At some point after this, Roland opened his eyes again, half-expecting to see Sister Jenna’s pretty young face hovering above him.
And that comma of dark hair once more poking out from beneath her wimple. There was no one. The swags of silk overhead were at their brightest, and although it was impossible to tell the hours in here with any real accuracy, Roland guessed it to be around noon. Perhaps three hours since his second bowl of the Sisters’ soup.
Beside him, John Norman still slept, his breath whistling out in faint, nasal snores.
Roland tried to raise his hand and slide it under his pillow. The hand wouldn’t move. He could wiggle the tips of his fingers, but that was all. He waited, calming his mind as well as he could, gathering his patience. Patience wasn’t easy to come by. He kept thinking about what Norman had said—that there had been twenty survivors of the ambush . . . at least to start with. One by one they went, until only me and that one down yonder was left. And now you.
The girl wasn’t here. His mind spoke in the soft, regretful tone of Alain, one of his old friends, dead these many years now. She wouldn’t dare, not with the others watching. That was only a dream you had.
But Roland thought perhaps it had been more than a dream.
Some length of time later—the slowly shifting brightness overhead made him believe it had been about an hour—Roland tried his 186
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hand again. This time he was able to get it beneath his pillow. This was puffy and soft, tucked snugly into the wide sling that supported the gunslinger’s neck. At first he found nothing, but as his fingers worked their slow way deeper, they touched what felt like a stiffish bundle of thin rods.
He paused, gathering a little more strength (every movement was like swimming in glue), and then burrowed deeper. It felt like a dead bouquet. Wrapped around it was what felt like a ribbon.
Roland looked around to make sure the ward was still empty and Norman still asleep, then drew out what was under the pillow. It was six brittle stems of fading green with brownish reed heads at the tops.
They gave off a strange, yeasty aroma that made Roland think of early-morning begging expeditions to the Great House kitchens as a child—forays he had usually made with Cuthbert. The reeds were tied with a wide white silk ribbon, and smelled like burnt toast. Beneath the ribbon was a fold of cloth. Like everything else in this cursed place, it seemed, the cloth was of silk.
Roland was breathing hard and could feel drops of sweat on his brow. Still alone, though—good. He took the scrap of cloth and unfolded it. Printed painstakingly in blurred charcoal letters was this message:
NIBBLE HEDS. ONCE EACH HOUR. TOO
MUCH, CRAMPS OR DETH.
TOMORROW NITE. CAN’T BE SOONER.
BE CAREFUL!
No explanation, but Roland supposed none was needed. Nor did he have any option; if he remained here, he would die. All they had to do was have the medallion off him, and he felt sure Sister Mary was smart enough to figure a way to do that.
He nibbled at one of the dry reed heads. The taste was nothing like the toast they had begged from the kitchen as boys; it was bitter in his throat and hot in his stomach. Less than a minute after his nibble, his heart rate had doubled. His muscles awakened, but not in a 187
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pleasant way, as after good sleep; they felt first trembly and then hard, as if they were gathered into knots. This feeling passed rapidly, and his heartbeat was back to normal before Norman stirred awake an hour or so later, but he understood why Jenna’s note had warned him not to take more than a nibble at a time—this was very powerful stuff.
He slipped the bouquet of reeds back under the pillow, being careful to brush away the few crumbles of vegetable matter which had dropped to the sheet. Then he used the ball of his thumb to blur the painstaking charcoaled words on the bit of silk. When he was finished, there was nothing on the square but meaningless smudges. The square he also tucked back under his pillow.
When Norman awoke, he and the gunslinger spoke briefly of the young scout’s home—Delain, it was, sometimes known jestingly as Dragon’s Lair, or Liar’s Heaven. All tall tales were said to originate in Delain. The boy asked Roland to take his medallion and that of his brother home to their parents, if Roland was able, and explain as well as he could what had happened to James and John, sons of Jesse.
“You’ll do all that yourself,” Roland said.
“No.” Norman tried to raise his hand, perhaps to scratch his nose, and was unable to do even that. The hand rose perhaps six inches, then fell back to the counterpane with a small thump. “I think not.
It’s a pity for us to have run up against each other this way, you know—I like you.”
“And I you, John Norman. Would that we were better met.”
“Aye. When not in the company of such fascinating ladies.”
He dropped off to sleep again soon after. Roland never spoke with him again . . . although he certainly heard from him. Yes.
Roland was lying above his bed, shamming sleep, as John Norman screamed his last.
Sister Michela came with his evening soup just as Roland was getting past the shivery muscles and galloping heartbeat that resulted from his second nibble of brown reed. Michela looked at his flushed face with some concern, but had to accept his assurances that he did not feel feverish; she couldn’t bring herself to touch him and judge the heat of his skin for herself—the medallion held her away.
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With the soup was a popkin. The bread was leathery and the meat inside it tough, but Roland demolished it greedily, just the same.
Michela watched with a complacent smile, hands folded in front of her, nodding from time to time. When he had finished the soup, she took the bowl back from him carefully, making sure their fingers did not touch.
“Ye’re healing,” she said. “Soon you’ll be on yer way, and we’ll have just yer memory to keep, Jim.”
“Is that true?” he asked quietly.
She only looked at him, touched her tongue against her upper lip, giggled, and departed. Roland closed his eyes and lay back against his pillow, feeling lethargy steal over him again. Her speculative eyes
. . . her peeping tongue. He had seen women look at roast chickens and joints of mutton that same way, calculating when they might be done.
His body badly wanted to sleep, but Roland held onto wakefulness for what he judged was an hour, then worked one of the reeds out from under the pillow. With a fresh infusion of their “can’t-move medicine” in his system, this took an enormous effort, and he wasn’t sure he could have done it at all, had he not separated this one reed from the ribbon holding the others. Tomorrow night, Jenna’s note had said.
If that meant escape, the idea seemed preposterous. The way he felt now, he might be lying in this bed until the end of the age.
He nibbled. Energy washed into his system, clenching his muscles and racing his heart, but the burst of vitality was gone almost as soon as it came, buried beneath the Sisters’ stronger drug. He could only hope . . . and sleep.
When he woke it was full dark, and he found he could move his arms and legs in their network of slings almost naturally. He slipped one of the reeds out from beneath his pillow and nibbled cautiously.
She had left half a dozen, and the first two were now almost entirely consumed.
The gunslinger put the stem back under the pillow, then began to shiver like a wet dog in a downpour. I took too much, he thought. I’ll be lucky not to convulse—
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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—