Darktower 1 - The Gunslinger Read online

  She was turning black in the flames, her skin cracking open.

  “The boy!” She was screaming. “Roland, the boy!”

  He whirled, pulling his captors with him. The collar ripped at his neck and he heard the hitching, strangled sounds that were coming from his own throat. There was a sickish-sweet smell of barbecuing meat on the air.

  The boy was looking down at him from a window high above the courtyard, the same window where Susan, who had taught him to be a man, had once sat and sung the old songs; “Hey Jude” and “Ease on Down the Road” and “A Hundred Leagues to Ban-berry Cross. “He looked out from the window like the statue of an alabaster saint in a cathedral. His eyes were marble. A spike had been driven through fake ‘s forehead.

  The gunslinger felt the strangling ripping scream that signaled the beginning of his lunacy pull up from the root of his belly.

  “Nnnnnnnnnn —Roland grunted a cry as he felt the fire singe him. He

  sat bolt upright in the dark, still feeling the dream around him, strangling him like the collar he had worn. In his twist­ings and turnings he had thrown one hand against the dying coals of the fire. He put the hand to his face, feeling the dream flee, leaving only the stark picture of Jake, plaster-white, a saint for demons.

  “Nnnnnnnnnn —He glared around at the mystic darkness of the willow

  grove, both guns out and ready. His eyes were red loopholes in the last glow from the fire.

  “Nnnnnnnnn —Jake.

  The gunslinger was up and on the run. A bitter circle of moon had risen and he could follow the boy’s track in the dew. He ducked under the first of the willows, splashed

  through the spring, and legged up the far bank, skidding in the dampness (even now his body could relish it). Willow withes slapped at his face. The trees were thicker here, and the moon was blotted out Tree trunks rose in lurching shadows. The grass, now knee-high, slapped against him. Half rotted dead branches reached for his shins, his cojones. He paused for a moment, lifting his head and scenting at the air. A ghost of a breeze helped him. The boy did not smell good, of course; neither of them did. The gunslinger’s nostrils flared like those of an ape. The odor of sweat was faint, oily, unmistakable. He crashed over a deadfall of grass and bramble and downed branches, sprinted down a tunnel of overhanging willow and sumac. Moss struck his shoulders. Some clung in sighing gray tendrils.

  He clawed through a last barricade of willows and came to a clearing that looked up at the stars and the highest peak of the range, gleaming skull-white at an impossible altitude.

  There was a ring of tall, black stones which looked like some sort of surreal animal-trap in the moonlight In the center was a table of stone… an altar. Very old, rising out of the ground on a powerful arm of basalt

  The boy stood before it, trembling back and forth. His hands shook at his sides as if infused with static electricity. The gunslinger called his name sharply, and Jake responded with that inarticulate sound of negation. The faint smear of face, almost hidden by the boy’s left shoulder, looked both terrified and exalted. And there was something else.

  The gunslinger stepped inside the ring and Jake screamed, recoiling and throwing up his arms. Now his face could be seen clearly, and indexed. The gunslinger saw fear and terror warring with an almost excruciating grimace of pleasure.

  The gunslinger felt it touch him — the spirit of the

  oracle, the succubus. His loins were suddenly filled with rose light, a light that was soft yet hard. He felt his head twisting, his tongue thickening and becoming excruciatingly sensitive to even the spittle that coated it

  He did not think when he pulled the half-rotted jawbone from the pocket where he had carried it since he found it in the lair of the Speaking Demon at the way station. He did not think, but it did not frighten him to operate on pure instinct He held the jawbone’s frozen, prehistoric grin up in front of him, holding his other arm out stiffly, first and last fingers poked out in the ancient forked talisman, the ward against the evil eye.

  The current of sensuality was whipped away from him like a drape.

  Jake screamed again.

