Song of Susannah

“This where we stand is the allure,” Mia said. “The wall-walk of the Castle on the Abyss, once known as Castle Discordia. You said you wanted fresh air. I hope this does ya, as they say in the Calla. This is far beyond there, Susa

Susa

“Aye, they’re long gone, and the machines the later ones left behind are mostly stilled, but the smell of their dying lingers, doesn’t it? The smell of death always does. Ask your friend the gunslinger, thetrue gunslinger. He knows, for he’s dealt his share of it. He is responsible for much, Susa

“Ask your questions, have at me,” Mia said. “Just remember, we exist in the other world, too, the one where we’re bound together. We’re lying on a bed in the i

Susa

Meantime, she thought she’d start with something relatively easy.

“If this is the Castle on the Abyss,” she said, “where’s the Abyss? I don’t see anything out that way except for a minefield of rocks. And that red glow on the horizon.”

Mia, her shoulder-length black hair flying out behind her (not a bit of kink in that hair, as there was in Susa

“This is the i

“The Red Death?” Susa

“Lady, I know not. All I can tell you is that beyond the deserted village is the outer wall, and beyond the outer wall is a great crack in the earth filled with monsters that cozen, diddle, increase, and plot to escape. Once there was a bridge across, but it fell long ago. ‘In the time before counting,’ as ’tis said. They’re horrors that might drive an ordinary man or woman mad at a glance.”

She favored Susa

“But not agunslinger. Surely not one such asthee. ”

“Why do you mock me?” Susa

Mia looked startled, then grim. “Was it my idea to come here? To stand in this miserable cold where the King’s Eye dirties the horizon and sullies the very cheek of the moon with its filthy light? Nay, lady! ’Twas you, so harry me not with your tongue!”

Susa

“I wasn’t scolding,” Susa

Mia made an impatient shooing gesture with her hand as if to sayDon’t split hairs, and half-turned away. Under her breath she said, “I didn’t go to Morehouse orno house. And in any case I’ll bear my chap, do you hear? Whichever way the cards fall. Bear him and feed him!”

All at once Susa

I didn’t go to Morehouse or no house,for instance; that was fromInvisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. When Mia had bought into Susa

“Mia,” she said now. “Whose chap is it besides yours? What demon was his father, do you know?”

Mia gri

“Then how—”

“Your dinh is the father of my chap,” Mia said. “Roland of Gilead, aye, he. Steven Deschain finally has his grandson, although he lies rotten in his grave and knows it not.”

Susa

“All the same, Roland is his father,” Mia insisted. “And when the chap comes, I shall name him from your own mind, Susa

Professor Murray’s Introduction to Medieval History, that’s what she’s talking about.

“I will name him Mordred,” said she. “He’ll grow quickly, my darling boy, quicker than human, after his demon nature. He’ll grow strong. The avatar of every gunslinger that ever was. And so, like the Mordred of your tale, will he slay his father.”

And with that, Mia, daughter of none, raised her arms to the star-shot sky and screamed, although whether in sorrow, terror, or joy, Susa