Song of Susannah (6 page)

“What in God’s name was
that?
” Callahan asked, nodding toward the deeper darkness where the floor sloped down. “It wasn’t like that before.”

“I believe that either the quake or the loss of the magic ball has driven the cave insane,” Henchick said calmly. “It doesn’t matter to our business here, anyroa’. Our business is with the door.” He looked at Callahan’s packsack. “Once you were a wandering man.”

“So I was.”

Henchick’s teeth made another brief guest appearance. Eddie decided that, on some level, the old bastard was enjoying this. “From the look of your gunna, sai Callahan, you’ve lost the knack.”

“I suppose it’s hard for me to believe that we’re really going anywhere,” Callahan said, and offered a smile. Compared to Henchick’s, it was feeble. “And I’m older now.”

Henchick made a rude sound at that—
fah!,
it sounded like.

“Henchick,” Roland said, “do you know what caused the ground to shake early this morning?”

The old man’s blue eyes were faded but still sharp. He nodded. Outside the cave’s mouth, in a line going down the path, almost three dozen Manni men waited patiently. “Beam let go is what we think.”

“What I think, too,” Roland said. “Our business grows more desperate. I’d have an end to idle talk, if it does ya. Let’s have what palaver we must have, and then get on with our business.”

Henchick looked at Roland as coldly as he had looked at Eddie, but Roland’s eyes never wavered. Henchick’s brow furrowed, then smoothed out.

“Aye,” he said. “As’ee will, Roland. Thee’s rendered us a great service, Manni and forgetful folk alike, and we’d return it now as best we can. The magic’s still here, and thick. Wants only a spark. We can make that spark, aye, easy as commala. You may get what’ee want. On the other hand, we all may go to the clearing at the end of the path together. Or into the darkness. Does thee understand?”

Roland nodded.

“Would’ee go ahead?”

Roland stood for a moment with his head lowered and his hand on the butt of his gun. When he looked up, he was wearing his own smile. It was handsome and tired and desperate and dangerous. He twirled his whole left hand twice in the air:
Let’s go.

The coffs were set down—carefully, because the path leading up to what the Manni called Kra Kammen was narrow—and the contents were removed. Long-nailed fingers (the Manni were allowed to cut their nails only once a year) tapped the magnets, producing a shrill hum that seemed to slice through Jake’s head like a knife. It reminded him of the todash chimes, and he guessed that wasn’t surprising; those chimes
were
the kammen.

“What does Kra Kammen mean?” he asked Cantab. “House of Bells?”

“House of Ghosts,” he replied without looking up from the chain he was unwinding. “Leave me alone, Jake, this is delicate work.”

Jake couldn’t see why it would be, but he did as bade. Roland, Eddie, and Callahan were standing just inside the cave’s mouth. Jake joined them. Henchick, meanwhile, had placed the oldest members of his group in a semicircle that went around the back of the door. The front side, with its incised hieroglyphs and crystal doorknob, was unguarded, at least for the time being.

The old man went to the mouth of the cave, spoke briefly with Cantab, then motioned for the line of Manni waiting on the path to move up. When the first man in line was just inside the cave, Henchick stopped him and came back to Roland. He squatted, inviting the gunslinger with a gesture to do the same.

The cave’s floor was powdery with dust. Some came from rocks, but most of it was the bone
residue of small animals unwise enough to wander in here. Using a fingernail, Henchick drew a rectangle, open at the bottom, and then a semicircle around it.

“The door,” he said. “And the men of my kra. Do’ee kennit?”

Roland nodded.

“You and your friends will finish the circle,” he said, and drew it.

“The boy’s strong in the touch,” Henchick said, looking at Jake so suddenly that Jake jumped.

“Yes,” Roland said.

“We’ll put him direct in front of the door, then, but far enough away so that if it opens hard—and it may—it won’t clip his head off. Will’ee stand, boy?”

“Yes, until you or Roland says different,” Jake replied.

“You’ll feel something in your head—like a sucking. It’s not nice.” He paused. “Ye’d open the door twice.”

“Yes,” Roland said. “Twim.”

Eddie knew the door’s second opening was about Calvin Tower, and he’d lost what interest he’d had in the bookstore proprietor. The man wasn’t entirely without courage, Eddie supposed, but he was also greedy and stubborn and self-involved: the perfect twentieth-century New York City man, in other words. But the most recent person to use this door had been Suze, and the moment it opened, he intended to dart through. If it opened a second time on the little Maine town where Calvin Tower and his friend, Aaron Deepneau, had gone to earth, fine
and dandy. If the rest of them wound up there, trying to protect Tower and gain ownership of a certain vacant lot and a certain wild pink rose, also fine and dandy. Eddie’s priority was Susannah. Everything else was secondary to that.

