The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower #7)

The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower #7) Page 31

ONE

The dan-tete was watching when the long-haired fellow they were now traveling with grabbed Susannah's shoulder to point out the dancing orange hobs in the distance. Mordred watched as she whirled, pulling one of the White Daddy's big revolvers.

For a moment the far-seeing glass eyes he'd found in the house on Odd's Lane trembled in Mordred's hand, that was how hard he was rooting for his Blackbird Mommy to shoot the Artist. How the guilt would have bitten into her! Like the blade of a dull hatchet, yar! It was even possible that, overcome by the horror of what she had done, she'd've put the barrel of the gun to her own head and pulled the trigger a second time, and how would Old White Daddy like waking up to that?

All, children are such dreamers.

It didn't happen, of course, but there had been much more to watch. Some of it was hard to see, though. Because it wasn't just excitement that made the binoculars tremble. He was dressed warmly now, in layers of Dandelo's hume clothes, but he was still cold. Except when he was hot. And either way, hot or cold, he trembled like a toothless old gaffer in a chimney corner.

This state of affairs had been growing gradually worse since he left Joe Collins's house behind. Fever roared in his bones like a blizzard wind. Mordred was no longer a-hungry (for Mordred no longer had an appetite), but Mordred was a-sick, a-sick, a-sick.

In truth, he was afraid Mordred might be a-dying.

Nonetheless he watched Roland's party with great interest, and once the fire was replenished, he saw even better. Saw the door come into being, although he could not read the symbols there writ upon. He understood that the Artist had somehow drawn it into being-what a godlike talent that was! Mordred longed to eat him just on the chance such a talent might be transmittable! He doubted it, the spiritual side of cannibalism was greatly overrated, but what harm in seeing for one's self?

He watched their palaver. He saw-and also understood-her plea to the Artist and the Mutt, her whining entreaties

(come with me so I don't have to go alone, come on, be a sport, in fact be a couple of sports, oh boo-hoo)

and rejoiced in her sorrow and fury when the plea was rejected by both boy and beast; Mordred rejoiced even though he knew it would make his own job harder. (A little harder, anyway; how much trouble could a mute young man and a billybumbler really give him, once he changed his shape and made his move?) For a moment he thought that, in her anger, she might shoot Old White Daddy with his own gun, and that Mordred did mtf want. Old White Daddy was meant to be his. The voice from the Dark Tower had told him so. A-sick he surely was, a-dying he might be, but Old White Daddy was still meant to be his meal, not the Blackbird Mommy's. Why, she'd leave the meat to rot without taking a single bite! But she didn't shoot him. Instead she kissedhim... Mordred didn't want to see that, it made him feel sicker than ever, and so he put the binoculars aside. He lay in the grass amid a little clump of alders, trembling, hot and cold, trying not to puke (he had spent the entire previous day puking and shitting, it seemed, until the muscles of his midsection ached with the strain of sending such heavy traffic in two directions at once and nothing came up his throat but thick, mucusy strings and nothing out of his backside but brown stew and great hollow farts), and when he looked through the binoculars again, it was just in time to see the back end of the little electric cart disappear as the Blackbird Mommy drove it through the door. Something swirled out around it. Dust, maybe, but he thought snow. There was also singing. The sound of it made him feel almost as sick as seeing her kiss Old White Gunslinger Daddy. Then the door slammed shut behind her and the singing was gone and the gunslinger just sat there near it, with his face in his hands, boohoo, sob-sob.

The bumbler went to him and put its long snout on one of his boots as if to offer comfort, how sweet, how puking sweet. By then it was dawn, and Mordred dozed a little. When he woke up, it was to the sound of Old White Daddy's voice. Mordred's hiding place was downwind, and the words came to him clearly:

"Oy? Will'ee not have at least a bite?" The bumbler would not, however, and the gunslinger had scattered the food that had been meant for the little fvirry houken. Later, after they moved on (Old White Gunslinger Daddy pulling the cart the robot had made for them, plodding slowly along the ruts of Tower Road with his head down and his shoulders all a-slump), Mordred crept to the campsite. He did indeed eat some of the scattered food-surely it had not been poisoned if Roland had hoped it would go down the bumbler's gullet-but he stopped after only three or four chunks of meat, knowing that if he went on eating, his guts would spew everything back out, both north and south.

