Everything's Eventual

   "Do I?" She laughed angrily. "Oh, la! And if I whipped your little sweetheart hard enough and long enough—until the blood jumped out her back like drops of sweat, let us say—should I not whip a different name out of her? Or didn't ye trust her with it, during your little talk?"

   "Touch her and I'll kill you."

   She laughed again. Her face shimmered; her firm mouth turned into something that looked like a dying jellyfish. "Speak not of killing to us, cully; lest we speak of it to you."

   "Sister, if you and Jenna don't see eye to eye, why not release her from her vows and let her go her course?"

   "Such as us can never be released from our vows, nor be let go. Her mother tried and then came back, her dying and the girl sick. Why, it was we nursed Jenna back to health after her mother was nothing but dirt in the breeze that blows out toward End-World, and how little she thanks us! Besides, she bears the Dark Bells, the sigul of our sisterhood. Of our ka-tet. Now eat—yer belly says ye're hungry!"

   Sister Louise offered the bowl, but her eyes kept drifting to the shape the medallion made under the breast of his bed-dress. Don't like it, do you? Roland thought, and then remembered Louise by candlelight, the freighter's blood on her chin, her ancient eyes eager as she leaned forward to lick his spend from Sister Mary's hand.

   He turned his head aside. "I want nothing."

   "But ye're hungry!" Louise protested. "If'ee don't eat, James, how will'ee get'ee strength back?"

   "Send Jenna. I'll eat what she brings."

   Sister Mary's frown was black. "Ye'll see her no more. She's been released from Thoughtful House only on her solemn promise to double her time of meditation . . . and to stay out of infirmary. Now eat, James, or whoever ye are. Take what's in the soup, or we'll cut ye with knives and rub it in with flannel poultices. Either way, makes no difference to us. Does it, Louise?"

   "Nar," Louise said. She still held out the bowl. Steam rose from it, and the good smell of chicken.

   "But it might make a difference to you." Sister Mary grinned humorlessly, baring her unnaturally large teeth. "Flowing blood's risky around here. The doctors don't like it. It stirs them up."

   It wasn't just the bugs that were stirred up at the sight of blood, and Roland knew it. He also knew he had no choice in the matter of the soup. He took the bowl from Louise and ate slowly. He would have given much to wipe out the look of satisfaction he saw on Sister Mary's face.

   "Good," she said after he had handed the bowl back and she had peered inside to make sure it was completely empty. His hand thumped back into the sling which had been rigged for it, already too heavy to hold up. He could feel the world drawing away again.

   Sister Mary leaned forward, the billowing top of her habit touching the skin of his left shoulder. He could smell her, an aroma both ripe and dry, and would have gagged if he'd had the strength.

   "Have that foul gold thing off ye when yer strength comes back a little—put it in the pissoir under the bed. Where it belongs. For to be even this close to where it lies hurts my head and makes my throat close."

   Speaking with enormous effort, Roland said, "If you want it, take it. How can I stop you, you bitch?"

   Once more her frown turned her face into something like a thunderhead. He thought she would have slapped him, if she had dared touch him so close to where the medallion lay. Her ability to touch seemed to end above his waist, however.

   "I think you had better consider the matter a little more fully," she said. "I can still have Jenna whipped, if I like. She bears the Dark Bells, but I am the Big Sister. Consider that very well."

   She left. Sister Louise followed, casting one look—a strange combination of fright and lust—back over her shoulder.

   Roland thought, I must get out of here—I must.

   Instead, he drifted back to that dark place which wasn't quite sleep. Or perhaps he did sleep, at least for awhile; perhaps he dreamed. Fingers once more caressed his fingers, and lips first kissed his ear and then whispered into it: "Look beneath your pillow, Roland . . . but let no one know I was here."

   At some point after this, Roland opened his eyes again, halfexpecting to see Sister Jenna's pretty young face hovering above him. And that comma of dark hair once more poking out from beneath her wimple. There was no one. The swags of silk overhead were at their brightest, and although it was impossible to tell the hours in here with any real accuracy, Roland guessed it to be around noon. Perhaps three hours since his second bowl of the Sisters' soup.

   Beside him, John Norman still slept, his breath whistling out in faint, nasal snores.