Henchick’s blue eyes had faded and grown watery with age, but there was no mistaking the surprise that came into them at this question. His bushy eyebrows went up. “Why would I bother?” he asked. “She knows. She’ll have time to repent her heathen man at leisure in the depths of Na’ar. She knows that, too. Come, gunslinger. Another quarter-wheel and we’re there. But it’s upsy.”

Eight

Upsy it was, very upsy indeed. Half an hour later, they came to a place where a fallen boulder blocked most of the path. Henchick eased his way around it, dark pants rippling in the wind, beard blowing out sideways, long-nailed fingers clutching for purchase. Roland followed. The boulder was warm from the sun, but the wind was now so cold he was shivering. He sensed the heels of his worn boots sticking out over a blue drop of perhaps two thousand feet. If the old man decided to push him, all would end in a hurry. And in decidedly undramatic fashion.

But it wouldn’t,he thought. Eddie would carry on in my place, and the other two would follow until they fell.

On the far side of the boulder, the path ended in a ragged, dark hole nine feet high and five wide. A draft blew out of it into Roland’s face. Unlike the breeze that had played with them as they climbed the path, this air was smelly and unpleasant. Coming with it, carried upon it, were cries Roland couldn’t make out. But they were the cries of human voices.

“Is it the cries of folks in Na’ar we’re hearing?” he asked Henchick.

No smile touched the old man’s mostly hidden lips now. “Speak not in jest,” he said. “Not here. For you are in the presence of the infinite.”

Roland could believe it. He moved forward cautiously, boots gritting on the rubbly scree, his hand dropping to the butt of his gun—he always wore the left one now, when he wore any; below the hand that was whole.

The stench breathing from the cave’s open mouth grew stronger yet. Noxious if not outright toxic. Roland held his bandanna against his mouth and nose with his diminished right hand. Something inside the cave, there in the shadows. Bones, yes, the bones of lizards and other small animals, but something else as well, a shape he knew—

“Be careful, gunslinger,” Henchick said, but stood aside to let Roland enter the cave if he so desired.

My desires don’t matter,Roland thought. This is just something I have to do. Probably that makes it simpler.