2004 The Dark Tower VII The Dark Tower
.pdfthe hobs, dancing orange in the distance. Heard nothing but the sough of the wind.
But he waits. He bides. And if I sleep—whenI sleep—he’ll be on us.
Around three in the morning he roused himself by willpower alone from a doze that was on the very verge of tumbling him into deeper sleep. He looked around desperately, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms hard enough to make mirks and fouders and sankofites explode across his field of vision. The fire had burned very low. Patrick lay about twenty feet from it, at the twisted base of a cottonwood tree. From where Roland sat, the boy was no more than a hide-covered hump. Of Oy there was no immediate sign.
Roland called to the bumbler and got no response. The gunslinger was about to try his feet when he saw Jake’s old friend a little beyond the edge of the failing firelight—or at least
the gleam of his gold-ringed eyes. Those eyes looked at Roland for a moment, then disappeared, probably when Oy put his snout back down on his paws.
He’s tired, too,Roland thought,and why not?
The question of what would become of Oy after tomorrow tried to rise to the surface of the gunslinger’s troubled, tired mind, and Roland pushed it away. He got up (in his weariness
his hands slipped down to his formerly troublesome hip, as if expecting to find the pain still there), went to Patrick, and shook him awake. It took some doing, but at last the boy’s eyes opened. That wasn’t good enough for Roland. He grasped Patrick’s shoulders and pulled
him up to a sitting position. When the boy tried to slump back down again, Roland shook him.Hard . He looked at Roland with dazed incomprehension.
“Help me build up the fire, Patrick.”
Doing that should wake him up at least a little. And once the fire was burning bright again,
Patrick would have to stand a brief watch. Roland didn’t like the idea, knew full well that leaving Patrick in charge of the night would be dangerous, but trying to watch the rest of it on his own would be even more dangerous. He needed sleep. An hour or two would be enough, and surely Patrick could stay awake that long.
Patrick was willing enough to gather up some sticks and put them on the fire, although he moved like a bougie—a reanimated corpse. And when the fire was blazing, he slumped back down in his former place with his arms between his bony knees, already more asleep than awake. Roland thought he might actually have to slap the boy to bring him around, and would later wish—bitterly—that he had done just that.
“Patrick, listen to me.” He shook Patrick by the shoulders hard enough to make his long hair fly, but some of it flopped back into his eyes. Roland brushed it away. “I need you to stay awake and watch. Just for an hour…just until…look up, Patrick! Look! Gods, don’t
youdare go to sleep on me again! Do you see that? The brightest star of all those close to us!”
It was Old Mother Roland was pointing to, and Patrick nodded at once. There was a gleam
of interest in his eye now, and the gunslinger thought that was encouraging. It was
Patrick’s “I want to draw” look. And if he sat drawing Old Mother as she shone in the widest fork of the biggest dead cottonwood, then the chances were good that he’d stay
awake. Maybe until dawn, if he got fully involved.
“Here, Patrick.” He made the boy sit against the base of the tree. It was bony and knobby
and—Roland hoped—uncomfortable enough to prohibit sleep. All these movements felt to
Roland like the sort you made underwater. Oh, he was tired.So tired. “Do you still see the star?”
Patrick nodded eagerly. He seemed to have thrown off his sleepiness, and the gunslinger thanked the gods for this favor.
“When it goes behind that thick branch and you can’t see it or draw it anymore without getting up…you call me. Wake me up, no matter how hard it is. Do you understand?”
Patrick nodded at once, but Roland had now traveled with him long enough to know that such a nod meant little or nothing. Eager to please, that’s what he was. If you asked him if
nine and nine made nineteen, he would nod with the same instant enthusiasm.
“When you can’t see it anymore from where you’re sitting…” His own words seemed to be coming from far away, now. He’d just have to hope that Patrick understood. The
tongueless boy had taken out his pad, at least, and a freshly sharpened pencil.
That’s my best protection,Roland’s mind muttered as he stumbled back to his little pile of hides between the campfire and Ho Fat II.He won’t fall asleep while he’s drawing, will he?
He hoped not, but supposed he didn’t really know. And it didn’t matter, because he, Roland of Gilead, was going to sleep in any case. He’d done the best he could, and it would
have to be enough.
“An hour,” he muttered, and his voice was far and wee in his own ears. “Wake me in an hour…when the star…when Old Mother goes behind…”
But Roland was unable to finish. He didn’t even know what he was saying anymore.
Exhaustion grabbed him and bore him swiftly away into dreamless sleep.
