without them, who would remain to stand against the Crimson King and his infernally clever chancellor? John Cullum, Aaron Deepneau, and Moses Carver.
Three old men, one of them with blackmouth disease, which Eddie called can't, sir.
So much you did, he thought, gazing raptly at the dusty, dissolving face. So much you did and so much more you would have done, aye, and all without a check or qualm, and so will the world end,
I think, a victim of love rather than hate. For love's ever been the more destructive weapon, sure.
He leaned forward, smelling what could have been old flowers or ancient spices, and exhaled. The thing that looked vaguely like a head even now blew away like milkweed fluff or a dandy-o ball.
"She meant no harm to the universe," Susannah said, her voice not quite steady. "She only wanted any woman's privilege: to have a baby. Someone to love and raise."
"Aye," Roland agreed, "you say true. Which is what makes her end so black."
Eddie said, "Sometimes I think we'd all be better off if the people who mean well would just creep away and die."
"That'd be the end of us, Big Ed," Jake pointed out.
They all considered this, and Eddie found himself wondering how many they'd already killed with their well-intentioned meddling. The bad ones he didn't care about, but there had been others, too-Roland's lost love, Susan, was only one.
Then Roland left the powdery remains of Mia's corpse and came to Susannah, who was sitting on one of the nearby beds with her hands clasped between her thighs. "Tell me everything that befell since you left us on the East Road, after the battle,"
he said. "We need to-"
"Roland, I never meant to leave you. It was Mia. She took over. If I hadn't had a place to go-a Dogan-she might've taken over completely."
Roland nodded to show he understood that. "Nevertheless, tell me how you came to this devar-tete. And Jake, I'd hear the same from you."
"Devar-tete," Eddie said. The phrase held some faint familiarity.
Did it have something to do with Chevin of Chayven, the slow mutie Roland had put out of its misery in Lovell? He thought so. "What's that?"
Roland swept a hand at the room with all its beds, each with its helmet-like machine and segmented steel hose; beds where the gods only knew how many children from the Callas had lain, and been ruined. "It means little prison, or torture-chamber."
"Doesn't look so little to me," Jake said. He couldn't tell how many beds there were, but he guessed the number at three hundred. Three hundred at least.
"Mayhap we'll come upon a larger one before we're finished.
Tell your tale, Susannah, and you too, Jake."
"Where do we go from here?" Eddie asked.
"Perhaps the tale will tell," Roland answered.
TWO
Roland and Eddie listened in silent fascination as Susannah and Jake recounted their adventures, turn and turn about. Roland first halted Susannah while she was telling them of Mathiessen van Wyck, who had given her his money and rented her a hotel room. The gunslinger asked Eddie about the turtle in the lining of the bag.
"I didn't know it was a turtle. I thought it might be a stone."
"If you'd tell this part again, I'd hear," Roland said.
So, thinking carefully, trying to remember completely (for it all seemed a very long time ago), Eddie related how he and Pere Callahan had gone up to the Doorway Cave and opened the ghostwood box with Black Thirteen inside. They'd expected Black Thirteen to open the door, and so it had, but first-
"We put the box in the bag," Eddie said. "The one that said NOTHING BUT STRIKES AT MIDTOWN LANES in New York and NOTHING BUT STRIKES AT MID-WORLD LANES on the Calla Bryn Sturgis side. Remember?"
They all did.
"And I felt something in the lining of the bag. I told Callahan, and he said..." Eddie mulled it over. "He said, 'This isn't the time to investigate it.' Or something like that. I agreed.
I remember thinking we had enough mysteries on our hands already, we'd save this one for another day. Roland, who in God's name put that thing in the bag, do you think?"
"For that matter, who left the bag in the vacant lot?" Susannah asked.
"Or the key?" Jake chimed in. "I found the key to the house in Dutch Hill in that same lot. Was it the rose? Did the rose somehow... I dunno... make them?"
Roland thought about it. "Were I to guess," he said, "I'd say that sai King left those