He couldn't have that. If he didn't hold onto at least some nourishment, he would be too weak to follow them. And he must follow, had to stay close a little while longer. It would have to be tonight. It would have to be, because tomorrow Old White Daddy would reach the Dark Tower, and then it would almost certainly be too late. His heart told him so. Mordred plodded as Roland had, but even more slowly. Every now and then he would double over as cramps seized him and his human shape wavered, that blackness rising and receding under his skin, his heavy coat bulging restlessly as the other legs tried to burst free, then hanging slack again as he willed them back inside, gritting his teeth and groaning with effort. Once he shit a pint or so of stinky brown fluid in his pants, and once he managed to get his trousers down, and he cared little either way. No one had invited him to the Reap Ball, ha-ha! Invitation lost in the mail, no doubt! Later, when it came time to attack, he would let the little Red King free. But if it happened now, he was almost positive he wouldn't be able to change back again. He wouldn't have the strength. The spider's faster metabolism would fan the sickness the way a strong wind fans a low ground-fire into a forest-gobbling blaze. What was killing him slowly would kill him rapidly, instead. So he fought it, and by afternoon he felt a little better. The pulse from the Tower was growing rapidly now, growing in strength and urgency. So was his Red Daddy's voice, urging him on, urging him to stay within striking distance.

Old White Gunslinger Daddy had gotten no more than four hours' sleep a night for weeks now, because he had been standing watch-and-watch with the now-departed Blackbird Mommy.

But Blackbird Mommy hadn't ever had to pull that cart, had she? No, just rode in it like Queen Shit O'Turd Hill did she, hee!

Which meant Old White Gunslinger Daddy was plenty tired, even with the pulse of the Dark Tower to buoy him up and pull him onward. Tonight Old White Daddy would either have to depend on the Artist and die Mutt to stand the first watch or try to do the whole thing on his own. Mordred thought he could stand one more wakeful night himself, simply because he knew he'd never have to have another. He would creep close, as he had the previous night. He would watch their camp with the old man-monster's glass eyes for far-seeing. And when they were all asleep, he would change for the last time and rush down upon them. Scrabble-de-dee comes me, hee! Old White Daddy might never even wake up, but Mordred hoped he would. At the very end. Just long enough to realize what was happening to him.

Just long enough to know that his son was snatching him into the land of death only hours before he would have reached his precious Dark Tower. Mordred clenched his fists and watched the fingers turn black. He felt the terrible but pleasurable itching up the sides of his body as the spider-legs tried to burst through-seven instead of eight, thanks to the terriblenastyawful Blackbird Mommy who had been both preg and notpreg at the same time, and might she rot screaming in todash space forever (or at least until one of the Great Ones who lurked there found her). He fought and encouraged the change with equal ferocity. At last he only fought it, and the urge to change subsided. He gave out a victory-fart, but although this one was long and smelly, it was silent. His asshole was now a broken squeezebox that could no longer make music but only gasp. His fingers returned to their normal pinkish-white shade and the itching up and down the sides of his body disappeared.

His head swam and slithered with fever; his thin arms (little more than sticks) ached with chills. The voice of his Red Daddy was sometimes loud and sometimes faint, but it was always there: Come to me. Run to me. Hie thy doubleton self. Come-commala, you good son of mine. We'll bring the Tower down, we'll destroy all the light there is, and then rule the darkness together.

Come to me.

Come.

TWO

Surely those three who remained (four, counting himself) had outrun ka's umbrella. Not since the Prim receded had there been such a creature as Mordred Deschain, who was part hume and part of that rich and potent soup. Surely such a creature could never have been meant by ka to die such a mundane death as the one that now threatened: fever brought on by foodpoisoning.

Roland could have told him that eating what he found in the snow around to the side of Dandelo's barn was a bad idea; so could Robert Browning, for that matter. Wicked or not, actual horse or not, Lippy (probably named after another, and betterknown,

Browning poem called "Fra Lippo Lippi") had been a sick animal herself when Roland ended her life with a bullet to the head. But Mordred had been in his spider-form when he'd come upon the thing which at least looked like a horse, and almost nothing would have stopped him from eating the meat.