Seven
Mordred saw it all through the far-seeing glass eyes. His fever had soared, and in its bright flame, his own exhaustion had at least temporarily departed. He watched with avid interest as the gunslinger woke the mute boy—the Artist—and bullied him into helping him build
up the fire. He watched, rooting for the mute to finish this chore and then go back to sleep before the gunslinger could stop him. That didn’t happen, unfortunately. They had camped
near a grove of dead cottonwoods, and Roland led the Artist to the biggest tree. Here he pointed up at the sky. It was strewn with stars, but Mordred reckoned Old White
Gunslinger Daddy was pointing to Old Mother, because she was the brightest. At last the
Artist, who didn’t seem to be rolling a full barrow (at least not in the brains department) seemed to understand. He got out his pad and had already set to sketching as Old White Daddy stumbled a little way off, still muttering instructions and orders to which the Artist was pretty clearly paying absolutely no attention at all. Old White Daddy collapsed so suddenly that for a moment Mordred feared that perhaps the strip of jerky that served the son of a bitch as a heart had finally given up beating. Then Roland stirred in the grass, resettling himself, and Mordred, lying on a knoll about ninety yards west of the dry
streambed, felt his own heartbeat slow. And deep though the Old White Gunslinger Daddy’s exhaustion might be, his training and his long lineage, going all the way back to
the Eld himself, would be enough to wake him with his gun in his hand the second the Artist gave one of his wordless but devilishly loud cries. Cramps seized Mordred, the deepest yet. He doubled over, fighting to hold his human shape, fighting not to scream, fighting not to die. He heard another of those long flabbering noises from below and felt more of the lumpy brown stew begin coursing down his legs. But his preternaturally keen nose smelled more than excreta in this new mess; this time he smelled blood as well as shit. He thought the pain would never end, that it would go on deepening until it tore him in two, but at last it began to let up. His looked at his left hand and was not entirely surprised to see that the fingers had blackened and fused together. They would never come back to human again, those fingers; he believed he had but only one more change left in him. Mordred wiped sweat from his brow with his right hand and raised the bin-doculars to his eyes again, praying to his Red Daddy that the stupid mutie boy would be asleep. But he was not. He was leaning against the cottonwood tree and looking up between the branches and drawing Old Mother. That was the moment when Mordred Deschain came closest to despair. Like Roland, he thought drawing was the one thing that would likely keep the idiot boy awake. Therefore, why not give in to the change while he had the heat of this latest fever-spike to fuel him with its destructive energy? Why not take his chance? It was Roland he wanted,
after all, not the boy; surely he could, in his spider form, sweep down on the gunslinger rapidly enough to grab him and pull him against the spider’s craving mouth. Old White
Daddy might get off one shot, possibly even two, but Mordred thought he could take one or two, if the flying bits of lead didn’t find the white node on the spider’s back: his dual body’s brain.And once I pull him in, I’ll never let him go until he’s sucked dry, nothing but
a dust-mummy like the other one, Mia. He relaxed, ready to let the change sweep over him, and then another voice spoke from the center of his mind. It was the voice of his Red Daddy, the one who was imprisoned on the side of the Dark Tower and needed Mordred alive, at least one more day, in order to set him free.
Wait a little longer,this voice counseled.Wait a little more. I might have another trick up my sleeve. Wait…wait just a little longer…
Mordred waited. And after a moment or two, he felt the pulse from the Dark Tower change.
Eight
Patrick felt that change, too. The pulse became soothing. And there were words in it, ones
that blunted his eagerness to draw. He made another line, paused, then put his pencil aside
and only looked up at Old Mother, who seemed to pulse in time with the words he heard in his head, words Roland would have recognized. Only these were sung in an old man’s
voice, quavering but sweet:
“Baby-bunting, darling one,
Now another day is done.
May your dreams be sweet and merry,
May you dream of fields and berries.
Baby-bunting, baby-dear,
Baby, bring your berries here.
Oh chussit, chissit, chassit!
Bring enough to fill your basket!”
Patrick’s head nodded. His eyes closed…opened… slipped closed again.
Enough to fill my basket,he thought, and slept in the firelight.
Nine
Now, my good son,whispered the cold voice in the middle of Mordred’s hot and melting
brains.Now. Go to him and make sure he never rises from his sleep. Murder him among the roses and we’ll rule together.
Mordred came from hiding, the binoculars tumbling from a hand that was no longer a hand at all. As he changed, a feeling of huge confidence swept through him. In another minute it would be done. They both slept, and there was no way he could fail.
