"Agreed," Roland said. "I only want you to realize that such doors may be far more rare than you realize. And now you're speaking not of one but two. Doors you can aim in time, the way you'd aim a gun."

I do not aim with my hand , Eddie thought, and shivered a little. "When you put it that way, Roland, it does sound a little iffy."

"Then what do we do next?" Jake asked.

"I might be able to help you with that," a voice said.

They all turned, only Roland without surprise. He had heard the stranger when he arrived, about halfway through their palaver. Roland did turn with interest, however, and one look at the man standing twenty feet from them on the edge of the road was enough to tell him that the newcomer was either from the world of his new friends, or from one right next door.

"Who are you?" Eddie asked.

"Where are your friends?" Susannah asked.

"Where are you from?" Jake asked. His eyes were alight with eagerness.

The stranger wore a long black coat open over a dark shirt with a notched collar. His hair was long and white, sticking up on the sides and in front as if scared. His forehead was marked with a T-shaped scar. "My friends are still back there a little piece," he said, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the woods in a deliberately nonspecific way. "I now call Calla Bryn Sturgis my home. Before that, Detroit, Michigan, where I worked in a homeless shelter, making soup and running AA meetings. Work I knew quite well. Before that - for a short while - Topeka, Kansas."

He observed the way the three younger ones started at that with a kind of interested amusement.

"Before that, New York City. And before that , a little town called Jerusalem's Lot, in the state of Maine."

SEVEN

"You're from our side," Eddie said. He spoke in a kind of sigh. "Holy God, you're really from our side!"

"Yes, I think I am," the man in the turned-around collar said. "My name is Donald Callahan."

"You're a priest," Susannah said. She looked from the cross that hung around his neck - small and discreet, but gleaming gold - to the larger, cruder one that scarred his forehead.

Callahan shook his head. "No more. Once. Perhaps one day again, with the blessing, but not now. Now I'm just a man of God. May I ask... when are you from?"

"1964," Susannah said.

"1977," Jake said.

"1987," Eddie said.

Callahan's eyes gleamed at that. "1987. And I came here in 1983, counting as we did then. So tell me something, young man, something very important. Had the Red Sox won the World Series yet when you left?"

Eddie threw back his head and laughed. The sound was both surprised and cheerful. "No, man, sorry. They came within one out of it last year - at Shea Stadium this was, against the Mets - and then this guy named Bill Buckner who was playing first base let an easy grounder get through his wickets. He'll never live it down. Come on over here and sit down, what do you say? There's no coffee, but Roland - that's this beat-up-lookin guy on my right - makes a pretty fair cup of woods tea."

Callahan turned his attention to Roland and then did an amazing thing: dropped to one knee, lowered his head slightly, and put his fist against his scarred brow. "Hile, gunslinger, may we be well-met on the path."

"Hile," Roland said. "Come forward, good stranger, and tell us of your need."

Callahan looked up at him, surprised.

Roland looked back at him calmly, and nodded. "Well-met or ill, it may be you will find what you seek."

"And you may also," Callahan said.

"Then come forward," Roland said. "Come forward and join our palaver."

EIGHT

"Before we really get going, can I ask you something?"

This was Eddie. Beside him, Roland had built up the fire and was rummaging in their combined gunna for the little earthen pot - an artifact of the Old People - in which he liked to brew tea.

"Of course, young man."

"You're Donald Callahan."

"Yes."

"What's your middle name?"

Callahan cocked his head a litde to the side, raised one eyebrow, then smiled. "Frank. After my grandfather. Does it signify?"

Eddie, Susannah, and Jake shared a look. The thought that went with it flowed effordessly among them: Donald Frank Callahan. Equals nineteen.

"It does signify," Callahan said.

"Perhaps," Roland said. "Perhaps not." He poured water for the tea, manipulating the waterskin easily.

"You seem to have suffered an accident," Callahan said, looking at Roland's right hand.

"I make do," Roland said.

"Gets by with a little help from his friends, you might say," Jake added, not smiling.

Callahan nodded, not understanding and knowing he need not: they were ka-tet. He might not know that particular term, but the term didn't matter. It was in the way they looked at each other and moved around each other.

"You know my name," Callahan said. "May I have the pleasure of knowing yours?"

