"Not even your gunslinger friend hopes toprevent it," Mia said, "only to slow it down by freeing the Breakers and - perhaps - slaying the Crimson King. Save it!Save it, O delight! Did he ever tell you that was his quest?"
Susannah considered this and shook her head. If Roland had ever said that, in so many words, she couldn't remember. And she was sure she would have.
"No," Mia went on, "for he won't lie to his ka-tet unless he has to, 'tis his pride. What he wants of the Tower is only tosee it." Then she added, rather grudgingly: "Oh, perhaps to enter it, and climb to the room at the top, his ambition may strike so far. He may dream of standing on its allure as we hunker on this one, and chant the names of his fallen comrades, and of his line all the way back to Arthur Eld. Butsave it? No, good lady! Only a return of the magic could possibly save it, and - as you yourself well know - your dinh deals only in lead."
Never since crossing the worlds had Susannah heard Roland's trade of hand cast in such a paltry light. It made her feel sad and angry, but she hid her feelings as best she could.
"Tell me how your chap can be Roland's son, for I would hear."
"Aye, 'tis a good trick, but one the old people of River Crossing could have explained to you, I've no doubt."
Susannah started at that. "How do you know somuch of me?"
"Because you are possessed," Mia said, "and I am your possessor, sure. I can look through any of your memories that I like. I can read what your eyes see. Now be quiet and listen if you would learn, for I sense our time has grown short."
Four
This is what Susannah's demon told her.
"There are six Beams, as you did say, but there are twelve Guardians, one for each end of each Beam. This - for we're still on it - is the Beam of Shardik. Were you to go beyond the Tower, it would become the Beam of Maturin, the great turtle upon whose shell the world rests.
"Similarly, there are but six demon elementals, one for each Beam. Below them is the whole invisible world, those creatures left behind on the beach of existence when thePrim receded. There are speaking demons, demons of house which some call ghosts, ill-sick demons which some - makers of machines and worshippers of the great false god rationality, if it does ya - call disease. Many small demons but only six demon elementals. Yet as there are twelve Guardians for the six Beams, there are twelve demonaspects, for each demon elemental is both male and female."
Susannah began to see where this was going, and felt a sudden sinking in her guts. From the naked bristle of rocks beyond the allure, in what Mia called the Discordia, there came a dry, feverish cackle of laughter. This unseen humorist was joined by a second, a third, a fourth and fifth. Suddenly it seemed that the whole world was laughing at her. And perhaps with good reason, for it was a good joke. But how could she have known?
As the hyenas - or whatever they were - cackled, she said: "You're telling me that the demon elementals are hermaphrodites. That's why they're sterile, because they're both."
"Aye. In the place of the Oracle, your dinh had intercourse with one of these demon elementals in order to gain information, what's calledprophecy in the High Speech. He had no reason to think the Oracle was anything but a succubus, such as those that sometimes exist in the lonely places - "
"Right," Susannah said, "just a run-of-the-mill demon sexpot."
"If you like," Mia said, and this time when she offered Susannah a pokeberry, Susannah took it and began to roll it between her palms, warming the skin. She still wasn't hungry, but her mouth was dry. So dry.
"The demon took the gunslinger's seed as female, and gave it back to you as male."
"When we were in the speaking ring," Susannah said dismally. She was remembering how the pouring rain had pounded against her upturned face, the sense of invisible hands on her shoulders, and then the thing's engorgement filling her up and at the same time seeming to tear her apart. The worst part had been the coldness of the enormous c**k inside her. At the time, she'd thought it was like being f**ked by an icicle.
And how had she gotten through it? By summoning Detta, of course. By calling on the bitch, victor in a hundred nasty little sex-skirmishes fought in the parking lots of two dozen roadhouses and county-line honky-tonks. Detta, who had trapped it -
"It tried to get away," she told Mia. "Once it figured out it had its c**k caught in a damn Chinese finger-puller, it tried to get away."
"If it had wanted to get away," Mia said quietly, "itwould have."
"Why would it bother fooling me?" Susannah asked, but she didn't need Mia to answer that question, not now. Because it had needed her, of course. It had needed her to carry the baby.
Roland'sbaby.
Roland's doom.
"You know everything you need to know about the chap," Mia said. "Don't you?"
Susannah supposed she did. A demon had taken in Roland's seed while female; had stored it, somehow; and then shot it into Susannah Dean as male. Mia was right. She knew what she needed to know.
"I've kept my promise," Mia said. "Let's go back. The cold's not good for the chap."
"Just a minute longer," Susannah said. She held up the pokeberry. Golden fruit now bulged through ruptures in the orange skin. "My berry just popped. Let me eat it. I have another question."
"Eat and ask and be quick about both."
"Who areyou ? Who are you really? Are you this demon? Does she have a name, by the way? She and he, do they have a name?"
"No," Mia said. "Elementals have no need of names; they are what they are. Am I a demon? Is that what you'd know? Yar, I suppose I am. Or I was. All that is vague now, like a dream."