advanced halfway across the bridge and stopped at its highest point. Here they put down their burdens side by side. The third man stopped on the castle side and stood with his empty hands clasped decorously before him. Now Susannah could smell the cooked meat that was undoubtedly in one of the boxes. Not long pork, either. Roast beef and chicken all mingled was what it smelled like to her, an aroma that was heaven-sent. Her mouth began to water.
"Hile, Roland of Gilead!" said the dark-haired man on their right. "Hile, Susannah of New York! Hile, Oy of Mid-World! Long days and pleasant nights!"
"One's ugly and the others are worse," his companion remarked.
"Don't mind him," said the righthand Stephen King lookalike.
"'don't mind him,'" mocked the other, screwing his face up in a grimace so purposefully ugly that it was funny.
"May you have twice the number," Roland said, responding to the more polite of the two. He cocked his heel and made a perfunctory bow over his outstretched leg. Susannah curtsied in the Calla fashion, spreading imaginary skirts. Oy sat by Roland's left foot, only looking at the two identical men on the bridge.
"We are uffis," said the man on the right. "Do you ken uffis,
Roland?"
"Yes," he said, and then, in an aside to Susannah: "It's an old word... ancient, in fact. He claims they're shape-changers." To this he added in a much lower voice that could surely not be heard over the roar of the river: "I doubt it's true."
"Yet it is," said the one on the right, pleasantly enough.
"Liars see their own kind everywhere," observed the one on the left, and rolled a cynical blue eye. Just one. Susannah didn't believe she had ever seen a person roll just one eye before.
The one behind said nothing, only continued to stand and watch with his hands clasped before him.
"We can take any shape we like," continued the one on the right, "but our orders were to assume that of someone you'd recognize and trust."
"I'd not trust sai King much further than I could throw his heaviest grandfather," Roland remarked. "As troublesome as a trousers-eating goat, that one."
"We did the best we could," said the righthand Stephen King. "We could have taken the shape of Eddie Dean, but felt that might be too painful to the lady."
"The 'lady' looks as if she'd be happy to fuck a rope, could she make it stand up between her thighs," remarked the lefthand Stephen King, and leered.
"Uncalled-for," said the one behind, he with his hands crossed in front of him. He spoke in the mild tones of a contest referee. Susannah almost expected him to sentence Badmouth King to five minvxtes in the penalty box. She wouldn't have minded, either, for hearing Badmouth King crack wise hurt her heart; it reminded her of Eddie.
Roland ignored all the byplay.
"Could the three of you take three different shapes?" he inquired of Goodmouth King. Susannah heard the gunslinger swallow quite audibly before asking this question, and knew she wasn't the only one struggling to keep from drooling over the smells from the food-basket. "Could one of you have been sai King, one sai Kennedy, and one sai Nixon, for instance?"
"A good question," said Goodmouth King on the right.
"A stupid question," said Badmouth King on the left. "Nothing at all to the point. Off we go into the wild blue yonder. Oh well, was there ever an action hero who was an intellectual?"
"Prince Hamlet of Denmark," said Referee King quietly from behind them. "But since he's the only one who comes immediately to mind, he may be no more than the exception that proves the rule."
Goodmouth and Badmouth both turned to look at him.
When it was clear that he was done, they turned back to Roland and Susannah.
"Since we're actually one being," said Goodmouth, "and of fairly limited capabilities at that, the answer is no. We could all be Kennedy, or we could all be Nixon, but-"
"'Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today,'" said Susannah. She had no idea why this had popped into her head
(even less why she should have said it out loud), but Referee King said "Exactly!" and gave her a go-to-the-head-of-the-class nod.
"Move on, for your father's sake," said Badmouth King on the left. "I can barely look at these traitors to the Lord of the Red wi'out puking."
"Very well," said his partner. "Although calling them traitors seems rather unfair, at least if one adds ka to the equation.
Since the names we give ourself