Cort was dead. Of poison, some said. Two yearsafter his death, the final bloody civil war
had begun. The red slaughter had reached the last bastion of civilization, light,and sanity,
and had taken away what all of them had assumedwas so strong with the casual ease of a
wave taking a child’scastle of sand.
So he was the last, and perhaps he had survived becausethe dark romance in his nature was
overset by his practicalityand simplicity. He understood that only three things
mattered:mortality, ka, and the Tower.
Those were enough things to think about.
Eddie finished his tale around four o’clock on the thirdday of their northward journey up
the featureless beach. Thebeach itself never seemed to change. If a sign of progress
waswanted, it could only be obtained by looking left, to the east.There the jagged peaks of the mountains had begun to soften and slump a bit. It was possible that if they went north
far enough, the mountains would become rolling hills.
With his story told, Eddie lapsed into silence and they walked without speaking for a half
an hour or longer. Eddiekept stealing little glances at him. Roland knew Eddie wasn’taware
that he was picking these glances up; he was still too much in himself. Roland also knew
what Eddie was waitingfor: a response. Some kind of response. Any kind. Twice
Eddieopened his mouth only to close it again. Finally he asked whatthe gunslinger had
known he would ask.
“So? What do you think?”
“I think you’re here.”
Eddie stopped, fisted hands planted on his hips. “That’sall?That’s it?”
“That’s all I know,” the gunslinger replied. His missingfingers and toe throbbed and itched.
He wished for some of theastinfrom Eddie’s world.
“You don’t have any opinion on what the hell it allmeans?”
The gunslinger might have held up his subtracted righthand and said, Think about what
this means, you silly idiot, but it no more crossed his mind to say this than it had to askwhy it was Eddie, out of all the people in all the universes thatmight exist. “It’s ka,” he said, facing Eddie patiently.
“What’s ka?” Eddie’s voice was truculent. “I never heardof it. Except if you say it twice you come out with the babyword for shit.”
“I don’t know about that,” the gunslinger said. “Here itmeans duty, or destiny, or, in the vulgate, a place you mustgo.”
Eddie managed to look dismayed, disgusted, and amused all at the same time. “Then say it
twice, Roland, because wordslike that sound like shit to this kid.”
The gunslinger shrugged. “I don’t discuss philosophy. Idon’t study history. All I know is
what’s past is past, and what’s ahead is ahead. The second is ka, and takes care of itself.”
“Yeah?” Eddie looked northward. “Well all I see ahead isabout nine billion miles of this same fucking beach. If that’s what’s ahead, ka and kaka are the same thing. We might haveenough good shells to pop five or six more of those lobsterdudes, but then we’re going
to be down to chucking rocks atthem. So where are we going?”
Roland did wonder briefly if this was a question Eddiehad ever thought to ask his brother, but to ask such a questionwould only be an invitation to a lot of meaningless argument.So
he only cocked a thumb northward and said, “There. Tobegin with.”
Eddie looked and saw nothing but the same reach of shell- and rock-studded gray shingle.
He looked back atRoland, about to scoff, saw the serene certainty on his face, andlooked
again. He squinted. He shielded the right side of his face from the westering sun with his
right hand. He wanteddesperately to see something, anything, shit, even a mirage would do, but there was nothing.
“Crap on me all you want to,” Eddie said slowly, “but Isay it’s a goddam mean trick. I put my life on the line for you atBalazar’s.”
“I know you did.” The gunslinger smiled—a rarity that lit his face like a momentary flash of sunlight on a dismalluring day. “That’s why I’ve done nothing but square-dealyou, Eddie.
It’s there. I saw it an hour ago. At first I thought it was only a mirage or wishful thinking,
but it’s there, allright.”
Eddie looked again, looked until water ran from thecorners of his eyes. At last he said, “I
don’t see anything upahead but more beach. And I got twenty-twenty vision.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means if there was something there to see, I’d see it!”But Eddie wondered. Wondered how much further than hisown the gunslinger’s blue bullshooter’s eyes could see. Maybea
little.
Maybe a lot.
