“It’s here.” Cuthbert stopped at a point midway between the bunk-house and the charred remains of the home place. He pointed with great assurance, but Roland could see nothing out of the ordinary. He walked over to Cuthbert and looked down.
“I don’t see—”
Brilliant light—starshine times a thousand—exploded in his head as Cuthbert’s fist drove against the point of his chin. It was the first time, except in play (and as very small boys), that Bert had ever struck him. Roland didn’t lose consciousness, but he did lose control over his arms and legs. They were there, but seemingly in another country, flailing like the limbs of a rag doll. He went down on his back.
Dust puffed up around him. The stars seemed strangely in motion, running in arcs and leaving milky trails behind them. There was a high ringing in his ears.
From a great distance he heard Alain scream: “Oh, you fool! You stupid fool!”
By making a tremendous effort, Roland was able to turn his head. He saw Alain start toward him and saw Cuthbert, no longer smiling, push him away. “This is between us, Al. You stay out of it.”
“You sucker-punched him, you bastard!” Alain, slow to anger, was now building toward a rage Cuthbert might well regret. I have to get up, Roland thought. I have to get between them before something even worse happens. His arms and legs
began to swim weakly in the dust.
“Yes—that’s how he’s played us,” Cuthbert said. “I only returned the favor.” He looked down. “That’s what I wanted to show you, Roland.
That particular piece of ground. That particular puff of dust in which you are now lying. Get a good taste of it. Mayhap it’ll wake you up.”
Now Roland’s own anger began to rise. He felt the coldness that was seeping into his thoughts, fought it, and realized he was losing. Jonas ceased to matter; the tankers at Citgo ceased to matter; the supply conspiracy they had uncovered ceased to matter. Soon the Affiliation and the ka-tet he had been at such pains to preserve would cease to matter as well.
The surface numbness was leaving his feet and legs, and he pushed himself to a sitting position. He looked up calmly at Bert, his tented hands on the ground, his face set. Starshine swam in his eyes.
“I love you, Cuthbert, but I’ll have no more insubordination and jealous tantrums.
If I paid you back for all, I reckon you’d finish in pieces, so I’m only going to pay you for hitting me when I didn’t know it was coming.”
“And I’ve no doubt ye can, cully,” Cuthbert said, falling effortlessly into the Hambry patois. “But first ye might want to have a peek at this.” Almost contemptuously, he tossed a folded sheet of paper. It hit Roland’s chest and bounced into his lap.
Roland picked it up, feeling the fine point of his developing rage lose its edge.
“What is it?”
“Open and see. There’s enough starlight to read by.”
Slowly, with reluctant fingers, Roland unfolded the sheet of paper and read what was printed there.
He read it twice. The second time was actually harder, because his hands had begun to tremble. He saw every place he and Susan had met— the boathouse, the hut, the shack-and now he saw them in a new light, knowing someone else had seen them, too. How clever he had believed they were being. How confident of
their secrecy and their discretion. And yet someone had been watching all the time. Susan had been right. Someone had seen.
I’ve put everything at risk. Her life as well as our lives.
Tell him what I said about the doorway to hell.
And Susan’s voice, too: Ka like a wind . . . if you love me, then love me.
So he had done, believing in his youthful arrogance that everything would turn out all right for no other reason—yes, at bottom he had believed this—than that he was he, and ka must serve his love.
“I’ve been a fool,” he said. His voice trembled like his hands.
“Yes, indeed,” Cuthbert said. “So you have.” He dropped to his knees in the dust, facing Roland. “Now if you want to hit me, hit away. Hard as you want and as many as you can manage. I’ll not hit back. I’ve done all I can to wake you up to your responsibilities. If you still sleep, so be it. Either way, I still love you.” Bert put his hands on Roland’s shoulders and briefly kissed his friend’s cheek.
Roland began to cry. They were partly tears of gratitude, but mostly those of mingled shame and confusion; there was even a small, dark part of him that hated Cuthbert and always would. That part hated Cuthbert more on account of the kiss than because of the unexpected punch on the jaw; more for the forgiveness than the awakening.
He got to his feet, still holding the letter in one dusty hand, the other ineffectually brushing his cheeks and leaving damp smears there. When he staggered and Cuthbert put out a hand to steady him, Roland pushed him so hard that Cuthbert himself would have fallen, if Alain hadn’t caught hold of his shoulders.
Then, slowly, Roland went back down again—this time in front of Cuthbert with his hands up and his head down.
“Roland, no!” Cuthbert cried.
“Yes,” Roland said. “I have forgotten the face of my father, and cry your pardon.”
“Yes, all right, for gods’ sake, yes!” Cuthbert now sounded as if he were crying himself. “Just… please get up! It breaks my heart to see you so!”
And mine to be so, Roland thought. To be humbled so. But I brought it on myself, didn’t I? This dark yard, with my head throbbing and my heart full of shame and fear. This is mine, bought and paid for.
They helped him up and Roland let himself be helped. “That’s quite a left, Bert,”
he said in a voice that almost passed for normal.
“Only when it’s going toward someone who doesn’t know it’s coming,” Cuthbert replied.
“This letter—how did you come by it?”
Cuthbert told of meeting Sheemie, who had been dithering along in his own misery, as if waiting for ka to intervene … and, in the person of “Arthur Heath,” ka had.
“From the witch,” Roland mused. “Yes, but how did she know? For she never leaves the Coos, or so Susan has told me.”
“I can’t say. Nor do I much care. What I’m most concerned about right now is making sure that Sheemie isn’t hurt because of what he told me and gave me. After that, I’m concerned that what old witch Rhea has tried to tell once she doesn’t try to tell again.”
“I’ve made at least one terrible mistake,” Roland said, “but I don’t count loving Susan as another. That was beyond me to change. As it was beyond her. Do you believe that?”
“Yes,” Alain said at once, and after a moment, almost reluctantly, Cuthbert said,
“Aye, Roland.”
“I’ve been arrogant and stupid. If this note had reached her aunt, she could have been sent into exile.”
“And we to the devil, by way of hangropes,” Cuthbert added dryly. “Although I know that’s a minor matter to you by comparison.”
“What about the witch?” Alain asked. “What do we do about her?” Roland smiled a little, and turned toward the northwest. “Rhea,” he said. “Whatever else she is, she’s a first-class troublemaker, is she not? And troublemakers must be put on notice.”
He started back toward the bunkhouse, trudging with his head down. Cuthbert looked at Alain, and saw that Al was also a little teary-eyed. Bert put out his hand.
For a moment Alain only looked at it. Then he nodded—to himself rather than to Cuthbert, it seemed—and shook it.
“You did what you had to,” Alain said. “I had my doubts at first, but not now.”
Cuthbert let out his breath. “And I did it the way I had to. If I hadn’t surprised him—”
“—he would have beaten you black and blue.”
“So many more colors than that,” Cuthbert said. “I would have looked like a
rainbow.”
“The Wizard’s Rainbow, even,” Alain said. “Extra colors for your penny.”
That made Cuthbert laugh. The two of them walked back toward the bunkhouse, where Roland was unsaddling Bert’s horse.
Cuthbert turned in that direction to help, but Alain held him back. “Leave him alone for a little while,” he said. “It’s best you do.”
They went on ahead, and when Roland came in ten minutes later, he found Cuthbert playing his hand. And winning with it.
“Bert,” he said.
Cuthbert looked up.
“We have a spot of business tomorrow, you and I. Up on the Coos.” “Are we going to kill her?”
Roland thought, and thought hard. At last he looked up, biting his lip. “We should.”
“Aye. We should. But are we going to?”