“We are uffis,” said the man on the right. “Do you ken uffis, Roland?”
“Yes,” he said, and then, in an aside to Susannah: “It’s an old word…ancient, in fact. He
claims they’re shape-changers.” To this he added in a much lower voice that could surely
not be heard over the roar of the river: “I doubt it’s true.”
“Yet it is,” said the one on the right, pleasantly enough.
“Liars see their own kind everywhere,” observed the one on the left, and rolled a cynical
blue eye. Just one. Susannah didn’t believe she had ever seen a person roll just one eye
before.
The one behind said nothing, only continued to stand and watch with his hands clasped
before him.
“We can take any shape we like,” continued the one on the right, “but our orders were to
assume that of someone you’d recognize and trust.”
“I’d not trust sai King much further than I could throw his heaviest grandfather,” Roland
remarked. “As troublesome as a trousers-eating goat, that one.”
“We did the best we could,” said the righthand Stephen King. “We could have taken the
shape of Eddie Dean, but felt that might be too painful to the lady.”
“The ‘lady’ looks as if she’d be happy to fuck a rope, could she make it stand up between
her thighs,” remarked the left-hand Stephen King, and leered.
“Uncalled-for,” said the one behind, he with his hands crossed in front of him. He spoke in
the mild tones of a contest referee. Susannah almost expected him to sentence Badmouth King to five minutes in the penalty box. She wouldn’t have minded, either, for hearing
Badmouth King crack wise hurt her heart; it reminded her of Eddie.
Roland ignored all the byplay.
“Could the three of you take three different shapes?” he inquired of Goodmouth King.
Susannah heard the gunslinger swallow quite audibly before asking this question, and
knew she wasn’t the only one struggling to keep from drooling over the smells from the
food-basket. “Could one of you have been sai King, one sai Kennedy, and one sai Nixon,
for instance?”
“A good question,” said Goodmouth King on the right.
“A stupid question,” said Badmouth King on the left. “Nothing at all to the point. Off we
go into the wild blue yonder. Oh well, was there ever an action hero who was an
intellectual?”
“Prince Hamlet of Denmark,” said Referee King quietly from behind them. “But since
he’s the only one who comes immediately to mind, he may be no more than the exception
that proves the rule.”
Goodmouth and Badmouth both turned to look at him. When it was clear that he was done,
they turned back to Roland and Susannah.
“Since we’re actually one being,” said Goodmouth, “and of fairly limited capabilities at
that, the answer is no. We could all be Kennedy, or we could all be Nixon, but—”
“ ‘Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today,’ ” said Susannah. She had no idea
why this had popped into her head (even less why she should have said it out loud), but
Referee King said “Exactly!” and gave her a go-to-the-head-of-the-class nod.
“Move on, for your father’s sake,” said Badmouth King on the left. “I can barely look at
these traitors to the Lord of the Red wi’out puking.”
“Very well,” said his partner. “Although calling them traitors seems rather unfair, at least
if one adds ka to the equation. Since the names we give ourself would be unpronounceable
to you—”
“Like Superman’s rival, Mr. Mxyzptlk,” said Badmouth.
“—you may as well use those Los’ used. Him being the one you call the Crimson King.
I’m ego, roughly speaking, and go by the name of Feemalo. This fellow beside me is
Fumalo. He’s our id.”
“So the one behind you must be Fimalo,” Susannah said, pronouncing itFie -ma-lo.
“What’s he, your superego?”
“Oh brilliant!” Fumalo exclaimed. “I bet you can even say Freud so it doesn’t rhyme with
lewd!” He leaned forward and gave her his knowing leer. “But can youspell it, you
shor’-leg New York blackbird?”
“Don’t mind him,” said Feemalo, “he’s always been threatened by women.”
“Are you Stephen King’s ego, id, and superego?” Susannah asked.
“What a good question!” Feemalo said approvingly.
“What adumb question!” Fumalo said, disapprovingly. “Did your parents have any kids
that lived, Blackbird?”
