The voice uttered one more shriek and fell silent. Roland rode back to Cuthbert, bolstering his gun. Bert's eyes were round and amazed. "Roland, what shooting! Gods, what shooting!" "Let's get out of here."
"But we still don't know how she knew!"
"Do you think she'd tell?" There was a small but minute shake in Roland's voice. The way the snake had come out of the tree like that, right at him ... he could still barely believe he wasn't dead. Thank gods for his hand, which had taken matters over.
"We could make her talk," Cuthbert said, but Roland could tell from his voice that Bert had no taste for such. Maybe later, maybe after years of trail-riding and gunslinging, but now he had no more stomach for torture than for killing outright.
"Even if we could, we couldn't make her tell the truth. Such as her lies as other folks breathe. If we've convinced her to keep quiet, we've done enough for today. Come on. I hate this place."
18
As they rode back toward town, Roland said: "We've got to meet."
"The four of us. That's what you mean, isn't it?"
"Yes. I want to tell everything I know and surmise. I want to tell you my plan, such as it is. What we've been waiting for."
"That would be very good indeed."
"Susan can help us." Roland seemed to be speaking to himself. Cuthbert was amused to see that the lone, crown like leaf was still caught in his dark hair. "Susan was meant to help us. Why didn't I see that?"
"Because love is blind," Cuthbert said. He snorted laughter and clapped Roland on the shoulder. "Love is blind, old son."
19
When she was sure the boys were gone, Rhea crept out of her door and into the hateful sunshine. She hobbled across to the tree and fell on her knees by the tattered length of her snake, weeping loudly.
"Ermot, Ermot!" she cried. "See what's become of ye!"
There was his head, the mouth frozen open, the double fangs still dripping poison - clear drops that shone like prisms in the day's strengthening light. The glazing eyes glared. She picked Ermot up, kissed the scaly mouth, licked the last of the venom from the exposed needles, crooning and weeping all the while.
Next she picked up the long and tattered body with her other hand, moaning at the holes which had been torn into Ermot's satiny hide; the holes and the ripped red flesh beneath. Twice she put the head against the body and spoke incantations, but nothing happened. Of course not. Ermot had gone beyond the aid of her spells. Poor Ermot.
She held his head to one flattened old dug, and his body to the other. Then, with the last of his blood wetting the bodice of her dress, she looked in the direction the hateful boys had gone.
"I'll pay ye back," she whispered. "By all the gods that ever were, I'll pay ye back. When ye least expect it, there Rhea will be, and your screams will break your throats. Do you hear me? Your screams will break your throats!"
She knelt a moment longer, then got up and shuffled back toward her hut, holding Ermot to her bosom.
CHAPTER V WIZARD'S RAINBOW
1
On an afternoon three days after Roland's and Cuthbert's visit to the Coos, Roy Depape and Clay Reynolds walked along the upstairs hallway of the Travellers' Rest to the spacious bedroom Coral Thorin kept there. Clay knocked. Jonas called for them to come in, it was open.
The first thing Depape saw upon entering was sai Thorin herself, in a rocker by the window. She wore a foamy nightdress of white silk and a red bufanda on her head. She had a lapful of knitting. Depape looked at her in surprise. She offered him and Reynolds an enigmatic smile, said "Hello, gents," and returned to her needlework. Outside there was a rattle of firecrackers (young folks could never wait until the big day; if they had crackers in their hands, they had to set match to them), the nervous whinny of a horse, and the raucous laughter of boys.
Depape turned to Reynolds, who shrugged and then crossed his arms to hold the sides of his cloak. In this way he expressed doubt or disapproval or both.
"Problem?"
Jonas was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, wiping shaving soap from his face with the end of the towel laid over his shoulder. He was bare to the waist. Depape had seen him that way plenty of times, but the old white crisscrossings of scars always made him feel a little sick to his stomach.
"Well... I knew we was using the lady's room, I just didn't know the lady came with it."
"She does." Jonas tossed the towel into the bathroom, crossed to the bed, and took his shirt from where it hung on one of the footposts. Beyond him, Coral glanced up, gave his naked back a single greedy look, then went back to her work once more. Jonas slipped into his shirt. "How arc things at Citgo, Clay?"
"Quiet. But it'll get noisy if certain young vagabundos poke their nosy noses in."