Wolves of the Calla

'No fear,' Roland said. Eddie drew close and looked over his shoulder. The map was a marvel of detail, with the Town Gathering Hall and the common at the center and the Big River/Devar-Tete running along the left side of the paper, which looked to Eddie like an ordinary mimeo sheet. The kind available by the ream at any office supply store in America.

'Kids, this is absolutely terrific,' Eddie said, and for a moment he thought Francine Tavery might actually faint.

'Aye,' Roland said. 'You've done a great service. And now I'm going to do something that will probably look like blasphemy to you. You know the word?'

'Yes,' Frank said. 'We're Christians. 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God or His Son, the Man Jesus, in vain.' But blasphemy is also to commit a rude act upon a thing of beauty.'

His tone was deeply serious, but he looked interested to see what blasphemy the outworlder meant to commit. His sister did, too.

Roland folded the paper-which they had almost dared not touch, in spite of their obvious skill-in half. The children gasped. So did Rosalita Munoz, although not quite as loudly.

'It's not blasphemy to treat it so because it's no longer just paper,' Roland said. 'It has become a tool, and tools must be protected. D'ye ken?'

'Yes,' they said, but doubtfully. Their confidence was at least partly restored by the care with which Roland stowed the folded map in his purse.

'Thankya big-big,' Roland said. He took Francine's hand in his left, Frank's in his diminished right. 'You may have saved lives with your hands and eyes.'

Francine burst into tears. Frank held his own back until he grinned. Then they overspilled and ran down his freckled cheeks.

SEVEN

Walking back to the church steps, Eddie said: 'Good kids. Talented kids.'

Roland nodded.

'Can you see one of them coming back from Thunderclap a drooling idiot?'

Roland, who could see it all too well, made no reply.

EIGHT

Susannah accepted Roland's decision that she and Eddie should stay outside the church with no argument, and the gunslinger found himself remembering her reluctance to enter the vacant lot. He wondered if part of her was afraid of the same thing he was. If that was the case, the battle-her battle-had already begun.

'How long before I come in and drag you out?' Eddie asked.

'Before we come in and drag you out?' Susannah corrected him.

Roland considered. It was a good question. He looked at Callahan, who stood on the top step in blue jeans and a plaid shirt rolled to the elbows. His hands were clasped in front of him. Roland saw good muscle on those forearms.

The Old Fella shrugged. 'It sleeps. There should be no problem. But-' He unlocked one of his gnarled hands and pointed at the gun on Roland's hip. 'I sh'd ditch that. Mayhap it sleeps with one eye open.'

Roland unbuckled the gunbelt and handed it to Eddie, who was wearing the other one. Then he unslung his purse and handed it to Susannah. 'Five minutes,' he said. 'If there's trouble, I might be able to call.' Or I might not, he didn't add.

'Jake should be here by then,' Eddie said.

'If they come, hold them out here,' Roland told him.

'Eisenhart and the Slightmans won't try to come in,' Callahan said. 'What worship they have is for Oriza. Lady Rice.' He grimaced to show what he thought of Lady Rice and the rest of the Calla's second-rate gods.

'Let's go, then,' Roland said.

NINE

It had been a long time since Roland Deschain had been afraid in the deeply superstitious way that goes with a believed religion. Since his childhood, perhaps. But fear fell upon him as soon as Pere Callahan opened the door of his modest wooden church and held it, gesturing for Roland to precede him inside. There was a foyer with a faded rug on the floor. On the other side of the foyer, two doors stood open. Beyond them was a largish room with pews on each side and kneelers on the floor. At the room's far end was a raised platform and what Roland thought of as a lectern flanked by pots of white flowers. Their mild scent pervaded the still air. There were narrow windows of clear glass. Behind the lectern, on the far wall, was an ironwood cross.