They introduced themselves: Eddie and Susannah Dean, of New York; Jake Chambers, of New York; Oy of Mid-World; Roland Deschain, of Gilead that was. Callahan nodded to each in turn, raising his closed fist to his forehead.

"And to you comes Callahan, of the Lot," he said when the introductions were done. "Or so I was. Now I guess I'm just the Old Fella. That's what they call me in the Calla."

"Won't your friends join us?" Roland said. "We haven't a great deal to eat, but there's always tea."

"Perhaps not just yet."

"Ah," Roland said, and nodded as if he understood.

"In any case, we've eaten well," Callahan said. "It's been a good year in the Calla - until now, anyway - and we'll be happy to share what we have." He paused, seemed to feel he had gone too far too fast, and added: "Mayhap. If all goes well."

"If," Roland said. "An old teacher of mine used to call it the only word a thousand letters long."

Callahan laughed. "Not bad! In any case, we're probably better off for food than you are. We also have fresh muffin-balls -  Zalia found em - but I suspect you know about those. She said the patch, although large, had a picked-over look."

"Jake found them," Roland said.

"Actually, it was Oy," Jake said, and stroked the bumbler's head. "I guess he's sort of a muffin-hound."

"How long have you known we were here?" Callahan asked.

"Two days."

Callahan contrived to look both amused and exasperated. "Since we cut your trail, in other words. And we tried to be so crafty."

"If you didn't think you needed someone craftier than you are, you wouldn't have come," Roland said.

Callahan sighed. "You say true, I say thankya."

"Do you come for aid and succor?" Roland asked. There was only mild curiosity in his voice, but Eddie Dean felt a deep, deep chill. The words seemed to hang there, full of resonance. Nor was he alone in feeling that. Susannah took his right hand. A moment later Jake's hand crept into Eddie's left.

"That is not for me to say." Callahan sounded suddenly hesitant and unsure of himself. Afraid, maybe.

"Do you know you come to the line of Eld?" Roland asked in that same curiously gentle voice. He stretched a hand toward Eddie, Susannah, and Jake. Even toward Oy. "For these are mine, sure. As I am theirs. We are round, and roll as we do. And you know what we are."

"Are you?" Callahan asked. "Are you all ?"

Susannah said, "Roland, what are you getting us into?"

"Naught be zero, naught be free," he said. "I owe not you, nor you owe me. At least for now. They have not decided to ask."

They will , Eddie thought. Dreams of the rose and the deli and little todash-jaunts aside, he didn't think of himself as particularly psychic, but he didn't need to be psychic to know that they - the people from whom this Callahan had come as representative - would ask. Somewhere chestnuts had fallen into a hot fire, and Roland was supposed to pull them out.

But not just Roland.

You've made a mistake here, Pops , Eddie thought. Perfectly understandable, hit a mistake, all the same. We're not the cavalry. We're not the posse. We're not gunslingers. We're just three lost souls from the Big Apple who  -

But no. No. Eddie had known who they were since River Crossing, when the old people had knelt in the street to Roland. Hell, he'd known since the woods (what he still thought of as Shardik's Woods), where Roland had taught them to aim with the eye, shoot with the mind, kill with the heart. Not three, not four. One. That Roland should finish them so, complete them so, was horrible. He was filled with poison and had kissed them with his poisoned lips. He had made them gunslingers, and had Eddie really thought there was no work left for the line of Arthur Eld in this mostly empty and husked-out world? That they would simply be allowed to toddle along the Path of the Beam until they got to Roland's Dark Tower and fixed whatever was wrong there? Well, guess again.

It was Jake who said what was in Eddie's mind, and Eddie didn't like the look of excitement in the boy's eyes. He guessed plenty of kids had gone off to plenty of wars with that same excited gonna-kick-some-ass look on their faces. Poor kid didn't know he'd been poisoned, and that made him pretty dumb, because no one should have known better.

"They will, though," he said. "Isn't that true, Mr. Callahan? They will ask."

"I don't know," Callahan said. "You'd have to convince them..."

He trailed off, looking at Roland. Roland was shaking his head.

"That's not how it works," the gunslinger said. "Not being from Mid-World you may not know that, but that's not how it works. Convincing isn't what we do. We deal in lead."

