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. Itcan'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.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***