The Dark Tower (Page 147)

Undoubtedly all true. But the truth of it actually fed his rage instead of damping it down. He put his remaining gun aside (it lay gleaming between two of the singing roses) because having it close to hand wouldn’t do, no, not in his current mood.

Then he rose to his feet, meaning to give Patrick the scolding of his life, if for no other reason than it would make Roland feel a little bit better himself. He could already hear the first words:

Do you enjoy drawing those who saved your mostly worthless life, stupid boy? Does it cheer your heart?

He was opening his mouth to begin when Patrick put his pencil down and seized his new toy, instead. The eraser was halfgone now, and there were no others; as well as Roland’s gun,

Susannah had taken the little pink nubbins with her, probably for no other reason than that she’d been carrying the jar in her pocket and her mind had been studying other, more important, matters. Patrick poised the eraser over his drawing, then looked up-perhaps to make sure he really wanted to erase at all-and saw the gunslinger standing in the streambed and frowning at him. Patrick knew immediately that Roland was angry, although he probably had no idea under heaven as to why, and his face cramped with fear and unhappiness. Roland saw him now as Dandelo must have seen him time and time again, and his anger collapsed at the thought. He would not have Patrick fear him-for Susannah’s sake if not his own, he would not have Patrick fear him.

And discovered that it was for his own sake, after all.

Why not kill him, then? asked the sly, pulsing voice in his head. Kill him and put him out of his misery, if thee feels so tender toward him? He and the bumbler can enter the clearing together. They can make a place there for you, gunslinger.

Roland shook his head and tried to smile. "Nay, Patrick, son of Sonia," he said (for that was how Bill the robot had called the boy). "Nay, I was wrong-again-and will not scold thee. But…"

He walked to where Patrick was sitting. Patrick cringed away from him with a doglike, placatory smile that made Roland angry all over again, but he quashed the emotion easily enough this time. Patrick had loved Oy too, and this was the only way he had of dealing with his sorrow.

Little that mattered to Roland now.

He reached down and gently plucked the eraser out of the boy’s fingers. Patrick looked at him questioningly, then reached out his empty hand, asking with his eyes that the wonderful

(and useful) new toy be given back.

"Nay," Roland said, as gently as he could. ‘You made do for the gods only know how many years without ever knowing such things existed; you can make do the rest of this one day, I think. Mayhap there’ll be something for you to draw-and then undraw-later on. Do’ee ken, Patrick?"

Patrick did not, but once the eraser was safely deposited in Roland’s pocket along with the watch, he seemed to forget about it and just went back to his drawing.

"Put thy picture aside for a little, too," Roland told him.

Patrick did so without argument. He pointed first to the cart, then to the Tower Road, and made his interrogative hooting sound.

"Aye," Roland said, "but first we should see what Mordred had for gunna-there may be something useful there-and bury our friend. Will’ee help me see Oy into the ground,

Patrick?"

Patrick was willing, and the burial didn’t take long; the body was far smaller than the heart it had held. By midmorning they had begun to cover the last few miles on the long road which led to the Dark Tower.

Chapter III:THE CRIMSON KING AND THE DARK TOWER

ONE

The road and the tale have both been long, would you not say so? The trip has been long and the cost has been high… but no great thing was ever attained easily. A long tale, like a tall Tower, must be built a stone at a time. Now, however, as the end draws closer, you must mark yon two travelers walking toward us with great care. The older man-he with the tanned, lined face and the gun on his hip-is pulling the cart they call Ho Fat II.

The younger one-he with the oversized drawing pad tucked under his arm that makes him look like a student in days of old-is walking along beside it. They are climbing a long, gently upsloping hill not much different from hundreds of others they have climbed. The overgrown road they follow is lined on either side with the remains of rock walls; wild roses grow in amiable profusion amid die tumbles of fieldstone. In the open, brush-dotted land beyond these fallen walls are strange stone edifices. Some look like the ruins of castles; others have the appearance of Egyptian obelisks; a few are clearly Speaking Rings of the sort where demons may be summoned; one ancient ruin of stone pillars and plinths has the look of Stonehenge.

