on their side of the infirmary, the bed where the bearded man had
been was empty, it's top sheet pulled up and neatly tucked in, the
pillow neatly nestled in a crisp white case. The complication of
slings in which his body had rested was gone.
Roland remembered the candles - the way their glow had
combined and streamed up in a column, illuminating the Sisters as
they gathered around the bearded man. Giggling. Their damned
bells jingling.
Now, as if summoned by his thoughts, came Sister Mary, gliding
along rapidly with Sister Louise in her wake. Louise bore a tray,
and looked nervous. Mary was frowning, obviously not in good
temper.
To be grumpy after you've fed so well? Roland thought. Fie, Sister.
She reached the gunslinger's bed and looked down at him. 'I have
little to thank ye for, sai,' she said with no preamble.
'Have I asked for your thanks?' he responded in a voice that
sounded as dusty and little-used as the pages of an old book.
She took no notice. 'Ye've made one who was only impudent and
restless with her place outright rebellious. Well, her mother was
the same way, and died of it not long after returning Jenna to her
proper Place. Raise your hand, thankless man.'
'I can't. I can't move at all.'
'Oh, cully! Haven't you heard it said "fool not your mother 'less
she's out of face"? I know pretty well what ye can and can't do.
Now raise your hand.'
Roland raised his right hand, trying to suggest more effort than it,
actually took. He thought that this morning he might be strong
enough to slip free of the slings ... but what then? Any real walking
would beyond him for hours yet, even without another dose of
'medicine' . . and behind Sister Mary, Sister Louise was taking the
cover from a fresh bowl of soup. As Roland looked at it, his
stomach rumbled.
Big Sister heard and smiled a bit. 'Even lying in bed builds an
appetite in a strong man, if it's done long enough. Wouldn't you
say so, Jason brother of John?'
'My name is James. As you well know, Sister.'
'Do I?' She laughed angrily. 'Oh, la! And if I whipped your little
sweetheart hard enough and long enough - until the blood jumped
her back like drops of sweat, let us say - should I not whip a
different name out of her? Or didn't ye trust her with it, during
your little talk?'
'Touch her and I'll kill you.'
She laughed again. Her face shimmered; her firm mouth turned
into something that looked like a dying jellyfish. 'Speak not of
killing to us cully, lest we speak of it to you.'
'Sister, if you and Jenna don't see eye to eye, why not release her
from her vows and let her go her course?'
'Such as us can never be released from our vows, nor be let go. Her
mother tried and then came back, her dying and the girl sick. Why,
it was we nursed Jenna back to health after her mother was nothing
but dirt in the breeze that blows out towards End-World, and how
little she thanks us! Besides, she bears the Dark Bells, the sigil of
our sisterhood. Of our ka-tet. Now eat - yer belly says ye're
hungry!'
Sister Louise offered the bowl, but her eyes kept drifting to the
shape the medallion made under the breast of his bed-dress. Don't
like it, do you? Roland thought, and then remembered Louise by
candlelight, the freighter's blood on her chin, her ancient eyes
eager as she leaned forward to lick his spend from Sister Mary's
hand.
He turned his head aside. 'I want nothing.'
'But ye're hungry!' Louise protested. 'If'ee don't eat, James, how
will'ee get'ee strength back?'
'Send Jenna. I'll eat what she brings.'
Sister Mary's frown was black. 'Ye'll see her no more. She's been
released from Thoughtful House only on her solemn promise to
double her time of meditation ... and to stay out of the infirmary.
Now eat, James, or whoever ye are. Take what's in the soup, or
we'll cut ye with knives and rub it in with flannel poultices. Either
way, makes no difference to us. Does it? Louise?'
'Nar,' Louise said. She still held out the bowl. Steam rose from it,
and the good smell of chicken.
'But it might make a difference to you.' Sister Mary grinned
humourlessly, baring her unnaturally large teeth. 'Flowing blood's
risky around here. The doctors don't like it. It stirs them up.'
It wasn't just the bugs that were stirred up at the sight of blood, and
Roland knew it. He also knew he had no choice in the matter of the
soup. He took the bowl from Louise and ate slowly. He would
have given much to wipe but the look of satisfaction he saw on
Sister Mary's face.
'Good,' she said after he had handed the bowl back and she had
peered inside to make sure it was completely empty. His hand
thumped back into the sling which had been rigged for it, already
too heavy to hold up. He could feel the world drawing away again.
Sister Mary leaned forward, the billowing top of her habit touching
the skin of his left shoulder. He could smell her, an aroma both
ripe and dry, and would have gagged if he'd had the strength.
'Have that foul gold thing off ye when yer strength comes back a
little - put it in the pissoir under the bed. Where it belongs. For to
be even this close to where it lies hurts my head and makes my
throat close.'
