Alain stared at him in silent shock.

“Come with me, Alain. It’s time to end this mad game. We’ll find Jonas and kill him. Our ka-tet is broken. We’ll make a new one, you and I.”

“It’s not broken. If it does break, it’ll be you responsible. And for that I’ll never forgive you.”

Now it was Cuthbert’s turn to be silent.

“Go for a ride, why don’t you? A long one. Give yourself time to cool off. So much depends on our fellowship—”

“Tell him that!”

“No, I’m telling you. Jonas wrote a foul word about my mother. Don’t you think I’d go with you just to avenge that, if I didn’t think that Roland was right? That it’s what Jonas wants? For us to lose our wits and come charging blindly around our Hillock?”

“That’s right, but it’s wrong, too,” Cuthbert said. Yet his hands were slowly unrolling, fists becoming fingers again. “You don’t see and I don’t have the words to explain. If I say that Susan has poisoned the well of our ka-tet, you would call me jealous. Yet I think she has, all unknowing and unmeaning. She’s poisoned his mind, and the door to hell has opened. Roland feels the heat from that open door and thinks it’s only his feeling for her... but we must do better, Al. We must think better. For him as well as for ourselves and our fathers.”

“Are you calling her our enemy?”

“No! It would be easier if she was.” He took a deep breath, let it out, took another, let it out, took a third and let it out. With each one he felt a little saner, a little more himself. “Never mind. There’s no more to say on’t for now. Your advice is good—I think I will take a ride. A long one.”

Bert started toward his horse, then turned back.

“Tell him he’s wrong. Tell him that even if he’s right about waiting, he’s right for the wrong reasons, and that makes him all the way wrong.” He hesitated. “Tell him what I said about the door to hell. Say that’s my piece of the touch. Will you tell him?”

“Yes. Stay away from Jonas, Bert.”

Cuthbert mounted up. “I promise nothing.”

“You’re not a man.” Alain sounded sorrowful; on the point of tears, in fact. “None of us are men.”

“You better be wrong about that,” Cuthbert said, “because men’s work is coming.”

He turned his mount and rode away at a gallop.

10

He went far up the Seacoast Road, to begin with trying not to think at all. He’d found that sometimes unexpected things wandered into your head if you left the door open for them. Useful things, often.