did you?" Roland asked.
"No," the old man admitted. He sat on the bridge with a weary sigh. One of the snakes attempted to crawl into his lap and he pushed it away with a gesture that was both absent and impatient. "But I had my orders, so I did."
Susannah was looking at the corpses of the other two with horrified fascination. Feemalo and Fumalo, nowjust a couple of dead old men, were rotting with unnatural rapidity, their parchment skins deflating toward the bone and oozing slack rivulets of pus. As she watched, the sockets of Feemalo's skull surfaced like twin periscopes, giving the corpse a momentary expression of shock. Some of the snakes crawled and writhed around these decaying corpses. Others were crawling into the basket of maggoty limbs, seeking the undoubtedly warmer regions at the bottom of the heap. Decay brought its own temporary fevers, and she supposed that she herself might be tempted to luxuriate in it while she could. If she were a snake, that was.
"Are you going to kill me?" Fimalo asked.
"Nay," Roland said, "for your duties aren't done. You have another coming along behind."
Fimalo looked up, a gleam of interest in his rheumy old eyes. 'Your son?"
"Mine, and your master's, as well. Would you give him a word for me during your palaver?"
"If I'm alive to give it, sure."
"Tell him that I'm old and crafty, while he's but young.
Tell him that if he lies back, he may live awhile yet with his dreams of revenge... although what I've done to him requiring his vengeance, I know not. And tell him that if he comes forward, I'll kill him as I intend to kill his Red Father."
"Either you listen and don't hear or hear and don't believe,"
Fimalo said. Now that his own ruse had been exposed (nothing so glamorous as an uffi, Susannah thought; just a retreaded adman from upstate New York), he seemed unutterably weary.
"You cannot kill a creature that has killed itself. Nor can you enter the Dark Tower, for there is only one entrance, and the balcony upon which Los' is imprisoned commands it. And he's armed with a sufficiency of weapons. The sneetches alone would seek you out and slay you before you'd crossed halfway through the field of roses."
"That's our worry," Roland said, and Susannah thought he'd rarely spoken a truer word: she was worrying about it already. "As for you, will you pass my message on to Mordred, when you see him?"
Fimalo made a gesture of acquiescence.
Roland shook his head. "Don't just flap thy hand at me, cully-let me hear from your mouth."
"I'll pass along your message," said Fimalo, then added: "If I see him, and we palaver."
"You will. 'day to you, sir." Roland began to turn away, but Susannah caught his arm and he turned back.
"Swear to me that all you told us was true," she bade the ugly ancient sitting on the cobbled bridge and below the cold gaze of the crows, who were beginning to settle back to their former places. What she meant to learn or prove by this she had not the slightest idea. Would she know this man's lies, even now? Probably not. But she pressed on, just the same. "Swear it on the name of your father, and on his face, as well."
The old man raised his right hand to her, palm out, and Susannah saw there were open sores even there. "I swear it on the name of Andrew John Cornwell, of Tioga Springs, New York.
And on his face, too. The King of this casde really did run mad, and really did burst those Wizard's Glasses that had come into his hands. He really did force the staff to take poison and he really did watch them die." He flung out the hand he'd held up in pledge to the box of severed limbs. "Where do you think I got those, Lady Blackbird? Body Parts R Us?"
She didn't understand the reference, and remained still.
"He really has gone on to the Dark Tower. He's like the dog in some old fable or other, wanting to make sure that if he can't get any good from the hay, no one else will, either. I didn't even lie to you about what was in these boxes, not really. I simply showed you the goods and let you draw your own conclusions."
His smile of cynical pleasure made Susannah wonder if she ought to remind him that Roland, at least, had seen through this trick. She decided