“Not hardcases,” Callahan said patiently, “ gunslingers.”

“How can three men stand against the Wolves, Pere?” Tian heard himself ask.

According to Andy, one of the gunslingers was actually a woman, but Callahan saw no need to muddy the waters further (although an impish part of him wanted to, just the same). “That’s a question for their dinh, Tian. We’ll ask him. And they wouldn’t just be fighting for their suppers, you know. Not at all.”

“What else, then?” Bucky Javier asked.

Callahan thought they would want the thing that lay beneath the floorboards of his church. And that was good, because that thing had awakened. The Old Fella, who had once run from a town called Jerusalem’s Lot in another world, wanted to be rid of it. If he wasn’t rid of it soon, it would kill him.

Ka had come to Calla Bryn Sturgis. Ka like a wind.

“In time, Mr. Javier,” Callahan said. “All in good time, sai.”

Meantime, a whisper had begun in the Gathering Hall. It slipped along the benches from mouth to mouth, a breeze of hope and fear.

Gunslingers.

Gunslingers to the west, come out of Mid-World.

And it was true, God help them. Arthur Eld’s last deadly children, moving toward Calla Bryn Sturgis along the Path of the Beam. Ka like a wind.

“Time to be men,” Pere Callahan told them. Beneath the scar on his forehead, his eyes burned like lamps. Yet his tone was not without compassion. “Time to stand up, gentlemen. Time to stand and be true.”

Part One

Todash

Chapter I

The Face on the Water

One

Time is a face on the water:this was a proverb from the long-ago, in far-off Mejis. Eddie Dean had never been there.

Except he had, in a way. Roland had carried all four of his companions—Eddie, Susannah, Jake, Oy—to Mejis one night, storying long as they camped on I-70, the Kansas Turnpike in a Kansas that never was. That night he had told them the story of Susan Delgado, his first love. Perhaps his only love. And how he had lost her.