The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower #7)

The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower #7) Page 26

ONE

They were a mile from the castle and the roar of the unseen river had become very loud when bunting and posters began to appear. The bunting consisted of red, white, and blue swags-the kind Susannah associated with Memorial Day parades and small-town Main Streets on the Fourth of July. On the facades of these narrow, secretive houses and the fronts of shops long closed and emptied from basement to attic, such decoration looked like rouge on the cheeks of a decaying corpse.

The faces on the posters were all too familiar to her.

Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge flashed V's-for-victory and car-salesmen grins (NIXON/LODGE, BECAUSE THE WORK's NOT DONE, these read). John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson stood with their arms around each other and their free hands raised.

Below their feet was the bold proclamation WE STAND ON THE EDGE OF A NEW FRONTIER.

"Any idea who won?" Roland asked over his shoulder.

Susannah was currently riding in Ho Fat's Luxury Taxi, taking in the sights (and wishing for a sweater: even a light cardigan would do her just fine, by God).

"Oh, yes," she said. There was no doubt in her mind that these posters had been mounted for her benefit. "Kennedy did."

"He became your dinh?"

"Dinh of the entire United States. And Johnson got the job when Kennedy was gunned down."

"Shot? Do you say so?" Roland was interested.

"Aye. Shot from hiding by a coward named Oswald."

"And your United States was the most powerful country in the world."

"Well, Russia was giving us a run for our money when you grabbed me by the collar and yanked me into Mid-World, but yes, basically."

"And the folk of your country choose their dinh for themselves.

It's not done on account of fathership."

"That's right," she said, a little warily. She half-expected Roland to blast the democratic system. Or laugh at it.

Instead he surprised her by saying, "To quote Blaine the Mono, that sounds pretty swell."

"Do me a favor and don't quote him, Roland. Not now, not ever. Okay?"

"As you like," he said, then went on without a pause, but in a much lower voice. "Keep my gun ready, may it do ya."

"Does me fine," she agreed at once, and in the same low voice. It came out Does 'ee 'ine, because she didn't even want to move her lips. She could feel that they were now being watched from within the buildings that crowded this end of The King's Way like shops and inns in a medieval village (or a movie set of one). She didn't know if they were humans, robots, or maybe just still-operating TV cameras, but she hadn't mistrusted the feeling even before Roland spoke up and confirmed it. And she only had to look at Oy's head, ticktocking back and forth like the pendulum in a grandfather clock, to know he felt it, too.

"And was he a good dinh, this Kennedy?" Roland asked, resuming his normal voice. It carried well in the silence. Susannah realized a rather lovely thing: for once she wasn't cold, even though this close to the roaring river the air was dank as well as chill. She was too focused on the world around her to be cold. At least for the present.

"Well, not everyone thought so, certainly the nut who shot him didn't, but I did," she said. "He told folks when he was running that he meant to change things. Probably less than half the voters thought he meant it, because most politicians lie for the same reason a monkey swings by his tail, which is to say because he can. But once he was elected, he started in doin the things he'd promised to do. There was a showdown over a olace called Cuba, and he was just as brave as... well, let's just say you would have been pleased to ride with him. When some folks saw just how serious he was, the motherfucks hired the nut to shoot him."

"Oz-walt."

She nodded, not bothering to correct him, thinking that there was nothing to correct, really. Oz-walt. Oz. It all came around again, didn't it?

"And Johnson took over when Kennedy fell."

"Yep."

"How did he do?"

"Was too early to tell when I left, but he was more the kind of fella used to playing the game. 'Go along to get along,' we used to say. Do yovi ken it?"

"Yes, indeed," he said. "And Susannah, I think we've arrived." Roland brought Ho Fat's Luxury Taxi to a stop. He stood with the handles wrapped in his fists, looking at Le Casse Roi Russe.

TWO

Here The King's Way ended, spilling into a wide cobbled forecourt that had once no doubt been guarded as assiduously by the Crimson King's men as Buckingham Palace was by the Beefeaters of Queen Elizabeth. An eye that had faded only slightly over the years was painted on the cobbles in scarlet.

From ground-level, one could only assume what it was, but from the upper levels of the casde itself, Susannah guessed, the eye would dominate the view to the northwest.

Same damn thing's probably painted at every other point of the compass, too, she thought.

Above this outer courtyard, stretched between two deserted guard-towers, was a banner that looked freshly painted. Stenciled upon it (also in red, white, and blue) was this:

WELCOME, ROLAND AND SUSANNAH!

(OY, TOO!)

KEEP ON ROCKIN' IN THE FREE WORLD!

The castle beyond the inner courtyard (and the caged river which here served as a moat) was indeed of dark red stone blocks that had darkened to near-black over the years. Towers and turrets burst upward from the castle proper, swelling in a way that hurt the eye and seemed to defy gravity. The castle within these gaudy brackets was sober and undecorated except for the staring eye carved into the keystone arch above the main entrance. Two of the overhead walkways had fallen, littering the main courtyard with shattered chunks of stone, but six others remained in place, crisscrossing at different levels in a way that made her think of turnpike entrances and exits where a number of major highways met. As with the houses, the doors and windows were oddly narrow. Fat black rooks were perched on the sills of the windows and lined up along the overhead walkways, peering at them.

Susannah swung down from the rickshaw with Roland's gun stuffed into her belt, within easy reach. She joined him, looking at the main gate on this side of the moat. It stood open. Beyond it, a humped stone bridge spanned the river.

Beneath the bridge, dark water rushed through a stone throat forty feet wide. The water smelled harsh and unpleasant, and where it flowed around a number of fangy black rocks, the foam was yellow instead of white.

"What do we do now?" she asked.

"Listen to those fellows, for a start," he said, and nodded toward the main doors on the far side of the castle's cobbled forecourt. The portals were ajar and through them now came two men-perfectly ordinary men, not narrow funhouse fellows, as she had rather expected. When they were halfway across the forecourt, a third slipped out and scurried along after. None appeared to be armed, and as the two in front approached the bridge, she was not exactly flabbergasted to see they were identical twins. And the one behind looked the same: Caucasian, fairly tall, long black hair. Triplets, then: two to meet, and one for good luck. They were wearing jeans and heavy pea-coats of which she was instantly (and achingly) jealous.

The two in front carried large wicker baskets by leather handles.

"Put spectacles and beards on them, and they'd look exactly like Stephen King as he was when Eddie and I first met him,"

Roland said in a low voice.

