Wizard and Glass

The glass over the route-map blew out. A moment later, the route-map itself exploded from its socket, revealing twinkling lights and a maze of circuit-boards behind it. The lights pulsed in time to the drums. Suddenly blue fire flashed out, sizzling the surface around the hole in the wall where the map had been, scorching it black. From deeper within that wall, toward Blaine’s blunt, bullet-shaped snout, came a thick grinding noise.

“It crossed the road because it was stapled to the chicken, you dopey fuck!” Eddie yelled. He got to his feet and started to walk toward the smoking hole where the route-map had been. Susa

“What’s the difference between a truckload of bowling balls and a truckload of dead woodchucks?” Eddie raved. “You can’t unload a truck-load of bowling balls with a pitchfork!”

A terrible shriek of mingled anger and agony issued from the hole where the route-map had been. It was followed by a gust of blue fire, as if somewhere forward of Barony Coach an electric dragon had exhaled violently. Jake called a warning, but Eddie didn’t need it; his reflexes had been replaced with razor-blades. He ducked, and the burst of electricity went over his right shoulder, making the hair on that side of his neck stand up. He drew the gun he wore-a heavy.45 with a worn sandalwood grip, one of two revolvers which Roland had brought out of Mid-World’s ruin. He kept walking as he bore down on the front of the coach… and of course he kept talking. As Roland had said, Eddie would die talking. As his old friend Cuthbert had done. Eddie could think of many worse ways to go, and only one better.

“Say, Blaine, you ugly, sadistic fuck! Since we’re talking riddles, what is the greatest riddle of the Orient? Many men smoke but Fu Manchu! Get it? No? So solly, Cholly! How about this one? Why’d the woman name her son Seven and a Half? Because she drew his name out of a hat!”

He had reached the pulsing square. Now he lifted Roland’s gun and the Barony Coach suddenly filled with its thunder. He put all six rounds into the hole, fa

“I HATE YOU!” Blaine cried in his childish voice. The splinters were gone from it now; it was growing soft, mushy. “I HATE YOU FOREVER!”

“It’s not dying that bothers you, is it?” Eddie asked. The lights in the hole where the route-map had been were fading. More blue fire flashed, but he hardly had to pull his head back to avoid it; the flame was small and weak. Soon Blaine would be as dead as all the Pubes and Grays in Lud. “It’s losing that bothers you.”

“HATE… FORRRRrmr…”

The word degenerated into a hum. The hum became a kind of stuttery thudding sound. Then it was gone.

Eddie looked around. Roland was there, holding Susa

Drifting out of the hole where the route-map had been was a peculiar charred smell, somehow not unpleasant. To Eddie it smelled like burning leaves in October. Otherwise, the hole was as dead and dark as a corpse’s eye. All the lights in there had gone out.

Your goose is cooked, Blaine, Eddie thought, and your turkey’s baked. Happy fuckin Thanksgiving.

5

The shrieking from beneath the mono stopped. There was one final, grinding thud from up front, and then those sounds ceased, too. Roland felt his legs and hips sway gently forward and put out his free hand to steady himself. His body knew what had happened before his head did:

Blaine’s engines had quit. They were now simply gliding forward along the track. But-

“Back,” he said. “All the way. We’re coasting. If we’re close enough to Blaine’s termination point, we may still crash.”

He led them past the puddled remains of Blaine’s welcoming ice sculpture and to the back of the coach. “And stay away from that thing,” he said, pointing at the instrument which looked like a cross between a piano and a harpsichord. It stood on a small platform. “It may shift. Gods, I wish we could see where we are! Lie down. Wrap your arms over your heads.”

They did as he told them. Roland did the same. He lay there with his chin pressing into the nap of the royal blue carpet, eyes shut, thinking about what had just happened.

“I cry your pardon, Eddie,” he said. “How the wheel of ka turns! Once I had to ask the same of my friend Cuthbert… and for the same reason. There’s a kind of blindness in me. An arrogant blindness.”

“I hardly think there’s any need of pardon-crying,” Eddie said. He sounded uncomfortable.

“There is. I held your jokes in contempt. Now they have saved our lives. I cry your pardon. I have forgotten the face of my father.”

“You don’t need any pardon and you didn’t forget anybody’s face,” Eddie said. “You can’t help your nature, Roland.”

The gunslinger considered this carefully, and discovered something which was wonderful and awful at the same time: that idea had never occurred to him. Not once in his whole life. That he was a captive of ka- this he had known since earliest childhood. But his nature… his very nature…

“Thank you, Eddie. I think-”

Before Roland could say what he thought, Blaine the Mono crashed to a final bitter halt. All four of them were thrown violently up Barony Coach’s central aisle, Oy in Jake’s arms and barking. The cabin’s front wall buckled and Roland struck it shoulder-first. Even with the padding (the wall was carpeted and, from the feel, undercoated with some resilient stuff), the blow was hard enough to numb him. The chandelier swung forward and tore loose from the ceiling, pelting them with glass pendants. Jake rolled aside, vacating its landing-zone just in time. The harpsichord-piano flew off its podium, struck one of the sofas, and overturned, coming to rest with a discordant brrra

The trip was over.

The gunslinger raised himself up. His shoulder was still numb, but the arm below it supported him, and that was a good sign. On his left, Jake was sitting up and picking glass beads out of his lap with a dazed expression. On his right, Susa

There was an explosion from above them, a hollow Pow! that reminded Roland of the big-bangers Cuthbert and Alain had sometimes lit and tossed down drains, or into the privies behind the scullery for a prank. And once Cuthbert had shot some big-bangers with his sling. That had been no prank, no childish folly. That had been-

Susa

There was a bony rattle, and a ladder-it appeared to be equipped with rungs made of twisted steel wire-dropped out of a slot up there.