Wizard and Glass

“We are very little creatures; all of us have different features. One of us in glass is set; one of us you’ll find in jet. Another you may see in tin, and a fourth is boxed within. If the fifth you should pursue, it can never fly from you. What are we?”

“A AND E AND I AND O AND U,” Blaine replied. “THE VOWELS OF THE HIGH SPEECH.” Still no hesitation, not so much as a whit. Only that voice, mocking and just about two steps from laughter; the voice of a cruel little boy watching bugs run around on top of a hot stove. “ALTHOUGH THAT PARTICULAR RIDDLE IS NOT FROM YOUR TEACHER, ROLAND OF GILEAD; I KNOW IT FROM JONATHAN SWIFT OF LONDON-A CITY IN THE WORLD YOUR FRIENDS COME FROM.”

“Thankee-sai,” Roland said, and his sai sounded like a sigh. “Your answer is true, Blaine, and undoubtedly what you believe of the riddle’s origins is true as well. That Cort knew of other worlds is something I long suspected. I think he may have held palaver with the ma

“I CARE NOT ABOUT THE MANNI, ROLAND OF GILEAD. THEY WERE ALWAYS A FOOLISH SECT. TRY ME WITH ANOTHER RIDDLE.”

“All right. What has-”

“HOLD, HOLD. THE FORCE OF THE BEAM GATHERS. LOOK NOT DIRECTLY AT THE HOUNDS, MY INTERESTING NEW FRIENDS! AND SHIELD YOUR EYES!”

Jake looked away from the colossal rock sculptures jutting from the falls, but didn’t get his hand up quite in time. With his peripheral vision he saw those featureless heads suddenly develop eyes of a fiercely glowing blue. Jagged tines of lightning leaped out of them and toward the mono. Then Jake was lying on the carpeted floor of the Barony Coach with the heels of his hands pasted against his closed eyes and the sound of Oy whining in one faintly ringing ear. Beyond Oy, he heard the crackle of electricity as it stormed around the mono.

When Jake opened his eyes again, the Falls of the Hounds were gone;

Blaine had opaqued the cabin. He could still hear the sound, though-a waterfall of electricity, a force somehow drawn from the Beam and shot out through the eyes of the stone heads. Blaine was feeding himself with it, somehow. When we go on, Jake thought, he’ll be ru

“Blaine,” Roland said. “How is the power of the Beam stored in that place? What makes it come from the eyes of yon stone temple-dogs? How do you use it?”

Silence from Blaine.

“And who carved them?” Eddie asked. “Was it the Great Old Ones? It wasn’t, was it? There were people even before them. Or… were they people?”

More silence from Blaine. And maybe that was good. Jake wasn’t sure how much he wanted to know about the Falls of the Hounds, or what went on beneath them. He had been in the dark of Roland’s world before, and had seen enough to believe that most of what was growing there was neither good nor safe.

“Better not to ask him,” the voice of Little Blaine drifted down from over their heads. “Safer.”

“Don’t ask him silly questions, he won’t play silly games,” Eddie said. That distant, dreaming look had come onto his face again, and when Susa

3

Roland sat down across from Jake and scrubbed his right hand slowly up the stubble on his right cheek, an unconscious gesture he seemed to make only when he was feeling tired or doubtful. “I’m ru

Jake looked back at him, startled. The gunslinger had posed fifty or more to the computer, and Jake supposed that was a lot to just yank out of your head with no preparation, but when you considered that riddling had been such a big deal in the place where Roland had grown up…

He seemed to read some of this on Jake’s face, for a small smile, lemon-bitter, touched the comers of his mouth, and he nodded as if the boy had spoken out loud. “I don’t understand, either. If you’d asked me yesterday or the day before, I would have told you that I had at least a thousand riddles stored up in the junkbin I keep at the back of my mind. Perhaps two thousand. But…”

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug, shook his head, rubbed his hand up his cheek again.

“It’s not like forgetting. It’s as if they were never there in the first place. What’s happening to the rest of the world is happening to me, I reckon.”

“You’re moving on,” Susa

“Yes, I fear so.” He looked at Jake, lips tight, eyes sharp. “Will you be ready with the riddles from your book when I call on you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. And take heart. We’re not finished yet.”

Outside, the dim crackle of electricity ceased.

“I HAVE FED MY BATTERIES AND ALL IS WELL,” Blaine a

“Marvelous,” Susa

“Luss!” Oy agreed, catching Susa

“I HAVE A NUMBER OF SWITCHING FUNCTIONS TO PERFORM. THESE WILL TAKE ABOUT FORTY MINUTES AND ARE LARGELY AUTOMATIC. WHILE THIS SWITCHOVER TAKES PLACE AND THE ACCOMPANYING CHECKLIST IS RUNNING, WE SHALL CONTINUE OUR CONTEST. I AM ENJOYING IT VERY MUCH.”

“It’s like when you have to switch over from electric to diesel on the train to Boston,” Eddie said. He still sounded as if he wasn’t quite with them. “At Hartford or New Haven or one of those other places where no one in their right fucking mind would want to live.”

“Eddie?” Susa

Roland touched her shoulder and shook his head.

“NEVER MIND EDDIE OF NEW YORK,” Blaine said in his expansive, gosh-but-this-is-fun voice.

“That’s right,” Eddie said. “Never mind Eddie of New York.”

“HE KNOWS NO GOOD RIDDLES. BUT YOU KNOW MANY, ROLAND OF GILEAD. TRY ME WITH ANOTHER.”

And, as Roland did just that, Jake thought of his Final Essay. Blaine is a pain, he had written there. Blaine is a pain and that is the truth. It was the truth, all right.

The stone truth.

A little less than an hour later, Blaine the Mono began to move again.

4

Susa

Roland was also slowing down, going deeper and deeper into that mental junkbin of his to find riddles. Yet he did find them, and he refused to give up. As always. Ever since he had begun teaching her to shoot, Susa

“Blaine, where may you find roads without carts, forests without trees, cities without houses?”

“ON A MAP.”

“You say true, sai. Next. I have a hundred legs but ca