cracked egg. He cried out, and could hardly believe that the harsh
crow's caw he heard came from his own throat. He thought he
could also hear, very faintly, the barking of the cross-dog, but
surely that was his imagination.
Am I dying? Have I awakened once more at the very end?
A hand stroked his brow. He could feel it but not see it - fingers
trailing across his skin ' pausing here and there to massage a knot
or a line. Delicious, like a drink of cool water on a hot day. He
began to close his eyes, and then a horrible idea came to him:
suppose that hand were green, its owner wearing a tattered red vest
over her hanging dugs?
What if it is? What could you do?
'Hush, man,' a young woman's voice said ... or perhaps it was the
voice of a girl. Certainly the first person Roland thought of was
Susan, the girl from Mejis, she who had spoken to him as thee.
'Where ... where . . .'
'Hush, stir not. 'Tis far too soon.'
The pain in his back was subsiding now, but the image of the pain
as a tree remained, for his very skin seemed to be moving like
leaves in a light breeze. How could that be?
He let the question go - let all questions go - and concentrated on
the small, cool hand stroking his brow.
'Hush, pretty man, God's love be upon ye. Yet it's sore hurt ye are.
Be still. Heal.'
The dog had hushed its barking (if it had ever been there in the first
place), and Roland became aware of that low, creaking sound
again. It reminded him of horse-tethers, or something - hangropes -
he didn't like to think of. Now he believed he could feel pressure
beneath his thighs, his buttocks, and perhaps . . . yes ... his
shoulders.
I'm not in a bed at all. I think I'm above a bed. Can that be?
He supposed he could be in a sling. He seemed to remember once,
as a boy, that some fellow had been suspended that way in the
horse-doctor's room behind the Great Hall. A stablehand who had
been burned too badly by kerosene to be laid in a bed. The man
had died, but not soon enough; for two nights, his shrieks had filled
the sweet summer air of the Gathering Fields.
Am I burned, then, nothing but a cinder with legs, hanging in a
sling?
The fingers touched the centre of his brow, rubbing away the
frown forming there. And it was as if the voice which went with
the hand had read his thoughts, picking them up with the tips of her
clever, soothing fingers.
'Ye'll be fine if God wills, sai,' the voice which went with the hand
said. 'But time belongs to God, not to you.'
No, he would have said, if he had been able. Time belongs to the
Tower.
Then he slipped down again, descending as smoothly as he had
risen, going away from the hand and the dreamlike sounds of the
