The Dark Tower tdt-7

by Stephen King

  The boy scrambled to his knees and would have run-likely back into the road-but Roland grabbed him by the collar of his hide coat and yanked him down again.

  “We’re safe enough here,” he murmured to Patrick.

  “Look.” He reached into a hole revealed by the falling rock, knocked on the interior with his knuckles, produced a dull ringing noise, and showed his teeth in a strained grin. “Steel!

  Yar! He can hit this thing with a dozen of his flying fireballs and not knock it down. All he can do is blast away the rocks and blocks and expose what lies beneadi. Kennit? And I don’t think he’ll waste his ammunition. He can’t have much more than a donkey’s carry.”

  Before Patrick could reply, Roland peered around the pyramid’s ragged edge once more. He cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed: “TRYAGAIN, SAI! WE’RE STILL HERE, BUT PERHAPS YOUR NEXT THROW WILL BE LUCKY!”

  There was a moment of silence, then an insane scream:

  “FFFFFFFFFFF! YOU DON’T DARE MOCK ME! YOU DON’T DARE! FFFFFFFFFFF.”

  Now came another of tiiose rising whisdes. Roland grabbed Patrick and fell on top of him, behind the pyramid but not against it. He was afraid it might vibrate hard enough when the sneetch struck to give them concussion injuries, or turn their soft insides to jelly.

  Only this time the sneetch didn’t strike the pyramid. It flew past it instead, soaring above the road. Roland rolled off Patrick and onto his back. His eyes picked up the golden blur and marked the place where it buttonhooked back toward its targets. He shot it out of the air like a clay plate. There was a blinding flash and then it was gone.

  “OH DEAR, STILL HERE!"Roland called, striving to put just the right note of mocking amusement into his voice. It wasn’t easy when you were screaming at the top of your lungs.

  Another crazed scream in response-“EEEEEEEEE!"Roland was amazed that the Red King didn’t split his own head wide open with such cries. He reloaded the chamber he’d emptied-he intended to keep a full gun just as long as he could-and this time there was a double whine. Patrick moaned, rolled over onto his belly, and plunged his face into the rock-strewn grass, covering his head with his hands. Roland sat with his back against the pyramid of rock and steel, the long barrel of his sixgun lying on his thigh, relaxed and waiting. At the same time he bent all of his willpower toward one object. His eyes wanted water in response to that high, approaching whisde, and he must not let them. If he ever needed the preternaturally keen eyesight for which he’d been famous in his time, this was it.

  Those blue eyes were still clear when the sneetches bolted past above the road. This time one buttonhooked left and the other right. They took evasive action, jigging crazily first one way and then another. It made no difference. Roland waited, sitting with his legs outstretched and his old broken boots cocked into a relaxed V, his heart beating slow and steady, his eye filled with all the world’s clarity and color (had he seen better on that last day, he believed he would have been able to see the wind). Then he snapped his gun up, blew both sneetches out of the air, and was once more reloading the empty chambers while the afterimages still pulsed with his heartbeat in front of his eyes.

  He leaned to the corner of the pyramid, plucked up the binoculars, braced them on a convenient spur of rock, and looked through them for his enemy. The Crimson King almost jumped at him, and for once in his life Roland saw exactly what he had imagined: an old man with an enormous nose, hooked and waxy; red lips that bloomed in the snow of a luxuriant beard; snowy hair that spilled down the Crimson King’s back almost all the way to his scrawny bottom. His pink-flushed face peered toward the pilgrims. The King wore a robe of brilliant red, dotted here and about with lightning strokes and cabalistic symbols. To Susannah, Eddie, and Jake, he would have looked like Father Christmas. To Roland he looked like what he was: Hell, incarnate.

  “HOW SLOW YOU ARE!” the gunslinger cried in a tone of mock amazement. “TRY THREE, PERHAPS THREE AT ONCE WILL DO YA!”

  Looking into the binoculars was like looking into a magic hourglass tipped on its side. Roland watched the Big Red King leaping up and down, shaking his hands beside his face in a way that was almost comic. Roland thought he could see a crate at that robed figure’s feet, but wasn’t entirely sure; the scrolled iron staves between the balcony’s floor and its railing obscured it.

