“I know it,” Callahan said. “Twice. Once to Mexico. A little town called Los Zapatos. And once…I think…to the Castle of the King. I believe that I was very lucky to get back, that second time.”

“What King are you talking about?” Susannah asked. “Arthur Eld?”

Callahan shook his head. The scar on his forehead glared in the starlight. “Best not to talk about it now,” he said. “Not at night.” He looked at Eddie sadly. “The Wolves are coming. Bad enough. Now comes a young man who tells me the Red Sox lost the World Series again…to the Mets ?”

“Afraid so,” Eddie said, and his description of the final game—a game that made little sense to Roland, although it sounded a bit like Points, called Wickets by some—carried them up to the house. Callahan had a housekeeper. She was not in evidence but had left a pot of hot chocolate on the hob.

While they drank it, Susannah said: “Zalia Jaffords told me something that might interest you, Roland.”

The gunslinger raised his eyebrows.

“Her husband’s grandfather lives with them. He’s reputed to be the oldest man in Calla Bryn Sturgis. Tian and the old man haven’t been on good terms in years—Zalia isn’t even sure what they’re pissed off about, it’s that old—but Zalia gets on with him very well. She says he’s gotten quite senile over the last couple of years, but he still has his bright days. And he claims to have seen one of these Wolves. Dead.” She paused. “He claims to have killed it himself.”

Fourteen

“My soul!” Callahan exclaimed. “You don’t say so!”

“I do. Or rather, Zalia did.”

“That,” Roland said, “would be a tale worth hearing. Was it the last time the Wolves came?”

“No,” Susannah said. “And not the time before, when even Overholser would have been not long out of his clouts. The time before that.”

“If they come every twenty-three years,” Eddie said, “that’s almost seventy years ago.”

Susannah nodded. “But he was a man grown, even then. He told Zalia that a moit of them stood out on the West Road and waited for the Wolves to come. I don’t know how many a moit might be—”

“Five or six,” Roland said. He was nodding over his chocolate.

“Anyway, Tian’s Gran-pere was among them. And they killed one of the Wolves.”

“What was it?” Eddie asked. “What did it look like with its mask off?”

“She didn’t say,” Susannah replied. “I don’t think he told her. But we ought to—”

A snore arose, long and deep. Eddie and Susannah turned, startled. The gunslinger had fallen asleep. His chin was on his breastbone. His arms were crossed, as if he’d drifted off to sleep still thinking of the dance. And the rice.

Fourteen