He could hear the Old Fella's secret treasure, not with his ears but with his bones. A steady low hum. Like the rose, that hum conveyed a sense of power, but it was like the rose in no other way. This hum spoke of colossal emptiness. A void like the one they had all sensed behind the surface reality of todash New York. A void that could become a voice.

Yes, this is what took us, he thought. It took us to New York -one New York of many, according to Callahan's story -but it could take us anywhere or anywhen. It could take us… or it could fling us.

He remembered the conclusion of his long palaver with Walter, in the place of the bones. He had gone todash then, too; he understood that now. And there had been a sense of growing, of swelling, until he had been bigger than the earth, the stars, the very universe itself. That power was here, in this room, and he was afraid of it.

Gods grant it sleep, he thought, but the thought was followed by an even more dismaying one: sooner or later they would have to wake it up. Sooner or later they would have to use it to get back to the New York whens they needed to visit.

There was a bowl of water on a stand beside the door. Callahan dipped his fingers, then crossed himself. 'You can do that now?' Roland murmured in what was little more than a whisper.

'Aye,' Callahan said. 'God has taken me back, gunslinger. Although I think only on what might be called 'a trial basis.' Do you ken?'

Roland nodded. He followed Callahan into the church without dipping his fingers in the font.

Callahan led him down the center aisle, and although he moved swiftly and surely, Roland sensed the man was as frightened as Roland was himself, perhaps more. The religious wanted to be rid of the thing, of course, there was that, but Roland still gave him high marks for courage.

On the far right side of the preacher's cove was a little flight of three steps. Callahan mounted them. 'No need for you to come up, Roland; you can see well enough from where you are. You'd not have it this minute, I ken?'

'Not at all,' Roland said. Now they were whispering.

'Good.' Callahan dropped to one knee. There was an audible pop as the joint flexed, and they both started at the sound. 'I'd not even touch the box it's in, if I don't have to. I haven't since I put it here. The hidey-hole I made myself, asking God's pardon for using a saw in His house.'

'Take it up,' Roland said. He was on complete alert, every sense drawn fine, feeling and listening for any slightest change in that endless void hum. He missed the weight of the gun on his hip. Did the people who came here to worship not sense the terrible thing the Old Fella had hidden here? He supposed they must not, or they'd stay away. And he supposed there was really no better place for such a thing; the simple faith of the parishioners might neutralize it to some degree. Might even soothe it and thus deepen its doze.

But it could wake up, Roland thought. Wake up and send them all to the nineteen points of nowhere in the blink of an eye. This was an especially terrible thought, and he turned his mind from it. Certainly the idea of using it to secure protection for the rose seemed more and more like a bitter joke. He had faced both men and monsters in his time, but had never been close to anything like this. The sense of its evil was terrible, almost unmanning. The sense of its malevolent emptiness was far, far worse.

Callahan pressed his thumb into the groove between two boards. There was a faint click and a section of the preacher's cove popped out of place. Callahan pulled the boards free, revealing a square hole roughly fifteen inches long and wide. He rocked back on his haunches, holding the boards across his chest. The hum was much louder now. Roland had a brief image of a gigantic hive with bees the size of waggons crawling sluggishly over it. He bent forward and looked into the Old Fella's hidey-hole.

The thing inside was wrapped in white cloth, fine linen from the look of it.

'An altar boy's surplice,' Callahan said. Then, seeing Roland didn't know the word: 'A thing to wear.' He shrugged. 'My heart said to wrap it up, and so I did.'

'Your heart surely said true,' Roland whispered. He was thinking of the bag Jake had brought out of the vacant lot, the one with nothing but strikes at mid-world lanes on the side. They would need it, aye and aye, but he didn't like to think of the transfer.

Then he put thought aside-fear as well-and folded back the cloth. Beneath the surplice, wrapped in it, was a wooden box.

Despite his fear, Roland reached out to touch that dark, heavy wood. It will be like touching some lightly oiled metal, he thought, and it was. He felt an erotic shiver shake itself deep inside him; it kissed his fear like an old lover and then was gone.