hidden beneath the breast of his bed-dress. He said no more, not
wanting to weaken the implied threat by reminding her that the
man who made it was unarmed, next to naked, and hung in the air
because his back couldn't yet bear the weight of his body.
'Where's Sister Jenna?' he asked.
'Oooo!' Sister Coquina said, raising her eyebrows. 'We like her, do
we? She makes our heart go . . .' She put her hand against the rose
on her breast and fluttered it rapidly.
'Not at all, not at all,' Roland said, 'but she was kind. I doubt she
would have teased me with a spoon, as some would.'
Sister Coquina's smile faded. She looked both angry and worried.
'Say nothing of that to Mary, if she comes by later. Ye might get
me in trouble.'
'Should I care?'
'I might get back at one who caused me trouble by causing little
Jenna trouble,' Sister Coquina said. 'She's in Big Sister's black
books, just now, anyway. Sister Mary doesn't care for the way
Jenna spoke to her about ye ... nor does she like it that Jenna came
back to us wearing the Dark Bells.'
This was no sooner out of her mouth before Sister Coquina put her
hand over that frequently imprudent organ, as if realizing she had
said too much.
Roland, intrigued by what she'd said but not liking to show it just
now, only replied: 'I'll keep my mouth shut about you, if you keep
your mouth shut to Sister Mary about Jenna.'
Coquina looked relieved. 'Aye, that's a bargain.' She leaned
forward confidingly. 'She's in Thoughtful House. That's the little
cave in the hillside where we have to go and meditate when Big
Sister decides we've been bad. She'll have to stay and consider her
impudence until Mary lets her out.' She paused, then said abruptly:
'Who's this beside ye? Do ye know?'
Roland turned his head and saw that the young man was awake,
and had been listening. His eyes were as dark as Jenna's.
'Know him?' Roland asked, with what he hoped was the right touch
of scorn. 'Should I not know my own brother?'
'Is he, now, and him so young and you so old?' Another of the
sisters materialized out of the darkness: Sister Tamra, who had
called herself one-and-twenty. In the moment before she reached
Roland's bed, her face was that of a hag who will never see eighty
again ... or ninety. Then it shimmered and was once more the
plump, healthy countenance of a thirty-year-old matron. Except for
the eyes. They remained yellowish in the corneas, gummy in the
corners, and watchful.
'He's the youngest, I the eldest,' Roland said. 'Betwixt us are seven
others, and twenty years of our parents' lives.'
'How sweet! And if he's yer brother, then ye'll know his name,
won't ye? Know it very well.'
Before the gunslinger could flounder, the young man said: 'They
think you've forgotten such a simple hook as John Norman. What
culleens they be, eh, Jimmy?'
Coquina and Tamra looked at the pale boy in the bed next to
Roland's, clearly angry ... and clearly trumped. For the time being,
at least.
'You've fed him your muck,' the boy (whose medallion
undoubtedly proclaimed him John, Loved of Family, Loved of
God) said `Why don't you go, and let us have a natter?'
'Well!' Sister Coquina huffed. 'I like the gratitude around here, so I
do!'
'I'm grateful for what's given me,' Norman responded, looking at
her steadily, 'but not for what folk would take away.'
Tamra snorted through her nose, turned violently enough for her
swirling dress to push a draught of air into Roland's face, and then
took her leave. Coquina stayed a moment.
'Be discreet, and mayhap someone ye like better than ye like me
will get out of hack in the morning, instead of a week from
tonight.'
Without waiting for a reply, she turned and followed Sister Tamra.
Roland and John Norman waited until they were both gone, and
then Norman turned to Roland and spoke in a low voice. 'My
brother. Dead?'
Roland nodded. 'The medallion I took in case I should meet with
any of his people. It rightly belongs to you. I'm sorry for your loss.'
'Thankee-sai. ' John Norman's lower lip trembled, then firmed. 'I
knew the green men did for him, although these old biddies
wouldn't tell me for sure. They did for plenty, and cotched the rest.'
'Perhaps the Sisters didn't know for sure.'
'They knew. Don't you doubt it. They don't say much, but they
know plenty. The only one any different is Jenna. That's who the
old battle-axe meant when she said "your friend". Aye?'
Roland nodded. 'And she said something about the Dark Bells. I'd
know more of that, if would were could.'
'She's something special, Jenna is. More like a princess - someone
whose place is made by bloodline and can't be refused - than like
the other Sisters. I lie here and look like I'm asleep - it's safer, I
think - but I've heard 'em talking. Jenna's just come back among
'em recently, and those Dark Bells mean something special ... but
Mary's still the one who swings the weight. I think the Dark Bells
are only ceremonial, like the rings the old Barons used to hand
down from father to son. Was it she who put Jimmy's medal
around your neck?'
'Yes.'
