Stephen King – The Dark Tower

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 were-creature, 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. “Havethe 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. Itried .”

“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 wasfine 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.

Yetnot 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.”