The Dark Tower tdt-7

by Stephen King

  It’s not done on account of fathership.”

  “That’s right,” she said, a little warily. She half-expected Roland to blast the democratic system. Or laugh at it.

  Instead he surprised her by saying, “To quote Blaine the Mono, that sounds pretty swell.”

  “Do me a favor and don’t quote him, Roland. Not now, not ever. Okay?”

  “As you like,” he said, then went on without a pause, but in a much lower voice. “Keep my gun ready, may it do ya.”

  “Does me fine,” she agreed at once, and in the same low voice. It came out Does ’ee ’ine, because she didn’t even want to move her lips. She could feel that they were now being watched from within the buildings that crowded this end of The King’s Way like shops and inns in a medieval village (or a movie set of one). She didn’t know if they were humans, robots, or maybe just still-operating TV cameras, but she hadn’t mistrusted the feeling even before Roland spoke up and confirmed it. And she only had to look at Oy’s head, ticktocking back and forth like the pendulum in a grandfather clock, to know he felt it, too.

  “And was he a good dinh, this Kennedy?” Roland asked, resuming his normal voice. It carried well in the silence. Susannah realized a rather lovely thing: for once she wasn’t cold, even though this close to the roaring river the air was dank as well as chill. She was too focused on the world around her to be cold. At least for the present.

  “Well, not everyone thought so, certainly the nut who shot him didn’t, but I did,” she said. “He told folks when he was running that he meant to change things. Probably less than half the voters thought he meant it, because most politicians lie for the same reason a monkey swings by his tail, which is to say because he can. But once he was elected, he started in doin the things he’d promised to do. There was a showdown over a olace called Cuba, and he was just as brave as… well, let’s just say you would have been pleased to ride with him. When some folks saw just how serious he was, the motherfucks hired the nut to shoot him.”

  “Oz-walt.”

  She nodded, not bothering to correct him, thinking that there was nothing to correct, really. Oz-walt. Oz. It all came around again, didn’t it?

  “And Johnson took over when Kennedy fell.”

  “Yep.”

  “How did he do?”

  “Was too early to tell when I left, but he was more the kind of fella used to playing the game. ’Go along to get along,’ we used to say. Do yovi ken it?”

  “Yes, indeed,” he said. “And Susannah, I think we’ve arrived.” Roland brought Ho Fat’s Luxury Taxi to a stop. He stood with the handles wrapped in his fists, looking at Le Casse Roi Russe.

  TWO

  Here The King’s Way ended, spilling into a wide cobbled forecourt that had once no doubt been guarded as assiduously by the Crimson King’s men as Buckingham Palace was by the Beefeaters of Queen Elizabeth. An eye that had faded only slightly over the years was painted on the cobbles in scarlet.

  From ground-level, one could only assume what it was, but from the upper levels of the casde itself, Susannah guessed, the eye would dominate the view to the northwest.

  Same damn thing’s probably painted at every other point of the compass, too, she thought.

  Above this outer courtyard, stretched between two deserted guard-towers, was a banner that looked freshly painted. Stenciled upon it (also in red, white, and blue) was this:

  WELCOME, ROLAND AND SUSANNAH!

  (OY, TOO!)

  KEEP ON ROCKIN’ IN THE FREE WORLD!

  The castle beyond the inner courtyard (and the caged river which here served as a moat) was indeed of dark red stone blocks that had darkened to near-black over the years. Towers and turrets burst upward from the castle proper, swelling in a way that hurt the eye and seemed to defy gravity. The castle within these gaudy brackets was sober and undecorated except for the staring eye carved into the keystone arch above the main entrance. Two of the overhead walkways had fallen, littering the main courtyard with shattered chunks of stone, but six others remained in place, crisscrossing at different levels in a way that made her think of turnpike entrances and exits where a number of major highways met. As with the houses, the doors and windows were oddly narrow. Fat black rooks were perched on the sills of the windows and lined up along the overhead walkways, peering at them.

