The Little Sisters of Eluria Read online

  Roland remembered the black scar across the man's cheek and nose - the scar which had disappeared. More such as these, of course. And they were on him, as well. That was how he could shiver without shivering. They were all over his back.Battening on him.

  No, keeping back a scream wasn't as easy as he had expected it to be.

  The bugs ran down to the tips of the suspended man's toes, then leaped off them in waves, like creatures leaping off an embankment and into a swimming hole. They organized themselves quickly and easily on the bright white sheet below, and began to march down to the floor in a battalion about a foot wide. Roland couldn't get a good look at them, the distance was too far and the light too dim, but he thought they were perhaps twice the size of ants, and a little smaller than the fat honeybees which had swarmed the flowerbeds back home.

  They sang as they went.

  The bearded man didn't sing. As the swarms of bugs which had coated his twisted legs began to diminish, he shuddered and groaned. The young woman put her hand on his brow and soothed him, making Roland a little jealous even in his revulsion at what he was seeing.

  And was what he was seeing really so awful? In Gilead, leeches had been used for certain ailments - swellings of the brain, the armpits, and the groin, primarily. When it came to the brain, the leeches, ugly as they were, were certainly preferable to the next step, which was trepanning.

  Yet therewas something loathsome about them, perhaps only because he couldn't see them well, and something awful about trying to imagine them all over his back as he hung here, helpless. Not singing, though. Why? Because they were feeding? Sleeping? Both at once?

  The bearded man's groans subsided. The bugs marched away across the floor, towards one of the mildly rippling silken walls. Roland lost sight of them in the shadows.

  Jenna came back to him, her eyes anxious. 'Ye did well. Yet I see how ye feel; it's on your face.'

  'The doctors,' he said.

  'Yes. Their power is very great, but. . .'She dropped her voice. 'I believe that drover is beyond their help. His legs are a little better, and the wounds on his face are all but healed, but he has injuries where the doctors cannot reach.' She traced a hand across her midsection, suggesting the location of these injuries, if not their nature.

  'And me?' Roland asked.

  'Ye were ta'en by the green folk,' she said. 'Ye must have angered them powerfully, for them not to kill ye outright. They roped ye and dragged ye, instead. Tamra, Michela, and Louise were out gathering herbs. They saw the green folk at play with ye, and bade them stop, but -,

  'Do the muties always obey you, Sister Jenna

  She smiled, perhaps pleased he remembered her name. 'Not always, but mostly. This time they did, or ye'd have now found the clearing in the trees.'

  'I suppose so.'

  'The skin was stripped almost clean off your back - red ye were from nape to waist. Ye'll always bear the scars, but the doctors have gone far towards healing ye. And their singing is passing fair, is it not?'

  'Yes,' Roland said, but the thought of those black things all over his back, roosting in his raw flesh, still revolted him. 'I owe you thanks, and give it freely. Anything I can do for you -

  'Tell me your name, then. Do that.'

  'I'm Roland of Gilead. A gunslinger. I had revolvers, Sister Jenna. Have you seen them?'

  'I've seen no shooters,' she said, but cast her eyes aside. The roses bloomed in her cheeks again. She might be a good nurse, and fair, but Roland thought her a poor liar. He was glad. Good liars were common. Honesty, on the other hand, came dear.

  Let the untruth pass for now,

  he told himself.She speaks it out of fear, I think.

  'Jenna!' The cry came from the deeper shadows at the far end of the infirmary - today it seemed longer than ever to the gunslinger - and Sister Jenna jumped guiltily. 'Come away! Ye've passed words enough to entertain twenty men! Let him sleep!'

  'Aye!' she called, then turned back to Roland. 'Don't let on that I showed you the doctors.'

  'Mum is the word, Jenna.'

  She paused, biting her lip again, then suddenly swept back her wimple. It fell against the nape of her neck in a soft chiming of bells. Freed from its confinement, her hair swept against her cheeks like shadows.

