“You speak of Armageddon,” Callahan said in a low, troubled voice.
Roland shook his head, but not in disagreement. “I don’t know that word, Pere, but I’m
speaking of great death and great destruction, sure. And somewhere — along the Beam
connecting Fish to Rat, perhaps — that has now happened.”
“Are you positive this is true?” Rosa asked, low.
Roland nodded. He had been through this once before, when Gilead fell and civilization as he
then understood it had ended. When he had been cast loose to wander with Cuthbert and Alain
and Jamie and the few others of their ka-tet. One of the six Beams had broken then, and almost
certainly not the first.
“How many Beams remain to hold the Tower?” Callahan asked.
For the first time, Eddie seemed interested in something other than the fate of his lost wife. He was looking at Roland with what was almost attention. And why not? This was, after all, the
crucial question. All things serve the Beam, they said, and although the actual truth was that all things served the Tower, it was the Beams which held the Tower up. If they snapped —
“Two,” Roland said. “There have to be at least two, I’d say. The one running through Calla Bryn Sturgis and another. But God knows how long they’ll hold. Even without the Breakers
working on them, I doubt they’d hold for long. We have to hurry.”
Eddie had stiffened. “If you’re suggesting we go on without Suze — ”
Roland shook his head impatiently, as if to tell Eddie not to be a fool. “We can’t win through to the Tower without her. For all I know, we can’t win through without Mia’s chap. It’s in the
hands of ka, and there used to be a saying in my country. ‘Ka has no heart or mind.'”
“That one I can agree with,” Eddie said.
“We might have another problem,” Jake said.
Eddie frowned at him. “We don’t need another problem.”
“I know, but . . . what if the earthquake blocked the mouth of that cave? Or . . .”Jake hesitated, then reluctantly brought out what he was really afraid of. “Or knocked it down completely?”
Eddie reached out, took hold of Jake’s shirt, and bundled it into his fist. “Don’t say that. Don’t you even think that.”
Now they could hear voices from town. The folken would be gathering on the common again, Roland guessed. He further guessed that this day — and now this night — would be remembered
in Calla Bryn Sturgis for a thousand years. If the Tower stood, that was.
Eddie let go of Jake’s shirt and then pawed at the place he had grabbed, as if to erase the
wrinkles. He tried a smile that made him look feeble and old.
Roland turned to Callahan. “Will the Manni still turn up tomorrow? You know this bunch
better than I.”
Callahan shrugged. “Henchick’s a man of his word. Whether he can hold the others to his word after what just happened . . . that, Roland, I don’t know.”
“He better be able to,” Eddie said darkly. “He just better be.”
Roland of Gilead said, “Who’s for Watch Me?”
Eddie looked at him, unbelieving.
“We’re going to be up until morning light,” the gunslinger said. “We might as well pass the time.”
So they played Watch Me, and Rosalita won hand after hand, adding up their scores on a piece
of slate with no smile of triumph — with no expression at all that Jake could read. At least not at first. He was tempted to try the touch, but had decided that to use it for any but the strongest reasons was wrong. Using it to see behind Rosa’s poker face would be like watching her undress.
Or watching her and Roland make love.
Yet as the game went on and the northeast finally began to grow lighter, Jake guessed he knew
what she was thinking of after all, because it was what he was thinking of. On some level of their minds, all of them would be thinking of those last two Beams, from now until the end.
Waiting for one or both of them to snap. Whether it was them trailing Susannah or Rosa
cooking her dinner or even Ben Slightman, mourning his dead son out there on Vaughn
Eisenhart’s ranch, all of them would now be thinking of the same thing: only two left, and the
Breakers working against them night and day, eating into them, killing them.
How long before everything ended? And how would it end? Would they hear the vast rumble of those enormous slate-colored stones as they fell? Would the sky tear open like a flimsy piece of cloth, spilling out the monstrosities that lived in the todash darkness? Would there be time to
cry out? Would there be an afterlife, or would even Heaven and Hell be obliterated by the fall of the Dark Tower?
He looked at Roland and sent a thought, as clearly as he could: Roland, help us.
And one came back, filling his mind with cold comfort (ah, but comfort served cold was better
than no comfort at all): If I can.
“Watch Me,” said Rosalita, and laid down her cards. She had built Wands, the high run, and the card on top was Madame Death.
STAVE: Commala-come-come
There’s a young man with a gun.
Young man lost his honey
When she took it on the run.
RESPONSE: Commala-come-one!
She took it on the run!
Left her baby lonely but
Her baby ain’t done.
2nd STANZA
THE PERSISTENCE OF MAGIC
The Persistence of Magic
ONE
They needn’t have worried about the Manni-folk showing up. Henchick, dour as ever, appeared
at the town common, which had been the designated setting-out point, with forty men. He
assured Roland it would be enough to open the Unfound Door, if it could indeed be opened now
that what he called “the dark glass” was gone. The old man offered no word of apology for showing up with less than the promised number of men, but he kept tugging on his beard. Sometimes with both hands.
“Why does he do that, Pere, do you know?” Jake asked Callahan. Henchick’s troops were rolling eastward in a dozen bucka waggons. Behind these, drawn by a pair of albino asses with
freakishly long ears and fiery pink eyes, was a two-wheeled fly completely covered in white
duck. To Jake it looked like a big Jiffy-Pop container on wheels. Henchick rode upon this
contraption alone, gloomily yanking at his chin-whiskers.
“I think it means he’s embarrassed,” Callahan said.
“I don’t see why. I’m surprised so many showed up, after the Beamquake and all.”
“What he learned when the ground shook is mat some of his men were more afraid of that than of him. As far as Henchick’s concerned, it adds up to an unkept promise. Not just any unkept promise, either, but one he made to your dinh. He’s lost face.” And, without changing his tone of voice at all, tricking him into an answer he would not otherwise have given, Callahan asked: “Is she still alive, then, your molly?”
“Yes, but in ter — ” Jake began, then covered his mouth. He looked at Callahan accusingly.
Ahead of them, on the seat of the two-wheeled fly, Henchick looked around, startled, as if they had raised their voices in argument. Callahan wondered if everyone in this damned story had the touch but him.
It’s not a story. It’s not a story, it’s my life!
But it was hard to believe that, wasn’t it, when you’d seen yourself set in type as a major
character in a book with the word fiction on the copyright page. Doubleday and Company, 1975.
A book about vampires, yet, which everyone knew weren’t real. Except they had been. And, in at least some of the worlds adjacent to this one, still were.
“Don’t treat me like that,” Jake said. “Don’t trick me like that. Not if we’re all on the same side, Pere. Okay?”
“I’m sorry,” Callahan said. And then: “Cry pardon.”
Jake smiled wanly and stroked Oy, who was riding in the front pocket of his poncho.
“Is she — ”
The boy shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about her now, Pere. It’s best we not even think about her. 1 have a feeling — I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it’s strong — that something’s looking for her. If there is, it’s better it not overhear us. And it could.”
“Something . . .?”
Jake reached out and touched the kerchief Callahan wore around his neck, cowboy-style. It was red. Then he put a hand briefly over his left eye. For a moment Callahan didn’t understand, and then he did. The red eye. The Eye of the King.
He sat back on the seat of the waggon and said no more. Behind them, not talking, Roland and