it wasn't worth it.
"I told you only one outright lie," said the former Austin Cornwell. "That he'd had me beheaded."
"Are you satisfied, Susannah?" Roland asked her.
"Yes," she said, although she wasn't; not really. "Let's go."
"Climb up in Ho Fat, then, and don't turn thy back on him when thee does. He's sly."
"Tell me about it," Susannah said, and then did as she was asked.
"Long days and pleasant nights," said the former sai Cornwell from where he sat amid the squirming, dying snakes. "May the Man Jesus watch over you and all your clan-fam. And may you show sense before it's too late for sense and stay away from the Dark Tower!"
SIX
They retraced their path to the intersection where they had turned away from the Path of the Beam to go to the Crimson King's castle, and here Roland stopped to rest for a few minutes.
A little bit of a breeze had gotten up, and the patriotic bunting flapped. She saw it now looked old and faded. The pictures of Nixon, Lodge, Kennedy, and Johnson had been defaced by graffiti which was itself ancient. All the glammer-such ragged glammer as the Crimson King had been able to manage, at any rate-was gone.
Masks off, masks off, she thought tiredly. It was a wonderful party, but now it's finished... and the Red Death holds sway over all.
She touched the pimple beside her mouth, then looked at the tip of her finger. She expected to see blood or pus or both.
There was neither, and that was a relief.
"How much of it do you believe?" Susannah asked him.
"Pretty much all of it," Roland replied.
"So he's up there. In the Tower."
"Not in it. Trapped outside it." He smiled. "There's a big difference."
"Is there really? And what will you do to him?"
"I don't know."
"Do you think that if he did get control of your guns, diat he could get back inside the Tower and climb to the top?"
"Yes." The reply was immediate.
"What will you do about it?"
"Not let him get either of them." He spoke as if this should have been self-evident, and Susannah supposed it should have been. What she had a way of forgetting was how goddamned literalhe was. About everything.
"You were diinking of trapping Mordred, back at the castle."
"Yes," Roland agreed, "but given what we found there-and what we were told-it seemed better to move on. Simpler.
Look."
He took out the watch and snapped open the lid. They both observed the second-hand racing its solitary course. But at the same speed as before? Susannah didn't know for sure, but she didn't think so. She looked up at Roland with her eyebrows raised.
"Most of die time it's still right," Roland said, "but no longer all of the time. I think that it's losing at least a second every sixdi or seventh revolution. Perhaps three to six minutes a day, all told."
"That's not very much."
"No," Roland admitted, putting the watch away, "but it's a start. Let Mordred do as he will. The Dark Tower lies close beyond the white lands, and I mean to reach it."
Susannah could understand his eagerness. She only hoped it wouldn't make him careless. If it did, Mordred Deschain's youth might no longer matter. If Roland made the right mistake at the wrong moment, she, he, and Oy might never see the Dark Tower at all.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a great fluttering from behind them. Not quite lost within it came a human sound that began as a howl and quickly rose to a shriek. Although distance diminished that cry, the horror and pain in it were all too clear. At last, mercifully, it faded.
"The Crimson King's Minister of State has entered the clearing," Roland said.
Susannah looked back toward the castle. She could see its blackish-red ramparts, but nothing else. She was glad she could see nothing else.
Mordred's a-hungry, she thought. Her heart was beating fast and she thought she had never been so frightened in her whole life-not lying next to Mia as she gave birth, not even in the blackness under Castle Discordia.
Mordred's a-hungry... but now he'll be fed.
SEVEN
The old man who had begun life as Austin Cornwell and who would end it as Rando Thoughtful sat at the casde end of the bridge. The rooks waited above him, perhaps sensing that the day's excitement was not yet done. Thoughtful was warm enough thanks to the pea-coat he was wearing, and he had helped himself to a mouthful of brandy before leaving to meet Roland and his blackbird ladyfriend. Well...