“If you love me, then love me.”

“Aye, lady. I will.”

He unbuttoned his shirt, made in a part of Mid-World she would never see, and took her in his arms.

7

Ka:

They helped each other with their clothes; they lay naked in each other’s arms on summer moss as soft as the finest goosedown. They lay with their foreheads touching, as in her daydream, and when he found his way into her, she felt pain melt into sweetness like some wild and exotic herb that may only be tasted once in each lifetime. She held that taste as long as she could, until at last the sweetness overcame it and she gave in to that, moaning deep in her throat and rubbing her forearms against the sides of his neck. They made love in the willow grove, questions of honor put aside, promises broken without so much as a look back, and at the end of it Susan discovered there was more than sweetness; there was a kind of delirious clinching of the nerves that began in the part of her that had opened before him like a flower; it began there and then filled her entire body. She cried out again and again, thinking there could not be so much pleasure in the mortal world; she would die of it. Roland added his voice to hers, and the sound of water rushing over stones wrapped around both. As she pulled him closer to her, locking her ankles together behind his knees and covering his face with fierce kisses, his going out rushed after hers as if trying to catch up. So were lovers joined in the Barony of Mejis, near the end of the last great age, and the green moss beneath the place where her thighs joined turned a pretty red as her virginity passed; so were they joined and so were they doomed.

Ka.

8

They lay together in each other’s arms, sharing afterglow kisses beneath Felicia’s mild gaze, and Roland felt himself drowsing. This was understandable-the strain on him that summer had been enormous, and he had been sleeping badly. Although he didn’t know it then, he would sleep badly for the rest of his life.

“Roland?” Her voice, distant. Sweet, as well.

“Yes?”

“Will thee take care of me?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t go to him when the time comes. I can bear his touching, and his little thefts-if I have you, I can-but I can’t go to him on Reap Night. I don’t know if I’ve forgotten the face of my father or not, but I cannot go lo Hart Thorin’s bed. There are ways the loss of a girl’s virginity can be concealed, I think, but I won’t use them. I simply cannot go to his bed.”

“All right,” he said, “good.” And then, as her eyes widened in startlement, he looked around. No one was there. He looked back at Susan, fully awake now. “What? What is it?”

“I might already be carrying your child,” she said. “Has thee thought of that?”

He hadn’t. Now he did. A child. Another link in the chain stretching hack into the dimness where Arthur Eld had led his gunslingers into battle with the great sword Excalibur raised above his head and the crown of All-World on his brow. But never mind that; what would his father think? Ur Gabrielle, to know she had become a grandmother?

A little smile had formed at the comers of his mouth, but the thought of his mother drove it away. He thought of the mark on her neck. When his mother came to his mind these days, he always thought of the mark he’d seen on her neck when he came unexpected into her apartment. And the small, rueful smile on her face.

“If you carry my child, such is my good fortune,” he said.

“And mine.” It was her turn to smile, but it had a sad look to it all the same, that smile. “We’re too young, I suppose. Little more than kiddies ourselves.”

He rolled onto his back and looked up at the blue sky. What she said might be true, but it didn’t matter. Truth was sometimes not the same as reality-this was one of the certainties that lived in the hollow, cavey place at the center of his divided nature. That he could rise above both and willingly embrace the insanity of romance was a gift from his mother. All else in his nature was humorless… and, perhaps more important, without metaphor. That they were too young to be parents? What of that? If he had planted a seed, it would grow.

“Whatever comes, we’ll do as we must. And I’ll always love you, no matter what comes.”

She smiled. He said it as a man would state any dry fact: sky is up, earth is down, water flows south.

“Roland, how old are you?” She was sometimes troubled by the idea that, young as she herself was, Roland was even younger. When he was concentrating on something, he could look so hard he frightened her. When he smiled, he looked not like a lover but a kid brother.

“Older than I was when I came here,” he said. “Older by far. And if I have to stay in sight of Jonas and his men another six months, I’ll be hobbling and needing a boost in the arse to get aboard my horse.”

She grinned at that, and he kissed her nose.

“And thee’ll take care of me?”

“Aye,” he said, and grinned back at her. Susan nodded, then also turned on her back. They lay that way, hip to hip, looking up at the sky. She took his hand and placed it on her breast. As he stroked the nipple with his thumb, it raised its head, grew hard, and began to tingle. This sensation slipped quickly down her body to the place that was still throbbing between her legs. She squeezed her thighs together and was both delighted and dismayed to find that doing so only made matters worse.

“Ye must take care of me,” she said in a low voice. “I’ve pinned everything on you. All else is cast aside.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said. “Never doubt it. But for now, Susan, you must go on as you have been. There’s more time yet to pass; I know that because Depape is back and will have told his tale, but they still haven’t moved in any way against us. Whatever he found out, Jonas still thinks it’s in his interest to wait. That’s apt to make him more dangerous when he does move, but for now it’s still Castles.”

“But after the Reaping Bonfire-Thorin-”

“You’ll never go to his bed. That you can count on. I set my warrant on it.”

A little shocked at her own boldness, she reached below his waist. “Here’s a warrant ye can set on me, if ye would,” she said.

He would. Could. And did.

When it was over (for Roland it had been even sweeter than the first time, if that was possible), he asked her: “That feeling you had out at Citgo, Susan-of being watched. Did you have it this time?”

She looked at him long and thoughtfully. “I don’t know. My mind was in other places, ye ken.” She touched him gently, then laughed as he jumped-the nerves in the half-hard, half-soft place where her palm stroked were still very lively, it seemed.

She took her hand away and looked up at the circle of sky above the grove. “So beautiful here,” she murmured, and her eyes drifted closed.

Roland also felt himself drifting. It was ironic, he thought. This time she hadn’t had that sensation of being watched… but the second time, he had. Yet he would have sworn there was no one near this grove.

No matter. The feeling, megrim or reality, was gone now. He took Susan’s hand, and felt her fingers slip naturally through his, entwining.

He closed his eyes.