holding it, Roland felt a bright flash of hate for her, and promised
himself she would pay for her temerity.
The thing standing at the foot of the bed, strange as it was, looked
almost normal in comparison to the Sisters. It was one of the green
folk.
Roland recognized Ralph at once. He would be a long time
forgetting that bowler hat.
Now Ralph walked slowly around to the side of Norman's bed
closest to Roland, momentarily blocking the gunslinger's view of
the Sisters. The mutie went all the way to Norman's head,
however, clearing the hags to Roland's slitted view once more.
Norman's medallion lay exposed - the boy had perhaps waken
enough to take it out of his bed-dress, hoping it would protect him
better so. Ralph picked it up in his melted-tallow hand. The Sister
watched eagerly in the glow of their candles as the green man
stretched to the end of its chain. . . and then put it down again.
Their faces droop in disappointment.
'Don't care for such as that,' Ralph said in his clotted voice. 'Want
whik-sky! Want 'backky!'
'You shall have it,' Sister Mary said. 'Enough for you and all you
verminous clan. But first, you must have that horrid thing off him!
both of them! Do you understand? And you shan't tease us.'
'Or what?' Ralph asked. He laughed. It was a choked and gargly
sound the laughter of a man dying from some evil sickness of the
throat an lungs, but Roland still liked it better than the giggles of
the Sisters 'Or what, Sisser Mary, you'll drink my bluid? My
bluid'd drop'ee dead where'ee stand, and glowing in the dark!'
Mary raised the gunslinger's revolver and pointed it at Ralph. 'Take
that wretched thing, or you die where you stand.'
'And die after I've done what you want, likely.'
Sister Mary said nothing to that. The others peered at him with
their black eyes.
Ralph lowered his head, appearing to think. Roland suspected hi
friend Bowler Hat could think, too. Sister Mary and her cohorts
might, not believe that, but Ralph had to be trig to have survived as
long as he had. But of course when he came here, he hadn't
considered Roland's guns.
'Smasher was wrong to give them shooters to you,' he said at last.
'Give em and not tell me. Did u'se give him whik-sky? Give him
'backky?'
'That's none o' yours,' Sister Mary replied. 'You have that
goldpiece off the boy's neck right now, or I'll put one of yonder
man's bullets in what's left of yer brain.'
'All right,' Ralph said. 'Just as you wish, sai.'
Once more he reached down and took the gold medallion in his
melted fist. That he did slow; what happened after, happened fast.
He snatched it away, breaking the chain and flinging the gold
heedlessly into the dark. With his other hand he reached down,
sank his long and ragged nails into John Norman's neck, and tore it
open.
Blood flew from the hapless boy's throat in a jetting, heart-driven
gush more black than red in the candlelight, and he made a single
bubbly cry. The women screamed - but not in horror. They
screamed as women do in a frenzy of excitement. The green man
was forgotten; Roland was forgotten; all was forgotten save the
life's blood pouring out of John Norman's throat.
They dropped their candles. Mary dropped Roland's revolver in the
same hapless, careless fashion. The last the gunslinger saw as
Ralph darted away into the shadows (whisky and tobacco another
time, wily Ralph must have thought; tonight he had best
concentrate on saving his own life) was the sisters bending forward
to catch as much of the flow as they could before it dried up.
Roland lay in the dark, muscles shivering, heart pounding,
listening to the harpies as they fed on the boy lying in the bed next
to his own. It seemed to go on for ever, but at last they had done
with him. The Sisters re-lit their candles and left, murmuring.
When the drug in the soup once more got the better of the drug in
the reeds, Roland was grateful ... yet for the first time since coming
here, his sleep was haunted.
In his dream he stood looking down at the bloated body in the
town trough, thinking of a line in the book marked REGISTRY OF
MISDEEDS & REDRESS. Green folk sent hence, it had read, and
perhaps the green folk had been sent hence, but then a worse tribe
had come. The Little Sisters of Eluria, they called themselves. And
a year hence, they might be the Little Sisters of Tejuas, or of
Kambero, or some other far-western village. They came with their
bells and their bugs ... from where? Who knew? Did it matter?
A shadow fell beside his on the scummy water of the trough.
Roland tried to turn and face it. He couldn't; he was frozen in
place. Then a green hand grasped his shoulder and whirled him
about. It was Ralph. His bowler hat was cocked back on his head;
John Norman's medallion, now red with blood, hung around his
neck.
'Booh!' cried Ralph, his lips stretching in a toothless grin. He raised
a big revolver with worn sandalwood grips. He thumbed the
hammer back
- and Roland jerked awake, shivering all over, dressed in skin both
wet and icy cold. He looked at the bed on his left. It was empty, the
sheet pulled up and tucked about neatly, the pillow resting above it
in its snowy sleeve. Of John Norman there was no sign. It might
have been empty for years, that bed.