Even the tower.

Henchick said: “Who would’ee send the first time the door opens?”

Roland thought about this, absently running his hand over the bookcase Calvin Tower had insisted on sending through. The case containing the book which had so upset the Pere. He did not much want to send Eddie, a man who was impulsive to begin with and now all but blinded by his concern and his love, after his wife. Yet would Eddie obey him if Roland ordered him after Tower and Deepneau instead? Roland didn’t think so. Which meant—

“Gunslinger?” Henchick prodded.

“The first time the door opens, Eddie and I will go through,” Roland said. “The door will shut on its own?”

“Indeed it will,” Henchick said. “You must be as quick as the devil’s bite, or you’ll likely be cut in two, half of you on the floor of this cave and the rest wherever the brown-skinned woman took herself off to.”

“We’ll be as quick as we can, sure,” Roland said.

“Aye, that’s best,” Henchick said, and put his teeth on display once more. This was a smile

(
what’s he not telling? something he knows or only thinks he knows?
)

Roland would have occasion to think of not long hence.

“I’d leave your guns here,” Henchick said. “If you try to carry them through, you may lose them.”

“I’m going to try and keep mine,” Jake said. “It came from the other side, so it should be all right. If it’s not, I’ll get another one. Somehow.”

“I expect mine may travel, as well,” Roland said. He’d thought about this carefully, and had decided to try and keep the big revolvers. Henchick shrugged, as if to say
As you will.

“What about Oy, Jake?” Eddie asked.

Jake’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Roland realized the boy hadn’t considered his bumbler friend until this moment. The gunslinger reflected (not for the first time) how easy it was to forget the most basic truth about John “Jake” Chambers: he was just a kid.

“When we went todash, Oy—” Jake began.

“This ain’t that, sugar,” Eddie said, and when he heard Susannah’s endearment coming out of his mouth, his heart gave a sad cramp. For the first time he admitted to himself that he might never see her again, any more than Jake might see Oy once they left this stinking cave.

“But . . .” Jake began, and then Oy gave a reproachful little bark. Jake had been squeezing him too tightly.

“We’ll keep him for you, Jake,” Cantab said gently. “Keep him very well, say true. There’ll be
folk posted here until thee comes back for thy friend and all the rest of thy goods.”
If you ever do
was the part he was too kind to state. Roland read it in his eyes, however.

“Roland, are you sure I can’t . . . that he can’t . . . no. I see. Not todash this time. Okay. No.”

Jake reached into the front pocket of the poncho, lifted Oy out, set him on the powdery floor of the cave. He bent down, hands planted just above his knees. Oy looked up, stretching his neck so that their faces almost touched. And Roland now saw something extraordinary: not the tears in Jake’s eyes, but those that had begun to well up in Oy’s. A billy-bumbler crying. It was the sort of story you might hear in a saloon as the night grew late and drunk—the faithful bumbler who wept for his departing master. You didn’t believe such stories but never said so, in order to save brawling (perhaps even shooting). Yet here it was, he was seeing it, and it made Roland feel a bit like crying himself. Was it just more bumbler imitation, or did Oy really understand what was happening? Roland hoped for the former, and with all his heart.

“Oy, you have to stay with Cantab for a little while. You’ll be okay. He’s a pal.”

“Tab!” the bumbler repeated. Tears fell from his muzzle and darkened the powdery surface where he stood in dime-sized drops. Roland found the creature’s tears uniquely awful, somehow even worse than a child’s might have been. “Ake!
Ake!
”

“No, I gotta split,” Jake said, and wiped at his cheeks with the heels of his hands. He left dirty streaks like warpaint all the way up to his temples.

“No! Ake!”

“I gotta. You stay with Cantab. I’ll come back for you, Oy—unless I’m dead, I’ll come back.” He hugged Oy again, then stood up. “Go to Cantab. That’s him.” Jake pointed. “Go on, now, you mind me.”

“Ake! Tab!” The misery in that voice was impossible to deny. For a moment Oy stayed where he was. Then, still weeping—or imitating Jake’s tears, Roland still hoped for that—the bumbler turned, trotted to Cantab, and sat between the young man’s dusty shor’boots.

