At first no one answered Roland's question, and so he asked it again,
this time looking across the living room of the rectory to where
Henchick of the Manni sat with Cantab, who had married one of Henchick's
numerous granddaughters. The two men were holding hands, as was the
Manni way. The older man had lost a granddaughter that day, but if he
grieved, the emotion did not show on his stony, composed face.
Next to Roland, holding no one's hand, silent and dreadfully white, sat
Eddie Dean. Beside him, cross-legged on the floor, was Jake Chambers. He
had pulled Oy into his lap, a thing Roland had never seen before and
would not have believed the billy-bumbler would allow. Both Eddie and
Jake were splattered with blood. That on Jake's shirt belonged to his
friend Benny Slightman. That on Eddie's belonged to Margaret Eisenhart,
once Margaret of Redpath, the lost granddaughter of the old patriarch.
Both Eddie and Jake looked as tired as Roland felt, but he was quite
sure there would be no rest for them this night. Distant, from town,
came the sounds of fireworks and singing and celebration.
There was no celebration here. Benny and Margaret were dead, and
Susannah was gone.
"Henchick, tell me, I beg: how long will the magic stay?"
The old man stroked his beard in a distracted fashion. "Gunslinger --
Roland -- I can't say. The magic of the door in that cave is beyond me.
As thee must know."
"Tell me what you think. Based on what you do know."
Eddie raised his hands. They were dirty, there was blood under the
nails, and they trembled. "Tell, Henchick," he said, speaking in a
voice, humble and lost, that Roland had never heard before. "Tell, I
beg."
Rosalita, Pere Callahan's woman of all work, came in with a tray. There
were cups on it, and a carafe of steaming coffee. She, at least, had
found time to change out of her bloody, dusty jeans and shirt and into a
housedress, but her eyes were still shocked. They peered from her face
like small animals from their burrows. She poured the coffee and passed
the cups without speaking. Nor had she gotten all the blood, Roland saw
as he took one of the cups. There was a streak of it on the back of her
right hand. Margaret's or Benny's? He didn't know. Or much care. The
Wolves had been defeated. They might or might not come again to Calla
Bryn Sturgis. That was ka's business. Theirs was Susannah Dean, who had
disappeared in the aftermath, taking Black Thirteen with her.
Henchick said: "Ye ask of kaven?"
"Aye, father," Roland agreed. "The persistence of magic."
Father Callahan took a cup of coffee with a nod and a distracted smile,
but no word of thanks. He had spoken little since they'd come back from
the cave. In his lap was a book called 'Salem's Lot, by a man of whom he
had never heard. It purported to be a work of fiction, but he, Donald
Callahan, was in it. He had lived in the town of which it told, had
taken part in the events it recounted. He had looked on the back and on
the rear flap for the author's photograph, queerly certain that he would
see a version of his own face looking back at him (the way he'd looked
in 1975, when these events had taken place, most likely), but there had
been no picture, just a note about the book's writer that told very
little. He lived in the state of Maine. He was married. He'd written one
previous book, quite well reviewed, if you believed the quotations on
the back.
"The greater the magic, the longer it persists," Cantab said, and then
looked at Henchick questioningly.
"Aye," Henchick said. "Magic and glammer, both are one, and they do
unroll from the back." He paused. "From the past, do'ee ken."
"This door opened on many places and many times in the world my friends
came from," Roland said. "I would open it again, but just on the last
two. The most recent two. Can that be done?"
They waited as Henchick and Cantab considered. The Manni were great
travelers. If anyone knew, if anyone could do what Roland wanted -- what
they all wanted -- it would be these folk.
Cantab leaned deferentially toward the old man, the dinh of Calla
Redpath. He whispered. Henchick listened, his face expressionless, then
turned Cantab's head with one gnarled old hand and whispered back.
Eddie shifted, and Roland felt him getting ready to break loose, perhaps
to begin shouting. He put a restraining hand on Eddie's shoulder, and
Eddie subsided. For the time being, at least.
The whispered consultation went on for perhaps five minutes while the
others waited. The sounds of celebration in the distance were difficult
for Roland to take; God knew how they must make Eddie feel.
At last Henchick patted Cantab's cheek with his hand and turned to
Roland.
"We think this may be done," he said.
"Thank God," Eddie muttered. Then, louder: "Thank God! Let's go up
there. We can meet you on the East Road -- "
Both of the bearded men were shaking their heads, Henchick with a kind
of stern sorrow, Cantab with a look that was almost horror.
