He sat beside Susannah and put his own arm around her. He could still hear the Falls of the Hounds, but the sound was now distant.

“What happens here?” Roland asked. “How do you charge your batteries?”

“YOU WILL SEE SHORTLY, GUNSLINGER. IN THE MEANTIME, TRY ME WITH A RIDDLE.”

“All right, Blaine. Here’s one of Cort’s own making, and has posed many in its time.”

“I AWAIT IT WITH GREAT INTEREST.”

Roland, pausing perhaps to gather his thoughts, looked up at the place where the roof of the coach had been and where there was now only a starry spill across a black sky (Jake could pick out Aton and Lydia—Old Star and Old Mother—and was oddly comforted by the sight of them, still glaring at each other from their accustomed places). Then the gunslinger looked back at the lighted rectangle which served them as Blaine’s face.

“‘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 manni who lived outside the city.”

“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.