  Must be his ammunition supply, he thought. Must be. How many can he have in a crate that size? Twenty? Fifty? It didn’t matter.

  Unless the Red King could throw more than twelve at a time,

  Roland was confident he could shoot anything out of the air the old daemon sent his way. This was, after all, what he’d been made for.

  Unfortunately, the Crimson King knew it as well as Roland did.

  The thing on the balcony gave another gruesome, earsplitting cry (Patrick plugged his dirty ears with his dirty fingers) and made as if to dip down for fresh ammunition. Then, however, he stopped himself. Roland watched him advance to the balcony’s railing… and then peer directly into the gunslinger’s eyes. That glare was red and burning. Roland lowered the binoculars at once, lest he be fascinated.

  The King’s call drifted to him. “WAIT THEN, A BIT-AND MEDITATE ON WHAT YOUD GAIN, ROLAND! THINK HOW CLOSE IT IS! AND… LISTEN! HEAR THE SONG YOUR DARLING SINGS!”

  He fell silent then. No more whistling; no more whines; no more oncoming sneetches. What Roland heard instead was the sough of the wind… and what the King wanted him to hear.

  The call of the Tower.

  Come, Roland, sang the voices. They came from the roses of Can’-Ka No Rey, they came from the strengthening Beams overhead, they came most of all from the Tower itself, that for which he had searched all his life, that which was now in reach… that which was being held away from him, now, at the last. If he went to it, he would be killed in the open. Yet the call was like a fishhook in his mind, drawing him. The Crimson King knew it would do his work if he only waited. And as the time passed, Roland came to know it, too. Because the calling voices weren’t constant. At their current level he could withstand them. Was withstanding them. But as the afternoon wore on, die level of the call grew stronger. He began to understand-and with growing horror-why in his dreams and visions he had always seen himself coming to the Dark Tower at sunset, when the light in the western sky seemed to reflect the field of roses, turning the whole world into a bucket of blood held up by one single stanchion, black as midnight against the burning horizon.

  He had seen himself coming at sunset because that was when the Tower’s strengthening call would finally overcome his willpower. He would go. No power on Earth would be able to stop him.

  Come… come… became COME… COME… and then COME! COME! His head ached with it. And for it. Again and again he found himself getting to his knees and forced himself to sit down once more with his back against the pyramid.

  Patrick was staring at him with growing fright. He was partly or completely immune to that call-Roland understood this-but he knew what was happening.

  FIVE

  They had been pinned down for what Roland judged to be an hour when the King tried another pair of sneetches. This time they flew on either side of the pyramid and hooked back almost at once, coming at him in perfect formation but twenty feet apart. Roland took the one on the right, snapped his wrist to the left, and blew the other one out of the sky. The explosion of the second one was close enough to buffet his face with warm air, but at least there was no shrapnel; when they blew, they blew completely, it seemed.

  “TRYAGAIN!"he called. His throat was rough and dry now, but he knew the words were carrying-the air in this place was made for such communication. And he knew each one was a dagger pricking the old lunatic’s flesh. But he had his own problems. The call of the Tower was growing steadily stronger.

  “COME, GUNSLJNGER!” the madman’s voice coaxed. “PERHAPS I’ll LET THEE COME, AFTER ALL! WE COULD AT LEAST PALAVER ON THE SUBJECT, COULD WE NOT?”

  To his horror, Roland thought he sen
sed a certain sincerity in that voice.

  Yes, he thought grimly. And we’ll have coffee. Perhaps even a little fry-up.

  He fumbled the watch out of his pocket and snapped it open. The hands were running briskly backward. He leaned against the pyramid and closed his eyes, but that was worse. The call of the Tower

  (come, Roland come, gunslinger, commala-come-come, now the journey’s done)

  was louder, more insistent than ever. He opened them again and looked up at the unforgiving blue sky and the clouds that raced across it in columns to the Tower at the end of the rose-field.

  And the torture continued.

