And the others retreated back under thetables.

He was made for this, Callahanthought. Perhaps once in the long-ago all bumblers were. Made for it the waysome breeds of terrier are made to—

A hoarse shout from behind the tapestryinterrupted these thoughts: “Humes!” one voice cried, and then a second:“Ka-humes!”

Callahan had an absurd impulse to yell Gesundheit!

Before he could yell that or anything else,Roland’s voice suddenly filled his head.

Six

“Jake, go.”

The boy turned toward Pere Callahan, bewildered.He was walking with his arms crossed, ready to fling the ‘Rizas at the firstlow man or woman who moved. Oy had returned to his heel, although he wasswinging his head ceaselessly from side to side and his eyes were bright withthe prospect of more prey.

“We go together,” Jake said. “They’rebuffaloed, Pere! And we’re close! They took her through here… this room… andthen through the kitchen—”

Callahan paid no attention. Still holdingthe turtle high (as one might hold a lantern in a deep cave), he had turnedtoward the tapestry. The silence from behind it was far more terrible than theshouts and feverish, gargling laughter. It was silence like a pointed weapon.And the boy had stopped.

“Go while you can,” Callahan said, strivingfor calmness. “Catch up to her if you can. This is the command of yourdinh. This is also the will of the White.”

“But you can’t—”

“Go, Jake!”

The low men and women in the Dixie Pig,whether in thrall to the sköldpadda or not, murmured uneasily atthe sound of that shout, and well they might have, for it was not Callahan’svoice coming from Callahan’s mouth.

“You have this one chance and must takeit! Find her! As dinh I command you!”

Jake’s eyes flew wide at the sound ofRoland’s voice issuing from Callahan’s throat. His mouth dropped open. Helooked around, dazed.

In the second before the tapestry to theirleft was torn aside, Callahan saw its black joke, what the careless eye wouldfirst surely overlook: the roast that was the banquet’s main entrée hada human form; the knights and their ladies were eating human flesh and drinkinghuman blood. What the tapestry showed was a cannibals’ communion.

Then the ancient ones who had been at theirown sup tore aside the obscene tapestry and burst out, shrieking through thegreat fangs that propped their deformed mouths forever open. Their eyes were asblack as blindness, the skin of their cheeks and brows—even the backs oftheir hands—tumorous with wild teeth. Like the vampires in the diningroom, they were surrounded with auras, but these were of a poisoned violet sodark it was almost black. Some sort of ichor dribbled from the corners of theireyes and mouths. They were gibbering and several were laughing: seeming not tocreate the sounds but rather to snatch them out of the air like something thatcould be rent alive.

And Callahan knew them. Of course he did.Had he not been sent hence by one of their number? Here were the truevampires, the Type Ones, kept like a secret and now loosed on the intruders.

The turtle he held up did not slow them inthe slightest.

Callahan saw Jake staring, pale, eyes shinywith horror and bulging from their sockets, all purpose forgotten at the sightof these freaks.

Without knowing what was going to come outof his mouth until he heard it, Callahan shouted: “They’ll kill Oy first!They’ll kill him in front of you and drink his blood!”

Oy barked at the sound of his name. Jake’seyes seemed to clear at the sound, but Callahan had no time to follow the boy’sfortunes further.

Turtle won’t stop them, but at leastit’s holding the others back. Bullets won’t stop them, but—

With a sense of déjà vu—andwhy not, he had lived all this before in the home of a boy named MarkPetrie—Callahan dipped into the open front of his shirt and brought outthe cross he wore there. It clicked against the butt of the Ruger and then hungbelow it. The cross was lit with a brilliant bluish-white glare. The twoancient things in the lead had been about to grab him and draw him into theirmidst. Now they drew back instead, shrieking with pain. Callahan saw thesurface of their skin sizzle and begin to liquefy. The sight of it filled himwith savage happiness.

“Get back from me!” he shouted. “The powerof God commands you! The power of Christ commands you! The ka of Mid-World commandsyou! The power of the White commands you!”

One of them darted forward nevertheless, adeformed skeleton in an ancient, moss-encrusted dinner suit. Around its neck itwore some sort of ancient award… the Cross of Malta, perhaps? It swiped one ofits long-nailed hands at the crucifix Callahan was holding out. He jerked itdown at the last second, and the vampire’s claw passed an inch above it.Callahan lunged forward without thought and drove the tip of the cross into theyellow parchment of the thing’s forehead. The gold crucifix went in like ared-hot skewer into butter. The thing in the rusty dinner suit let out a liquidcry of pained dismay and stumbled backward. Callahan pulled his cross back. Forone moment, before the elderly monster clapped its claws to its brow, Callahansaw the hole his cross had made. Then a thick, curdy, yellow stuff began tospill through the ancient one’s fingers. Its knees unhinged and it tumbled tothe floor between two tables. Its mates shrank away from it, screaming with outrage.The thing’s face was already collapsing inward beneath its twisted hands. Itsaura whiffed out like a candle and then there was nothing but a puddle ofyellow, liquefying flesh spilling like vomit from the sleeves of its jacket andthe legs of its pants.

Callahan strode briskly toward the others.His fear was gone. The shadow of shame that had hung over him ever since Barlowhad taken his cross and broken it was also gone.

Free at last, he thought. Free atlast, great God Almighty, I’m free at last. Then: I believe this isredemption. And it’s good, isn’t it? Quite good, indeed.

“H’row it aside!” one of them cried, itshands held up to shield its face. “Nasty bauble of the ‘heep-God, h’row itaside if you dare!”

Nasty bauble of the sheep-God, indeed.If so, why do you cringe?

Against Barlow he had not dared answer thischallenge, and it had been his undoing. In the Dixie Pig, Callahan turned thecross toward the thing which had dared to speak.

“I needn’t stake my faith on the challengeof such a thing as you, sai,” he said, his words ringing clearly in the room.He had forced the old ones back almost to the archway through which they hadcome. Great dark tumors had appeared on the hands and faces of those in front,eating into the paper of their ancient skin like acid. “And I’d never throwaway such an old friend in any case. But put it away? Aye, if you like.”And he dropped it back into his shirt.

Several of the vampires lunged forwardimmediately, their fang-choked mouths twisting in what might have been grins.Callahan held his hands out toward them. The fingers (and the barrel of theRuger) glowed, as if they had been dipped into blue fire. The eyes of theturtle had likewise filled with light; its shell shone.

“Stand away from me!” Callahan cried. “Thepower of God and the White commands you!”

Seven

When the terrible shaman turned to face theGrandfathers, Meiman of the taheen felt the Turtle’s awful, lovely glammerlessen a bit. He saw that the boy was gone, and that filled him with dismay,yet at least he’d gone further in rather than slipping out, so that might stillbe all right. But if the boy found the door to Fedic and used it, Meiman mightfind himself in very bad trouble, indeed. For Sayre answered to Walter o’ Dim,and Walter answered only to the Crimson King himself.