Patrick understood. The tongueless boy had taken out his pad, at least, and a freshly sharpened pencil.
That’s my best protection, Roland’s mind muttered as he stumbled back to his little pile of hides between the campfire and Ho Fat II. He ivon’tfall asleep while he’s drawing, will he?
He hoped not, but supposed he didn’t really know. And it didn’t matter, because he, Roland of Gilead, was going to sleep in any case. He’d done the best he could, and it would have to be enough.
“An hour,” he muttered, and his voice was far and wee in his own ears. “Wake me in an hour… when the star… when Old Mother goes behind…”
But Roland was unable to finish. He didn’t even know what he was saying anymore. Exhaustion grabbed him and bore him swifdy away into dreamless sleep.
SEVEN
Mordred saw it all through the far-seeing glass eyes. His fever had soared, and in its bright flame, his own exhaustion had at least temporarily departed. He watched with avid interest as the gunslinger woke the mute boy-the Artist-and bullied him into helping him build up the fire. He watched, rooting for the mute to finish this chore and then go back to sleep before the gunslinger could stop him. That didn’t happen, unfortunately.
They had camped near a grove of dead cottonwoods, and Roland led the Artist to the biggest tree. Here he pointed up at the sky. It was strewn with stars, but Mordred reckoned Old White Gunslinger Daddy was pointing to Old Mother, because she was the brightest. At last the Artist, who didn’t seem to be rolling a full barrow (at least not in the brains department) seemed to understand. He got out his pad and had already set to sketching as Old White Daddy stumbled a little way off, still muttering instructions and orders to which the Artist was pretty clearly paying absolutely no attention at all. Old White Daddy collapsed so suddenly that for a moment Mordred feared that perhaps the strip of jerky that served the son of a bitch as a heart had finally given up beating. Then Roland stirred in the grass, resetding himself, and Mordred, lying on a knoll about ninety yards west of the dry streambed, felt his own heartbeat slow. And deep though the Old White Gunslinger Daddy’s exhaustion might be, his training and his long lineage, going all the way back to the Eld himself, would be enough to wake him with his gun in his hand the second the Artist gave one of his wordless but devilishly loud cries. Cramps seized Mordred, the deepest yet. He doubled over, fighting to hold his human shape, fighting not to scream, fighting not to die. He heard another of those long flabbering noises from below and felt more of the lumpy brown stew begin coursing down his legs. But his preternaturally keen nose smelled more than excreta in this new mess; this time he smelled blood as well as shit. He thought the pain would never end, that it would go on deepening until it tore him in two, but at last it began to let up. His looked at his left hand and was not entirely surprised to see that the fingers had blackened and fused together. They would never come back to human again, those fingers; he believed he had but only one more change left in him. Mordred wiped sweat from his brow with his right hand and raised the bin-doculars to his eyes again, praying to his Red Daddy that the stupid mutie boy would be asleep. But he was not. He was leaning against the cottonwood tree and looking up between the branches and drawing Old Mother.
That was the moment when Mordred Deschain came closest to despair. like Roland, he thought drawing was the one thing that would likely keep the idiot boy awake. Therefore, why not give in to the change while he had the heat of this latest fever-spike to fuel him with its destructive energy? Why not take his chance?
It was Roland he wanted, after all, not the boy; surely he could, in his spider form, sweep down on the gunslinger rapidly enough to grab him and pull him against the spider’s craving mouth. Old White Daddy might get off one shot, possibly even two, but Mordred thought he could take one or two, if the flying bits of lead didn’t find the white node on the spider’s back: his dual body’s brain. And once I pull him in, I’ll never let him go until he’s sucked dry, nothing but a dust-mummy like the other one, Mia.
He relaxed, ready to let the change sweep over him, and then another voice spoke from the center of his mind. It was the voice of his Red Daddy, the one who was imprisoned on the side of the Dark Tower and needed Mordred alive, at least one more day, in order to set him free.
