"What he fed us was all right," he said. It was as if he'd read her mind and seen the worst fear that it held. "He'd never poison what he meant to... eat."
She was holding his gun out to him, butt first. He took it and reloaded the two empty chambers before dropping it back into the holster. The hut's door was still open and snow came blowing in. It had already created a white delta in the litde entryway, where their makeshift hide coats hung. The room was a little cooler now, a litde less like a sauna.
"How did you know?" he asked.
She thought back to die hotel where Mia had left Black Thirteen.
Later on, after they'd left, Jake and Callahan had been able to get into Room 1919 because someone had left them a note and
(dad-a-chee)
a key. Jake's name and This is the truth had been written on the envelope in a hybrid of cursive script and printing. She was sure that if she had that envelope with its brief message and compared it to the message she'd found in the bathroom, she would find the same hand made both.
According to Jake, the desk-clerk at the New York Plaza-Park Hotel had told them the message had been left by a man named Stephen King.
"Come with me," she said. "Into the bathroom."
THREE
Like the rest of the hut, the bathroom was smaller now, not much more than a closet. The tub was old and rusty, with a thin layer of dirt in the bottom. It looked like it had last been used...
Well, the truth was that it looked to Susannah like it had never been used. The shower-head was clotted with rust. The pink wallpaper was dull and dirty, peeling in places. There were no roses. The mirror was still there, but a crack ran down the middle of it, and she thought it was sort of a wonder that she hadn't cut the pad of her finger, writing on it. The vapor of her breath had faded but the words were still there, visible in the grime: 0W? lAt/B, and, below that, amp;Wfc??O.
"It's an anagram," she said. "Do you see?"
He studied the writing, then shook his head, looking a bit ashamed.
"Not your fault, Roland. They're our letters, not the ones you know. Take my word for it, it's an anagram. Eddie would have seen it right away, I bet. I don't know if it was Dandelo's idea of a joke, or if there are some sort of rules glammer things like him have to follow, but the thing is, we figured it out in time, with a little help from Stephen King."
"You figured it out," he said. "I was busy laughing myself to death."
"We both would have done that," she said. 'You were just a litde more vulnerable because your sense of humor... forgive me, Roland, but as a rule, it's pretty lame."
"I know tfiat," he said bleakly. Then he suddenly turned and left the room.
A horrid idea came to Susannah, and it seemed a very long time before the gunslinger came back. "Roland, is he still...?"
He nodded, smiling a litde. "Still as dead as ever was. You shot true, Susannah, but all at once I needed to be sure."
"I'm glad," she said simply.
"Oy's standing guard. If anything were to happen, I'm sure he'd let us know." He picked the note up from the floor and carefully puzzled out what was written on the back. The only term she had to help him with was medicine cabinet. "'I've left you something.' Do you know what?"
She shook her head. "I didn't have time to look."
"Where is this medicine cabinet?"
She pointed at the mirror and he swung it out. It squalled on its hinges. There were indeed shelves behind it, but instead of the neat rows of pills and potions she had imagined, there were only two more brown bottles, like the one on the table beside the La-Z-Boy, and what looked to Susannah like the world's oldest box of Smith Brothers Wild Cherry Cough Drops.
There was also an envelope, however, and Roland handed it to her. Written on the front, in that same distinctive half-writing, half-printing, was this:
$ amp;e?(
"Childe?" she asked. "Does that mean anything to you?"
He nodded. "It's a term that describes a knight-or a gunslinger-on a quest. A formal term, and ancient. We never used it among ourselves, you must ken, for it means holy, chosen by ka. We never liked to think of ourselves in such terms, and I haven't thought of myself so in many years."
"Yet you are Childe Roland?"
"Perhaps once I was. We're beyond such things now.
Beyond ka."
"But still on the Path of the Beam."
"Aye." He traced the last line on the envelope: All debts are paid. "Open it, Susannah, for I'd see what's inside."
She did.
FOUR