Stephen King – The Dark Tower

Patrick.

Nor would their deaths be long in coming.

“I’m sure,” said she.

“All right. Will you give me a kiss?”

She took him by the arm and pulled him down and put her lips on his. When she inhaled,

she took in the breath of a thousand years and ten thousand miles. And yes, she tasted

death.

But not for you, gunslinger,she thought.For others, but never for you. May I escape your

glammer, and may I do fine.

She was the one who broke their kiss.

“Can you open the door for me?” she asked.

Roland went to it, and took the knob in his hand, and the knob turned easily within his grip.

Cold air puffed out, strong enough to blow Patrick’s long hair back, and with it came a few

flakes of snow. She could see grass that was still green beneath light frost, and a path, and an iron fence. Voices were singing “What Child Is This,” just as in her dream.

It could be Central Park. Yes, itcould be; Central Park of some other world along the axis,

perhaps, and not the one she came from, but close enough so that in time she would know

no difference.

Or perhaps it was, as he said, a glammer.

Perhaps it was the todash darkness.

“It could be a trick,” he said, most certainly reading her mind.

“Lifeis a trick, love a glammer,” she replied. “Perhaps we’ll meet again, in the clearing at

the end of the path.”

“As you say so, let it be so,” he told her. He put out one leg, the rundown heel of his boot

planted in the earth, and bowed to her. Oy had begun to weep, but he sat firmly beside the

gunslinger’s left boot. “Goodbye, my dear.”

“Goodbye, Roland.” Then she faced ahead, took in a deep breath, and twisted the little

cart’s throttle. It rolled smoothly forward.

“Wait!” Roland cried, but she never turned, nor looked at him again. She rolled through the door. It slammed shut behind her at once with a flat, declamatory clap he knew all too

well, one he’d dreamed of ever since his long and feverish walk along the edge of the

Western Sea. The sound of the singing was gone and now there was only the lonely sound

of the prairie wind.

Roland of Gilead sat in front of the door, which already looked tired and unimportant. It

would never open again. He put his face in his hands. It occurred to him that if he had never loved them, he would never have felt so alone as this. Yet of all his many regrets, the

re-opening of his heart was not among them, even now.

Nineteen

Later—because there’s always a later, isn’t there?—he made breakfast and forced himself

to eat his share. Patrick ate heartily, then withdrew to do his necessary while Roland

packed up.

There was a third plate, and it was still full. “Oy?” Roland asked, tipping it toward the

billy-bumbler. “Will’ee not have at least a bite?”

Oy looked at the plate, then backed away two firm steps. Roland nodded and tossed away

the uneaten food, scattering it into the grass. Mayhap Mordred would come along in good

time, and find something to his liking.

At mid-morning they moved on, Roland pulling Ho Fat II and Patrick walking along

beside with his head hung low. And soon the beat of the Tower filled the gunslinger’s head

again. Very close now. That steady, pulsing power drove out all thoughts of Susannah, and

he was glad. He gave himself to the steady beating and let it sweep away all his thoughts

and all his sorrow.

Commala-come-come,sang the Dark Tower, now just over the

horizon.Commala-come-come, gunslinger may ya come.

Commala-come-Roland, the journey’s nearly done.

Chapter II:

Mordred

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 tothat?

Ah, 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 acoupleof 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. (Alittle harder,

anyway; how much trouble could a mute young man and a billy-bumbler 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 didnot want. Old

White Daddy was meant to behis . 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 behis 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 shekissed him. 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, boo-hoo, 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 furry 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