Wolves of the Calla

was how clever she was. If he hadn't awakened with a need to make water just as she left on one of her earlier expeditions, he quite likely still wouldn't know about her hunting trips, and he was supposed to be clever about such things.

Not as clever as she, maggot. Now, as if the ghost of Vannay were not enough, here was Cort to lecture him. She's shown you before, hasn't she?

Yes. She had shown him cleverness as three women. Now there was this fourth.

NINE

When Roland saw the break in the trees ahead-the road they'd been following, and the place where they'd camped for the night-he took two long, deep breaths. These were meant to steady him and didn't succeed very well.

Water if God wills it, he reminded himself. About the great matters, Roland, you have no say.

Not a comfortable truth, especially for a man on a quest such as his, but one he'd learned to live with.

He took another breath, then stepped out. He released the air in a long, relieved sigh as he saw Eddie and Jake lying deeply asleep beside the dead fire. Jake's right hand, which had been linked with Eddie's left when the gunslinger had followed Susannah out of camp, now circled Oy's body.

The bumbler opened one eye and regarded Roland. Then he closed it again.

Roland couldn't hear her coming, but sensed her just the same. He lay down quickly, rolled over onto his side, and put his face in the crook of his elbow. And from this position he watched as the wheelchair rolled out of the trees. She had cleaned it quickly but well. Roland couldn't see a single spot of mud. The spokes gleamed in the moonlight.

She parked the chair where it had been before, slipped out of it with her usual grace, and moved across to where Eddie lay. Roland watched her approach her husband's sleeping form with some anxiety. Anyone, he thought, who had met Detta Walker would have felt that anxiety. Because the woman who called herself mother was simply too close to what Detta had been.

Lying completely still, like one in sleep's deepest sling, Roland prepared himself to move.

Then she brushed the hair back from the side of Eddie's face and kissed the hollow of his temple. The tenderness in that gesture told the gunslinger all he needed to know. It was safe to sleep. He closed his eyes and let the darkness take him.

Chapter IV: Palaver

ONE

When Roland woke in the morning, Susannah was still asleep but Eddie and Jake were up. Eddie had built a small new fire on the gray bones of the old one. He and the boy sat close to it for the warmth, eating what Eddie called gunslinger burritos. They looked both excited and worried.

'Roland,' Eddie said, 'I think we need to talk. Something happened to us last night-'

'I know,' Roland said. 'I saw. You went todash.'

'Todash?' Jake asked. 'What's that?'

Roland started to tell them, then shook his head. 'If we're going to palaver, Eddie, you'd better wake Susannah up. That way we won't have to double back over the first part.' He glanced south. 'And hopefully our new friends won't interrupt us until we've had our talk. They're none of this.' But already he was wondering about that.

He watched with more than ordinary interest as Eddie shook Susannah awake, quite sure but by no means positive that it would be Susannah who opened her eyes. It was. She sat up, stretched, ran her fingers through her tight curls. 'What's your problem, honeychile? I was good for another hour, at least.'

'We need to talk, Suze,' Eddie said.

'All you want, but not quite yet,' she said. 'God, but I'm stiff.'

'Sleeping on hard ground'll do it every time,' Eddie said.

Not to mention hunting naked in the bogs and damps, Roland thought.

'Pour me some water, sug.' She held out her palms, and Eddie filled them with water from one of the skins. She dashed this over her cheeks and into her eyes, gave out a little shivery cry, and said, 'Cold.'

'Old!' Oy said.

'Not yet,' she told the bumbler, 'but you give me a few more months like the last few, and I will be. Roland, you Mid- World folks know about coffee, right?'

Roland nodded. 'From the plantations of the Outer Arc. Down south.'

'If we come across some, we'll hook it, won't we? You promise me, now.'

'I promise,' Roland said.

Susannah, meanwhile, was studying Eddie. 'What's going on? You boys don't look so good.'

'More dreams,' Eddie said.

'Me too,' Jake said.

'Not dreams,' the gunslinger said. 'Susannah, how did you sleep?'

She looked at him candidly. Roland did not sense even the shadow of a lie in her answer. 'Like a rock, as I usually do. One thing all this traveling is good for-you can throw your damn Nembutal away.'

'What's this toadish thing, Roland?' Eddie asked.

'Todash,' he said, and explained it to them as well as he could. What he remembered best from Vannay's teachings was how the Manni spent long periods fasting in order to induce the right state of mind, and how they traveled around, looking for exactly the right spot in which to induce the todash state. This was something they determined with magnets and large plumb-bobs.

'Sounds to me like these guys would have been right at home down in Needle Park,' Eddie said.

'Anywhere in Greenwich Village,' Susannah added.

' 'Sounds Hawaiian, doesn't it?' 'Jake said in a grave, deep voice, and they all laughed. Even Roland laughed a little.

'Todash is another way of traveling,' Eddie said when the laughter had stopped. 'Like the doors. And the glass balls. Is that right?'

Roland started to say yes, then hesitated. 'I think they might all be variations of the same thing,' he said. 'And according to Vannay, the glass balls-the pieces of the Wizard's Rainbow- make going todash easier. Sometimes too easy.'

Jake said, 'We really flickered on and off like… like light-bulbs? What you call sparklights?'

'Yes-you appeared and disappeared. When you were gone, there was a dim glow where you'd been, almost as if something were holding your place for you.'

'Thank God if it was,' Eddie said. 'When it ended… when those chimes started playing again and we kicked loose… I'll tell you the truth, I didn't think we were going to get back.'

'Neither did I,' Jake said quietly. The sky had clouded over again, and in the dull morning light, the boy looked very pale. 'I lost you.'

'I was never so glad to see anyplace in my life as I was when I opened my eyes and saw this little piece of road,' Eddie said. 'And you beside me, Jake. Even Rover looked good to me.' He glanced at Oy, then over at Susannah. 'Nothing like this happened to you last night, hon?'

'We'd have seen her,' Jake said.

'Not if she todashed off to someplace else,' Eddie said.

Susannah shook her head, looking troubled. 'I just slept the night away. As I told you. What about you, Roland?'

'Nothing to report,' Roland said. As always, he would keep his own counsel until his instinct told him it was time to share. And besides, what he'd said wasn't exactly a lie. He looked keenly at Eddie and Jake. 'There's trouble, isn't there?'

Eddie and Jake looked at each other, then back at Roland. Eddie sighed.'Yeah, probably.'

'How bad? Do you know?'

'I don't think we do. Do we, Jake?'

Jake shook his head.

'But I've got some ideas,' Eddie went on, 'and if I'm right, we've got a problem. A big one.' He swallowed. Hard. Jake touched his hand, and the gunslinger was concerned to see how quickly and firmly Eddie took hold of the boy's fingers.

Roland reached out and drew Susannah's hand into his own. He had a brief vision of that hand seizing a frog and squeezing the guts out of it He