"We'll not go up to the Cave of the Voices in the dark," Henchick said.
"We have to!" Eddie burst out. "You don't understand! It's not just a
question of how long the magic will or won't last, it's a question of
time on the other side! It goes faster over there, and once it's gone,
it's gone! Christ, Susannah could be having that baby right now, and if
it's some kind of cannibal -- "
"Listen to me, young fellow," Henchick said, "and hear me very well, I
beg. The day is nigh gone."
This was true. Never in Roland's experience had a day run so quickly
through his fingers. There had been the battle with the Wolves early,
not long after dawn, then celebration there on the road for the victory
and sorrow for their losses (which had been amazingly small, as things
had fallen). Then had come the realization that Susannah was gone, the
trek to the cave, their discoveries there. By the time they'd gotten
back to the East Road battlefield, it had been past noon. Most of the
townsfolk had left, bearing their saved children home in triumph.
Henchick had agreed willingly enough to this palaver, but by the time
they'd gotten back to the rectory, the sun had been on the wrong side of
the sky.
We're going to get a night's rest, after all, Roland thought, and didn't
know whether to be glad or disappointed. He could use sleep; that much
he did know.
"I listen and hear," Eddie said, but Roland's hand was still on his
shoulder, and he could feel the younger man trembling.
"Even were we willing to go, we couldn't persuade enough of the others
to come wi' us," Henchick said.
"You're their dinh -- "
"Aye, so you call it, and so I suppose I am, although it isn't our word,
ye ken. In most things they'd follow me, and they know the debt they owe
your ka-tet out of this day's work and would say thank ya any way they
could. But they wouldn't go up that path and into that haunted place
after dark." Henchick was shaking his head slowly and with great
certainty. "No -- that they will not do.
"Listen, young man. Cantab and I can be back at Redpath Kra-ten well
before full dark. There we'll call our menfolk to the Tempa, which is to
us as the Meeting Hall is to the forgetful folk." He glanced briefly at
Callahan. "Say pardon, Pere, if the term offends ye."
Callahan nodded absently without looking up from the book, which he was
turning over and over in his hands. It had been covered in protective
plastic, as valuable first editions often are. The price lightly
penciled on the flyleaf was $ 950. Some young man's second novel. He
wondered what made it so valuable. If they ran into the book's owner, a
man named Calvin Tower, he would surely ask. And that would only be the
start of his questioning.
"We'll explain what it is ye want, and ask for volunteers. Of the
sixty-eight men of Redpath Kra-ten, I believe all but four or five will
agree to help -- to blend their forces together. It will make powerful
khef. Is that what ye call it? Khef? The sharing?"
"Yes," Roland said. "The sharing of water, we say."
"You couldn't fit anywhere that number of men in the mouth of that
cave," Jake said. "Not even if half of them sat on the other half's
shoulders."
"No need," Henchick said. "We'll put the most powerful inside -- what we
call the senders. The others can line up along the path, linked hand to
hand and bob to bob. They'll be there before the sun goes rooftop
tomorrow. I set my watch and warrant on it."
"We'll need tonight to gather our mags and bobs, anyway," Cantab said.
He was looking at Eddie apologetically, and with some fear. The young
man was in terrible pain, that was clear. And he was a gunslinger. A
gunslinger might strike out, and when one did, it was never blindly.
"It could be too late," Eddie said, low. He looked at Roland with his
hazel eyes. They were now bloodshot and dark with exhaustion. "Tomorrow
could be too late even if the magic hasn't gone away."
Roland opened his mouth and Eddie raised a finger.
"Don't say ka, Roland. If you say ka one more time, I swear my head'll
explode."
Roland closed his mouth.
Eddie turned back to the two bearded men in their dark, Quakerish
cloaks. "And you can't be sure the magic will stay, can you? What could
be opened tonight could be closed against us forever tomorrow. Not all
the magnets and plumb-bobs in Manni creation could open it."
"Aye," Henchick said. "But your woman took the magic ball with her, and
whatever'ee may think, Mid-World and the Borderlands are well shed of
it."
"I'd sell my soul to have it back, and in my hands," Eddie said clearly.
