Wolves of the Calla (85 page)

The bullets in his ears blocked the voices completely. The chimes got in, but even they were dulled. A good thing, because the sound of them was far worse than the warble of the thinny. A couple
of days listening to that sound and he reckoned he’d be ready for the lunatic asylum, but for thirty minutes he’d be all right. If worse came to worst, he might be able to pitch something through the door, attract the Pere’s attention, and get him to come back early.

For a little while Roland watched the street unroll before Callahan. The doors on the beach had been like looking through the eyes of his three: Eddie, Odetta, Jack Mort. This one was a little different. He could always see Callahan’s back in it, or his face if he turned around to look, as he often did.

To pass the time, Roland got up to look at a few of the books which had meant so much to Calvin Tower that he’d made their safety a condition for his cooperation. The first one Roland pulled out had the silhouette of a man’s head on it. The man was smoking a pipe and wearing a sort of gamekeeper’s hat. Cort had had one like it, and as a boy, Roland had thought it much more stylish than his father’s old dayrider with its sweat-stains and frayed tugstring. The words on the book were of the New York world. Roland was sure he could have read them easily if he’d been on that side, but he wasn’t. As it was, he could read some, and the result was almost as maddening as the chimes.

“Sir-lock Hones,” he read aloud. “No,
Holmes
. Like Odetta’s fathername. Four . . . short . . . movels. Movels?” No, this one
was
an. “Four short
novels
by Sirlock Holmes.” He opened the book, running a respectful hand over the title page and then smelling it: the spicy, faintly sweet aroma of good old paper. He could make out the name of
one of the four short novels—
The Sign of the Four
. Other than the words
Hound
and
Study,
the titles of the others were gibberish to him.

“A sign is a sigul,” he said. When he found himself counting the number of letters in the title, he had to laugh at himself. Besides, there were only sixteen. He put the book back and took up another, this one with a drawing of a soldier on the front. He could make out one word of the title:
Dead.
He looked at another. A man and woman kissing on the cover. Yes, there were always men and women kissing in stories; folks liked that. He put it back and looked up to check on Callahan’s progress. His eyes widened slightly as he saw the Pere walking into a great room filled with books and what Eddie called Magda-seens . . . although Roland was still unsure what Magda had seen, or why there should be so much written about it.

He pulled out another book, and smiled at the picture on the cover. There was a church, with the sun going down red behind it. The church looked a bit like Our Lady of Serenity. He opened it and thumbed through it. A delah of words, but he could only make out one in every three, if that. No pictures. He was about to put it back when something caught his eye.
Leaped
at his eye. Roland stopped breathing for a moment.

He stood back, no longer hearing the todash chimes, no longer caring about the great room of books Callahan had entered. He began reading the book with the church on the front. Or trying to. The words swam maddeningly in front of his eyes, and he couldn’t be sure. Not quite. But, gods! If he was seeing what he thought he was seeing—

Intuition told him that this was a key. But to what door?

He didn’t know, couldn’t read enough of the words to know. But the book in his hands seemed almost to thrum. Roland thought that perhaps this book was like the rose . . .

. . . but there were black roses, too.

“Roland, I found it! It’s a little town in central Maine called East Stoneham, about forty miles north of Portland and . . . ” He stopped, getting a good look at the gunslinger. “What’s wrong?”

“The chiming sound,” Roland said quickly. “Even with my ears stopped up, it got through.” The door was shut and the chimes were gone, but there were still the voices. Callahan’s father was currently asking if Donnie thought those magazines he’d found under his son’s bed were anything a Christian boy would want to have, what if his mother had found them? And when Roland suggested they leave the cave, Callahan was more than willing to go. He remembered that conversation with his old man far too clearly. They had ended up praying together at the foot of his bed, and the three
Playboy
s had gone into the incinerator out back.

Roland returned the carved box to the pink bag and once more stowed it carefully behind Tower’s case of valuable books. He had already replaced the book with the church on it, turning it with the title down so he could find it again quickly.

