"Alain, at least, knew it would be better for me - easier - if I didn't have to hand the ball over alone. He hushed Cuthbert up and said they'd be there. And they were. And I gave it over, little as I wanted to. My father went as pale as paper when he looked into the bag and saw what was there, then excused himself and took it away. When he came back, he picked up his glass of wine and went on talking to us of our adventures in Mejis as if nothing had happened."
"But between the time your friends talked to you about it and the time you gave it up, you looked into it," Jake said. "Went into it. Travelled in it. What did it show you that time?"
"First the Tower again," Roland said, "and the beginning of the way there. I saw the fall of Gilead, and the triumph of the Good Man. We'd put those things back a mere twenty months or so by destroying the tankers and the oilpatch. I could do nothing about that, but it showed me something I could do. There was a certain knife. The blade had been treated with an especially potent poison, something from a distant Mid-World Kingdom called Garlan. Stuff so strong even the tiniest cut would cause almost instant death. A wandering singer - in truth, John Parson's eldest nephew - had brought this knife to court. The man he gave it to was the castle's chief of domestic staff. This man was to pass the knife on to the actual assassin. My father was not meant to see the sun come up on the morning after the banquet." He smiled at them grimly. "Because of what I saw in the Wizard's Glass, the knife never reached the hand that would have used it, and there was a new chief of domestics by the end of that week. These are pretty tales I tell you, are they not? Aye, very pretty, indeed."
"Did you see the person the knife was meant for?" Susannah asked. "The actual killer?"
"Yes."
"Anything else? Did you see anything else?" Jake asked. The plan to murder Roland's father didn't seem to hold much interest for him.
"Yes." Roland looked puzzled. "Shoes. Just for a minute. Shoes tumbling through the air. At first I thought they were autumn leaves. And when I saw what they really were, they were gone and I was lying on my bed with the ball hugged in my arms . . . pretty much the way I carried it back from Mejis. My father ... as I've said, his surprise when he looked inside the bag was very great, indeed."
You told him who had the knife with the special poison on it, Susannah thought, Jeeves the Butler, or whoever, but you didn't tell him who was supposed to actually use it, did you, sugar? Why not? Because you wanted to take careof dat little spot o' work yo ownself? But before she could ask, Eddie was asking a question of his own.
"Shoes? Flying through the air? Does that mean anything to you now?"
Roland shook his head.
"Tell us about the rest of what you saw in it," Susannah said.
He gave her a look of such terrible pain that what Susannah had only suspected immediately solidified to fact in her mind. She looked away from him and groped for Eddie's hand.
"I cry your pardon, Susannah, but I cannot. Not now. For now, I've told all I can."
"All right," Eddie said. "All right, Roland, that's cool."
"Ool," Oy agreed.
"Did you ever see the witch again?" Jake asked.
For a long time it seemed Roland would not answer this, either, but in the end he did.
"Yes. She wasn't done with me. Like my dreams of Susan, she followed me. All the way from Mejis, she followed me."
"What do you mean?" Jake asked in a low, awed voice. "Cripes, Roland, what do you mean?"
"Not now." He got up. "It's time we were on our way again." He nodded to the building which floated ahead of them; the sun was just now clearing its battlements. "Yon glitter-dome's a good distance away, but I think we can reach it this afternoon, if we move brisk. 'Twould be best. It's not a place I'd reach after nightfall, if that can be avoided."
"Do you know what it is yet?" Susannah asked.
"Trouble," he repeated. "And in our road."
4
For awhile that morning, the thinny warbled so loudly that not even the bullets in their ears would entirely stop up the sound; at its worst, Susannah felt as if the bridge of her nose would simply disintegrate, and when she looked at Jake, she saw he was weeping copiously - not crying the way people do when they're sad, but the way they do when their sinuses are in total revolt. She couldn't get the saw-player the kid had mentioned out of her mind. Sounds Hawaiian, she thought over and over again as Eddie pushed her grimly along in the new wheelchair, weaving in and out of the stalled vehicles. Sounds Hawaiian, doesn't it? Sounds f**king Hawaiian, doesn't it. Miss Oh So Black and Pretty?