One almost expects to see hooded Druids gathered in the center of that great circle, perhaps casting die runes, but the keepers of these monuments, these precursors of the Great Monument, are all gone. Only small herds of bannock graze where once they worshipped.

Never mind. It’s not old ruins we’ve come to observe near the end of our long journey, but the old gunslinger pulling the handles of the cart. We stand at the crest of the hill and wait as he comes toward us. He comes. And comes. Relendess as ever, a man who always learns to speak the language of the land (at least some of it) and die customs of the country; he is still a man who would straighten pictures in strange hotel rooms. Much about him has changed, but not that. He crests the hill, so close to us now that we can smell the sour tang of his sweat. He looks up, a quick and automatic glance he shoots first ahead and then to either side as he tops any hill-Always conyer vantagewas Cort’s rule, and the last of his pupils has still not forgotten it. He looks up without interest, looks down… and stops. After a moment of staring at the broken, weed-infested paving of the road, he looks up again, more slowly this time. Much more slowly. As if in dread of what he thinks he has seen.

And it’s here we mustjoin him-sink into him-although how we will ever con the vantage of Roland’s heart at such a moment as this, when the single-minded goal of his lifetime at last comes in sight, is more than this poor excuse for a storyman can ever tell. Some moments are beyond imagination.

Roland glanced up quickly as he topped the hill, not because he expected trouble but because the habit was too deeply ingrained to break. Always con yer vantage, Cort had told them, drilling it into their heads from the time when they had been litde more than babbies. He looked back down at the road-it was becoming more and more difficult to swerve among the roses without crushing any, although he had managed the trick so far-and then, belatedly, realized what he had just seen.

What you thought you saw, Roland told himself, still looking down at the road. It’s probably just another of the strange ruins we’ve been passing ever since we started moving again.

But even then Roland knew it wasn’t so. What he’d seen was not to either side of the Tower Road, but dead ahead.

He looked up again, hearing his neck creak like hinges in an old door, and there, still miles ahead but now visible on the horizon, real as roses, was the top of the Dark Tower. That which he had seen in a thousand dreams he now saw with his living eyes.

Sixty or eighty yards ahead, the road rose to a higher hill with an ancient Speaking Ring moldering in the ivy and honeysuckle on one side and a grove of ironwood trees on the other. At the center of this near horizon, the black shape rose in the near distance, blotting out a tiny portion of the blue sky.

Patrick came to a stop beside Roland and made one of his hooting sounds.

"Do you see it?" Roland asked. His voice was dusty, cracked with amazement. Then, before Patrick could answer, the gunslinger pointed to what the boy wore around his neck. In the end, the binoculars had been the only item in Mordred’s little bit of gunna worth taking.

"Give them over, Pat."

Patrick did, willingly enough. Roland raised them to his eyes, made a minute adjustment to the knurled focus knob, and then caught his breath as the top of the Tower sprang into view, seemingly close enough to touch. How much was visible over the horizon? How much was he looking at? Twenty feet? Perhaps as much as fifty? He didn’t know, but he could see at least three of the narrow slit-windows which ascended the Tower’s barrel in a spiral, and he could see the oriel window at the top, its many colors blazing in the spring sunshine, the black center seeming to peer back down the binoculars at him like the very Eye of Todash.

Patrick hooted and held out a hand for the binoculars. He wanted his own look, and Roland handed the glasses over without a murmur. He felt light-headed, not really there. It occurred to him that he had sometimes felt like that in the weeks before his battle with Cort, as though he were a dream or a moonbeam.

He had sensed something coming, some vast change, and that was what he felt now.

Yonder it is, he thought. Yonder is my destiny, the end of my life’s road. And yet my heart still beats (a little faster than before, ’tis true), my blood still courses, and no doubt when I bend over to grasp the handies of this becurst cart my back will groan and I may pass a little gas.

Nothing at all has changed.

He waited for the disappointment this thought surely presaged-the letdown. It didn’t come. What he felt instead was a queer, soaring brightness that seemed to begin in his mind and then spread to his muscles. For the first time since setting out at mid-morning, thoughts of Oy and Susannah left his mind.

He felt free.

Patrick lowered the binoculars. When he turned to Roland, his face was excited. He pointed to the black thumb jutting above the horizon and hooted.