  SIX

  He hung on for another hour while the shadows of the bushes and the roses growing near the pyramid lengthened, hoping against hope that someuiing would occur to him, some brilliant idea that would save him from having to put his life and his fate in the hands of the talented but soft-minded boy by his side. But as the sun began to slide down the western arc of the sky and the blue overhead began to darken, he knew there was nothing else. The hands of the pocket-watch were turning backward ever faster. Soon they would be spinning. And when they began to spin, he would go. Sneetches or no sneetches (and what else might the madman be holding in reserve?), he would go. He would run, he would zig-zag, he would fall to the ground and crawl if he had to, and no matter what he did, he knew he would be lucky to make it even half the distance to the Dark Tower before he was blown out of his boots.

  He would die among the roses.

  “Patrick,” he said. His voice was husky.

  Patrick looked up at him with desperate intensity. Roland stared at the boy’s hands-dirty, scabbed, but in their way as incredibly talented as his own-and gave in. It occurred to him that he’d only held out as long as this from pride; he had wanted to kill the Crimson King, not merely send him into some null zone. And of course there was no guarantee that Patrick could do to the King what he’d done to the sore on Susannah’s face. But the pull of the Tower would soon be too strong to resist, and all his other choices were gone.

  “Change places with me, Patrick.”

  Patrick did, scrambling carefully over Roland. He was now at the edge of the pyramid nearest the road.

  “Look through the far-seeing instrument. Lay it in that notch-yes, just so-and look.”

  Patrick did, and for what seemed to Roland a very long time. The voice of the Tower, meanwhile, sang and chimed and cajoled. At long last, Patrick looked back at him.

  “Now take thy pad, Patrick. Draw yonder man.” Not that he luas a man, but at least he looked like one.

  At first, however, Patrick only continued to gaze at Roland, biting his lip. Then, at last, he took the sides of the gunslinger’s head in his hands and brought it forward until they were brow to brow.

  Very hard, whispered a voice deep in Roland’s mind. It was not the voice of a boy at all, but of a grown man. A powerful man. He’s not entirely there. He darkles. He tincts.

  Where had Roland heard those words before?

  No time to think about it now.

  “Are you saying you can’t?” Roland asked, injecting (with an effort) a note of disappointed incredulity into his voice. “That you can’t? That Patrick can’t? The Artist can’t?”

  Patrick’s eyes changed. For a moment Roland saw in them the expression that would be there permanently if he grew to be a man… and the paintings in Sayre’s office said that he would do that, at least on some track of time, in some world. Old enough, at least, to paint what he had seen this day. That expression would be hauteur, if he grew to be an old man with a little wisdom to match his talent; now it was only arrogance.

  The look of a kid who knows he’s faster than blue blazes, the best, and cares to know nothing else. Roland knew that look, for had he not seen it gazing back at him from a hundred mirrors and still pools of water when he had been as young as Patrick Danville was now?

  I can, came the voice in Roland’s head. I only say it won’t be easy. I’ll need the eraser.

  Roland shook his head at once. In his pocket, his hand closed around what remained of the pink nubbin and held it tight.

  “No,” he said. “Thee must draw cold, Patrick. Every line right the first time. The erasing comes later.”

  For a moment the look of arrogance faltered, but only for a moment. When it returned, what came with it pleased the gunslinger mightily, and eased him a litde, as well. It was a look of hot excitement. It was die look the talented wear when, after years of just moving sleepily along from pillar to post, they are finally challenged to do something that will tax their abilities, stretch them to their limits. Perhaps even beyond them.

  Patrick rolled to the binoculars again, which he’d left propped aslant just below the notch. He looked long while the voices sang their growing imperative in Roland’s head.

  And at last he rolled away, took up his pad, and began to draw the most important picture of his life.

  SEVEN

  It was slow work compared to Patrick’s usual method-rapid strokes diat produced a completed and compelling drawing in only minutes. Roland again and again had to restrain himself from shouting at the boy: Hurry up! For the sake of all the gods, hurry up! Can’t you see that I’m in agony here?

  But Patrick didn’t see and wouldn’t have cared in any case.

  He was totally absorbed in his work, caught up in the unknowing greed of it, pausing only to go back to the binoculars now and then for another long look at his red-robed subject. Sometimes he slanted die pencil to shade a litde, dien rubbed with his thumb to produce a shadow. Sometimes he rolled his eyes back in his head, showing the world nothing but the waxy gleam of the whites. It was as if he were conning some version of the Red King that stood a-glow in his brain. And really, how did Roland know that was not possible?