  Susannah swung down from the rickshaw with Roland’s gun stuffed into her belt, within easy reach. She joined him, looking at the main gate on this side of the moat. It stood open. Beyond it, a humped stone bridge spanned the river.

  Beneath the bridge, dark water rushed through a stone throat forty feet wide. The water smelled harsh and unpleasant, and where it flowed around a number of fangy black rocks, the foam was yellow instead of white.

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  “Listen to those fellows, for a start,” he said, and nodded toward the main doors on the far side of the castle’s cobbled forecourt. The portals were ajar and through them now came two men-perfectly ordinary men, not narrow funhouse fellows, as she had rather expected. When they were halfway across the forecourt, a third slipped out and scurried along after. None appeared to be armed, and as the two in front approached the bridge, she was not exactly flabbergasted to see they were identical twins. And the one behind looked the same: Caucasian, fairly tall, long black hair. Triplets, then: two to meet, and one for good luck. They were wearing jeans and heavy pea-coats of which she was instantly (and achingly) jealous.

  The two in front carried large wicker baskets by leather handles.

  “Put spectacles and beards on them, and they’d look exactly like Stephen King as he was when Eddie and I first met him,”

  Roland said in a low voice.

  “Really? Say true?”

  “Yes. Do you remember what I told you?”

  “Let you do the talking.”

  “And before victory comes temptation. Remember that, too.”

  “I will. Roland, are you afraid of em?”

  “I think there’s little to fear from those three. But be ready to shoot.”

  “They don’t look armed.” Of course there were those wicker baskets; anything might be in those.

  “All the same, be ready.”

  “Count on it,” said she.

  THREE

  Even with the roar of the river rushing beneath the bridge, they could hear the steady tock-tock of the strangers’ bootheels.

  The two with the baskets advanced halfway across the bridge and stopped at its highest point. Here they put down their burdens side by side. The third man stopped on the castle side and stood with his empty hands clasped decorously before him. Now Susannah could smell the cooked meat that was undoubtedly in one of the boxes. Not long pork, either. Roast beef and chicken all mingled was what it smelled like to her, an aroma that was heaven-sent. Her mouth began to water.

  “Hile, Roland of Gilead!” said the dark-haired man on their right. “Hile, Susannah of New York! Hile, Oy of Mid-World! Long days and pleasant nights!”

  “One’s ugly and the others are worse,” his companion remarked.

  “Don’t mind him,” said the righthand Stephen King lookalike.

  “’don’t mind him,’” mocked the other, screwing his face up in a grimace so purposefully ugly that it was funny.

  “May you have twice the number,” Roland said, responding to the more polite of the two. He cocked his heel and made a perfunctory bow over his outstretched leg. Susannah curtsied in the Calla fashion, spreading imaginary skirts. Oy sat by Roland’s left foot, only looking at the two identical men on the bridge.

  “We are uffis,” said the man on the right. “Do you ken uffis,

  Roland?”

  “Yes,” he said, and then, in an aside to Susannah: “It’s an old word… ancient, in fact. He claims they’re shape-changers.” To this he added in a much lower voice that could surely not be heard over the roar of the river: “I doubt it’s true.”

  “Yet it is,” said the one on the r
ight, pleasantly enough.

  “Liars see their own kind everywhere,” observed the one on the left, and rolled a cynical blue eye. Just one. Susannah didn’t believe she had ever seen a person roll just one eye before.

  The one behind said nothing, only continued to stand and watch with his hands clasped before him.

  “We can take any shape we like,” continued the one on the right, “but our orders were to assume that of someone you’d recognize and trust.”

  “I’d not trust sai King much further than I could throw his heaviest grandfather,” Roland remarked. “As troublesome as a trousers-eating goat, that one.”

  “We did the best we could,” said the righthand Stephen King. “We could have taken the shape of Eddie Dean, but felt that might be too painful to the lady.”

  “The ’lady’ looks as if she’d be happy to fuck a rope, could she make it stand up between her thighs,” remarked the lefthand Stephen King, and leered.

