Wolves of the Calla (59 page)

“Nay, gunslinger, ye dare not!” Henchick cried in alarm.

“I dare,” Roland said. And he did, but the knob wouldn’t turn in either direction. He stepped back from it.

“But the door was open when you found the
priest?” he asked Henchick. They had spoken of this the previous night, but Roland wanted to hear more.

“Aye. ’Twas I and Jemmin who found him. Thee knows we elder Manni seek the other worlds? Not for treasure but for enlightenment?”

Roland nodded. He also knew that some had come back from their travels insane. Others never came back at all.

“These hills are magnetic, and riddled with many ways into many worlds. We’d gone out to a cave near the old garnet mines and there we found a message.”

“What kind of message?”

“ ’Twas a machine set in the cave’s mouth,” Henchick said. “Push a button and a voice came out of it. The voice told us to come here.”

“You knew of this cave before?”

“Aye, but before the Pere came, it were called the Cave of Voices. For which reason thee now knows.”

Roland nodded and motioned for Henchick to go on.

“The voice from the machine spoke in accents like those of your ka-mates, gunslinger. It said that we should come here, Jemmin and I, and we’d find a door and a man and a wonder. So we did.”

“Someone left you instructions,” Roland mused. It was Walter he was thinking of. The man in black, who had also left them the cookies Eddie called Keeblers. Walter was Flagg and Flagg was Marten and Marten . . . was he Maerlyn, the old rogue wizard of legend? On that subject Roland remained
unsure. “And spoke to you by name?”

“Nay, he did not know s’much. Only called us the Manni-folk.”

“How did this someone know where to leave the voice machine, do you think?”

Henchick’s lips thinned. “Why must thee think it was a person? Why not a god speaking in a man’s voice? Why not some agent of The Over?”

Roland said, “Gods leave siguls. Men leave machines.” He paused. “In my own experience, of course, Pa.”

Henchick made a curt gesture, as if to tell Roland to spare him the flattery.

“Was it general knowledge that thee and thy friend were exploring the cave where you found the speaking machine?”

Henchick shrugged rather sullenly. “People see us, I suppose. Some mayhap watch over the miles with their spyglasses and binoculars. Also, there’s the mechanical man. He sees much and prattles everlastingly to all who will listen.”

Roland took this for a yes. He thought someone had known Pere Callahan was coming. And that he would need help when he arrived on the outskirts of the Calla.

“How far open was the door?” Roland asked.

“These are questions for Callahan,” Henchick said. “I promised to show thee this place. I have. Surely that’s enough for ye.”

“Was he conscious when you found him?”

There was a reluctant pause. Then: “Nay. Only muttering, as one does in his sleep if he dreams badly.”

“Then he can’t tell me, can he? Not this part. Henchick, you seek aid and succor. This thee told
me on behalf of all your clans. Help me, then! Help me to help you!”

“I do na’ see how this helps.”

And it might not help, not in the matter of the Wolves which so concerned this old man and the rest of Calla Bryn Sturgis, but Roland had other worries and other needs; other fish to fry, as Susannah sometimes said. He stood looking at Henchick, one hand still on the crystal doorknob.

“It were open a bit,” Henchick said finally. “So were the box. Both just a bit. The one they call the Old Fella, he lay facedown, there.” He pointed to the rubble- and bone-littered floor where Roland’s boots were now planted. “The box were by his right hand, open about this much.” Henchick held his thumb and forefinger perhaps two inches apart. “Coming from it was the sound of the
kammen
. I’ve heard em before, but never s’strong. They made my very eyes ache and gush water. Jemmin cried out and begun walking toward the door. The Old Fella’s hands were spread out on the ground and Jemmin treaded on one of em and never noticed.

“The door were only ajar, like the box, but a terrible light was coming through it. I’ve traveled much, gunslinger, to many
wheres
and many
whens
; I’ve seen other doors and I’ve seen todash tahken, the holes in reality, but never any light like that. It were black, like all the emptiness that ever was, but there were something red in it.”

“The Eye,” Roland said.

Henchick looked at him. “An eye? Do’ee say so?”

