With no gods to pray to, Susan prayed to her father.
Da? If thee's there, help me to be strong as lean be, and help me hold to him, to the memory of him. Help me to hold to myself as well. Not for rescue, not for salvation, but just so as not to give them the satisfaction of seeing my pain and my fear. And him, help him as well. . .
"Help keep him safe," she whispered. "Keep my love safe; take my love safe to where he goes, give him joy in who he sees, and make him a cause of joy in those who see him."
"Praying, dearie?" the old woman asked without turning on the seat. Her croaking voice oozed false compassion. "Aye, ye'd do well t'make things right with the Powers while ye still can - before the spit's burned right out of yer throat!" She threw back her head and cackled, the straggling remains of her broomstraw hair flying out orange in the light of the bloated moon.
24
Their horses, led by Rusher, had come to the sound of Roland's dismayed shout. They stood not far away, their manes rippling in the wind, shaking their heads and whinnying their displeasure whenever the wind dropped enough for them to get a whiff of the thick white smoke rising from the canyon.
Roland paid no attention to the horses or the smoke. His eyes were fixed on the drawstring sack slung over Alain's shoulder. The ball inside had come alive again; in the growing dark, the bag seemed to pulse like some weird pink firefly. He held out his hands for it.
"Give it to me!"
"Roland, I don't know if - "
"Give it to me, damn your face!"
Alain looked at Cuthbert, who nodded . . . then lifted his hands skyward in a weary, distracted gesture.
Roland tore the bag away before Alain could do more than begin to shrug it off his shoulder. The gunslinger dipped into it and pulled the glass out. It was glowing fiercely, a pink Demon Moon instead of an orange one.
Behind and below them, the nagging whine of the thinny rose and fell, rose and fell.
"Don't look directly into that thing," Cuthbert muttered to Alain. "Don't, for your father's sake."
Roland bent his face over the pulsing ball, its light running over his cheeks and brow like liquid, drowning his eyes in its dazzle.
In Maerlyn's Rainbow he saw her - Susan, horse-drover's daughter, lovely girl at the window. He saw her standing in the back of a black cart decorated with gold symbols, the old witch's cart. Reynolds rode behind her, holding the end of a rope that was noosed around her neck. The cart was rolling toward Green Heart, making its way with processional slow-ness. Hill Street was lined with people of whom the farmer with the lamb-slaughterer's eyes had been only the first - all those folk of Hambry and Mejis who had been deprived of their fair but were now given this ancient dark attraction in its stead: Charyou tree, come, Reap, death for you, life for our crops.
A soundless whispering ran through them like a gathering wave, and they began to pelt her - first with cornhusks, then with rotting tomatoes, then with potatoes and apples. One of these latter struck her cheek. She reeled, almost fell, then stood straight again, now raising her swollen but still lovely face so the moon painted it. She looked straight ahead.
"Charyou tree, " they whispered. Roland couldn't hear them, but he could see the words on their lips. Stanley Ruiz was there, and Pettie, and Gert Moggins, and Frank Claypool, the deputy with the broken leg; Jamie McCann, who was to have been this year's Reap Lad. Roland saw a hundred people he had known (and mostly liked) during his time in Mejis. Now these people pelted his love with cornshucks and vegetables as she stood, hands bound before her, in the back of Rhea's cart.
The slowly rolling cart reached Green Heart, with its colored paper lanterns and silent carousel where no laughing children rode ... no, not this year. The crowd, still speaking those two words - chanting them now, it appeared - parted. Roland saw the heaped pyramid of wood that was the unlit bonfire. Sitting around it, their backs propped on the central column, their lumpy legs outstretched, was a ring of red-handed stuffy-guys. There was a single hole in the ring; a single waiting vacancy.
And now a woman emerged from the crowd. She wore a rusty black dress and held a pail in one hand. A smear of ash stood out on one of her cheeks like a brand. She -
Roland began to shriek. It was a single word, over and over again:
No, no, no, no, no, no! The ball's pink light flashed brighter with each repetition, as if his horror refreshed and strengthened it. And now, with each of those pulses, Cuthbert and Alain could see the shape of the gunslinger's skull beneath his skin.
"We have to take it away from him," Alain said. "We have to, it's sucking him dry. It's killing him!"
Cuthbert nodded and stepped forward. He grabbed the ball, but couldn't take it from Roland's hands. The gunslinger's fingers seemed welded to it.