Song of Susannah

“Yes,” Roland said. “The sharing of water, we say.”

“You couldn’t fit anywhere that number of men in the mouth of that cave, “Jake said. “Not even if half of them sat on the other half’s shoulders.”

“No need,” Henchick said. “We’ll put the most powerful inside-what we call the senders. The others can line up along the path, linked hand to hand and bob to bob. They’ll be there before the sun goes rooftop tomorrow. I set my watch and warrant on it.”

“We’ll need tonight to gather our mags and bobs, anyway,” Cantab said. He was looking at Eddie apologetically, and with some fear. The young man was in terrible pain, that was clear. And he was a gunslinger. A gunslinger might strike out, and when one did, it was never blindly.

“It could be too late,” Eddie said, low. He looked at Roland with his hazel eyes. They were now bloodshot and dark with exhaustion. “Tomorrow could be too late even if the magic hasn’t gone away.”

Roland opened his mouth and Eddie raised a finger.

“Don’t say ka, Roland. If you say ka one more time, I swear my head’ll explode.”

Roland closed his mouth.

Eddie turned back to the two bearded men in their dark, Quakerish cloaks. “And you can’t be sure the magic will stay, can you? What could be opened tonight could be closed against us forever tomorrow. Not all the magnets and plumb-bobs in Manni creation could open it.”

“Aye,” Henchick said. “But your woman took the magic ball with her, and whatever’ee may think, Mid-World and the Borderlands are well shed of it.”

“I’d sell my soul to have it back, and in my hands,” Eddie said clearly.

They all looked shocked at this, even Jake, and Roland felt a deep urge to tell Eddie he must take that back, must unsay it. There were powerful forces working against their quest for the Tower, dark ones, and Black Thirteen was their clearest sigul. What could be used could also be misused, and the bends o’ the rainbow had their own malevolent glammer, Thirteen most of all. Was the sum of all, perhaps. Even if they had possessed it, Roland would have fought to keep it out of Eddie Dean’s hands. In his current state of sorrowing distraction, the ball would either destroy him or make him its slave in minutes.

“A stone might drink if it had a mouth,” Rosa said dryly, startling them all. “Eddie, questions of magic aside, think of the path that goes up there. Then think of five dozen men, many of them nigh as old as Henchick, one or two blind as bats, trying to climb it after dark.”

“The boulder,” Jake said. “Remember the boulder you have to kind of slide by, with your feet sticking out over the drop?”

Eddie nodded reluctantly. Roland could see him trying to accept what he couldn’t change. Groping for sanity.

“Susannah Dean is also a gunslinger,” Roland said. “Mayhap she can take care of herself a little while.”

“I don’t think Susannah’s in charge anymore,” Eddie replied, “and neither do you. It’s Mia’s baby, after all, and it’ll be Mia at the controls until the baby-the chap-comes.”

Roland had an intuition then, and like so many he’d had over the years, it turned out to be true. “She may have been in charge when they left, but she may not be able to stay in charge.”

Callahan spoke at last, looking up from the book which had so stunned him. “Why not?”

“Because it’s not her world,” Roland said. “It’s Susannah’s. If they can’t find a way to work together, they may die together.”

TWO

Henchick and Cantab went back to Manni Redpath, first to tell the gathered (and entirely male) elders about the day’s work, and then to tell them what payment was required. Roland went with Rosa to her cottage. It stood up the hill from a formerly neat privy which was now mostly in ruins. Within this privy, standing useless sentinel, was what remained of Andy the Messenger Robot (many other functions). Rosalita undressed Roland slowly and completely. When he was mother-naked, she stretched beside him on her bed and rubbed him with special oils: cat-oil for his aches, a creamier, faintly perfumed blend for his most sensitive parts. They made love. They came together (the sort of physical accident fools take for fate), listening to the crackle of firecrackers from the Calla’s high street and the boisterous shouts of the folken, most of them now well past tipsy, from the sound.

“Sleep,” she said. “Tomorrow I see you no more. Not me, not Eisenhart or Overholser, not anyone in the Calla.”

“Do you have the sight, then?” Roland asked. He sounded relaxed, even amused, but even when he had been deep in her heat and thrusting, the gnaw of Susannah had never left his mind: one of his ka-tet, and lost. Even if there had been no more than that, it would have been enough to keep him from true rest or ease.

“No,” said she, “but I have feelings from time to time, like any other woman, especially about when her man is getting ready to move on.”

“Is that what I am to you? Your man?”

Her gaze was both shy and steady. “For the little time ye’ve been here, aye, I like to think so. Do’ee call me wrong, Roland?”

He shook his head at once. It was good to be some woman’s man again, if only for a short time.

She saw he meant it, and her face softened. She stroked his lean cheek. “We were well-met, Roland, were we not? Well-met in the Calla.”

“Aye, lady.”

