Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,62

only the one in the middle. She took in the jeans and boots he wore, the flat-brimmed hat that hid the upper half of his face, the easy way he sat his horse, and her first alarmed thought was Gunslinger! Come east from the Inner Baronies, aye, perhaps from Gilead itself! But she did not have to see the upper half of the rider’s face to know he was little more than a child, and there were no guns on his hips. Yet she didn’t think the youth came unarmed. If only she could see a little better . . .

She brought the glass almost to the tip of her nose and whispered, “Closer, lovie! Closer still!”

She didn’t know what to expect—nothing at all seemed most likely—but within the dark circle of the glass, the figure did come closer. Swam closer, almost, like a horse and rider underwater, and she saw there was a quiver of arrows on his back. Before him, on the pommel of his saddle, was not a skull but a shortbow. And to the right side of the saddle, where a gunslinger might have carried a rifle in a scabbard, there was the feather-fluffed shaft of a lance. He was not one of the Old People, his face had none of that look . . . yet she did not think he was of the Outer Arc, either.

“But who are ye, cully?” she breathed. “And how shall I know ye? Ye’ve got yer hat pulled down so far I can’t see your God-pounding eyes, so ye do! By yer horse, mayhap . . . or p’raps by yer . . . get away, Musty! Why do yer trouble me so? Arrrr!”

The cat had come back from its lookout point and was twining back and forth between her swollen old ankles, waowing up at her in a voice even more rusty than its purr. When the old woman kicked out at him, Musty dodged agilely away . . . then immediately came back and started in again, looking up at her with moonstruck eyes and making those soft yowls.

Rhea kicked out at it again, this one just as ineffectual as the first one, then looked into the glass once more. The horse and its interesting young rider were gone. The rose light was gone, as well. It was now just a dead glass ball she held, its only light a reflection borrowed from the moon.

The wind gusted, pressing her dress against the ruination that was her body. Musty, undaunted by the feeble kicks of his mistress, darted forward and began to twine about her ankles again, crying up at her the whole time.

“There, do ye see what you’ve done, ye nasty bag of fleas and disease? The light’s gone out of it, gone out just when I—”

Then she heard a sound from the cart track which led up to her hut, and understood why Musty had been acting out. It was singing she heard. It was the girl she heard. The girl was early.

Grimacing horribly—she loathed being caught by surprise, and the little miss down there would pay for doing it—she bent and put the glass back in its box. The inside was lined with padded silk, and the ball fit as neatly as the breakfast egg in His Lordship’s cup. And still from down the hill (the cursed wind was wrong or she would have heard it sooner), the sound of the girl singing, now closer than ever:

“Love, o love, o careless love,

Can’t you see what careless love has done?”

“I’ll give’ee careless love, ye virgin bitch,” the old woman said. She could smell the sour reek of sweat from under her arms, but that other moisture had dried up again. “I’ll give ye payday for walking in early on old Rhea, so I will!”

She passed her fingers over the lock on the front of the box, but it wouldn’t fasten. She supposed she had been overeager to have it open, and had broken something inside it when she used the touch. The eye and the motto seemed to mock her: I SEE WHO OPENS ME. It could be put right, and in a jiffy, but right now even a jiffy was more than she had.

“Pestering cunt!” she whined, lifting her head briefly toward the approaching voice (almost here now, by the gods, and forty-five minutes before her time!). Then she closed the lid of the box. It gave her a pang to do it, because the