"Really? Say true?"

"Yes. Do you remember what I told you?"

"Let you do the talking."

"And before victory comes temptation. Remember that, too."

"I will. Roland, are you afraid of em?"

"I think there's little to fear from those three. But be ready to shoot."

"They don't look armed." Of course there were those wicker baskets; anything might be in those.

"All the same, be ready."

"Count on it," said she.

THREE

Even with the roar of the river rushing beneath the bridge, they could hear the steady tock-tock of the strangers' bootheels.

The two with the baskets advanced halfway across the bridge and stopped at its highest point. Here they put down their burdens side by side. The third man stopped on the castle side and stood with his empty hands clasped decorously before him. Now Susannah could smell the cooked meat that was undoubtedly in one of the boxes. Not long pork, either. Roast beef and chicken all mingled was what it smelled like to her, an aroma that was heaven-sent. Her mouth began to water.

"Hile, Roland of Gilead!" said the dark-haired man on their right. "Hile, Susannah of New York! Hile, Oy of Mid-World! Long days and pleasant nights!"

"One's ugly and the others are worse," his companion remarked.

"Don't mind him," said the righthand Stephen King lookalike.

"'don't mind him,'" mocked the other, screwing his face up in a grimace so purposefully ugly that it was funny.

"May you have twice the number," Roland said, responding to the more polite of the two. He cocked his heel and made a perfunctory bow over his outstretched leg. Susannah curtsied in the Calla fashion, spreading imaginary skirts. Oy sat by Roland's left foot, only looking at the two identical men on the bridge.

"We are uffis," said the man on the right. "Do you ken uffis,

Roland?"

"Yes," he said, and then, in an aside to Susannah: "It's an old word... ancient, in fact. He claims they're shape-changers." To this he added in a much lower voice that could surely not be heard over the roar of the river: "I doubt it's true."

"Yet it is," said the one on the right, pleasantly enough.

"Liars see their own kind everywhere," observed the one on the left, and rolled a cynical blue eye. Just one. Susannah didn't believe she had ever seen a person roll just one eye before.

The one behind said nothing, only continued to stand and watch with his hands clasped before him.

"We can take any shape we like," continued the one on the right, "but our orders were to assume that of someone you'd recognize and trust."

"I'd not trust sai King much further than I could throw his heaviest grandfather," Roland remarked. "As troublesome as a trousers-eating goat, that one."

"We did the best we could," said the righthand Stephen King. "We could have taken the shape of Eddie Dean, but felt that might be too painful to the lady."

"The 'lady' looks as if she'd be happy to fuck a rope, could she make it stand up between her thighs," remarked the lefthand Stephen King, and leered.

"Uncalled-for," said the one behind, he with his hands crossed in front of him. He spoke in the mild tones of a contest referee. Susannah almost expected him to sentence Badmouth King to five minvxtes in the penalty box. She wouldn't have minded, either, for hearing Badmouth King crack wise hurt her heart; it reminded her of Eddie.

Roland ignored all the byplay.

"Could the three of you take three different shapes?" he inquired of Goodmouth King. Susannah heard the gunslinger swallow quite audibly before asking this question, and knew she wasn't the only one struggling to keep from drooling over the smells from the food-basket. "Could one of you have been sai King, one sai Kennedy, and one sai Nixon, for instance?"

"A good question," said Goodmouth King on the right.

"A stupid question," said Badmouth King on the left. "Nothing at all to the point. Off we go into the wild blue yonder. Oh well, was there ever an action hero who was an intellectual?"

"Prince Hamlet of Denmark," said Referee King quietly from behind them. "But since he's the only one who comes immediately to mind, he may be no more than the exception that proves the rule."

Goodmouth and Badmouth both turned to look at him.

When it was clear that he was done, they turned back to Roland and Susannah.

"Since we're actually one being," said Goodmouth, "and of fairly limited capabilities at that, the answer is no. We could all be Kennedy, or we could all be Nixon, but-"

"'Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today,'" said Susannah. She had no idea why this had popped into her head

(even less why she should have said it out loud), but Referee King said "Exactly!" and gave her a go-to-the-head-of-the-class nod.

"Move on, for your father's sake," said Badmouth King on the left. "I can barely look at these traitors to the Lord of the Red wi'out puking."

"Very well," said his partner. "Although calling them traitors seems rather unfair, at least if one adds ka to the equation.

Since the names we give ourself would be unpronounceable to you-"

"Like Superman's rival, Mr. Mxyzptlk," said Badmouth.

"-you may as well use those Los' used. Him being the one you call the Crimson King. I'm ego, roughly speaking, and go by the name of Feemalo. This fellow beside me is Fumalo. He's our id."

"So the one behind you must be Fimalo," Susannah said, pronouncing it i^-ma-lo. "What's he, your superego?"

"Oh brilliant!" Fumalo exclaimed. "I bet you can even say Freud so it doesn't rhyme with lewd!" He leaned forward and gave her his knowing leer. "But can you spell it, you shor'-leg New York blackbird?"

"Don't mind him," said Feemalo, "he's always been threatened by women."

"Are you Stephen King's ego, id, and superego?" Susannah asked.

"What a good question!" Feemalo said approvingly.

"What a dumb question!" Fumalo said, disapprovingly. "Did your parents have any kids that lived, Blackbird?"

"You don't want to start in playing the dozens with me,"

Susannah said, "I'll bring out Detta Walker and shut you down."

Referee King said, "I have nothing to do with sai King other than having appropriated some of his physical characteristics for a short time. And I understand that short time is really all the time you have. I have no particular love for your cause and no intention of going out of my way to help you-not far out of my way, at least-and yet I understand that you two are largely responsible for the departure of Los'. Since he kept me prisoner and treated me as little more than his court jester-or even his pet monkey-I'm not at all sorry to see him go. I'd help you if I can-a little, at least-but no, I won't go out of my way to do so. 'Let's get that up front,' as your late friend Eddie Dean might have said."

Susannah tried not to wince at this, but it hurt. It hurt.

As before, Feemalo and Fumalo had turned to look at Fimalo when he spoke. Now they turned back to Roland and Susannah.

"Honesty's the best policy," said Feemalo, with a pious look.

"Cervantes."

"Liars prosper," said Fumalo, with a cynical grin. "Anonymous."

Feemalo said, "There were times when Los' would make us divide into six, or even seven, and for no other reason than because it hurt. Yet we could leave no more than anyone else in the castle could, for he'd set a dead-line around its walls."

