Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,295

stairs at the end of the hall, Olive nodded to Maria and they crossed the room. Maria threw the bolts; Olive pulled the door open. Susan came out at once, looking from one to the other, then smiling tentatively. Maria gasped at the sight of her mistress’s swelled face and the blood crusted around her nose.

Susan took Maria’s hand before the maid could touch her face and squeezed her fingers gently. “Do ye think Thorin would want me now?” she asked, and then seemed to realize who her other rescuer was. “Olive . . . sai Thorin . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be cruel. But ye must believe that Roland, him ye know as Will Dearborn, would never—”

“I know it well,” Olive said, “and there’s no time for this now. Come on.”

She and Maria led Susan out of the kitchen, away from the stairs ascending to the main house and toward the storage rooms at the far north end of the lower level. In the drygoods storage room, Olive told the two of them to wait. She was gone for perhaps five minutes, but to Susan and Maria it seemed an eternity.

When she came back, Olive was wearing a wildly colored serape much too big for her—it might have been her husband’s, but Susan thought it looked too big for the late Mayor, as well. Olive had tucked a piece of it into the side of her jeans to keep from stumbling over it. Slung over her arm like blankets, she had two more, both smaller and lighter. “Put these on,” she said. “It’s going to be cold.”

Leaving the drygoods store, they went down a narrow servants’ passageway toward the back courtyard. There, if they were fortunate (and if Miguel was still unconscious), Sheemie would be waiting for them with mounts. Olive hoped with all her heart that they would be fortunate. She wanted Susan safely away from Hambry before the sun went down.

And before the moon rose.

10

“Susan’s been taken prisoner,” Roland told the others as they rode west toward Hanging Rock. “That’s the first thing I saw in the glass.”

He spoke with such an air of absence that Cuthbert almost reined up. This wasn’t the ardent lover of the last few months. It was as if Roland had found a dream to ride through the pink air within the ball, and part of him rode it still. Or is it riding him? Cuthbert wondered.

“What?” Alain asked. “Susan taken? How? By whom? Is she all right?”

“Taken by Jonas. He hurt her some, but not too badly. She’ll heal . . . and she’ll live. I’d turn around in a second if I thought her life was in any real danger.”

Ahead of them, appearing and disappearing in the dust like a mirage, was Hanging Rock. Cuthbert could see the sunlight pricking hazy sunstars on the tankers, and he could see men. A lot of them. A lot of horses, as well. He patted the neck of his own mount, then glanced across to make sure Alain had Lengyll’s machine-gun. He did. Cuthbert reached around to the small of his back, making sure of the slingshot. It was there. Also his deerskin ammunition bag, which now contained a number of the big-bangers Sheemie had stolen as well as steel shot.

He’s using every ounce of his will to keep from going back, anyway, Cuthbert thought. He found the realization comforting—sometimes Roland scared him. There was something in him that went beyond steel. Something like madness. If it was there, you were glad to have it on your side . . . but often enough you wished it wasn’t there at all. On anybody’s side.

“Where is she?” Alain asked.

“Reynolds took her back to Seafront. She’s locked in the pantry . . . or was locked there. I can’t say which, exactly, because . . .” Roland paused, thinking. “The ball sees far, but sometimes it sees more. Sometimes it sees a future that’s already happening.”

“How can the future already be happening?” Alain asked.

“I don’t know, and I don’t think it was always that way. I think it’s more to do with the world than Maerlyn’s Rainbow. Time is strange now. We know that, don’t we? How things sometimes seem to . . . slip. It’s almost as if there’s a thinny everywhere, breaking things down. But Susan’s safe. I know that, and that’s enough for me. Sheemie is going to help her . . . or is helping her. Somehow