“I
think
so,” Roland said. “The blackness you saw is cast by Black Thirteen. The red might have been the Eye of the Crimson King.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” Roland said. “Only that he bides far east of here, in Thunderclap or beyond it. I believe he may be a Guardian of the Dark Tower. He may even think he owns it.”

At Roland’s mention of the Tower, the old man covered his eyes with both hands, a gesture of deep religious dread.

“What happened next, Henchick? Tell me, I beg.”

“I began to reach for Jemmin, then recalled how he stepped on the man’s hand with his bootheel, and thought better of it. Thought, ‘Henchick, if thee does that, he’ll drag you through with him.’ ” The old man’s eyes fastened on Roland’s. “Traveling is what we do, I know ye ken as much, and rarely are we afraid, for we trust The Over. Yet I were afraid of that light and the sound of those chimes.” He paused. “Terrified of them. I’ve never spoken of that day.”

“Not even to Pere Callahan?”

Henchick shook his head.

“Did he not speak to you when he woke up?”

“He asked if he were dead. I told him that if he were so, so were we all.”

“What about Jemmin?”

“Died two years later.” Henchick tapped the front of his black shirt. “Heart.”

“How many years since you found Callahan here?”

Henchick shook his head slowly back and forth in wide arcs, a Manni gesture so common it might have been genetic. “Gunslinger, I know not. For
time is—”

“Yes, in drift,” Roland said impatiently. “How long would you
say
?”

“More than five years, for he has his church and superstitious fools to fill it, ye ken.”

“What did you do? How did thee save Jemmin?”

“Fell on my knees and closed the box,” Henchick said. “’Twas all I could think to do. If I’d hesitated even a single second I do believe I would ha’ been lost, for the same black light were coming out of it. It made me feel weak and . . . and
dim
.”

“I’ll bet it did,” Roland said grimly.

“But I moved fast, and when the lid of the box clicked down, the door swung shut. Jemmin banged his fists against it and screamed and begged to be let through. Then he fell down in a faint. I dragged him out of the cave. I dragged them both out. After a little while in the fresh air, both came to.” Henchick raised his hands, then lowered them again, as if to say
There you are
.

Roland gave the doorknob a final try. It moved in neither direction. But with the ball—

“Let’s go back,” he said. “I’d like to be at the Pere’s house by dinnertime. That means a fast walk back down to the horses and an even faster ride once we get there.”

Henchick nodded. His bearded face was good at hiding expression, but Roland thought the old man was relieved to be going. Roland was a little relieved, himself. Who would enjoy listening to the accusing screams of one’s dead mother and father rising out of the dark? Not to mention the cries of one’s dead friends?

“What happened to the speaking device?” Roland asked as they started back down.

Henchick shrugged. “Do ye ken bayderies?”

Batteries.
Roland nodded.

“While they worked, the machine played the same message over and over, the one telling us that we should go to the Cave of Voices and find a man, a door, and a wonder. There was also a song. We played it once for the Pere, and he wept. You must ask him about it, for that truly is his part of the tale.”

Roland nodded again.

“Then the bayderies died.” Henchick’s shrug showed a certain contempt for machines, the gone world, or perhaps both. “We took them out. They were Duracell. Does thee ken Duracell, gunslinger?”

Roland shook his head.

“We took them to Andy and asked if he could recharge them, mayhap. He took them into himself, but when they came out again they were as useless as before. Andy said sorry. We said thankya.” Henchick rolled his shoulders in that same contemptuous shrug. “We opened the machine—another button did that—and the tongue came out. It were this long.” Henchick held his hands four or five inches apart. “Two holes in it. Shiny brown stuff inside, like string. The Pere called it a ‘cassette tape.’ ”

Roland nodded. “I want to thank you for taking me up to the cave, Henchick, and for telling me all thee knows.”

“I did what I had to,” Henchick said. “And you’ll
do as’ee promise. Wont’chee?”

Roland of Gilead nodded. “Let God pick a winner.”

“Aye, so we do say. Ye speak as if ye knew us, once upon a season.” He paused, eyeing Roland with a certain sour shrewdness. “Or is it just makin up to me that ye does? For anyone who’s ever read the Good Book can thee and thou till the crows fly home.”

