The Dark Tower IV Wizard and Glass (78 page)

“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—

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.”

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.

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 corners 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.”

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 Señor 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
serape
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.

“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 sunstars 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.”