Dark Tower V, The Read online

The light was fading out of the day. They sat around the fire and let it go. What little appetite they’d been able to muster had been easily satisfied by the muffin-balls Susannah and Jake had brought back to camp. Roland had been meditating on something Slightman had said, and more deeply than was probably healthy. Now he pushed it aside still half-chewed and said, “Some of us or all of us may meet later tonight in the city of New York.”

  “I only hope I get to go this time,” Susannah said.

  “That’s as ka will,” Roland said evenly. “The important thing is that you stay together. If there’s only one who makes the journey, I think it’s apt to be you who goes, Eddie. If only one makes the journey, that one should stay exactly where he…or mayhap she…is until the bells start again.”

  “The kammen,” Eddie said. “That’s what Andy called em.”

  “Do you all understand that?”

  They nodded, and looking into their faces, Roland realized that each one of them was reserving the right to decide what to do when the time came, based upon the circumstances. Which was exactly right. They were either gunslingers or they weren’t, after all.

  He surprised himself by uttering a brief snort of a laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Jake asked.

  “I was just thinking that long life brings strange companions,” Roland said.

  “If you mean us,” Eddie said, “lemme tell you something, Roland—you’re not exactly Norman Normal yourself.”

  “I suppose not,” Roland said. “If it’s a group that crosses—two, a trio, perhaps all of us—we should join hands when the chimes start.”

  “Andy said we had to concentrate on each other,” Eddie said. “To keep from getting lost.”

  Susannah surprised them all by starting to sing. Only to Roland, it sounded more like a galley-chorus—a thing made to be shouted out verse by verse—than an actual song. Yet even without a real tune to carry, her voice was melodious enough: “Children, when ye hear the music of the clarinet…Children, when ye hear the music of the flute! Children, when ye hear the music of the tam-bou-rine…Ye must bow down and wor-ship the iyyy-DOL!”

  “What is it?”

  “A field-chant,” she said. “The sort of thing my grandparents and great-grandparents might have sung while they were picking ole massa’s cotton. But times change.” She smiled. “I first heard it in a Greenwich Village coffee-house, back in 1962. And the man who sang it was a white blues-shouter named Dave Van Ronk.”

  “I bet Aaron Deepneau was there, too,” Jake breathed. “Hell, I bet he was sitting at the next damn table.”

  Susannah turned to him, surprised and considering. “Why do you say so, sugar?”

  Eddie said, “Because he overheard Calvin Tower saying this guy Deepneau had been hanging around the Village since…what’d he say, Jake?”

  “Not the Village, Bleecker Street,” Jake said, laughing a little. “Mr. Tower said Mr. Deepneau was hanging around Bleecker Street back before Bob Dylan knew how to blow more than open G on his Hohner. That must be a harmonica.”

  “It is,” Eddie said, “and while I might not bet the farm on what Jake’s saying, I’d go a lot more than pocket-change. Sure, Deepneau was there. It wouldn’t even surprise me to find out that Jack Andolini was tending the bar. Because that’s just how things work in the Land of Nineteen.”

  “In any case,” Roland said, “those of us who cross should stay together. And I mean within a hand’s reach, all the time.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be there,” Jake said.

  “Why do you say so, Jake?” the gunslinger asked, surprised.

  “Because I’ll never fall asleep,” Jake said. “I’m too excited.”

  But eventually they all slept.

  Four

  He knows it’s a dream, something brought on by no more than Slightman’s chance remark, and yet he can’t escape it. Always look for the back door, Cort used to tell them, but if there’s a back door in this dream, Roland cannot find it. I heard of Jericho Hill and such blood-and-thunder tales of pretend, that was what Eisenhart’s foreman had said, only Jericho Hill had seemed real enough to Roland. Why would it not? He had been there. It had been the end of them. The end of a whole world.