  “Uncalled-for,” said the one behind, he with his hands crossed in front of him. He spoke in the mild tones of a contest referee. Susannah almost expected him to sentence Badmouth King to five minvxtes in the penalty box. She wouldn’t have minded, either, for hearing Badmouth King crack wise hurt her heart; it reminded her of Eddie.

  Roland ignored all the byplay.

  “Could the three of you take three different shapes?” he inquired of Goodmouth King. Susannah heard the gunslinger swallow quite audibly before asking this question, and knew she wasn’t the only one struggling to keep from drooling over the smells from the food-basket. “Could one of you have been sai King, one sai Kennedy, and one sai Nixon, for instance?”

  “A good question,” said Goodmouth King on the right.

  “A stupid question,” said Badmouth King on the left. “Nothing at all to the point. Off we go into the wild blue yonder. Oh well, was there ever an action hero who was an intellectual?”

  “Prince Hamlet of Denmark,” said Referee King quietly from behind them. “But since he’s the only one who comes immediately to mind, he may be no more than the exception that proves the rule.”

  Goodmouth and Badmouth both turned to look at him.

  When it was clear that he was done, they turned back to Roland and Susannah.

  “Since we’re actually one being,” said Goodmouth, “and of fairly limited capabilities at that, the answer is no. We could all be Kennedy, or we could all be Nixon, but-”

  “’Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today,’” said Susannah. She had no idea why this had popped into her head

  (even less why she should have said it out loud), but Referee King said “Exactly!” and gave her a go-to-the-head-of-the-class nod.

  “Move on, for your father’s sake,” said Badmouth King on the left. “I can barely look at these traitors to the Lord of the Red wi’out puking.”

  “Very well,” said his partner. “Although calling them traitors seems rather unfair, at least if one adds ka to the equation.

  Since the names we give ourself would be unpronounceable to you-”

  “Like Superman’s rival, Mr. Mxyzptlk,” said Badmouth.

  “-you may as well use those Los’ used. Him being the one you call the Crimson King. I’m ego, roughly speaking, and go by the name of Feemalo. This fellow beside me is Fumalo. He’s our id.”

  “So the one behind you must be Fimalo,” Susannah said, pronouncing it i^-ma-lo. “What’s he, your superego?”

  “Oh brilliant!” Fumalo exclaimed. “I bet you can even say Freud so it doesn’t rhyme with lewd!” He leaned forward and gave her his knowing leer. “But can you spell it, you shor’-leg New York blackbird?”

  “Don’t mind him,” said Feemalo, “he’s always been threatened by women.”

  “Are you Stephen King’s ego, id, and superego?” Susannah asked.

  “What a good question!” Feemalo said approvingly.

  “What a dumb question!” Fumalo said, disapprovingly. “Did your parents have any kids that lived, Blackbird?”

  “You don’t want to start in playing the dozens with me,”

  Susannah said, “I’ll bring out Detta Walker and shut you down.”

  Referee King said, “I have nothing to do with sai King other than having appropriated some of his physical characteristics for a short time. And I understand that short time is really all the time you have. I have no particular love for your cause and no intention of going out of my way to help you-not far out of my way, at least-and yet I understand that you two are largely responsible for the departure of Los’. Since he kept me prisoner and treated me as little more than his court jester-or even his pet monkey-I’m not at all sorry to see him go. I’d help you if I can-a little, at least-but no, I won’t go out of my way to do so. ’Let’s get that up front,’ as your late friend Eddie Dean might have said.”

  Susannah tried not to wince at this, but it hurt. It hurt.

  As before, Feemalo and Fumalo had turned to look at Fimalo when he spoke. Now they turned back to Roland and Susannah.

  “Honesty’s the best policy,” said Feemalo, with a pious look.

  “Cervantes.”

  “Liars prosper,” said Fumalo, with a cynical grin. “Anonymous.”

  Feemalo said, “There were times when Los’ would make us divide into six, or even seven, and for no other reason than because it hurt. Yet we could leave no more than anyone else in the castle could, for he’d set a dead-line around its walls.”

