The Dark Tower tdt-7

by Stephen King

  He’s tired, too, Roland thought, and why not?

  The question of what would become of Oy after tomorrow tried to rise to the surface of the gunslinger’s troubled, tired mind, and Roland pushed it away. He got up (in his weariness his hands slipped down to his formerly troublesome hip, as if expecting to find the pain still there), went to Patrick, and shook him awake. It took some doing, but at last the boy’s eyes opened. That wasn’t good enough for Roland. He grasped Patrick’s shoulders and pulled him up to a sitting position.

  When the boy tried to slump back down again, Roland shook him. Hard. He looked at Roland with dazed incomprehension.

  “Help me build up the fire, Patrick.”

  Doing that should wake him up at least a little. And once the fire was burning bright again, Patrick would have to stand a brief watch. Roland didn’t like the idea, knew full well that leaving Patrick in charge of the night would be dangerous, but trying to watch the rest of it on his own would be even more dangerous.

  He needed sleep. An hour or two would be enough, and surely Patrick could stay awake that long.

  Patrick was willing enough to gather up some sticks and put them on the fire, although he moved like a bougie-a reanimated corpse. And when the fire was blazing, he slumped back down in his former place with his arms between his bony knees, already more asleep than awake. Roland thought he might actually have to slap the boy to bring him around, and would later wish-bitterly-that he had done just that.

  “Patrick, listen to me.” He shook Patrick by the shoulders hard enough to make his long hair fly, but some of it flopped back into his eyes. Roland brushed it away. “I need you to stay awake and watch. Just for an hour…just until… look up,

  Patrick! Look! Gods, don’t you dare go to sleep on me again! Do you see that? The brightest star of all those close to us!”

  It was Old Mother Roland was pointing to, and Patrick nodded at once. There was a gleam of interest in his eye now, and the gunslinger thought that was encouraging. It was Patrick’s “I

  want to draw” look. And if he sat drawing Old Mother as she shone in the widest fork of the biggest dead cottonwood, then the chances were good that he’d stay awake. Maybe until dawn, if he got fully involved.

  “Here, Patrick.” He made the boy sit against the base of the tree. It was bony and knobby and-Roland hoped-uncomfortable enough to prohibit sleep. All these movements felt to Roland like the sort you made underwater. Oh, he was tired. So tired. “Do you still see the star?”

  Patrick nodded eagerly. He seemed to have thrown off his sleepiness, and the gunslinger thanked the gods for this favor.

  “When it goes behind that thick branch and you can’t see it or draw it anymore without getting up… you call me. Wake me up, no matter how hard it is. Do you understand?”

  Patrick nodded at once, but Roland had now traveled with him long enough to know that such a nod meant little or nothing.

  Eager to please, that’s what he was. If you asked him if nine and nine made nineteen, he would nod with the same instant enthusiasm.

  “When you can’t see it anymore from where you’re sitting…” His own words seemed to be coming from far away, now. He’d just have to hope that Patrick understood. The tongueless boy had taken out his pad, at least, and a freshly sharpened pencil.

  That’s my best protection, Roland’s mind muttered as he stumbled back to his little pile of hides between the campfire and Ho Fat II. He ivon’tfall asleep while he’s drawing, will he?

  He hoped not, but supposed he didn’t really know. And it didn’t matter, because he, Roland of Gilead, was going to sleep in any case. He’d done the best he could, and it would have to be enough.

  “An hour,” he muttered, and his voice was far and wee in his own ears. “Wake me in an hour… when the star… when Old Mother goes behind…”

  But Roland was unable to finish. He didn’t even know what he was saying anymore. Exhaustion grabbed him and bore him swifdy away into dreamless sleep.

  SEVEN

  Mordred saw it all through the far-seeing glass eyes. His fever had soared, and in its bright flame, his own exhaustion had at least temporarily departed. He watched with avid interest as the gunslinger woke the mute boy-the Artist-and bullied him into helping him build up the fire. He watched, rooting for the mute to finish this chore and then go back to sleep before the gunslinger could stop him. That didn’t happen, unfortunately.