  The day is suffocatingly hot; the sun reaches its roofpeak and then seems to stay there, as if the hours have been suspended. Below them is a long sloping field filled with great gray-black stone faces, eroded statues left by people who are long gone, and Grissom’s men advance relentlessly among them as Roland and his final few companions withdraw ever upward, shooting as they go. The gunfire is constant, unending, the sound of bullets whining off the stone faces a shrill counterpoint that sinks into their heads like the bloodthirsty whine of mosquitoes. Jamie DeCurry has been killed by a sniper, perhaps Grissom’s eagle-eyed son or Grissom himself. With Alain the end was far worse; he was shot in the dark the night before the final battle by his two best friends, a stupid error, a horrible death. There was no help. DeMullet’s column was ambushed and slaughtered at Rimrocks and when Alain rode back after midnight to tell them, Roland and Cuthbert…the sound of their guns…and oh, when Alain cried out their names—

  And now they’re at the top and there’s nowhere left to run. Behind them to the east is a shale-crumbly drop to the Salt—what five hundred miles south of here is called the Clean Sea. To the west is the hill of the stone faces, and Grissom’s screaming, advancing men. Roland and his own men have killed hundreds, but there are still two thousand left, and that’s a conservative estimate. Two thousand men, their howling faces painted blue, some armed with guns and even a few with Bolts—against a dozen. That’s all that’s left of them now, here at the top of Jericho Hill, under the burning sky. Jamie dead, Alain dead under the guns of his best friends—stolid, dependable Alain, who could have ridden on to safety but chose not to—and Cuthbert has been shot. How many times? Five? Six? His shirt is soaked crimson to his skin. One side of his face has been drowned in blood; the eye on that side bulges sightlessly on his cheek. Yet he still has Roland’s horn, the one which was blown by Arthur Eld, or so the stories did say. He will not give it back. “For I blow it sweeter than you ever did,” he tells Roland, laughing. “You can have it again when I’m dead. Neglect not to pluck it up, Roland, for it’s your property.”

  Cuthbert Allgood, who had once ridden into the Barony of Mejis with a rook’s skull mounted on the pommel of his saddle. “The lookout,” he had called it, and talked to it just as though it were alive, for such was his fancy and sometimes he drove Roland half-mad with his foolishness, and here he is under the burning sun, staggering toward him with a smoking revolver in one hand and Eld’s Horn in the other, blood-bolted and half-blinded and dying…but still laughing. Ah dear gods, laughing and laughing.

  “Roland!” he cries. “We’ve been betrayed! We’re outnumbered! Our backs are to the sea! We’ve got em right where we want em! Shall we charge?”

  And Roland understands he is right. If their quest for the Dark Tower is really to end here on Jericho Hill—betrayed by one of their own and then overwhelmed by this barbaric remnant of John Farson’s army—then let it end splendidly.

  “Aye!” he shouts. “Aye, very well. Ye of the castle, to me! Gunslingers, to me! To me, I say!”

  “As for gunslingers, Roland,” Cuthbert says, “I am here. And we are the last.”

  Roland first looks at him, then embraces him under that hideous sky. He can feel Cuthbert’s burning body, its suicidal trembling thinness. And yet he’s laughing. Bert is still laughing.

  “All right,” Roland says hoarsely, looking around at his few remaining men. “We’re going into them. And will accept no quarter.”

  “Nope, no quarter, absolutely none,” Cuthbert says.

  “We will not accept their surrender if offered.”

  “Under no circumstances!” Cuthbert agrees, laughing harder than ever. “Not even should all two thousand lay down their arms.”

&nb
sp; “Then blow that fucking horn.”

  Cuthbert raises the horn to his bloody lips and blows a great blast—the final blast, for when it drops from his fingers a minute later (or perhaps it’s five, or ten; time has no meaning in that final battle), Roland will let it lie in the dust. In his grief and bloodlust he will forget all about Eld’s Horn.

  “And now, my friends—hile!”

  “Hile!” the last dozen cry beneath that blazing sun. It is the end of them, the end of Gilead, the end of everything, and he no longer cares. The old red fury, dry and maddening, is settling over his mind, drowning all thought. One last time, then, he thinks. Let it be so.

  “To me!” cries Roland of Gilead. “Forward! For the Tower!”

  “The Tower!” Cuthbert cries out beside him, reeling. He holds Eld’s Horn up to the sky in one hand, his revolver in the other.

  “No prisoners!” Roland screams. “NO PRISONERS!”