"We thought he'd kill us all before he left," Fumalo said, and with none of his previous fuck-you cynicism. His face wore the long and introspective expression of one who looks back on a disaster perhaps averted by mere inches.

Feemalo: "He did kill a great many. Beheaded his Minister of State."

Fumalo: "Who had advanced syphilis and no more idea what was happening to him than a pig in a slaughterhouse chute, more's the pity."

Feemalo: "He lined up the kitchen staff and the women o' work-"

Fumalo: "All of whom had been very loyal to him, very loyal indeed-"

Feemalo: "And made them take poison as they stood in front of him. He could have killed them in their sleep if he'd wanted to-"

Fumalo: "And by no more than wishing it on them."

Feemalo: "But instead he made them take poison. Rat poison.

They swallowed large brown chunks of it and died in convulsions right in front of him as he sat on his throne-"

Fumalo: "Which is made of skulls, do ye ken-"

Feemalo: "He sat there with his elbow on his knee and his fist on his chin, like a man thinking long thoughts, perhaps about squaring the circle or finding the Ultimate Prime Number, all the while watching them writhe and vomit and convulse on the floor of the Audience Chamber."

Fumalo (with a touch of eagerness Susannah found both prurient and extremely unattractive): "Some died begging for water. It was a thirsty poison, aye! And we thought we were next!"

At this Feemalo at last betrayed, if not anger, then a touch of pique. "Will you let me tell this and have done with it so they can go on or back as they please?"

"Bossy as ever," Fumalo said, and dropped into a sulky silence. Above them, the Castle Rooks josded for position and looked down with beady eyes. No doubt hoping to make a meal of those who don't walk away, Susannah thought.

"He had six of the surviving Wizard's Glasses," Feemalo said. "And when you were still in Calla Bryn Sturgis, he saw something in them that finished the job of running him mad.

We don't know for sure what it was, for we didn't see, but we have an idea it was your victory not just in the Calla but further on, at Algul Siento. If so, it meant the end of his scheme to bring down the Tower from afar, by breaking the Beams."

"Of course that's what it was," Fimalo said quiedy, and once more both Stephen Kings on the bridge turned to look at him.

"It could have been nothing else. What brought him to the brink of madness in die first place were two conflicting compulsions in his mind: to bring the Tower down, and to get diere before you could get diere, Roland, and mount to die top.

To destroy it... or to rule it. I'm not sure he has ever cared overmuch about understandingit-just about beating you to something you want, and then snatching it away from you. About such things he'd care much."

"It'd no doubt please you to know how he raved about you, and cursed your name in the weeks before he smashed his precious playthings," said Fumalo. "How he came to fear you, insofar as he can fear."

"Not this one," Feemalo contradicted, and rather glumly,

Susannah thought. "It wouldn't please this one much at all. He wins with no better grace than he loses."

Fimalo said: "When the Red King saw that the Algul would fall to you, he understood that die working Beams would regenerate.

More! That eventually those two working Beams would re-create the other Beams, knitting them forth mile by mile and wheel by wheel. If that happens, then eventually..."

Roland was nodding. In his eyes Susannah saw an entirely new expression: glad surprise. Maybe he does know how to win, she thought. "Then eventually what has moved on might return again," the gunslinger said. "Perhaps Mid-World and In-World."

He paused. "Perhaps even Gilead. The light. The White."

"No perhaps about it," Fimalo said. "For ka is a wheel, and if a wheel be not broken, it will always roll. Unless the Crimson King can become either Lord of the Tower or its Lord High Executioner, all that was will eventually return."

"Lunacy," said Fumalo. "And destructive lunacy, at that. Bixt of course Big Red always was Gan's crazy side." He gave Susannah an ugly smirk and said, "That's Frooood, Lady Blackbird."

Feemalo resumed. "And after the Balls were smashed and the killing was done-"

"This is what we'd have you understand," said Fumalo. "If, that is, your heads aren't too thick to get the sense of it."

"After those chores were finished, he killed himself," Fimalo said, and once more the other two turned to him. It was as if they were helpless to do otherwise.

"Did he do it with a spoon?" Roland asked. "For that was die prophecy my friends and I grew up with. 'Twas in a bit of doggerel."

"Yes indeed," said Fimalo. "I thought he'd cut his throat with it, for the edge of the spoon's bowl had been sharpened (like certain plates, ye ken-ka's a wheel, and always comes around to where it started), but he swallowed it. Swallowed it, can you imagine? Great gouts of blood poured from his mouth. Freshets!

Then he mounted the greatest of the gray horses-he calls it Nis, after the land of sleep and dreams-and rode southeast into the white lands of Empathica with his litde bit of gunna before him on the saddle." He smiled. "There are great stores of food here, but he has no need of it, as you may ken. Los' no longer eats."

"Wait a minute, time out," Susannah said, raising her hands in a T-shape (it was a gesture she'd picked up from Eddie, although she didn't realize it). "If he swallowed a sharpened spoon and cut himself open as well as choking-"

"Lady Blackbird begins to see the light!" Fumalo exulted, and shook his hands at the sky.

"-then how could he do anything)"

"Los' cannot die," Feemalo said, as if explaining something obvious to a three-year-old. "And you-"

"You poor saps-" his partner put in with good-natured viciousness.

"You can't kill a man who's already dead," Fimalo finished.

"As he was, Roland, your guns might have ended him..."

Roland was nodding. "Handed down from father to son, with barrels made from Arthur Eld's great sword, Excalibur. Yes, that's also part of the prophecy. As he of course would know."

"But now he's safe from them. Has put himself beyond them.

He is Un-dead."

"We have reason to believe that he's been shunted onto a balcony of the Tower," Roland said. "Un-dead or not, he never could have gained the top without some sigul of the Eld; surely if he knew so much prophecy, then he knew that."

Fimalo was smiling grimly. "Aye, but as Horatio held the bridge in a story told in Susannah's world, so Los', the Crimson King, now holds the Tower. He has found his way into its mouth but cannot climb to the top, 'tis true. Yet while he holds it hard, neither can you."

"It seems old King Red wasn't entirely mad, after all,"

Feemalo said.

"Cray-zee lak-a de focks!" Fumalo added. He tapped his temple gravely... and then burst out laughing.

"But if you go on," said Fimalo, "you bring to him the siguls of the Eld he needs to gain possession of that which now holds him captive."

