The Dark Tower - Stephen King [270]
Susannah tried not to wince at this, but it hurt. It hurt.
As before, Feemalo and Fumalo had turned to look at Fimalo when he spoke. Now they turned back to Roland and Susannah.
“Honesty’s the best policy,” said Feemalo, with a pious look. “Cervantes.”
“Liars prosper,” said Fumalo, with a cynical grin. “Anonymous.”
Feemalo said, “There were times when Los’ would make us divide into six, or even seven, and for no other reason than because it hurt. Yet we could leave no more than anyone else in the castle could, for he’d set a dead-line around its walls.”
“We thought he’d kill us all before he left,” Fumalo said, and with none of his previous fuck-you cynicism. His face wore the long and introspective expression of one who looks back on a disaster perhaps averted by mere inches.
Feemalo: “He did kill a great many. Beheaded his Minister of State.”
Fumalo: “Who had advanced syphilis and no more idea what was happening to him than a pig in a slaughterhouse chute, more’s the pity.”
Feemalo: “He lined up the kitchen staff and the women o’ work—”
Fumalo: “All of whom had been very loyal to him, very loyal indeed—”
Feemalo: “And made them take poison as they stood in front of him. He could have killed them in their sleep if he’d wanted to—”
Fumalo: “And by no more than wishing it on them.”
Feemalo: “But instead he made them take poison. Rat poison. They swallowed large brown chunks of it and died in convulsions right in front of him as he sat on his throne—”
Fumalo: “Which is made of skulls, do ye ken—”
Feemalo: “He sat there with his elbow on his knee and his fist on his chin, like a man thinking long thoughts, perhaps about squaring the circle or finding the Ultimate Prime Number, all the while watching them writhe and vomit and convulse on the floor of the Audience Chamber.”
Fumalo (with a touch of eagerness Susannah found both prurient and extremely unattractive): “Some died begging for water. It was a thirsty poison, aye! And we thought we were next!”
At this Feemalo at last betrayed, if not anger, then a touch of pique. “Will you let me tell this and have done with it so they can go on or back as they please?”
“Bossy as ever,” Fumalo said, and dropped into a sulky silence. Above them, the Castle Rooks jostled for position and looked down with beady eyes. No doubt hoping to make a meal of those who don’t walk away, Susannah thought.
“He had six of the surviving Wizard’s Glasses,” Feemalo said. “And when you were still in Calla Bryn Sturgis, he saw something in them that finished the job of running him mad. We don’t know for sure what it was, for we didn’t see, but we have an idea it was your victory not just in the Calla but further on, at Algul Siento. If so, it meant the end of his scheme to bring down the Tower from afar, by breaking the Beams.”
“Of course that’s what it was,” Fimalo said quietly, and once more both Stephen Kings on the bridge turned to look at him. “It could have been nothing else. What brought him to the brink of madness in the first place were two conflicting compulsions in his mind: to bring the Tower down, and to get there before you could get there, Roland, and mount to the top. To destroy it…or to rule it. I’m not sure he has ever cared overmuch about understanding it—just about beating you to something you want, and then snatching it away from you. About such things he’d care much.”
“It’d no doubt please you to know how he raved about you, and cursed your name in the weeks before he smashed his precious playthings,” said Fumalo. “How he came to fear you, insofar as he can fear.”
“Not this one,” Feemalo contradicted, and rather glumly, Susannah thought. “It wouldn’t please this one much at all. He wins with no better grace than he loses.”
Fimalo said: “When the Red King saw that