cared about was catching the men who had ambushed him… if an ambush in desert country was even possible.

Men? No.

The boys who had done this.

Latigo knew who they were, all right; he didn’t know how they had gotten out here, but he knew who they were, and their run would stop right here, east of the woods and rising hills.

“Hendricks!” he bawled. Hendricks had at least managed to hold his men-half a dozen of them, all mounted-near the remuda. “Hendricks, to me!”

As Hendricks rode toward him, Latigo spun the other way and saw a huddle of men standing and watching the burning tankers. Their gaping mouths and stupid young sheep faces made him feel like screaming and dancing up and down, but he refused to give in to that. He held a narrow beam of concentration, one aimed directly at the raiders, who must not under any circumstances be allowed to escape.

“You!” he shouted at the men. One of them turned; the others did not. Latigo strode to them, drawing his pistol as he went. He slapped it into the hand of the man who had turned toward the sound of his voice, and pointed at random to one of those who had not. “Shoot that fool.”

Dazed, his face that of a man who believes he is dreaming, the soldier raised the pistol and shot the man to whom Latigo had pointed. That unlucky fellow went down in a heap of knees and elbows and twitching hands. The others turned.

“Good,” Latigo said, taking his gun back.

“Sir!” Hendricks cried. “I see them, sir! I have the enemy in clear view!”

Two more tankers exploded. A few whickering shards of steel flew in their direction. Some of the men ducked; Latigo did not so much as twitch. Nor did Hendricks. A good man. Thank God for at least one such in this nightmare.

“Shall I hie after them, sir?”

“I’ll take your men and hie after them myself, Hendricks. Mount these hoss-guts before us.” He swept an arm at the standing men, whose doltish attention had been diverted from the burning tankers to their dead comrade. “Pull in as many others as you can. Do you have a bugler?”

“Yes, sir, Raines, sir!” Hendricks looked around, beckoned, and a pimply, scared-looking boy rode forward. A dented bugle on a frayed strap hung askew on the front of his shirt.

“Raines,” Latigo said, “you’re with Hendricks.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get as many men as you can, Hendricks, but don’t linger over the job. They’re headed for that canyon, and I believe someone told me it’s a box. If so, we’re going to turn it into a shooting gallery.”

Hendricks’s lips spread in a twisted grin. “Yes, sir.”

Behind them, the tankers continued to explode.

17

Roland glanced back and was astonished by the size of the black, smoky column rising into the air. Ahead he could clearly see the brush blocking most of the canyon’s mouth. And although the wind was blowing the wrong way, he could now hear the maddening mosquito-whine of the thinny.

He patted the air with his outstretched hands, signalling for Cuthbert and Alain to slow down. While they were both still looking at him, he took off his bandanna, whipped it into a rope, and tied it so it would cover his ears. They copied him. It was better than nothing.

The gunslingers continued west, their shadows now running out behind them as long as gantries on the desert floor. Looking back, Roland could see two groups of riders streaming in pursuit. Latigo was at the head of the first, Roland thought, and he was deliberately holding his riders back a little, so that the two groups could merge and attack together.

Good, he thought.

The three of them rode toward Eyebolt in a tight line, continuing to hold their own horses in, allowing their pursuers to close the distance. Every now and then another thud smote the air and shivered through the ground as one of the remaining tankers blew up. Roland was amazed at how easy it had been-even after the battle with Jonas and Lengyll, which should have put the men out here on their mettle, it had been easy. It made him think of a Reaptide long ago, he and Cuthbert surely no more than seven years old, running along a line of stuffy-guys with sticks, knocking them over one after the other, bang-bang-bangety-bang.

The sound of the thinny was warbling its way into his brain in spite of the bandanna over his ears, making his eyes water. Behind him, he could hear the whoops and shouts of the pursuing men. It delighted him. Latigo’s men had counted the odds-two dozen against three, with many more of their own force riding hard to join the battle-and their peckers were up once more.

Roland faced front and pointed Rusher at the slit in the brush marking the entrance to Eyebolt Canyon.

18

Hendricks fell in beside Latigo, breathing hard, cheeks glaring with color. “Sir! Beg to report!”

“Then do it.”

“I have twenty men, and there are p'raps three times that number riding hard to join us.”

Latigo ignored all of this. His eyes were bright blue flecks of ice. Under his mustache was a small, greedy smile. “Rodney,” he said, speaking Hendricks’s first name almost with the caress of a lover.

“Sir?”

“I think they’re going in, Rodney. Yes… look. I’m sure of it. Two more minutes and it’ll be too late for them to turn back.” He raised his gun, laid the muzzle across his forearm, and threw a shot at the three riders ahead, mostly in exuberance.

“Yes, sir, very good, sir.” Hendricks turned and waved viciously for his men to close up, close up.

19

“Dismount!” Roland shouted when they reached the line of tangled brush. It had a smell that was at once dry and oily, like a fire waiting to happen. He didn’t know if their failure to ride their horses into the canyon would put Latigo’s wind up or not, and he didn’t care. These were good mounts, fine Gilead stock, and over these last months, Rusher had become his friend. He would not take him or any of the horses into the canyon, where they would be caught between the fire and the thinny.