"He'd have to take them from me first," Roland said. "From us." He spoke without drama, as if merely commenting on the weather.

"True," Fimalo agreed, "but consider, Roland. You cannot kill him with them, but it is possible that he might be able to take them from you, for his mind is devious and his reach is long. If he were to do so... well! Imagine a dead king, and mad, at the top of the Dark Tower, with a pair of the great old guns in his possession! He might rule from there, but I think that, given his insanity, he'd choose to bring it down, instead. Which he might be able to do, Beams or no Beams."

Fimalo studied them gravely from his place on the far side of the bridge.

"And then," he said, "all would be darkness."

FOUR

There was a pause during which those gathered in that place considered the idea. Then Feemalo said, almost apologetically:

"The cost might not be so great if one were just to consider this world, which we might call Tower Keystone, since the Dark Tower exists here not as a rose, as it does on many, or an immortal tiger, as it does on some, or the ur?log Rover, as it does on at least one-"

"A dog named Rover?" Susannah asked, bemused. "Do you really say so?"

"Lady, you have all the imagination of a half-burnt stick,"

Fumalo said in a tone of deep disgust.

Feemalo paid no heed. "In this world, the Tower is itself. In the world where you, Roland, have most lately been, most species still breed true and many lives are sweet. There is still energy and hope. Would you risk destroying that world as well as this, and the other worlds sai King has touched with his imagination, and drawn from? For it was not he that created them, you know. To peek in Gan's navel does not make one Gan, although many creative people seem to think so. Would you risk it all?"

"We're just asking, not trying to convince you," Fimalo said.

"But the truth is bald: now this is only your quest, gunslinger.

That's all it is. Nothing sends you further. Once you pass beyond this castle and into the White Lands, you and your friends pass beyond ka itself. And you need not do it. All you have been through was set in motion so that you might save the Beams, and by saving them ensure the eternal existence of the Tower, the axle upon which all worlds and all life spins. That is done.

If you turn back now, the dead King will be trapped forever where he is."

"Sez you," Susannah put in, and with a rudeness worthy of sai Fumalo.

"Whether you speak true or speak false," Roland said, "I will push on. For I have promised."

"To whom have you given your promise?" Fimalo burst out.

For the first time since stopping on the castle side of the bridge, he unclasped his hands and used them to push his hair back from his brow. The gesture was small but expressed his frustration with perfect eloquence. "For there's no prophecy of such a promise; I tell you so!"

"There wouldn't be. For it's one I made myself, and one I mean to keep."

"This man is as crazy as Los' the Red," Fumalo said, not without respect.

"All right," Fimalo said. He sighed and once more clasped his hands before him. "I have done what I can do." He nodded to his other two thirds, who were looking attentively back at him.

Feemalo and Fumalo each dropped to one knee: Feemalo his right, Fumalo his left. They lifted away the lids of the wicker boxes they had carried and tilted them forward. (Susannah was fleetingly reminded of how the models on The Price Is Right and Concentration showed off the prizes.)

Inside one was food: roasts of chicken and pork, joints of beef, great pink rounds of ham. Susannah felt her stomach expand at the sight, as if making ready to swallow all of it, and it was only with a great effort that she stopped the sensual

"moan rising in her throat. Her mouth flooded with saliva and she raised a hand to wipe it away. They would know what she was doing, she supposed there was no help for that, but she could at least keep them from the satisfaction of seeing the physical evidence of her hunger gleaming on her lips and chin. Oy barked, but kept his seat by the gunslinger's left heel.

Inside the other basket were big cable-knit sweaters, one green and one red: Christmas colors.

"There's also long underwear, coats, fleece-lined shor'-boots, and gloves," said Feemalo. "For Empathica's deadly cold at this time of year, and you'll have months of walking ahead."

"On the outskirts of town we've left you a light aluminum sledge," Fimalo said. 'You can throw it in the back of your little cart and then use it to carry the lady and your gunna, once you reach the snowlands."

"You no doubt wonder why we do all this, since we disapprove of your journey," said Feemalo. "The fact is, we're grateful for our survival-"

"We really did think we were done for," Fumalo broke in.

"'The quarterback is toast,' Eddie might have said."

And this, too, hurt her... but not as much as looking at all that food. Not as much as imagining how it would feel to slip one of those bulky sweaters over her head and let the hem fall all the way to the middle of her thighs.

"My decision was to try and talk you out of going if I could,"

said Fimalo-the only one who spoke of himself in the firstperson singular, Susannah had noticed. "And if I couldn't, I'd give you the supplies you'd need to go on with."

"You can't kill him!" Fumalo burst out. "Don't you see that, you wooden-headed killing machine, don't you see? All you can do is get overeager and play into his dead hands! How can you be so stu-"

"Hush," Fimalo said mildly, and Fumalo hushed at once.

"He's taken his decision."

"What will you do?" Roland asked. "Once we've pushed on, that is?"

The three of them shrugged in perfect mirror unison, but it was Fimalo-the so-called uffi's superego-who answered.

"Wait here," he said. "See if the matrix of creation lives or dies.

In the meanwhile, try to refurbish Le Casse and bring it to some of its previous glory. It was a beautiful place once. It can be beautiful again. And now I think our palaver's done. Take your gifts with our thanks and good wishes."

"Grudging good wishes," said Fumalo, and actually smiled.

Coming from him, that smile was both dazzling and unexpected.

Susannah almost started forward. Hungry as she was for fresh food (for fresh meat), it was the sweaters and the thermal underwear that she really craved. Although supplies were getting thin (and would surely run out before they were past the place die uffi called Empathica), there were still cans of beans and tuna and corned beef hash rolling around in the back of Ho Fat's Luxury Taxi, and their bellies were currendy full. It was the cold that was killing her. That was what it felt like, at least; cold working its way inward toward her heart, one painful inch at a time.

Two dungs stopped her. One was the realization that a single step forward was all it would take to destroy what little remained of her will; she'd run to the center of the bridge and fall on her knees before that deep basket of clothes and go grubbing through it like a predatory housewife at the annual Filene's white-sale. Once she took diat first step, nothing would stop her.

And losing her will wouldn't be the worst of it; she would also lose the self-respect Odetta Holmes had labored all her life to win, despite die barely suspected saboteur lurking in her mind.

Yet even that wouldn't have been enough to hold her back.