  They rush forward and down toward Grissom’s blue-faced horde, he and Cuthbert in the lead, and as they pass the first of the great gray-black faces leaning in the high grass, spears and bolts and bullets flying all around them, the chimes begin. It is a melody far beyond beautiful; it threatens to tear him to pieces with its stark loveliness.

  Not now, he thinks, ah, gods, not now—let me finish it. Let me finish it with my friend at my side and have peace at last. Please.

  He reaches for Cuthbert’s hand. For one moment he feels the touch of his friend’s blood-sticky fingers, there on Jericho Hill where his brave and laughing existence was snuffed out…and then the fingers touching his are gone. Or rather, his have melted clean through Bert’s. He is falling, he is falling, the world is darkening, he is falling, the chimes are playing, the kammen are playing (“Sounds Hawaiian, doesn’t it?”) and he is falling, Jericho Hill is gone, Eld’s Horn is gone, there’s darkness and red letters in the darkness, some are Great Letters, enough so he can read what they say, the words say—

  Five

  They said DON’T WALK. Although, Roland saw, people were crossing the street in spite of the sign. They would take a quick look in the direction of the flowing traffic, and then go for it. One fellow crossed in spite of an oncoming yellow tack-see. The tack-see swerved and blared its horn. The walking man yelled fearlessly at it, then shot up the middle finger of his right hand and shook it after the departing vehicle. Roland had an idea that this gesture probably did not mean long days and pleasant nights.

  It was night in New York City, and although there were people moving everywhere, none were of his ka-tet. Here, Roland admitted to himself, was one contingency he had hardly expected: that the one person to show up would be him. Not Eddie, but him. Where in the name of all the gods was he supposed to go? And what was he supposed to do when he got there?

  Remember your own advice, he thought. “If you show up alone,” you told them, “stay where you are.”

  But did that mean to just roost on…he looked up at the green street-sign…on the corner of Second Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street, doing nothing but watching a sign change from DON’T WALK in red to WALK in white?

  While he was pondering this, a voice called out from behind him, high and delirious with joy. “Roland! Sugarbunch! Turn around and see me! See me very well!”

  Roland turned, already knowing what he would see, but smiling all the same. How terrible to relive that day at Jericho Hill, but what an antidote was this—Susannah Dean, flying down Fifty-fourth Street toward him, laughing and weeping with joy, her arms held out.

  “My legs!” She was screaming it at the top of her voice. “My legs! I have my legs back! Oh Roland, honeydoll, praise the Man Jesus, I HAVE MY LEGS BACK!”

  Six

  She threw herself into his embrace, kissing his cheek, his neck, his brow, his nose, his lips, saying it over and over again: “My legs, oh Roland do you see, I can walk, I can run, I have my legs, praise God and all the saints, I have my legs back.”

  “Give you every joy of them, dear heart,” Roland said. Falling into the patois of the place in which he had lately found himself was an old trick of his—or perhaps it was habit. For now it was the patois of the Calla. He supposed if he spent much time here in New York, he’d soon find himself waving his middle finger at tack-sees.

  But I’d always be an outsider, he thought. Why, I can’t even say “aspirin.” Every time I try, the word comes out wrong.

  She took his right hand, dragged it down with surprising force, and placed it on her shin. “Do you feel it?” she demanded. “I mean, I’m not just imagining it, am I?”

  Roland laughed. “Did you not run to me as if with wings on em like Raf? Yes, Susannah.” He put his left hand, the one with all the fingers, on her left leg. “One leg and two legs, each with a foot below them.” He frowned. “We ought to get you some shoes, though.”

  “Why? This is a dream. It has to be.”

  He looked at her steadily, and slowly her smile faded.

  “Not? Really not?”

  “We’ve gone todash. We are really here. If you cut your foot, Mia, you’ll have a cut foot tomorrow, when you wake up aside the campfire.”

  The other name had come out almost—but not quite—on its own. Now he waited, all his muscles wire-tight, to see if she would notice. If she did, he’d apologize and tell her he’d gone todash directly from a dream of someone he’d known long ago (although there had only been one woman of any importance after Susan Delgado, and her name had not been Mia).

