Wolves of the Calla - Page 11/26

ONE

Roland awoke from another vile dream of Jericho Hill in the hour before dawn. The horn. Something about Arthur Eld's horn. Beside him in the big bed, the Old Fella slept with a frown on his face, as if caught in his own bad dream. It creased his broad brow zigzag, breaking the arms of the cross scarred into the skin there.

It was pain that had wakened Roland, not his dream of the horn spilling from Cuthbert's hand as his old friend fell. The gunslinger was caught in a vise of it from the hips all the way down to his ankles. He could visualize the pain as a series of bright and burning rings. This was how he paid for his outrageous exertions of the night before. If that was all, all would have been well, but he knew there was more to this than just having danced the commala a little too enthusiastically. Nor was it the rheumatiz, as he had been telling himself these last few weeks, his body's necessary period of adjustment to the damp weather of this fall season. He was not blind to the way his ankles, especially the right one, had begun to thicken. He had observed a similar thickening of his knees, and although his hips still looked fine, when he placed his hands on them, he could feel the way the right one was changing under the skin. No, not the rheumatiz that had afflicted Cort so miserably in his last year or so, keeping him inside by his fire on rainy days. This was something worse. It was arthritis, the bad kind, the dry kind. It wouldn't be long before it reached his hands. Roland would gladly have fed his right one to the disease, if that would have satisfied it; he had taught it to do a good many things since the lobstrosities had taken the first two fingers, but it was never going to be what it was. Only ailments didn't work that way, did they? You couldn't placate them with sacrifices. The arthritis would come when it came and go where it wanted to go.

I might have a year , he thought, lying in bed beside the sleeping religious from Eddie and Susannah and Jake's world. I might even have two .

No, not two. Probably not even one. What was it Eddie sometimes said? Quit kidding yourself . Eddie had a lot of sayings from his world, but that was a particularly good one. A particularly apt one.

Not that he would cry off the Tower if Old Bone-Twist Man took his ability to shoot, saddle a horse, cut a strip of rawhide, even to chop wood for a campfire, so simple a thing as that; no, he was in it until the end. But he didn't relish the picture of riding along behind the others, dependent upon them, perhaps tied to his saddle with the reins because he could no longer hold the pommel. Nothing but a drag-anchor. One they wouldn't be able to pull up if and when fast sailing was required.

If it gets to that, I'll kill myself.

But he wouldn't. That was the truth. Quit kidding yourself .

Which brought Eddie to mind again. He needed to talk to Eddie about Susannah, and right away. This was the knowledge with which he had awakened, and perhaps worth the pain. It wouldn't be a pleasant talk, but it had to be done. It was time Eddie knew about Mia. She would find it more difficult to slip away now that they were in a town - in a house - but she would have to, just the same. She could argue with her baby's needs and her own cravings no more than Roland could argue with the bright rings of pain which circled his right hip and knee and both ankles but had so far spared his talented hands. If Eddie wasn't warned, there might be terrible trouble. More trouble was something they didn't need now; it might sink them.

Roland lay in the bed, and throbbed, and watched the sky lighten. He was dismayed to see that brightness no longer bloomed dead east; it was a little off to the south, now.

Sunrise was also in drift.

TWO

The housekeeper was good-looking, about forty. Her name was Rosalita Munoz, and when she saw the way Roland walked to the table, she said: "One cup coffee, then you come with me."

Callahan cocked his head at Roland when she went to the stove to get the pot. Eddie and Susannah weren't up yet. The two of them had the kitchen to themselves. "How bad is it with you, sir?"

"It's only the rheumatiz," Roland said. "Goes through all my family on my father's side. It'll work out by noon, given bright sunshine and dry air."

"I know about the rheumatiz," Callahan said. "Tell God thankya it's no worse."

"I do." And to Rosalita, who brought heavy mugs of steaming coffee. "I tell you thankya, as well."

She put down the cups, curtsied, and then regarded him shyly and gravely. "I never saw the rice-dance kicked better, sai."

Roland smiled crookedly. "I'm paying for it this morning."

"I'll fix you," she said. "I've a cat-oil, special to me. It'll first take the pain and then the limp. Ask Pere."

Roland looked at Callahan, who nodded.

"Then I'll take you up on it. Thankee-sai."