'Don't take it off, whatever you do.' His face was strained, grim. 'I
don't know if it's the gold or the God, but they don't like to get too
close. I think that's the only reason I'm still here.' Now his voice
dropped all the way to a whisper. 'They ain't human.'
'Well, perhaps a bit fey and magical, but-`
'No!' With what was clearly an effort, the boy got up on one elbow.
He looked at Roland earnestly. 'You're thinking about hubber-
women, or witches. These ain't hubbers, nor witches, either. They
ain't human!'
'Then what are they?'
'Don't know.'
'How came you here, John?'
Speaking in a low voice, John Norman told Roland what he knew
of what had happened to him. He, his brother, and four other
young men who were quick and owned good horses had been hired
as scouts, riding drogue-and-forward, protecting a long-haul
caravan of seven freightwagons taking goods - seeds, food, tools,
mail, and four ordered brides - to an unincorporated township
called Tejuas some two hundred miles further west of Eluria. The
scouts rode fore and aft of the goods-train in turn and turn about
fashion; one brother rode with each party because, Norman
explained, when they were together they fought like ... well ...
'Like brothers,' Roland suggested.
John Norman managed a brief, pained smile. 'Aye,' he said.
The trio of which John was a part had been riding drogue, about
two miles behind the freight-wagons, when the green mutants had
sprung an ambush in Eluria.
'How many wagons did you see when you got there?' he asked
Roland. 'Only one. Overturned.'
'How many bodies?'
'Only your brother's.'
John Norman nodded grimly. 'They wo
uldn't take him because of
the medallion, I think.'
'The muties?'
'The Sisters. The muties care nothing for gold or God. These
bitches, though . . .' He looked into the dark, which was now
almost complete. Roland felt lethargy creeping over him again, but
it wasn't until later that he realized the soup had been drugged.
'The other wagons?' Roland asked. 'The ones not overturned?'
'The muties would have taken them, and the goods, as well,'
Norman said. 'They don't care for gold or God; the Sisters don't
care for goods. Like as not they have their own foodstuffs,
something I'd as soon not think of. Nasty stuff ... like those bugs.'
He and the other drogue riders galloped into Eluria, but the fight
was over by the time they got there. Men had been lying about,
some dead but many more still alive. At least two of the ordered
brides had still been alive, as well. Survivors able to walk were
being herded together by the,,' green folk - John Norman
remembered the one in the bowler hat very well, and the woman in
the ragged red vest.
Norman and the other two had tried to fight. He had seen one of hi
pards gutshot by an arrow, and then he saw no more - someone had
cracked him over the head from behind, and the lights had gone
out.
Roland wondered if the ambusher had cried 'Booh!' before he had
struck, but didn't ask.
'When I woke up again, I was here,' Norman said. 'I saw that some
of the others - most of them - had those cursed bugs on them.'
'Others?' Roland looked at the empty beds. In the growing
darkness, they glimmered like white islands. 'How many were
brought here?'
'At least twenty. They healed ... the bugs healed 'em ... and then,
one by one, they disappeared. You'd go to sleep, and when you
woke up there'd, be one more empty bed. One by one they went,
until only me and that, one down yonder was left.'
He looked at Roland solemnly.
'And now you.'
'Norman,' Roland's head was swimming. `I-`
'I reckon I know what's wrong with you,' Norman said. He seemed
to speak from far away . . . perhaps from all the way around the
curve of I the earth. 'It's the soup. But a man has to eat. A woman,
too. If she's a natural woman, anyway. These ones ain't natural.
Even Sister Jenna's not natural. Nice don't mean natural.' Further
and further away. 'And she'll be like them in the end. Mark me
well.'
'Can't move.' Saying even that required a huge effort. It was like
moving boulders.
'No.' Norman suddenly laughed. It was a shocking sound, and
echoed in the growing blackness which filled Roland's head. 'It
ain't just sleepmedicine they put in their soup; it's can't-move-
medicine, too. There's nothing much wrong with me, brother ... so
why do you think I'm still here?'
Norman was now speaking not from around the curve of the earth
but perhaps from the moon. He said: 'I don't think either of us is
ever going to see the sun shining on a flat piece of ground again.'
You're wrong about that, Roland tried to reply, and more in that
vein, as well, but nothing came out. He sailed around to the black
side of the moon, losing all his words in the void he found there.
Yet he never quite lost awareness of himself. Perhaps the dose of
'medicine' in Sister Coquina's soup had been badly calculated, or
perhaps it was just that they had never had a gunslinger to work
their mischief on, and did not know they had one now.
Except, of course, for Sister Jenna - she knew.
At some point in the night, whispering, giggling voices and lightly
chiming bells brought him back from the darkness where he had
been biding, not quite asleep or unconscious. Around him, so
constant he now barely heard it, were the singing 'doctors'.