What did was a memory of die day they'd seen die crow with die green stuff in its beak, the crow that had been going Croo, crool instead of Caw, caw!Only devilgrass, true, but green stuff, all the same. Living stuff. That was die day Roland had told her to hold her tongue, had told her-what was it? Before victory comes temptation.

She never would have suspected that her life's greatest temptation would be a cable-knit fisherman's sweater, but-

She suddenly understood what the gunslinger must have known, if not from the first then from soon after the three Stephen Kings appeared: this whole thing was a shuck. She didn't know what, exacdy, was in those wicker baskets, but she doubted like hell that it was food and clothes.

She setded within herself.

"Well?" Fimalo asked patiendy. "Will you come and take the presents I'd give you? You must come, if you'd have them, for halfway across the bridge is as far as I can go myself. Just beyond Feemalo and Fumalo is the King's dead-line. You and she may pass both ways. We may not."

Roland said, "We thank you for your kindness, sai, but we're going to refuse. We have food, and clothing is waiting for us up ahead, still on the hoof. Besides, it's really not that cold."

"No," Susannah agreed, smiling into the three identical-and identically dumbfounded-faces. "It's really not."

"We'll be pushing on," Roland said, and made another bow over his cocked leg.

"Say thankya, say may ya do well," Susannah put in, and once more spread her invisible skirts.

She and Roland began to turn away. And that was when Feemalo and Fumalo, still down on their knees, reached inside the open baskets before them.

Susannah needed no instruction from Roland, not so much as a shouted word. She drew the revolver from her belt and shot down the one on her left-Fumalo-just as he swung a longbarreled silver gun out of the basket. What looked like a scarf was hanging from it. Roland drew from his holster, as blindingly fast as ever, and fired a single shot. Above them the rooks took wing, cawing affrightedly, turning the blue sky momentarily black.

Feemalo, also holding one of the silver guns, collapsed slowly forward across his basket of food with a dying expression of surprise on his face and a bullet-hole dead center in his forehead.

FIVE

Fimalo stood where he was, on the far side of the bridge. His hands were still clasped in front of him, but he no longer looked like Stephen King. He now wore the long, yellowcomplexioned face of an old man who is dying slowly and not well. What hair he had was a dirty gray rather than luxuriant black. His skull was a peeling garden of eczema. His cheeks, chin, and forehead were lumped with pimples and open sores, some pustulating and some bleeding.

"What are you, really?" Roland asked him.

"A hume, just as you are," said Fimalo, resignedly. "Rando Thoughtful was my name during my years as the Crimson King's Minister of State. Once upon a time, however, I was plain old Austin Cornwell, from upstate New York. Not the Keystone World, I regret to say, but another. I ran the Niagara Mall at one time, and before that I had a successful career in advertising. You might be interested to know I worked on accounts for both Nozz-A-La and the Takuro Spirit."

Susannah ignored this bizarre and unexpected resume.

"So he didn't have his top boy beheaded, after all," she said.

"What about the three Stephen Kings?"

"Just a glammer," said the old man. "Are you going to kill me? Go ahead. All I ask is that you make quick work of it. I'm not well, as you must see."

"Was any of what you told us true?" Susannah asked.

His old eyes looked at her with watery amazement. "All of it was," he said, and advanced onto the bridge, where two other old men-his assistants, once upon a time, she had no doubt-lay sprawled. "All of it, anyway, save for one lie... and this." He kicked the baskets over so that the contents spilled out.

Susannah gave an involuntary shout of horror. Oy was up in a flash, standing protectively in front of her with his short legs spread and his head lowered.

"It's all right," she said, but her voice was still trembling. "I was just... startled."

The wicker basket which had seemed to contain all sorts of freshly cooked roasts was actually filled with decaying human limbs-long pork, after all, and in bad shape even considering what it was. The flesh was mostly blue-black and a-teem with maggots.

And there were no clothes in the other basket. What Fimalo had spilled out of it was actually a shiny knot of dying snakes.

Their beady eyes were dull; their forked tongues flickered listlessly in and out; several had already ceased to move.

"You would have refreshed them wonderfully, if you'd pressed them against your skin," Fimalo said regretfully.

"You didn't really expect that to happen, did you?" Roland asked.

"No," the old man admitted. He sat on the bridge with a weary sigh. One of the snakes attempted to crawl into his lap and he pushed it away with a gesture that was both absent and impatient. "But I had my orders, so I did."

Susannah was looking at the corpses of the other two with horrified fascination. Feemalo and Fumalo, nowjust a couple of dead old men, were rotting with unnatural rapidity, their parchment skins deflating toward the bone and oozing slack rivulets of pus. As she watched, the sockets of Feemalo's skull surfaced like twin periscopes, giving the corpse a momentary expression of shock. Some of the snakes crawled and writhed around these decaying corpses. Others were crawling into the basket of maggoty limbs, seeking the undoubtedly warmer regions at the bottom of the heap. Decay brought its own temporary fevers, and she supposed that she herself might be tempted to luxuriate in it while she could. If she were a snake, that was.

"Are you going to kill me?" Fimalo asked.

"Nay," Roland said, "for your duties aren't done. You have another coming along behind."

Fimalo looked up, a gleam of interest in his rheumy old eyes. 'Your son?"

"Mine, and your master's, as well. Would you give him a word for me during your palaver?"

"If I'm alive to give it, sure."

"Tell him that I'm old and crafty, while he's but young.

Tell him that if he lies back, he may live awhile yet with his dreams of revenge... although what I've done to him requiring his vengeance, I know not. And tell him that if he comes forward, I'll kill him as I intend to kill his Red Father."

"Either you listen and don't hear or hear and don't believe,"

Fimalo said. Now that his own ruse had been exposed (nothing so glamorous as an uffi, Susannah thought; just a retreaded adman from upstate New York), he seemed unutterably weary.

"You cannot kill a creature that has killed itself. Nor can you enter the Dark Tower, for there is only one entrance, and the balcony upon which Los' is imprisoned commands it. And he's armed with a sufficiency of weapons. The sneetches alone would seek you out and slay you before you'd crossed halfway through the field of roses."

"That's our worry," Roland said, and Susannah thought he'd rarely spoken a truer word: she was worrying about it already. "As for you, will you pass my message on to Mordred, when you see him?"

Fimalo made a gesture of acquiescence.

Roland shook his head. "Don't just flap thy hand at me, cully-let me hear from your mouth."

"I'll pass along your message," said Fimalo, then added: "If I see him, and we palaver."