“Does thee ask if I play the toady, up here where there’s no one to hear us but them?” Roland nodded toward the babbling darkness. “Thou knows better, I hope, for if thee doesn’t, thee’s a fool.”

The old man considered, then put out his gnarled, long-fingered hand. “Do’ee well, Roland. ’Tis a good name, and a fair.”

Roland put out his right hand. And when the old man took it and squeezed it, he felt the first deep twinge of pain where he wanted to feel it least.

No, not yet. Where I’d feel it least is in the other one. The one that’s still whole.

“Mayhap this time the Wolves’ll kill us all,” said Henchick.

“Perhaps so.”

“Yet still, perhaps we’re well-met.”

“Perhaps we are,” the gunslinger replied.

“Beds’re ready,” Rosalita Munoz said when they got back.

Eddie was so tired that he believed she’d said something else entirely—
Time to weed the garden,
perhaps, or
There’s fifty or sixty more people’d like t’meet ye waitin up to the church
. After all, who spoke of beds at three in the afternoon?

“Huh?” Susannah asked blearily. “What-say, hon? Didn’t quite catch it.”

“Beds’re ready,” the Pere’s woman of work repeated. “You two’ll go where ye slept night before last; young soh’s to have the Pere’s bed. And the bumbler can go in with ye, Jake, if ye’d like; Pere said for me to tell’ee so. He’d be here to tell you himself, but it’s his afternoon for sick-rounds. He takes the Communion to em.” She said this last with unmistakable pride.

“Beds,” Eddie said. He couldn’t quite get the sense of this. He looked around, as if to confirm that it was still midafternoon, the sun still shining brightly. “Beds?”

“Pere saw’ee at the store,” Rosalita amplified,
“and thought ye’d want naps after talking to all those people.”

Eddie understood at last. He supposed that at some point in his life he must have felt more grateful for a kindness, but he honestly couldn’t remember when or what that kindness might have been. At first those approaching them as they sat in the rockers on the porch of Took’s had come slowly, in hesitant little clusters. But when no one turned to stone or took a bullet in the head—when there was, in fact, animated conversation and actual laughter—more and more came. As the trickle became a flood, Eddie at last discovered what it was to be a public person. He was astounded by how difficult it was, how draining. They wanted simple answers to a thousand difficult questions—where the gunslingers came from and where they were going were only the first two. Some of their questions could be answered honestly, but more and more Eddie heard himself giving weaselly politicians’ answers, and heard his two friends doing the same. These weren’t lies, exactly, but little propaganda capsules that sounded like answers. And everyone wanted a look straight in the face and a
Do ya fine
that sounded straight from the heart. Even Oy came in for his share of the work; he was petted over and over again, and made to speak until Jake got up, went into the store, and begged a bowl of water from Eben Took. That gentleman gave him a tin cup instead, and told him he could fill it at the trough out front. Jake was surrounded by townsfolk who questioned him steadily even as he did this simple chore. Oy lapped the cup dry,
then faced his own gaggle of curious questioners while Jake went back to the trough to fill the cup again.

All in all, they had been five of the longest hours Eddie had ever put in, and he thought he would never regard celebrity in quite the same way again. On the plus side, before finally leaving the porch and heading back to the Old Fella’s residence, Eddie reckoned they must have talked to everyone who lived in town and a good number of farmers, ranchers, cowpokes, and hired hands who lived beyond it. Word traveled fast: the outworlders were sitting on the porch of the General Store, and if you wanted to talk to them, they would talk to you.

And now, by God, this woman—this
angel
—was speaking of beds.

“How long have we got?” he asked Rosalita.

“Pere should be back by four,” she said, “but we won’t eat until six, and that’s only if your dinh gets back in time. Why don’t I wake you at five-thirty? That’ll give ye time to wash. Does it do ya?”

“Yeah,” Jake said, and gave her a smile. “I didn’t know just talking to folks could make you so tired. And thirsty.”

She nodded. “There’s a jug of cool water in the pantry.”

“I ought to help you get the meal ready,” Susannah said, and then her mouth opened in a wide yawn.

“Sarey Adams is coming in to help,” Rosalita said, “and it’s nobbut a cold meal, in any case. Go on, now. Take your rest. You’re all in, and it shows.”