She curtsied again, and left them.

"I need a map of the Calla," Roland said when she was gone. "It doesn't have to be great art, but it has to be accurate, and true as to distance. Can you draw one for me?"

"Not at all," Callahan said composedly. "I cartoon a little, but I couldn't draw you a map that would take you as far as the river, not even if you put a gun to my head. It's just not a talent I have. But I know two that could help you there." He raised his voice. "Rosalita! Rosie! Come to me a minute, do ya!"

THREE

Twenty minutes later, Rosalita took Roland by the hand, her grip firm and dry. She led him into the pantry and closed the door. "Drop yer britches, I beg," she said. "Be not shy, for I doubt you've anything I haven't seen before, unless men are built summat different in Gilead and the Inners."

"I don't believe they are," Roland said, and let his pants fall.

The sun was now up but Eddie and Susannah were still down. Roland was in no hurry to wake them. There would be plenty of early days ahead - and late evenings, too, likely - but this morning let them enjoy the peace of a roof over their heads, the comfort of a feather mattress beneath their bodies, and the exquisite privacy afforded by a door between their secret selves and the rest of the world.

Rosalita, a bottle of pale, oily liquid in one hand, drew in a hiss over her full lower lip. She looked at Roland's right knee, then touched his right hip with her left hand. He flinched away a bit from the touch, although it was gentleness itself.

She raised her eyes to him. They were so dark a brown they were almost black. "This isn't rheumatiz. It's arthritis. The kind that spreads fast."

"Aye, where I come from some call it dry twist," he said. "Not a word of it to the Pere, or to my friends."

Those dark eyes regarded him steadily. "You won't be able to keep this a secret for long."

"I hear you very well. Yet while I can keep the secret, I will keep the secret. And you'll help me."

"Aye," she said. "No fear. I'll bide'ee."

"Say thankya. Now, will that help me?"

She looked at the bottle and smiled. "Aye. It's mint and spriggum from the swamp. But the secret's the cat's bile that's in it - not but three drops in each bottle, ye ken. They're the rock-cats that come in out of the desert, from the direction of the great darkness." She tipped up the bottle and poured a little of the oily stuff into her palm. The smell of the mint struck Roland's nose at once, followed by some other smell, a lower smell, which was far less pleasant. Yes, he reckoned that could be the bile of a puma or a cougar or whatever they meant by a rock-cat in these parts.

When she bent and rubbed it into his kneecaps, the heat was immediate and intense, almost too strong to bear. But when it moderated a bit, there was more relief than he would have dared hope for.

When she had finished anointing him, she said: "How be your body now, gunslinger-sai?"

Instead of answering with his mouth, he crushed her against his lean, undressed body and hugged her tightly. She hugged him back with an artless lack of shame and whispered in his ear, "If 'ee are who 'ee say 'ee are, 'ee mustn't let un take the babbies. No, not a single one. Never mind what the big bugs like Eisenhart and Telford might say."

"We'll do the best we can," he said.

"Good. Thankya." She stepped back, looked down. "One part of 'ee has no arthritis, nor rheumatiz, either. Looks quite lively. Perhaps a lady might look at the moon tonight, gunslinger, and pine for company."

"Perhaps she'll find it," Roland said. "Will you give me a bottle of that stuff to take on my travels around the Calla, or is it too dear?"

"Nay, not too dear," she said. In her flirting, she had smiled. Now she looked grave again. "But will only help'ee a little while, I think."

"I know," Roland said. "And no matter. We spread the time as we can, but in the end the world takes it all back."

"Aye," she said. "So it does."

FOUR

When he came out of the pantry, buckling his belt, he finally heard stirring in the other room. The murmur of Eddie's voice followed by a sleepy peal of female laughter. Callahan was at the stove, pouring himself fresh coffee. Roland went to him and spoke rapidly.

"I saw pokeberries on the left of your drive between here and your church."

"Yes, and they're ripe. Your eyes are sharp."

"Never mind my eyes, do ya. I would go out to pick my hat full. I'd have Eddie join me while his wife perhaps cracks an egg or three. Can you manage that?"

"I believe so, but - "

"Good," Roland said, and went out.