The boys were off the horses in a flash, Alain pulling the drawstring bag free of his saddle-horn and slinging it over one shoulder. Cuthbert’s and Alain’s horses ran at once, whinnying, parallel to the brush, but Rusher lingered for a moment, looking at Roland. “Go on.” Roland slapped him on the flank. “Run.”

Rusher ran, tail streaming out behind him. Cuthbert and Alain slipped through the break in the brush. Roland followed, glancing down to make sure that the powder-trail was still there. It was, and still dry-there had been not a drop of rain since the day they’d laid it.

“Cuthbert,” he said. “Matches.”

Cuthbert gave him some. He was grinning so hard it was a wonder they hadn’t fallen out of his mouth. “We warmed up their day, didn’t we, Roland? Aye!”

“We did, indeed,” Roland said, grinning himself. “Go on, now. Back to that chimney-cut.”

“Let me do it,” Cuthbert said. “Please, Roland, you go with Alain and let me stay. I’m a firebug at heart, always have been.”

“No,” Roland said. “This part of it’s mine. Don’t argue with me. Go on. And tell Alain to mind the wizard’s glass, no matter what.”

Cuthbert looked at him for a moment longer, then nodded. “Don’t wait too long.”

“I won’t.”

“May your luck rise, Roland.”

“May yours rise twice.”

Cuthbert hurried away, boots rattling on the loose stone which carpeted the floor of the canyon. He reached Alain, who lifted a hand to Roland. Roland nodded back, then ducked as a bullet snapped close enough to his temple to flick his hatbrim.

He crouched to the left of the opening in the brush and peered around, the wind now striking full in his face. Latigo’s men were closing rapidly. More rapidly than he had expected. If the wind blew out the lucifers-

Never mind the ifs. Hold on, Roland… hold on… wait for them…

He held on, hunkering with an unlit match in each hand, now peering out through a tangle of interlaced branches. The smell of mesquite was strong in his nostrils. Not far behind it was the reek of burning oil. The drone of the thinny filled his head, making him feel dizzy, a stranger to himself. He thought of how it had been inside the pink storm, flying through the air… how he had been snatched away from his vision of Susan. Thank God for Sheemie, he thought distantly. He’ll make sure she finishes the day someplace safe. But the craven whine of the thinny seemed somehow to mock him, to ask him if there had been more to see.

Now Latigo and his men were crossing the last three hundred yards to the canyon’s mouth at a full-out gallop, the ones behind closing up fast. It would be hard for the ones riding point to stop suddenly without the risk of being ridden down.

It was time. Roland stuck one of the lucifers between his front teeth and raked it forward. It lit, spilling one hot and sour spark onto the wet bed of his tongue. Before the lucifer’s head could bum away, Roland touched it to the powder in the trench. It lit at once, running left beneath the north end of the brush in a bright yellow thread.

He lunged across the opening-which might be wide enough for two horses running flank to flank-with the second lucifer already poised behind his teeth. He struck it as soon as he was somewhat blocked from the wind, dropped it into the powder, heard the splutter-hiss, then turned and ran.

20

Mother and father, was Roland’s first shocked thought-memory so deep and unexpected it was like a slap. At Lake Saroni.

When had they gone there, to beautiful Lake Saroni in the northern part of Gilead Barony? That Roland couldn’t remember. He knew only that he had been very small, and that there had been a beautiful stretch of sandy beach for him to play on, perfect for an aspiring young castle-builder such as he. That was what he had been doing on one day of their (vacation? was it a vacation? did my parents once upon a time actually take a vacation?)

trip, and he had looked up, something-maybe only the cries of the birds circling over the lake-had made him look up, and there were his mother and father, Steven and Gabrielle Deschain, at the water’s edge, standing with their backs to him and their arms around each other’s waists, looking out at blue water beneath a blue summer sky. How his heart had filled with love for them! How infinite was love, twining in and out of hope and memory like a braid with three strong strands, so much the Bright Tower of every human’s life and soul.

It wasn’t love he felt now, however, but terror. The figures standing before him as he ran back to where the canyon ended (where the rational part of the canyon ended) weren’t Steven of Gilead and Gabrielle of Arten but his mollies, Cuthbert and Alain. They didn’t have their arms around each other’s waists, either, but their hands were clasped, like the hands of fairy-tale children lost in a threatening fairy-tale wood. Birds circled, but they were vultures, not gulls, and the shimmering, mist-topped stuff before the two boys wasn’t water.

It was the thinny, and as Roland watched, Cuthbert and Alain began to walk toward it.

“Stop!” he screamed. “For your fathers’ sakes, stop!”

They did not stop. They walked hand-in-hand toward the white-edged hem of the smoky green shimmer. The thinny whined its pleasure, murmured endearments, promised rewards. It baked the nerves numb and picked at the brain.

There was no time to reach them, so Roland did the only thing he could think of: raised one of his guns and fired it over their heads. The report was a hammer-blow in the canyon’s enclosure, and for a moment the ricochet whine was louder than that of the thinny. The two boys stopped only inches from its sick shimmer. Roland kept expecting it to reach out and grab them, as it had grabbed the low-flying bird when they had been here on the night of the Peddler’s Moon.