They all looked shocked at this, even Jake, and Roland felt a deep urge
to tell Eddie he must take that back, must unsay it. There were powerful
forces working against their quest for the Tower, dark ones, and Black
Thirteen was their clearest sigul. What could be used could also be
misused, and the bends o' the rainbow had their own malevolent glammer,
Thirteen most of all. Was the sum of all, perhaps. Even if they had
possessed it, Roland would have fought to keep it out of Eddie Dean's
hands. In his current state of sorrowing distraction, the ball would
either destroy him or make him its slave in minutes.
"A stone might drink if it had a mouth," Rosa said dryly, startling them
all. "Eddie, questions of magic aside, think of the path that goes up
there. Then think of five dozen men, many of them nigh as old as
Henchick, one or two blind as bats, trying to climb it after dark."
"The boulder," Jake said. "Remember the boulder you have to kind of
slide by, with your feet sticking out over the drop?"
Eddie nodded reluctantly. Roland could see him trying to accept what he
couldn't change. Groping for sanity.
"Susannah Dean is also a gunslinger," Roland said. "Mayhap she can take
care of herself a little while."
"I don't think Susannah's in charge anymore," Eddie replied, "and
neither do you. It's Mia's baby, after all, and it'll be Mia at the
controls until the baby -- the chap -- comes."
Roland had an intuition then, and like so many he'd had over the years,
it turned out to be true. "She may have been in charge when they left,
but she may not be able to stay in charge."
Callahan spoke at last, looking up from the book which had so stunned
him. "Why not?"
"Because it's not her world," Roland said. "It's Susannah's. If they
can't find a way to work together, they may die together."
TWO
Henchick and Cantab went back to Manni Redpath, first to tell the
gathered (and entirely male) elders about the day's work, and then to
tell them what payment was required. Roland went with Rosa to her
cottage. It stood up the hill from a formerly neat privy which was now
mostly in ruins. Within this privy, standing useless sentinel, was what
remained of Andy the Messenger Robot (many other functions). Rosalita
undressed Roland slowly and completely. When he was mother-naked, she
stretched beside him on her bed and rubbed him with special oils:
cat-oil for his aches, a creamier, faintly perfumed blend for his most
sensitive parts. They made love. They came together (the sort of
physical accident fools take for fate), listening to the crackle of
firecrackers from the Calla's high street and the boisterous shouts of
the folken, most of them now well past tipsy, from the sound.
"Sleep," she said. "Tomorrow I see you no more. Not me, not Eisenhart or
Overholser, not anyone in the Calla."
"Do you have the sight, then?" Roland asked. He sounded relaxed, even
amused, but even when he had been deep in her heat and thrusting, the
gnaw of Susannah had never left his mind: one of his ka-tet, and lost.
Even if there had been no more than that, it would have been enough to
keep him from true rest or ease.
"No," said she, "but I have feelings from time to time, like any other
woman, especially about when her man is getting ready to move on."
"Is that what I am to you? Your man?"
Her gaze was both shy and steady. "For the little time ye've been here,
aye, I like to think so. Do'ee call me wrong, Roland?"
He shook his head at once. It was good to be some woman's man again, if
only for a short time.
She saw he meant it, and her face softened. She stroked his lean cheek.
"We were well-met, Roland, were we not? Well-met in the Calla."
"Aye, lady."
She touched the remains of his right hand, then his right hip. "And how
are your aches?"
To her he wouldn't lie. "Vile."
She nodded, then took hold of his left hand, which he'd managed to keep
away from the lobstrosities. "And this un?"
"Fine," he said, but he felt a deep ache. Lurking. Waiting its time to
come out. What Rosalita called the dry twist.
"Roland!" said she.
"Aye?"
Her eyes looked at him calmly. She still had hold of his left hand,
touching it, culling out its secrets. "Finish your business as soon as
you can."
"Is that your advice?"
"Aye, dearheart. Before your business finishes you."
THREE
Eddie sat on the back porch of the rectory as midnight came and what
these folk would ever after call The Day of the East Road Battle passed
into history (after which it would pass into myth...always assuming the
world held together long enough for it to happen). In town the sounds of
celebration had grown increasingly loud and feverish, until Eddie
seriously began to wonder if they might not set the entire high street
afire. And would he mind? Not a whit, say thanks and you're welcome,
too. While Roland, Susannah, Jake, Eddie, and three women -- Sisters of
Oriza, they called themselves -- stood against the Wolves, the rest of
the Calla-folken had either been cowering back in town or in the rice by
the riverbank. Yet ten years from now -- maybe even five! -- they would
be telling each other about how they'd bagged their limit one day in
autumn, standing shoulder to shoulder with the gunslingers.