Roland was alone now. Gods help him, he was the last patient of
the Little Sisters of Eluria, those sweet and patient hospitallers.
The last human being still alive in this terrible place, the last with
warm blood flowing in his veins.
Roland, lying suspended, gripped the gold medallion in his fist and
looked across the aisle at the long row of empty beds. After a little
while, he brought one of the reeds out from beneath his pillow and
nibbled at it.
When Mary came fifteen minutes later, the gunslinger took the
bowl she brought with a show of weakness he didn't really feel.
Porridge instead of soup this time ... but he had no doubt the basic
ingredient was still the same.
'How well ye look this morning, sai,' Big Sister said. She looked
well herself - there were no shimmers to give away the ancient
wampir hiding inside her. She had supped well, and her meal had
firmed her up. Roland, stomach rolled over at the thought. 'Ye'll be
on yer pins in no time, I warrant.'
'That's shit,' Roland said, speaking in an ill-natured growl. 'Put me
on my pins and you'd be picking me up off the floor directly after.
I've start to wonder if you're not putting something in the food.'
She laughed merrily at that. 'La, you lads! Always eager to blame
weakness on a scheming woman! How scared of us ye are - aye,
way down in yer little boys' hearts, how scared ye are!'
'Where's my brother? I dreamed there was a commotion about him
in the night, and now I see his bed's empty.'
Her smile narrowed. Her eyes glittered. 'He came over fevery and
been home to contagion more than once in its time.'
To the grave is where you've taken him, Roland thought. Mayhap
that is a Thoughtful House, but little would you know it, sai, one
way or another.
'I know ye're no brother to that boy,' Mary said, watching him eat.
Already Roland could feel the stuff hidden in the porridge draining
his strength once more. 'Sigil or no sigil, I know ye're no brother to
him. Why do you lie? 'Tis a sin against God.'
'What gives you such an idea, sai?' Roland asked, curious to see if
she would mention the guns.
'Big Sister knows what she knows. Why not 'fess up, Jimmy?
Confession's good for the soul, they say.'
'Send me Jenna to pass the time, and perhaps I'd tell you much,'
Roland said.
The narrow bone of smile on Sister Mary's face disappeared like
chalkwriting in a rainstorm. 'Why would ye talk to such as her?'
'She's passing fair,' Roland said. 'Unlike some.'
Her lips pulled back from her overlarge teeth. 'Ye'll see her no
more, cully. Ye've stirred her up, so you have, and I won't have
that.'
She turned to go. Still trying to appear weak and hoping he would
not overdo it (acting was never his forte), Roland held out the
empty porridge bowl. 'Do you not want to take this?'
'Put it on your head and wear it as a nightcap, for all of me. Or
stick it ill your ass. You'll talk before I'm done with ye, cully - talk
till I bid you shut up and then beg to talk some more!'
On this note she swept regally away, hands lifting the front of her
skirt off the floor. Roland had heard that such as she couldn't go
about in daylight, and that part of the old tales was surely a lie. Yet
another part was almost true, it seemed: a fuzzy, amorphous shape
kept pace with her, running along the row of empty beds to her
right, but she cast no real shadow at all.
VI. Jenna. Sister Coquina. Tamra, Michela, Louise.
The Cross-Dog. What Happened in the Sage.
That was one of the longest days of Roland's life. He dozed, but
never deeply; the reeds were doing their work, and he had begun to
believe that he might, with Jenna's help, actually get out of here.
And there was the matter of his guns, as well - perhaps she might
be able to help there, too.
He passed the slow hours thinking of old times - of Gilead and his
friends, of the riddling he had almost won at one Wide Earth Fair.
In the end another had taken the goose, but he'd had his chance,
aye. He thought of his mother and father; he thought of Abel
Vannay, who had limped his way through a life of gentle
goodness, and Eldred Jonas, who had limped his way through a life
of evil ... until Roland had blown him loose of his saddle, one fine
desert day.
He thought, as always, of Susan.
If you love me, then love me, she'd said ... and so he had.
So he had.
In this way the time passed. At rough hourly intervals, he took one
of the reeds from beneath his pillow and nibbled it. Now his
muscles didn't tremble so badly as the stuff passed into his system,
nor his heart pound so fiercely. The medicine in the reeds no
longer had to battle the Sisters' medicine so fiercely, Roland
thought; the reeds were winning.
The diffused brightness of the sun moved across the white silk
ceiling of the ward, and at last the dimness which always seemed
to hover at bed-level began to rise. The long room's western wall
bloomed with the rose-melting-to-orange shades of sunset.
It was Sister Tamra who brought him his dinner that night - soup
and another popkin. She also laid a desert lily beside his hand. She
smiled she did it. Her cheeks were bright with colour. All of them
were bright with colour today, like leeches which had gorged until
they were almost to bursting.
'From your admirer, Jimmy,' she said. 'She's so sweet on ye! The I
means "Do not forget my promise". What has she promised ye,
Jimmy brother of Johnny?'