They went out and stood side by side, taking
deep breaths of the fresh air. “Are you sure the chimes is all it was?” Callahan asked. “Man, you looked as though you’d seen a ghost.”

“The todash chimes are
worse
than ghosts,” Roland said. That might or might not be true, but it seemed to satisfy Callahan. As they started down the path, Roland remembered the promise he had made to the others, and, more important, to himself: no more secrets within the tet. How quickly he found himself ready to break that promise! But he felt he was right to do so. He
knew
at least some of the names in that book. The others would know them, too. Later they would need to know, if the book was as important as he thought it might be. But now it would only distract them from the approaching business of the Wolves. If they could win that battle, then perhaps . . .

“Roland, are you quite sure you’re okay?”

“Yes.” He clapped Callahan on the shoulder. The others would be able to read the book, and by reading might discover what it meant. Perhaps the story in the book was
just
a story . . . but how could it be, when . . .

“Pere?”

“Yes, Roland.”

“A novel is a story, isn’t it? A made-up story?”

“Yes, a long one.”

“But make-believe.”

“Yes, that’s what fiction means. Make-believe.”

Roland pondered this.
Charlie the Choo-Choo
had also been make-believe, only in many ways, many
vital
ways, it hadn’t been. And the author’s name had changed. There were many different worlds, all held together by the Tower. Maybe . . .

No, not now. He mustn’t think about these things now.

“Tell me about the town where Tower and his friend went,” Roland said.

“I can’t, really. I found it in one of the Maine telephone books, that’s all. Also a simplified zip code map that showed about where it is.”

“Good. That’s very good.”

“Roland, are you sure you’re all right?”

Calla,
Roland thought.
Callahan
. He made himself smile. Made himself clap Callahan on the shoulder again.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Now let’s get back to town.”

Tian Jaffords had never been more frightened in his life than he was as he stood on the stage in the Pavilion, looking down at the
folken
of Calla Bryn Sturgis. He knew there were likely no more than five hundred—six hundred at the very outside—but to him it looked like a multitude, and their taut silence was unnerving. He looked at his wife for comfort and found none there. Zalia’s face looked thin and dark and pinched, the face of an old woman rather than one still well within her childbearing years.

Nor did the look of this late afternoon help him find calm. Overhead the sky was a pellucid, cloudless blue, but it was too dark for five o’ the clock. There was a huge bank of clouds in the southwest, and the sun had passed behind them just as he climbed the steps to the stage. It was what his Granpere would have called weirding weather;
omenish,
say thankya. In the constant darkness that was Thunderclap, lightning flashed like great sparklights.

Had I known it would come to this, I’d never have started it a-going,
he thought wildly.
And this time there’ll be no Pere Callahan to haul my poor old ashes out of the fire
. Although Callahan was there, standing with Roland and his friends—they of the hard calibers—with
his arms folded on his plain black shirt with the notched collar and his Man Jesus cross hanging above.

He told himself not to be foolish, that Callahan
would
help, and the outworlders would help, as well. They were
there
to help. The code they followed demanded that they
must
help, even if it meant their destruction and the end of whatever quest they were on. He told himself that all he needed to do was introduce Roland, and Roland would come. Once before, the gunslinger had stood on this stage and danced the commala and won their hearts. Did Tian doubt that Roland would win their hearts again? In truth, Tian did not. What he was afraid of in
his
heart was that this time it would be a death-dance instead of a life-dance. Because death was what this man and his friends were about; it was their bread and wine. It was the sherbet they took to clear their palates when the meal was done. At that first meeting—could it have been less than a month ago?—Tian had spoken out of angry desperation, but a month was long enough to count the cost. What if this was a mistake? What if the Wolves burned the entire Calla flat with their light-sticks, took the children they wanted one final time, and exploded all the ones that were left—old, young, in the middle—with their whizzing balls of death?