“You don’t want to start in playing the dozens with me,” Susannah said, “I’ll bring out
Detta Walker and shut you down.”
Referee King said, “I have nothing to do with sai King other than having appropriated
some of his physical characteristics for a short time. And I understand that short time is
really all the time you have. I have no particular love for your cause and no intention of
going out of my way to help you—notfar out of my way, at least—and yet I understand that
you two are largely responsible for the departure of Los’. Since he kept me prisoner and
treated me as little more than his court jester—or even his pet monkey—I’m not at all sorry
to see him go. I’d help you if I can—a little, at least—but no, I won’t go out of my way to
do so. ‘Let’s get that up front,’ as your late friend Eddie Dean might have said.”
Susannah tried not to wince at this, but it hurt. It hurt.
As before, Feemalo and Fumalo had turned to look at Fimalo when he spoke. Now they
turned back to Roland and Susannah.
“Honesty’s the best policy,” said Feemalo, with a pious look. “Cervantes.”
“Liars prosper,” said Fumalo, with a cynical grin. “Anonymous.”
Feemalo said, “There were times when Los’ would make us divide into six, or even seven,
and for no other reason than because ithurt . Yet we could leave no more than anyone else
in the castle could, for he’d set a dead-line around its walls.”
“We thought he’d kill us all before he left,” Fumalo said, and with none of his previous
fuck-you cynicism. His face wore the long and introspective expression of one who looks
back on a disaster perhaps averted by mere inches.
Feemalo: “Hedid kill a great many. Beheaded his Minister of State.”
Fumalo: “Who had advanced syphilis and no more idea what was happening to him than a pig in a slaughterhouse chute, more’s the pity.”
Feemalo: “He lined up the kitchen staff and the women o’ work—”
Fumalo: “All of whom had been very loyal to him, very loyal indeed—”
Feemalo: “And made them take poison as they stood in front of him. He could have killed
them in their sleep if he’d wanted to—”
Fumalo: “And by no more than wishing it on them.”
Feemalo: “But instead he made them take poison.Rat poison. They swallowed large brown
chunks of it and died in convulsions right in front of him as he sat on his throne—”
Fumalo: “Which is made of skulls, do ye ken—”
Feemalo: “He sat there with his elbow on his knee and his fist on his chin, like a man
thinking long thoughts, perhaps about squaring the circle or finding the Ultimate Prime
Number, all the while watching them writhe and vomit and convulse on the floor of the
Audience Chamber.”
Fumalo (with a touch of eagerness Susannah found both prurient andextremely
unattractive): “Some died begging for water. It was athirsty poison, aye! And we
thoughtwe were next!”
At this Feemalo at last betrayed, if not anger, then a touch of pique. “Will you let me tell
this and have done with it so they can go on or back as they please?”
“Bossy as ever,” Fumalo said, and dropped into a sulky silence. Above them, the Castle
Rooks jostled for position and looked down with beady eyes.No doubt hoping to make a
meal of those who don’t walk away, Susannah thought.
“He had six of the surviving Wizard’s Glasses,” Feemalo said. “And when you were still
in Calla Bryn Sturgis, he saw something in them that finished the job of running him mad.
We don’t know for sure what it was, for we didn’t see, but we have an idea it was your
victory not just in the Calla but further on, at Algul Siento. If so, it meant the end of his scheme to bring down the Tower from afar, by breaking the Beams.”
“Of course that’s what it was,” Fimalo said quietly, and once more both Stephen Kings on
the bridge turned to look at him. “It could have been nothing else. What brought him to the
brink of madness in the first place were two conflicting compulsions in his mind: to bring
the Tower down, and to get there beforeyou could get there, Roland, and mount to the top.
To destroy it…or to rule it. I’m not sure he has ever cared overmuch aboutunderstanding
it—just about beating you to something you want, and then snatching it away from you.
About such things he’d care much.”
“It’d no doubt please you to know how he raved about you, and cursed your name in the weeks before he smashed his precious playthings,” said Fumalo. “How he came to fear you,