He triggered two more shots into the air, the reports hitting the walls and rolling back. “Gunslingers!” he cried. “To me! To me!”

It was Alain who turned toward him first, his dazed eyes seeming to float in his dust-streaked face. Cuthbert continued forward another step, the tips of his boots disappearing in the greenish-silver froth at the edge of the thinny (the whingeing grumble of the thing rose half a note, as if in anticipation), and then Alain yanked him back by the tugstring of his sombrero. Cuthbert tripped over a good-sized chunk of fallen rock and landed hard. When he looked up, his eyes had cleared.

“Gods!” he murmured, and as he scrambled to his feet, Roland saw that the toes of his boots were gone, clipped off neatly, as if with a pair of gardening shears. His great toes stuck out.

“Roland,” he gasped as he and Alain stumbled toward him. “Roland, we were almost gone. It talks!”

“Yes. I’ve heard it. Come on. There’s no time.”

He led them to the notch in the canyon wall, praying that they could get up quick enough to avoid being riddled with bullets… as they certainly would be, if Latigo arrived before they could get up at least part of the way.

A smell, acrid and bitter, began to fill the air-an odor like boiling juniper berries. And the first tendrils of whitish-gray smoke drifted past them.

“Cuthbert, you first. Alain, you next. I’ll come last. Climb fast, boys. Climb for your lives.”

21

Latigo’s men poured through the slot in the wall of brush like water pouring into a funnel, gradually widening the gap as they came. The bottom layer of the dead vegetation was already on fire, but in their excitement none of them saw these first low flames, or marked them if they did. The pungent smoke also went unnoticed; their noses had been deadened by the colossal stench of the burning oil. Latigo himself, in the lead with Hendricks close behind, had only one thought; two words that pounded at his brain in a kind of vicious triumph: Box canyon! Box canyon! Box canyon!

Yet something began to intrude on this mantra as he galloped deeper into Eyebolt, his horse’s hooves clattering nimbly through the scree of rocks and

(bones)

whitish piles of cow-skulls and ribcages. This was a kind of low buzzing, a maddening, slobbering whine, insectile and insistent. It made his eyes water. Yet, strong as the sound was (if it was a sound; it almost seemed to be coming from inside him), he pushed it aside, holding onto his mantra

(box canyon box canyon got em in a box canyon)

instead. He would have to face Walter when this was over, perhaps Farson himself, and he had no idea what his punishment would be for losing the tankers… but all that was for later. Now he wanted only to kill these interfering bastards.

Up ahead, the canyon took a jog to the north. They would be beyond that point, and probably not far beyond, either. Backed up against the canyon’s final wall, trying to squeeze themselves behind what fallen rocks there might be. Latigo would mass what guns he had and drive them out into the open with ricochets. They would probably come with their hands up, hoping for mercy. They would hope in vain. After what they’d done, the trouble they’d caused-

As Latigo rode around the jog in the canyon’s wall, already levelling his pistol, his horse screamed-like a woman, it screamed-and reared beneath him. Latigo caught the saddle-horn and managed to stay up, but the horse’s rear hooves slid sideways in the scree and the animal went down. Latigo let go of the horn and threw himself clear, already aware that the sound which had been creeping into his ears was suddenly ten times stronger, buzzing loud enough to make his eyeballs pulse in their sockets, loud enough to make his balls tingle unpleasantly, loud enough to blot out the mantra which had been beating so insistently in his head.

The insistence of the thinny was far, far greater than any George Latigo could have managed.

Horses flashed around him as he landed in a kind of sprawling squat, horses that were shoved forward willy-nilly by the oncoming press from behind, by riders that squeezed through the gap in pairs (then trios as the hole in the brush, now burning all along its length, widened) and then spread out again once they were past the bottleneck, none of them clearly realizing that the entire canyon was a bottleneck.

Latigo got a confused glimpse of black tails and gray forelegs and dappled fetlocks; he saw chaps, and jeans, and boots jammed into stirrups. He tried to get up and a horseshoe clanged against the back of his skull. His hat saved him from unconsciousness, but he went heavily to his knees with his head down, like a man who means to pray, his vision full of stars and the back of his neck instantly soaked with blood from the gash the passing hoof had opened in his scalp.

Now he heard more screaming horses. Screaming men, as well. He got up again, coughing out the dust raised by the passing horses (such acrid dust, too; it clawed his throat like smoke), and saw Hendricks trying to spur his horse south and east against the oncoming tide of riders. He couldn’t do it. The rear third of the canyon was some sort of swamp, filled with greenish steaming water, and there must be quicksand beneath it, because Hendricks’s horse seemed stuck. It screamed again, and tried to rear. Its hindquarters slewed sideways. Hendricks crashed his boots into the animal’s sides again and again, attempting to get it in motion, but the horse didn’t-or couldn’t-move. That hungry buzzing sound filled Latigo’s ears, and seemed to fill the world.