  They had camped near a grove of dead cottonwoods, and Roland led the Artist to the biggest tree. Here he pointed up at the sky. It was strewn with stars, but Mordred reckoned Old White Gunslinger Daddy was pointing to Old Mother, because she was the brightest. At last the Artist, who didn’t seem to be rolling a full barrow (at least not in the brains department) seemed to understand. He got out his pad and had already set to sketching as Old White Daddy stumbled a little way off, still muttering instructions and orders to which the Artist was pretty clearly paying absolutely no attention at all. Old White Daddy collapsed so suddenly that for a moment Mordred feared that perhaps the strip of jerky that served the son of a bitch as a heart had finally given up beating. Then Roland stirred in the grass, resetding himself, and Mordred, lying on a knoll about ninety yards west of the dry streambed, felt his own heartbeat slow. And deep though the Old White Gunslinger Daddy’s exhaustion might be, his training and his long lineage, going all the way back to the Eld himself, would be enough to wake him with his gun in his hand the second the Artist gave one of his wordless but devilishly loud cries. Cramps seized Mordred, the deepest yet. He doubled over, fighting to hold his human shape, fighting not to scream, fighting not to die. He heard another of those long flabbering noises from below and felt more of the lumpy brown stew begin coursing down his legs. But his preternaturally keen nose smelled more than excreta in this new mess; this time he smelled blood as well as shit. He thought the pain would never end, that it would go on deepening until it tore him in two, but at last it began to let up. His looked at his left hand and was not entirely surprised to see that the fingers had blackened and fused together. They would never come back to human again, those fingers; he believed he had but only one more change left in him. Mordred wiped sweat from his brow with his right hand and raised the bin-doculars to his eyes again, praying to his Red Daddy that the stupid mutie boy would be asleep. But he was not. He was leaning against the cottonwood tree and looking up between the branches and drawing Old Mother.

  That was the moment when Mordred Deschain came closest to despair. like Roland, he thought drawing was the one thing that would likely keep the idiot boy awake. Therefore, why not give in to the change while he had the heat of this latest fever-spike to fuel him with its destructive energy? Why not take his chance?

  It was Roland he wanted, after all, not the boy; surely he could, in his spider form, sweep down on the gunslinger rapidly enough to grab him and pull him against the spider’s craving mouth. Old White Daddy might get off one shot, possibly even two, but Mordred thought he could take one or two, if the flying bits of lead didn’t find the white node on the spider’s back: his dual body’s brain. And once I pull him in, I’ll never let him go until he’s sucked dry, nothing but a dust-mummy like the other one, Mia.

  He relaxed, ready to let the change sweep over him, and then another voice spoke from the center of his mind. It was the voice of his Red Daddy, the one who was imprisoned on the side of the Dark Tower and needed Mordred alive, at least one more day, in order to set him free.

  Wait a little longer, this voice counseled. Wait a little more. I might have another trick up my sleeve. Wait… wait just a little longer…

  Mordred waited. And after a moment or two, he felt the pulse from the Dark Tower change.

  EIGHT

  Patrick felt that change, too. The pulse became soothing. And there were words in it, ones that blunted his eagerness to draw.

  He made another line, paused, then put his pencil aside and only looked up at Old Mother, who seemed to pulse in time w
ith the words he heard in his head, words Roland would have recognized.

  Only these were sung in an old man’s voice, quavering but sweet:

  “Baby-bunting, darling one,

  Now another day is done.

  May your dreams be sweet and merry,

  May you dream of fields and berries.

  Baby-bunting, baby-dear,

  Baby, bring your berries here.

  Oh chussit, chissit, chassit!

  Bring enough to fill your basket!”

  Patrick’s head nodded. His eyes closed… opened… slipped closed again.

  Enough to fill my basket, he thought, and slept in the firelight.

  NINE

  Now, my good son, whispered the cold voice in the middle of Mordred’s hot and melting brains. Now. Go to him and make sure he never rises from his sleep. Murder him among the mses and we’ll rule together.

