Wolves of the Calla

sends Andy to keep an eye on us, only then he wakes up in the middle of the night and decides to check on us for himself Maybe he had his own bad dream.

Maybe so, but that didn't explain why Andy and Mr. Slightman were having their palaver way down there by the river, did it?

Well, maybe he was afraid of waking us up. Maybe he'll come up to check on the tent now —in which case I better get back inside it —or maybe he'll take Andy's word that we're all right and head back to the Rocking B .

The moon went behind another cloud, and Jake thought it best to stay where he was until it came back out. When it did, what he saw filled him with the same sort of dismay he'd felt in his dream, following Mia through that deserted castle. For a moment he clutched at the possibility that this was a dream, that he'd simply gone from one to another, but the feel of the pebbles biting into his feet and the sound of Oy panting in his ear were completely undreamlike. This was happening, all right.

Mr. Slightman wasn't coming up toward where the boys had pitched their tent, and he wasn't heading back toward the Rocking B, either (although Andy was, in long strides along the bank). No, Benny's father was wading across the river. He was heading dead east.

He could have a reason for going over there. He could have a perfectly good reason.

Really? What might that perfectly good reason be? It wasn't the Calla anymore over there, Jake knew that much. Over there was nothing but waste ground and desert, a buffer between the borderlands and the kingdom of the dead that was Thunderclap.

First something wrong with Susannah—his friend Susannah. Now, it seemed, something wrong with the father of his new friend. Jake realized he had begun to gnaw at his nails, a habit he'd picked up in his final weeks at Piper School, and made himself stop.

'This isn't fair, you know,' he said to Oy. 'This isn't fair at all.'

Oy licked his ear. Jake turned, put his arms around the bumbler, and pressed his face against his friend's lush coat. The bumbler stood patiently, allowing this. After a little while, Jake pulled himself back up to the more level ground where Oy stood. He felt a little better, a little comforted.

The moon went behind another cloud and the world darkened. Jake stood where he was. Oy whined softly. 'Just a minute,' Jake murmured.

The moon came out again. Jake looked hard at the place where Andy and Ben Slightman had palavered, marking it in his memory. There was a large round rock with a shiny surface. A dead log had washed up against it. Jake was pretty sure he could find this spot again, even if Benny's tent was gone.

Are you going to tell Roland?

'I don't know,' he muttered.

'Know,' Oy said from beside his ankle, making Jake jump a litde. Or was it no? Was that what the bumbler had actually said?

Are you crazy?

He wasn't. There was a time when he'd thought he was crazy—crazy or going there in one hell of a hurry—but he didn't think that anymore. And sometimes Oy did read his mind, he knew it.

Jake slipped back into the tent. Benny was still fast asleep. Jake looked at the other boy—older in years but younger in a lot of the ways that mattered—for several seconds, biting his lip. He didn't want to get Benny's father in trouble. Not unless he had to.

Jake lay down and pulled his blankets up to his chin. He had never in his life felt so undecided about so many things, and he wanted to cry. The day had begun to grow light before he was able to get back to sleep.

Chapter VIII: Took's Store; The Unfound Door

ONE

For the first half hour after leaving the Rocking B, Roland and Jake rode east toward the smallholds in silence, their horses ambling side by side in perfect good fellowship. Roland knew Jake had something serious on his mind; that was clear from his troubled face. Yet the gunslinger was still astounded when Jake curled his fist, placed it against the left side of his chest, and said: 'Roland, before Eddie and Susannah join up with us, may I speak to you dan-dinh?'

May I open my heart to your command . But the subtext was more complicated than that, and ancient—pre-dating Arthur Eld by centuries, or so Vannay had claimed. It meant to turn some insoluble emotional problem, usually having to do with a love affair, over to one's dinh. When one did this, he or she agreed to do exactly as the dinh suggested, immediately and without question. But surely Jake Chambers didn't have love problems—not unless he'd fallen for the gorgeous Francine Tavery, that was—and how had he known such a phrase in the first place?

Meanwhile Jake was looking at him with a wide-eyed, pale-cheeked solemnity that Roland didn't much like.

'Dan-dinh—where did you hear that, Jake?'

'Never did. Picked it up from your mind, I think.' Jake added hastily: 'I don't go snooping in there, or anything like that, but sometimes stuff just comes. Most of it isn't very important, I don't think, but sometimes there are phrases.'

'You pick them up like a crow or a rustie picks up the bright things that catch its eye from the wing.'

'I guess so, yeah.'

'What others? Tell me a few.'

Jake looked embarrassed. 'I can't remember many. Dan-dinh, that means I open my heart to you and agree to do what you say.'

It was more complicated than that, but the boy had caught the essence. Roland nodded. The sun felt good on his face as they clopped along. Margaret Eisenhart's exhibition with the plate had soothed him, he'd had a good meeting with the lady-sai's father later on, and he had slept quite well for the first time in many nights. 'Yes.'

'Let's see. There's tell-a-me, which means—I think—to gossip about someone you shouldn't gossip about. It stuck in my head, because that's what gossip sounds like: tell-a-me.' Jake cupped a hand to his ear.

Roland smiled. It was actually telamei , but Jake had of course picked it up phonetically. This was really quite amazing. He reminded himself to guard his deep thoughts carefully in the future. There were ways that could be done, thank the gods.

'There's dash-dinh, which means some sort of religious leader. You're thinking about that this morning, I think, because of… is it because of the old Manni guy? Is he a dash-dinh?'

Roland nodded. 'Very much so. And his name, Jake?' The gunslinger concentrated on it. 'Can you see his name in my mind?'