“Back! Turn back!”

He tried to scream the words, but they came out in what was little more than a croak. Still the riders pounded past him, raising dust that was too thick to be only dust. Latigo pulled in breath so he could scream louder-they had to go back, something was dreadfully wrong in Eyebolt Canyon-and hacked it out without saying anything.

Screaming horses.

Reeking smoke.

And everywhere, filling the world like lunacy, that whining, whingeing, cringing buzz.

Hendricks’s horse went down, eyes rolling, bit-parted teeth snapping at the smoky air and splattering curds of foam from its lips. Hendricks fell into the steaming stagnant water, and it wasn’t water at all. It came alive, somehow, as he struck it; grew green hands and a green, shifty mouth; pawed his cheek and melted away the flesh, pawed his nose and tore it off, pawed at his eyes and stripped them from their sockets. It pulled Hendricks under, but before it did, Latigo saw his denuded jawbone, a bloody piston to drive his screaming teeth.

Other men saw, and tried to wheel away from the green trap. Those who managed to do so in time were broadsided by the next wave of men-some of whom were, incredibly, still yipping or bellowing full-throated battle cries. More horses and riders were driven into the green shimmer, which accepted them eagerly. Latigo, standing stunned and bleeding like a man in the middle of a stampede (which was exactly what he was), saw the soldier to whom he had given his gun. This fellow, who had obeyed Latigo’s order and shot one of his compadres in order to awaken the rest of them, threw himself from his saddle, howling, and crawled back from the edge of the green stuff even as his horse plunged in. He tried to get to his feet, saw two riders bearing down on him, and clapped his hands across his face. A moment later he was ridden down.

The shrieks of the wounded and dying echoed in the smoky canyon, but Latigo hardly heard them. What he heard mostly was that buzzing, a sound that was almost a voice. Inviting him to jump in. To end it here. Why not? It was over, wasn’t it? All over.

He struggled away instead, and was now able to make some headway; the stream of riders packing its way into the canyon was easing. Some of the riders fifty or sixty yards back from the jog had even been able to turn their horses. But these were ghostly and confused in the thickening smoke.

The cunning bastards have set the brush on fire behind us. Gods of heaven, gods of earth, I think we ’re trapped in here.

He could give no commands-every time he drew in breath to try, he coughed it wordlessly back out again-but he was able to grab a passing rider who looked all of seventeen and yank him out of his saddle. The boy went down headfirst and smashed his brow open on a jutting chunk of rock. Latigo was mounted in his place before the kid’s feet had stopped twitching.

He jerked the horse’s head around and spurred for the front of the canyon, but the smoke thickened to a choking white cloud before he got more than twenty yards. The wind was driving it this way. Latigo could make out-barely-the shifting orange glare of the burning brush at the desert end.

He wheeled his new horse back the way it had come. More horses loomed out of the fog. Latigo crashed into one of them and was thrown for the second time in five minutes. He landed on his knees, scrambled to his feet, and staggered back downwind, coughing and retching, eyes red and streaming.

It was a little better beyond the canyon’s northward jog, but wouldn’t be for much longer. The edge of the thinny was a tangle of milling horses, many with broken legs, and crawling, shrieking men. Latigo saw several hats floating on the greenish surface of the whining organism that filled the back of the canyon; he saw boots; he saw wristlets; he saw neckerchiefs; he saw the bugle-boy’s dented instrument, still trailing its frayed strap.

Come in, the green shimmer invited, and Latigo found its buzz strangely attractive… intimate, almost. Come in and visit, squat and hunker, be at rest, be at peace, be at one.

Latigo raised his gun, meaning to shoot it. He didn’t believe it could be killed, but he would remember the face of his father and go down shooting, all the same.

Except he didn’t. The gun dropped from his relaxing fingers and he walked forward-others around him were now doing the same-into the thinny. The buzzing rose and rose, filling his ears until there was nothing else.

Nothing else at all.

22

They saw it all from the notch, where Roland and his friends had stopped in a strung-out line about twenty feet below the top. They saw the screaming confusion, the panicky milling, the men who were trampled, the men and horses that were driven into the thinny… and the men who, at the end, walked willingly into it.

Cuthbert was closest to the top of the canyon’s wall, then Alain, then Roland, standing on a six-inch shelf of rock and holding an outcrop just above him. From their vantage-point they could see what the men struggling in their smoky hell below them could not: that the thinny was growing, reaching out, crawling eagerly toward them like an incoming tide.

Roland, his battle-lust slaked, did not want to watch what was happening below, but he couldn’t turn away. The whine of the thinny- cowardly and triumphant at the same time, happy and sad at the same time, lost and found at the same time-held him like sweet, sticky ropes. He hung where he was, hypnotized, as did his friends above him, even when the smoke began to rise, and its pungent tang made him cough dryly.

Men shrieked their lives away in the thickening smoke below. They struggled in it like phantoms. They faded as the fog thickened, climbing the canyon walls like water. Horses whinnied desperately from beneath that acrid white death. The wind swirled its surface in prankish whirlpools. The thinny buzzed, and above where it lay, the surface of the smoke was stained a mystic shade of palest green.