  Mordred came from hiding, the binoculars tumbling from a hand that was no longer a hand at all. As he changed, a feeling of huge confidence swept through him. In another minute it would be done. They both slept, and diere was no way he could fail.

  He rushed down on the camp and the sleeping men, a black nightmare on seven legs, his mouth opening and closing.

  TEN

  Somewhere, a thousand miles away, Roland heard barking, loud and urgent, furious and savage. His exhausted mind tried to turn away from it, to blot it out and go deeper. Then there was a horrible scream of agony that awoke him in a flash. He knew that voice, even as distorted by pain as it was.

  “Oy!” he cried, leaping up. “Oy, where are you? To me! To m-”

  There he was, twisting in the spider’s grip. Bodi of them were clearly visible in the light of the fire. Beyond them, sitting propped against the cottonwood tree, Patrick gazed stupidly through a curtain of hair that would soon be dirty again, now that Susannah was gone. The bumbler wriggled furiously to and fro, snapping at the spider’s body with foam flying from his jaws even as Mordred bent him in a direction his back was never meant to go.

  If he’d not rushed out of the tall grass, Roland thought, that would be me in Mordred’s grip.

  Oy sent his teeth deep into one of the spider’s legs. In the firelight Roland could see the coin-sized dimples of the bumbler’s jaw-muscles as he chewed deeper still. The thing squalled and its grip loosened. At that moment Oy might have gotten free, had he chosen to do so. He did not. Instead of jumping down and leaping away in the momentary freedom granted him before Mordred was able to re-set his grip, Oy used the time to extend his long neck and seize the place where one of the thing’s legs joined its bloated body. He bit deep, bringing a flood of blackish-red liquor that ran freely from the sides of his muzzle. In the firelight it gleamed with orange sparks. Mordred squalled louder still. He had left Oy out of his calculations, and was now paying the price. In the firelight, the two writhing forms were figures out of a nightmare.

  Somewhere nearby, Patrick was hooting in terror.

  Worthless whoreson fell asleep after all, Roland thought bitterly.

  But who had set him to watch in the first place?

  “Put him down, Mordred!” he shouted. “Put him down and I’ll let you live another day! I swear it on my father’s name!”

  Red eyes, full of insanity and malevolence, peered at him over Oy’s contorted body. Above them, high on the curve of the spider’s back, were tiny blue eyes, hardly more than pinholes.

  They stared at the gunslinger with a hate that was all too human.

  My own eyes, Roland thovight with dismay, and then there was a bitter crack. It was Oy’s spine, but in spite of this mortal injury he never loosened his grip on the joint where Mordred’s legjoined his body, although the steely brisdes had torn away much of his muzzle, baring sharp teeth that had sometimes closed on Jake’s wrist with gentle affection, tugging him toward something Oy wanted the boy to see. Ake.’he would cry on such occasions. Ake-Ake!

  Roland’s right hand dropped to his holster and found it empty. It was only then, hours after she had taken her leave, that he realized Susannah had taken one of his guns with her into the other world. Good, he thought. Good. If it is the darkness she found, there would have been five for the things in it and one for herself.

  Good.

  But this thought was also dim and distant. He pulled the other revolver as Mordred crouched on his hindquarters and used his remaining middle leg, curling it around Oy’s midsection and pulling the animal, still snarling, away from his torn and bleeding leg. The spider twirled the furry body upward in a terrible spiral. For a moment it blotted out the bright beacon that was Old Mother. Then he hurled Oy away from him and Roland had a moment of deja vu, realizing he had seen this long ago, in the Wizard’s Glass. Oy arced across the fireshot dark and was impaled on one of the cottonwood branches the gunslinger himself had broken off for firewood. He gave an awful hurt cry-a death-cry-and then hung, suspended and limp, above Patrick’s head.

  Mordred came at Roland without a pause, but his charge was a slow, shambling thing; one of his legs had been shot away only minutes after his birth, and now another hung limp and broken, its pincers jerking spasmodically as they dragged on the grass.

