final choked syllable. It sounded like some final cry of surprise, and Jake had no doubt that the desert-dog was dead. Something had crept up behind it, and when the big overhead light went out-
There were still lights on down there, he saw: a double white row that might have been streetlights in “Pleasantville,” yellow circles that were probably arc-sodiums along the various paths of what Susannah was calling Breaker U… and spotlights running random patterns across the dark.
No, Jake thought, not spotlights. Searchlights. Like in a prison movie. “Let’s go back,” he said. “There’s nothing to see anymore, and I don’t like it out here in the dark.”
Roland agreed. They followed him in single file, with Eddie carrying Susannah and Jake walking behind them with Oy at his heel. He kept expecting a second desert-dog to take up the cry of the first, but none did.
FOUR
“They were wood,” Jake said. He was sitting cross-legged beneath one of the gas lanterns, letting its welcome white glow shine down on his face.
“Wood,” Eddie agreed.
Susannah hesitated a moment, sensing it was a question of real importance and reviewing what she had seen. Then she also nodded. “Wood, I’m almost positive. Especially the one they call Damli House. A Queen Anne built out of stone or brick and camouflaged to look like wood? It makes no sense.”
“If it fools wandering folk who’d burn it down,” Roland said, “it does. It does make sense.”
Susannah thought about it. He was right, of course, but-
“I still say wood.”
Roland nodded. “So do I.” He had found a large green botde marked PERRIER. NOW he opened it and ascertained that Perrier was water. He took five cups and poured a measure into each. He set them down in front of Jake, Susannah, Eddie, Oy, and himself. s
“Do you call me dinh?” he asked Eddie.
“Yes, Roland, you know I do.”
“Will you share khef with me, and drink this water?”
“Yes, if you like.” Eddie had been smiling, but now he wasn’t. The feeling was back, and it was strong. Ka-shume, a rueful word he did not yet know.
“Drink, bondsman.”
Eddie didn’t exactly like being called bondsman, but he drank his water. Roland knelt before him and put a brief, dry kiss on Eddie’s lips. “I love you, Eddie,” he said, and outside in the ruin that was Thunderclap, a desert wind arose, carrying gritty poisoned dust.
“Why… I love you, too,” Eddie said. It was surprised out of him. “What’s wrong? And don’t tell me nothing is, because I feelit.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Roland said, smiling, but Jake had never heard the gunslinger sound so sad. It terrified him. “It’s only kashume, and it comes to every ka-tet that ever was… but now, while we are whole, we share our water. We share our khef. ’Tis a jolly thing to do.”
He looked at Susannah.
“Do you call me dinh?”
“Yes, Roland, I call you dinh.” She looked very pale, but perhaps it was only the white light from the gas lanterns.
“Will you share khef with me, and drink this water?”
“With pleasure,” said she, and took up the plastic cup.
“Drink, bondswoman.”
She drank, her grave dark eyes never leaving his. She thought of the voices she’d heard in her dream of the Oxford jail-cell: this one dead, that one dead, (’other one dead; O Discordia, and the shadows grow deeper.
Roland kissed her mouth. “I love you, Susannah.”
“I love you, too.”
The gunslinger turned to Jake. “Do you call me dinh?”
“Yes,” Jake said. There was no question about his pallor; even his lips were ashy. “Ka-shume means death, doesn’t it?
Which one of us will it be?”
“I know not,” Roland said, “and the shadow may yet lift from us, for the wheel’s still in spin. Did you not feel ka-shume when you and Callahan went into the place of the vampires?”
“Yes.”
“Ka-shume for both?”
“Yes.”
“Yet here you are. Our ka-tet is strong, and has survived many dangers. It may survive this one, too.”
“But I feel-”
“Yes,” Roland said. His voice was kind, but that awful look was in his eyes. The look that was beyond mere sadness, the one that said this would be whatever it was, but the Tower was beyond, the Dark Tower was beyond and it was there that he dwelt, heart and soul, ka and khef. ’Yes, I feel it, too. So do we all. Which is why we take water, which is to say fellowship, one with the other. Will you share khef with me, and share this water?”
“Yes.”
“Drink, bondsman.”
Jake did. Then, before Roland could kiss him, he dropped the cup, flung his arms about the gunslinger’s neck, and whispered fiercely into his ear: “Roland, I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said, and released him. Outside, the wind gusted again. Jake waited for something to howl-perhaps in triumph-but nothing did.
Smiling, Roland turned to the billy-bumbler.
“Oy of Mid-World, do you call me dinh?”
“DinhF’Oysaid.
“Will you share khef with me, and this water?”
“Khef! Wat’!”
“Drink, bondsman.”
Oy inserted his snout into his plastic cup-an act of some delicacy-and lapped until the water was gone. Then he looked up expectantly. There were beads of Perrier on his whiskers.
“Oy, I love you,” Roland said, and leaned his face within range of the bumbler’s sharp teeth. Oy licked his cheek a single time, then poked his snout back into t h e glass, hoping for a missed drop or two.
Roland put out his hands. Jake took one and Susannah the other. Soon they were all linked. Like drunks at the end of an A.A. meeting, Eddie thought.
“We are ka-tet,” Roland said. “We are one from many. We have shared our water as we have shared our lives and our quest. If one should fall, that one will not be lost, for we are one and will not forget, even in death.”
They held hands a moment longer. Roland was the first to let go.
“What’s your plan?” Susannah asked him. She didn’t call him sugar; never called him that or any other endearment ever again, so far as Jake was aware. “Will you tell us?”
Roland nodded toward the Wollensak tape recorder, still sitting on the barrel. “Perhaps we should listen to that first,” he said. “I do have a plan of sorts, but what Brautigan has to say might help with some of the details.”
FIVE
Night in Thunderclap is the very definition of darkness: no moon, no stars. Yet if we were to stand outside the cave where Roland and his tet have just shared khef and will now listen to the tapes Ted Brautigan has left them, we’d see two red coals floating in that wind-driven darkness. If we were to climb the path up the side of Steek-Tete toward those floating coals (a dangerous proposition in the dark), we’d eventually come upon a seven-legged spider now crouched over the queerly deflated body of a mutie coyote. This can-toi-tete was a literally misbegotten thing in life, with the stub of a fifth leg jutting from its chest and ajellylike mass of flesh hanging down between its rear legs like a deformed udder, but its flesh nourishes Mordred, and its blood-taken in a series of long, steaming gulps-is as sweet as a dessert wine. There are, in truth, all sorts of things to eat over here. Mordred has no friends to lift him from place to place via the seven-league boots of teleportation, but he found his journey from Thunderclap Station to Steek-Tete far from arduous.
He has overheard enough to be sure of what his father is planning: a surprise attack on the facility below. They’re badly outnumbered, but Roland’s band of shooters is fiercely devoted to him, and surprise is ever a powerful weapon.
And gunslingers are what Jake would call fou, crazy when their blood is up, and afraid of nothing. Such insanity is an even more powerful weapon.
Mordred was born with a fair amount of inbred knowledge, it seems. He knows, for instance, that his Red Father, possessed of such information
