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 sigil 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
colours 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 towards 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.'
Roland's heart seemed to stop dead in his chest. He looked around
and saw Sister Coquina getting to her feet. She had crept in while
he was dozing and hidden under the bed on his right side to watch
him. 'Where did ye get that?' she asked. 'Was it 'He got it from me.'
Coquina whirled about. Jenna was walking down the aisle towards
them. Her habit was gone. She still wore her wimple with its
foreheadfringe of bells, but its hem rested on the shoulders of a
simple checkered shirt. Below this she wore jeans and scuffed
desert boots. She had something in her hands. It was too dark for
Roland to be sure, but he thought
YOU,' Sister Coquina whispered with infinite hate. 'When I tell
Big Sister -
`you'll tell no one anything,' Roland said.
If he had planned his escape from the slings which entangled him,
he no doubt would have made a bad business of it, but, as always,
