Stephen King – The Dark Tower

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,

resettling 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

roses 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 there 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—”

Therehe was, twisting in the spider’s grip. Both 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 thought 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 leg joined his body, although the steely bristles 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 isthe 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 ofdéjà 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