"You will. 'day to you, sir." Roland began to turn away, but Susannah caught his arm and he turned back.

"Swear to me that all you told us was true," she bade the ugly ancient sitting on the cobbled bridge and below the cold gaze of the crows, who were beginning to settle back to their former places. What she meant to learn or prove by this she had not the slightest idea. Would she know this man's lies, even now? Probably not. But she pressed on, just the same. "Swear it on the name of your father, and on his face, as well."

The old man raised his right hand to her, palm out, and Susannah saw there were open sores even there. "I swear it on the name of Andrew John Cornwell, of Tioga Springs, New York.

And on his face, too. The King of this casde really did run mad, and really did burst those Wizard's Glasses that had come into his hands. He really did force the staff to take poison and he really did watch them die." He flung out the hand he'd held up in pledge to the box of severed limbs. "Where do you think I got those, Lady Blackbird? Body Parts R Us?"

She didn't understand the reference, and remained still.

"He really has gone on to the Dark Tower. He's like the dog in some old fable or other, wanting to make sure that if he can't get any good from the hay, no one else will, either. I didn't even lie to you about what was in these boxes, not really. I simply showed you the goods and let you draw your own conclusions."

His smile of cynical pleasure made Susannah wonder if she ought to remind him that Roland, at least, had seen through this trick. She decided it wasn't worth it.

"I told you only one outright lie," said the former Austin Cornwell. "That he'd had me beheaded."

"Are you satisfied, Susannah?" Roland asked her.

"Yes," she said, although she wasn't; not really. "Let's go."

"Climb up in Ho Fat, then, and don't turn thy back on him when thee does. He's sly."

"Tell me about it," Susannah said, and then did as she was asked.

"Long days and pleasant nights," said the former sai Cornwell from where he sat amid the squirming, dying snakes. "May the Man Jesus watch over you and all your clan-fam. And may you show sense before it's too late for sense and stay away from the Dark Tower!"

SIX

They retraced their path to the intersection where they had turned away from the Path of the Beam to go to the Crimson King's castle, and here Roland stopped to rest for a few minutes.

A little bit of a breeze had gotten up, and the patriotic bunting flapped. She saw it now looked old and faded. The pictures of Nixon, Lodge, Kennedy, and Johnson had been defaced by graffiti which was itself ancient. All the glammer-such ragged glammer as the Crimson King had been able to manage, at any rate-was gone.

Masks off, masks off, she thought tiredly. It was a wonderful party, but now it's finished... and the Red Death holds sway over all.

She touched the pimple beside her mouth, then looked at the tip of her finger. She expected to see blood or pus or both.

There was neither, and that was a relief.

"How much of it do you believe?" Susannah asked him.

"Pretty much all of it," Roland replied.

"So he's up there. In the Tower."

"Not in it. Trapped outside it." He smiled. "There's a big difference."

"Is there really? And what will you do to him?"

"I don't know."

"Do you think that if he did get control of your guns, diat he could get back inside the Tower and climb to the top?"

"Yes." The reply was immediate.

"What will you do about it?"

"Not let him get either of them." He spoke as if this should have been self-evident, and Susannah supposed it should have been. What she had a way of forgetting was how goddamned literalhe was. About everything.

"You were diinking of trapping Mordred, back at the castle."

"Yes," Roland agreed, "but given what we found there-and what we were told-it seemed better to move on. Simpler.

Look."

He took out the watch and snapped open the lid. They both observed the second-hand racing its solitary course. But at the same speed as before? Susannah didn't know for sure, but she didn't think so. She looked up at Roland with her eyebrows raised.

"Most of die time it's still right," Roland said, "but no longer all of the time. I think that it's losing at least a second every sixdi or seventh revolution. Perhaps three to six minutes a day, all told."

"That's not very much."

"No," Roland admitted, putting the watch away, "but it's a start. Let Mordred do as he will. The Dark Tower lies close beyond the white lands, and I mean to reach it."

Susannah could understand his eagerness. She only hoped it wouldn't make him careless. If it did, Mordred Deschain's youth might no longer matter. If Roland made the right mistake at the wrong moment, she, he, and Oy might never see the Dark Tower at all.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a great fluttering from behind them. Not quite lost within it came a human sound that began as a howl and quickly rose to a shriek. Although distance diminished that cry, the horror and pain in it were all too clear. At last, mercifully, it faded.

"The Crimson King's Minister of State has entered the clearing," Roland said.

Susannah looked back toward the castle. She could see its blackish-red ramparts, but nothing else. She was glad she could see nothing else.

Mordred's a-hungry, she thought. Her heart was beating fast and she thought she had never been so frightened in her whole life-not lying next to Mia as she gave birth, not even in the blackness under Castle Discordia.

Mordred's a-hungry... but now he'll be fed.

SEVEN

The old man who had begun life as Austin Cornwell and who would end it as Rando Thoughtful sat at the casde end of the bridge. The rooks waited above him, perhaps sensing that the day's excitement was not yet done. Thoughtful was warm enough thanks to the pea-coat he was wearing, and he had helped himself to a mouthful of brandy before leaving to meet Roland and his blackbird ladyfriend. Well... perhaps that wasn't quite true. Perhaps it was Brass and Compson (also known as Feemalo and Fumalo) who'd had die mouthfuls of die King's best brandy, and Los's ex-Minister of State who had polished off the last third of the bottle.

Whatever the cause, the old man fell asleep, and the coming of Mordred Red-Heel didn't wake him. He sat with his chin on his chest and drool trickling from between his pursed lips, looking like a baby who has fallen asleep in his highchair. The birds on the parapets and walkways were gathered more thickly than ever. Surely they would have flown at the approach of the young Prince, but he looked up at them and made a gesture in the air: the open right hand waved brusquely across the face, then curled into a fist and pulled downward. Wait, it said.

Mordred stopped on the town side of the bridge, sniffing delicately at the decayed meat. That smell had been charming enough to bring him here even though he knew Roland and Susannah had continued along the Path of the Beam. Let them and their pet bumbler get fairly back on their way, was the boy's thinking. This wasn't the time to close the gap. Later, perhaps.

Later his White Daddy would let down his guard, if only for a moment, and then Mordred would have him.

For dinner, he hoped, but lunch or breakfast would do almost as well.

