Aunt Talitha sighed deeply.
“YE’D HEAR MUCH, GUNSLINGER, and we know but little. One thing I do know is this: the city’s an evil place, especially for this youngster. Any youngster. Is there any way you can steer around it as you go your course?” Roland looked up and observed the now familiar shape of the clouds as they flowed along the path of the Beam. In this wide plains sky, that shape, like a river in the sky, was impossible to miss. “Perhaps,” he said at last, but his voice was oddly reluctant. “I suppose we could skirt around Lud to the southwest and pick up the Beam on the far side.” “It’s the Beam ye follow,” she said. “Ay, I thought so.” Eddie found his own consideration of the city colored by the steadily strengthening hope that when and if they got there, they would find help—abandoned goodies which would aid them in their quest, or maybe even some people who could tell them a little more about the Dark Tower and what they were supposed to do when they got there. The ones called the Grays, for instance—they sounded like the sort of wise old elves he kept imagining. The drums were creepy, true enough, reminding him of a hundred low-budget jungle epics (mostly watched on TV with Henry by his side and a bowl of popcorn between them) where the fabulous lost cities the explorers had come looking for were in ruins and the natives had degen-erated into tribes of blood-thirsty cannibals, but Eddie found it impossible to believe something like that could have happened in a city that looked, at least from a distance, so much like New York. If there were not wise old elves or abandoned goodies, there would surely be books, at least; he had listened to Roland talk about how rare paper was here, hut every city Eddie had ever been in was absolutely drowning in books. They might even find some working transportation; the equivalent of a Land Rover would be nice. That was probably just a silly dream, but when you had thousands of miles of unknown territory to cover, a few silly dreams were undoubtedly in order, if only to keep your spirits up. And weren’t those things at least possible, damn it?
He opened his mouth to say some of these things, but Jake spoke before he could. “I don’t think we can go around,” he said, then blushed a little when they all turned to look at him. Oy shifted at his feet. “No?” Aunt Talitha said. “And why do ye think that, pray tell?” “Do you know about trains?” Jake asked.
There was a long silence. Bill and Till exchanged an uneasy glance. Aunt Talitha only looked at Jake steadily. Jake did not drop his eyes. “I heard of one,” she said. “Mayhap even saw it. Over there.” She pointed in the direction of the Send. “Long ago, when I was but a child and the world hadn’t moved on … or at least not s’far’s it has now. Is it Blaine ye speak of, boy?” Jake’s eyes flashed in surprise and recognition. “Yes! Blaine!” Roland was studying Jake closely.
“And how would ye know of Blaine the Mono?” Aunt Talitha asked. “Mono?” Jake looked blank.
“Ay, so it was called. How would you know of that old lay?” Jake looked helplessly at Roland, then back at Aunt Talitha. “I don’t know how I know.”
And that’s the truth, Eddie thought suddenly, but it’s not all the truth. He knows more than he wants to tell here . . . and I think he’s scared. “This is our business, I think,” Roland said in a dry, brisk administra-tor’s voice. “You must let us work it out for ourselves, Old Mother.” “Ay,” she agreed quickly. “You’ll keep your own counsel. Best that such as us not know.”
“What of the city?” Roland prompted. “What do you know of Lud?” “Little now, but what we know, ye shall hear.” And she poured herself another cup of coffee.