  “We thought he’d kill us all before he left,” Fumalo said, and with none of his previous fuck-you cynicism. His face wore the long and introspective expression of one who looks back on a disaster perhaps averted by mere inches.

  Feemalo: “He did kill a great many. Beheaded his Minister of State.”

  Fumalo: “Who had advanced syphilis and no more idea what was happening to him than a pig in a slaughterhouse chute, more’s the pity.”

  Feemalo: “He lined up the kitchen staff and the women o’ work-”

  Fumalo: “All of whom had been very loyal to him, very loyal indeed-”

  Feemalo: “And made them take poison as they stood in front of him. He could have killed them in their sleep if he’d wanted to-”

  Fumalo: “And by no more than wishing it on them.”

  Feemalo: “But instead he made them take poison. Rat poison.

  They swallowed large brown chunks of it and died in convulsions right in front of him as he sat on his throne-”

  Fumalo: “Which is made of skulls, do ye ken-”

  Feemalo: “He sat there with his elbow on his knee and his fist on his chin, like a man thinking long thoughts, perhaps about squaring the circle or finding the Ultimate Prime Number, all the while watching them writhe and vomit and convulse on the floor of the Audience Chamber.”

  Fumalo (with a touch of eagerness Susannah found both prurient and extremely unattractive): “Some died begging for water. It was a thirsty poison, aye! And we thought we were next!”

  At this Feemalo at last betrayed, if not anger, then a touch of pique. “Will you let me tell this and have done with it so they can go on or back as they please?”

  “Bossy as ever,” Fumalo said, and dropped into a sulky silence. Above them, the Castle Rooks josded for position and looked down with beady eyes. No doubt hoping to make a meal of those who don’t walk away, Susannah thought.

  “He had six of the surviving Wizard’s Glasses,” Feemalo said. “And when you were still in Calla Bryn Sturgis, he saw something in them that finished the job of running him mad.

  We don’t know for sure what it was, for we didn’t see, but we have an idea it was your victory not just in the Calla but further on, at Algul Siento. If so, it meant the end of his scheme to bring down the Tower from afar, by breaking the Beams.”

  “Of course that’s what it was,” Fimalo said quiedy, and once more both Stephen Kings on the bridge turned to look at him.

  “It could have been nothing else. What brought him to the brink of madne
ss in die first place were two conflicting compulsions in his mind: to bring the Tower down, and to get diere before you could get diere, Roland, and mount to die top.

  To destroy it… or to rule it. I’m not sure he has ever cared overmuch about understandingit-just about beating you to something you want, and then snatching it away from you. About such things he’d care much.”

  “It’d no doubt please you to know how he raved about you, and cursed your name in the weeks before he smashed his precious playthings,” said Fumalo. “How he came to fear you, insofar as he can fear.”

  “Not this one,” Feemalo contradicted, and rather glumly,

  Susannah thought. “It wouldn’t please this one much at all. He wins with no better grace than he loses.”

  Fimalo said: “When the Red King saw that the Algul would fall to you, he understood that die working Beams would regenerate.

  More! That eventually those two working Beams would re-create the other Beams, knitting them forth mile by mile and wheel by wheel. If that happens, then eventually…”

  Roland was nodding. In his eyes Susannah saw an entirely new expression: glad surprise. Maybe he does know how to win, she thought. “Then eventually what has moved on might return again,” the gunslinger said. “Perhaps Mid-World and In-World.”

  He paused. “Perhaps even Gilead. The light. The White.”

  “No perhaps about it,” Fimalo said. “For ka is a wheel, and if a wheel be not broken, it will always roll. Unless the Crimson King can become either Lord of the Tower or its Lord High Executioner, all that was will eventually return.”

  “Lunacy,” said Fumalo. “And destructive lunacy, at that. Bixt of course Big Red always was Gan’s crazy side.” He gave Susannah an ugly smirk and said, “That’s Frooood, Lady Blackbird.”

  Feemalo resumed. “And after the Balls were smashed and the killing was done-”

  “This is what we’d have you understand,” said Fumalo. “If, that is, your heads aren’t too thick to get the sense of it.”