It wasn't fair and part of him knew it wasn't fair, but never in his
life had he felt so helpless, so lost, and so consequently mean. He
would tell himself not to think of Susannah, to wonder where she was or
if her demon child had yet been delivered, and find himself thinking of
her, anyway. She had gone to New York, of that much he was sure. But
when? Were people traveling in hansom cabs by gaslight or jetting around
in anti-grav taxis driven by robots from North Central Positronics?
Is she even alive?
He would have shuddered away from this thought if he could have, but the
mind could be so cruel. He kept seeing her in the gutter somewhere down
in Alphabet City, with a swastika carved on her forehead, and a placard
reading GREETINGS FROM YOUR FRIENDS IN OXFORD TOWN hung around her neck.
Behind him the door from the rectory's kitchen opened. There was the
soft padding sound of bare feet (his ears were sharp now, trained like
the rest of his killer's equipment), and the click of toenails. Jake and
Oy.
The kid sat down next to him in Callahan's rocking chair. He was dressed
and wearing his docker's clutch. In it was the Ruger Jake had stolen
from his father on the day he had run away from home. Today it had
drawn...well, not blood. Not yet. Oil? Eddie smiled a little. There was
no humor in it.
"Can't sleep, Jake?"
"Ake," Oy agreed, and collapsed at Jake's feet, muzzle resting on the
boards between his paws.
"No," Jake said. "I keep thinking about Susannah." He paused, then
added: "And Benny."
Eddie knew that was natural, the boy had seen his friend blown apart
before his very eyes, of course he'd be thinking about him, but Eddie
still felt a bitter spurt of jealousy, as if all of Jake's regard should
have been saved for Eddie Dean's wife.
"That Tavery kid," Jake said. "It's his fault. Panicked. Got running.
Broke his ankle. If not for him, Benny'd still be alive." And very
softly -- it would have chilled the heart of the boy in question had he
heard it, Eddie had no doubt of that -- Jake said: "Frank...fucking...Tavery."
Eddie reached out a hand that did not want to comfort and made it touch
the kid's head. His hair was long. Needed a wash. Hell, needed a cut.
Needed a mother to make sure the boy under it took care of it. No mother
now, though, not for Jake. And a little miracle: giving comfort made
Eddie feel better. Not a lot, but a little.
"Let it go," he said. "Done is done."
"Ka," Jake said bitterly.
"Ki-yet, ka," Oy said without raising his muzzle.
"Amen," Jake said, and laughed. It was disturbing in its coldness. Jake
took the Ruger from its makeshift holster and looked at it. "This one
will go through, because it came from the other side. That's what Roland
says. The others may, too, because we won't be going todash. If they
don't, Henchick will cache them in the cave and maybe we can come back
for them."
"If we wind up in New York," Eddie said, "there'll be plenty of guns.
And we'll find them."
"Not like Roland's. I hope like hell they go through. There aren't any
guns left in any of the worlds like his. That's what I think."
It was what Eddie thought, too, but he didn't bother saying so. From
town there came a rattle of firecrackers, then silence. It was winding
down there. Winding down at last. Tomorrow there would undoubtedly be an
all-day party on the common, a continuation of today's celebration but a
little less drunk and a little more coherent. Roland and his ka-tet
would be expected as guests of honor, but if the gods of creation were
good and the door opened, they would be gone. Hunting Susannah. Finding
her. Never mind hunting. Finding.
As if reading his thoughts (and he could do that, he was strong in the
touch), Jake said: "She's still alive."
"How can you know that?"
"We would have felt it if she was gone."
"Jake, can you touch her?"
"No, but -- "
Before he could finish, a deep rumbling came from the earth. The porch
suddenly began to rise and fall like a boat on a heavy sea. They could
hear the boards groaning. From the kitchen came the sound of rattling
china like chattering teeth. Oy raised his head and whined. His foxy
little face was comically startled, his ears laid back along his skull.
In Callahan's parlor, something fell over and shattered.
Eddie's first thought, illogical but strong, was that Jake had killed
Suze simply by declaring her still alive.
For a moment the shaking intensified. A window shattered as its frame
was twisted out of shape. There was a crump from the darkness. Eddie
assumed -- correctly -- that it was the ruined privy, now falling down
completely. He was on his feet without realizing it. Jake was standing
beside him, gripping his wrist. Eddie had drawn Roland's gun and now
they both stood as if ready to begin shooting.