  The gunslinger walked to him, and held the jawbone in front of Jake’s warring eyes. A wet sound of agony. The boy tried to pull his gaze away, could not And suddenly both eyes rolled up to show the whites. Jake collapsed. His body struck the earth limply, one hand almost touching the altar. The gunslinger dropped to one knee and picked him up. He was amazingly light, as dehydrated as a November leaf from their long walk through the desert

  Around him Roland could feel the presence that dwelt in the circle of stones, whirring with a jealous anger — its prize had been taken from it When the gunslinger passed out of the circle, the sense of frustrated jealousy faded. He carried Jake back to their camp. By the time they got there, the boy’s twitching unconsciousness had become deep sleep. The gunslinger paused for a moment above the gray ruin of the fire. The moonlight on Jake’s face reminded him again of a church saint, alabaster purity all unknown. He suddenly hugged the boy, knowing that he loved him. And it seemed that he could almost feel the laughter from the man in black, someplace far above them.

  Jake was calling him; that was how he awoke. He had tied the boy firmly to one of the tough bushes that grew nearby, and the boy was hungry and upset By the sun, it was almost nine-thirty.

  “Why’d you tie me up?” Jake asked indignantly as the gunslinger loosened the thick knots in the blanket “I wasn’t going to run away!”

  “You did run away,” the gunslinger said, and the expression on Jake’s face made him smile. “I had to go out and get you. You were sleepwalking.”

  “I was?” Jake looked at him suspiciously.

  The gunslinger nodded and suddenly produced the jawbone. He held it in front of Jake’s face and Jake flinched away from it, raising his arm.

  “See?”

  Jake nodded, bewildered.

  “I have to go off for a while now. I may be gone the whole day. So listen to me, boy. It’s important If sunset comes and I’m not back — “

  Fear flashed on Jake’s face. “You’re leaving me!”

  The gunslinger only looked at him.

  “No,” Jake said after a moment “I guess you’re not.”

  “I want you to stay right here while I’m gone. And if you feel strange — funny in any way — you pick up this bone and hold it in your hands.”

  Hate and disgust crossed Jake’s face, mixed with bewilderment. “I couldn’t. I … I just couldn’t”

  “You can. You may have to. Especially after midday. It’s important. Dig?”

  “Why do you have to go away?” Jake burst out.

  “I just do.”

  The gunslinger caught another fascinating glimpse of the steel that lay under the boy’s surface, as enigmatic as the story he had told about coming from a city where the buildings were so tall they actually scraped the sky.

  “All right,” Jake said.

  The gunslinger laid the jawbone carefully on the ground next to the ruins of the fire, where it grinned up through the grass like some eroded fossil that has seen the light of day after a night of five thousand years. Jake would not look at it His face was pale and miserable. The gunslinger wondered if it would profit them for him to put the boy to sleep and question him, but he decided there would be little gain. He knew well enough that the spirit of the stone circle was surely a demon, and very likely an oracle as well. A demon with no shape, only a kind of unformed sexual glare with the eye of prophecy. He wondered sardonically if it might not be the soul of Sylvia Pittston, the giant woman whose religious huckstering had led to the final showdown in Tull… but knew it was not. The stones in the circle had been ancient, this particular demon’s territory staked out long before the earliest shade of prehistory. But the gunslinger knew the forms of speaking quite well and did not think the boy would have to use the jawbone mojo. The voice and mind of the oracle would be more than occupied with him. And the gunslinger needed to kn
ow things, in spite of the risk… and the risk was high. For both Jake and himself, he needed desperately to know.

  The gunslinger opened his tobacco poke and pawed through it, pushing the dry strands of leaf aside until he came to a minuscule object wrapped in a fragment of white paper. He hefted it in his hand, looking absently up at the sky. Then he unwrapped it and held the contents — a tiny white pill with edges that had been much worn with traveling — in his hand.

  Jake looked at it curiously. “What’s that?”

  The gunslinger uttered a short laugh. “The philosopher’s stone,” he said. “The story that Cort used to tell us was that the Old Gods pissed over the desert and made mescaline.”

  Jake only looked puzzled.

  “A drug,” the gunslinger said. “But not one that puts you to sleep. One that wakes you up all the way for a little while.”