She touched the remains of his right hand, then his right hip. “And how are your aches?”

To her he wouldn’t lie. “Vile.”

She nodded, then took hold of his left hand, which he’d managed to keep away from the lobstrosities. “And this un?”

“Fine,” he said, but he felt a deep ache. Lurking. Waiting its time to come out. What Rosalita called the dry twist.

“Roland!” said she.

“Aye?'-

Her eyes looked at him calmly. She still had hold of his left hand, touching it, culling out its secrets. “Finish your business as soon as you can.”

“Is that your advice?”

“Aye, dearheart. Before your business finishes you.”

THREE

Eddie sat on the back porch of the rectory as midnight came and what these folk would ever after call The Day of the East Road Battle passed into history (after which it would pass into myth… always assuming the world held together long enough for it to happen). In town the sounds of celebration had grown increasingly loud and feverish, until Eddie seriously began to wonder if they might not set the entire high street afire. And would he mind? Not a whit, say thanks and you’re welcome, too. While Roland, Susannah, Jake, Eddie, and three women-Sisters of Oriza, they called themselves-stood against the Wolves, the rest of the Calla-folken had either been cowering back in town or in the rice by the riverbank. Yet ten years from now-maybe even five!-they would be telling each other about how they’d bagged their limit one day in autumn, standing shoulder to shoulder with the gunslingers.

It wasn’t fair and part of him knew it wasn’t fair, but never in his life had he felt so helpless, so lost, and so consequently mean. He would tell himself not to think of Susannah, to wonder where she was or if her demon child had yet been delivered, and find himself thinking of her, anyway. She had gone to New York, of that much he was sure. But when? Were people traveling in hansom cabs by gaslight or jetting around in anti-grav taxis driven by robots from North Central Positronics?

Is she even alive?

He would have shuddered away from this thought if he could have, but the mind could be so cruel. He kept seeing her in the gutter somewhere down in Alphabet City, with a swastika carved on her forehead, and a placard reading GREETINGS FROM YOUR FRIENDS IN OXFORD TOWN hung around her neck.

Behind him the door from the rectory’s kitchen opened. There was the soft padding sound of bare feet (his ears were sharp now, trained like the rest of his killer’s equipment), and the click of toenails. Jake and Oy.

The kid sat down next to him in Callahan’s rocking chair. He was dressed and wearing his docker’s clutch. In it was the Ruger Jake had stolen from his father on the day he had run away from home. Today it had drawn… well, not blood. Not yet. Oil? Eddie smiled a little. There was no humor in it.

“Can’t sleep, Jake?”

“Ake,” Oy agreed, and collapsed at Jake’s feet, muzzle resting on the boards between his paws.

“No,” Jake said. “I keep thinking about Susannah.” He paused, then added: “And Benny.”

Eddie knew that was natural, the boy had seen his friend blown apart before his very eyes, of course he’d be thinking about him, but Eddie still felt a bitter spurt of jealousy, as if all of Jake’s regard should have been saved for Eddie Dean’s wife.

“That Tavery kid,” Jake said. “It’s his fault. Panicked. Got running. Broke his ankle. If not for him, Benny’d still be alive.” And very softly-it would have chilled the heart of the boy in question had he heard it, Eddie had no doubt of that-Jake said: “Frank… fucking… Tavery.”

Eddie reached out a hand that did not want to comfort and made it touch the kid’s head. His hair was long. Needed awash. Hell, needed a cut. Needed a mother to make sure the boy under it took care of it. No mother now, though, not for Jake. And a little miracle: giving comfort made Eddie feel better. Not a lot, but a little.

“Let it go,” He said. “Done is done.”

“Ka,” Jake said bitterly.

“Ki-yet, ka,” Oy said without raising his muzzle.

“Amen,” Jake said, and laughed. It was disturbing in its coldness. Jake took the Ruger from its makeshift holster and looked at it. “This one will go through, because it came from the other side. That’s what Roland says. The others may, too, because we won’t be going todash. If they don’t, Henchick will cache them in the cave and maybe we can come back for them.”

“If we wind up in New York,” Eddie said, “there’ll be plenty of guns. And we’ll find them.”

“Not like Roland’s. I hope like hell they go through. There aren’t any guns left in any of the worlds like his. That’s what I think.”

It was what Eddie thought, too, but he didn’t bother saying so. From town there came a rattle of firecrackers, then silence. It was winding down there. Winding down at last. Tomorrow there would undoubtedly be an all-day party on the common, a continuation of today’s celebration but a little less drunk and a little more coherent. Roland and his ka-tet would be expected as guests of honor, but if the gods of creation were good and the door opened, they would be gone. Hunting Susannah. Finding her. Never mind hunting. Finding.

As if reading his thoughts (and he could do that, he was strong in the touch), Jake said: “She’s still alive.”

“How can you know that?”