“You’ll see it,” the gunslinger said.
“See what?”
“We won’t get there today, but if you see as well as you say,you’ll see it before the sun hits the water. Unless you just wantto stand here chin-jawing, that is.”
“Ka,”Eddie said in a musing voice.
Roland nodded. “Ka.”
“Kaka,”Eddie said, and laughed. “Come on, Roland.Let’s take a hike. And if I don’t see anything by the time the sunhits the water, you owe me a chicken dinner. Or a Big Mac.
Or anything that isn’t lobster.”
“Come on.”
They started walking again, and it was at least a full hourbefore the sun’s lower arc touched
the horizon when EddieDean began to see the shape in tin- distance—vague, shimmer- ing,
indefinable, but definitely something. Something new.
“Okay,” he said. “I see it. You must have eyes likeSuperman.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. You’ve got a really incredible case of cul- ture lag, you know it?”
“What?”
Eddie laughed. “Never mind. What is it?”
“You’ll see.” The gunslinger started walking againbefore Eddie could ask anything else.
Twenty minutes later Eddie thought he did see. Fifteenminutes after that he was sure. The
object on the beach wasstill two, maybe three miles away, but he knew what it was. A door,
of course. Another door.
Neither of them slept well that night, and they were upand walking an hour before the sun
cleared the eroding shapesof the mountains. They reached the door just as the morningsun’s
first rays, so sublime and so still, broke over them. Thoserays lighted their stubbly cheeks
like lamps. They made the gunslinger forty again, and Eddie no older than Roland had been
when he went out to fight Cort with his hawk David ashis weapon.
This door was exactly like the first, except for what waswrit upon it:
THE LADY OF SHADOWS
” So,” Eddie said softly, looking at the door which simplystood here with its hinges
grounded in some unknown jambbetween one world and another, one universe and another.
Itstood with its graven message, real as rock and strange asstarlight.
“So,” the gunslinger agreed.
“Ka.”
“Ka.”
“Here is where you draw the second of your three?”
“It seems so.”
The gunslinger knew what was in Eddie’s mind before Eddie knew it himself. He saw
Eddie make his move beforeEddie knew he was moving. He could have turned and
brokenEddie’s arm in two places before Eddie knew it was happen- ing, but he made no
move. He let Eddie snake the revolver from his right holster. It was the first time in his life
he hadallowed one of his weapons to be taken from him without anoffer of that weapon having first been made. Yet he made nomove to stop it. He turned and looked at Eddie
equably, evenmildly.
Eddie’s face was livid, strained. His eyes showed stareywhites all the way around the irises.
He held the heavy revolverin both hands and still the muzzle rambled from side to
side,centering, moving off, centering again and then moving offagain.
“Open it,” he said.
“You’re being foolish,” the gunslinger said in the samemild voice. “Neither of us has any idea where that door goes. Itneedn’t open on your universe, let alone upon your world.
Forall either of us know, the Lady of Shadows might have eighteyes and nine arms, like
Suvia. Even if it does open on yourworld, it might be on a time long before you were born
or longafter you would have died.”
Eddie smiled tightly. “Tell you what, Monty: I’m morethan willing to trade the rubber
chicken and the shitty seasidevacation for what’s behind Door #2.”
“I don’t understand y—”
“I know you don’t. It doesn’t matter. Just open thefucker.”
The gunslinger shook his head.
They stood in the dawn, the door casting its slantedshadow toward the ebbing sea.
“Openit!”Eddie cried. “I’m going with you! Don’t you get it? I’m going with you! That doesn’t mean I won’t comeback. Maybe I will. I mean, probably I will. I guess I owe you
that much. You been square-John with me down the line, don’t think I’m not aware of the
fact. But while you get whoever this Shadow-Babe is, I’m gonna find the nearestChicken
Delight and pick me up some take-out. I think theThirty-Piece Family Pak should do for
starters.”
“You stay here.”
“You think I don’t mean it?” Eddie was shrill now, closeto the edge. The gunslinger could almost see him looking down into the drifty depths of his own damnation. Eddiethumbed