  I don’t care what it is. Just let him finish before I go mad and sprint to what the Old Red King so rightly called “my darling.”

  Half an hour at least three days long passed in this fashion.

  Once the Crimson King called more coaxingly than ever to Roland, asking if he would not come to the Tower and palaver, after all. Perhaps, he said, if Roland were to free him from his balcony prison, they might bury an arrow together and then climb to the top room of the Tower in that same spirit of friendliness. It was not impossible, after all. A hard rain made for queer bedfellows at the inn; had Roland never heard that saying?

  The gunslinger knew the saying well. He also knew that the Red King’s offer was essentially the same false request as before, only this time dressed up in morning coat and cravat. And this time Roland heard worry lurking in the old monster’s voice. He wasted no energy on reply.

  Realizing his coaxing had failed, the Crimson King threw another sneetch. This one flew so high over the pyramid it was only a spark, then dove down upon them with the scream of a falling bomb. Roland took care of it with a single shot and reloaded from a plentitude of shells. He wished, in fact, that the King would send more of the flying grenados against him, because they took his mind temporarily off the dreadful call of the Tower.

  It’s been waiting for me, he thought with dismay. That’s what makes it so hard to resist, I think-it’s calling me in particular. Not to Roland, exactly, but to the entire line of Eld… and of that line, only I am left.

  EIGHT

  At last, as the descending sun began to take on its first hues of orange and Roland felt he could stand it no longer, Patrick put his pencil aside and held the pad out to Roland, frowning. The look made Roland afraid. He had never seen that particular expression in the mute boy’s repertoire. Patrick’s former arrogance was gone.

  Roland took the pad, however, and for a moment was so amazed by what he saw there that he looked away, as if even the eyes in Patrick’s drawing might have the power to fascinate him; might perhaps compel him to put his gun to his temple and blow out his aching brains. It was that good. The greedy and questioning face was long, the cheeks and forehead marked by creases
so deep they might have been bottomless. The lips within the foaming beard were full and cruel. It was the mouth of a man who would turn a kiss into a bite if the spirit took him, and the spirit often would.

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’re DOING?” came that screaming, lunatic voice. “IT WON’T DO YOU ANY GOOD, WHATEVER IT IS! I HOLD THE TOWER-EEEEEEEE!-I’M LIKE THE DOG WITH THE GRAPES, ROLAND! IT’s MINE EVEN IF I CANT CLIMB IT! AND YOU’ll COME! EEEEE! SAY TRUE! BEFORE THE SHADOW OF THE TOWER REACHES YOUR PALTRY HIDING-PLACE, YOU’ll COME! FFFFFFFFJ FFFFFFFFJ EEEEEEEE!”

  Patrick covered his ears, wincing. Now that he had finished drawing, he registered those terrible screams again.

  That the picture was the greatest work of Patrick’s life Roland had absolutely no doubt. Challenged, the boy had done more than rise above himself; he had soared above himself and committed genius. The image of the Crimson King was haunting in its clarity. The far-seeing instrument can’t explain this, or not all of it, Roland thought. It’s as if he has a third eye, one that looks out from his imagination and sees everything. It’s that eye he looks through when he rolls the other two up. To own such an ability as this… and to express it with something as humble as a pencil! Ye gods!

  He almost expected to see the pulse begin to beat in the hollows of the old man’s temples, where clocksprings of veins had been delineated with only a few gende, feathered shadings. At the corner of the full and sensuous lips, the gunslinger could see the wink of a single sharp

  (t U S k)

  tooth, and he thought the lips of the drawing might come to life and part as he looked, revealing a mouthful of fangs: one mere wink of white (which was only a bit of unmarked paper, after all) made the imagination see all the rest, and even to smell the reek of meat that would accompany each outflow of breath.

  Patrick had perfectly captured a tuft of hair curling from one of the King’s nostrils, and a tiny thread of scar that wove in and out of the King’s right eyebrow like a bit of string. It was a marvelous piece of work, better by far than the portrait the mute boy had done of Susannah. Surely if Patrick had been able to erase the sore from that one, then he could erase the Crimson King from this one, leaving nothing but the balcony railing before him and the closed door to the Tower’s barrel behind. Roland almost expected the Crimson King to breathe and move, and so surely it was done! Surely…