Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,170

and rotated it gently in either direction, listening for the grate of small bones.

He heard nothing, and the wrist turned freely. As Susan watched, stunned and confused, he raised it to his lips and kissed the inner part, above the delicate tracery of veins.

11

Roland had tied Rusher just far enough into the willows so the big gelding could not be seen by anyone who happened to come riding along the Drop.

“Be easy,” Roland said, approaching. “Be easy a little longer, goodheart.”

Rusher stamped and whickered, as if to say he could be easy until the end of the age, if that was what were required.

Roland flipped open his saddlebag and took out the steel utensil that served as either a pot or a frypan, depending on his needs. He started away, then turned back. His bedroll was tied behind Rusher’s saddle—he had planned to spend the night camped out on the Drop, thinking. There had been a lot to think about, and now there was even more.

He pulled one of the rawhide ties, reached inside the blankets, and pulled out a small metal box. This he opened with a tiny key he drew from around his neck. Inside the box was a small square locket on a fine silver chain (inside the locket was a line-drawing of his mother), and a handful of extra shells—not quite a dozen. He took one, closed it in his fist, and went back to Susan. She looked at him with wide, frightened eyes.

“I don’t remember anything after we made love the second time,” she said. “Only looking up at the sky and thinking how good I felt and going to sleep. Oh, Roland, how bad does it look?”

“Not bad, I should think, but you’ll know better than I. Here.”

He dipped his cooker full of water and set it on the bank. Susan bent over it apprehensively, laying the hair on the left side of her head across her forearm, then moving the arm slowly outward, extending the tress in a band of bright gold. She saw the ragged cut at once. She examined it carefully, then let it drop with a sigh more relieved than rueful.

“I can hide it,” she said. “When it’s braided, no one will know. And after all, ’tis only hair—no more than woman’s vanity. My aunt has told me so often enough, certainly. But Roland, why? Why did I do it?”

Roland had an idea. If hair was a woman’s vanity, then hair-chopping would likely be a woman’s bit of nastiness—a man would hardly think of it at all. The Mayor’s wife, had it been her? He thought not. It seemed more likely that Rhea, up there on her height of land looking north toward the Bad Grass, Hanging Rock, and Eyebolt Canyon, had set this ugly trap. Mayor Thorin had been meant to wake up on the morning after the Reap with a hangover and a bald-headed gilly.

“Susan, can I try something?”

She gave him a smile. “Something ye didn’t try already up yonder? Aye, what ye will.”

“Nothing like that.” He opened the hand he had held closed, showing the shell. “I want to try and find out who did this to you, and why.” And other things, too. He just didn’t know what they were yet.

She looked at the shell. Roland began to move it along the back of his hand, dancing it back and forth in a dexterous weaving. His knuckles rose and fell like the heddles of a loom. She watched this with a child’s fascinated delight. “Where did ye learn that?”

“At home. It doesn’t matter.”

“Ye’d hypnotize me?”

“Aye . . . and I don’t think it would be for the first time.” He made the shell dance a bit faster—now east along his rippling knuckles, now west. “May I?”

“Aye,” she said. “If you can.”

12

He could, all right; the speed with which she went under confirmed that this had happened to Susan before, and recently. Yet he couldn’t get what he wanted from her. She was perfectly cooperative (some sleep eager, Cort would have said), but beyond a certain point she would not go. It wasn’t decorum or modesty, either—as she slept open-eyed before the stream, she told him in a far-off but calm voice about the old woman’s examination, and the way Rhea had tried to “fiddle her up.” (At this Roland’s fists clenched so tightly his nails bit into his palms.) But there came a point where she could no longer remember.

She and Rhea had gone to the