Legends: Stories By The Masters of Modern Fantasy by Robert Silverberg

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 (whiskey 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 forever, but at last they had done with him. The Sisters relit 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 he’d come here, his sleep was haunted.
    In his dream he stood looking down at the bloated body in the town trough, thinking of a line in the book marked REGISTRY OF MISDEEDS AND REDRESS. Green folk sent hence , it had read, and perhaps the green folk had been sent hence, but then a worse tribe had come. The
Little Sisters of Eluria, they called themselves. And a year hence, they might be the Little Sisters of Tejuas, or of Kambero, or some other far western village. They came with their bells and their bugs … from where? Who knew? Did it matter?
    A shadow fell beside his on the scummy water of the trough. Roland tried to turn and face it. He couldn’t; he was frozen in place. Then a green hand grasped his shoulder and whirled him about. It was Ralph. His bowler hat was cocked back on his head; John Norman’s medallion, now red with blood, hung around his neck.
    “Booh!” cried Ralph, his lips stretching in a toothless grin. He raised a big revolver with worn sandalwood grips. He thumbed the hammer back—
    —and Roland jerked awake, shivering all over, dressed in skin both wet and icy cold. He looked at the bed on his left. It was empty, the sheet pulled up and tucked about neatly, the pillow resting above it in its snowy sleeve. Of John Norman there was no sign. It might have been empty for years, that bed.
    Roland was alone now. Gods help him, he was the last patient of the Little Sisters of Eluria, those sweet and patient hospitalers. The last human being still alive in this terrible place, the last with warm blood flowing in his veins.
    Roland, lying suspended, gripped the gold medallion in his fist and looked across the aisle at the long row of empty beds. After a little while, he brought one of the reeds out from beneath his pillow and nibbled at it.
    When Mary came fifteen minutes later, the gunslinger took the bowl she brought with a show of weakness he didn’t really feel. Porridge instead of soup this time … but he had no doubt the basic ingredient was still the same.
    “How well ye look this morning, sai,” Big Sister said. She looked well herself—there were no shimmers to give away the ancient wampir hiding inside her. She had supped well, and her meal had firmed her up. Roland’s stomach rolled over at the thought. “Ye’ll be on yer pins in no time, I’ll warrant.”
    “That’s shit,” Roland said, speaking in an ill-natured growl. “Put me on my pins and you’d be picking me up off the floor directly after. I’ve started to wonder if you’re not putting something in the food.”
    She laughed merrily at that. “La, you lads! Always eager to blame
yer weakness on a scheming woman! How scared of us ye are—aye, way down in yer little boys’ hearts, how scared ye are!”
    “Where’s my brother? I dreamed there was a commotion about him in the night, and now I see his bed’s empty.”
    Her smile narrowed. Her eyes glittered. “He came over fevery and pitched a fit. We’ve taken him to Thoughtful House, which has been home to contagion more than once in its time.”
    To the grave is where you’ve taken him, Roland thought . Mayhap that is a Thoughtful House, but little would you know it, sai, one way or