Wizard and Glass

yer thumbs for fart-corks while Seafront burned down around yer ears!'

'Go on!' Olive snapped. 'Are you cowards?'

There were several smaller bangs as, above them in the great parlor, Sheemie set off the lady-fingers. He used the same match to light the drapes.

The two viejos exchanged a glance. 'Andelay, ' said the older of the two, then looked back at Maria. He no longer bothered with the crunk. 'Watch this door,' he said.

'Like a hawk,' she agreed.

The two old men bustled out, one gripping the cords of his bolas, the other pulling a long knife from the scabbard on his belt.

As soon as the women heard their footsteps on the stairs at the end of the hall, Olive nodded to Maria and they crossed the room. Maria threw the bolts; Olive pulled the door open. Susan came out at once, looking from one to the other, then smiling tentatively. Maria gasped at the sight of her mistress's swelled face and the blood crusted around her nose.

Susan took Maria's hand before the maid could touch her face and squeezed her fingers gently. 'Do ye think Thorin would want me now?' she asked, and then seemed to realize who her other rescuer was. 'Olive … sai Thorin … I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be cruel. But ye must believe that Roland, him ye know as Will Dearborn, would never—'

'I know it well,' Olive said, 'and there's no time for this now. Come on.'

She and Maria led Susan out of the kitchen, away from the stairs ascending to the main house and toward the storage rooms at the far north end of the lower level. In the drygoods storage room, Olive told the two of them to wait. She was gone for perhaps five minutes, but to Susan and Maria it seemed an eternity.

When she came back, Olive was wearing a wildly colored scrape much too big for her—it might have been her husband's, but Susan thought it looked too big for the late Mayor, as well. Olive had tucked a piece of it into the side of her jeans to keep from stumbling over it. Slung over her arm like blankets, she had two more, both smaller and lighter. 'Put these on,' she said. 'It's going to be cold.'

Leaving the drygoods store, they went down a narrow servants' passageway toward the back courtyard. There, if they were fortunate (and if Miguel was still unconscious), Sheemie would be waiting for them with mounts. Olive hoped with all her heart that they would be fortunate. She wanted Susan safely away from Hambry before the sun went down.

And before the moon rose.

10

'Susan's been taken prisoner,' Roland told the others as they rode west toward Hanging Rock. 'That's the first thing I saw in the glass.'

He spoke with such an air of absence that Cuthbert almost reined up. This wasn't the ardent lover of the last few months. It was as if Roland had found a dream to ride through the pink air within the ball, and part of him rode it still. Or is it riding him? Cuthbert wondered.

'What?' Alain asked. 'Susan taken? How? By whom? Is she all right?''

'Taken by Jonas. He hurt her some, but not too badly. She'll heal . . . and she'll live. I'd turn around in a second if I thought her life was in any real danger.'

Ahead of them, appearing and disappearing in the dust like a mirage, was Hanging Rock. Cuthbert could see the sunlight pricking hazy sun-stars on the tankers, and he could see men. A lot of them. A lot of horses, as well. He patted the neck of his own mount, then glanced across to make sure Alain had Lengyll's machine-gun. He did. Cuthbert reached around to the small of his back, making sure of the slingshot. It was there. Also his deerskin ammunition bag, which now contained a number of the big-bangers Sheemie had stolen as well as steel shot.

He's using every ounce of his will to keep from going back, anyway, Cuthbert thought. He found the realization comforting—sometimes Roland scared him. There was something in him that went beyond steel. Something like madness. If it was there, you were glad to have it on your side … but often enough you wished it wasn't there at all. On anybody's side.

'Where is she?' Alain asked.

'Reynolds took her back to Seafront. She's locked in the pantry … or was locked there. I can't say which, exactly, because . . .' Roland paused, thinking. 'The ball sees far, but sometimes it sees more. Sometimes it sees a future that's already happening.'

'How can the future already be happening?' Alain asked. 'I don't know, and I don't think it was always that way. I think it's more to do with the world than Maerlyn's Rainbow. Time is strange now. We know that, don't we? How things sometimes seem to … slip. It's almost as if there's a thinny everywhere, breaking things down. But Susan's safe. I know that, and that's enough for me. Sheemie is going to help her … or is helping her. Somehow Jonas missed Sheemie, and he followed Susan all the way back.'

'Good for Sheemie!' Alain said, and pumped his fist into the air. 'Hurrah!' Then: 'What about us? Did you see us in this future?'

'No. This part was all quick—I hardly snatched more than a glance before the ball took me away. Flew me away, it seemed. But … I saw smoke on the horizon. I remember that. It could have been the smoke of burning tankers, or the brush piled in front of Eyebolt, or both. I think we're going to succeed.'

Cuthbert was looking at his old friend in a queerly distraught way. The young man so deeply in love that Bert had needed to knock him into the dust of the courtyard in order to wake him up to his responsibilities . . . where was that young man, exactly? What had changed him, given him those disturbing strands of white hair?

'If we survive what's ahead,' Cuthbert said, watching the gunslinger closely, 'she'll meet us on the road. Won't she, Roland?'

He saw the pain on Roland's face, and now understood: the lover was here, but the ball had taken away his joy and left only grief. That, and some new purpose—yes, Cuthbert felt it very well—which had yet to be stated.

'I don't know,' Roland said. 'I almost hope not, because we can never be as we were.'

'What? ' This time Cuthbert did rein up.

Roland looked at him calmly enough, but now there were tears in

his eyes.

'We are fools of ka' the gunslinger said. 'Ka like a wind, Susan calls it.' He looked first at Cuthbert on his left, then at Alain on his right. 'The Tower is our ka; mine especially. But it isn't hers, nor she mine. No more is John Parson our ka. We're not going toward his men to defeat him, but only because they're in our way.' He raised his hands, then dropped them again, as if to say, What more do you need me to tell you?

'There is no Tower, Roland,' Cuthbert said patiently. 'I don't know what you saw in that glass ball, but there is no Tower. Well, as a symbol, I suppose—like Arthur's Cup, or the Cross of the man-Jesus—but not as a real thing, a real building—'

'Yes,' Roland said. 'It's real.'

They looked at him uncertainly, and saw no doubt on his face. 'It's real, and our fathers know. Beyond the dark land—I can't remember its name now, it's one of the things I've lost—is End-World, and in End-World stands the Dark Tower. Its existence is the great secret our fathers keep; it's what has held them together as ka-tet across all the years of the world's decline. When we return to Gilead— if we return, and I now think we will—I'll tell them what I've seen, and they'll confirm what I say.'

'You saw all that in the glass?' Alain asked in an awe-hushed voice.

'I saw much.'