He rushed down on the camp and the sleeping men, a black nightmare on seven legs, his mouth opening and closing.
Ten
Somewhere, a thousand miles away, Roland heard barking, loud and urgent, furious and savage. His exhausted mind tried to turn away from it, to blot it out and go deeper. Then
there was a horrible scream of agony that awoke him in a flash. He knew that voice, even as distorted by pain as it was.
“Oy!” he cried, leaping up. “Oy, where are you? To me! To m—”
Therehe was, twisting in the spider’s grip. Both of them were clearly visible in the light of the fire. Beyond them, sitting propped against the cottonwood tree, Patrick gazed stupidly
through a curtain of hair that would soon be dirty again, now that Susannah was gone. The bumbler wriggled furiously to and fro, snapping at the spider’s body with foam flying from
his jaws even as Mordred bent him in a direction his back was never meant to go.
If he’d not rushed out of the tall grass,Roland thought,that would be me in Mordred’s grip.
Oy sent his teeth deep into one of the spider’s legs. In the firelight Roland could see the coin-sized dimples of the bumbler’s jaw-muscles as he chewed deeper still. The thing
squalled and its grip loosened. At that moment Oy might have gotten free, had he chosen to do so. He did not. Instead of jumping down and leaping away in the momentary freedom
granted him before Mordred was able to re-set his grip, Oy used the time to extend his long neck and seize the place where one of the thing’s legs joined its bloated body. He bit deep,
bringing a flood of blackish-red liquor that ran freely from the sides of his muzzle. In the firelight it gleamed with orange sparks. Mordred squalled louder still. He had left Oy out of his calculations, and was now paying the price. In the firelight, the two writhing forms were figures out of a nightmare.
Somewhere nearby, Patrick was hooting in terror.
Worthless whoreson fell asleep after all,Roland thought bitterly. But who had set him to watch in the first place?
“Put him down, Mordred!” he shouted. “Put him down and I’ll let you live another day! I swear it on my father’s name!”
Red eyes, full of insanity and malevolence, peered at him over Oy’s contorted body. Above them, high on the curve of the spider’s back, were tiny blue eyes, hardly more than
pinholes. They stared at the gunslinger with a hate that was all too human.
My own eyes,Roland thought with dismay, and then there was a bitter crack. It was Oy’s
spine, but in spite of this mortal injury he never loosened his grip on the joint where
Mordred’s leg joined his body, although the steely bristles had torn away much of his muzzle, baring sharp teeth that had sometimes closed on Jake’s wrist with gentle affection,
tugging him toward something Oy wanted the boy to see.Ake! he would cry on such occasions.Ake-Ake!
Roland’s right hand dropped to his holster and found it empty. It was only then, hours after she had taken her leave, that he realized Susannah had taken one of his guns with her into the other world.Good, he thought.Good. If it isthe darkness she found, there would have
been five for the things in it and one for herself. Good.
But this thought was also dim and distant. He pulled the other revolver as Mordred crouched on his hindquarters and used his remaining middle leg, curling it around Oy’s
midsection and pulling the animal, still snarling, away from his torn and bleeding leg. The spider twirled the furry body upward in a terrible spiral. For a moment it blotted out the
bright beacon that was Old Mother. Then he hurled Oy away from him and Roland had a moment ofdéjà vu, realizing he had seen this long ago, in the Wizard’s Glass. Oy arced
across the fireshot dark and was impaled on one of the cottonwood branches the gunslinger
himself had broken off for firewood. He gave an awful hurt cry—a death-cry—and then hung, suspended and limp, above Patrick’s head.
Mordred came at Roland without a pause, but his charge was a slow, shambling thing; one
of his legs had been shot away only minutes after his birth, and now another hung limp and broken, its pincers jerking spasmodically as they dragged on the grass. Roland’s eye had
never been clearer, the chill that surrounded him at moments like this never deeper. He saw the white node and the blue bombardier’s eyes that werehis eyes. He saw the face of his
only son peering over the back of the abomination and then it was gone in a spray of blood
as his first bullet tore it off. The spider reared up, legs clashing at the black and star-shot sky. Roland’s next two bullets went into its revealed belly and exited through the back,
pulling dark sprays of liquid with it. The spider slewed to one side, perhaps trying to run away, but its remaining legs would not support it. Mordred Deschain fell into the fire, casting up a flume of red and orange sparks. It writhed in the embers, the bristles on its belly beginning to burn, and Roland, grinning bitterly, shot it again. The dying spider rolled out of the now scattered fire on its back, its remaining legs twitching together in a knot and then spreading apart. One fell back into the fire and began to burn. The smell was atrocious.