Eddie attempted to put an arm around Jake. Jake shook it off and stepped away from him. Eddie looked baffled. Roland kept his Watch Me face, but inside he was grimly delighted. Not thirteen yet, no, but there was no shortage of steel there.

And it was time.

“Henchick?”

“Aye. Would’ee speak a word of prayer first, Roland? To whatever God thee holds?”

“I hold to no God,” Roland said. “I hold to the Tower, and won’t pray to that.”

Several of Henchick’s
’migos
looked shocked at this, but the old man himself only nodded, as if he had expected no more. He looked at Callahan. “Pere?”

Callahan said, “God, Thy hand, Thy will.” He sketched a cross in the air and nodded at Henchick. “If we’re goin, let’s go.”

Henchick stepped forward, touched the Unfound Door’s crystal knob, then looked at Roland. His
eyes were bright. “Hear me this last time, Roland of Gilead.”

“I hear you very well.”

“I am Henchick of the Manni Kra Redpath-a-Sturgis. We are far-seers and far travelers. We are sailors on ka’s wind. Would thee travel on that wind? Thee and thine?”

“Aye, to where it blows.”

Henchick slipped the chain of the Branni bob over the back of his hand and Roland at once felt some power let loose in this chamber. It was small as yet, but it was growing. Blooming, like a rose.

“How many calls would you make?”

Roland held up the remaining fingers of his right hand. “Two. Which is to say
twim
in the Eld.”

“Two or twim, both the same,” Henchick said. “Commala-come-two.” he raised his voice. “Come, Manni! Come-commala, join your force to my force! Come and keep your promise! Come and pay our debt to these gunslingers! Help me send them on their way!
Now!
”

Before any of them could even begin to register the fact that ka had changed their plans, ka had worked its will on them. But at first it seemed that nothing at all would happen.

The Manni Henchick had chosen as senders—six elders, plus Cantab—formed their semicircle behind the door and around to its sides. Eddie took Cantab’s hand and laced his fingers through the Manni’s. One of the shell-shaped magnets kept their
palms apart. Eddie could feel it vibrating like something alive. He supposed it was. Callahan took his other hand and gripped it firmly.

On the other side of the door, Roland took Henchick’s hand, weaving the Branni bob’s chain between his fingers. Now the circle was complete save for the one spot directly in front of the door. Jake took a deep breath, looked around, saw Oy sitting against the wall of the cave about ten feet behind Cantab, and nodded.

Oy, stay, I’ll be back,
Jake sent, and then he stepped into his place. He took Callahan’s right hand, hesitated, and then took Roland’s left.

The humming returned at once. The Branni bob began to move, not in arcs this time but in a small, tight circle. The door brightened and became more
there
—Jake saw this with his own eyes. The lines and circles of the hieroglyphs spelling
UNFOUND
grew clearer. The rose etched into the doorknob began to glow.

The door, however, remained closed.

(
Concentrate, boy!
)

That was Henchick’s voice, so strong in his head that it almost seemed to slosh Jake’s brains. He lowered his head and looked at the doorknob. He saw the rose. He saw it very well. He imagined it turning as the knob upon which it had been cast turned. Once not so long ago he had been obsessed by doors and the other world

(
Mid-World
)

he knew must lie behind one of them. This felt like going back to that. He imagined all the doors he’d known in his life—bedroom doors bathroom
doors kitchen doors closet doors bowling alley doors cloakroom doors movie theater doors restaurant doors doors marked
KEEP OUT
doors marked
EMPLOYEES ONLY
refrigerator doors, yes even those—and then saw them all opening at once.

Open!
he thought at the door, feeling absurdly like an Arabian princeling in some ancient story.
Open sesame! Open says me!

From the cave’s belly far below, the voices began to babble once more. There was a whooping, windy sound, the heavy crump of something falling. The cave’s floor trembled beneath their feet, as if with another Beamquake. Jake paid no mind. The feeling of live force in this chamber was very strong now—he could feel it plucking at his skin, vibrating in his nose and eyes, teasing the hairs out from his scalp—but the door remained shut. He bore down more strongly on Roland’s hand and the Pere’s, concentrating on firehouse doors, police station doors, the door to the Principal’s Office at Piper, even a science fiction book he’d once read called
The Door into Summer.
The smell of the cave—deep must, ancient bones, distant drafts—seemed suddenly very strong. He felt that brilliant, exuberant uprush of certainty—
Now, it will happen now, I know it will
—yet the door still stayed closed. And now he could smell something else. Not the cave, but the slightly metallic aroma of his own sweat, rolling down his face.