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.”

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 cock inside her. At the time, she’d thought it was like being fucked 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 cock 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.”

“And you’re not me…or are you?”

Mia didn’t answer. And Susannah realized that she probably didn’t know.

“Mia?” Low. Musing.

Mia was hunkering against the merlon with her serape tucked between her knees. Susannah could see that her ankles were swollen and felt a moment’s pity for the woman. Then she squashed it. This was no time for pity, for there was no truth in it.

“You ain’t nothing but the baby-sitter, girl.”

The reaction was all she’d hoped for, and more. Mia’s face registered shock, then anger. Hell,fury. “Youlie! I’m this chap’smother! And when he comes, Susannah, there will be no more combing the world for Breakers, for my chap will be the greatest of them all, able to break both of the remaining Beams all by himself!” Her voice had filled with pride that sounded alarmingly close to insanity. “My Mordred! Do you hear me?”

“Oh, yes,” Susannah said. “I hear. And you’re actually going to go trotting right to those who’ve made it their business to pull down the Tower, aren’t you? They call, you come.” She paused, then finished with deliberate softness. “And when you get to them, they’ll take your chap, and thank you very much, and then send you back into the soup you came from.”

“Nay! I shall have the raising of him, for so they have promised!” Mia crossed her arms protectively over her belly. “He’s mine, I’m his mother and I shall have the raising of him!”

“Girl, why don’t you getreal? Do you think they’llkeep their word?Them? How can you see so much and not see that?”

Susannah knew the answer, of course. Motherhood itself had deluded her.

“Why would they not let me raise him?” Mia asked shrilly. “Who better? Who better than Mia, who was made for only two things, to bear a son and raise him?”

“But you’re not just you,” Susannah said. “You’re like the children of the Calla, and just about everything else my friends and I have run into along the way. You’re atwin, Mia! I’m your other half, your lifeline. You see the world through my eyes and breathe through my lungs. I had to carry the chap, because you couldn’t, could you? You’re as sterile as the big boys. And once they’ve got your kid, their A-bomb of a Breaker, they’ll get rid of you if only so they can get rid of me.”

“I have their promise,” she said. Her face was downcast, set in its stubbornness.

“Turn it around,” Susannah said. “Turn it around, I beg. If I were in your place and you in mine, what would you think if I spoke of such a promise?”

“I’d tell you to stop your blabbering tongue!”

“Who are you, really? Where in the hell did they get you? Was it like a newspaper ad you answered, ‘Surrogate Mother Wanted, Good Benefits, Short Term of Employment’? Who are you, really?”

“Shut up!”

Susannah leaned forward on her haunches. This position was ordinarily exquisitely uncomfortable for her, but she’d forgotten both her discomfort and the half-eaten pokeberry in her hand.

“Come on!” she said, her voice taking on the rasping tones of Detta Walker. “Come on and take off yo’ blindfold, honeybunch, jus’ like you made me take off mine! Tell the truth and spit in the devil’s eye!Who the fuck are you? ”