Stephen King – The Dark Tower

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 leastsome

nourishment, he would be too weak to follow them. And hemust 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 the 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 terrible-nastyawful Blackbird Mommy who

had been both preg and not-preg 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 thePrim 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 food-poisoning.

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,

actualhorse or not, Lippy (probably named after another, and better-known, 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 leastlooked 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 thePrim …that being had

finally arrived as a naïve and bad-hearted 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, buthe 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 gateway,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 they? 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.