The Dark Tower-Part 1#-2#(28)

"So brave," Susannah said, and ruffled Jake's hair. Then she bent to stroke Oy's head. The bumbler stretched his long neck to maximize the caress, his eyes half-closed and a grin on his foxy little face. "So damned brave. Thankee-sai, Jake."

"Thank Ake!" Oy agreed.

"If it hadn't been for the turtle, they would have gotten us both." Jake's voice was steady, but he had gone pale. "As it was, the Pere …  he … "Jake wiped away a tear with the heel of his hand and gazed at Roland. 'You used his voice to send me on. I heard you."

"Aye, I had to," the gunslinger agreed. "'Twas no more than what he wanted."

Jake said, "The vampires didn't get him. He used my Ruger before they could take his blood and change him into one of them. I don't think they would've done that, anyway. They would have torn him apart and eaten him. They were mad."

Roland was nodding.

"The last thing he sent-I think he said it out loud, although I'm not sure-it was … "Jake considered it. He was weeping freely now. "He said 'May you find your Tower, Roland, and breach it, and may you climb to the top.' Then … "Jake made a little puffing sound between his pursed lips. "Gone. like a candle-flame. To whatever worlds there are."

He fell silent. For several moments they all did, and the quiet had the feel of a deliberate thing. Then Eddie said, "All right, we're back together again. What the hell do we do next?"

FOUR

Roland sat down with a grimace, then gave Eddie Dean a look which said-clearer than any words ever could have done-

Why do you try my patience?

"All right," Eddie said, "it's just a habit. Quit giving me the look."

"What's a habit, Eddie?"

Eddie thought of his final bruising, addictive year with Henry less frequently these days, but he thought of it now.

Only he didn't like to say so, not because he was ashamed-

Eddie really thought he might be past that-but because he sensed the gunslinger's growing impatience with Eddie's explaining things in terms of his big brother. And maybe that was fair. Henry had been the defining, shaping force in Eddie's life, okay. Just as Cort had been the defining, shaping force in Roland's …  but the gunslinger didn't talk about his old teacher all the time.

"Asking questions when I already know the answer," Eddie said.

"And what's the answer this time?"

"We're going to backtrack to Thunderclap before we go on to the Tower. We're either going to kill the Breakers or set them free. Whatever it takes to make the Beams safe. We'll kill Walter, or Flagg, or whatever he's calling himself. Because he's the field marshal, isn't he?"

"He was," Roland agreed, "but now a new player has come on the scene." He looked at the robot. "Nigel, I need you."

Nigel unfolded his arms and raised his head. "How may I serve?"

"By getting me something to write with. Is there such?"

"Pens, pencils, and chalk in the Supervisor's cubicle at the far end of the Extraction Room, sai. Or so there was, the last time I had occasion to be there."

"The Extraction Room," Roland mused, studying the serried ranks of beds. "Do you call it so?"

"Yes, sai." And then, almost timidly: "Vocal elisions and fricatives suggest that you're angry. Is that the case?"

"They brought children here by the hundreds and thousands-healthy ones, for the most part, from a world where too many are still born twisted-and sucked away their minds.

Why would I be angry?"

"Sai, I'm sure I don't know," Nigel said. He was, perhaps, repenting his decision to come back here. "But I had no part in the extraction procedures, I assure you. I am in charge of domestic services, including maintenance."

"Bring me a pencil and a piece of chalk."

"Sai, you won't destroy me, will you? It was Dr. Scowther who was in charge of the extractions over the last twelve or fourteen years, and Dr. Scowther is dead. This lady-sai shot him, and with his own gun." There was a touch of reproach in Nigel's voice, which was quite expressive within its narrow range.

Roland only repeated: "Bring me a pencil and a piece of chalk, and do itjin-jin."

Nigel went off on his errand.

"When yovi say a new player, you mean the baby," Susannah said.

"Certainly. He has two fathers, that bah-bo."

Susannah nodded. She was thinking about the tale Mia had told her during their todash visit to the abandoned town of Fedic-abandoned, that was, except for the likes of Sayre and Scowther and the marauding Wolves. Two women, one white and one black, one pregnant and one not, sitting in chairs outside the Gin-Puppy Saloon. There Mia had told Eddie Dean's wife a great deal-more than either of them had known, perhaps.