Speaking with enormous effort, Roland said: 'If you want it, take
it. How can I stop you, you bitch?'
Once more her frown turned her face into something like a
thunderhead. He thought she would have slapped him, if she had
dared touch him so close to where the medallion lay. Her ability to
touch seemed to end above his waist, however.
'I think you had better consider the matter a little more fully,' she
said. 'I can still have Jenna whipped, if I like. She bears the Dark
Bells, but I am the Big Sister. Consider that very well.'
She left. Sister Louise followed, casting one look - a strange
combination Of fright and lust - back over her shoulder.
Roland thought, I must get out of here - I must.
Instead, he drifted back to that dark place which wasn't quite sleep.
Or perhaps he did sleep, at least for a while; perhaps he dreamed.
Fingers once more caressed his fingers, and lips first kissed his ear
and then whispered into it: 'Look beneath your pillow, Roland ...
but let no one know I was here.'
At some point after this, Roland opened his eyes again, half-
expecting to see Sister Jenna's pretty young face hovering above
him, and that comma of dark hair once more poking out from
beneath her wimple. There was no one. The swags of silk overhead
were at their brightest, and although it was impossible to tell the
hours in here with any real accuracy, Roland guessed it to be
around noon. Perhaps three hours since his second bowl of the
Sisters' soup.
Beside him, John Norman still slept, his breath whistling out in
faint, nasal snores.
Roland tried to raise his hand and slide it under his
pillow. The
hand wouldn't move. He could wiggle the tips of his fingers, but
that was all. He waited, calming his mind as well as he could,
gathering his patience.' Patience wasn't easy to come by. He kept
thinking about what Norman had said - that there had been twenty
survivors of the ambush ... at least to start with. One by one they
went, until only me and that one down yonder was left. And now
you.
The girl wasn't here. His mind spoke in the soft, regretful tone of
Alain, one of his old friends, dead these many years now. She
wouldn't dare, not with the others watching. That was only a
dream you had.
But Roland thought perhaps it had been more than a dream.
Some length of time later - the slowly shifting brightness overhead
made him believe it had been about an hour - Roland tried his hand
again. This time he was able to get it beneath his pillow. This was
puffy and soft, tucked snugly into the wide sling which supported
the gunslinger's neck. At first he found nothing, but as his fingers
worked their slow way deeper, they touched what felt like a stiffish
bundle of thin rods.
He paused, gathering a little more strength (every movement was
like swimming in glue), and then burrowed deeper. It felt like a
dead bouquet. Wrapped around it was what felt like a ribbon.
Roland looked around to make sure the ward was still empty and
Norman still asleep, then drew out what was under the pillow. It
was six brittle stems of fading green with brownish reed-heads at
the tops. They gave off a strange, yeasty aroma that made Roland
think of early-morning begging expeditions to the Great House
kitchens as a child - forays he had usually made with Cuthbert. The
reeds were tied with a wide white silk ribbon, and smelled like
burned toast. Beneath the ribbon was a fold of cloth. Like
everything else in this cursed place, it seemed, the cloth was of
silk.
Roland was breathing hard and could feel drops of sweat on his
brow. Still alone, though - good. He took the scrap of cloth and
unfolded it. Printed painstakingly in blurred charcoal letters, was
this message:
NIBBLE HEDS. Once each hour. Too
much, CRAMPS or DETH.
TOMORROW NITE. Can't be sooner.
BE CAREFUL!
No explanation, but Roland supposed none was needed. Nor did he
have any option; if he remained here, he would die. All they had to
do was have the medallion off him, and he felt sure Sister Mary
was smart enough to figure a way to do that.
He nibbled at one of the dry reed-heads. The taste was nothing like
the toast they had begged from the kitchen as boys; it was bitter in
his throat and hot in his stomach. Less than a minute after his
nibble, his heart-rate had doubled. His muscles awakened, but not
in a pleasant way, as after good sleep; they felt first trembly and
then hard, as if they were gathered into knots. This feeling passed
rapidly, and his heartbeat was back to normal before Norman
stirred awake an hour or so later, but he understood why Jenna's
note had warned him not to take more than a nibble at a time - this
was very powerful stuff.
He slipped the bouquet of reeds back under the pillow, being
careful to brush away the few crumbles of vegetable matter which
had dropped to the sheet. Then he used the ball of his thumb to
blur the painstaking charcoaled words on the bit of silk. When he
was finished, there was nothing on the square but meaningless
smudges. The square he also tucked back under his pillow.
When Norman awoke, he and the gunslinger spoke briefly of the
young scout's home - Delain, it was, sometimes known jestingly as
Dragon's Lair, or Liar's Heaven. All tall tales were said to orginate
in Delain. The boy asked Roland to take his medallion and that of
his brother home to their parents, if Roland was able, and explain
as well as he could what had happened to James and John, sons of
Jesse.