  'Am I pretty? Am I? Tell me the truth, Roland of Gilead - no flattery. For flattery's kind only a candle's length.'

  'Pretty as a summer night.'

  What she saw in his face seemed to please her more than his words, because she smiled radiantly. She pulled the wimple up again, tucking her hair back in with quick little finger-pokes. 'Am I decent?'

  'Decent as fair,' he said, then cautiously lifted an arm and pointed at her brow. 'One curl's out ... just there.'

  'Aye, always that one to devil me.' With a comical little grimace, she tucked it back. Roland thought how much he would like to kiss her rosy cheeks ... and perhaps her rosy mouth, for good measure.

  'All's well,' he said.

  'Jenna!' The cry

  was more impatient than ever. 'Meditations!'

  'I'm coming just now!' she called, and gathered her voluminous skirts to go. Yet she turned back once more, her face now very grave and very serious. 'One more thing,' she said in a voice only a step above a whisper. She snatched a quick look around. 'The gold medallion ye wear - ye wear it because it's yours. Do'ee understand ... James?'

  'Yes.' He turned his head a bit to look at the sleeping boy. 'This is my brother.'

  'If they ask, yes. To say different would be to get Jenna in serious trouble.'

  How serious he did not ask, and she was gone in any case, seeming to flow along the aisle between all the empty beds, her skirt caught up in one hand. The roses had fled from her face, leaving her cheeks and brow ashy. He remembered the greedy look on the faces of the others, how they had gathered around him in a tightening knot ... and the way their faces had shimmered.

  Six women, five old and one young.

  Doctors that sang and then crawled away across the floor when dismissed by jingling bells.

  And an improbable hospital ward of perhaps a hundred beds, a ward with a silk roof and silk walls ...

  ... and all the beds empty save three.

  Roland didn't understand why Jenna had taken the dead boy's medallion from his pants pocket and put it around his neck, but he had an idea that if they found out she had done so, the Little Sisters of Eluria might kill her.

  Roland closed his eyes, and the soft singing of the doctor-insects once again floated him off into sleep.

  IV. A Bowl of Soup. The Boy

  in the Next Bed. The Night-Nurses.

  Roland dreamed that a very large bug (a doctor-bug, mayhap) was flying around his head and banging repeatedly into his nose - collisions which were annoying rather than painful. He swiped at the bug repeatedly, and although his hands were eerily fast under ordinary circumstances, he kept missing it. And each time he missed, the bug giggled.

  I'm slowbecause I've been sick, he thought.

  No, ambushed. Dragged across the ground by slow mutants, saved by the Little Sisters of Eluria.

  Roland had a sudden, vivid image of a man's shadow growing from the shadow of an overturned freightwagon; heard a rough, gleeful voice cry, 'Booh!'

  He jerked awake hard enough to set his body rocking in its complication of slings, and the woman who had been standing beside his head, giggling as she tapped his nose lightly with a wooden spoon, stepped back so quickly that the bowl in her other hand slipped from her fingers.

  Roland's hands shot out, and they were as quick as ever - his frustrated failure to catch the bug had been only part of his dream. He caught the bowl before more than a few drops could spill. The woman - Sister Coquina - looked at him with round eyes.

  There was pain all up and down his back from the sudden movement but it was nowhere near as sharp as it had been before, and there was no sensation of movement on his skin. Perhaps the 'doctors' were only sleeping, but he had an idea they were gon
e.

  He held out his hand for the spoon Coquina had been teasing him with (he found he wasn't surprised at all that one of these would tease a sick and sleeping man in such a way; it only would have surprised him if it had been Jenna), and she handed it to him, her eyes still big.

  'How speedy ye are!' she said. ''Twas like a magic trick, and you still rising from sleep!'

  'Remember it, sai,' he said, and tried the soup. There were tiny bits of chicken floating in it. He probably would have considered it bland under other circumstances, but under these, it seemed ambrosial. He began to eat greedily.

