Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower #6)(113)

She pulled it out and flipped it behind her, casting it into the gutter. From her hand into the lap of ka.

Then she was carried up the three steps to the double doors of the Dixie Pig.

Sixteen

It was very dim inside and at first Mia could see nothing but murky, reddish-orange lights. Electricflambeaux of the sort that still lit some of the rooms in Castle Discordia. Her sense of smell needed no adjusting, however, and even as a fresh labor pain clamped her tight, her stomach reacted to the smell of roasting pork and cried out to be fed. Herchap cried out to be fed.

That's not pork, Mia,Susannah said, and was ignored.

As the doors were closed behind her - there was a man (or a manlike being) standing at each of them - she began to see better. She was at the head of a long, narrow dining room. White napery shone. On each table was a candle in an orange-tinted holder. They glowed like fox-eyes. The floor here in the foyer was black marble, but beyond thema?tre d 's stand there was a rug of darkest crimson.

Beside the stand was a sai of about sixty with white hair combed back from a lean and rather predatory face. It was the face of an intelligent man, but his clothes - the blaring yellow sportcoat, the red shirt, the black tie - were those of a used-car salesman or a gambler who specializes in rooking small-town rubes. In the center of his forehead was a red hole about an inch across, as if he had been shot at close range. It swam with blood that never overflowed onto his pallid skin.

At the tables in the dining room stood perhaps fifty men and half again as many women. Most of them were dressed in clothes as loud or louder than those of the white-haired gent. Big rings glared on fleshy fingers, diamond eardrops sparked back orange light from theflambeaux.

There were also some dressed in more sober attire - jeans and plain white shirts seemed to be the costume of choice for this minority. Thesefolken were pallid and watchful, their eyes seemingly all pupil. Around their bodies, swirling so faintly that they sometimes disappeared, were blue auras. To Mia these pallid, aura-enclosed creatures looked quite a bit more human than the low men and women. They were vampires - she didn't have to observe the sharpened fangs which their smiles disclosed to know it - but still they looked more human than Sayre's bunch. Perhaps because they once hadbeen human. The others, though...

Their faces are only masks,she observed with growing dismay.Beneath the ones the Wolves wear lie the electric men - the robots - but what is beneath these?

The dining room was breathlessly silent, but from somewhere nearby came the uninterrupted sounds of conversation, laughter, clinking glasses, and cutlery against china. There was a patter of liquid - wine or water, she supposed - and a louder outburst of laughter.

A low man and a low woman - he in a tuxedo equipped with plaid lapels and a red velvet bow tie, she in a strapless silver lamé evening dress, both of startling obesity - turned to look (with obvious displeasure) toward the source of these sounds, which seemed to be coming from behind some sort of swaggy tapestry depicting knights and their ladies at sup. When the fat couple turned to look, Mia saw their cheeks wrinkle upward like clingy cloth, and for a moment, beneath the soft angle of their jaws, she saw something dark red and tufted with hair.

Susannah, was thatskin? Mia asked.Dear God, was it their skin?

Susannah made no reply, not evenI told you so orDidn't I warn you? Things had gone past that now. It was too late for exasperation (or any of the milder emotions), and Susannah felt genuinely sorry for the woman who had brought her here. Yes, Mia had lied and betrayed; yes, she had tried her best to get Eddie and Roland killed. But what choice had she ever had? Susannah realized, with dawning bitterness, that she could now give the perfect definition of a ka-mai: one who has been given hope but no choices.

Like giving a motorcycle to a blindman,she thought.

Richard Sayre - slim, middle-aged, handsome in a full-lipped, broad-browed way - began to applaud. The rings on his fingers flashed. His yellow blazer blared in the dim light. "Hile, Mia!" he cried.

"Hile, Mia!"the others responded.

"Hile, Mother!"

"Hile, Mother!"the vampires and low men and low women cried, and they, too began to applaud. The sound was certainly enthusiastic enough, but the acoustics of the room dulled it and turned it into the rustle of batwings. A hungry sound, one that made Susannah feel sick to her stomach. At the same time a fresh contraction gripped her and turned her legs to water. She reeled forward, yet almost welcomed the pain, which partially muffled her trepidation. Sayre stepped forward and seized her by the upper arms, steadying her before she could fall. She had thought his touch would be cold, but his fingers were as hot as those of a cholera victim.

Farther back, she saw a tall figure come out of the shadows, something that was neither low man nor vampire. It wore jeans and a plain white shirt, but emerging from the shirt's collar was the head of a bird. It was covered with sleek feathers of dark yellow. Its eyes were black. It patted its hands together in polite applause, and she saw - with ever-growing dismay - that those hands were equipped with talons rather than fingers.

Half a dozen bugs scampered from beneath one of the tables and looked at her with eyes that hung on stalks. Horribly intelligent eyes. Their mandibles clicked in a sound that was like laughter.

Hile, Mia!she heard in her head. An insectile buzzing.Hile, Mother! And then they were gone, back into the shadows.

Mia turned to the door and saw the pair of low men who blocked it. And yes, thosewere masks; this close to the door-guards it was impossible not to see how their sleek black hair had been painted on. Mia turned back to Sayre with a sinking heart.