by Stephen King
“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, stern 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 Rusher’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 bad-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, holstering 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, crownlike 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.
CHAPTER V
WIZARD’S R AINBOW
1
On an afternoon three days after Roland’s and Cuthbert’s visit to the Cöos, 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 are 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 flapping 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, serape, 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 serape, 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 titties.
“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 a 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-born, in the pay of John Farson. 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 As
sociation. 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.”