It wasn't until he'd resumed his human form again that he wondered uneasily how there could be so much meat on Dandelo's bony old nag and why it had been so soft and warm, so full of uncoagulated blood. It had been in a snowdrift, after all, and had been lying there for some days. The mare's remains should have been frozen stiff.

Then the vomiting began. The fever came next, and with it the struggle not to change until he was close enough to his Old White Daddy to rip him limb from limb. The being whose coming had been prophesied for thousands of years (mostly by the Manni-folk, and usually in frightened whispers), the being who would grow to be half-human and half-god, the being who would oversee the end of humanity and the return of the Prim... that being had finally arrived as a naive and badhearted child who was now dying from a bellyful of poisoned horsemeat.

Ka could have had no part in this.

THREE

Roland and his two companions didn't make much progress on the day Susannah left them. Even had he not planned to travel short miles so that they could come to the Tower at sunset of the day following, Roland wouldn't have been able to go far. He was.

disheartened, lonely, and tired almost to death. Patrick was also tired, but he at least could ride if he chose to, and for most of that day he did so choose, sometimes napping, sometimes sketching, sometimes walking a little while before climbing back into Ho Fat II and napping some more.

The pulse from the Tower was strong in Roland's head and heart, and its song was powerful and lovely, now seemingly composed of a thousand voices, but not even these things could take the lead from his bones. Then, as he was looking for a shady spot where they could stop and eat a little midday meal (by now it was actually mid-afternoon), he saw something that momentarily made him forget both his weariness and his sorrow.

Growing by the side of the road was a wild rose, seemingly the exact twin of the one in the vacant lot. It bloomed in defiance of the season, which Roland put as very early spring. It was a light pink shade on the outside and darkened to a fierce red on the inside; the exact color, he thought, of heart's desire. He fell on his knees before it, tipped his ear toward that coral cup, and listened.

The rose was singing.

The weariness stayed, as weariness will (on this side of the grave, at least), but the loneliness and the sadness departed, at least for a little while. He peered into the heart of the rose and saw a yellow center so bright he couldn't look directly at it.

Gan 's gateivay, he thought, not sure exactly what that was but positive that he was right. Aye, Gan's gateway, so it is!

This was unlike the rose in the vacant lot in one crucial way: the feeling of sickness and the faint voices of discord were gone. This one was rich with health as well as full of light and love. It and all the others... they... they must...

They feed the Beams, don't they1? With their songs and their perfume.

As the Beams feed them. It's a living force-field, a giving and taking, all spinning out from the Tower. And this is only the first, the farthest outrider. In Can'-Ka No Rey there are tens of thousands, just like this.

The thought made him faint with amazement. Then came another that filled him with anger and fear: the only one with a view of that great red blanket was insane. Would blight them all in an instant, if allowed free rein to do so.

There was a hesitant tap on his shoulder. It was Patrick, with Oy at his heel. Patrick pointed to the grassy area beside the rose, then made eating gestures. Pointed at the rose and made drawing motions. Roland wasn't very hungry, but the boy's other idea pleased him a great deal.

"Yes," he said. "We'll have a bite here, then maybe I'll take me a little siesta while you draw the rose. Will you make two pictures of it, Patrick?" He showed the two remaining fingers on his right hand to make sure Patrick understood.

The young man frowned and cocked his head, still not understanding. His hair hung to one shoulder in a bright sheaf. Roland thought of how Susannah had washed that hair in a stream in spite of Patrick's hooted protests. It was the sort of thing Roland himself would never have thought to do, but it made the young fellow look a lot better. Looking at that sheaf of shining hair made him miss Susannah in spite of the rose's song.

She had brought grace to his life. It wasn't a word that had occurred to him until she was gone.

Meanwhile, here was Patrick, wildly talented but awfully slow on the uptake.

Roland gestured to his pad, then to the rose. Patrick nodded-that part he got. Then Roland raised two of the fingers on his good hand and pointed to the pad again. This time the light broke on Patrick's face. He pointed to the rose, to the pad, to Roland, and then to himself.

"That's right, big boy," Roland said. "A picture of the rose for you and one for me. It's nice, isn't it?"