There was a final grumbling from deep in the earth, and then the porch
settled under their feet. At certain key points along the Beam, people
were waking up and looking around, dazed. In the streets of one New York
when, a few car alarms were going off. The following day's papers would
report a minor earthquake: broken windows, no reported casualties. Just
a little shake of the fundamentally sound bedrock.
Jake was looking at Eddie, eyes wide. And knowing.
The door opened behind them and Callahan came out onto the porch,
dressed in flimsy white underpants that fell to his knees. The only
other thing on him was the gold crucifix around his neck.
"It was an earthquake, wasn't it?" he said. "I felt one in northern
California once, but never since coming to the Calla."
"It was a hell of a lot more than an earthquake," Eddie said, and
pointed. The screened-in porch looked east, and over there the horizon
was lit by silent artillery bursts of green lightning. Downhill from the
rectory, the door of Rosalita's snug creaked open and then banged shut.
She and Roland came up the hill together, she in her chemise and the
gunslinger in a pair of jeans, both barefoot in the dew.
Eddie, Jake, and Callahan went down to them. Roland was looking fixedly
at the already diminishing flickers of lightning in the east, where the
land of Thunderclap waited for them, and the Court of the Crimson King,
and, at the end of End-World, the Dark Tower itself.
If, Eddie thought. If it still stands.
"Jake was just saying that if Susannah died, we'd know it," Eddie said.
"That there'd be what you call a sigul. Then comes this." He pointed to
the Pere's lawn, where a new ridge had humped up, peeling the sod apart
in one ten-foot line to show the puckered brown lips of the earth. A
chorus of dogs was barking in town, but there were no sounds from the
folken, at least not yet; Eddie supposed a goodly number had slept
through the whole thing. The sleep of the drunken victorious. "But it
wasn't anything to do with Suze. Was it?"
"Not directly, no."
"And it wasn't ours," Jake put in, "or the damage would have been a lot
worse. Don't you think?"
Roland nodded.
Rosa looked at Jake with a mixture of puzzlement and fright. "Wasn't our
what, boy? What are you talking about? It wasn't an earthquake, sure!"
"No," Roland said, "a Beamquake. One of the Beams holding up the Tower
-- which holds up everything -- just let go. Just snapped."
Even in the faint light from the four 'seners flickering on the porch,
Eddie saw Rosalita Munoz's face lose its color. She crossed herself. "A
Beam? One of the Beams? Say no! Say not true!"
Eddie found himself thinking of some long-ago baseball scandal. Of some
little boy begging, Say it ain't so, Joe.
"I can't," Roland told her, "because it is."
"How many of these Beams are there?" Callahan asked.
Roland looked at Jake, and nodded slightly: Say your lesson, Jake of New
York -- speak and be true.
"Six Beams connecting twelve portals," Jake said. "The twelve portals
are at the twelve ends of the earth. Roland, Eddie, and Susannah really
started their quest from the Portal of the Bear, and picked me up
between there and Lud."
"Shardik," Eddie said. He was watching the last flickers of lightning in
the east. "That was the bear's name."
"Yes, Shardik," Jake agreed. "So we're on the Beam of the Bear. All the
Beams come together at the Dark Tower. Our Beam, on the other side of
the Tower...?" He looked at Roland for help. Roland, in turn, looked at
Eddie Dean. Even now, it seemed, Roland was not done teaching them the
Way of Eld.
Eddie either didn't see the look or chose to ignore it, but Roland would
not be put off. "Eddie?" he murmured.
"We're on the Path of the Bear, Way of the Turtle," Eddie said absently.
"I don't know why it would ever matter, since the Tower's as far as
we're going, but on the other side it's the Path of the Turtle, Way of
the Bear." And he recited:
"See the TURTLE of enormous girth!
On his shell he holds the earth,
His thought is slow but always kind;
He holds us all within his mind."
At this point, Rosalita took up the verse
"On his back the truth is carried,
And there are love and duty married.
He loves the earth and loves the sea,
And even loves a child like me."
"Not quite the way I learned it in my cradle and taught it to my
friends," Roland said, "but close enough, by watch and by warrant."
"The Great Turtle's name is Maturin," Jake said, and shrugged. "If it
matters."
"You have no way of telling which one broke?" Callahan said, studying
Roland closely.
Roland shook his head. "All I know is that Jake's right -- it wasn't
ours. If it had been, nothing within a hundred miles of Calla Bryn
Sturgis would be standing." Or maybe within a thousand miles -- who
could know? "The very birds would have fallen flaming from the sky."