They stood waiting for him to begin, the gathered Calla. Eisenharts and Overholsers and Javiers and Tooks without number (although no twins among these last of the age the Wolves liked, aye-no, such lucky Tooks they were); Telford standing with the men and his plump but
hard-faced wife with the women; Strongs and Rossiters and Slightmans and Hands and Rosarios and Posellas; the Manni once again bunched together like a dark stain of ink, Henchick their patriarch standing with young Cantab, whom all the children liked so well; Andy, another favorite of the kiddies, standing off to one side with his skinny metal arms akimbo and his blue electric eyes flashing in the gloom; the Sisters of Oriza bunched together like birds on fencewire (Tian’s wife among them); and the cowboys, the hired men, the dayboys, even old Bernardo, the town tosspot.

To Tian’s right, those who had carried the feather shuffled a bit uneasily. In ordinary circumstances, one set of twins was plenty to take the opopanax feather; in most cases, people knew well in advance what was up, and carrying the feather was nothing but a formality. This time (it had been Margaret Eisenhart’s idea), three sets of twins had gone together with the hallowed feather, carrying it from town to smallhold to ranch to farm in a bucka driven by Cantab, who sat unusually silent and songless up front, clucking along a matched set of brown mules that needed precious little help from the likes of him. Oldest at twenty-three were the Haggengood twins, born the year of the last Wolf-raid (and ugly as sin by the lights of most folks, although precious hard workers, say thankya). Next came the Tavery twins, those beautiful map-drawing town brats. Last (and youngest, although eldest of Tian’s brood) came Heddon and Hedda. And it was Hedda who got him going. Tian caught her eye and saw that his good (although plain-faced)
daughter had sensed her father’s fright and was on the verge of tears herself.

Eddie and Jake weren’t the only ones who heard the voices of others in their heads; Tian now heard the voice of his Gran-pere. Not as Jamie was now, doddering and nearly toothless, but as he had been twenty years before: old but still capable of clouting you over the River Road if you sassed back or dawdled over a hard pull. Jamie Jaffords who had once stood against the Wolves. This Tian had from time to time doubted, but he doubted it no longer. Because Roland believed.

Garn, then!
snarled the voice in his mind.
What is it fashes and diddles thee s’slow, oafing? ’Tis nobbut to say his name and stand aside, ennit? Then fer good or nis, ye can let him do a’rest
.

Still Tian looked out over the silent crowd a moment longer, their bulk hemmed in tonight by torches that didn’t change—for this was no party—but only glared a steady orange. Because he wanted to say something, perhaps
needed
to say something. If only to acknowledge that he was partly to credit for this. For good or for nis.

In the eastern darkness, lightning fired off silent explosions.

Roland, standing with his arms folded like the Pere, caught Tian’s eye and nodded slightly to him. Even by warm torchlight, the gunslinger’s blue gaze was cold. Almost as cold as Andy’s. Yet it was all the encouragement Tian needed.

He took the feather and held it before him. Even the crowd’s breathing seemed to still. Somewhere far overtown, a rustie cawed as if to hold back the night.

“Not long since I stood in yon Gathering Hall and told’ee what I believe,” Tian said. “That when the Wolves come, they don’t just take our children but our hearts and souls. Each time they steal and we stand by, they cut us a little deeper. If you cut a tree deep enough, it dies. Cut a town deep enough, that dies, too.”

The voice of Rosalita Munoz, childless her whole life, rang out in the fey dimness of the day with clear ferocity: “Say true, say thankya! Hear him,
folken
! Hear him very well!”

“Hear him, hear him, hear him well” ran through the assembly.

“Pere stood up that night and told us there were gunslingers coming from the northwest, coming through Mid-Forest along the Path of the Beam. Some scoffed, but Pere spoke true.”

“Say thankya,” they replied. “Pere said true.” And a woman’s voice: “Praise Jesus! Praise Mary, mother of God!”

“They’ve been among us all these days since. Any who’s wanted to speak to em
has
spoke to em. They have promised nothing but to help—”