Patrick nodded enthusiastically, setting to work while Roland rusded the grub. Once again Roland fixed three plates, and once again Oy refused his share. When Roland looked into the bumbler's gold-ringed eyes he saw an emptiness there-a kind of loss-that hurt him deep inside. And Oy couldn't stand to miss many meals; he was far too thin already. Trail-frayed, Cuthbert would have said, probably smiling. In need of some hot sassafras and salts. But the gunslinger had no sassy here.

"Why do'ee look so?" Roland asked the bumbler crossly.

"If ee wanted to go witfi her, thee should have gone when thee had the chance! Why will'ee cast thy sad houken's eyes on me now?"

Oy looked at him a moment longer, and Roland saw that he had hurt the little fellow's feelings; ridiculous but true. Oy walked away, little squiggle of tail drooping. Roland felt like calling him back, but that would have been more ridiculous yet, would it not? What plan did he have? To apologize to a billybumbler?

He felt angry and ill at ease with himself, feelings he had never suffered before hauling Eddie, Susannah, and Jake from America-side into his life. Before they'd come he'd felt almost nothing, and while that was a narrow way to live, in some ways it wasn't so bad; at least you didn't waste time wondering if you should apologize to animals for taking a high tone to them, by the gods.

Roland hunkered by the rose, leaning into the soothing power of its song and the blaze of light-healthy light-from its center. Then Patrick hooted at him, gesturing for Roland to move away so he could see it and draw it. This added to Roland's sense of dislocation and annoyance, but he moved back without a word of protest. He had, after all, asked Patrick to draw it, hadn't he? He thought of how, if Susannah had been here, their eyes would have met with amused understanding, as the eyes of parents do over the antics of a small child. But she wasn't here, of course; she'd been the last of them and now she was gone, too.

"All right, can'ee see howgit rosen-gaff a tweakit better?" he asked, striving to sound comic and only sounding cross-cross and tired.

Patrick, at least, didn't react to the harshness in the gunslinger's tone; probably didn't even ken what I said, Roland thought.

The mute boy sat with his ankles crossed and his pad balanced on his thighs, his half-finished plate of food set off to one side.

"Don't get so busy you forget to eat that," Roland said. 'You mind me, now." He got another distracted nod for his pains and gave up. "I'm going to snooze, Patrick. It'll be a long afternoon."

And an even longer night, he added to himself... and yet he had the same consolation as Mordred: tonight would likely be the last. He didn't know for sure what waited for him in the Dark Tower at the end of the field of roses, but even if he managed to put paid to the Crimson King, he felt quite sure that this was his last march. He didn't believe he would ever leave Can'-Ka No Rey, and that was all right. He was very tired. And, despite the power of the rose, sad.

Roland of Gilead put an arm over his eyes and was asleep at once.

FOUR

He didn't sleep for long before Patrick woke him with a child's enthusiasm to show him the first picture of the rose he'd drawn-the sun suggested no more than ten minutes had passed, fifteen at most.

Like all of his drawings, this one had a queer power. Patrick had captured the rose almost to the life, even though he had nothing but a pencil to work with. Still, Roland would much have preferred another hour's sleep to this exercise in art appreciation. He nodded his approval, though-no more grouch and grump in the presence of such a lovely thing, he promised himself-and Patrick smiled, happy even with so little.

He tossed back the sheet and began drawing die rose again.

One picture for each of them, just as Roland had asked.

Roland could have slept again, but what was the point?

The mute boy would be done with the second picture in a matter of minutes and would only wake him again. He went to Oy instead, and stroked die bumbler's dense fur, something he rarely did.

"I'm sorry I spoke rough to'ee, fella," Roland said. "Will you not set me on with a word?"

But Oy would not.

Fifteen minutes later, Roland re-packed the few things he'd taken out of the cart, spat into his palms, and hoisted the handles again. The cart was lighter now, had to be, but it felt heavier.

Of course it's heavier, he thought. It's got my grief in it. I pull it along with me everywhere I go, so I do.

Soon Ho Fat II had Patrick Danville in it, as well. He crawled up, made himself a litde nest, and fell asleep almost at once. Roland plodded on, head down, shadow growing longer at his heels. Oy walked beside him.

One more night, the gunslinger thought. One more night, one more day to follow, and then it's done. One way or t' other.

