Song of Susannah

amount of outrage. “The King keeps his promises, unlike some I could name. And, issues of our integrity aside, think of the practical issues! Who else should have the keeping of perhaps the most important child to ever be born… including Christ, including Buddha, including the Prophet Muhammad? To who else’s breast, if I may be crude, would we trust his suck?”

Music to her ears, Susannah thought dismally. All the things she’s been thirsting to hear. And why? Because she is Mother.

“You’d trust him to me!” Mia cried. “Only to me, of course! Thank you! Thank you!”

Susannah spoke at last. Told her not to trust him. And was, of course, roundly ignored.

“I’d no more lie to you than break a promise to my own mother,” said the voice on the phone. (Did you ever have one, sugar? Detta wanted to know.) “Even though the truth some times hurts, lies have a way of coming back to bite us, don’t they? The truth of this matter is you won’t have your chap for long, Mia, his childhood won’t be like that of other children, normal children-”

“I know! Oh, I know!”

“-but for the five years you do have him… or perhaps seven, it might be as many as seven… he’ll have the best of everything. From you, of course, but also from us. Our interference will be minimal-”

Detta Walker leaped forward, as quick and as nasty as a grease-burn. She was only able to take possession of Susannah Dean’s vocal cords for a moment, but it was a precious moment.

“Dass raht, dahlin, dass raht,” she cackled, “he won’t come in yo’ mouf or get it in you’ hair!”

“Shut that bitch UP!” Sayre whipcracked, and Susannah felt the jolt as Mia shoved Detta head over heels-but still cackling-to the back of their shared mind again. Once more into the brig.

Had mah say, though, damn if I didn’t! Detta cried. Ah tole that honky muhfuh!

Sayre’s voice in the telephone’s earpiece was cold and clear. “Mia, do you have control or not?”

“Yes! Yes, I do!”

“Then don’t let that happen again.”

“I won’t!”

And somewhere-it felt like above her, although there were no real directions here at the back of the shared mind-something clanged shut. It sounded like iron.

We really are in the brig, she told Detta, but Detta just went on laughing.

Susannah thought: I’m pretty sure I know who she is, anyway. Besides me, that is. This truth seemed obvious to her. The part of Mia that wasn’t either Susannah or something summoned from the void world to do the Crimson King’s bid-ding… surely the third part really was the Oracle, elemental or not; the female force that had at first tried to molest Jake and then had taken Roland, instead. That sad, craving spirit. She finally had the body she needed. One capable of carrying the chap.

“Odetta?” Sayre’s voice, teasing and cruel. “Or Susannah, if you like that better? I promised you news, didn’t I? It’s kind of a good news-bad news thing, I’m afraid. Would you like to hear it?”

Susannah held her silence.

“The bad news is that Mia’s chap may not be able to fulfill the destiny of his name by killing his father, after all. The good news is that Roland will almost surely be dead in the next few minutes. As for Eddie, I’m afraid there’s no question. He doesn’t have either your dinh’s reflexes or his battle experience. My dear, you’re going to be a widow very soon. That’s the bad news.”

She could hold her silence no longer, and Mia let her speak. “You lie! About everything!”

“Not at all,” Sayre said calmly, and Susannah realized where she knew that name from: the end of Callahan’s story. Detroit. Where he’d violated his church’s most sacred teaching and committed suicide to keep from falling into the hands of the vampires. Callahan had jumped out of a skyscraper window to avoid that particular fate. He had landed first in Mid-World, and gone from there, via the Unfound Door, into the Calla Borderlands. And what he’d been thinking, the Pere had told them, was They don’t get to win, they don’t get to win. And he was right about that, right, goddammit. But if Eddie died-

“We knew where your dinh and your husband would be most likely to end up, should they be swept through a certain doorway,” Sayre told her. “And calling certain people, beginning with a chap named Enrico Balazar… I assure you, Susannah, that was easy.”

Susannah heard the sincerity in his voice. If he didn’t mean what he said, then he was the world’s best liar.

“How could you find such a thing out?” Susannah asked. When there was no answer she opened her mouth to ask the question again. Before she could, she was tumbled backward once more. Whatever Mia might have been once, she had grown to incredible strength inside Susannah.

“Is she gone?” Sayre was asking.

“Yes, gone, in the back.” Servile. Eager to please.

“Then come to us, Mia. The sooner you come to us, the sooner you can look your chap in the face!”

