Stephen King – The Dark Tower

before him and put a brief, dry kiss on Eddie’s lips. “I love you, Eddie,” he said, and

outside in the ruin that was Thunderclap, a desert wind arose, carrying gritty poisoned dust.

“Why…I love you, too,” Eddie said. It was surprised out of him. “What’s wrong? And

don’t tell me nothing is, because I feel it.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Roland said, smiling, but Jake had never heard the gunslinger sound

so sad. It terrified him. “It’s only ka-shume, and it comes to every ka-tet that ever was…but now, while we are whole, we share our water. We share our khef. ’Tis a jolly thing to do.”

He looked at Susannah.

“Do you call me dinh?”

“Yes, Roland, I call you dinh.” She looked very pale, but perhaps it was only the white

light from the gas lanterns.

“Will you share khef with me, and drink this water?”

“With pleasure,” said she, and took up the plastic cup.

“Drink, bondswoman.”

She drank, her grave dark eyes never leaving his. She thought of the voices she’d heard in

her dream of the Oxford jail-cell: this one dead, that one dead, t’other one dead; O

Discordia, and the shadows grow deeper.

Roland kissed her mouth. “I love you, Susannah.”

“I love you, too.”

The gunslinger turned to Jake. “Do you call me dinh?”

“Yes,” Jake said. There was no question abouthis pallor; even his lips were ashy.

“Ka-shume means death, doesn’t it? Which one of us will it be?”

“I know not,” Roland said, “and the shadow may yet lift from us, for the wheel’s still in

spin. Did you not feel ka-shume when you and Callahan went into the place of the

vampires?”

“Yes.”

“Ka-shume for both?”

“Yes.”

“Yet here you are. Our ka-tet is strong, and has survived many dangers. It may survive this

one, too.”

“But I feel—”

“Yes,” Roland said. His voice was kind, but that awful look was in his eyes. The look that

was beyond mere sadness, the one that said this would be whatever it was, but the Tower

was beyond, the Dark Tower was beyond and it was there that he dwelt, heart and soul, ka

and khef. “Yes, I feel it, too. So do we all. Which is why we take water, which is to say

fellowship, one with the other. Will you share khef with me, and share this water?”

“Yes.”

“Drink, bondsman.”

Jake did. Then, before Roland could kiss him, he dropped the cup, flung his arms about the

gunslinger’s neck, and whispered fiercely into his ear: “Roland, I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said, and released him. Outside, the wind gusted again. Jake waited

for something to howl—perhaps in triumph—but nothing did.

Smiling, Roland turned to the billy-bumbler.

“Oy of Mid-World, do you call me dinh?”

“Dinh!” Oy said.

“Will you share khef with me, and this water?”

“Khef! Wat’!”

“Drink, bondsman.”

Oy inserted his snout into his plastic cup—an act of some delicacy—and lapped until the

water was gone. Then he looked up expectantly. There were beads of Perrier on his

whiskers.

“Oy, I love you,” Roland said, and leaned his face within range of the bumbler’s sharp

teeth. Oy licked his cheek a single time, then poked his snout back into the glass, hoping for a missed drop or two.

Roland put out his hands. Jake took one and Susannah the other. Soon they were all

linked.Like drunks at the end of an A.A. meeting, Eddie thought.

“We are ka-tet,” Roland said. “We are one from many. We have shared our water as we

have shared our lives and our quest. If one should fall, that one will not be lost, for we are one and will not forget, even in death.”

They held hands a moment longer. Roland was the first to let go.

“What’s your plan?” Susannah asked him. She didn’t call him sugar; never called him that

or any other endearment ever again, so far as Jake was aware. “Will you tell us?”

Roland nodded toward the Wollensak tape recorder, still sitting on the barrel. “Perhaps we

should listen to that first,” he said. “I do have a plan of sorts, but what Brautigan has to say might help with some of the details.”