"You speak of Armageddon," Callahan said in a low, troubled voice.
Roland shook his head, but not in disagreement. "I don't know that word,
Pere, but I'm speaking of great death and great destruction, sure. And
somewhere -- along the Beam connecting Fish to Rat, perhaps -- that has
now happened."
"Are you positive this is true?" Rosa asked, low.
Roland nodded. He had been through this once before, when Gilead fell
and civilization as he then understood it had ended. When he had been
cast loose to wander with Cuthbert and Alain and Jamie and the few
others of their ka-tet. One of the six Beams had broken then, and almost
certainly not the first.
"How many Beams remain to hold the Tower?" Callahan asked.
For the first time, Eddie seemed interested in something other than the
fate of his lost wife. He was looking at Roland with what was almost
attention. And why not? This was, after all, the crucial question. All
things serve the Beam, they said, and although the actual truth was that
all things served the Tower, it was the Beams which held the Tower up.
If they snapped --
"Two," Roland said. "There have to be at least two, I'd say. The one
running through Calla Bryn Sturgis and another. But God knows how long
they'll hold. Even without the Breakers working on them, I doubt they'd
hold for long. We have to hurry."
Eddie had stiffened. "If you're suggesting we go on without Suze -- "
Roland shook his head impatiently, as if to tell Eddie not to be a fool.
"We can't win through to the Tower without her. For all I know, we can't
win through without Mia's chap. It's in the hands of ka, and there used
to be a saying in my country: 'Ka has no heart or mind.'"
"That one I can agree with," Eddie said.
"We might have another problem," Jake said.
Eddie frowned at him. "We don't need another problem."
"I know, but...what if the earthquake blocked the mouth of that cave?
Or..." Jake hesitated, then reluctantly brought out what he was really
afraid of. "Or knocked it down completely?"
Eddie reached out, took hold of Jake's shirt, and bundled it into his
fist. "Don't say that. Don't you even think that."
Now they could hear voices from town. The folken would be gathering on
the common again, Roland guessed. He further guessed that this day --
and now this night -- would be remembered in Calla Bryn Sturgis for a
thousand years. If the Tower stood, that was.
Eddie let go of Jake's shirt and then pawed at the place he had grabbed,
as if to erase the wrinkles. He tried a smile that made him look feeble
and old.
Roland turned to Callahan. "Will the Manni still turn up tomorrow? You
know this bunch better than I."
Callahan shrugged. "Henchick's a man of his word. Whether he can hold
the others to his word after what just happened...that, Roland, I don't
know."
"He better be able to," Eddie said darkly. "He just better be."
Roland of Gilead said, "Who's for Watch Me?"
Eddie looked at him, unbelieving.
"We're going to be up until morning light," the gunslinger said. "We
might as well pass the time."
So they played Watch Me, and Rosalita won hand after hand, adding up
their scores on a piece of slate with no smile of triumph -- with no
expression at all that Jake could read. At least not at first. He was
tempted to try the touch, but had decided that to use it for any but the
strongest reasons was wrong. Using it to see behind Rosa's poker face
would be like watching her undress. Or watching her and Roland make
love.
Yet as the game went on and the northeast finally began to grow lighter,
Jake guessed he knew what she was thinking of after all, because it was
what he was thinking of. On some level of their minds, all of them would
be thinking of those last two Beams, from now until the end.
Waiting for one or both of them to snap. Whether it was them trailing
Susannah or Rosa cooking her dinner or even Ben Slightman, mourning his
dead son out there on Vaughn Eisenhart's ranch, all of them would now be
thinking of the same thing: only two left, and the Breakers working
against them night and day, eating into them, killing them.
How long before everything ended? And how would it end? Would they hear
the vast rumble of those enormous slate-colored stones as they fell?
Would the sky tear open like a flimsy piece of cloth, spilling out the
monstrosities that lived in the todash darkness? Would there be time to
cry out? Would there be an afterlife, or would even Heaven and Hell be
obliterated by the fall of the Dark Tower?
He looked at Roland and sent a thought, as clearly as he could: Roland,
help us.
And one came back, filling his mind with cold comfort (ah, but comfort
served cold was better than no comfort at all): If I can.
"Watch Me," said Rosalita, and laid down her cards. She had built Wands,
the high run, and the card on top was Madame Death.
STAVE: Commala-come-come
There's a young man with a gun.
