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

another.
    “I know ye’re no brother to that boy,” Mary said, watching him eat. Already Roland could feel the stuff hidden in the porridge draining his strength once more. “Sigul or no sigul, I know ye’re no brother to him. Why do you lie? ’Tis a sin against God.”
    “What gives you such an idea, sai?” Roland asked, curious to see if she would mention the guns.
    “Big Sister knows what she knows. Why not ’fess up, Jimmy? Confession’s good for the soul, they say.”
    “Send me Jenna to pass the time, and perhaps I’d tell you much,” Roland said.
    The narrow bone of smile on Sister Mary’s face disappeared like chalk-writing in a rainstorm. “Why would ye talk to such as her?”
    “She’s passing fair,” Roland said. “Unlike some.”
    Her lips pulled back from her overlarge teeth. “Ye’ll see her no more, cully. Ye’ve stirred her up, so you have, and I won’t have that.”
    She turned to go. Still trying to appear weak and hoping he would not overdo it (acting was never his forte), Roland held out the empty porridge bowl. “Do you not want to take this?”
    “Put it on your head and wear it as a nightcap, for all of me. Or stick it in your ass. You’ll talk before I’m done with ye, cully—talk till I bid you shut up and then beg to talk some more!”
    On this note she swept regally away, hands lifting the front of her skirt off the floor. Roland had heard that such as she couldn’t go about in daylight, and that part of the old tales was surely a lie. Yet another part was almost true, it seemed: a fuzzy, amorphous shape kept pace with her, running along the row of empty beds to her right, but she cast no real shadow at all.
    VI. Jenna. Sister Coquina. Tamra, Michela, Louise. The Cross-Dog. What Happened in the Sage.
    That was one of the longest days of Roland’s life. He dozed, but never deeply; the reeds were doing their work, and he had begun to believe that he might, with Jenna’s help, actually get out of here. And there was the matter of his guns, as well—perhaps she might be able to help there, too.
    He passed the slow hours thinking of old times—of Gilead and his friends, of the riddling he had almost won at one Wide Earth Fair. In the end another had taken the goose, but he’d had his chance, aye. He thought of his mother and father; he thought of Abel Vannay, who had limped his way through a life of gentle goodness, and Eldred Jonas, who had limped his way through a life of evil … until Roland had blown him loose of his saddle, one fine desert day.
    He thought, as always, of Susan.
    If you love me, then love me , she’d said … and so he had.
    So he had.
    In this way the time passed. At rough hourly intervals, he took one of the reeds from beneath his pillow and nibbled it. Now his muscles didn’t tremble so badly as the stuff passed into his system, nor his heart pound so fiercely. The medicine in the reeds no longer had to battle the Sisters’ medicine so fiercely, Roland thought; the reeds were winning.
    The diffused brightness of the sun moved across the white silk ceiling of the ward, and at last the dimness which always seemed to hover at bed-level began to rise. The long room’s western wall bloomed with the rose-melting-to-orange shades of sunset.
    It was Sister Tamra who brought him his dinner that night—soup and another popkin. She also laid a desert lily beside his hand. She smiled as she did it. Her cheeks were bright with color. All of them were bright with color today, like leeches that had gorged until they were full almost to bursting.
    “From your admirer, Jimmy,” she said. “She’s so sweet on ye! The lily means ‘Do not forget my promise.’ What has she promised ye, Jimmy, brother of Johnny?”
    “That she’d see me again, and we’d talk.”
    Tamra laughed so hard that the bells lining her forehead jingled.
She clasped her hands together in a perfect ecstasy of glee. “Sweet as honey! Oh, yes!” She bent her smiling gaze on Roland.