That's where they changed me, Mia had told her, "they" presumably meaning Scowther and a team of other doctors. Plus magicians? Folk like the Manni, only gone over to the other side? Maybe. Who could say? In the Extraction Room she'd been made mortal. Then, with Roland's sperm already in her, something else had happened. Mia didn't remember much about that part, only a red darkness. Susannah wondered now if the Crimson King had come to her in person, mounting her with its huge and ancient spider's body, or if its unspeakable sperm had been transported somehow to mix with Roland's. In either case, the baby grew into the loathsome hybrid Susannah had seen: not a werewolf but a -were-spider. And now it was out there, somewhere. Or perhaps it was here, watching them even as they palavered and Nigel returned with various writing implements.

Yes, she thought. It's watching us. And hating us …  but not equally. Mostly it's Roland the dan-tete hates. Its first father.

She shivered.

"Mordred means to kill you, Roland," she said. "That's its job. What it was made for. To end you, and your quest, and the Tower."

"Yes," Roland said, "and to rule in his father's place. For the Crimson King is old, and I have come more and more to believe that he is imprisoned, somehow. If that's so, then he's no longer our real enemy."

"Will we go to his castle on the other side of the Discordia?"

Jake asked. It was the first time he'd spoken in half an hour.

"We will, won't we?"

"I think so, yes," Roland said. "Le Casse Roi Russe, the old legends call it. We'll go there ka-tet and slay what lives there."

"Let it be so," Eddie said. "By God, let that be so."

"Aye," Roland agreed. "But our first job is the Breakers. The Beamquake we felt in Calla Bryn Sturgis, just before we came here, suggests that their work is nearly done. Yet even if it isn't-"

"Ending what they're doing is our job," Eddie said.

Roland nodded. He looked more tired than ever. "Aye," he said. "Killing them or setting them free. Either way, we must finish their meddling with the two Beams that remain. And we must finish off the dan-tete. The one that belongs to the Crimson King …  and to me."

FIVE

Nigel ended up being quite helpful (although not just to Roland and his ka-tet, as things fell). To begin with he brought two pencils, two pens (one of them a great old thing that would have looked at home in the hand of a Dickens scrivener), and three pieces of chalk, one of them in a silver holder that looked like a lady's lipstick, Roland chose this and gave Jake another piece. "I can't write words you'd understand easily," he said, "but our numbers are the same, or close enough. Print what I say to one side, Jake, and fair."

Jake did as he was bid. The result was crude but understandable enough, a map with a legend.

1-Fedic

2- Castle

3 -M-'R.a-WadTroi.Ks

5- Do^o-n

(o - R,'wer

7- CcxItaS

8 - DcvO-r-To!

"Fedic," Roland said, pointing to 1, and then drew a short chalk line to 2. "And here's Castle Discordia, with the doors beneath. An almighty tangle of em, from what we hear. There'll be a passage that'll take us from here to there, under the castle.

Now, Susannah, tell again how die Wolves go, and what they do."

He handed her the chalk in its holder.

She took it, noticing with some admiration that it sharpened itself as it was used. A small trick but a neat one.

"They ride through a one-way door that brings them out here," she said, drawing a line from 2 to 3, which Jake had dubbed Thunderclap Station. "We ought to know this door when we see it, because it'll be big, unless they go through single-file."

"Maybe they do," Eddie said. "Unless I'm wrong, they're pretty well stuck with what the old people left them."

"You're not wrong," Roland said. "Go on, Susannah." He wasn't hunkering but sitting with his right leg stretched stiffly out. Eddie wondered how badly his hip was hurting him, and if he had any of Rosalita's cat-oil in his newly recovered purse. He doubted it.

She said, "The Wolves ride from Thunderclap along the course of the railroad tracks, at least until they're out of the shadow …  or the darkness …  or whatever it is. Do you know,

Roland?"

"No, but we'll see soon enough." He made his impatient twirling gesture with his left hand.

"They cross the river to the Callas and take the children.

When they get back to the Thunderclap Station, I think they must board their horses and their prisoners on a train and go back to Fedic that way, for the door's no good to them."