189
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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 closed 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 among 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 and 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. “U’se has ’backky?”
“Yes, yes, plenty whiskey 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 190
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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 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 with 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 wakened 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 Sisters watched eagerly in the glow of their candles as the green man stretched it to the end of its chain . . . and then put it down again.
Their faces drooped 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 your verminous clan. But first, you must have that horrid thing off him!
Off 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 and 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 his 191
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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 gold-piece 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 (whiskey 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 forever, but at last they had done with him.
The Sisters relit 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 he’d come here, his sleep was haunted.
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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 AND 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 hospitalers. 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 193