FIVE

By the time Eddie came, Roland had already half-filled his hat with the orange berries, and also eaten several good handfuls. The pain in his legs and hips had faded with amazing rapidity. As he picked, he wondered how much Cort would have paid for a single bottle of Rosalita Munoz's cat-oil.

"Man, those look like the wax fruit our mother used to put out on a doily every Thanksgiving," Eddie said. "Can you really eat them?"

Roland picked a pokeberry almost as big as the tip of his own finger and popped it into Eddie's mouth. "Does that taste like wax, Eddie?"

Eddie's eyes, cautious to begin with, suddenly widened. He swallowed, grinned, and reached for more. "Like cranberries, only sweeter. I wonder if Suze knows how to make muffins? Even if she doesn't, I bet Callahan's housekeeper - "

"Listen to me, Eddie. Listen closely and keep a rein on your emotions. For your father's sake."

Eddie had been reaching for a bush that was particularly heavy with pokeberries. Now he stopped and simply looked at Roland, his face expressionless. In this early light, Roland could see how much older Eddie looked. How much he had grown up was really extraordinary.

"What is it?"

Roland, who had held this secret in his own counsel until it seemed more complex than it really was, was surprised at how quickly and simply it was told. And Eddie, he saw, wasn't completely surprised.

"How long have you known?"

Roland listened for accusation in this question and heard none. "For certain? Since I first saw her slip into the woods. Saw her eating..." Roland paused. "... what she was eating. Heard her speaking with people who weren't there. I've suspected much longer. Since Lud."

"And didn't tell me."

"No." Now the recriminations would come, and a generous helping of Eddie's sarcasm. Except they didn't.

"You want to know if I'm pissed, don't you? If I'm going to make this a problem."

"Are you?"

"No. I'm not angry, Roland. Exasperated, maybe, and I'm scared to fuckin death for Suze, but why would I be angry with you? Aren't you the dinh?" It was Eddie's turn to pause. When he spoke again, he was more specific. It wasn't easy for him, but he got it out. "Aren't you my dinh?"

"Yes," Roland said. He reached out and touched Eddie's arm. He was astounded by his desire - almost his need - to explain. He resisted it. If Eddie could call him not just dinh but his dinh, he ought to behave as dinh. What he said was, "You don't seem exactly stunned by my news."

"Oh, I'm surprised," Eddie said. "Maybe not stunned, but... well..." He picked berries and dropped them into Roland's hat. "I saw some things, okay? Sometimes she's too pale. Sometimes she winces and grabs at herself, but if you ask her, she says it's just gas. And her boobs are bigger. I'm sure of it. But Roland, she's still having her period! A month or so ago I saw her burying the rags, and they were bloody. Soaked . How can that be? If she caught pregnant when we pulled Jake through - while she was keeping the demon of the circle occupied - that's got to be four months at least, and probably five. Even allowing for the way time slips around now, it's gotta be ."

Roland nodded. "I know she's been having her monthlies. And that's proof conclusive it isn't your baby. The thing she's carrying scorns her woman's blood." Roland thought of her squeezing the frog in her fist, popping it. Drinking its black bile. Licking it from her fingers like syrup.

"Would it..." Eddie made as if to eat one of the pokeberries, decided against it, and tossed it into Roland's hat instead. Roland thought it would be a while before Eddie felt the stirrings of true appetite again. "Roland, would it even look like a human baby?"

"Almost surely not."

"What, then?"

And before he could stay them, the words were out. "Better not to name the devil."

Eddie winced. What little color remained in his face now left it.

"Eddie? Are you all right?"

"No," Eddie said. "I am most certainly not all right. But I'm not gonna faint like a girl at an Andy Gibb concert, either. What are we going to do?"

"For the time being, nothing. We have too many other things to do."

"Don't we just," Eddie said. "Over here, the Wolves come in twenty-four days, if I've got it figured right. Over there in New York, who knows what day it is? The sixth of June? The tenth? Closer to July fifteenth than it was yesterday, that's for sure. But Roland - if what she's got inside her isn't human, we can't be sure her pregnancy will go nine months. She might pop it in six. Hell, she might pop it tomorrow."

Roland nodded and waited. Eddie had gotten this far; surely he would make it the rest of the way.

And he did. "We're stuck, aren't we?"

