I knew, Jonas thought. Even then I knew my ka had pretty well run out. But surely he won’t risk the ball… he can’t risk the ball, he’s the dinh of this ka-tet and he can’t risk it…

“To me!” Jonas screamed. “To me, boys! They’re only three, for gods’ sake! To me, you cowards!”

But he was alone-Lengyll killed with his idiotic machine-gun lying by his side, Roy a corpse glaring up at the bitter sky, Quint fled, Hookey dead, the ranchers who had ridden with them gone. Only Clay still lived, and he was miles from here.

“I’ll smash it!” he shrieked at the cold-eyed boy bearing down on him like death’s sleekest engine. “Before all the gods, I’ll-”

Roland thumbed back the hammer of his revolver and fired. The bullet struck the center of the tattooed hand holding the drawstring cord and vaporized the palm, leaving only fingers that twitched their random way out of a spongy red mass. For just a moment Roland saw the blue coffin, and then it was covered by downspilling blood.

The bag dropped. And, as Rusher collided with Jonas’s horse and slewed it to the side. Roland caught the bag deftly in the crook of one arm. Jonas, screaming in dismay as the prize left him, grabbed at Roland, caught his shoulder, and almost succeeded in turning the gunslinger out of his saddle. Jonas’s blood rained across Roland’s face in hot drops.

“Give it back, you brat!” Jonas clawed under his serape and brought out another gun. “Give it back, it’s mine!”

“Not anymore,” Roland said. And, as Rusher danced around, quick and delicate for such a large animal, Roland fired two point-blank rounds into Jonas’s face. Jonas’s horse bolted out from under him and the man with the white hair landed spreadeagled on his back with a thump. His arms and legs spasmed, jerked, trembled, then stilled.

Roland looped the bag’s drawstring over his shoulder and rode back toward Alain and Cuthbert, ready to give aid… but there was no need. They sat their horses side by side in the blowing dust, at the end of a scattered road of dead bodies, their eyes wide and dazed-eyes of boys who have passed through fire for the first time and can hardly believe they have not been burned. Only Alain had been wounded; a bullet had opened his left cheek, a wound that healed clean but left a scar he bore until his dying day. He could not remember who had shot him, he said later on, or at what point of the battle. He had been lost to himself during the shooting, and had only vague memories of what had happened after the charge began. Cuthbert said much the same.

“Roland,” Cuthbert said now. He passed a shaky hand down his face. “Hile, gunslinger.”

“Hile.”

Cuthbert’s eyes were red and irritated from the sand, as if he had been crying. He took back the unspent silver slingshot balls when Roland handed them to him without seeming to know what they were. “Roland, we’re alive.”

“Yes.”

Alain was looking around dazedly. “Where did the others go?”

“I’d say at least twenty-five of them are back there,” Roland said, gesturing at the road of dead bodies. “The rest-” He waved his hand, still with a revolver in it, in a wide half-circle. “They’ve gone. Had their fill of Mid-World’s wars, I wot.”

Roland slipped the drawstring bag off his shoulder, held it before him on the bridge of his saddle for a moment, and then opened it. For a moment the bag’s mouth was black, and then it filled with the irregular pulse of a lovely pink light.

It crept up the gunslinger’s smooth cheeks like fingers and swam in his eyes.

“Roland,” Cuthbert said, suddenly nervous, “I don’t think you should play with that. Especially not now. They’ll have heard the shooting out at Hanging Rock. If we’re going to finish what we started, we don’t have time for-”

Roland ignored him. He slipped both hands into the bag and lifted the wizard’s glass out. He held it up to his eyes, unaware that he had smeared it with droplets of Jonas’s blood. The ball did not mind; this was not the first time it had been blood-touched. It flashed and swirled formlessly for a moment, and then its pink vapors opened like curtains. Roland saw what was there, and lost himself within it.

Chapter X

BENEATH THE DEMON MOON (II)

1

Coral’s grip on Susan’s arm was firm but not painful. There was nothing particularly cruel about the way she was moving Susan along the downstairs corridor, but there was a relentlessness about it that was disheartening. Susan didn’t try to protest; it would have been useless. Behind the two women were a pair of vaqueros (armed with knives and bolas rather than guns; the available guns had all gone west with Jonas). Behind the vaqs, skulking along like a sullen ghost which lacks the necessary psychic energy to fully materialize itself, came the late Chancellor’s older brother, Laslo. Reynolds, his taste for a spot of journey’s-end rape blunted by his growing sense of disquiet, had either remained above or gone off to town.

“I’m going to put ye in the cold pantry until I know better what to do with'ee, dear,” Coral said. “Ye’ll be quite safe there… and warm. How fortunate ye wore a serape. Then… when Jonas gets back…”

“Ye’ll never see sai Jonas again,” Susan said. “He won’t ever-”

Fresh pain exploded in her sensitive face. For a moment it seemed the entire world had blown up. Susan reeled back against the dressed stone wall of the lower corridor, her vision first blurred, then slowly clearing. She could feel blood flowing down her cheek from a wound opened by the stone in Coral’s ring when Coral had backhanded her. And her nose. That cussed thing was bleeding again, too.

Coral was looking at her in a chilly this-is-all-business-to-me fashion, but Susan believed she saw something different in the woman’s eyes. Fear, mayhap.

“Don’t talk to me about Eldred, missy. He’s sent to catch the boys who killed my brother. The boys you set loose.”

“Get off it.” Susan wiped her nose, grimaced at the blood pooled in her palm, and wiped it on the leg of her pants. “I know who killed Hart as well as ye do yerself, so don’t pull mine and I won’t yank yer own.” She watched Coral’s hand rise, ready to slap, and managed a dry laugh. “Go on. Cut my face open on the other side, if ye like. Will that change how ye sleep tonight with no man to warm the other side of the bed?”

Coral’s hand came down fast and hard, but instead of slapping, it seized Susan’s arm again. Hard enough to hurt, this time, but Susan barely felt it. She had been hurt by experts this day, and would suffer more hurt gladly, if that would hasten the moment when she and Roland could be together again.

Coral hauled her the rest of the way down the corridor, through the kitchen (that great room, which would have been all steam and bustle on any other Reaping Day, now stood uncannily deserted), and to the iron-bound door on the far side. This she opened. A smell of potatoes and gourds and sharproot drifted out.

“Get in there. Go smart, before I decide to kick yer winsome ass square.”

Susan looked her in the eye, smiling.

“I’d damn ye for a murderer’s bed-bitch, sai Thorin, but ye’ve already damned yerself. Ye know it, too-'tis written in yer face, to be sure. So I’ll just drop ye a curtsey”-still smiling, she suited action to the words- “and wish ye a very good day.”

“Get in and shut up yer saucy mouth!” Coral cried, and pushed Susan into the cold pantry. She slammed the door, ran the bolt, and turned her blazing eyes upon the vaqs, who stood prudently away from her.

“Keep her well, muchachos. Mind ye do.”

She brushed between them, not listening to their assurances, and went up to her late brother’s suite to wait for Jonas, or word of Jonas. The whey-faced bitch sitting down there amongst the carrots and potatoes knew nothing, but her words