"How old are you?" Jake asked.
"I turned a hundred and twenty quite some time ago, but since then I've lost count, so I have. Time's short on this side of the door, kennit."
On this side of the door. That memory of some old story tugged at Roland again, and then was gone.
"Do you follow that?" The old man pointed to the moving band of clouds in the sky.
"We do."
"To the Callas, or beyond?"
"Beyond."
"To the great darkness?" Bix looked both troubled and fascinated by the idea.
"We go our course," Roland said. "What fee would you take to cross us, sai ferryman?"
Bix laughed. The sound was cracked and cheerful. "Money's no good with nothing to spend it on, you have no livestock, and it's clear as day that I have more to eat than you do. And you could always draw on me and force me to take you across."
"Never," Susannah said, looking shocked.
"I know that," Bix said, waving a hand at her. "Harriers might--and then burn my ferry for good measure once they got t'other side--but true men of the gun, never. And women too, I suppose. You don't seem armed, missus, but with women, one can never tell."
Susannah smiled thinly at this and said nothing.
Bix turned to Roland. "Ye come from Lud, I wot. I'd hear of Lud, and how things go there. For it was a marvelous city, so it was. Crumbling and growing strange when I knew it, but still marvelous."
The four of them exchanged a look that was all an-tet, that peculiar telepathy they shared. It was a look that was also dark with shume, the old Mid-World term that can mean shame, but also means sorrow.
"What?" Bix asked. "What have I said? If I've asked for something you'd not give, I cry your pardon."
"Not at all," Roland said, "but Lud . . ."
"Lud is dust in the wind," Susannah said.
"Well," Eddie said, "not dust, exactly."
"Ashes," Jake said. "The kind that glow in the dark."
Bix pondered this, then nodded slowly. "I'd hear anyway, or as much as you can tell in an hour's time. That's how long the crossing takes."
5
Bix bristled when they offered to help him with his preparations. It was his job, he said, and he could still do it--just not as quickly as once upon a time, when there had been farms and a few little trading posts on both sides of the river.
In any case, there wasn't much to do. He fetched a stool and a large ironwood ringbolt from the boathouse, mounted the stool to attach the ringbolt to the top of the post, then hooked the ringbolt to the cable. He took the stool back inside and returned with a large metal crank shaped like a block Z. This he laid with some ceremony by a wooden housing on the far end of the raft.
"Don't none of you kick that overboard, or I'll never get home," he said.
Roland squatted on his hunkers to study it. He beckoned to Eddie and Jake, who joined him. He pointed to the words embossed on the long stroke of the Z. "Does it say what I think it does?"
"Yep," Eddie said. "North Central Positronics. Our old pals."
"When did you get that, Bix?" Susannah asked.
"Ninety year ago, or more, if I were to guess. There's an underground place over there." He pointed vaguely in the direction of the Green Palace. "It goes for miles, and it's full of things that belonged to the old people, perfectly preserved. Strange music still plays from overhead, music such as you've never heard. It scrambles your thinking, like. And you don't dare stay there long, or you break out in sores and puke and start to lose your teeth. I went once. Never again. I thought for a while I was going to die."
"Did you lose your hair as well as your chompers?" Eddie asked.
Bix looked surprised, then nodded. "Yar, some, but it grew back. That crank, it's still, you know."
Eddie pondered this a moment. Of course it was still, it was an inanimate object. Then he realized the old man was saying steel.
"Are'ee ready?" Bix asked them. His eyes were nearly as bright as Oy's. "Shall I cast off?"
Eddie snapped off a crisp salute. "Aye-aye, cap'n. We're away to the Treasure Isles, arr, so we be."
"Come and help me with these ropes, Roland of Gilead, will ya do."
Roland did, and gladly.
6
The raft moved slowly along the diagonal cable, pulled by the river's slow current. Fish jumped all around them as Roland's ka-tet took turns telling the old man about the city of Lud, and what had befallen them there. For a while Oy watched the fish with interest, his paws planted on the upstream edge of the raft. Then he once more sat and faced back the way they had come, snout raised.
Bix grunted when they told him how they'd left the doomed city. "Blaine the Mono, y'say. I remember. Crack train. There was another 'un, too, although I can't remember the name--"
"Patricia," Susannah said.
"Aye, that was it. Beautiful glass sides, she had. And you say the city's all gone?"
"All gone," Jake agreed.
Bix lowered his head. "Sad."
"It is," Susannah said, taking his hand and giving it a brief, light squeeze. "Mid-World's a sad place, although it can be very beautiful."
They had reached the middle of the river now, and a light breeze, surprisingly warm, ruffled their hair. They had all laid aside their heavy outer clothes and sat at ease in the wicker passenger chairs, which rolled this way and that, presumably for the views this provided. A large fish--probably one of the kind that had fed their bellies at gobble o'clock--jumped onto the raft and lay there, flopping at Oy's feet. Although he was usually death on any small creature that crossed his path, the bumbler appeared not even to notice it. Roland kicked it back into the water with one of his scuffed boots.
"Yer throcken knows it's coming," Bix remarked. He looked at Roland. "You'll want to take heed, aye?"
For a moment Roland could say nothing. A clear memory rose from the back of his mind to the front, one of a dozen hand-colored woodcut illustrations in an old and well-loved book. Six bumblers sitting on a fallen tree in the forest beneath a crescent moon, all with their snouts raised. That volume, Magic Tales of the Eld, he had loved above all others when he had been but a sma' one, listening to his mother as she read him to sleep in his high tower bedroom, while an autumn gale sang its lonely song outside, calling down winter. "The Wind Through the Keyhole" was the name of the story that went with the picture, and it had been both terrible and wonderful.
"All my gods on the hill," Roland said, and thumped the heel of his reduced right hand to his brow. "I should have known right away. If only from how warm it's gotten the last few days."
"You mean you didn't?" Bix asked. "And you from In-World?" He made a tsking sound.
"Roland?" Susannah asked. "What is it?"
Roland ignored her. He looked from Bix to Oy and back to Bix. "The starkblast's coming."
Bix nodded. "Aye. Throcken say so, and about starkblast the throcken are never wrong. Other than speaking a little, it's their bright."
"Bright what?" Eddie asked.
"He means their talent," Roland said. "Bix, do you know of a place on the other side where we can hide up and wait for it to pass?"
"Happens I do." The old man pointed to the wooded hills sloping gently down to the far side of the Whye, where another dock and another boathouse--this one unpainted and far less grand--waited for them. "Ye'll find your way forward on the other side, a little lane that used to be a road. It follows the Path of the Beam."
"Sure it does," Jake said. "All things serve the Beam."
"As you say, young man, as you say. Which do'ee ken, wheels or miles?"
"Both," Eddie said, "but for most of us, miles are better."
"All right, then. Follow the old Calla road five miles . . . maybe six . . . and ye'll come to a deserted village. Most of the buildings are wood and no use to'ee, but the town meeting hall is good stone. Ye'll be fine there. I've been inside, and there's a lovely big fireplace. Ye'll want to check the chimney, accourse, as ye'll want a goo
d draw up its throat for the day or two ye have to sit out. As for wood, ye can use what's left of the houses."
"What is this starkblast?" Susannah asked. "Is it a storm?"
"Yes," Roland said. "I haven't seen one in many, many years. It's a lucky thing we had Oy with us. Even then I wouldn't have known, if not for Bix." He squeezed the old man's shoulder. "Thankee-sai. We all say thankee."