'You'll do all that yourself,' Roland said.
'No.' Norman tried to raise his hand, perhaps to scratch his nose,
and was unable to do even that. The hand rose perhaps six inches,
then fell back to the counterpane with a small thump. 'I think not.
It's a pity for us to have run up against each other this way, you
know - I like you.'
'And I you, John Norman. Would that we were better met.'
'Aye. When not in the company of such fascinating ladies.'
He dropped off to sleep again soon after. Roland never spoke with
him again ... although he certainly heard from him. Yes. Roland
was lying above his bed, shamming sleep, as John Norman
screamed his last.
Sister Michela came with his evening soup just as Roland was
getting past the shivery muscles and galloping heartbeat that
resulted from his second nibble of brown reed. Michela looked at
his flushed face with some concern, but had to accept his
assurances that he did not feel feverish; she couldn't bring herself
to touch him and judge the heat of his skin for herself - the
medallion held her away.
With the soup was a popkin. The bread was leathery and the meat
inside it tough, but Roland demolished it greedily, just the same.
Michela watched with a complacent smile, hands folded in front of
her, nodding from time to time. When he had finished the soup,
she took the bowl back from him carefully, making sure their
fingers did not touch.
'Ye're healing,' she said. 'Soon you'll be on yer way, and we'll have
just yer memory to keep, Jim.'
'Is that true?' he asked quietly.
She only looked at him, touched her tongue against her upper lip,
giggled, and departed. Roland closed his eyes and lay back against
hi pillow, feeling lethargy steal over him again. Her speculative
eyes ... he peeping tongue. He had seen women look at roast
chickens and joints of mutton that same way, calculating when
they might be done.
His body badly wanted to sleep, but Roland held on to wakefulness
for what he judged was an hour, then worked one of the reeds out
from under the pillow. With a fresh infusion of their 'can't-move-
medicine' in his system, this took an enormous effort, and he
wasn't sure he could have done it at all, had he not separated this
one reed from the ribbon holding the others. Tomorrow night,
Jenna's note had said. If that meant escape, the idea seemed
preposterous. The way he felt now, he might be lying in this bed
until the end of the age.
He nibbled. Energy washed into his system, clenching his muscles
and racing his heart, but the burst of vitality was gone almost as
soon as it came, buried beneath the Sisters' stronger drug. He could
only hope ... and sleep.
When he woke it was full dark, and he found he could move his
arms and legs in their network of slings almost naturally. He
slipped one of the reeds out from beneath his pillow and nibbled
cautiously. She had left half a dozen, and the first two were now
almost entirely con
sumed.
The gunslinger put the stem back under the pillow, then began to
shiver like a wet dog in a downpour. I took too much, he thought.
I'll be lucky not to convulse -
His heart, racing like a runaway engine. And then, to make matters
worse, he saw candlelight at the far end of the aisle. A moment
later he heard the rustle of their gowns and the whisk of their
slippers.
Gods, why now? They'll see me shaking, they'll know
Calling on every bit of his willpower and control, Roland dosed his
eyes and concentrated on stilling his jerking limbs. If only he had
been in bed instead of in these cursed slings, which seemed to
tremble as if with their own ague at every movement!
The Little Sisters drew closer. The light of their candles bloomed
red within his closed eyelids. Tonight they were not giggling, nor
whispering amongst themselves. It was not until they were almost
on top of him that Roland became aware of the stranger in their
midst - a creature that breathed through its nose in great, slobbery
gasps of mixed air and snot.
The gunslinger lay with his eyes closed, the gross twitches and
jumps of his arms and legs under control, but with his muscles still
knotted arid crampy, thrumming beneath the skin. Anyone who
looked at him closely would see at once that something was wrong
with him. His heart was larruping away like a horse under the
whip, surely they must see
But it wasn't him they were looking at - not yet, at least.
'Have it off him,' Mary said. She spoke in a bastardized version of
the low speech Roland could barely understand. 'Then t'other 'un.
Go on, Ralph.'
'U'se has whik-sky?' the slobberer asked, his dialect even heavier
than Mary's. Use has 'backky?'
'Yes, yes, plenty whisky and plenty smoke, but not until you have
these wretched things off!' Impatient. Perhaps afraid, as well.
Roland cautiously rolled his head to the left and cracked his
eyelids open.
Five of the six Little Sisters of Eluria were clustered around the far
side of the sleeping John Norman's bed, their candles raised to cast
their light upon him. It also cast light upon their own faces, faces
which would have given the strongest man nightmares. Now, in the
ditch of the night, their glamours were set aside, and they were but
ancient corpses in voluminous habits.
Sister Mary had one of Roland's guns in her hand. Looking at her
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