  “Like LSD,” the boy agreed instantly and then looked puzzled.

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” Jake said. “It just popped out I think it came from… you know, before.”

  The gunslinger nodded, but he was doubtful. He had never heard of mescaline referred to as LSD, not even in Marten’s old books.

  “Will it hurt you?” Jake asked.

  “It never has,” the gunslinger said, conscious of the evasion.

  “I don’t like it”

  “Never mind.”

  The gunslinger squatted in front of the waterskin, took a mouthful, and swallowed the pill. As always, he felt an immediate reaction in his mouth; it seemed overloaded with saliva. He sat down before the dead fire.

  “When does something happen to you?” Jake asked.

  “Not for a little while. Be quiet.”

  So Jake was quiet, watching with open suspicion as the gunslinger went calmly about the ritual of cleaning his guns.

  He reholstered them and said, “Your shirt, Jake. Take it off and give it to me.”

  Jake pulled his faded shirt reluctantly over his head and gave it to the gunslinger.

  The gunslinger produced a needle that had been threaded into the side-seam of his jeans, and thread from an empty cartridge-loop in his gunbelt He began to sew up a long rip in one of the sleeves of the boy’s shirt. As he finished and handed the shirt back, he felt the mesc beginning to take hold — there was a tightening in his stomach and a feeling that all the muscles in his body were being cranked up a notch.

  “I have to go,” he said, getting up.

  The boy half rose, his face a shadow of concern, and then he settled back. “Be careful,” he said. “Please.”

  “Remember the jawbone,” the gunslinger said. He put his hand on Jake’s head as he went by and touseled the corn-colored hair. The gesture startled him into a short laugh. Jake watched after him with a troubled smile until he was gone into the willow jungle.

  The gunslinger walked deliberately toward the circle of stones, pausing once to get a cool drink from the spring. He could see his own reflection in a tiny pool edged with moss and lilypads, and he looked at himself for a moment, as fascinated as Narcissus. The mind-reaction was beginning to settle in, slowing down his chain of thought by seeming to increase the connotations of every idea and every bit of sensory input. Things began to take on weight and thickness that had been heretofore invisible. He paused, getting to his feet again, and looked through the tangled snarl of willows. Sunlight slanted through in a golden, dusty bar, and he watched the interplay of motes and tiny flying things for a moment before going on.

  The drug often had disturbed him: his ego was too strong (or perhaps just too simple) to enjoy being eclipsed and peeled back, made a target for more sensitive emotions

  — they tickled at him like a cat’s whiskers. But this time he felt fairly calm. That was good.

  He stepped into the clearing and walked straight into the circle. He stood, letting his mind run free. Yes, it was coming harder now, faster. The grass screamed green at him; it seemed that if he bent over and rubbed his hands in it he would stand up with green paint all over his fingers and palms. He resisted a puckish urge to try the experiment

  But there was no voice from the oracle. No sexual stirring.

  He went to the altar, stood beside it for a moment coherent thought was now almost impossible. His teeth felt strange in his head. The world held too much light. He climbed up on the altar and lay back. His mind was becoming a jungle full of strange thought-plants that he had never seen or suspected before, a willow-jungle that had grown up around a mescaline spring. The sky was water and he hung suspended over it The thought gave him a vertigo that seemed faraway and unimportant.

  A line of old poetry occurred to him, not a nursery verse now, no; his mother had feared the drugs and the necessity of them (as she had feared Cort and the necessity for this beater of boys); this verse came from one of the Dens to the north of the desert, where men still lived among the machines that usually didn’t work… and which sometimes ate the men when they did. The lines played again and again, reminding him (in an unconnected way that was typical of the mescaline rush) of snow falling in a globe he had owned as a child, mystic and half fantastical:

  Beyond the reach of human range

  A drop of hell, a touch of strange…

  The trees which overhung the altar contained faces. He watched them with abstracted fascination: Here was a dragon, green and twitching. Here a wood-nymph with beckoning branch arms. Here a living skull overgrown with slime. Faces. Faces.