“Yes!” Mia cried, delirious with joy, and Susannah caught a sudden brilliant glimpse of something. It was like peeking beneath the hem of a circus tent at some bright wonder. Or a dark one.

What she saw was as simple as it was terrible: Pere Callahan, buying a piece of salami from a shopkeeper. A Yankee shopkeeper. One who ran a certain general store in the town of East Stoneham, Maine, in the year of 1977. Callahan had told them all this story in the rectory… and Mia had been listening.

Comprehension came like a red sun rising on a field where thousands have been slaughtered. Susannah rushed forward again, unmindful of Mia’s strength, screaming it over and over again:

“Bitch! Betraying bitch! Murdering bitch! You told them where the Door would send them! Where it would send Eddie and Roland! Oh you BITCH!'

SEVEN

Mia was strong, but unprepared for this new attack. It was especially ferocious because Detta had joined her own murderous energy to Susannah’s understanding. For a moment the interloper was pushed backward, eyes wide. In the hotel room, the telephone dropped from Mia’s hand. She staggered drunkenly across the carpet, almost tripped over one of the beds, then whirled about like a tipsy dancer. Susannah slapped at her and red marks appeared on her cheek like exclamation points.

Slapping myself, that’s all I’m doing, Susannah thought. Beating up the equipment, how stupid is that? But she couldn’t help it. The enormity of what Mia had done, the betraying enormity-

Inside, in some battle-ring which was not quite physical (but not entirely mental, either), Mia was finally able to clutch Susannah/Detta by the throat and drive her back. Mia’s eyes were still wide with shock at the ferocity of the assault. And perhaps with shame, as well. Susannah hoped she was able to feel shame, that she hadn’t gone beyond that.

Idid what I had to do, Mia repeated as she forced Susannah back into the brig. It’s my chap, every hand is against me, I did what I had to do.

You traded Eddie and Roland for your monster, that’s what you did! Susannah screamed. Based, on what you overheard and then passed on, Sayre was sure they’d use the Door to go after Tower, wasn’t he? And how many has he set against them?

The only answer was that iron clang. Only this time it was followed by a second. And a third. Mia had had the hands of her hostess clamped around her throat and was consequently taking no chances. This time the brig’s door had been triple-locked. Brig? Hell, might as well call it the Black Hole of Calcutta.

When I get out of here, I’ll go back to the Dogan and disable all the switches! she cried. I can’t believe I tried to help you! Well, fuck that! Have it on the street, for all of me!

You can’t get out, Mia replied, almost apologetically. Later, if I can, I’ll leave you in peace-

What kind of peace will there be for me with Eddie dead? No wonder you wanted to take his ring off! Hoxu could you bear to have it lie against your skin, knowing what you’d done?

Mia picked up the telephone and listened, but Richard P. Sayre was no longer there. Probably had places to go and diseases to spread, Susannah thought.

Mia replaced the telephone in its cradle, looked around at the empty, sterile room the way people do when they won’t be coming back to a place and want to make sure they’ve taken everything that matters. She patted one pocket of her jeans and felt the little wad of cash. Touched the other and felt the lump that was the turtle, the skolpadda.

I’m sorry, Mia said. Ihave to take care of my chap. Every hand is against me now.

That’s not true, Susannah said from the locked room where Mia had thrown her. And where was it, really? In the deepest, darkest dungeons of the Castle on the Abyss? Probably. Did it matter? I was on your side. I helped you. I stopped your damn labor when you needed it stopped. And look what you did. How could you ever be so cowardly and low?

Mia paused with her hand on the room’s doorknob, her cheeks flushing a dull red. Yes, she was ashamed, all right. But shame wouldn’t stop her. Nothing would stop her. Until, that was, she found herself betrayed in turn by Sayre and his friends.

Thinking of that inevitability gave Susannah no satisfaction at all.

You’re damned, she said. You know that, don’t you?

“I don’t care,” Mia said. “An eternity in hell’s a fair price to pay for one look in my chap’s face. Hear me well, I beg.”

And then, carrying Susannah and Detta with her, Mia opened the hotel room door, re-entered the corridor, and took her first steps on her course toward the Dixie Pig, where terrible surgeons waited to deliver her of her equally terrible chap.

STAVE: Commala-mox-nix !
You’re in a nasty fix!
To take the hand in a traitor’s glove
Is to grasp a sheaf of sticks!

RESPONSE: Commala-come-six !