Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,314

said.

Roland’s face worked, and for a moment Eddie was sure he was going to lose it. A long time between hugs, maybe. Mighty long. Eddie had to look away for a moment. Kansas in the morning, he told himself. A sight you never expected to see. Dig on that for awhile, and let the man be.

When he looked back, Roland had it together again. Jake was sitting beside him, and Oy had his long snout on one of the gunslinger’s boots. Roland had begun to eat his burrito. Slowly, and without much relish . . . but he was eating.

A cold hand—Susannah’s—crept into Eddie’s. He took it and folded his fingers over it.

“One night,” she marvelled.

“On our body-clocks, at least,” Eddie said. “In our heads . . .”

“Who knows?” Roland agreed. “But storytelling always changes time. At least it does in my world.” He smiled. It was unexpected, as always, and as always, it transformed his face into something nearly beautiful. Looking at that, Eddie mused, you could see how a girl might have fallen in love with Roland, once upon a time. Back when he had been long and going on tall but maybe not so ugly; back when the Tower hadn’t yet got its best hold on him.

“I think it’s that way in all worlds, sugar,” Susannah said. “Could I ask you a couple of questions, before we get rolling?”

“If you like.”

“What happened to you? How long were you . . . gone?”

“I was certainly gone, you’re right about that. I was travelling. Wandering. Not in Maerlyn’s Rainbow, exactly . . . I don’t think I ever would have returned from there, if I’d gone into it while I was still . . . sick . . . but everyone has a wizard’s glass, of course. Here.” He tapped his forehead gravely, just above the space between his eyebrows. “That’s where I went. That’s where I travelled while my friends travelled east with me. I got better there, little by little. I held onto the ball, and I travelled inside my head, and I got better. But the glass never glowed for me until the very end . . . when the battlements of the castle and the towers of the city were actually in sight. If it had awakened earlier . . .”

He shrugged.

“If it had awakened before I’d started to get some of my strength of mind back, I don’t think I’d be here now. Because any world—even a pink one with a glass sky—would have been preferable to one where there was no Susan. I suppose the force that gives the glass its life knew that . . . and waited.”

“But when it did glow for you again, it told you the rest,” Jake said. “It must have. It told you the parts that you weren’t there to see.”

“Yes. I know as much of the story as I do because of what I saw in the ball.”

“You told us once that John Farson wanted your head on a pole,” Eddie said. “Because you stole something from him. Something he held dear. It was the glass ball, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. He was more than furious when he found out. He was insane with rage. In your parlance, Eddie, he ‘went nuclear.’ ”

“How many more times did it glow for you?” Susannah asked.

“And what happened to it?” Jake added.

“I saw in it three times after we left Mejis Barony,” Roland said. “The first was on the night before we came home to Gilead. That was when I travelled in it the longest, and it showed me what I’ve told you. A few things I’ve only guessed at, but most I was shown. It showed me these things not to teach or enlighten, but to hurt and wound. The remaining pieces of the Wizard’s Rainbow are all evil things. Hurt enlivens them, somehow. It waited until my mind was strong enough to understand and withstand . . . and then it showed me all the things I missed in my stupid adolescent complacency. My lovesick daze. My prideful, murderous conceit.”

“Roland, don’t,” Susannah said. “Don’t let it hurt you still.”

“But it does. It always will. Never mind. It doesn’t matter now; that tale is told.

“The second time I saw into the glass—went into the glass—was three days after I came home. My mother wasn’t there, although she was due that evening. She had gone into Debaria—a kind of retreat for women—to wait and pray for my return. Nor was Marten