Alain couldn’t get Roland’s hands off the ball, and so he laid his own on Roland’s cheeks, touching him that way. Except there was nothing to touch, nothing there. The thing which rode west with them toward Gilead was not Roland, or even a ghost of Roland. Like the moon at the close of its cycle, Roland had gone.
===
On that somber now, I stop reading for today. I am now 92% of the way through Wizard and Glass.

When Roland remained unconscious the following day (Mejis falling behind them now, and both boys feeling a deep tug of homesickness, inexplicable but as real as tides), they sat on either side of him, looking at each other over the slow rise and fall of his chest.
===
The ka-tet have left town. Will Roland get revenge on Rhea? I have no idea as I remember nothing beyond this point.

There was no word, not even no, in his screams at the end: he howled like a gutted animal, his hands welded to the ball, which beat like a runaway heart. He watched in it as she burned.
===

<No words>

The dry wood caught; her pants caught; her shirt caught; her long blonde hair blazed on her head like a crown.

“ROLAND, I LOVE THEE!”

At the end of her life she was aware of heat but not pain.
===
I'm openly weeping now. It took forever to get here and now it's gone by far too fast. Somehow, I still wasn't ready for it.

“Bird and bear and hare and fish,” she murmured as she was first lowered and then slammed against the pyramid of dry wood, put in the place which had been left for her—the whole crowd chanting in unison now, “Charyou TREE! Charyou TREE! Charyou TREE!”
===
That phrase, “Bird and bear and hare and fish", was the sweetest thing ever and now it just fills me with sorrow.

Roland began to shriek. It was a single word, over and over again: No, no, no, no, no, no! The ball’s pink light flashed brighter with each repetition, as if his horror refreshed and strengthened it. And now, with each of those pulses, Cuthbert and Alain could see the shape of the gunslinger’s skull beneath his skin.
===
Wow!

Roland bent his face over the pulsing ball, its light running over his cheeks and brow like liquid, drowning his eyes in its dazzle.

In Maerlyn’s Rainbow he saw her—Susan, horse-drover’s daughter, lovely girl at the window. He saw her standing in the back of a black cart decorated with gold symbols, the old witch’s cart.
===
My heart is sinking!

===
Goddamn it - this got me teary-eyed!

Nothing was clear to Susan until she saw the man with the long red hair and the straw hat which did not quite obscure his lamb-slaughterer’s eyes; the man with the cornshucks in his hands. He was the first, just a farmer... standing by himself not far from the place where Silk Ranch Road and the Great Road intersected, standing in the light of the rising moon.
===
Oh man, I was not prepared for first person POV of someone about to be executed.

===
Roland finally realizes that Susan is in mortal danger. King captures his sudden panic perfectly.

Come in, the green shimmer invited, and Latigo found its buzz strangely attractive . . . intimate, almost. Come in and visit, squat and hunker, be at rest, be at peace, be at one.
===
With that call of the thinny, I end my reading for today.

I am now 90% of the way through Wizard and Glass.

===
The thinny claimed its first victim of Latigo's army.

===
Thinking of Cuthbert and Alain almost entering the thinny...

How infinite was love, twining in and out of hope and memory like a braid with three strong strands, so much the Bright Tower of every human’s life and soul.
===
What a beautiful line! And I wonder if the "Bright Tower" was part of the lore of the land as much as the "Dark Tower" was.