'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 Little 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