“Nevertheless,” the gunslinger said. There were tiny sores in his mouth, the result of vitamin deprivation, and the salt taste made him grin bitterly.
“Are you afraid of enchanted meat?”
“Yes indeed.”
The man in black slipped his hood back.
The gunslinger looked at him silently. In a way, the face that the hood had hidden was an uneasy disappointment. It was handsome and regular, with none of the marks and twists which indicate a man who has been through awesome times and has been privy to great secrets. His hair was black and of a ragged, matted length. His forehead was high, his eyes dark and brilliant. His nose was nondescript. The lips were full and sensual. His complexion was pallid, as was the gunslinger’s own.
The gunslinger said finally, “I expected an older man.”
“Why? I am nearly immortal, as are you, Roland—for now, at least. I could have taken a face with which you would have been more familiar, but I elected to show you the one I was—ah—born with. See, gunslinger, the sunset.”
The sun had departed already, and the western sky was filled with sullen furnace light.
“You won’t see another sunrise for what may seem a very long time,” the man in black said.
The gunslinger remembered the pit under the mountains and then looked at the sky, where the constellations sprawled in clockspring profusion.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said softly, “now.”
II
The man in black shuffled the cards with flying hands. The deck was huge, the designs on the back convoluted. “These are Tarot cards, gunslinger—of a sort. A mixture of the standard deck to which have been added a selection of my own development. Now watch carefully.”
“What will I watch?”
“I’m going to tell your future. Seven cards must be turned, one at a time, and placed in conjunction with the others. I’ve not done this since the days when Gilead stood and the ladies played at Points on the west lawn. And I suspect I’veneverread a tale such as yours.” Mockery was creeping into his voice again. “You are the world’s last adventurer. The last crusader. How that must please you, Roland! Yet you have no idea how close you stand to the Tower now, as you resume your quest. Worlds turn about your head.”
“What do you mean, resume? I never left off.”
At this the man in black laughed heartily, but would not say what he found so funny. “Read my fortune then,” Roland said harshly.
The first card was turned.
“The Hanged Man,” the man in black said. The darkness had given him back his hood. “Yet here, in conjunction with nothing else, it signifies strength, not death. You, gunslinger, are the Hanged Man, plodding ever onward toward your goal over the pits of Na’ar. You’ve already dropped one co-traveler into that pit, have you not?”
The gunslinger said nothing, and the second card was turned.
“The Sailor! Note the clear brow, the hairless cheeks, the wounded eyes. He drowns, gunslinger, and no one throws out the line. The boy Jake.”
The gunslinger winced, said nothing.
The third card was turned. A baboon stood grinningly astride a young man’s shoulder. The young man’s face was turned up, a grimace of stylized dread and horror on his features. Looking more closely, the gunslinger saw the baboon held a whip.
“The Prisoner,” the man in black said. The fire cast uneasy, flickering shadows over the face of the ridden man, making it seem to move and writhe in wordless terror. The gunslinger flicked his eyes away.
“A trifle upsetting, isn’t he?” the man in black said, and seemed on the verge of sniggering.
He turned the fourth card. A woman with a shawl over her head sat spinning at a wheel. To the gunslinger’s dazed eyes, she appeared to be smiling craftily and sobbing at the same time.
“The Lady of the Shadows,” the man in black remarked. “Does she look two-faced to you, gunslinger? She is. Two faces at least. She broke the blue plate!”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” And—in this case, at least—the gunslinger thought his adversary was telling the truth.
“Why are you showing me these?”