When we last saw this fellow, he was only

(baby-bunting baby-dear baby bring your berries here)

an infant. The creature standing beyond the gates of the Crimson King's castle had grown into a boy who looked about nine years old. Not a handsome boy; not the sort anyone

(except for his lunatic mother) would have called comely. This had less to do with his complicated genetic inheritance than with plain starvation. The face beneath the dry spall of black hair was haggard and far too thin. The flesh beneath Mordred's blue bombardier's eyes was a discolored, pouchy purple.

His complexion was a birdshot blast of sores and blemishes.

These, like the pimple beside Susannah's mouth, could have been the result of his journey through the poisoned lands, but surely Mordred's diet had something to do with it. He could have stocked up on canned goods before setting out from the checkpoint beyond the tunnel's mouth-Roland and Susannah had left plenty behind-but he hadn't thought to do so. He was, as Roland knew, still learning the tricks of survival. The only thing Mordred had taken from the checkpoint Quonset was a rotting railwayman's pillowtick jacket and a pair of serviceable boots. Finding the boots was good fortune indeed, although they had mostly fallen apart as the trek continued.

Had he been a hume-or even a more ordinary werecreature, for that matter-Mordred would have died in the Badlands, coat or no coat, boots or no boots. Because he was what he was, he had called the rooks to him when he was hungry, and the rooks had no choice but to come. The birds made nasty eating and the bugs he summoned from beneath the parched (and still faintly radioactive) rocks were even worse, but he had choked them down. One day he had touched the mind of a weasel and bade it come. It had been a scrawny, wretched thing, on the edge of starvation itself, but it tasted like the world's finest steak after the birds and the bugs. Mordred had changed into his other self and gathered the weasel into his seven-legged embrace, sucking and eating until there was nothing left but a torn piece of fur. He would have gladly eaten another dozen, but that had been the only one.

And now there was a whole basket of food set before him. It was well-aged, true, but what of that? Even the maggots would provide nourishment. More than enough to carry him into the snowy woods southeast of the castle, which would be teeming with game.

But before them, there was the old man.

"Rando," he said. "Rando Thoughtful."

The old man jerked and mumbled and opened his eyes. For a moment he looked at the scrawny boy standing before him with a total lack of understanding. Then his rheumy eyes filled with fright.

"Mordred, son of Los'," he said, trying a smile. "Hile to you,

King that will be!" He made a shuffling gesture with his legs, then seemed to realize that he was sitting down and it wouldn't do. He attempted to find his feet, fell back with a bump that amused the boy (amusement had been hard to come by in the Badlands, and he welcomed it), then tried again. This time he managed to get up.

"I see no bodies except for those of two fellows who look like they died even older than you," Mordred remarked, looking around in exaggerated fashion. "I certainly see no dead gunslingers, of either the long-leg or shor'-leg variety."

"You say true-and I say thankya, o'course I do-but I can explain that, sai, and quite easily-"

"Oh, but wait! Hold thy explanation, excellent though I'm sure it is! Let me guess, instead! Is it that the snakes have bound the gunslinger and his lady, long fat snakes, and you've had them removed into yonder castle for safekeeping?"

"My lord-"

"If so," Mordred continued, "there must have been an almighty lot of snakes in thy basket, for I still see many out here.

Some appear to be dining on what should have been my supper."

Although the severed, rotting limbs in the basket would still be his supper-part of it, anyway-Mordred gave the old fellow a reproachful look. "Have the gunslingers been put away, then?"

The old man's look of fright departed and was replaced by one of resignation. Mordred found this downright infuriating.

What he wanted to see in old sai Thoughtful's face was not fright, and certainly not resignation, but hope. Which Mordred would snatch away at his leisure. His shape wavered. For a moment the old man saw the unformed blackness which lurked beneath, and the many legs. Then it was gone and the boy was back. For the moment, at least.

May I not die screaming, the former Austin Cornwell thought.

At least grant me that much, you gods that be. May I not die screaming in the arms of yonder monstrosity.

"You know what's happened here, young sai. It's in my mind, and so it's in yours. Why not take the mess in that basket-the snakes, too, do ya like em-and leave an old man to what little life he has left? For your father's sake, if not your own.

I served him well, even at the end. I could have simply hunkered in the castle and let them go their course. But I didn't. I tried."

"You had no choice," Mordred replied from his end of the bridge. Not knowing if it was true or not. Nor caring. Dead flesh was only nourishment. Living flesh and blood still rich with the air of a man's last breath... ah, that was something else. That was fine dining!"Did he leave me a message?"

"Aye, you know he did."

"Tell me."

"Why don't you just pick it out of my mind?"

Again there came that fluttering, momentary change. For a moment it was neither a boy nor a boy-sized spider standing on the far end of the bridge but something that was both at the same time. Sai Thoughtful's mouth went dry even while the drool that had escaped during his nap still gleamed on his chin. Then the boy-version of Mordred solidified again inside his torn and rotting coat.

"Because it pleases me to hear it from your drooping old stew-hole," he told Thoughtful.

The old man licked his lips. "All right; may it do ya fine. He said that he's crafty while you're young and without so much as a sip of guile. He said that if you don't stay back where you belong, he'll have your head off your shoulders. He said he'd like to hold it up to your Red Father as he stands trapped upon his balcony."

This was quite a bit more than Roland actually said (as we should know, having been there), and more than enough for Mordred.

Yet not enough for Rando Thoughtful. Perhaps only ten days before it would have accomplished the old man's purpose, which was to goad the boy into killing him quickly. But Mordred had seasoned in a hurry, and now withstood his first impulse to simply bolt across the bridge into the castle courtyard, changing as he charged, and tearing Rando Thoughtful's head from his body with the swipe of one barbed leg.

Instead he peered up at the rooks-hundreds of them, now-and they peered back at him, as intent as pupils in a classroom.

The boy made a fluttering gesture with his arms, then pointed at the old man. The air was at once filled with the rising whir of wings. The King's Minister turned to flee, but before he'd gotten a single step, the rooks descended on him in an inky cloud. He threw his arms up to protect his face as they lit on his head and shoulders, turning him into a scarecrow.

This instinctive gesture did no good; more of them alit on his upraised arms until the very weight of the birds forced them down. Bills nipped and needled at the old man's face, drawing blood in tiny tattoo stipples.

"No!" Mordred shouted. "Save the skin for me... but you may have his eyes."

