Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,23

was a cynical weariness in this chuckle that chilled her even more deeply. Perhaps because it was almost sane.

“GOOD, GUNSLINGER. A VALIANT EFFORT. BUT YOU ARE NOT SCHEHERAZADE, NOR DO WE HAVE A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS IN WHICH TO HOLD PALAVER.”

“I don’t understand you. I know not this Scheherazade.”

“NO MATTER. SUSANNAH CAN FILL YOU IN, IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW. PERHAPS EVEN EDDIE. THE POINT, ROLAND, IS THAT I’LL NOT BE DRAWN ON BY THE PROMISE OF MORE RIDDLES. WE VIE FOR THE GOOSE. COME TOPEKA, IT SHALL BE AWARDED, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?”

Once more the diminished hand went up Roland’s cheek; once more Susannah heard the minute rasp of his fingers against the wiry stubble of his beard.

“We play for keeps. No one cries off.”

“CORRECT. NO ONE CRIES OFF.”

“All right, Blaine, we play for keeps and no one cries off. Here’s the next.”

“AS ALWAYS, I AWAIT IT WITH PLEASURE.”

Roland looked down at Jake. “Be ready with yours, Jake; I’m almost at the end of mine.”

Jake nodded.

Beneath them, the mono’s slo-trans engines continued to cycle up—that beat-beat-beat which Susannah did not so much hear as feel in the hinges of her jaw, the hollows of her temples, the pulse-points of her wrists.

It’s not going to happen unless there’s a stumper in Jake’s book, she thought. Roland can’t pose Blaine, and I think he knows it. I think he knew it an hour ago.

“Blaine, I occur once in a minute, twice in every moment, but not once in a hundred thousand years. What am I?”

And so the contest would continue, Susannah realized, Roland asking and Blaine answering with his increasingly terrible lack of hesitation, like an all-seeing, all-knowing god. Susannah sat with her cold hands clasped in her lap and watched the glowing dot draw nigh Topeka, the place where all rail service ended, the place where the path of their ka-tet would end in the clearing. She thought about the Hounds of the Falls, how they had jutted from the thundering white billows below the dark and starshot sky; she thought of their eyes.

Their electric-blue eyes.

CHAPTER III

THE FAIR-DAY GOOSE

1

Eddie Dean—who did not know Roland sometimes thought of him as ka-mai, ka’s fool—heard all of it and heard none of it; saw all of it and saw none of it. The only thing to really make an impression on him once the riddling began in earnest was the fire flashing from the stone eyes of the Hounds; as he raised his hand to shield his eyes from that chain-lightning glare, he thought of the Portal of the Beam in the Clearing of the Bear, how he had pressed his ear against it and heard the distant, dreamy rumble of machinery.

Watching the eyes of the Hounds light up, listening as Blaine drew that current into his batteries, powering up for his final plunge across Mid-World, Eddie had thought: Not all is silent in the halls of the dead and the rooms of ruin. Even now some of the stuff the Old Ones left behind still works. And that’s really the horror of it, wouldn’t you say? Yes. The exact horror of it.

Eddie had been with his friends for a short time after that, mentally as well as physically, but then he had fallen back into his thoughts again. Eddie’s zonin, Henry would have said. Let ’im be.

It was the image of Jake striking flint and steel that kept recurring; he would allow his mind to dwell on it for a second or two, like a bee alighting on some sweet flower, and then he would take off again. Because that memory wasn’t what he wanted; it was just the way in to what he wanted, another door like the ones on the beach of the Western Sea, or the one he had scraped in the dirt of the speaking ring before they had drawn Jake . . . only this door was in his mind. What he wanted was behind it; what he was doing was kind of . . . well . . . diddling the lock.

Zonin, in Henry-speak.

His brother had spent most of his time putting Eddie down—because Henry had been afraid of him and jealous of him, Eddie had finally come to realize—but he remembered one day when Henry had stunned him by saying something that was nice. Better than nice, actually; mind-boggling.

A bunch of them had been sitting in the alley behind Dahlie’s, some of them eating Popsicles and Hoodsie Rockets, some