The Little Sisters of Eluria

'I think you had better consider the matter a little more fully,' she said. 'I can still have Jenna whipped, if I like. She bears the Dark Bells, but I am the Big Sister. Consider that very well.'

She left. Sister Louise followed, casting one look - a strange combination Of fright and lust - back over her shoulder.

Roland thought, I must get out of here - I must.

Instead, he drifted back to that dark place which wasn't quite sleep. Or perhaps he did sleep, at least for a while; perhaps he dreamed. Fingers once more caressed his fingers, and lips first kissed his ear and then whispered into it: 'Look beneath your pillow, Roland ... but let no one know I was here.'

At some point after this, Roland opened his eyes again, half-expecting to see Sister Jenna's pretty young face hovering above him, and that comma of dark hair once more poking out from beneath her wimple. There was no one. The swags of silk overhead were at their brightest, and although it was impossible to tell the hours in here with any real accuracy, Roland guessed it to be around noon. Perhaps three hours since his second bowl of the Sisters' soup.

Beside him, John Norman still slept, his breath whistling out in faint, nasal snores.

Roland tried to raise his hand and slide it under his pillow. The hand wouldn't move. He could wiggle the tips of his fingers, but that was all. He waited, calming his mind as well as he could, gathering his patience.' Patience wasn't easy to come by. He kept thinking about what Norman had said - that there had been twenty survivors of the ambush ... at least to start with. One by one they went, until only me and that one down yonder was left. And now you.

The girl wasn't here.

His mind spoke in the soft, regretful tone of Alain, one of his old friends, dead these many years now.

She wouldn't dare, not with the others watching. That was only a dream you had.

But Roland thought perhaps it had been more than a dream.

Some length of time later - the slowly shifting brightness overhead made him believe it had been about an hour - Roland tried his hand again. This time he was able to get it beneath his pillow. This was puffy and soft, tucked snugly into the wide sling which supported the gunslinger's neck. At first he found nothing, but as his fingers worked their slow way deeper, they touched what felt like a stiffish bundle of thin rods.

He paused, gathering a little more strength (every movement was like swimming in glue), and then burrowed deeper. It felt like a dead bouquet. Wrapped around it was what felt like a ribbon.

Roland looked around to make sure the ward was still empty and Norman still asleep, then drew out what was under the pillow. It was six brittle stems of fading green with brownish reed-heads at the tops. They gave off a strange, yeasty aroma that made Roland think of early-morning begging expeditions to the Great House kitchens as a child - forays he had usually made with Cuthbert. The reeds were tied with a wide white silk ribbon, and smelled like burned toast. Beneath the ribbon was a fold of cloth. Like everything else in this cursed place, it seemed, the cloth was of silk.

Roland was breathing hard and could feel drops of sweat on his brow. Still alone, though - good. He took the scrap of cloth and unfolded it. Printed painstakingly in blurred charcoal letters, was this message:

NIBBLE HEDS. Once each hour. Too

much, CRAMPS or DETH.

TOMORROW NITE. Can't be sooner.

BE CAREFUL!

No explanation, but Roland supposed none was needed. Nor did he have any option; if he remained here, he would die. All they had to do was have the medallion off him, and he felt sure Sister Mary was smart enough to figure a way to do that.

He nibbled at one of the dry reed-heads. The taste was nothing like the toast they had begged from the kitchen as boys; it was bitter in his throat and hot in his stomach. Less than a minute after his nibble, his heart-rate had doubled. His muscles awakened, but not in a pleasant way, as after good sleep; they felt first trembly and then hard, as if they were gathered into knots. This feeling passed rapidly, and his heartbeat was back to normal before Norman stirred awake an hour or so later, but he understood why Jenna's note had warned him not to take more than a nibble at a time - this was very powerful stuff.

He slipped the bouquet of reeds back under the pillow, being careful to brush away the few crumbles of vegetable matter which had dropped to the sheet. Then he used the ball of his thumb to blur the painstaking charcoaled words on the bit of silk. When he was finished, there was nothing on the square but meaningless smudges. The square he also tucked back under his pillow.