Everything's Eventual

   —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 wampir hiding inside her. She had supped well, and her meal had firmed her up. Roland's stomach rolled over at the thought. 'Ye'll be on yer pins in no time, I'll warrant.'

   'That's shit,' Roland said, speaking in an ill-natured growl. 'Put me on my pins and you'd be picking me up off the floor directly after. I've started to wonder if you're not putting something in the food.'

   She laughed merrily at that. 'La, you lads! Always eager to blame yer weakness on a scheming woman! How scared of us ye are—aye, way down in yer little boys' hearts, how scared ye are!'

   'Where's my brother? I dreamed there was a commotion about him in the night, and now I see his bed's empty.'

   Her smile narrowed. Her eyes glittered. 'He came over fevery and pitched a fit. We've taken him to Thoughtful House, which has been home to contagion more than once in its time.'

   To the grave is where you've taken him, Roland thought. Mayhap that is a Thoughtful House, but little would you know it, sai, one way or another.

   'I know ye're no brother to that boy,' Mary said, watching him eat. Already Roland could feel the stuff hidden in the porridge draining his strength once more. 'Sigul or no sigul, I know ye're no brother to him. Why do you lie? 'Tis a sin against God.'

   'What gives you such an idea, sai?' Roland asked, curious to see if she would mention the guns.

   'Big Sister knows what she knows. Why not 'fess up, Jimmy? Confession's good for the soul, they say.'

   'Send me Jenna to pass the time, and perhaps I'd tell you much,' Roland said.

   The narrow bone of smile on Sister Mary's face disappeared like chalk-writing in a rainstorm. 'Why would ye talk to such as her?'

   'She's passing fair,' Roland said. 'Unlike some.'

   Her lips pulled back from her overlarge teeth. 'Ye'll see her no more, cully. Ye've stirred her up, so you have, and I won't have that.'

   She turned to go. Still trying to appear weak and hoping he would not overdo it (acting was never his forte), Roland held out the empty porridge bowl. 'Do you not want to take this?'

   'Put it on your head and wear it as a nightcap, for all of me. Or stick it in your ass. You'll talk before I'm done with ye, cully—talk till I bid you shut up and then beg to talk some more!'

   On this note she swept regally away, hands lifting the front of her skirt off the floor. Roland had heard that such as she couldn't go about in daylight, and that part of the old tales was surely a lie. Yet another part was almost true, it seemed: a fuzzy, amorphous shape kept pace with her, running along the row of empty beds to her right, but she cast no real shadow at all.

VI. JENNA

. SISTER COQUINA. TAMRA, MICHELA, LOUISE.

THE CROSS-DOG. WHAT HAPPENED IN THE SAGE.

That was one of the longest days of Roland's life. He dozed, but never deeply; the reeds were doing their work, and he had begun to believe that he might, with Jenna's help, actually get out of here. And there was the matter of his guns, as well—perhaps she might be able to help there, too.

   He passed the slow hours thinking of old times—of Gilead and his friends, of the riddling he had almost won at one Wide Earth Fair. In the end another had taken the goose, but he'd had his chance, aye. He thought of his mother and father; he thought of Abel Vannay, who had limped his way through a life of gentle goodness, and Eldred Jonas, who had limped his way through a life of evil . . . until Roland had blown him loose of his saddle, one fine desert day.

   He thought, as always, of Susan.

   If you love me, then love me, she'd said . . . and so he had.

   So he had.

   In this way the time passed. At rough hourly intervals, he took one of the reeds from beneath his pillow and nibbled it. Now his muscles didn't tremble so badly as the stuff passed into his system, nor his heart pound so fiercely. The medicine in the reeds no longer had to battle the Sisters' medicine so fiercely, Roland thought; the reeds were winning.

   The diffused brightness of the sun moved across the white silk ceil ing of the ward, and at last the dimness which always seemed to hover at bed-level began to rise. The long room's western wall bloomed with the rose- melting-to-orange shades of sunset.

   It was Sister Tamra who brought him his dinner that night—soup and another popkin. She also laid a desert lily beside his hand. She smiled as she did it. Her cheeks were bright with color. All of them were bright with color today, like leeches that had gorged until they were full almost to bursting.

   'From your admirer, Jimmy,' she said. 'She's so sweet on ye! The lily means 'Do not forget my promise.' What has she promised ye, Jimmy, brother of Johnny?'

   'That she'd see me again, and we'd talk.'

   Tamra laughed so hard that the bells lining her forehead jingled. She clasped her hands together in a perfect ecstasy of glee. 'Sweet as honey! Oh, yes!' She bent her smiling gaze on Roland. 'It's sad such a promise can never be kept. Ye'll never see her again, pretty man.' She took the bowl. 'Big Sister has decided.' She stood up, still smiling. 'Why not take that ugly gold sigul off?'

   'I think not.'

   'Yer brother took his off—look!' She pointed, and Roland spied the gold medallion lying far down the aisle, where it had landed when Ralph threw it.

   Sister Tamra looked at him, still smiling.

   'He decided it was part of what was making him sick, and cast it away. Ye'd do the same, were ye wise.'

   Roland repeated, 'I think not.'

   'So,' she said dismissively, and left him alone with the empty beds glimmering in the thickening shadows.

   Roland hung on, in spite of growing sleepiness, until the hot colors bleeding across the infirmary's western wall had cooled to ashes. Then he nibbled one of the reeds and felt strength—real strength, not a jittery, heart-thudding substitute—bloom in his body. He looked toward where the castaway medallion gleamed in the last light and made a silent promise to John Norman: he would take it with the other one to Norman's kin, if ka chanced that he should encounter them in his travels.

   Feeling completely easy in his mind for the first time that day, the gunslinger dozed. When he awoke it was full dark. The doctor-bugs were singing with extraordinary shrillness. He had taken one of the reeds out from under the pillow and had begun to nibble on it when a cold voice said, 'So—Big Sister was right. Ye've been keeping secrets.'