Then, at long last, John Farson’s men screamed no more. We killed them, Roland thought with a kind of sick and fascinated horror. Then: No, not we. I. I killed them.

How long he might have stayed there Roland didn’t know-perhaps until the rising smoke engulfed him as well, but then Cuthbert, who had begun to climb again, called down three words from above him; called down in a tone of surprise and dismay. “Roland! The moon!”

Roland looked up, startled, and saw that the sky had darkened to a velvety purple. His friend was outlined against it and looking east, his face stained fever-orange with the light of the rising moon.

Yes, orange, the thinny buzzed inside his head. Laughed inside his head. Orange as ’twas when it rose on the night you came out here to see me and count me. Orange like afire. Orange like a bonfire.

How can it be almost dark? he cried inside himself, but he knew-yes, he knew very well. Time had slipped back together, that was all, like layers of ground embracing once more after the argument of an earthquake. Twilight had come. Moonrise had come.

Terror struck Roland like a closed fist aimed at the heart, making him jerk backward on the small ledge he’d found. He groped for the horn-shaped outcrop above him, but that act of rebalancing was far away; most of him was inside the pink storm again, before he had been snatched away and shown half the cosmos. Perhaps the wizard’s glass had only shown him what stood worlds far away in order to keep from showing him what might soon befall so close to home.

I’d turn around if I thought her life was in any real danger, he had said. In a second.

And if the ball knew that? If it couldn’t lie, might it not misdirect? Might it not take him away and show him a dark land, a darker tower? And it had shown him something else, something that recurred to him only now: a scrawny man in farmer’s overalls who had said… what? Not quite what he’d thought, not what he had been used to hearing all his life; not Life for you and life for your crop, but…

“Death,” he whispered to the stones surrounding him. “Death for you, life for my crop. Charyou tree. That’s what he said, Charyou tree. Come, Reap.”

Orange, gunslinger, a cracked old voice laughed inside his head. The voice of the Coos. The color of bonfires. Charyou tree, fin de ano, these are the old ways of which only the stuffy-guys with their red hands remain… until tonight. Tonight the old ways are refreshed, as the old ways must be, from time to time. Charyou tree, you damned babby, Charyou tree: tonight you pay for my sweet Ermot. Tonight you pay for all. Come, Reap.

“Climb!” he screamed, reaching up and slapping Alain’s behind. “Climb, climb! For your father’s sake, climb!”

“Roland, what-?” Alain’s voice was dazed, but he did begin to climb, going from handhold to handhold and rattling small pebbles down into Roland’s upturned face. Squinting against their fall, Roland reached and swatted Al’s bottom again, driving him like a horse.

“Climb, gods damn you!” he cried. “It mayn’t be too late, even now!”

But he knew better. Demon Moon had risen, he had seen its orange light shining on Cuthbert’s face like delirium, arid he knew better. In his head the lunatic buzz of the thinny, that rotting sore eating through the flesh of reality, joined with the lunatic laughter of the witch, and he knew better.

Death for you, life for the crop. Charyou tree.

Oh, Susan-

23

Nothing was clear to Susan until she saw the man with the long red hair and the straw hat which did not quite obscure his lamb-slaughterer’s eyes; the man with the cornshucks in his hands. He was the first, just a farmer (she had glimpsed him in the Lower Market, she thought; had even nodded to him, as countryfolk do, and he back to her), standing by himself not far from the place where Silk Ranch Road and the Great Road intersected, standing in the light of the rising moon. Until they came upon him, nothing was clear; after he hurled his bundle of cornshucks at her as she passed, standing in the slowly rolling cart with her hands bound in front of her and her head lowered and a rope around her neck, everything was clear.

“Charyou tree,” he called, almost sweetly uttering words of the Old People she hadn’t heard since her childhood, words that meant “Come, Reap”… and something else, as well. Something hidden, something secret, something to do with that root word, char, that word which meant only death. As the dried shucks fluttered around her boots, she understood the secret very well; understood also that there would be no baby for her, no wedding for her in the fairy-distant land of Gilead, no hall in which she and Roland would be joined and then saluted beneath the electric lights, no husband, no more nights of sweet love; all that was over. The world had moved on and all that was over, done before fairly begun.

She knew that she had been put in the back of the cart, stood in the back of the cart, and that the surviving Coffin Hunter had looped a noose around her neck. “Don’t try to sit,” he had said, sounding almost apologetic. “I have no desire to choke you, girly. If the wagon bumps and you fall, I’ll try to keep the knot loose, but if you try to sit, I’ll have to give you a pinching. Her orders.” He nodded to Rhea, who sat erect on the seat of the cart, the reins in her warped hands. “She’s in charge now.”

And so she had been; so, as they neared town, she still was. Whatever the possession of her glam had done to her body, whatever the loss of it had done to her mind, it had not broken her power; that seemed to have increased, if anything, as if she’d found some other source from which she could feed, at least for awhile. Men who could have broken her over one knee like a stick of kindling followed her commands as unquestioningly as children.