It was then, as the eager rooks tore Rando Thoughtful's eyes from their living sockets, that the ex-Minister of State uttered the rising howl Roland and Susannah heard as they neared the edge of Castle-town. The birds who couldn't find a roostingplace hung around him in a living thunderhead. They turned him on his levitating heels and carried him toward the changeling, who had now advanced to die center of the bridge and squatted there. The boots and rotted pillowtick coat had been left behind for the nonce on the town side of the bridge; what waited for sai Thoughtful, reared up on its back legs, forelegs pawing the air, red mark on its hairy belly all too visible, was Dan-Tete, the Little Red King.

The man floated to his fate, shrieking and eyeless. He thrust his hands out in front of him, making warding-off gestures, and the spider's front legs seized one of them, guided it into the bristling maw of its mouth, and bit it off with a candy-cane crunch.

Sweet!

EIGHT

That night, beyond the last of the oddly narrow, oddly unpleasant townhouses, Roland stopped in front of what had probably been a smallhold farm. He stood facing the ruin of the main building, sniffing.

"What, Roland? What?"

"Can you smell the wood of that place, Susannah?"

She sniffed. "I can, as a matter of fact-what of it?"

He turned to her, smiling. "If we can smell it, we can burn it."

This turned out to be correct. They had trouble kindling the fire, even aided by Roland's slyest tricks of trailcraft and half a can of Sterno, but in die end they succeeded. Susannah sat as close to it as she could, turning at regular intervals in order to toast bodi sides equally, relishing die sweat diat popped out first on her face and her breasts, then on her back. She had forgotten what it was to be warm, and went on feeding wood to die flames until the campfire was a roaring bonfire. To animals in the open lands furdier along die Padi of die healing Beam, diat fire must have looked like a comet that had fallen to Earth, still blazing. Oy sat beside her, ears cocked, looking into the fire as if mesmerized. Susannah kept expecting Roland to object-to tell her to stop feeding the damned thing and start letting it burn down, for her father's sake-but he didn't. He only sat with his disassembled guns before him, oiling the pieces. When the fire grew too hot, he moved back a few feet. His shadow danced a skinny, wavering commala in the firelight.

"Can you stand one or two more nights of cold?" he asked her at last.

She nodded. "If I have to."

"Once we start climbing toward the snowlands, it will be really cold," he said. "And while I can't promise you we'll have to go fireless for only a single night, I don't believe it'll be any longer than two."

"You think it'll be easier to take game if we don't build a fire, don't you?"

Roland nodded and began putting his guns back together.

"Will there be game as early as day after tomorrow?"

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

He considered this, then shook his head. "I can't say-but I do."

"Can you smell it?"

"No."

"Touch their minds?"

"It's not that, either."

She let it go. "Roland, what if Mordred sends the birds against us tonight?"

He smiled and pointed to the flames. Below them, a deepening bed of bright red coals waxed and waned like dragon's breath. "They'll not come close to thy bonfire."

"And tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow we'll be further from Le Casse Roi Russe than even Mordred can persuade them to go."

"And how do you know that?"

He shook his head yet again, although he thought he knew the answer to her question. What he knew came from the Tower. He could feel the pulse of it awakening in his head. It was like green coming out of a dry seed. But it was too early to say so.

"Lie down, Susannah," he said. "Take your rest. I'll watch until midnight, then wake you."

"So now we keep a watch," she said.

He nodded.

"Is he watching us?"

Roland wasn't sure, but thought that Mordred was. What his imagination saw was a skinny boy (but with a potbelly pooched out in front of him now, for he'd have eaten well), naked inside the rags of a filthy, torn coat. A skinny boy laid up in one of those unnaturally skinny houses, perhaps on the third floor, where the sightline was good. He sits at a window with his knees pulled up against his chest for warmth, the scar on his side perhaps aching in the bony cold, looking out at the flare of their fire, jealous of it. Jealous of their companionship, as well.

Half-mother and White Father, with their backs turned to him.

"It's likely," he said.

She started to lie down, then stopped. She touched the sore beside her mouth. "This isn't a pimple, Roland."

"No?" He sat quiet, watching her.

"I had a friend in college who got one just like it," Susannah said. "It'd bleed, then stop, then almost heal up, then darken and bleed a little more. At last she went to see a doctor-a special kind we call a dermatologist-and he said it was an angioma. A blood-tumor. He gave her a shot of novocaine and took it off with a scalpel. He said it was a good thing she came when she did, because every day she waited that thing was sinking its roots in a litde deeper. Eventually, he said, it would have worked its way right through the roof of her mouth, and maybe into her sinuses, too."

Roland was silent, waiting. The term she had used clanged in his head: blood-tumor. He thought it might have been coined to describe the Crimson King himself. Mordred, as well.

"We don't have no novocaine, Baby-Boots," Detta Walker said, "and Ah know dat, sho! But if de time come and Ah tell you, you goan whip out yo' knife and cut dat ugly mahfah right off'n me. Goan do it faster than yon bum'blah c'n snatch a fly out de air. You unnerstand me? Kitch mah drift?"

"Yes. Now lie over. Take some rest."

She lay over. Five minutes after she had appeared to go to sleep, Detta Walker opened her eyes and gave him

(I watchin you, xuhite boy)

a glare. Roland nodded to her and she closed her eyes again. A minute or two later, they opened a second time. Now it was Susannah who looked at him, and this time when her eyes closed, they didn't open again.

He had promised to wake her at midnight, but let her sleep two hours longer, knowing that in the heat of the fire her body was really resting, at least for this one night. At what his fine new watch said was one O'The clock, he finally felt the gaze of their pursuer slip away. Mordred had lost his fight to stay awake through the darkest watches of the night, as had innumerable children before him. Wherever his room was, the unwanted, lonely child now slept in it with his wreck of a coat pulled around him and his head in his arms.

And does his mouth, still caked with sai Thoughtful's blood, purse and quiver, as if dreaming of the nipple it knew but once, the milk it never tasted"?

Roland didn't know. Didn't particularly want to know. He was only glad to be awake in the stillwatch of the night, feeding the occasional piece of wood to the lowering fire. It would die quickly, he thought. The wood was newer than that of which the townhouses were constructed, but it was still ancient, hardened to a substance that was nearly stone.

Tomorrow they would see trees. The first since Calla Bryn Sturgis, if one set aside those growing beneath Algul Siento's artificial sun and those he'd seen in Stephen King's world.

That would be good. Meanwhile, the dark held hard. Beyond the circle of the dying fire a wind moaned, lifting Roland's hair from his temples and bringing a faint, sweet smell of snow. He tilted his head back and watched the clock of the stars turn in the blackness overhead.