Roland opened his eyes. He saw pale and chancy light dancing in
the black air. The giggles and whispers were closer. Roland tried to
turn his head and at first couldn't. He rested, gathered his will into
a hard blue ball, and tried again. This time his head did turn. Only
a little, but a little was enough.
It was five of the Little Sisters - Mary, Louise, Tamra, Coquina,
Michela. They came up the long aisle of the black infirmary,
laughing together like children out on a prank, carrying long tapers
in silver holders, the bells lining the forehead-bands of their
wimples chiming little silver runs of sound. They gathered about
the bed of the bearded man. From within their circle, candleglow
rose in a shimmery column that died before it got halfway to the
silken ceiling.
Sister Mary spoke briefly. Roland recognized her voice, but not the
words - it was neither low speech nor the High, but some other
language entirely. One phrase stood out - can de lach, mi him en
tow - and he had no idea what it might mean.
He realized that now he could hear only the tinkle of bells - the
doctor-bugs had stilled.
'Ras me! On! On!' Sister Mary cried in a harsh, powerful voice.
The candles went out. The light which had shone through the
wings of their wimples as they gathered around the bearded man's
bed vanished, and all was darkness once more.
Roland waited for what might happen next, his skin cold. He tried
to flex his hands and feet, and could not. He had been able to move
his head perhaps fifteen degrees; otherwise he was as paralysed as
a fly neatly wrapped up and hung in a spider's web.
The low jingling of bells in the black ... and then sucking sounds.
As soon as he heard them, Roland knew he'd been waiting for
them. Some part of him had known what the Little Sisters of Eluria
were, all along.
If Roland could have raised his hands, he would have put them to
his ears to block those sounds out. As it was, he could only lie still,
listening and waiting for them to stop.
For a long time - for ever, it seemed - they did not. The women
slurped and grunted like pigs snuffling half-liquefied feed out of a
trough. There was even one resounding belch, followed by more
whispered giggles (these, ended when Sister Mary uttered a single
curt word - 'Hais!'). And once there was a low, moaning cry - from
the bearded man, Roland was quite sure. If so, it was his last on
this side of the clearing.
In time, the sound of their feeding began to taper off. As it did, the
bugs began to sing again - first hesitantly, then with more
confidence. The whispering and giggling recommenced. The
candles were re-lit. Roland was by now lying with his head turned
in the other direction. He didn't want them to know what he'd seen,
but that wasn't all; he had no urge to see more on any account. He
had seen and heard enough.
But the giggles and whispers now came his way. Roland closed his
eyes concentrating on the medallion which lay against his chest. I
don't know if it's the gold or the God, but they don't like to get too
close, John Norman had said. It was good to have such a thing to
remember as the Litt
le Sister drew nigh, gossiping and whispering
in their strange other tongue, but the medallion seemed a thin
protection in the dark.
Faintly, at a great distance, Roland heard the cross-dog barking.
As the Sisters circled him, the gunslinger realized he could smell
them. It was a low, unpleasant odour, like spoiled meat. And what
else would they smell of, such as these?
'Such a pretty man it is.' Sister Mary. She spoke in a low,
meditative tone.
'But such an ugly sigil it wears.' Sister Tamra.
'We'll have it off him!' Sister Louise.
'And then we shall have kisses!' Sister Coquina.
'Kisses for all!' exclaimed Sister Michela, with such fervent
enthusiasm that they all laughed.
Roland discovered that not all of him was paralysed, after all. Part
of him had, in fact, arisen from its sleep at the sound of their voices
and now stood tall. A hand reached beneath the bed-dress he wore,
touched that stiffened member, encircled it, caressed it. He lay in
silent horror, feigning sleep, as wet warmth almost immediately
spilled from him. The hand remained where it was for a moment,
the thumb rubbing up and down the wilting shaft. Then it let him
go and rose a little higher. Found the wetness pooled on his lower
belly. Giggles, soft as wind. Chiming bells. Roland opened his
eyes the tiniest crack and looked up at the ancient faces laughing
down at him in the light of their candles - glittering eyes, yellow
cheeks, hanging teeth that jutted over lower lips. Sister Michela
and sister Louise appeared to have grown goatees, but of course
that wasn't the darkness of hair but of the bearded man's blood.
Mary is hand was cupped. She passed it from Sister to Sister; each
licked from her palm in the candlelight.
Roland closed his eyes all the way and waited for them to be gone.
Eventually they were.
I'll never sleep again, he thought, and was five minutes later lost to
himself and the world.
V. Sister Mary. A Message. A Visit from Ralph.
Norman's Fate. Sister Mary Again.
When Roland awoke, it was full daylight, the silk roof overhead a
bright white and billowing in a mild breeze. The doctor-bugs were
singing contentedly. Beside him on his left, Norman was heavily
asleep with his head turned so far to one side that his stubbly cheek
rested on his shoulder.
Roland and John Norman were the only ones here. Further down
The Collective Page 23