There were more and more men as that Reaping afternoon wound its shallow course to night: half a dozen ahead of the cart, riding with Rimer and the man with the cocked eye, a full dozen riding behind it with Reynolds, the rope leading to her neck wound around his tattooed hand, at their head. She didn’t know who these men were, or how they had been summoned.

Rhea had taken this rapidly increasing party north a little farther, then turned southwest on the old Silk Ranch Road, which wound back toward town. On the eastern edge of Hambry, it rejoined the Great Road. Even in her dazed state, Susan had realized the harridan was moving slowly, measuring the descent of the sun as they went, not clucking at the pony to hurry but actually reining it in, at least until afternoon’s gold had gone. When they passed the farmer, thin-faced and alone, a good man, no doubt, with a freehold farm he worked hard from first gleam to last glow and a family he loved (but oh, there were those lamb-slaughterer eyes below the brim of his battered hat), she understood this leisurely course of travel, too. Rhea had been waiting for the moon.

With no gods to pray to, Susan prayed to her father.

Da? If thee’s there, help me to be strong as lean be, and help me hold to him, to the memory of him. Help me to hold to myself as well. Not for rescue, not for salvation, but just so as not to give them the satisfaction of seeing my pain and my fear. And him, help him as well…

“Help keep him safe,” she whispered. “Keep my love safe; take my love safe to where he goes, give him joy in who he sees, and make him a cause of joy in those who see him.”

“Praying, dearie?” the old woman asked without turning on the seat. Her croaking voice oozed false compassion. “Aye, ye’d do well t'make things right with the Powers while ye still can-before the spit’s burned right out of yer throat!” She threw back her head and cackled, the straggling remains of her broomstraw hair flying out orange in the light of the bloated moon.

24

Their horses, led by Rusher, had come to the sound of Roland’s dismayed shout. They stood not far away, their manes rippling in the wind, shaking their heads and whinnying their displeasure whenever the wind dropped enough for them to get a whiff of the thick white smoke rising from the canyon.

Roland paid no attention to the horses or the smoke. His eyes were fixed on the drawstring sack slung over Alain’s shoulder. The ball inside had come alive again; in the growing dark, the bag seemed to pulse like some weird pink firefly. He held out his hands for it.

“Give it to me!”

“Roland, I don’t know if-”

“Give it to me, damn your face!”

Alain looked at Cuthbert, who nodded… then lifted his hands skyward in a weary, distracted gesture.

Roland tore the bag away before Alain could do more than begin to shrug it off his shoulder. The gunslinger dipped into it and pulled the glass out. It was glowing fiercely, a pink Demon Moon instead of an orange one.

Behind and below them, the nagging whine of the thinny rose and fell, rose and fell.

“Don’t look directly into that thing,” Cuthbert muttered to Alain. “Don’t, for your father’s sake.”

Roland bent his face over the pulsing ball, its light running over his cheeks and brow like liquid, drowning his eyes in its dazzle.

In Maerlyn’s Rainbow he saw her-Susan, horse-drover’s daughter, lovely girl at the window. He saw her standing in the back of a black cart decorated with gold symbols, the old witch’s cart. Reynolds rode behind her, holding the end of a rope that was noosed around her neck. The cart was rolling toward Green Heart, making its way with processional slow-ness. Hill Street was lined with people of whom the farmer with the lamb-slaughterer’s eyes had been only the first-all those folk of Hambry and Mejis who had been deprived of their fair but were now given this ancient dark attraction in its stead: Charyou tree, come, Reap, death for you, life for our crops.

A soundless whispering ran through them like a gathering wave, and they began to pelt her-first with cornhusks, then with rotting tomatoes, then with potatoes and apples. One of these latter struck her cheek. She reeled, almost fell, then stood straight again, now raising her swollen but still lovely face so the moon painted it. She looked straight ahead.

“Charyou tree,” they whispered. Roland couldn’t hear them, but he could see the words on their lips. Stanley Ruiz was there, and Pettie, and Gert Moggins, and Frank Claypool, the deputy with the broken leg; Jamie McCann, who was to have been this year’s Reap Lad. Roland saw a hundred people he had known (and mostly liked) during his time in Mejis. Now these people pelted his love with cornshucks and vegetables as she stood, hands bound before her, in the back of Rhea’s cart.

The slowly rolling cart reached Green Heart, with its colored paper lanterns and silent carousel where no laughing children rode… no, not this year. The crowd, still speaking those two words-chanting them now, it appeared-parted. Roland saw the heaped pyramid of wood that was the unlit bonfire. Sitting around it, their backs propped on the central column, their lumpy legs outstretched, was a ring of red-handed stuffy-guys. There was a single hole in the ring; a single waiting vacancy.

And now a woman emerged from the crowd. She wore a rusty black dress and held a pail in one hand. A smear of ash stood out on one of her cheeks like a brand. She-

Roland began to shriek. It was a single word, over and over again:

No, no, no, no, no, no! The ball’s pink light flashed brighter with each repetition, as if his horror refreshed and strengthened it. And now, with each of those pulses, Cuthbert and Alain could see the shape of the gunslinger’s skull beneath his skin.