'That she'd see me again, and we'd talk.'
Tamra laughed so hard that the bells lining her forehead jingled.
She clasped her hands together in a perfect ecstasy of glee. 'Sweet
as honey
Oh, yes!' She bent her smiling gaze on Roland. 'It's sad such a
promise can never be kept. Ye'll never see her again, pretty man.'
She took the bowl. 'Big Sister has decided.' She stood up, still
smiling. 'Why not take that ugly gold sigil off?'
'I think not.'
'Yer brother took his off - look!' She pointed, and Roland spied the
gold medallion lying far down the aisle, where it had landed when
Ralph threw it.
Sister Tamra looked at him, still smiling.
'He decided it was part of what was making him sick, and cast it
away Ye'd do the same, were ye wise.'
Roland repeated: 'I think not.'
'So,' she said dismissively, and left him alone with the empty beds
glimmering in the thickening shadows.
Roland hung on, in spite of growing sleepiness, until the hot
colours bleeding across the infirmary's western wall had cooled to
ashes. Then he nibbled one of the reeds and felt strength - real
strength, not a jittery, heart-thudding substitute -bloom in his body.
He looked towards where the castaway medallion gleamed in the
last light and made a silent promise to John Norman: he would take
it with the other one to Norman's kin, if ka chanced that he should
encounter them in his travels.
Feeling completely easy in his mind for the first time that day, the
gunslinger dozed. When he awoke it was full dark. The doctor-
bugs were singing with extraordinary shrillness. He had taken one
of the reeds out from under the pillow and had begun to nibble on
it when a cold voice said, 'So - Big Sister was right. Ye've been
keeping secrets.'
Roland's heart seemed to stop dead in his chest. He looked around
and saw Sister Coquina getting to her feet. She had crept in while
he was dozing and hidden under the bed on his right side to watch
him. 'Where did ye get that?' she asked. 'Was it 'He got it from me.'
Coquina whirled about. Jenna was walking down the aisle towards
them. Her habit was gone. She still wore her wimple with its
foreheadfringe of bells, but its hem rested on the shoulders of a
simple checkered shirt. Below this she wore jeans and scuffed
desert boots. She had something in her hands. It was too dark for
Roland to be sure, but he thought
YOU,' Sister Coquina whispered with infinite hate. 'When I tell
Big Sister -
`you'll tell no one anything,' Roland said.
If he had planned his escape from the slings which entangled him,
he no doubt would have made a bad business of it, but, as always,
the gunslinger did best when he thought least. His arms were free
in a moment; so was his left leg. His right caught at the ankle,
however, twisting, hanging him up with his shoulders on the bed
and his leg in the air.
Coquina turned on h
im, hissing like a cat. Her lips pulled back
from teeth that were needle-sharp. She rushed at him, her fingers
splayed. The nails at the ends of them looked sharp and ragged.
Roland clasped the medallion and shoved it out towards her. She
recoiled from it, still hissing, and whirled back to Sister Jenna in a
flare of white skirt. 'I'll do for ye, ye interfering trull!' she cried in a
low, harsh voice.
Roland struggled to free his leg and couldn't. It was firmly caught,
the shitting sling actually wrapped around the ankle somehow, like
a noose.
Jenna raised her hands, and he saw he had been right: it was his
revolvers she had brought, holstered and hanging from the two old
gunbelts he had worn out of Gilead after the last burning.
'Shoot her, Jenna! Shoot her!'
Instead, still holding the holstered guns up, Jenna shook her head
as she had on the day when Roland had persuaded her to push back
her wimple so he could see her hair. The bells rang with a
sharpness that seemed to go into the gunslinger's head like a spike.
The Dark Bells. The sigil of their ka-tet. What
The sound of the doctor-bugs rose to a shrill, reedy scream that
was eerily like the sound of the bells Jenna wore. Nothing sweet
about them now. Sister Coquina's hands faltered on their way to
Jenna's throat; Jenna herself had not so much as flinched or blinked
her eyes.
'No,' Coquina whispered. 'You can't!'
'I have,' Jenna said, and Roland saw the bugs. Descending from the
legs of the bearded man, he'd observed a battalion. What he saw
coming from the shadows now was an army to end all armies; had
they been men instead of insects, there might have been more than
all the men who had ever carried arms in the long and bloody
history of World.
Yet the sight of them advancing down the boards of the aisle was
what Roland would always remember, nor what would haunt his
dream for a year or more; it was the way they coated the beds.
These were turning black two by two on both sides of the aisle,
like pairs of dim rectangular lights going out.
Coquina shrieked and began to shake her own head, to ring her
bells. The sound they made was thin and pointless compared to the
sharp ringing of the Dark Bells.
Still the bugs marched on, darkening the floor, blacking out the be
Jenna darted past the shrieking Sister Coquina, dropped Roland's
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