Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower #6)(5)

"And it wasn't ours," Jake put in, "or the damage would have been a lot worse. Don't you think?"

Roland nodded.

Rosa looked at Jake with a mixture of puzzlement and fright. "Wasn't ourwhat, boy? What are you talking about? It wasn't an earthquake, sure!"

"No," Roland said, "aBeam quake. One of the Beams holding up the Tower - which holds up everything - just let go. Just snapped."

Even in the faint light from the four 'seners flickering on the porch, Eddie saw Rosalita Munoz's face lose its color. She crossed herself. "ABeam? One of theBeams? Say no! Say not true!"

Eddie found himself thinking of some long-ago baseball scandal. Of some little boy begging,Say it ain't so, Joe.

"I can't," Roland told her, "because it is."

"How many of these Beams are there?" Callahan asked.

Roland looked at Jake, and nodded slightly:Say your lesson, Jake of New York - speak and be true.

"Six Beams connecting twelve portals," Jake said. "The twelve portals are at the twelve ends of the earth. Roland, Eddie, and Susannah really started their quest from the Portal of the Bear, and picked me up between there and Lud."

"Shardik," Eddie said. He was watching the last flickers of lightning in the east. "That was the bear's name."

"Yes, Shardik," Jake agreed. "So we're on the Beam of the Bear. All the Beams come together at the Dark Tower. Our Beam, on the other side of the Tower...?" He looked at Roland for help. Roland, in turn, looked at Eddie Dean. Even now, it seemed, Roland was not done teaching them the Way of Eld.

Eddie either didn't see the look or chose to ignore it, but Roland would not be put off. "Eddie?" he murmured.

"We're on the Path of the Bear, Way of the Turtle," Eddie said absently. "I don't know why it would ever matter, since the Tower's as far as we're going, but on the other side it's the Path of the Turtle, Way of the Bear." And he recited:

"See the TURTLE of enormous girth!

On his shell he holds the earth,

His thought is slow but always kind;

He holds us all within his mind."

At this point, Rosalita took up the verse

"On his back the truth is carried,

And there are love and duty married.

He loves the earth and loves the sea,

And even loves a child like me."

"Not quite the way I learned it in my cradle and taught it to my friends," Roland said, "but close enough, by watch and by warrant."

"The Great Turtle's name is Maturin," Jake said, and shrugged. "If it matters."

"You have no way of telling which one broke?" Callahan said, studying Roland closely.

Roland shook his head. "All I know is that Jake's right - it wasn't ours. If it had been, nothing within a hundred miles of Calla Bryn Sturgis would be standing." Or maybe within a thousand miles - who could know? "The very birds would have fallen flaming from the sky."

"You speak of Armageddon," Callahan said in a low, troubled voice.

Roland shook his head, but not in disagreement. "I don't know that word, Pere, but I'm speaking of great death and great destruction, sure. And somewhere - along the Beam connecting Fish to Rat, perhaps - that has now happened."

"Are you positive this is true?" Rosa asked, low.

Roland nodded. He had been through this once before, when Gilead fell and civilization as he then understood it had ended. When he had been cast loose to wander with Cuthbert and Alain and Jamie and the few others of their ka-tet. One of the six Beams had broken then, and almost certainly not the first.

"How many Beams remain to hold the Tower?" Callahan asked.

For the first time, Eddie seemed interested in something other than the fate of his lost wife. He was looking at Roland with what was almost attention. And why not? This was, after all, the crucial question.All things serve the Beam, they said, and although the actual truth was that all things served the Tower, it was the Beams which held the Tower up. If they snapped -

"Two," Roland said. "There have to be at least two, I'd say. The one running through Calla Bryn Sturgis and another. But God knows how long they'll hold. Even without the Breakers working on them, I doubt they'd hold for long. We have to hurry."

Eddie had stiffened. "If you're suggesting we go on without Suze - "

Roland shook his head impatiently, as if to tell Eddie not to be a fool. "We can't win through to the Tower without her. For all I know, we can't win through without Mia's chap. It's in the hands of ka, and there used to be a saying in my country: 'Ka has no heart or mind.' "

"That one I can agree with," Eddie said.

"We might have another problem," Jake said.

Eddie frowned at him. "We don'tneed another problem."

"I know, but...what if the earthquake blocked the mouth of that cave? Or..." Jake hesitated, then reluctantly brought out what he was really afraid of. "Or knocked it down completely?"

Eddie reached out, took hold of Jake's shirt, and bundled it into his fist. "Don't say that. Don't you eventhink that."

Now they could hear voices from town. Thefolken would be gathering on the common again, Roland guessed. He further guessed that this day - and now this night - would be remembered in Calla Bryn Sturgis for a thousand years. If the Tower stood, that was.