The Dark Tower

There he was, twisting in the spider’s grip. Bodi 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 thovight 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 legjoined his body, although the steely brisdes 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 is the 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 of deja 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 hung, suspended and limp, above Patrick’s head.

Mordred came at Roland without a pause, but his charge was a slow, shambling thing; one of his legs had been shot away only minutes after his birth, and now another hung limp and broken, its pincers jerking spasmodically as they dragged on the grass.

Roland’s eye had never been clearer, the chill that surrounded him at moments like this never deeper. He saw the white node and the blue bombardier’s eyes that were his eyes. He saw the face of his only son peering over the back of the abomination and then it was gone in a spray of blood as his first bullet tore it off. The spider reared up, legs clashing at the black and star-shot sky. Roland’s next two bullets went into its revealed belly and exited through the back, pulling dark sprays of liquid with it.

The spider slewed to one side, perhaps trying to run away, but its remaining legs would not support it. Mordred Deschain fell into the fire, casting up a flume of red and orange sparks. It writhed in the embers, the bristles on its belly beginning to burn, and Roland, grinning bitterly, shot it again. The dying spider rolled out of the now scattered fire on its back, its remaining legs twitching together in a knot and then spreading apart. One fell back into the fire and began to burn. The smell was atrocious.

Roland started forward, meaning to stamp out the litde fires the scattered embers had started in the grass, and then a howl of outraged fury rose in his head.

My son! My only son! You ‘ve murdered him!

"He was mine, too," Roland said, looking at die smoldering monstrosity. He could own the truth. Yes, he could do that much.

Come then! Come, son-killer, and look at your Tower, but know ihis-you’ll die of old age at the edge of the Can’-Ka before you ever so much as touch its door! I will never let you pass! Todash space itself will pass away before I let you pass! Murderer! Murderer of your mother, murderer of your friends-aye, every one, for Susannah lies dead with her throat cut on the other side of the door you sent her through-and now murderer of your own son!

"Who sent him to me?" Roland asked the voice in his head.

"Who sent yonder child-for that’s what he is, inside that black skin-to his death, ye red boggart?"

To this there was no answer, so Roland re-holstered his gun and put out the patches of fire before they could spread.

He thought of what the voice had said about Susannah, decided he didn’t believe it. She might be dead, aye, might be, but he thought Mordred’s Red Father knew for sure no more than Roland himself did.

The gunslinger let that thought go and went to the tree, where the last of his ka-tet hung, impaled… but still alive.

The gold-ringed eyes looked at Roland with what might almost have been weary amusement.

"Oy," Roland said, stretching out his hand, knowing it might be bitten and not caring in the least. He supposed that part of him-and not a small one, either-wanted to be bitten.

"Oy, we all say thank you. /say thank you, Oy."

The bumbler did not bite, and spoke but one word. "Olan,"

said he. Then he sighed, licked the gunslinger’s hand a single time, hung his head down, and died.

ELEVEN

As dawn strengthened into the clear light of morning, Patrick came hesitantly to where the gunslinger sat in the dry streambed, amid the roses, with Oy’s body spread across his lap like a stole.

The young man made a soft, interrogative hooting sound.

"Not now, Patrick," Roland said absently, stroking Oy’s fur.

It was dense but smooth to the touch. He found it hard to believe that the creature beneath it had gone, in spite of the stiffening muscles and the tangled places where the blood had now clotted. He combed these smooth with his fingers as best he could. "Not now. We have all the livelong day to get there, and we’ll do fine."

No, there was no need to hurry; no reason why he should not leisurely mourn the last of his dead. There had been no doubt in the old King’s voice when he had promised that Roland should die of old age before he so much as touched the door in the Tower’s base. They would go, of course, and Roland would study the terrain, but he knew even now that his idea of coming to the Tower on the old monster’s blind side and then working his way around was not an idea at all, but a fool’s hope. There had been no doubt in the old villain’s voice; no doubt hiding behind it, either.

And for the time being, none of that mattered. Here was another one he had killed, and if there was consolation to be had, it was this: Oy would be the last. Now he was alone again except for Patrick, and Roland had an idea Patrick was immune to the terrible germ the gunslinger carried, for he had never been ka-tet to begin with.

I only kill my family, Roland thought, stroking the dead billybumbler.

What hurt most was remembering how unpleasantly he had spoken to Oy the day before. Ifee wanted to go with her, thee should have gone when thee had thy chance!

Had he stayed because he knew that Roland would need him? That when push came down to shove (it was Eddie’s phrase, of course), Patrick would fail?

Why will’ee cast thy sad houken ‘s eyes on me now?

Because he had known it was to be his last day, and his dying would be hard?

"I think you knew both things," Roland said, and closed his eyes so he could feel the fur beneath his hands better. "I’m so sorry I spoke to’ee so-would give the fingers on my good left hand if I could take the words back. So I would, every one, say true."

But here as in the Keystone World, time only ran one way.

Done was done. There would be no taking back.

Roland would have said there was no anger left, that every bit of it had been burned away, but when he felt the tingling all over his skin and understood what it meant, he felt fresh fury rise in his heart. And he felt the coldness settle into his tired but still talented hands.

Patrick was drawing him! Sitting beneath the cottonwoodjust as if a brave little creature worth ten of him-no, a hundred!-hadn’t died in that very tree, and for both of them.

It’s his way, Susannah spoke up calmly and gently from deep in his mind. It’s all he has, everything else has been taken from him-his home world as well as his mother and his tongue and whatever brains he might once have had. He’s mourning, too, Roland.

He’s frightened, too. This is the only way he has of soothing himself.