  Roland’s eye had never been clearer, the chill that surrounded him at moments like this never deeper. He saw the white node and the blue bombardier’s eyes that were his eyes. He saw the face of his only son peering over the back of the abomination and then it was gone in a spray of blood as his first bullet tore it off. The spider reared up, legs clashing at the black and star-shot sky. Roland’s next two bullets went into its revealed belly and exited through the back, pulling dark sprays of liquid with it.

  The spider slewed to one side, perhaps trying to run away, but its remaining legs would not support it. Mordred Deschain fell into the fire, casting up a flume of red and orange sparks. It writhed in the embers, the bristles on its belly beginning to burn, and Roland, grinning bitterly, shot it again. The dying spider rolled out of the now scattered fire on its back, its remaining legs twitching together in a knot and then spreading apart. One fell back into the fire and began to burn. The smell was atrocious.

  Roland started forward, meaning to stamp out the litde fires the scattered embers had started in the grass, and then a howl of outraged fury rose in his head.

  My son! My only son! You ’ve murdered him!

  “He was mine, too,” Roland said, looking at die smoldering monstrosity. He could own the truth. Yes, he could do that much.

  Come then! Come, son-killer, and look at your Tower, but know ihis-you’ll die of old age at the edge of the Can’-Ka before you ever so much as touch its door! I will never let you pass! Todash space itself will pass away before I let you pass! Murderer! Murderer of your mother, murderer of your friends-aye, every one, for Susannah lies dead with her throat cut on the other side of the door you sent her through-and now murderer of your own son!

  “Who sent him to me?” Roland asked the voice in his head.

  “Who sent yonder child-for that’s what he is, inside that black skin-to his death, ye red boggart?”

  To this there was no answer, so Roland re-holstered his gun and put out the patches of fire before they could spread.

  He thought of what the voice had said about Susannah, decided he didn’t believe it. She might be dead, aye, might be, but he thought Mordred’s Red Father knew for sure no more than Roland himself did.

  The gunslinger let that thought go and went to the tree, where the last of his ka-tet hung, impaled… but still alive.

  The gold-ringed eyes looked at Roland with what might almost have been weary amusement.

  “Oy,” Roland said, stretching out his hand, knowing it might be bitten and not caring in the least. He supposed that part of him-and not a small one, either-wanted to be bitten.

  “Oy, we all say thank you. /say thank you, Oy.”

  The bumbler did not bite, and spoke but one word. “Olan,”

  said he. Then he sighed, licked the gunslin
ger’s hand a single time, hung his head down, and died.

  ELEVEN

  As dawn strengthened into the clear light of morning, Patrick came hesitantly to where the gunslinger sat in the dry streambed, amid the roses, with Oy’s body spread across his lap like a stole.

  The young man made a soft, interrogative hooting sound.

  “Not now, Patrick,” Roland said absently, stroking Oy’s fur.

  It was dense but smooth to the touch. He found it hard to believe that the creature beneath it had gone, in spite of the stiffening muscles and the tangled places where the blood had now clotted. He combed these smooth with his fingers as best he could. “Not now. We have all the livelong day to get there, and we’ll do fine.”

  No, there was no need to hurry; no reason why he should not leisurely mourn the last of his dead. There had been no doubt in the old King’s voice when he had promised that Roland should die of old age before he so much as touched the door in the Tower’s base. They would go, of course, and Roland would study the terrain, but he knew even now that his idea of coming to the Tower on the old monster’s blind side and then working his way around was not an idea at all, but a fool’s hope. There had been no doubt in the old villain’s voice; no doubt hiding behind it, either.

  And for the time being, none of that mattered. Here was another one he had killed, and if there was consolation to be had, it was this: Oy would be the last. Now he was alone again except for Patrick, and Roland had an idea Patrick was immune to the terrible germ the gunslinger carried, for he had never been ka-tet to begin with.

  I only kill my family, Roland thought, stroking the dead billybumbler.

  What hurt most was remembering how unpleasantly he had spoken to Oy the day before. Ifee wanted to go with her, thee should have gone when thee had thy chance!

  Had he stayed because he knew that Roland would need him? That when push came down to shove (it was Eddie’s phrase, of course), Patrick would fail?