“We have to take it away from him,” Alain said. “We have to, it’s sucking him dry. It’s killing him!”

Cuthbert nodded and stepped forward. He grabbed the ball, but couldn’t take it from Roland’s hands. The gunslinger’s fingers seemed welded to it.

“Hit him!” he told Alain. “Hit him again, you have to!”

But Alain might as well have been hitting a post. Roland didn’t even rock back on his heels. He continued to cry out that single negative- “No! No! No! No”-and the ball flashed faster and faster, eating its way into him through the wound it had opened, sucking up his grief like blood.

25

“Charyou tree!” Cordelia Delgado cried, darting forward from where she had been waiting. The crowd cheered her, and beyond her left shoulder Demon Moon winked, as if in complicity. “Charyou tree, ye faithless bitch! Charyou tree!”

She flung the pail of paint at her niece, splattering her pants and dressing her tied hands in a pair of wet scarlet gloves. She grinned up at Susan as the cart rolled past. The smear of ash stood out on her cheek; in the center of her pale forehead, a single vein pulsed like a worm.

“Bitch!” Cordelia screamed. Her fists were clenched; she danced a kind of hilarious jig, feet jumping, bony knees pumping beneath her skirt. “Life for the crops! Death for the bitch! Charyou tree! Come, Reap!”

The cart rolled past her; Cordelia faded from Susan’s sight, just one more cruel phantasm in a dream that would soon end. Bird and bear and hare and fish, she thought. Be safe, Roland; go with my love. That’s my fondest wish.

“Take her!” Rhea screamed. “Take this murdering bitch and cook her red-handed! Charyou tree!”

“Charyou tree!” the crowd responded. A forest of willing hands grew in the moonlit air; somewhere firecrackers rattled and children laughed excitedly.

Susan was lifted from the cart and handed toward the waiting woodpile above the heads of the crowd, passed by uplifted hands like a heroine returned triumphantly home from the wars. Her hands dripped red tears upon their straining, eager faces. The moon overlooked it all, dwarfing the glow of the paper lanterns.

“Bird and bear and hare and fish,” she murmured as she was first lowered and then slammed against the pyramid of dry wood, put in the place which had been left for her-the whole crowd chanting in unison now, “Charyou TREE! Charyou TREE! Charyou TREE!”

“Bird and bear and hare and fish.”

Trying to remember how he had danced with her that night. Trying to remember how he had loved with her in the willow grove. Trying to remember that first meeting on the dark road: Thankee-sai, we ’re well met, he had said, and yes, in spite of everything, in spite of this miserable ending with the folk who had been her neighbors turned into prancing goblins by moonlight, in spite of pain and betrayal and what was coming, he had spoken the truth: they had been well met, they had been very well met, indeed.

“Charyou TREE! Charyou TREE! Charyou TREE!”

Women came and piled dry cornshucks around her feet. Several of them slapped her (it didn’t matter; her bruised and puffy face seemed to have gone numb), and one-it was Misha Alvarez, whose daughter Susan had taught to ride-spat into her eyes and then leaped prankishly away, shaking her hands at the sky and laughing. For a moment she saw Coral Thorin, festooned with reap-charms, her arms filled with dead leaves which she threw at Susan; they fluttered down around her in a crackling, aromatic shower.

And now came her aunt again, and Rhea beside her. Each held a torch. They stood before her, and Susan could smell sizzling pitch.

Rhea raised her torch to the moon. “CHARYOU TREE!” she screamed in her rusty old voice, and the crowd responded, “CHARYOU TREE!”

Cordelia raised her own torch. “COME, REAP!”

“COME, REAP!” they cried back to her.

“Now, ye bitch,” Rhea crooned. “Now comes warmer kisses than any yer love ever gave ye.”

“Die, ye faithless,” Cordelia whispered. “Life for the crops, death for you.”

It was she who first flung her torch into the cornshucks which were piled as high as Susan’s knees; Rhea flung hers a bare second later. The cornshucks blazed up at once, dazzling Susan with yellow light.

She drew in a final breath of cool air, warmed it with her heart, and loosed it in a defiant shout: “ROLAND, I LOVE THEE!”

The crowd fell back, murmuring, as if uneasy at what they had done, now that it was too late to take it back; here was not a stuffy-guy but a cheerful girl they all knew, one of their own, for some mad reason backed up against the Reap-Night bonfire with her hands painted red. They might have saved her, given another moment-some might have, anyway-but it was too late. The dry wood caught; her pants caught; her shirt caught; her long blonde hair blazed on her head like a crown.

“ROLAND, I LOVE THEE!”

At the end of her life she was aware of heat but not pain. She had time to consider his eyes, eyes of that blue which is the color of the sky at first light of morning. She had time to think of him on the Drop, riding Rusher flat-out with his black hair flying back from his temples and his neckerchief rippling; to see him laughing with an ease and freedom he would never find again in the long life which stretched out for him beyond hers, and it was his laughter she took with her as she went out, fleeing the light and heat into the silky, consoling dark, calling to him over and over as she went, calling bird and bear and hare and fish.