He let the pulse of the Tower and its many singing voices fill his head and lighten his heels... at least a little. There were more roses now, dozens scattered on either side of the road and brightening the otherwise dull countryside. A few were growing in the road itself and he was careful to detour around them. Tired though he might be, he would not crush a single one, or roll a wheel over a single fallen petal.

FIVE

He stopped for the night while the sun was still well above the horizon, too weary to go farther even though there would be at least another two hours of daylight. Here was a stream that had gone dry, but in its bed grew a riot of those beautiful wild roses. Their songs didn't diminish his weariness, but they revived his spirit to some extent. He thought this was true for Patrick and Oy, as well, and that was good. When Patrick had awakened he'd looked around eagerly at first. Then his face had darkened, and Roland knew he was realizing all over again that Susannah was gone. The boy had cried a little then, but perhaps there would be no crying here.

There was a grove of cottonwood trees on the bank-at least the gunslinger thought they were cottonwoods-but they had died when the stream from which their roots drank had disappeared. Now their branches were only bony, leafless snarls against the sky. In their silhouettes he could make out the number nineteen over and over again, in both the figures of Susannah's world and those of his own. In one place the branches seemed to clearly spell the word CHASSTT against the deepening sky.

Before making a fire and cooking them an early supper-canned goods from Dandelo's pantry would do well enough tonight, he reckoned-Roland went into the dry streambed and smelled the roses, strolling slowly among the dead trees and listening to their song. Both the smell and the sound were refreshing.

Feeling a little better, he gathered wood from beneath the trees (snapping off a few of the lower branches for good measure, leaving dry, splintered stumps that reminded him a little of Patrick's pencils) and piled kindling in the center. Then he struck a light, speaking the old catechism almost without hearing it: "Spark-a-dark, who's my sire? Will I lay me? Will I stay me? Bless this camp with fire."

While he waited for the fire to first grow and then die down to a bed of rosy embers, Roland took out the watch he had been given in New York. Yesterday it had stopped, although he had been assured the battery that ran it would last for fifty years.

Now, as late afternoon faded to evening, die hands had very slowly begun to move backward.

He looked at this for a little while, fascinated, then closed the cover and looked at the siguls inscribed there: key and rose and Tower. A faint and eldritch blue light had begun to gleam from the windows that spiraled upward.

They didn't know it would do that, he thought, and then put the watch carefully back in his lefthand front pocket, checking first (as he always did) that there was no hole for it to fall through. Then he cooked. He and Patrick ate well.

Oy would touch not a single bite.

SIX

Other than the night he had spent in palaver with the man in black-the night during which Walter had read a bleak fortune from an undoubtedly stacked deck-those twelve hours of dark by the dry stream were the longest of Roland's life. The weariness settled over him ever deeper and darker, until it felt like a cloak of stones. Old faces and old places marched in front of his heavy eyes: Susan, riding hellbent across the Drop with her blond hair flying out behind; Cuthbert running down the side of Jericho Hill in much the same fashion, screaming and laughing; Alain Johns raising a glass in a toast; Eddie and Jake wrestiing in the grass, yelling, while Oy danced around them, barking.

Mordred was somewhere out there, and close, yet again and again Roland found himself drifting toward sleep. Each time he jerked himself awake, staring around wildly into the dark, he knew he had come nearer to the edge of unconsciousness.

Each time he expected to see the spider with the red mark on its belly bearing down on him and saw nothing but the hobs, dancing orange in the distance. Heard nothing but the sough of die wind.

But he waits. He bides. And if I sleep-when I 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 goldringed 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 you dare 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 ivon'tfall 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 swifdy 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, resetding 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 mses 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 diere 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-"

There he was, twisting in the spider's grip. Bodi 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 thovight 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 legjoined his body, although the steely brisdes 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 is the 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 of deja 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 were his 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 litde 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 die 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 ihis-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 let you pass! 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. /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 billybumbler.

What hurt most was remembering how unpleasantly he had spoken to Oy the day before. Ifee 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 was drawing him! Sitting beneath the cottonwoodjust 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 halfgone 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 to why, 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 it was 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 midmorning they had begun to cover the last few miles on the long road which led to the Dark Tower.