  But she didn’t notice, and Roland wasn’t much surprised.

  Because she was getting ready to go on another of her hunting expeditions—as Mia—when the kammen rang. And unlike Susannah, Mia has legs. She banquets on rich foods in a great hall, she talks with all her friends, she didn’t go to Morehouse or to no house, and she has legs. So this one has legs. This one is both women, although she doesn’t know it.

  Suddenly Roland found himself hoping that they wouldn’t meet Eddie. He might sense the difference even if Susannah herself didn’t. And that could be bad. If Roland had had three wishes, like the foundling prince in a child’s bedtime story, right now all three would have been for the same thing: to get through this business in Calla Bryn Sturgis before Susannah’s pregnancy—Mia’s pregnancy—became obvious. Having to deal with both things at the same time would be hard.

  Perhaps impossible.

  She was looking at him with wide, questioning eyes. Not because he’d called her by a name that wasn’t hers, but because she wanted to know what they should do next.

  “It’s your city,” he said. “I would see the bookstore. And the vacant lot.” He paused. “And the rose. Can you take me?”

  “Well,” she said, looking around, “it’s my city, no doubt about that, but Second Avenue sure doesn’t look like it did back in the days when Detta got her kicks shoplifting in Macy’s.”

  “So you can’t find the bookstore and the vacant lot?” Roland was disappointed but far from desolate. There would be a way. There was always a—

  “Oh, no problem there,” she said. “The streets are the same. New York’s just a grid, Roland, with the avenues running one way and the streets the other. Easy as pie. Come on.”

  The sign had gone back to DON’T WALK, but after a quick glance uptown, Susannah took his arm and they crossed Fifty-fourth to the other side. Susannah strode fearlessly in spite of her bare feet. The blocks were short but crowded with exotic shops. Roland couldn’t help goggling, but his lack of attention seemed safe enough; although the sidewalks were crowded, no one crashed into them. Roland could hear his bootheels clopping on the sidewalk, however, and could see the shadows they were casting in the light of the display windows.

  Almost here, he thought. Were the force that brought us any more powerful, we would be here.

  And, he realized, the force might indeed grow stronger, assuming that Callahan was right about what was hidden under the floor of his church. As they drew closer to the town
and to the source of the thing doing this…

  Susannah twitched his arm. Roland stopped immediately. “Is it your feet?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, and Roland saw she was frightened. “Why is it so dark?”

  “Susannah, it’s night.”

  She gave his arm an impatient shake. “I know that, I’m not blind. Can’t you…” She hesitated. “Can’t you feel it?”

  Roland realized he could. For one thing, the darkness on Second Avenue really wasn’t dark at all. The gunslinger still couldn’t comprehend the prodigal way in which these people of New York squandered the things those of Gilead had held most rare and precious. Paper; water; refined oil; artificial light. This last was everywhere. There was the glow from the store windows (although most were closed, the displays were still lit), the even harsher glow from a popkin-selling place called Blimpie’s, and over all this, peculiar orange electric lamps that seemed to drench the very air with light. Yet Susannah was right. There was a black feel to the air in spite of the orange lamps. It seemed to surround the people who walked this street. It made him think about what Eddie had said earlier: This whole deal has gone nineteen.

  But this darkness, more felt than seen, had nothing to do with nineteen. You had to subtract six in order to understand what was going on here. And for the first time, Roland really believed Callahan was right.

  “Black Thirteen,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It’s brought us here, sent us todash, and we feel it all around us. It’s not the same as when I flew inside the grapefruit, but it’s like that.”

  “It feels bad,” she said, speaking low.

  “It is bad,” he said. “Black Thirteen’s very likely the most terrible object from the days of Eld still remaining on the face of the earth. Not that the Wizard’s Rainbow was from then; I’m sure it existed even before—”

  “Roland! Hey, Roland! Suze!”

  They looked up and in spite of his earlier misgivings, Roland was immensely relieved to see not only Eddie, but Jake and Oy, as well. They were about a block and a half farther along. Eddie was waving. Susannah waved back exuberantly. Roland grabbed her arm before she started to run, which was clearly her intention.