of them, staggering unsteadily along the shoulder, was an old man with snarled and straggly white hair. He wore a clumsy wrap of dirty cloth that could by no means be called a robe. His scrawny arms and legs were whipped with scratches. There were sores on them as well, burning a dull red. His feet were bare, and equipped with ugly and dangerous-looking yellow talons instead of toes. Clasped under one arm was a splintery wooden object that might have been a broken lyre. Eddie thought no one could have looked more out of place on this road, where the only pedestrians they had seen so far were serious-looking exercisers, obviously from "away," looking ever so put-together in their nylon jogging shorts, baseball hats, and tee-shirts (one jogger's shirt bore the legend DON'T SHOOT THE TOURISTS).
The thing that had been trudging along the berm of Route 7 turned toward them, and Eddie let out an involuntary cry of horror. Its eyes bled together above the bridge of its nose, reminding him of a double-yolked egg in a frypan. A fang depended from one nostril like a bone booger. Yet somehow worst of all was the dull green glow that baked out from the creature's face. It was as if its skin had been painted with some sort of thin fluorescent gruel.
It saw them and immediately dashed into the woods, dropping its splintered lyre behind.
"Christ!" Eddie screamed. If that was a walk-in, he hoped never to see another.
"Stop, Eddie!" Roland shouted, then braced die heel of one hand against the dashboard as Cullum's old Ford slid to a dusty halt close to where the thing had vanished.
"Open the backhold," Roland said as he opened the door.
"Get my widowmaker."
"Roland, we're in kind of a hurry here, and Turtleback Lane's still three miles north. I really think we ought to-"
"Shut your fool's mouth and get it!" Roland roared, then ran to the edge of the woods. He drew a deep breath, and when he shouted after the rogue creature, his voice sent gooseflesh racmg up Eddie's arms. He had heard Roland speak so once or twice before, but in between it was easy to forget that the blood of a King ran in his veins.
He spoke several phrases Eddie could not understand, then one he could: "So come forth, ye Child of Roderick, ye spoiled, ye lost, and make your bow before me, Roland, son of Steven, of the Line of Eld!"
For a moment there was nothing. Eddie opened the Ford's trunk and brought Roland his gun. Roland strapped it on without so much as a glance at Eddie, let alone a word of thanks.
Perhaps diirty seconds went by. Eddie opened his mouth to speak. Before he could, the dusty roadside foliage began to shake. A moment or two later, the misbegotten thing reappeared.
It staggered with its head lowered. On the front of its robe was a large wet patch. Eddie could smell the reek of a sick thing's urine, wild and strong.
Yet it made a knee and raised one misshapen hand to its forehead, a doomed gesture of fealty that made Eddie feel like weeping. "Hile, Roland of Gilead, Roland of Eld! Will you show me some sigul, dear?"
In a town called River Crossing, an old woman who called herself Aunt Talitha had given Roland a silver cross on a finelink silver chain. He'd worn it around his neck ever since. Now he reached into his shirt and showed it to the kneeling creature-a slow mutie dying of radiation sickness, Eddie was quite sure-and the thing gave a cracked cry of wonder.
"Would'ee have peace at the end of your course, thou Child of Roderick? Would'ee have the peace of the clearing?"
"Aye, my dear," it said, sobbing, then added a great deal more in some gibberish tongue Eddie couldn't understand.
Eddie looked both ways along Route 7, expecting to see traffic-this was the height of the summer season, after all-but spied nothing in either direction. For the moment, at least, their luck still held.
"How many of you are there in these parts?" Roland asked, interrupting the walk-in. As he spoke, he drew his revolver and raised that old engine of death until it lay against his shirt.
The Child of Roderick tossed its hand at the horizon without looking up. "Delah, gunslinger," he said, "for here the worlds are thin, say anro con fa; sey-sey desenefanno billet cobair can. I Chevin devardan do. Because I felt sat for dem. Can-toi, can-tah, canDiscordia, aven la