The Little Sisters of Eluria

'U'se has whik-sky?' the slobberer asked, his dialect even heavier than Mary's. Use has 'backky?'

'Yes, yes, plenty whisky and plenty smoke, but not until you have these wretched things off!' Impatient. Perhaps afraid, as well.

Roland cautiously rolled his head to the left and cracked his eyelids open.

Five of the six Little Sisters of Eluria were clustered around the far side of the sleeping John Norman's bed, their candles raised to cast their light upon him. It also cast light upon their own faces, faces which would have given the strongest man nightmares. Now, in the ditch of the night, their glamours were set aside, and they were but ancient corpses in voluminous habits.

Sister Mary had one of Roland's guns in her hand. Looking at her holding it, Roland felt a bright flash of hate for her, and promised himself she would pay for her temerity.

The thing standing at the foot of the bed, strange as it was, looked almost normal in comparison to the Sisters. It was one of the green folk.

Roland recognized Ralph at once. He would be a long time forgetting that bowler hat.

Now Ralph walked slowly around to the side of Norman's bed closest to Roland, momentarily blocking the gunslinger's view of the Sisters. The mutie went all the way to Norman's head, however, clearing the hags to Roland's slitted view once more.

Norman's medallion lay exposed - the boy had perhaps waken enough to take it out of his bed-dress, hoping it would protect him better so. Ralph picked it up in his melted-tallow hand. The Sister watched eagerly in the glow of their candles as the green man stretched to the end of its chain. . . and then put it down again. Their faces droop in disappointment.

'Don't care for such as that,' Ralph said in his clotted voice. 'Want whik-sky! Want 'backky!'

'You shall have it,' Sister Mary said. 'Enough for you and all you verminous clan. But first, you must have that horrid thing off him! both of them! Do you understand? And you shan't tease us.'

'Or what?' Ralph asked. He laughed. It was a choked and gargly sound the laughter of a man dying from some evil sickness of the throat an lungs, but Roland still liked it better than the giggles of the Sisters 'Or what, Sisser Mary, you'll drink my bluid? My bluid'd drop'ee dead where'ee stand, and glowing in the dark!'

Mary raised the gunslinger's revolver and pointed it at Ralph. 'Take that wretched thing, or you die where you stand.'

'And die after I've done what you want, likely.'

Sister Mary said nothing to that. The others peered at him with their black eyes.

Ralph lowered his head, appearing to think. Roland suspected hi friend Bowler Hat could think, too. Sister Mary and her cohorts might, not believe that, but Ralph had to be trig to have survived as long as he had. But of course when he came here, he hadn't considered Roland's guns.

'Smasher was wrong to give them shooters to you,' he said at last. 'Give em and not tell me. Did u'se give him whik-sky? Give him 'backky?'

'That's none o' yours,' Sister Mary replied. 'You have that goldpiece off the boy's neck right now, or I'll put one of yonder man's bullets in what's left of yer brain.'

'All right,' Ralph said. 'Just as you wish, sai.'

Once more he reached down and took the gold medallion in his melted fist. That he did slow; what happened after, happened fast. He snatched it away, breaking the chain and flinging the gold heedlessly into the dark. With his other hand he reached down, sank his long and ragged nails into John Norman's neck, and tore it open.

Blood flew from the hapless boy's throat in a jetting, heart-driven gush more black than red in the candlelight, and he made a single bubbly cry. The women screamed - but not in horror. They screamed as women do in a frenzy of excitement. The green man was forgotten; Roland was forgotten; all was forgotten save the life's blood pouring out of John Norman's throat.

They dropped their candles. Mary dropped Roland's revolver in the same hapless, careless fashion. The last the gunslinger saw as Ralph darted away into the shadows (whisky and tobacco another time, wily Ralph must have thought; tonight he had best concentrate on saving his own life) was the sisters bending forward to catch as much of the flow as they could before it dried up.

Roland lay in the dark, muscles shivering, heart pounding, listening to the harpies as they fed on the boy lying in the bed next to his own. It seemed to go on for ever, but at last they had done with him. The Sisters re-lit their candles and left, murmuring.

When the drug in the soup once more got the better of the drug in the reeds, Roland was grateful ... yet for the first time since coming here, his sleep was haunted.