Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,183

precious! Come, my sweet one!”

Musty, understanding all was forgiven, rushed into his mistress’s arms and began to purr loudly as Rhea licked along his sides with her old and yellowing tongue. That night the Cöos slept soundly for the first time in a week, and when she took the glass ball into her arms the following morning, its mists cleared for her at once. She spent the day in thrall to it, spying on people she detested, drinking little and eating nothing. Around sunset, she came out of her trance enough to realize she had as yet done nothing about the saucy little jade. But that was all right; she saw how it could be done . . . and she could watch all the results in the glass! All the protests, all the shouting and recriminations! She would see Susan’s tears. That would be the best, to see her tears.

“A little harvest of my own,” she said to Ermot, who now came slithering up her leg toward the place where she liked him best. There weren’t many men who could do you like Ermot could do you, no indeed. Sitting there with a lapful of snake, Rhea began to laugh.

3

“Remember your promise,” Alain said nervously as they heard the approaching beat of Rusher’s hoofs. “Keep your temper.”

“I will,” Cuthbert said, but he had his doubts. As Roland rode around the long wing of the bunkhouse and into the yard, his shadow trailing out in the sunset light, Cuthbert clenched his hands nervously. He willed them to open, and they did. Then, as he watched Roland dismount, they rolled themselves closed again, the nails digging into his palms.

Another go-round, Cuthbert thought. Gods, but I’m sick of them. Sick to death.

Last night’s had been about the pigeons—again. Cuthbert wanted to use one to send a message back west about the oil tankers; Roland still did not. So they had argued. Except (here was another thing which infuriated him, that rubbed against his nerves like the sound of the thinny) Roland did not argue. These days Roland did not deign to argue. His eyes always kept that distant look, as if only his body was here. The rest of him—mind, soul, spirit, ka—was with Susan Delgado.

“No,” he had said simply. “It’s too late for such.”

“You can’t know that,” Cuthbert had argued. “And even if it’s too late for help to come from Gilead, it’s not too late for advice to come from Gilead. Are you so blind you can’t see that?”

“What advice can they send us?” Roland hadn’t seemed to hear the rawness in Cuthbert’s voice. His own voice was calm. Reasonable. And utterly disconnected, Cuthbert thought, from the urgency of the situation.

“If we knew that,” he had replied, “we wouldn’t have to ask, Roland, would we?”

“We can only wait and stop them when they make their move. It’s comfort you’re looking for, Cuthbert, not advice.”

You mean wait while you fuck her in as many ways and in as many places as you can imagine, Cuthbert thought. Inside, outside, rightside up and upside down.

“You’re not thinking clearly about this,” Cuthbert had said coldly. He’d heard Alain’s gasp. Neither of them had ever said such a thing to Roland in their lives, and once it was out, he’d waited uneasily for whatever explosion might follow.

None did. “Yes,” Roland replied, “I am.” And he had gone into the bunkhouse without another word.

Now, watching Roland uncinch Rusher’s girths and pull the saddle from his back, Cuthbert thought: You’re not, you know. But you better think clearly about this. By all the gods, you’d better.

“Hile,” he said as Roland carried the saddle over to the porch and set it on the step. “Busy afternoon?” He felt Alain kick his ankle and ignored it.

“I’ve been with Susan,” Roland said. No defense, no demur, no excuse. And for a moment Cuthbert had a vision of shocking clarity: he saw the two of them in a hut somewhere, the late afternoon sun shining through holes in the roof and dappling their bodies. She was on top, riding him. Cuthbert saw her knees on the old, spongy boards, and the tension in her long thighs. He saw how tanned her arms were, how white her belly. He saw how Roland’s hands cupped the globes of her breasts, squeezing them as she rocked back and forth above him, and he saw how the sun lit her hair, turning it into a fine-spun net.

Why do you always have to be first? he