“May I?” he asked. “By your leave, dear.”

“Aye, as ye will.” Her eyes were widening and growing glassy. “I don’t know why ye think this time should be any different, but… “She stopped talking, her eyes continuing to follow the dance of the shell across Roland’s hand. When he stopped moving it and clasped it in his fist, her eyes closed. Her breath was soft and regular.

“Gods, she went like a stone,” Cuthbert whispered, amazed. “She’s been hypnotized before. By Rhea, I think.” Roland paused. Then: “Susan, do you hear me?”

“Aye, Roland, I hear ye very well.” “I want you to hear another voice, too.” “Whose?”

Roland beckoned to Alain. If anyone could break through the block in Susan’s mind (or find a way around it), it would be him.

“Mine, Susan,” Alain said, coming to Roland’s side. “Do you know it?” She smiled with her eyes closed. “Aye, you’re Alain. Richard Stock-worth that was.”

“That’s right.” He looked at Roland with nervous, questioning eyes- What shall I ask her?-but for a moment Roland didn’t reply. He was in two other places, both at the same time, and hearing two different voices.

Susan, by the stream in the willow grove: She says, “Aye, lovely, just so, it’s a good girl y’are,” then everything’s pink.

His father, in the yard behind the Great Hall: It’s the grapefruit. By which I mean it’s the pink one. The pink one.

7

Their horses were saddled and loaded; the three boys stood before them, outwardly stolid, inwardly feverish to be gone. The road, and the mysteries that lie along it, calls out to none as it calls to the young.

They were in the courtyard which lay east of the Great Hall, not far from where Roland had bested Cort, setting all these things in motion. It was early morning, the sun not yet risen, the mist lying over the green fields in gray ribbons. At a distance of about twenty paces, Cuthbert’s and Alain’s fathers stood sentry with their legs apart and their hands on the butts of their guns. It was unlikely that Marten (who had for the time being absented himself from the palace, and, so far as any knew, from Gilead itself) would mount any sort of attack on them-not here-but it wasn’t entirely out of the question, either.

So it was that only Roland’s father spoke to them as they mounted up to begin their ride east to Mejis and the Outer Arc.

“One last thing,” he said as they adjusted their saddle girths. “I doubt you’ll see anything that (ouches on our interests-not in Mejis-but I’d have you keep an eye out for a color of the rainbow. The Wizard’s Rain-how, that is.” He chuckled, then added: “It’s the grapefruit. By which I mean it’s the pink one.”

“Wizard’s Rainbow is just a fairy-tale,” Cuthbert said, smiling in response to Steven’s smile. Then-perhaps it was something in Steven Deschain’s eyes-Cuthbert’s smile faltered. “Isn’t it?”

“Not all the old stories are true, but I think that of Maerlyn’s Rainbow is,” Steven replied. “It’s said that once there were thirteen glass balls in it-one for each of the Twelve Guardians, and one representing the nexus-point of the Beams.”

“One for the Tower,” Roland said in a low voice, feeling gooseflesh. “One for the Dark Tower.”

“Aye, Thirteen it was called when I was a boy. We’d tell stories about the black ball around the fire sometimes, and scare ourselves silly… unless our fathers caught us at it. My own da said it wasn’t wise to talk about Thirteen, for it might hear its name called and roll your way. But Black Thirteen doesn’t matter to you three… not now, at least. No, it’s the pink one. Maerlyn’s Grapefruit.”

It was impossible to tell how serious he was… or if he was serious at all.

“If the other balls in the Wizard’s Rainbow did exist, most are broken now. Such things never stay in one place or one pair of hands for long, you know, and even enchanted glass has a way of breaking. Yet at least three or four bends o’ the Rainbow may still be rolling around this sad world of ours. The blue, almost certainly. A desert tribe of slow mutants-the Total Hogs, they called themselves-had that one less than fifty years ago, although it’s slipped from sight again since. The green and the orange are reputed to be in Lud and Dis, respectively. And, just maybe, the pink one.”

“What exactly do they do?” Roland asked. “What are they good for?”

“For seeing. Some colors of the Wizard’s Rainbow are reputed to look into the future. Others look into the other worlds-those where the demons live, those where the Old People are supposed to have gone when they left our world. These may also show the location of the secret doors which pass between the worlds. Other colors, they say, can look far in our own world, and see things people would as soon keep secret. They never see the good; only the ill. How much of this is true and how much is myth no one knows for sure.”

He looked at them, his smile fading.

“But this we do know: John Farson is said to have a talisman, something that glows in his tent late at night… sometimes before battles, sometimes before large movements of troop and horse, sometimes before momentous decisions are announced. And it glows pink.”

“Maybe he has an electric light and puts a pink scarf over it when he prays,” Cuthbert said. He looked around at his friends, a little defensively. “I’m not joking; there are people who do that.”

“Perhaps,” Roland’s father said. “Perhaps that’s all it is, or something like. But perhaps it’s a good deal more. All I can say of my own knowledge is that he keeps beating us, he keeps slipping away from us, and he keeps turning up where he’s least expected. If the magic is in him and not in some talisman he owns, gods help the Affiliation.”

“We’ll keep an eye out, if you like,” Roland said, “but Parson’s in the north or west. We’re going east.” As if his father did not know this.

“If it’s a bend o’ the Rainbow,” Steven replied, “it could be anywhere-east or south’s as likely as west. He can’t keep it with him all the time, you see. No matter how much it would ease his mind and heart to do so. No one can.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re alive, and hungry,” Steven said. “One begins using em; one ends being used by em. If Farson has a piece of the Rainbow, he’ll send it away and call it back only when he needs it. He understands the risk of losing it, but he also understands the risk of keeping it too long.”

There was a question which the other two, constrained by politeness, couldn’t ask. Roland could, and did. “You are serious about this. Dad? It’s not just a leg-pull, is it?”

“I’m sending you away at an age when many boys still don’t sleep well if their mothers don’t kiss them goodnight,” Steven said. “I expect to see all three of you again, alive and well-Mejis is a lovely, quiet place, or was when I was a boy-but I can’t be sure of it. As things are these days, no one can be sure of anything. I wouldn’t send you away with a joke and a laugh. I’m surprised you think it.”

“Cry your pardon,” Roland said. An uneasy peace had descended between him and his father, and he would not rupture it. Still, he was wild to be off. Pusher jigged beneath him, as if seconding that.

“I don’t expect you boys to see Maerlyn’s glass… but I didn’t expect to be seeing you off at fourteen with revolvers tucked in your bedrolls, either. Ka’s at work here, and where ka works, anything is possible.”

Slowly, slowly, Steven took off his hat, stepped back, and swept them a bow. “Go in peace, boys. And return in health.”

“Long days and pleasant nights, sai,” Alain said.

“Good fortune,” Cuthbert said.

“I love you,” Roland said.

Steven nodded. “Thankee-sai-I love you, too. My blessings, boys.” He said this last in a loud voice, and the other two men-Robert Allgood and Christopher Johns, who had been known in the days of his savage youth as Burning Chris-added their own blessings.