“The bad news is that Mia’s chap may not be able to fulfill the destiny of his name by killing his father, after all. The good news is that Roland will almost surely be dead in the next few
minutes. As for Eddie, I’m afraid there’s no question. He doesn’t have either your dinh’s reflexes or his battle experience. My dear, you’re going to be a widow very soon. That’s the bad news.”
She could hold her silence no longer, and Mia let her speak. “You lie! About everything! ”
“Not at all,” Sayre said calmly, and Susannah realized where she knew that name from: the end of Callahan’s story. Detroit. Where he’d violated his church’s most sacred teaching and
committed suicide to keep from falling into the hands of the vampires. Callahan had jumped out
of a skyscraper window to avoid that particular fate. He had landed first in Mid-World, and gone from there, via the Unfound Door, into the Calla Borderlands. And what he’d been thinking, the
Pere had told them, was They don’t get to win, they don’t get to win. And he was right about that, right, goddammit. But if Eddie died —
“We knew where your dinh and your husband would be most likely to end up, should they be
swept through a certain doorway,” Sayre told her. “And calling certain people, beginning with a chap named Enrico Balazar . . . I assure you, Susannah, that was easy. ”
Susannah heard the sincerity in his voice. If he didn’t mean what he said, then he was the world’s best liar.
“How could you find such a thing out?” Susannah asked. When there was no answer she
opened her mouth to ask the question again. Before she could, she was tumbled backward once
more. Whatever Mia might have been once, she had grown to incredible strength inside
Susannah.
“Is she gone?” Sayre was asking.
“Yes, gone, in the back.” Servile. Eager to please.
“Then come to us, Mia. The sooner you come to us, the sooner you can look your chap in the face!”
“Yes!” Mia cried, delirious with joy, and Susannah caught a sudden brilliant glimpse of something. It was like peeking beneath the hem of a circus tent at some bright wonder. Or a dark one.
What she saw was as simple as it was terrible: Pere Callahan, buying a piece of salami from a
shopkeeper. A Yankee shopkeeper. One who ran a certain general store in the town of East Stoneham, Maine, in the year of 1977. Callahan had told them all this story in the rectory . . . and Mia had been listening.
Comprehension came like a red sun rising on a field where thousands have been slaughtered.
Susannah rushed forward again, unmindful of Mia’s strength, screaming it over and over again:
” Bitch! Betraying bitch! Murdering bitch! You told them where the Door would send them!
Where it would send Eddie and Roland! Oh you BITCH! ”
SEVEN
Mia was strong, but unprepared for this new attack. It was especially ferocious because Detta
had joined her own murderous energy to Susannah’s understanding. For a moment the interloper
was pushed backward, eyes wide. In the hotel room, the telephone dropped from Mia’s hand. She
staggered drunkenly across the carpet, almost tripped over one of the beds, then whirled about
like a tipsy dancer. Susannah slapped at her and red marks appeared on her cheek like
exclamation points.
Slapping myself, that’s all I’m doing, Susannah thought. Beating up the equipment, how stupid is that? But she couldn’t help it. The enormity of what Mia had done, the betraying enormity —
Inside, in some battle-ring which was not quite physical (but not entirely mental, either), Mia was finally able to clutch Susannah/Detta by the throat and drive her back. Mia’s eyes were still wide with shock at the ferocity of the assault. And perhaps with shame, as well. Susannah hoped she was able to feel shame, that she hadn’t gone beyond that.
I did what I had to do, Mia repeated as she forced Susannah back into the brig. It’s my chap, every hand is against me, I did what I had to do.
You traded Eddie and Roland for your monster, that’s what you did! Susannah screamed.
Based, on what you overheard and then passed on, Sayre was sure they’d use the Door to go
after Tower, wasn’t he? And how many has he set against them?
The only answer was that iron clang. Only this time it was followed by a second. And a third.
Mia had had the hands of her hostess clamped around her throat and was consequently taking no
chances. This time the brig’s door had been triple-locked. Brig? Hell, might as well call it the Black Hole of Calcutta.
When I get out of here, I’ll go back to the Dogan and disable all the switches! she cried. I can’t believe I tried to help you! Well, fuck that! Have it on the street, for all of me!
You can’t get out, Mia replied, almost apologetically. Later, if I can, I’ll leave you in peace —
What kind of peace will there be for me with Eddie dead? No wonder you wanted to take his
ring off! Hoxu could you bear to have it lie against your skin, knowing what you’d done?
Mia picked up the telephone and listened, but Richard P. Sayre was no longer there. Probably
had places to go and diseases to spread, Susannah thought.
Mia replaced the telephone in its cradle, looked around at the empty, sterile room the way
people do when they won’t be coming back to a place and want to make sure they’ve taken
everything that matters. She patted one pocket of her jeans and felt the little wad of cash.
Touched the other and felt the lump that was the turtle, the skölpadda.
I’m sorry, Mia said. I have to take care of my chap. Every hand is against me now.
That’s not true, Susannah said from the locked room where Mia had thrown her. And where was it, really? In the deepest, darkest dungeons of the Castle on the Abyss? Probably. Did it
matter? I was on your side. I helped you. I stopped your damn labor when you needed it stopped.
And look what you did. How could you ever be so cowardly and low?
Mia paused with her hand on the room’s doorknob, her cheeks flushing a dull red. Yes, she
was ashamed, all right. But shame wouldn’t stop her. Nothing would stop her. Until, that was, she found herself betrayed in turn by Sayre and his friends.
Thinking of that inevitability gave Susannah no satisfaction at all.
You’re damned, she said. You know that, don’t you?
“I don’t care,” Mia said. “An eternity in hell’s a fair price to pay for one look in my chap’s face.
Hear me well, I beg.”
And then, carrying Susannah and Detta with her, Mia opened the hotel room door, re-entered
the corridor, and took her first steps on her course toward the Dixie Pig, where terrible surgeons waited to deliver her of her equally terrible chap.
STAVE: Commala-mox-nix!
You’re in a nasty fix!
To take the hand in a traitor’s glove
Is to grasp a sheaf of sticks!
RESPONSE: Commala-come-six!
Nothing there but thorns and sticks!
When you find your hand in a traitor’s glove
You’re in a nasty fix
7th STANZA
THE AMBUSH
.
The Ambush
ONE
Roland Deschain was the last of Gilead’s last great band of warriors, for good reason; with his queerly romantic nature, his lack of imagination, and his deadly hands, he had ever been the best of them. Now he had been invaded by arthritis, but there was no dry twist in his ears or eyes. He heard the thud of Eddie’s head against the side of the Unfound Door as they were sucked through (and, ducking down at the last split second, only just avoided having his own skull broken in by the Door’s top jamb). He heard the sound of birds, at first strange and distant, like birds singing in a dream, then immediate and prosaic and completely there. Sunlight struck his face and should have dazzled him blind, coming as he was from the dimness of the cave. But Roland had turned
his eyes into slits the moment he’d seen that bright light, had done it without thinking. Had he not, he surely would have missed the circular flash from two o’clock as they landed on hard-packed, oil-darkened earth. Eddie would have died for sure. Maybe both of them would have
died. In Roland’s experience, only two things glared with that perfect brilliant circularity:
eyeglasses and the long sight of a weapon.
The gunslinger grabbed Eddie beneath the arm as unthinkingly as he’d slitted his eyes against
the glare of onrushing sunlight. He’d felt the tension in the younger man’s muscles as their feet left the rock- and bone-littered floor of the Doorway Cave, and he felt them go slack when