  The grasses of the clearing suddenly whipped and bent

  I come.

  I come.

  Vague stirrings within his flesh. How far I have come,

  he thought From couching with Susan in sweet hay to this. She pressed over him, a body made of the wind, a breast

  of sudden fragrant jasmine, rose, and honeysuckle.

  “Make your prophecy,” he said. His mouth felt full of metal.

  A sigh. A faint sound of weeping. The gunslinger’s genitals felt drawn and hard. Over him and beyond the faces in the leaves, he could see the mountains — hard and brutal and full of teeth.

  The body moved against him, struggled with him. He felt his hands curl into fists. She had sent him a vision of Susan. It was Susan above him, lovely Susan at the window, waiting for him with her hair spilled down her back and over her shoulders. He tossed his head, but her face followed.

  Jasmine, rose, honeysuckle, old hay.., the smell of love. Love me.

  “Speak prophecy,” he said.

  Please, the oracle wept. Don’t be cold. It is always so cold here —Hands slipping over his flesh, manipulating, lighting

  him on fire. Pulling him. Drawing. A black crevice. The ultimate wanton. Wet and warm —No. Dry. Cold. Sterile.

  Have a touch of mercy, gunslinger. Ah, please, I beg your favor! Mercy!

  Would you have mercy on the boy?

  What boy? I know no boy. It’s not boys I need. 0 please. Jasmine, rose, honeysuckle. Dry hay with its ghost of summer clover. Oil decanted from ancient urns. A riot for flesh.

  “After,” he said.

  Now. Please. Now.

  He let his mind coil out at her, the antithesis of emotion. The body that hung over him froze and seemed to scream.

  There was a brief, vicious tug-of-war between his temples

  — his mind was the rope, gray and fibrous. For long moments there was no sound but the quiet hush of his breathing and the faint breeze which made the green faces in the trees shift, wink, and grimace. No bird sang.

  Her hold loosened. Again there was the sound of sobbing. It would have to be quick, or she would leave him. To stay now meant attenuation; perhaps her own kind of death. Already he felt her drawing away to leave the circle of stones. Wind rippled the grass in tortured patterns.

  “Prophecy,” he said — a bleak noun.

  A weeping, tired sigh. He could almost have granted the mercy she begged, but — there was Jake. He would have found Jake dead or insane if he had been any later
last night

  Sleep, then.

  “No.”

  Then half-sleep.

  The gunslinger turned his eyes up to the faces in the leaves. A play was being enacted there for his amusement Worlds rose and fell before him. Empires were built across shining sands where forever machines toiled in abstract electronic frenzies. Empires declined and fell. Wheels that had spun like silent liquid moved more slowly, began to squeak, began to scream, stopped. Sand choked the stainless steel gutters of concentric streets below dark skies full of stars like beds of cold jewels. And through it all, a dying wind of change blew, bringing with it the cinnamon smell of late October. The gunslinger watched as the world moved on.

  And half-slept

  Three. This is the number of your/ate.

  Three?

  Yes, three is mystic. Three stands at the heart 0/the mantra.

  Which three?

  ‘We see in part, and thus is the mirror of prophecy darkened.’

  Tell me what you can.

  The first is young, dark-haired. He stands on the brink of robbery and murder. A demon has infested him. The name of the demon is HEROIN

  Which demon is that? I know it not, even from nursery stories.

  ‘We see in part, and thus is the mirror of prophecy darkened. ‘There are other worlds, gunslinger, and other demons. These waters are deep.

  The second?

  She comes on wheels. Her mind is iron but her heart and eyes are soft. I see no more.

  The third?

  In chains.

  The man in black? Where is he?

  Near. You will speak with him.

  Of what will we speak?

  The Tower.

  The boy? Jake?

  Tell me of the boy!

  The boy is your gateway to the man in black. The man in black is your gate to the three. The three are your way to the Dark Tower.

  How? How can that be? Why must it be? ‘We see in part, and thus is the mirror —God damn you.

  No god damned me.