Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower #6)(10)

"Okay, I get the point!" Eddie shouted. "Get it off me, Henchick. At least make it stop!"

Henchick uttered a single word, one so guttural it sounded like something yanked from a mudflat. The bob didn't slow through a series of diminishing arcs but simply quit, again hanging beside Eddie's knee with the tip pointing at his foot. For a moment the humming in his arm and head continued. Then that also quit. When it did, the bob's disquieting sense of weight lifted. The damn thing was once more feather-light.

"Do'ee have something to say to me, Eddie of New York?" Henchick asked.

"Yeah, cry your pardon."

Henchick's teeth once more put in an appearance, gleaming briefly in the wilderness of his beard and then gone. "Thee's not entirely slow, is thee?"

"I hope not," Eddie said, and could not forbear a small sigh of relief as Henchick of the Manni lifted the fine-link silver chain from his hand.

Four

Henchick insisted on a dry-run. Eddie understood why, but he hated all this foreplay crap. The passing time now seemed almost to be a physical thing, like a rough piece of cloth slipping beneath the palm of your hand. He kept silent, nevertheless. He'd already pissed off Henchick once, and once was enough.

The old man brought six of hisamigos (five of them looked older than God to Eddie) into the cave. He passed bobs to three of them and shell-shaped magnets to the other three. The Branni bob, almost certainly the tribe's strongest, he kept for himself.

The seven of them formed a ring at the mouth of the cave.

"Not around the door?" Roland asked.

"Not until we have to," Henchick said.

The old men joined hands, each holding a bob or a mag at the clasping point. As soon as the circle was complete, Eddie heard that humming again. It was as loud as an over-amped stereo speaker. He saw Jake raise his hands to his ears, and Roland's face tighten in a brief grimace.

Eddie looked at the door and saw it had lost that dusty, unimportant look. The hieroglyphs on it once more stood out crisply, some forgotten word that meant UNFOUND. The crystal doorknob glowed, outlining the rose carved there in lines of white light.

Could I open it now?Eddie wondered.Open it and step through? He thought not. Not yet, anyway. But he was a hell of a lot more hopeful about this process than he'd been five minutes ago.

Suddenly the voices from deep in the cave came alive, but they did so in a roaring jumble. Eddie could make out Benny Slightman the Younger screaming the wordDogan, heard his Ma telling him that now, to top off a career of losing things, he'd lost hiswife, heard some man (probably Elmer Chambers) telling Jake that Jake had gone crazy, he wasfou, he wasMonsieur Lunatique. More voices joined in, and more, and more.



Henchick nodded sharply to his colleagues. Their hands parted. When they did, the voices from below ceased in midbabble. And, Eddie was not surprised to see, the door immediately regained its look of unremarkable anonymity - it was any door you ever passed on the street without a second look.

"What in God's name wasthat? " Callahan asked, nodding toward the deeper darkness where the floor sloped down. "It wasn't like that before."

"I believe that either the quake or the loss of the magic ball has driven the cave insane," Henchick said calmly. "It doesn't matter to our business here, anyroa'. Our business is with the door." He looked at Callahan's packsack. "Once you were a wandering man."

"So I was."

Henchick's teeth made another brief guest appearance. Eddie decided that, on some level, the old bastard was enjoying this. "From the look of your gunna, sai Callahan, you've lost the knack."

"I suppose it's hard for me to believe that we're really going anywhere," Callahan said, and offered a smile. Compared to Henchick's, it was feeble. "And I'm older now."

Henchick made a rude sound at that - fah!,it sounded like.

"Henchick," Roland said, "do you know what caused the ground to shake early this morning?"

The old man's blue eyes were faded but still sharp. He nodded. Outside the cave's mouth, in a line going down the path, almost three dozen Manni men waited patiently. "Beam let go is what we think."

"What I think, too," Roland said. "Our business grows more desperate. I'd have an end to idle talk, if it does ya. Let's have what palaver we must have, and then get on with our business."

Henchick looked at Roland as coldly as he had looked at Eddie, but Roland's eyes never wavered. Henchick's brow furrowed, then smoothed out.

"Aye," he said. "As'ee will, Roland. Thee's rendered us a great service, Manni and forgetful folk alike, and we'd return it now as best we can. The magic's still here, and thick. Wants only a spark. We can make that spark, aye, easy as commala. You may get what'ee want. On the other hand, we all may go to the clearing at the end of the path together. Or into the darkness. Does thee understand?"

Roland nodded.

"Would'ee go ahead?"

Roland stood for a moment with his head lowered and his hand on the butt of his gun. When he looked up, he was wearing his own smile. It was handsome and tired and desperate and dangerous. He twirled his whole left hand twice in the air:Let's go.

Five

The coffs were set down - carefully, because the path leading up to what the Manni called Kra Kammen was narrow - and the contents were removed. Long-nailed fingers (the Manni were allowed to cut their nails only once a year) tapped the magnets, producing a shrill hum that seemed to slice through Jake's head like a knife. It reminded him of the todash chimes, and he guessed that wasn't surprising; those chimeswere the kammen.