Wait a little longer, this voice counseled. Wait a little more. I might have another trick up my sleeve. Wait… wait just a little longer…
Mordred waited. And after a moment or two, he felt the pulse from the Dark Tower change.
EIGHT
Patrick felt that change, too. The pulse became soothing. And there were words in it, ones that blunted his eagerness to draw.
He made another line, paused, then put his pencil aside and only looked up at Old Mother, who seemed to pulse in time with the words he heard in his head, words Roland would have recognized.
Only these were sung in an old man’s voice, quavering but sweet:
“Baby-bunting, darling one,
Now another day is done.
May your dreams be sweet and merry,
May you dream of fields and berries.
Baby-bunting, baby-dear,
Baby, bring your berries here.
Oh chussit, chissit, chassit!
Bring enough to fill your basket!”
Patrick’s head nodded. His eyes closed… opened… slipped closed again.
Enough to fill my basket, he thought, and slept in the firelight.
NINE
Now, my good son, whispered the cold voice in the middle of Mordred’s hot and melting brains. Now. Go to him and make sure he never rises from his sleep. Murder him among the mses and we’ll rule together.
Mordred came from hiding, the binoculars tumbling from a hand that was no longer a hand at all. As he changed, a feeling of huge confidence swept through him. In another minute it would be done. They both slept, and diere was no way he could fail.
He rushed down on the camp and the sleeping men, a black nightmare on seven legs, his mouth opening and closing.
TEN
Somewhere, a thousand miles away, Roland heard barking, loud and urgent, furious and savage. His exhausted mind tried to turn away from it, to blot it out and go deeper. Then there was a horrible scream of agony that awoke him in a flash. He knew that voice, even as distorted by pain as it was.
“Oy!” he cried, leaping up. “Oy, where are you? To me! To m-”
There he was, twisting in the spider’s grip. Bodi of them were clearly visible in the light of the fire. Beyond them, sitting propped against the cottonwood tree, Patrick gazed stupidly through a curtain of hair that would soon be dirty again, now that Susannah was gone. The bumbler wriggled furiously to and fro, snapping at the spider’s body with foam flying from his jaws even as Mordred bent him in a direction his back was never meant to go.
If he’d not rushed out of the tall grass, Roland thought, that would be me in Mordred’s grip.
Oy sent his teeth deep into one of the spider’s legs. In the firelight Roland could see the coin-sized dimples of the bumbler’s jaw-muscles as he chewed deeper still. The thing squalled and its grip loosened. At that moment Oy might have gotten free, had he chosen to do so. He did not. Instead of jumping down and leaping away in the momentary freedom granted him before Mordred was able to re-set his grip, Oy used the time to extend his long neck and seize the place where one of the thing’s legs joined its bloated body. He bit deep, bringing a flood of blackish-red liquor that ran freely from the sides of his muzzle. In the firelight it gleamed with orange sparks. Mordred squalled louder still. He had left Oy out of his calculations, and was now paying the price. In the firelight, the two writhing forms were figures out of a nightmare.
Somewhere nearby, Patrick was hooting in terror.
Worthless whoreson fell asleep after all, Roland thought bitterly.
But who had set him to watch in the first place?
“Put him down, Mordred!” he shouted. “Put him down and I’ll let you live another day! I swear it on my father’s name!”
Red eyes, full of insanity and malevolence, peered at him over Oy’s contorted body. Above them, high on the curve of the spider’s back, were tiny blue eyes, hardly more than pinholes.
They stared at the gunslinger with a hate that was all too human.
My own eyes, Roland thovight with dismay, and then there was a bitter crack. It was Oy’s spine, but in spite of this mortal injury he never loosened his grip on the joint where Mordred’s legjoined his body, although the steely brisdes had torn away much of his muzzle, baring sharp teeth that had sometimes closed on Jake’s wrist with gentle affection, tugging him toward something Oy wanted the boy to see. Ake.’he would cry on such occasions. Ake-Ake!
Roland’s right hand dropped to his holster and found it empty. It was only then, hours after she had taken her leave, that he realized Susannah
