With no gods to pray to, Susan prayed to her father.

Da? If thee’s there, help me to be strong as I can be, and help me hold to him, to the memory of him. Help me to hold to myself as well. Not for rescue, not for salvation, but just so as not to give them the satisfaction of seeing my pain and my fear. And him, help him as well...

“Help keep him safe,” she whispered. “Keep my love safe; take my love safe to where he goes, give him joy in who he sees, and make him a cause of joy in those who see him.”

“Praying, dearie?” the old woman asked without turning on the seat. Her croaking voice oozed false compassion. “Aye, ye’d do well t’make things right with the Powers while ye still can—before the spit’s burned right out of yer throat!” She threw back her head and cackled, the straggling remains of her broomstraw hair flying out orange in the light of the bloated moon.

24

Their horses, led by Rusher, had come to the sound of Roland’s dismayed shout. They stood not far away, their manes rippling in the wind, shaking their heads and whinnying their displeasure whenever the wind dropped enough for them to get a whiff of the thick white smoke rising from the canyon.

Roland paid no attention to the horses or the smoke. His eyes were fixed on the drawstring sack slung over Alain’s shoulder. The ball inside had come alive again; in the growing dark, the bag seemed to pulse like some weird pink firefly. He held out his hands for it.

“Give it to me!”

“Roland, I don’t know if—”

“Give it to me, damn your face!”

Alain looked at Cuthbert, who nodded... then lifted his hands skyward in a weary, distracted gesture.

Roland tore the bag away before Alain could do more than begin to shrug it off his shoulder. The gunslinger dipped into it and pulled the glass out. It was glowing fiercely, a pink Demon Moon instead of an orange one.

Behind and below them, the nagging whine of the thinny rose and fell, rose and fell.

“Don’t look directly into that thing,” Cuthbert muttered to Alain. “Don’t, for your father’s sake.”

Roland bent his face over the pulsing ball, its light running over his cheeks and brow like liquid, drowning his eyes in its dazzle.

In Maerlyn’s Rainbow he saw her—Susan, horse-drover’s daughter, lovely girl at the window. He saw her standing in the back of a black cart decorated with gold symbols, the old witch’s cart. Reynolds rode behind her, holding the end of a rope that was noosed around her neck. The cart was rolling toward Green Heart, making its way with processional slowness. Hill Street was lined with people of whom the farmer with the lamb-slaughterer’s eyes had been only the first—all those folk of Hambry and Mejis who had been deprived of their fair but were now given this ancient dark attraction in its stead: charyou tree, come, Reap, death for you, life for our crops.