Roland had seen plenty of huts like it-the three of them had passed any number on their way here from Gilead-but never one that felt as powerfully wrong as this. He saw nothing untoward, yet there was a feeling, too strong to be denied, of a presence. One that watched and waited.
Cuthbert felt it, too. “Do we have to go closer?” lie swallowed. “Do we have to go in? Because… Roland, the door is open. Do you see?”
He saw. As if she expected them. As if she was inviting them in, wanting them to sit down with her to some unspeakable breakfast.
“Stay here.” Roland gigged Rusher forward.
“No! I’m coming!”
“No, cover my back. If I need to go inside, I’ll call you to join me… but if I need to go inside, the old woman who lives here will breathe no more. As you said, that might be for the best.”
At every slow step Rusher took, the feeling of wrongness grew in Roland’s heart and mind. There was a stench to the place, a smell like rotten meat and hot putrefied tomatoes. It came from the hut, he supposed, but it also seemed to come wafting out of the very ground. And at every step, the whine of the thinny seemed louder, as if the atmosphere of this place somehow magnified it.
Susan came up here alone, and in the dark, he thought. Gods, I’m not sure I could have come up here in the dark with my friends for company.
He stopped beneath the tree, looking through the open door twenty paces away. He saw what could have been a kitchen; the legs of a table, the back of a chair, a filthy hearthstone. No sign of the lady of the house. But she was there. Roland could feel her eyes crawling on him like loathsome bugs.
I can’t see her because she’s used her art to make herself dim… but she’s there.
And just perhaps he did see her. The air had a strange shimmer just inside the door to the right, as if it had been heated. Roland had been told that you could see someone who was dim by turning your head and looking from the comer of your eye. He did that now.
“Roland?” Cuthbert called from behind him.
“Fine so far, Bert.” Barely paying attention to the words he was saying, because… yes! That shimmer was clearer now, and it had almost the shape of a woman. It could be his imagination, of course, but…
But at that moment, as if understanding he’d seen her, the shimmer moved farther back into the shadows. Roland glimpsed the swinging hem of an old black dress, there and then gone.
No matter. He had not come to see her but only to give her her single warning… which was one more than any of their fathers would have given her, no doubt.
“Rhea!” His voice rolled in the harsh tones of old, stem and commanding. Two yellow leaves fell from the tree, as if shivered loose by that voice, and one fell in his black hair. From the hut came only a waiting, listening silence… and then the discordant, jeering yowl of a cat.
“Rhea, daughter of none! I’ve brought something back to you, woman! Something you must have lost!” From his shirt he took the folded letter and tossed it to the stony ground. “Today I’ve been your friend, Rhea-if this had gone where you had intended it to go, you would have paid with your life.”
He paused. Another leaf drifted down from the tree. This one landed in Pusher’s mane.
“Hear me well, Rhea, daughter of none, and understand me well. I have come here under the name of Will Dearborn, but Dearborn is not my name and it is the Affiliation I serve. More, ’tis all which lies behind the Affiliation-'tis the power of the White. You have crossed the way of our ka, and I warn you only this once: do not cross it again. Do you understand?”
Only that waiting silence.
“Do not touch a single hair on the head of the boy who carried your had-natured mischief hence, or you’ll die. Speak not another word of those things you know or think you know to anyone-not to Cordelia Delgado, nor to Jonas, nor to Rimer, nor to Thorin-or you’ll die. Keep your peace and we will keep ours. Break it, and we’ll still you. Do you understand?”
More silence. Dirty windows peering at him like eyes. A puff of breeze sent more leaves showering down around him, and caused the stuffy-guy to creak nastily on his pole. Roland thought briefly of the cook, Hax, twisting at the end of his rope.
“Do you understand?”
No reply. Not even a shimmer could he see through the open door now.
“Very well,” Roland said. “Silence gives consent.” He gigged his horse around. As he did, his head came up a little, and he saw something green shift above him among the yellow leaves. There was a low hissing sound.
“Roland look out! Snake!” Cuthbert screamed, but before the second word had left his mouth, Roland had drawn one of his guns.
He fell sideways in the saddle, holding with his left leg and heel as Rusher jigged and pranced. He fired three times, the thunder of the big gun smashing through the still air and then rolling back from the nearby hills. With each shot the snake flipped upward again, its blood dotting red across a background of blue sky and yellow leaves. The last bullet tore off its head, and when the snake fell for good, it hit the ground in two pieces. From within the hut came a wail of grief and rage so awful that Roland’s spine turned to a cord of ice.
“You bastard!” screamed a woman’s voice from the shadows. “Oh, you murdering cull! My friend! My friend!”
“If it was your friend, you oughtn’t to have set it on me,” Roland said. “Remember, Rhea, daughter of none.”
The voice uttered one more shriek and fell silent. Roland rode back to Cuthbert, bolstering his gun. Bert’s eyes were round and amazed. “Roland, what shooting! Gods, what shooting!” “Let’s get out of here.”
“But we still don’t know how she knew!”
“Do you think she’d tell?” There was a small but minute shake in Roland’s voice. The way the snake had come out of the tree like that, right at him… he could still barely believe he wasn’t dead. Thank gods for his hand, which had taken matters over.
“We could make her talk,” Cuthbert said, but Roland could tell from his voice that Bert had no taste for such. Maybe later, maybe after years of trail-riding and gunslinging, but now he had no more stomach for torture than for killing outright.
“Even if we could, we couldn’t make her tell the truth. Such as her lies as other folks breathe. If we’ve convinced her to keep quiet, we’ve done enough for today. Come on. I hate this place.”
18
As they rode back toward town, Roland said: “We’ve got to meet.”
“The four of us. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I want to tell everything I know and surmise. I want to tell you my plan, such as it is. What we’ve been waiting for.”
“That would be very good indeed.”
“Susan can help us.” Roland seemed to be speaking to himself. Cuthbert was amused to see that the lone, crown like leaf was still caught in his dark hair. “Susan was meant to help us. Why didn’t I see that?”
“Because love is blind,” Cuthbert said. He snorted laughter and clapped Roland on the shoulder. “Love is blind, old son.”
19
When she was sure the boys were gone, Rhea crept out of her door and into the hateful sunshine. She hobbled across to the tree and fell on her knees by the tattered length of her snake, weeping loudly.
“Ermot, Ermot!” she cried. “See what’s become of ye!”
There was his head, the mouth frozen open, the double fangs still dripping poison-clear drops that shone like prisms in the day’s strengthening light. The glazing eyes glared. She picked Ermot up, kissed the scaly mouth, licked the last of the venom from the exposed needles, crooning and weeping all the while.
Next she picked up the long and tattered body with her other hand, moaning at the holes which had been torn into Ermot’s satiny hide; the holes and the ripped red flesh beneath. Twice she put the head against the body and spoke incantations, but nothing happened. Of course not. Ermot had gone beyond the aid of her spells. Poor Ermot.