The Dark Tower - Stephen King [47]
Looks like a dragon, Flaherty thought, and before his eyes the cartoon dinosaur became a dragon. It roared and spewed a jet of fire that set several dangling vines and a mat of hanging moss to burning. The kid, meanwhile, was on the move again.
Lamla, the stoat-headed taheen, pushed his way to the forefront and raised one furred fist to his forehead. Flaherty returned the salute impatiently. “What’s down theah, Lam? Do you know?”
Flaherty himself had never been below the Pig. When he traveled on business, it was always between New Yorks, which meant using either the door on Forty-seventh Street between First and Second, the one in the eternally empty warehouse on Bleecker Street (only in some worlds that one was an eternally half-completed building), or the one way uptown on Ninety-fourth Street. (The last was now on the blink much of the time, and of course nobody knew how to fix it.) There were other doors in the city—New York was lousy with portals to other wheres and whens—but those were the only ones that still worked.
And the one to Fedic, of course. The one up ahead.
“ ’Tis a mirage-maker,” the stoat-thing said. Its voice was wet and rumbling and very far from human. “ ‘Yon machine trolls for what ye fear and makes it real. Sayre would’ve turned it on when he and his tet passed with the blackskin jilly. To keep ’is backtrail safe, ye do ken.”
Flaherty nodded. A mind-trap. Very clever. Yet how good was it, really? Somehow the cursed shitting boy had passed, hadn’t he?
“Whatever the boy saw will turn into what we fear,” the taheen said. “It works on imagination.”
Imagination. Flaherty seized on the word. “Fine. Whatevah they see down theah, tell em to just ignore it.”
He raised an arm to motion his men onward, greatly relieved by what Lam had told him. Because they had to press the chase, didn’t they? Sayre (or Walter o’ Dim, who was even worse) would very likely kill the lot of them if they failed to stop yon snot-babby. And Flaherty really did fear the idea of dragons, that was the other thing; had ever since his father had read him a story about such when he was a boy.
The taheen stopped him before he could complete the let’s-go gesture.
“What now, Lam?” Flaherty snarled.
“You don’t understand. What’s down there is real enough to kill you. To kill all of us.”
“What do you see, then?” This was no time to be curious, but that had always been Conor Flaherty’s curse.
Lamla lowered his head. “I don’t like to say. ’Tis bad enough. The point is, sai, we’ll die down there if we’re not careful. What happened to you might look like a stroke or a heart attack to a cut-em-up man, but t’would be whatever you see down there. Anyone who doesn’t think the imagination can kill is a fool.”
The rest had gathered behind the taheen now. They were alternating glances into the hazy clearing with looks at Lamla. Flaherty didn’t like what he saw on their faces, not a bit. Killing one or two of those least willing to veil their sullen eyes might restore the enthusiasm of the rest, but what good would that do if Lamla was right? Cursed old people, always leaving their toys behind! Dangerous toys! How they complicated a man’s life! A pox on every last one!
“Then how do we get past?” Flaherty cried. “For that mat-tah, how did the brat get past?”
“Dunno about the brat,” Lamla said, “but all we need to do