Callahan sighed deeply, then nodded. "I have a book. Tales of Arthur , it's called."

Roland's eyes gleamed. "Do you? Do you, indeed? I would like to see such a book. I would like it very well."

"Perhaps you shall," Callahan said. "The stories in it are certainly not much like the tales of the Round Table I read as a boy, but..." He shook his head. "I understand what you're saying to me, let's leave it at that. There are three questions, am I right? And you just asked me the first."

"Three, yes," Roland said. "Three is a number of power."

Eddie thought, If you want to try a real number of power, Roland old buddy, try nineteen .

"And all three must be answered yes."

Roland nodded. "And if they are, you may ask no more. We may be cast on, sai Callahan, but no man may cast us back. Make sure your people" - he nodded toward the woods south of them - "understand that."

"Gunslinger - "

"Call me Roland. We're at peace, you and I."

"All right, Roland. Hear me well, do ya, I beg. (For so we say in the Calla.) We who come to you are only half a dozen. We six cannot decide. Only the Calla can decide."

"Democracy," Roland said. He pushed his hat back from his forehead, rubbed his forehead, and sighed.

"But if we six agree - especially sai Overholser - " He broke off, looking rather warily at Jake. "What? Did I say something?"

Jake shook his head and motioned Callahan to continue.

"If we six agree, it's pretty much a done deal."

Eddie closed his eyes, as if in bliss. "Say it again, pal."

Callahan eyed him, puzzled and wary. "What?"

"Done deal. Or anything from your where and when." He paused. "Our side of the big ka."

Callahan considered this, then began to grin. "I didn't know whether to shit or go blind," he said. "I went on a bender, broke the bank, kicked the bucket, blew my top, walked on thin ice, rode the pink horse down nightmare alley. Like that?"

Roland looked puzzled (perhaps even a little bored), but Eddie Dean's face was a study in bliss. Susannah and Jake seemed caught somewhere between amusement and a kind of surprised, recollective sadness.

"Keep em coming, pal," Eddie said hoarsely, and made a come on, man gesture with both hands. He sounded as if he might have been speaking through a throatful of tears. "Just keep em coming."

"Perhaps another time," Callahan said gently. "Another time we may sit and have our own palaver about the old places and ways of saying. Baseball, if it do ya. Now, though, time is short."

"In more ways than you know, maybe," Roland said. "What would you have of us, sai Callahan? And now you must speak to the point, for I've told you in every way I can that we are not wanderers your friends may interview, then hire or not as they do their farmhands or saddle-tramps."

"For now I ask only that you stay where you are and let me bring them to you," he said. "There's Tian Jaffords, who's really responsible for us being out here, and his wife, Zalia. There's Overholser, the one who most needs to be convinced that we need you."

"We won't convince him or anyone," Roland said.

"I understand," Callahan said hastily. "Yes, you've made that perfectly clear. And there's Ben Slightman and his boy, Benny. Ben the Younger is an odd case. His sister died four years ago, when she and Benny were both ten. No one knows if that makes Ben the Younger a twin or a singleton." He stopped abruptly. "I've wandered. I'm sorry."

Roland gestured with an open palm to show it was all right.

"You make me nervous, hear me I beg."

"You don't need to beg us nothing, sugar," Susannah said.

Callahan smiled. "It's only the way we speak. In the Calla, when you meet someone, you may say, 'How from head to feet, do ya, I beg?' And the answer, 'I do fine, no rust, tell the gods thankee-sai.' You haven't heard this?"

They shook their heads. Although some of the words were familiar, the overall expressions only underlined the fact that they had come to somewhere else, a place where talk was strange and customs perhaps stranger.

"What matters," Callahan said, "is that the borderlands are terrified of creatures called the Wolves, who come out of Thunderclap once a generation and steal the children. There's more to it, but that's the crux. Tian Jaffords, who stands to lose not just one child this time but two, says no more, the time has come to stand and fight. Others - men like Overholser - say doing that would be disaster. I think Overholser and those like him would have carried the day, but your coming has changed things." He leaned forward earnestly. "Wayne Overholser isn't a bad man, just a frightened man. He's the biggest farmer in the Calla, and so he has more to lose than some of the rest. But if he could be convinced that we might drive the Wolves off... that we could actually win against them... I believe he might also stand and fight."