The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three Read online

  Damnation?

  Salvation?

  The Tower.

  He would come to the Dark Tower and there he would sing their names; there he would sing their names; there he would sing all their names.

  The sun stained the east a dusky rose, and at last Roland, no longer the last gunslinger but one of the last three, slept and dreamed his angry dreams through which there ran only that one soothing blue thread:

  There I will sing all their names!

  AFTERWORD

  This completes the second of six or seven books which make up a long tale called The Dark Tower. The third, The Waste Lands, details half of the quest of Roland, Eddie, and Susannah to reach the Tower; the fourth, Wizard and Glass, tells of an enchantment and a seduction but mostly of those things which befell Roland before his readers first met him upon the trail of the man in black.

  My surprise at the acceptance of the first volume of this work, which is not at all like the stories for which I am best known, is exceeded only by my gratitude to those who have read it and liked it. This work seems to be my own Tower, you know; these people haunt me, Roland most of all. Do I really know what that Tower is, and what awaits Roland there (should he reach it, and you must prepare yourself for the very real possibility that he will not be the one to do so)? Yes . . . and no. All I know is that the tale has called to me again and again over a period of seventeen years. This longer second volume still leaves many questions unanswered and the story’s climax far in the future, but I feel that it is a much more complete volume than the first.

  And the Tower is closer.

  —STEPHEN KING

  December 1st, 1986

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  Argument

  PROLOGUE THE SAILOR

  THE PRISONER

  CHAPTER 1 The Door

  CHAPTER 2 Eddie Dean

  CHAPTER 3 Contact and Landing

  CHAPTER 4 The Tower

  CHAPTER 5 Showdown and Shoot-Out

  SHUFFLE

  THE LADY OF SHADOWS

  CHAPTER 1 Detta and Odetta

  CHAPTER 2 Ringing the Changes

  CHAPTER 3 Odetta on the Other Side

  CHAPTER 4 Detta on the Other Side

  RESHUFFLE

  THE PUSHER

  CHAPTER 1 Bitter Medicine

  CHAPTER 2 The Honeypot

  CHAPTER 3 Roland Takes His Medicine

  CHAPTER 4 The Drawing

  FINAL SHUFFLE

  AFTERWORD

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  DID-A-CHICK

  ROLAND

  ON THE BEACH

  SOUVENIR

  WAITING FOR ROLAND

  DETTA

  WAITING FOR THE PUSHER

  NOTHING BUT THE HILT

  JACK MORT

  THEGUNSLINGER

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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