"Yes. We can watch her, but there's not much else we can do. We can't even keep her still in hopes of slowing things down, because she'd very likely guess why we were doing it. And we need her. To shoot when the time comes, but before that, we'll have to train some of these people with whatever weapons they feel comfortable with. It'll probably turn out to be bows." Roland grimaced. In the end he had hit the target in the North Field with enough arrows to satisfy Cort, but he had never cared for bow and arrow or bah and bolt. Those had been Jamie DeCurry's choice of weapons, not his own.

"We're really gonna go for it, aren't we?"

"Oh yes."

And Eddie smiled. Smiled in spite of himself. He was what he was. Roland saw it and was glad.

SIX

As they walked back to Callahan's rectory-house, Eddie asked: "You came clean with me, Roland, why not come clean widi her?"

"I'm not sure I understand you."

"Oh, I think you do," Eddie said.

"All right, but you won't like the answer."

"I've heard all sorts of answers from you, and I couldn't say I've cared for much more than one in five." Eddie considered. "Nah, that's too generous. Make it one in fifty."

"The one who calls herself Mia - which means mother in the High Speech - kens she's carrying a child, although I doubt she kens what kind of a child."

Eddie considered this in silence.

"Whatever it is, Mia thinks of it as her baby, and she'll protect it to the limit of her strength and life. If that means taking over Susannah's body - the way Detta Walker sometimes took over Odetta Holmes - she'll do it if she can."

"And probably she could," Eddie said gloomily. Then he turned directly to Roland. "So what I think you're saying -  correct me if I've got it wrong - is that you don't want to tell Suze she might be growing a monster in her belly because it might impair her efficiency."

Roland could have quibbled about the harshness of this judgment, but chose not to. Essentially, Eddie was right.

As always when he was angry, Eddie's street accent became more pronounced. It was almost as though he were speaking through his nose instead of his mouth. "And if anything changes over the next month or so - if she goes into labor and pops out the Creature from the Black Lagoon, for instance - she's gonna be completely unprepared. Won't have a clue."

Roland stopped about twenty feet from the rectory-house. Inside the window, he could see Callahan talking to a couple of young people, a boy and a girl. Even from here he could see they were twins.

"Roland?"

"You say true, Eddie. Is there a point? If so, I hope you'll get to it. Time is no longer just a face on the water, as you yourself pointed out. It's become a precious commodity."

Again he expected a patented Eddie Dean outburst complete with phrases such as kiss my ass or eat shit and die . Again, no such outburst came. Eddie was looking at him, that was all. Steadily and a little sorrowfully. Sorry for Susannah, of course, but also for the two of them. The two of them standing here and conspiring against one of the tet.

"I'm going to go along with you," Eddie said, "but not because you're the dinh, and not because one of those two is apt to come back brainless from Thunderclap." He pointed to the pair of kids the Old Fella was talking to in his living room. "I'd trade every kid in this town for the one Suze is carrying. If it was a kid. My kid."

"I know you would," Roland said.

"It's the rose I care about," Eddie said. "That's the only thing worth risking her for. But even so, you've got to promise me that if things go wrong - if she goes into labor, or if this Mia chick starts taking over - we'll try to save her."

"I would always try to save her," Roland said, and then had a brief, nightmare image - brief but very clear - of Jake dangling over die drop under the mountains.

"You swear that?" Eddie asked.

"Yes," Roland said. His eyes met those of the younger man. In his mind, however, he saw Jake falling into the abyss.

SEVEN

They reached the rectory door just as Callahan was ushering the two young people out. They were, Roland thought, very likely the most gorgeous children he had ever seen. Their hair was black as coal, the boy's shoulder-length, the girl's bound by a white ribbon and falling all the way to her bottom. Their eyes were dark, perfect blue. Their skin was creamy-pale, their lips a startling, sensuous red. There were faint spatters of freckles on their cheeks. So far as Roland could tell, the spatters were also identical. They looked from him to Eddie and then back to Susannah, who leaned in the kitchen doorway with a dish-wiper in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. Their shared expression was one of curious wonder. He saw caution in their faces, but no fear.

"Roland, Eddie, I'd like you to meet the Tavery twins, Frank and Francine. Rosalita fetched them - the Taverys live not half a mile away, do ya. You'll have your map by this afternoon, and I doubt if you'll ever have seen a finer one in all your life. It's but one of the talents they have."