Roland started forward, meaning to stamp out the little fires the scattered embers had started in the grass, and then a howl of outraged fury rose in his head.
My son! My only son! You’ve murdered him!
“He was mine, too,” Roland said, looking at the smoldering monstrosity. He could own the truth. Yes, he could do that much.
Come then! Come, son-killer, and look at your Tower, but know this—you’ll die of old age at the edge of the Can’-Ka before you ever so much as touch its door! I will never let
you pass! Todash space itself will pass away before I letyoupass! Murderer! Murderer of your mother, murderer of your friends—aye, every one, for Susannah lies dead with her throat cut on the other side of the door you sent her through—and now murderer of your own son!
“Who sent him to me?” Roland asked the voice in his head.
“Who sent yonder child—for that’s what he is, inside that black skin—to his death, ye red
boggart?”
To this there was no answer, so Roland re-holstered his gun and put out the patches of fire
before they could spread. He thought of what the voice had said about Susannah, decided he didn’t believe it. She might be dead, aye,might be, but he thought Mordred’s Red Father
knew for sure no more than Roland himself did.
The gunslinger let that thought go and went to the tree, where the last of his ka-tet hung, impaled…but still alive. The gold-ringed eyes looked at Roland with what might almost
have been weary amusement.
“Oy,” Roland said, stretching out his hand, knowing it might be bitten and not caring in the least. He supposed that part of him—and not a small one, either—wanted to be bitten. “Oy, we all say thank you.I say thank you, Oy.”
The bumbler did not bite, and spoke but one word.“Olan, ” said he. Then he sighed, licked the gunslinger’s hand a single time, hung his head down, and died.
Eleven
As dawn strengthened into the clear light of morning, Patrick came hesitantly to where the gunslinger sat in the dry streambed, amid the roses, with Oy’s body spread across his lap
like a stole. The young man made a soft, interrogative hooting sound.
“Not now, Patrick,” Roland said absently, stroking Oy’s fur. It was dense but smooth to the touch. He found it hard to believe that the creature beneath it had gone, in spite of the
stiffening muscles and the tangled places where the blood had now clotted. He combed these smooth with his fingers as best he could. “Not now. We have all the livelong day to get there, and we’ll do fine.”
No, there was no need to hurry; no reason why he should not leisurely mourn the last of his dead. There had been no doubt in the old King’s voice when he had promised that Roland should die of old age before he so much as touched the door in the Tower’s base. They
would go, of course, and Roland would study the terrain, but he knew even now that his idea of coming to the Tower on the old monster’s blind side and then working his way around was not an idea at all, but a fool’s hope. There had been no doubt in the old villain’s
voice; no doubt hiding behind it, either.
And for the time being, none of that mattered. Here was another one he had killed, and if there was consolation to be had, it was this: Oy would be the last. Now he was alone again except for Patrick, and Roland had an idea Patrick was immune to the terrible germ the gunslinger carried, for he had never been ka-tet to begin with.
I only kill my family,Roland thought, stroking the dead billy-bumbler.
What hurt most was remembering how unpleasantly he had spoken to Oy the day
before.If’ee wanted to go with her, thee should have gone when thee had thy chance!
Had he stayed because he knew that Roland would need him? That when push came down to shove (it was Eddie’s phrase, of course), Patrick would fail?
Why will’ee cast thy sad houken’s eyes on me now?
Because he had known it was to be his last day, and his dying would be hard?
“I think you knew both things,” Roland said, and closed his eyes so he could feel the fur beneath his hands better. “I’m so sorry I spoke to’ee so—would give the fingers on my good left hand if I could take the words back. So I would, every one, say true.”
But here as in the Keystone World, time only ran one way. Done was done. There would be no taking back.
Roland would have said there was no anger left, that every bit of it had been burned away, but when he felt the tingling all over his skin and understood what it meant, he felt fresh fury rise in his heart. And he felt the coldness settle into his tired but still talented hands.
Patrick wasdrawing him! Sitting beneath the cottonwood just as if a brave little creature worth ten of him—no, a hundred!—hadn’t died in that very tree, and for both of them.
It’s his way,Susannah spoke up calmly and gently from deep in his mind.It’s all he has,
everything else has been taken from him—his home world as well as his mother and his tongue and whatever brains he might once have had. He’s mourning, too, Roland. He’s
frightened, too. This is the only way he has of soothing himself.