  'What do 'ee mean by that?' she asked. The light was very dim now, the wall-panels across the way a pinkish-orange that suggested sunset. In this light, Coquina looked quite young and pretty ... but it was a glamour, Roland was sure; a sorcerous kind of make-up.

  'I mean nothing in particular.' Roland dismissed the spoon as too slow, preferring to tilt the bowl itself to his lips. In this way he disposed of the soup in four large gulps. 'You have been kind to me'

  'Aye, so wehave!' she said, rather indignantly.

  '- and I hope your kindness has no hidden motive. If it does, Sister, remember that I'm quick. And, as for myself, I have not always been kind.'

  She made no reply, only took the bowl when Roland handed it back. She did this delicately, perhaps not wanting to touch his fingers. Her eyes dropped to where the medallion lay, once more hidden beneath the breast of his bed-dress. He said no more, not wanting to weaken the implied threat by reminding her that the man who made it was unarmed, next to naked, and hung in the air because his back couldn't yet bear the weight of his body.

  'Where's Sister Jenna?' he asked.

  'Oooo!' Sister Coquina said, raising her eyebrows. 'We like her, do we? She makes our heart go . . .' She put her hand against the rose on her breast and fluttered it rapidly.

  'Not at all, not at all,' Roland said, 'but she was kind. I doubt she would have teased me with a spoon, as some would.'

  Sister Coquina's smile faded. She looked both angry and worried. 'Say nothing of that to Mary, if she comes by later. Ye might get me in trouble.'

  'Should I care?'

  'I might get back at one who caused me trouble by causing little Jenna trouble,' Sister Coquina said. 'She's in Big Sister's black books, just now, anyway. Sister Mary doesn't care for the way Jenna spoke to her about ye ... nor does she like it that Jenna came back to us wearing the Dark Bells.'

  This was no sooner out of her mouth before Sister Coquina put her hand over that frequently imprudent organ, as if realizing she had said too much.

  Roland, intrigued by what she'd said but not liking to show it just now, only replied: 'I'll keep my mouth shut about you, if you keep your mouth shut to Sister Mary about Jenna.'

  Coquina looked relieved. 'Aye, that's a bargain.' She leaned forward confidingly. 'She's in Thoughtful House. That's the little cave in the hillside where we have to go and meditate when Big Sister decides we've been bad. She'll have to stay and consider her impudence until Mary lets her out.' She paused, then said abruptly: 'Who's this beside ye? Do ye know?'

  Roland turned his head and saw that the young man was awake, and had been listening. His eyes were as dark as Jenna's.

  'Know him?' Roland asked, with what he hoped was the right touch of scorn. 'Should I not know my own brother?'

  'Is he, now, and him so young and you so old?' Another of the sisters materialized out of the darkness: Sister Tamra, who had called herself one-and-twenty. In the moment before she reached Roland's bed, her face was that of a hag who will never see eighty again ... or ninety. Then it shimmered and was once more the plump, healthy countenance of a thirty-year-old matron. Except for the eyes. They remained yellowish in the corneas, gummy in the corners, and watchful.

  'He's the youngest, I the eldest,' Roland said. 'Betwixt us are seven others, and twenty years of our parents' lives.'

  'How sweet! And if he's yer brother, then ye'll know his name, won't ye? Know it very well.'

  Before the gunslinger could flounder, the young man said: 'They think you've forgotten such a simple hook as John Norman. What culleens they be, eh, Jimmy?'

  Coquina and Tamra looked at the pale boy in the bed next to Roland's, clearly angry ... and clearly trumped. For the time being, at least.

  'You've fed him your muck,' the boy (whose medallion undoubtedly proclaimed him John, Loved of Family, Loved of God) said 'Why don't you go, and let us have a natter?'

  'Well!' Sister Coquina huffed. 'I like the gratitude around here, so I do!'

  'I'm grateful for what's given me,' Norman responded, looking at her steadily, 'but not for what folk would take away.'