The Tavery twins made their manners, Frank with a bow and Francine with a curtsy.

"You do us well and we say thankya," Roland told them.

An identical blush suffused their astoundingly creamy complexions; they muttered their thanks and prepared to slip away. Before they could, Roland put an arm around each narrow but well-made pair of shoulders and led the twins a little way down the walk. He was taken less by their perfect child's beauty than by the piercing intelligence he saw in their blue eyes. He had no doubt they would make his map; he also had no doubt that Callahan had had Rosalita fetch them as a kind of object lesson, were one still needed: with no interference, one of these beautiful children would be a grizzling idiot a month from now.

"Sai?" Frank asked. Now there was a touch of worry in his voice.

"Fear me not," Roland said, "but hear me well."

EIGHT

Callahan and Eddie watched Roland walk the Tavery twins slowly along the rectory's flagstoned path and toward the dirt drive. Both men shared the same thought: Roland looked like a benevolent gran-pere.

Susannah joined them, watched, then plucked Eddie's shirt. "Come with me a minute."

He followed her into the kitchen. Rosalita was gone and they had it to themselves. Susannah's brown eyes were enormous, shining.

"What is it?" he asked her.

"Pick me up."

He did.

"Now kiss me quick, while you have the chance."

"Is that all you want?"

"Isn't it enough? It better be, Mister Dean."

He kissed her, and willingly, but couldn't help marking how much larger her breasts were as they pressed against him. When he drew his face away from hers, he found himself looking for traces of the other one in her face. The one who called herself Mother in the High Speech, He saw only Susannah, but he supposed that from now on he would be condemned to look. And his eyes kept trying to go to her belly. He tried to keep them away, but it was as if they were weighted. He wondered how much that was between them would change now. It was not a pleasant speculation.

"Is that better?" he asked.

"Much." She smiled a little, and then the smile faded. "Eddie? Is something wrong?"

He grinned and kissed her again. "You mean other than that we're all probably gonna die here? Nope. Nothing at all."

Had he lied to her before? He couldn't remember, but he didn't think so. And even if he had, he had never done so with such baldness. With such calculation.

This was bad.

NINE

Ten minutes later, rearmed with fresh mugs of coffee (and a bowl of pokeberries), they went out into the rectory's small back yard. The gunslinger lifted his face into the sun for a moment, relishing its weight and heat. Then he turned to Callahan. "We three would hear your story now, Pere, if you'd tell it. And then mayhap stroll up to your church and see what's there."

"I want you to take it," Callahan said. "It hasn't desecrated the church, how could it when Our Lady was never consecrated to begin with? But it's changed it for the worse. Even when the church was still a building, I felt the spirit of God inside it. No more. That thing has driven it out. I want you to take it."

Roland opened his mouth to say something noncommittal, but Susannah spoke before he could. "Roland? You all right?"

He turned to her. "Why, yes. Why would I not be?"

"You keep rubbing your hip."

Had he been? Yes, he saw, he had. The pain was creeping back already, in spite of the warm sun, in spite of Rosalita's cat-oil. The dry twist.

"It's nothing," he told her. "Just a touch of the rheumatiz."

She looked at him doubtfully, then seemed to accept. This is a hell of a way to start , Roland thought, with at least two of us keeping secrets. We can't go on so. Not for long .

He turned to Callahan. "Tell us your tale. How you came by your scars, how you came here, and how you came by Black Thirteen. We would hear every word."

"Yes," Eddie murmured.

"Every word," Susannah echoed.

All three of them looked at Callahan - the Old Fella, the religious who would allow himself to be called Pere but not priest. His twisted right hand went to the scar on his forehead and rubbed at it. At last he said: " 'Twas the drink. That's what I believe now. Not God, not devils, not predestination, not the company of saints. 'Twas the drink." He paused, thinking, then smiled at them. Roland remembered Nort, the weed-eater in Tull who had been brought back from the dead by the man in black. Nort had smiled like that. "But if God made the world, then God made the drink. And that is also His will."

Ka , Roland thought.

Callahan sat quiet, rubbing the scarred crucifix on his forehead, gathering his thoughts. And then he began to tell his story.