The Dark Tower

Yet there was another problem, one Roland’s eye, trained to see every possible snare and ambush, fixed upon at once. He saw the blasphemous parody of Eld’s Last Fellowship on the wall and understood its significance completely in the seconds before it was ripped away. And the smell: not just flesh but human flesh. This too he would have understood earlier, had he had time to think about it . . . only life in Calla Bryn Sturgis had allowed him little time to think. In the Calla, as in a storybook, life had been one damned thing after another.

Yet it was clear enough now, wasn’t it? The low folk might only be taheen; a child’s ogres, if it did ya. Those behind the tapestry were what Callahan had called Type One vampires and what Roland himself knew as the Grandfathers, perhaps the most gruesome and powerful survivors of the Prim’s long-ago recession. And while such as the taheen might be content to stand as they were, gawking at the sigul Callahan held up, the Grandfathers wouldn’t spare it a second glance.

Now clattering bugs came pouring out from under the table. They were of a sort Roland had seen before, and any doubts he might still have held about what was behind that tapestry departed at the sight of them. They were parasites, blood-drinkers, camp-followers: Grandfather-fleas. Probably not dangerous while there was a bumbler present, but of course when you spied the little doctors in such numbers, the Grandfathers were never far behind.

As Oy charged at the bugs, Roland of Gilead did the only thing he could think of: he swam down to Callahan.

Into Callahan.

SEVEN

Pere, I am here.

Aye, Roland. What—

No time. GET HIM OUT OF HERE. You must. Get him out while there’s still time!

EIGHT

And Callahan tried. The boy, of course, didn’t want to go. Looking at him through the Pere’s eyes, Roland thought with some bitterness: I should have schooled him better in betrayal. Yet all the gods know I did the best I could.

“Go while you can,” Callahan told Jake, striving for calmness. “Catch up to her if you can. This is the command of your dinh. This is also the will of the White.”

It should have moved him but it didn’t, he still argued—gods, he was nearly as bad as Eddie!—and Roland could wait no longer.

Pere, let me.

Roland seized control without waiting for a reply. He could already feel the wave, the aven kal, beginning to recede. And the Grandfathers would come at any second.

“Go, Jake!” he cried, using the Pere’s mouth and vocal cords like a loudspeaker. If he had thought about how one might do something like this, he would have been lost completely, but thinking about things had also never been his way, and he was grateful to see the boy’s eyes flash wide. “You have this one chance and must take it! Find her! As dinh I command you!”

Then, as in the hospital ward with Susannah, he felt himself once more tossed upward like something without weight, blown out of Callahan’s mind and body like a bit of cobweb or a fluff of dandelion thistle. For a moment he tried to flail his way back, like a swimmer trying to buck a strong current just long enough to reach the shore, but it was impossible.

Roland! That was Eddie’s voice, and filled with dismay. Jesus, Roland, what in God’s name are those things?

The tapestry had been torn aside. The creatures which rushed out were ancient and freakish, their warlock faces warped with teeth growing wild, their mouths propped open by fangs as thick as the gunslinger’s wrists, their wrinkled and stubbled chins slick with blood and scraps of meat.

And still—gods, oh gods—the boy remained!

“They’ll kill Oy first!” Callahan shouted, only Roland didn’t think it was Callahan. He thought it was Eddie, using Callahan’s voice as Roland had. Somehow Eddie had found either smoother currents or more strength. Enough to get inside after Roland had been blown out. “They’ll kill him in front of you and drink his blood!”

It was finally enough. The boy turned and fled with Oy running beside him. He cut directly in front of the waseau-taheen and between two of the low folken, but none made any effort to grab him. They were still staring at the raised Turtle on Callahan’s palm, mesmerized.