Wizard and Glass

'Old man,' Roland said, 'you've lived too long.'

Jonas smiled. 'You'd remedy that if you could, wouldn't you? Yar, I reckon.' He flicked his eyes at Lengyll. 'Get their toys, Fran. Look specially sharp for knives. They've got guns, but not with em. Yet I know a bit more about those shooting irons than they might think. And funny boy's slingshot. Don't forget that, for gods' sake. He like to take Roy's head off with it not so long ago.'

'Are you talking about the carrot-top?' Cuthbert asked. His horse was dancing under him; Bert swayed back and forth and from side to side like a circus rider to keep from tumbling off. 'He never would have missed his head. His balls, maybe, but not his head.'

'Probably true,' Jonas agreed, watching as the spears and Roland's shortbow were taken into custody. The slingshot was on the back of Cuthbert's belt, tucked into a holster he had made for it himself. It was very well for Roy Depape that he hadn't tried Bert, Roland knew—Bert could take a bird on the wing at sixty yards. A pouch holding steel shot hung at the boy's left side. Bridger took it, as well.

While this was going on, Jonas fixed Roland with an amiable smile. 'What's your real name, brat? Fess up—no harm in telling now; you're going to ride the handsome, and we both know it.'

Roland said nothing. Lengyll looked at Jonas, eyebrows raised. Jonas shrugged, then jerked his head in the direction of town. Lengyll nodded and poked Roland with one hard, chapped finger. 'Come on, boy. Let's ride.'

Roland squeezed Rusher's sides; the horse trotted toward Jonas. And suddenly Roland knew something. As with all his best and truest intuitions, it came from nowhere and everywhere—absent at one second, all there and fully dressed at the next.

'Who sent you west, maggot?' he asked as he passed Jonas. 'Couldn't have been Cort—you're too old. Was it his father?'

The look of slightly bored amusement left Jonas's face—flew from his face, as if slapped away. For one amazing moment the man with the white hair was a child again: shocked, shamed, and hurt.

'Yes, Cort's da—I see it in your eyes. And now you're here, on the Clean Sea … except you're really in the west. The soul of a man such as you can never leave the west.'

Jonas's gun was out and cocked in his hand with such speed that only Roland's extraordinary eyes were capable of marking the movement. There was a murmur from the men behind them—partly shock, mostly awe.

'Jonas, don't be a fool!' Lengyll snarled. 'You ain't killin em after we took the time and risk to hood em and tie their hooks, are ye?'

Jonas seemed to take no notice. His eyes were wide; the comers of his seamed mouth were trembling. 'Watch your words, Will Dearborn,' he said in a low, hoarse voice. 'You want to watch em ever so close. I got two pounds of pressure on a three-pound trigger right this second.'

'Fine, shoot me,' Roland said. He lifted his head and looked down at Jonas. 'Shoot, exile. Shoot, worm. Shoot, you failure. You'll still live in exile and die as you lived.'

For a moment he was sure Jonas would shoot, and in that moment Roland felt death would be enough, an acceptable end after the shame of being caught so easily. In that moment Susan was absent from his mind. Nothing breathed in that moment, nothing called, nothing moved. The shadows of the men watching this confrontation, both on foot and on horseback, were printed depthless on the dirt.

Then Jonas dropped the hammer of his gun and slipped it back into its holster.

'Take em to town and jug em,' he said to Lengyll. 'And when I show up, I don't want to see one hair harmed on one head. If I could keep from killing this one, you can keep from hurting the rest. Now go on.'

'Move,' Lengyll said. His voice had lost some of its bluff authority. It was now the voice of a man who realizes (too late) that he has bought chips in a game where the stakes are likely much too high.

They rode. As they did, Roland turned one last time. The contempt Jonas saw in those cool young eyes stung him worse than the whips that had scarred his back in Garlan years ago.

6

When they were out of sight, Jonas went into the bunkhouse, pulled up the board which concealed their little armory, and found only two guns. The matched set of six-shooters with the dark handles—Dearborn's guns, surely—were gone.

You 're in the west. The soul of a man such as you can never leave the west. You'll live in exile and die as you lived.

Jonas's hands went to work, disassembling the revolvers Cuthbert and Alain had brought west. Alain's had never even been worn, save on the practice-range. Outside, Jonas threw the pieces, scattering them every which way. He threw as hard as he could, trying to rid himself of that cool blue gaze and the shock of hearing what he'd believed no man had known. Roy and Clay suspected, but even they hadn't known for sure.

Before the sun went down, everyone in Mejis would know that Eldred Jonas, the white-haired regulator with the tattooed coffin on his hand, was nothing but a failed gunslinger.

You'll live in exile and die as you lived.

'P'raps,' he said, looking at the burned-out ranch house without really seeing it. 'But I'll live longer than you, young Dearborn, and die long after your bones are rusting in the ground.'

He mounted up and swung his horse around, sawing viciously at the reins. He rode for Citgo, where Roy and Clay would be waiting, and he rode hard, but Roland's eyes rode with him.

7

'Wake up! Wake up, sai! Wake up! Wake up!'

At first the words seemed to be coming from far away, drifting down by some magical means to the dark place where she lay. Even when the voice was joined by a rudely shaking hand and Susan knew she must wake up, it was a long, hard struggle.

It had been weeks since she'd gotten a decent night's sleep, and she had expected more of the same last night. . . especially last night. She had lain awake in her luxurious bedchamber at Seafront, tossing from side to side, possibilities—none good—crowding her mind. The nightgown she wore crept up to her hips and bunched at the small of her back. When she got up to use the commode, she took the hateful thing off, hurled it into a comer, and crawled back into bed naked.

Being out of the heavy silk nightgown had done the trick. She dropped off almost at once . . . and in this case, dropped off was, exactly right: it was less like falling asleep than falling into some thoughtless, dreamless crack in the earth.

Now this intruding voice. This intruding arm, shaking her so hard that her head rolled from side to side on the pillow. Susan tried to slide away from it, pulling her knees up to her chest and mouthing fuzzy protests, but the arm followed. The shaking recommenced; the nagging, calling voice never stopped.

'Wake up, sai! Wake up! In the name of the Turtle and the Bear, wake up!'

Maria's voice. Susan hadn't recognized it at first because Maria was so upset. Susan had never heard her so, or expected to. Yet it was so; the maid sounded on the verge of hysteria.

Susan sat up. For a moment so much input—all of it wrong—crashed in on her that she was incapable of moving. The duvet beneath which she had slept tumbled into her lap, exposing her breasts, and she could do no more than pluck weakly at it with the tips of her fingers.

The first wrong thing was the light. It flooded through the windows more strongly than it ever had before . . . because, she realized, she had never been in this room so late before. Gods, it had to be ten o' the clock, perhaps later.

The second wrong thing was the sounds from below. Mayor's House was ordinarily a peaceful place in the morning; until noon one heard little but casa vaqueros leading the horses out for their morning exercise, the whicker-whicker-whick of Miguel sweeping the courtyard, and the constant boom and shush of the waves. This morning there were shouts, curses, galloping horses, the occasional burst of strange, jagged laughter. Somewhere outside her room—perhaps not in this wing, but close— Susan heard the running thud of