perhaps that wasn't quite true. Perhaps it was Brass and Compson (also known as Feemalo and Fumalo) who'd had die mouthfuls of die King's best brandy, and Los's ex-Minister of State who had polished off the last third of the bottle.
Whatever the cause, the old man fell asleep, and the coming of Mordred Red-Heel didn't wake him. He sat with his chin on his chest and drool trickling from between his pursed lips, looking like a baby who has fallen asleep in his highchair. The birds on the parapets and walkways were gathered more thickly than ever. Surely they would have flown at the approach of the young Prince, but he looked up at them and made a gesture in the air: the open right hand waved brusquely across the face, then curled into a fist and pulled downward. Wait, it said.
Mordred stopped on the town side of the bridge, sniffing delicately at the decayed meat. That smell had been charming enough to bring him here even though he knew Roland and Susannah had continued along the Path of the Beam. Let them and their pet bumbler get fairly back on their way, was the boy's thinking. This wasn't the time to close the gap. Later, perhaps.
Later his White Daddy would let down his guard, if only for a moment, and then Mordred would have him.
For dinner, he hoped, but lunch or breakfast would do almost as well.
When we last saw this fellow, he was only
(baby-bunting baby-dear baby bring your berries here)
an infant. The creature standing beyond the gates of the Crimson King's castle had grown into a boy who looked about nine years old. Not a handsome boy; not the sort anyone
(except for his lunatic mother) would have called comely. This had less to do with his complicated genetic inheritance than with plain starvation. The face beneath the dry spall of black hair was haggard and far too thin. The flesh beneath Mordred's blue bombardier's eyes was a discolored, pouchy purple.
His complexion was a birdshot blast of sores and blemishes.
These, like the pimple beside Susannah's mouth, could have been the result of his journey through the poisoned lands, but surely Mordred's diet had something to do with it. He could have stocked up on canned goods before setting out from the checkpoint beyond the tunnel's mouth-Roland and Susannah had left plenty behind-but he hadn't thought to do so. He was, as Roland knew, still learning the tricks of survival. The only thing Mordred had taken from the checkpoint Quonset was a rotting railwayman's pillowtick jacket and a pair of serviceable boots. Finding the boots was good fortune indeed, although they had mostly fallen apart as the trek continued.
Had he been a hume-or even a more ordinary werecreature, for that matter-Mordred would have died in the Badlands, coat or no coat, boots or no boots. Because he was what he was, he had called the rooks to him when he was hungry, and the rooks had no choice but to come. The birds made nasty eating and the bugs he summoned from beneath the parched (and still faintly radioactive) rocks were even worse, but he had choked them down. One day he had touched the mind of a weasel and bade it come. It had been a scrawny, wretched thing, on the edge of starvation itself, but it tasted like the world's finest steak after the birds and the bugs. Mordred had changed into his other self and gathered the weasel into his seven-legged embrace, sucking and eating until there was nothing left but a torn piece of fur. He would have gladly eaten another dozen, but that had been the only one.
And now there was a whole basket of food set before him. It was well-aged, true, but what of that? Even the maggots would provide nourishment. More than enough to carry him into the snowy woods southeast of the castle, which would be teeming with game.
But before them, there was the old man.
"Rando," he said. "Rando Thoughtful."
The old man jerked and mumbled and opened his eyes. For a moment he looked at the scrawny boy standing before him with a total lack of understanding. Then his rheumy eyes filled with fright.
"Mordred, son of Los'," he said, trying a smile. "Hile to you,
King that will be!" He made a shuffling gesture with his legs, then seemed to realize that he was sitting down and it wouldn't do. He attempted to find his feet, fell back with a bump that