Five

Night in Thunderclap is the very definition of darkness: no moon, no stars. Yet if we were

to stand outside the cave where Roland and his tet have just shared khef and will now listen

to the tapes Ted Brautigan has left them, we’d see two red coals floating in that

wind-driven darkness. If we were to climb the path up the side of Steek-Tete toward those

floating coals (a dangerous proposition in the dark), we’d eventually come upon a

seven-legged spider now crouched over the queerly deflated body of a mutie coyote. This

can-toi-tete was a literally misbegotten thing in life, with the stub of a fifth leg jutting from its chest and a jellylike mass of flesh hanging down between its rear legs like a deformed

udder, but its flesh nourishes Mordred, and its blood—taken in a series of long, steaming

gulps—is as sweet as a dessert wine. There are, in truth, all sorts of things to eat over here.

Mordred has no friends to lift him from place to place via the seven-league boots of

teleportation, but he found his journey from Thunderclap Station to Steek-Tete far from

arduous.

He has overheard enough to be sure of what his father is planning: a surprise attack on the

facility below. They’re badly outnumbered, but Roland’s band of shooters is fiercely

devoted to him, and surprise is ever a powerful weapon.

And gunslingers are what Jake would callfou, crazy when their blood is up, and afraid of

nothing. Such insanity is an even more powerful weapon.

Mordred was born with a fair amount of inbred knowledge, it seems. He knows, for

instance, that his Red Father, possessed of such information as Mordred now has, would

have sent word of the gunslinger’s presence at once to the Devar-Toi’s Master or Security

Chief. And then, sometime later tonight, the ka-tet out of Mid-World would have

foundthemselves ambushed. Killed in their sleep, mayhap, thus allowing the Breakers to

continue the King’s work. Mordred wasn’t born with a knowledge of that work, but he’s

capable of logic and his ears are sharp. He now understands what the gunslingers are about:

they have come here to break the Breakers.

He could stop it, true, but Mordred feels no interest in his Red Father’s plans or ambitions.

What he most truly enjoys, he’s discovering, is the bitter loneliness ofoutside . Of watching with the cold interest of a child watching life and death and war and peace through the glass wall of the antfarm on his bureau.

Would he let yon ki’-dam actually kill his White Father? Oh, probably not. Mordred is

reserving that pleasure for himself, and he has his reasons; already he has his reasons. But

as for the others—the young man, the shor’-leg woman, the kid—yes, if ki’-dam Prentiss

gets the upper hand, by all means let him kill any or all three of them. As for Mordred

Deschain, he will let the game play out straight. He will watch. He will listen. He will hear the screams and smell the burning and watch the blood soak into the ground. And then, if

he judges that Roland won’t win his throw, he, Mordred, will step in. On behalf of the

Crimson King, if it seems like a good idea, but really on his own behalf, and for his own

reason, which is really quite simple:Mordred’s a-hungry.

And if Roland and his ka-tet should win their throw? Win and press on to the Tower?

Mordred doesn’t really think it will happen, for he is in his own strange way a member of

their ka-tet, he shares their khef and feels what they do. He feels the impending break of

their fellowship.

Ka-shume!Mordred thinks, smiling. There’s a single eye left in the desert-dog’s face. One

of the hairy black spider-legs caresses it and then plucks it out. Mordred eats it like a grape, then turns back to where the white light of the gas-lanterns spills around the corners of the blanket Roland has hung across the cave’s mouth.

Could he go down closer? Close enough to listen?

Mordred thinks he could, especially with the rising wind to mask the sound of his

movements. An exciting idea.

He scutters down the rocky slope toward the errant sparks of light, toward the murmur of

the voice from the tape recorder and the thoughts of those listening: his brothers, his

sister-mother, the pet billy, and, of course, overseeing them all, Big White Ka-Daddy.

Mordred creeps as close as he dares and then crouches in the cold and windy dark,

miserable and enjoying his misery, dreaming his outside dreams. Inside, beyond the

blanket, is light. Let them have it, if they like; for now let there be light. Eventually he, Mordred, will put it out. And in the darkness, he will have his pleasure.