Roland shook his head. He didn't know. He only knew that Cort had told them they must always be able to keep time in their heads, because you couldn't depend on watches, and a sundial was no good on a cloudy day. Or at midnight, for that matter. One summer he had sent them out into the Baby Forest west of the castle night after uncomfortable night (and it was scary out there, too, at least when one was on one's own, although of course none of them would ever have said so out loud, even to each other), until they could come back to the yard behind the Great Hall at the very minute Cort had specified.
It was strange how that clock-in-the-head thing worked. The thing was, at first it didn't. And didn't. And didn't. Down would come Cort's callused hand, down it would come a-clout, and Cort would growl Am; maggot, back to the woods tomorrow night! You must like it out there! But once that headclock started ticking, it always seemed to run true. For awhile Roland had lost it, just as the world had lost its points of the compass, but now it was back and that cheered him greatly.
"Did you count the minute?" she asked. "Mississippi-one,
Mississippi-two, like that?"
He shook his head. "I just know. When a minute's up, or an hour."
"Bol-she-veckyl" she scoffed. 'You guessed!"
"If I'd guessed, would I have spoken after exactly one revolution of the hand?"
"You mought got lucky," Detta said, and eyed him shrewdly with one eye mostly closed, an expression Roland detested. (But never said so; that would only cause Detta to goad him with it on those occasions when she peeked out.)
"Do you want to try it again?" he asked.
"No," Susannah said, and sighed. "I take your word for it that your watch is keeping perfect time. And that means we're not close to the Dark Tower. Not yet."
"Perhaps not close enough to affect the watch, but closer than I've ever been," Roland said quietly. "Comparatively speaking, we're now almost in its shadow. Believe me, Susannah-I
know."
"But-"
From over their heads came a cawing that was both harsh and oddly muffled: Croo, croo! instead of Caw, caw! Susannah looked up and saw one of the huge blackbirds-the sort Roland had called Castle Rooks-flying overhead low enough so that they could hear the labored strokes of its wings. Dangling from its long hooked bill was a limp strand of something yellowygreen.
To Susannah it looked like a piece of dead seaweed. Only not entirely dead.
She turned to Roland, looked at him widi excited eyes.
He nodded. "Devilgrass. Probably bringing it back to feather his mate's nest. Certainly not for the babies to eat. Not that stuff.
But devilgrass always goes last when you're walking into the Nowhere Lands, and always shows up first when you're walking back out of them, as we are. As we finally are. Now listen to me,
Susannah, I'd have you listen, and I'd have you push that tiresome bitch Detta as far back as possible. Nor would I have you waste my time by telling me she's not there when I can see her dancing the commala in your eyes."
Susannah looked surprised, then piqued, as if she would protest. Then she looked away without saying anything. When she looked back at him again, she could no longer feel the presence of the one Roland had called "that tiresome bitch."
And Roland must no longer have detected her presence, because he went on.
"I think it will soon look like we're coming out of the Badlands, but you'd do well not to trust what you see-a few buildings and maybe a little paving on the roads doesn't make for safety or civilization. And before too long we're going to come to his castle, Le Casse Roi Russe. The Crimson King is almost certainly gone from there, but he may have left a trap for us. I want you to look and listen. If there's talking to be done, I want you to let me do it."
"What do you know that I don't?" she asked. "What are you holding back?"
"Nothing," he said (with what was, for him, a rare earnestness)
"It's only a feeling, Susannah. We're close to our goal now, no matter what the watch may say. Close to winning our way to the Dark Tower. But my teacher, Vannay, used to say that there's just one rule with no exceptions: before victory comes temptation.
And the greater the victory to win, the greater the temptation to withstand."
Susannah shivered and put her arms around herself. "All I want is to be warm," she said. "If nobody offers me a big load of firewood and a flannel union suit to cry off the Tower, I guess we'll be all right awhile longer."
Roland remembered one of Cort's most serious maxims-
Never speak the worst aloud!-but kept his own mouth shut, at least on that subject. He put his watch away carefully and then rose, ready to move on.
But Susannah paused a moment longer. "I've dreamed of the other one," she said. There was no need for her to say of whom she was speaking. "Three nights in a row, scuttering along our backtrail. Do you think he's really there?"
"Oh yes," Roland said. "And I think he's got an empty belly."
"Hungry, Mordred's a-hungry," she said, for she had also heard these words in her dream.
Susannah shivered again.