Undoubtedly all true. But the truth of it actually fed his rage instead of damping it down.
He put his remaining gun aside (it lay gleaming between two of the singing roses) because having it close to hand wouldn’t do, no, not in his current mood. Then he rose to his feet,
meaning to give Patrick the scolding of his life, if for no other reason than it would make Roland feel a little bit better himself. He could already hear the first words:Do you enjoy drawing those who saved your mostly worthless life, stupid boy? Does it cheer your heart?
He was opening his mouth to begin when Patrick put his pencil down and seized his new toy, instead. The eraser was half-gone now, and there were no others; as well as Roland’s
gun, Susannah had taken the little pink nubbins with her, probably for no other reason than that she’d been carrying the jar in her pocket and her mind had been studying other, more
important, matters. Patrick poised the eraser over his drawing, then looked up—perhaps to make sure he really wanted to erase at all—and saw the gunslinger standing in the streambed and frowning at him. Patrick knew immediately that Roland was angry, although he probably had no idea under heaven as towhy, and his face cramped with fear and unhappiness. Roland saw him now as Dandelo must have seen him time and time again,
and his anger collapsed at the thought. He would not have Patrick fear him—for
Susannah’s sake if not his own, he would not have Patrick fear him.
And discovered that itwas for his own sake, after all.
Why not kill him, then?asked the sly, pulsing voice in his head.Kill him and put him out of his misery, if thee feels so tender toward him? He and the bumbler can enter the clearing together. They can make a place there for you, gunslinger.
Roland shook his head and tried to smile. “Nay, Patrick, son of Sonia,” he said (for that was how Bill the robot had called the boy). “Nay, I was wrong—again—and will not scold thee. But…”
He walked to where Patrick was sitting. Patrick cringed away from him with a doglike, placatory smile that made Roland angry all over again, but he quashed the emotion easily enough this time. Patrick had loved Oy too, and this was the only way he had of dealing with his sorrow.
Little that mattered to Roland now.
He reached down and gently plucked the eraser out of the boy’s fingers. Patrick looked at him questioningly, then reached out his empty hand, asking with his eyes that the wonderful (and useful) new toy be given back.
“Nay,” Roland said, as gently as he could. “You made do for the gods only know how
many years without ever knowing such things existed; you can make do the rest of this one day, I think. Mayhap there’ll be something for you to draw—and then undraw—later on. Do’ee ken, Patrick?”
Patrick did not, but once the eraser was safely deposited in Roland’s pocket along with the watch, he seemed to forget about it and just went back to his drawing.
“Put thy picture aside for a little, too,” Roland told him.
Patrick did so without argument. He pointed first to the cart, then to the Tower Road, and made his interrogative hooting sound.
“Aye,” Roland said, “but first we should see what Mordred had for gunna—there may be something useful there—and bury our friend. Will’ee help me see Oy into the ground, Patrick?”
Patrick was willing, and the burial didn’t take long; the body was far smaller than the heart it had held. By mid-morning they had begun to cover the last few miles on the long road which led to the Dark Tower.
Chapter III:
The Crimson King
and the Dark Tower
One
The road and the tale have both been long, would you not say so? The trip has been long and the cost has been high…but no great thing was ever attained easily. A long tale, like a
tall Tower, must be built a stone at a time. Now, however, as the end draws closer, you must mark yon two travelers walking toward us with great care. The older man—he with the tanned, lined face and the gun on his hip—is pulling the cart they call Ho Fat II. The younger one—he with the oversized drawing pad tucked under his arm that makes him look like a student in days of old—is walking along beside it. They are climbing a long, gently upsloping hill not much different from hundreds of others they have climbed. The overgrown road they follow is lined on either side with the remains of rock walls; wild roses grow in amiable profusion amid the tumbles of fieldstone. In the open, brush-dotted land beyond these fallen walls are strange stone edifices. Some look like the ruins of castles; others have the appearance of Egyptian obelisks; a few are clearly Speaking Rings of the sort where demons may be summoned; one ancient ruin of stone pillars and plinths has the look of Stone-henge. One almost expects to see hooded Druids gathered in the center of that great circle, perhaps casting the runes, but the keepers of these monuments, these precursors of the Great Monument, are all gone. Only small herds of bannock graze where once they worshipped.
Never mind. It’s not old ruins we’ve come to observe near the end of our long journey, but the old gunslinger pulling the handles of the cart. We stand at the crest of the hill and wait