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Roland's heart seemed to stop dead in his chest. He looked around and saw Sister Coquina getting to her feet. She had crept in while he was dozing and hidden under the bed on his right side to watch him. “Where did ye get that?” she asked. “Was it “He got it from me.”
Coquina whirled about. Je
YOU,” Sister Coquina whispered with infinite hate. “When I tell Big Sister -
“you'll tell no one anything,” Roland said.
If he had pla
Coquina turned on him, hissing like a cat. Her lips pulled back from teeth that were needle-sharp. She rushed at him, her fingers splayed. The nails at the ends of them looked sharp and ragged.
Roland clasped the medallion and shoved it out towards her. She recoiled from it, still hissing, and whirled back to Sister Je
Roland struggled to free his leg and couldn't. It was firmly caught, the shitting sling actually wrapped around the ankle somehow, like a noose.
Je
“Shoot her, Je
Instead, still holding the holstered guns up, Je
The Dark Bells. The sigil of their ka-tet. What -
The sound of the doctor-bugs rose to a shrill, reedy scream that was eerily like the sound of the bells Je
“No,” Coquina whispered. “You can't!”
“I have,” Je
Yet the sight of them advancing down the boards of the aisle was what Roland would always remember, nor what would haunt his dream for a year or more; it was the way they coated the beds. These were turning black two by two on both sides of the aisle, like pairs of dim rectangular lights going out.
Coquina shrieked and began to shake her own head, to ring her bells. The sound they made was thin and pointless compared to the sharp ringing of the Dark Bells.
Still the bugs marched on, darkening the floor, blacking out the be
Je
“Come,” she said. “I've started them, but staying them could be a different thing.”
Now Sister Coquina's shrieks were not of horror but of pain. The bugs had found her.
“Don't look,” Je
“Thanks to you. “ How long he would stay strong Roland didn't know… and right now it wasn't a question that mattered. He saw Je
Roland buckled on his guns and tied them down without breaking stride.
They passed only three beds on each side before reaching the flap of the tent… and it was a tent, he saw, not a vast pavilion. The silk walls and ceiling were fraying canvas, thin enough to let in the light of a threequarters Kissing Moon. And the beds weren't beds at all, but only a double row of shabby cots.
He turned and saw a black, writhing hump on the floor where Sister Coquina had been. At the sight of her, Roland was struck by an unpleasant thought.
“I forgot John Norman's medallion!” A keen sense of regret-almost of mourning-went through him like wind.
Je
“I picked it up off the floor.”
He didn't know which made him gladder-the sight of the medallion or the sight of it in her hand. It meant she wasn't like the others.
Then, as if to dispel that notion before it got too firm a hold on him, she said: “Take it, Roland-I can hold it no more. “ And, as he took it, he saw unmistakable marks of charring on her fingers.
He took her hand and kissed each burn.
“Thankee-sai,” she said, and he saw she was crying. “Thankee, dear. To be kissed so is lovely, worth every pain. Now…”
Roland saw her eyes shift, and followed them. Here were bobbing lights descending a rocky path. Beyond them he saw the building where the Little Sisters had been living-not a convent but a ruined hacienda that looked a thousand years old. There were three candles; as they drew closer, Roland saw that there were only three sisters. Mary wasn't among them.
He drew his guns.
“Oooo, it's a gunslinger-man he is!” Louise.
“A scary man!” Michela.
“And he's found his ladylove as well as his shooters!” Tamra.
“His slut-whore!” Louise.
Laughing angrily. Not afraid… at least, not of his weapons.
“Put them away,” Je
The others, meanwhile, had drawn closer.
“Ooo, see, she cries!” Tamra.
“Doffed her habit, she has!” Michela. “Perhaps it's her broken vows she cries for.”
“Why such tears, pretty?” Louise.
“Because he kissed my fingers where they were burned,” Je
“Ooooo!”
“Luv-ly!”
“Next he'll stick his thing in her! Even luv-lier!”
Je
They gaped at her, counterfeit laughter disappearing in shock.
“No!” Louise whispered. “Are ye mad? Ye know what'll happen!”
“No, and neither do you,” Je
Roland wondered how many towns the Sisters had been to With this tent which was so small and plain on the outside, so huge and gloriously on the inside. How many towns and over how many years.
Now, cramming the mouth of it in a black, shiny tongue, were doctor-bugs. They had stopped their singing. Their silence was somehow terrible.
“Stand aside or I'll have them on ye,” Je
“Ye never would!” Sister Michela cried in a low, horrified voice.
“Aye. I've already set them on Sister Coquina. She's a part of the medicine, now.”