Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower #6)(11)

"What does Kra Kammen mean?" he asked Cantab. "House of Bells?"

"House of Ghosts," he replied without looking up from the chain he was unwinding. "Leave me alone, Jake, this is delicate work."

Jake couldn't see why it would be, but he did as bade. Roland, Eddie, and Callahan were standing just inside the cave's mouth. Jake joined them. Henchick, meanwhile, had placed the oldest members of his group in a semicircle that went around the back of the door. The front side, with its incised hieroglyphs and crystal doorknob, was unguarded, at least for the time being.

The old man went to the mouth of the cave, spoke briefly with Cantab, then motioned for the line of Manni waiting on the path to move up. When the first man in line was just inside the cave, Henchick stopped him and came back to Roland. He squatted, inviting the gunslinger with a gesture to do the same.

The cave's floor was powdery with dust. Some came from rocks, but most of it was the bone residue of small animals unwise enough to wander in here. Using a fingernail, Henchick drew a rectangle, open at the bottom, and then a semicircle around it.

"The door," he said. "And the men of my kra. Do'ee kennit?"

Roland nodded.

"You and your friends will finish the circle," he said, and drew it.

"The boy's strong in the touch," Henchick said, looking at Jake so suddenly that Jake jumped.

"Yes," Roland said.

"We'll put him direct in front of the door, then, but far enough away so that if it opens hard - and it may - it won't clip his head off. Will'ee stand, boy?"

"Yes, until you or Roland says different," Jake replied.

"You'll feel something in your head - like a sucking. It's not nice." He paused. "Ye'd open the door twice."

"Yes," Roland said. "Twim."

Eddie knew the door's second opening was about Calvin Tower, and he'd lost what interest he'd had in the bookstore proprietor. The man wasn't entirely without courage, Eddie supposed, but he was also greedy and stubborn and self-involved: the perfect twentieth-century New York City man, in other words. But the most recent person to use this door had been Suze, and the moment it opened, he intended to dart through. If it opened a second time on the little Maine town where Calvin Tower and his friend, Aaron Deepneau, had gone to earth, fine and dandy. If the rest of them wound up there, trying to protect Tower and gain ownership of a certain vacant lot and a certain wild pink rose, also fine and dandy. Eddie's priority was Susannah. Everything else was secondary to that.

Even the tower.

Six

Henchick said: "Who would'ee send the first time the door opens?"

Roland thought about this, absently running his hand over the bookcase Calvin Tower had insisted on sending through. The case containing the book which had so upset the Pere. He did not much want to send Eddie, a man who was impulsive to begin with and now all but blinded by his concern and his love, after his wife. Yet would Eddie obey him if Roland ordered him after Tower and Deepneau instead? Roland didn't think so. Which meant -

"Gunslinger?" Henchick prodded.

"The first time the door opens, Eddie and I will go through," Roland said. "The door will shut on its own?"

"Indeed it will," Henchick said. "You must be as quick as the devil's bite, or you'll likely be cut in two, half of you on the floor of this cave and the rest wherever the brown-skinned woman took herself off to."

"We'll be as quick as we can, sure," Roland said.

"Aye, that's best," Henchick said, and put his teeth on display once more. This was a smile

(what's he not telling? something he knows or only thinks he knows?)

Roland would have occasion to think of not long hence.

"I'd leave your guns here," Henchick said. "If you try to carry them through, you may lose them."

"I'm going to try and keep mine," Jake said. "It came from the other side, so it should be all right. If it's not, I'll get another one. Somehow."

"I expect mine may travel, as well," Roland said. He'd thought about this carefully, and had decided to try and keep the big revolvers. Henchick shrugged, as if to sayAs you will.

"What about Oy, Jake?" Eddie asked.

Jake's eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Roland realized the boy hadn't considered his bumbler friend until this moment. The gunslinger reflected (not for the first time) how easy it was to forget the most basic truth about John "Jake" Chambers: he was just a kid.

"When we went todash, Oy - " Jake began.

"This ain't that, sugar," Eddie said, and when he heard Susannah's endearment coming out of his mouth, his heart gave a sad cramp. For the first time he admitted to himself that he might never see her again, any more than Jake might see Oy once they left this stinking cave.

"But..." Jake began, and then Oy gave a reproachful little bark. Jake had been squeezing him too tightly.

"We'll keep him for you, Jake," Cantab said gently. "Keep him very well, say true. There'll be folk posted here until thee comes back for thy friend and all the rest of thy goods."If you ever do was the part he was too kind to state. Roland read it in his eyes, however.

"Roland, are you sure I can't...that he can't...no. I see. Not todash this time. Okay. No."