Their horses were saddled and loaded; the three boys stood before them, outwardly stolid, inwardly feverish to be gone. The road, and the mysteries that lie along it, calls out to none as it calls to the young.
They were in the courtyard which lay east of the Great Hall, not far from where Roland had bested Cort, setting all these things in motion. It was early morning, the sun not yet risen, the mist lying over the green fields in gray ribbons. At a distance of about twenty paces, Cuthbert's and Alain's fathers stood sentry with their legs apart and their hands on the butts of their guns. It was unlikely that Marten (who had for the time being absented himself from the palace, and, so far as any knew, from Gilead itself) would mount any sort of attack on them - not here - but it wasn't entirely out of the question, either.
So it was that only Roland's father spoke to them as they mounted up to begin their ride east to Mejis and the Outer Arc.
"One last thing," he said as they adjusted their saddle girths. "I doubt you'll see anything that (ouches on our interests - not in Mejis - but I'd have you keep an eye out for a color of the rainbow. The Wizard's Rain-how, that is." He chuckled, then added: "It's the grapefruit. By which I mean it's the pink one."
"Wizard's Rainbow is just a fairy-tale," Cuthbert said, smiling in response to Steven's smile. Then - perhaps it was something in Steven Deschain's eyes - Cuthbert's smile faltered. "Isn't it?"
"Not all the old stories are true, but I think that of Maerlyn's Rainbow is," Steven replied. "It's said that once there were thirteen glass balls in it - one for each of the Twelve Guardians, and one representing the nexus-point of the Beams."
"One for the Tower," Roland said in a low voice, feeling gooseflesh. "One for the Dark Tower."
"Aye, Thirteen it was called when I was a boy. We'd tell stories about the black ball around the fire sometimes, and scare ourselves silly . . . unless our fathers caught us at it. My own da said it wasn't wise to talk about Thirteen, for it might hear its name called and roll your way. But Black Thirteen doesn't matter to you three ... not now, at least. No, it's the pink one. Maerlyn's Grapefruit."
It was impossible to tell how serious he was ... or if he was serious at all.
"If the other balls in the Wizard's Rainbow did exist, most are broken now. Such things never stay in one place or one pair of hands for long, you know, and even enchanted glass has a way of breaking. Yet at least three or four bends o' the Rainbow may still be rolling around this sad world of ours. The blue, almost certainly. A desert tribe of slow mutants - the Total Hogs, they called themselves - had that one less than fifty years ago, although it's slipped from sight again since. The green and the orange are reputed to be in Lud and Dis, respectively. And, just maybe, the pink one."
"What exactly do they do?" Roland asked. "What are they good for?"
"For seeing. Some colors of the Wizard's Rainbow are reputed to look into the future. Others look into the other worlds - those where the demons live, those where the Old People are supposed to have gone when they left our world. These may also show the location of the secret doors which pass between the worlds. Other colors, they say, can look far in our own world, and see things people would as soon keep secret. They never see the good; only the ill. How much of this is true and how much is myth no one knows for sure."
He looked at them, his smile fading.
"But this we do know: John Farson is said to have a talisman, something that glows in his tent late at night ... sometimes before battles, sometimes before large movements of troop and horse, sometimes before momentous decisions are announced. And it glows pink."
"Maybe he has an electric light and puts a pink scarf over it when he prays," Cuthbert said. He looked around at his friends, a little defensively. "I'm not joking; there are people who do that."
"Perhaps," Roland's father said. "Perhaps that's all it is, or something like. But perhaps it's a good deal more. All I can say of my own knowledge is that he keeps beating us, he keeps slipping away from us, and he keeps turning up where he's least expected. If the magic is in him and not in some talisman he owns, gods help the Affiliation."
"We'll keep an eye out, if you like," Roland said, "but Parson's in the north or west. We're going east." As if his father did not know this.
"If it's a bend o' the Rainbow," Steven replied, "it could be anywhere - east or south's as likely as west. He can't keep it with him all the time, you see. No matter how much it would ease his mind and heart to do so. No one can."
"Why not?"
"Because they're alive, and hungry," Steven said. "One begins using em; one ends being used by em. If Farson has a piece of the Rainbow, he'll send it away and call it back only when he needs it. He understands the risk of losing it, but he also understands the risk of keeping it too long."