Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,224

silly . . . unless our fathers caught us at it. My own da said it wasn’t wise to talk about Thirteen, for it might hear its name called and roll your way. But Black Thirteen doesn’t matter to you three . . . not now, at least. No, it’s the pink one. Maerlyn’s Grapefruit.”

It was impossible to tell how serious he was . . . or if he was serious at all.

“If the other balls in the Wizard’s Rainbow did exist, most are broken now. Such things never stay in one place or one pair of hands for long, you know, and even enchanted glass has a way of breaking. Yet at least three or four bends o’ the Rainbow may still be rolling around this sad world of ours. The blue, almost certainly. A desert tribe of slow mutants—the Total Hogs, they called themselves—had that one less than fifty years ago, although it’s slipped from sight again since. The green and the orange are reputed to be in Lud and Dis, respectively. And, just maybe, the pink one.”

“What exactly do they do?” Roland asked. “What are they good for?”

“For seeing. Some colors of the Wizard’s Rainbow are reputed to look into the future. Others look into the other worlds—those where the demons live, those where the Old People are supposed to have gone when they left our world. These may also show the location of the secret doors which pass between the worlds. Other colors, they say, can look far in our own world, and see things people would as soon keep secret. They never see the good; only the ill. How much of this is true and how much is myth no one knows for sure.”

He looked at them, his smile fading.

“But this we do know: John Farson is said to have a talisman, something that glows in his tent late at night . . . sometimes before battles, sometimes before large movements of troop and horse, sometimes before momentous decisions are announced. And it glows pink.”

“Maybe he has an electric light and puts a pink scarf over it when he prays,” Cuthbert said. He looked around at his friends, a little defensively. “I’m not joking; there are people who do that.”

“Perhaps,” Roland’s father said. “Perhaps that’s all it is, or something like. But perhaps it’s a good deal more. All I can say of my own knowledge is that he keeps beating us, he keeps slipping away from us, and he keeps turning up where he’s least expected. If the magic is in him and not in some talisman he owns, gods help the Affiliation.”

“We’ll keep an eye out, if you like,” Roland said, “but Farson’s in the north or west. We’re going east.” As if his father did not know this.

“If it’s a bend o’ the Rainbow,” Steven replied, “it could be anywhere—east or south’s as likely as west. He can’t keep it with him all the time, you see. No matter how much it would ease his mind and heart to do so. No one can.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re alive, and hungry,” Steven said. “One begins using em; one ends being used by em. If Farson has a piece of the Rainbow, he’ll send it away and call it back only when he needs it. He understands the risk of losing it, but he also understands the risk of keeping it too long.”

There was a question which the other two, constrained by politeness, couldn’t ask. Roland could, and did. “You are serious about this, Dad? It’s not just a leg-pull, is it?”

“I’m sending you away at an age when many boys still don’t sleep well if their mothers don’t kiss them goodnight,” Steven said. “I expect to see all three of you again, alive and well—Mejis is a lovely, quiet place, or was when I was a boy—but I can’t be sure of it. As things are these days, no one can be sure of anything. I wouldn’t send you away with a joke and a laugh. I’m surprised you think it.”

“Cry your pardon,” Roland said. An uneasy peace had descended between him and his father, and he would not rupture it. Still, he was wild to be off. Rusher jigged beneath him, as if seconding that.

“I don’t expect you boys to see Maerlyn’s glass . . . but I didn’t expect to be seeing you off at fourteen with revolvers tucked in your bedrolls, either. Ka’s at work here, and where ka works, anything