  Tamra snorted through her nose, turned violently enough for her swirling dress to push a draught of air into Roland's face, and then took her leave. Coquina stayed a moment.

  'Be discreet, and mayhap someone ye like better than ye like me will get out of hack in the morning, instead of a week from tonight.'

  Without waiting for a reply, she turned and followed Sister Tamra.

  Roland and John Norman waited until they were both gone, and then Norman turned to Roland and spoke in a low voice. 'My brother. Dead?'

  Roland nodded. 'The medallion I took in case I should meet with any of his people. It rightly belongs to you. I'm sorry for your loss.'

  'Thankee-sai. ' John Norman's lower lip trembled, then firmed. 'I knew the green men did for him, although these old biddies wouldn't tell me for sure. They did for plenty, and cotched the rest.'

  'Perhaps the Sisters didn't know for sure.'

  'They knew. Don't you doubt it. They don't say much, but they knowplenty. The only one any different is Jenna. That's who the old battle-axe meant when she said "your friend". Aye?'

  Roland nodded. 'And she said something about the Dark Bells. I'd know more of that, if would were could.'

  'She's something special, Jenna is. More like a princess - someone whose place is made by bloodline and can't be refused - than like the other Sisters. I lie here and look like I'm asleep - it's safer, I think - but I've heard 'em talking. Jenna's just come back among 'em recently, and those Dark Bells mean something special ... but Mary's still the one who swings the weight. I think the Dark Bells are only ceremonial, like the rings the old Barons used to hand down from father to son. Was it she who put Jimmy's medal around your neck?'

  'Yes.'

  'Don't take it off, whatever you do.' His face was strained, grim. 'I don't know if it's the gold or the God, but they don't like to get too close. I think that's the only reason I'm still here.' Now his voice dropped all the way to a whisper. 'They ain't human.'

  'Well, perhaps a bit fey and magical, but-'

  'No!' With what was clearly an effort, the boy got up on one elbow. He looked at Roland earnestly. 'You're thinking about hubber-women, or witches. These ain't hubbers, nor witches, either.They ain't human!'

  'Then what are they?'

  'Don't know.'

  'How came you here, John?'

  Speaking in a low voice, John Norman told Roland what he knew of what had happened to him. He, his brother, and four other young men who were quick and owned good horses had been hired as scouts, riding drogue-and-forward, protecting a long-haul caravan of seven freightwagons taking goods - seeds, food, tools, mail, and four ordered brides - to an unincorporated township called Tejuas some two hundred miles further west of Eluria. The scouts rode fore and aft of the goods-train in turn and turn about fashion; one brother rode with each party because, Norman explained, when they were together they fought like ... well ...

  'Like brothers,' Roland suggested.

  John Norman managed a brief, pained smile. 'Aye,' he said.

  The trio of which John was a part had been riding drogue, about two miles behind the freightwagons, when the green mutants had sprung an ambush in Eluria.

  'How many wagons did you see when you got there?' he asked Roland. 'Only one. Overturned.'

  'How many bodies?'


  'Only your brother's.'

  John Norman nodded grimly. 'They wouldn't take him because of the medallion, I think.'

  'The muties?'

  'The Sisters. The muties care nothing for gold or God. These bitches, though . . .' He looked into the dark, which was now almost complete. Roland felt lethargy creeping over him again, but it wasn't until later that he realized the soup had been drugged.

  'The other wagons?' Roland asked. 'The ones not overturned?'

  'The muties would have taken them, and the goods, as well,' Norman said. 'They don't care for gold or God; the Sisters don't care for goods. Like as not they have their own foodstuffs, something I'd as soon not think of. Nasty stuff ... like those bugs.'

  He and the other drogue riders galloped into Eluria, but the fight was over by the time they got there. Men had been lying about, some dead but many more still alive. At least two of the ordered brides had still been alive, as well. Survivors able to walk were being herded together by the,,' green folk - John Norman remembered the one in the bowler hat very well, and the woman in the ragged red vest.