26

There was no word, not even no, in his screams at the end: he howled like a gutted animal, his hands welded to the ball, which beat like a runaway heart. He watched in it as she burned.

Cuthbert tried again to take the cursed thing away, and couldn’t. He did the only other thing he could think of-drew his revolver, pointed it at the ball, and thumbed back the hammer. He would likely wound Roland, and the flying glass might even blind him, but there was no other choice. If they didn’t do something, the glam would kill him.

But there was no need. As if seeing Cuthbert’s gun and understanding what it meant, the ball went instantly dark and dead in Roland’s hands. Roland’s stiff body, every line and muscle trembling with horror and outrage, went limp. He dropped like a stone, his fingers at last letting go of the ball. His stomach cushioned it as he struck the ground; it rolled off him and trickled to a stop by one of his limp, outstretched hands. Nothing burned in its darkness now except for one baleful orange spark-the tiny reflection of the rising Demon Moon.

Alain looked at the glass with a species of disgusted, frightened awe; looked at it as one might look at a vicious animal that now sleeps… but will wake again, and bite when it does.

He stepped forward, meaning to crush it to powder beneath his boot. “Don’t you dare,” Cuthbert said in a hoarse voice. He was kneeling beside Roland’s limp form but looking at Alain. The rising moon was in his eyes, two small, bright stones of light. “Don’t you dare, after all the misery and death we’ve gone through to get it. Don’t you even think of it.”

Alain looked at him uncertainly for a moment, thinking he should destroy the cursed thing, anyway-misery suffered did not justify misery to come, and as long as the thing on the ground remained whole, misery was all it would bring anyone. It was a misery-machine, that was what it was, and it had killed Susan Delgado. He hadn’t seen what Roland had seen in the glass, but he had seen his friend’s face, and that had been enough. It had killed Susan, and it would kill more, if left whole.

But then he thought of ka and drew back. Later he would bitterly regret doing so.

“Put it in the bag again,” Cuthbert said, “and then help me with Roland. We have to get out of here.”

The drawstring bag lay crumpled on the ground nearby, fluttering in the wind. Alain picked up the ball, hating the feel of its smooth, curved surface, expecting it to come alive under his touch. It didn’t, though. He put it in the bag, and looped it over his shoulder again. Then he knelt beside Roland.

He didn’t know how long they tried unsuccessfully to bring him around-until the moon had risen high enough in the sky to turn silver again, and the smoke roiling out of the canyon had begun to dissipate, that was all he knew. Until Cuthbert told him it was enough; they would have to sling him over Rusher’s saddle and ride with him that way. If they could get into the heavily forested lands west o’ Barony before dawn, Cuthbert said, they would likely be safe… but they had to get at least that far. They had smashed Parson’s men apart with stunning ease, but the remains would likely knit together again the following day. Best they be gone before that happened.

And that was how they left Eyebolt Canyon, and the seacoast side of Mejis; riding west beneath the Demon Moon, with Roland laid across his saddle like a corpse.

27

The next day they spent in II Bosque, the forest west of Mejis, waiting for Roland to wake up. When afternoon came and he remained unconscious, Cuthbert said: “See if you can touch him.”

Alain took Roland’s hands in his own, marshalled all his concentration, bent over his friend’s pale, slumbering face, and remained that way for almost half an hour. Finally he shook his head, let go of Roland’s hands, and stood up.

“Nothing?” Cuthbert asked.

Alain sighed and shook his head.

They made a travois of pine branches so he wouldn’t have to spend another night riding oversaddle (if nothing else, it seemed to make Rusher nervous to be carrying his master in such a way), and went on, not travelling on the Great Road-that would have been far too dangerous-but parallel to it. When Roland remained unconscious the following day (Mejis falling behind them now, and both boys feeling a deep tug of homesickness, inexplicable but as real as tides), they sat on either side of him, looking at each other over the slow rise and fall of his chest.

“Can an unconscious person starve, or die of thirst?” Cuthbert asked. “They can’t, can they?”

“Yes,” Alain said. “I think they can.”

It had been a long, nerve-wracking night of travel. Neither boy had slept well the previous day, but on this one they slept like the dead, with blankets over their heads to block the sun. They awoke minutes apart as the sun was going down and Demon Moon, now two nights past the full, was rising through a troubled rack of clouds that presaged the first of the great autumn storms.

Roland was sitting up. He had taken the glass from the drawstring bag. He sat with it cradled in his arms, a darkened bit of magic as dead as the glass eyes of The Romp. Roland’s own eyes, also dead, looked indifferently off into the moonlit corridors of the forest. He would eat but not sleep. He would drink from the streams they passed but not speak. And he would not be parted from the piece of Maerlyn’s Rainbow which they had brought out of Mejis at such great price. It did not glow for him, however. Not, Cuthbert thought once, while Al and I are awake to see it, anyway.

Alain couldn’t get Roland’s hands off the ball, and so he laid his own on Roland’s cheeks, touching him that way. Except there was nothing to touch, nothing there. The thing which rode west with them toward Gilead was not Roland, or even a ghost of Roland. Like the moon at the close of its cycle, Roland had gone.