by Stephen King
“TRY AGAIN!” 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, GUNSLINGER!” 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 sensed 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 rosefield.
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 something 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 was 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 little, as well. It was a look of hot excitement. It was the 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 that 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 the pencil to shade a little, then 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 CAN’T CLIMB IT! AND YOU’LL COME! EEEEE! SAY TRUE! BEFORE THE SHADOW OF THE TOWER REACHES YOUR PALTRY HIDING-PLACE, YOU’LL COME! EEEEEEEE! EEEEEEEE!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 gentle, feathered shadings. At the corner of the full and sensuous lips, the gunslinger could see the wink of a single sharp
(tusk)
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 …
But it was not. It was not, and wanting would not make it so. Not even needing would make it so.
It’s his eyes, Roland thought. They were wide and terrible, the eyes of a dragon in human form. They were dreadfully good, but they weren’t right. Roland felt a kind of desperate, miserable certainty and shuddered from head to toe, hard enough to make his teeth chatter. They’re not quite r—
Patrick took hold of Roland’s elbow. The gunslinger had been concentrating so fiercely on the drawing that he nearly screamed. He looked up. Patrick nodded at him, then touched his fingers to the corners of his own eyes.
Yes. His eyes. I know that! But what’s wrong with them?
Patrick was still touching the corners of his eyes. Overhead, a flock of rusties flew through a sky that would soon be more purple than blue, squalling the harsh cries that had given them their name. It was toward the Dark Tower that they flew; Roland arose to follow them so they should not have what he could not.
Patrick grabbed him by his hide coat and pulled him back. The boy shook his head violently, and this time pointed toward the road.
“I SAW THAT, ROLAND!” came the cry. “YOU THINK THAT WHAT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE BIRDS IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU, DO YOU NOT? EEEEEEEEE! AND IT’S TRUE, SURE! SURE AS SUGAR, SURE AS SALT, SURE AS RUBIES IN KING DANDO’S VAULT—EEEEEEEE, HA! I COULD HAVE HAD YOU JUST NOW, BUT WHY BOTHER? I THINK I’D RATHER SEE YOU COME, PISSING AND SHAKING AND UNABLE TO STOP YOURSELF!”
As I will, Roland thought. I won’t be able to help myself. I may be able to hold here another ten minutes, perhaps even another twenty, but in the end …
Patrick interrupted his thoughts, once more pointing at the road. Pointing back the way they had come.
Roland shook his head wearily. “Even if I could fight the pull of the thing—and I couldn’t, it’s all I can do to bide here—retreat would do us no good. Once we’re no longer in cover, he’ll use whatever else he has. He has something, I’m sure of it. And whatever it is, the bullets of my revolver aren’t likely to stop it.”
Patrick shook his head hard enough to make his long hair fly from side to side. The grip on Roland’s arm tightened until the boy’s fingernails bit into the gunslinger’s flesh even through three layers of hide clothing. His eyes, always gentle and usually puzzled, now peered at Roland with a look close to fury. He pointed again with his free hand, three quick jabbing gestures with the grimy forefinger. Not at the road, however.
Patrick was pointing at the roses.
“What about them?” Roland asked. “Patrick, what about them?”
This time Patrick pointed first to the roses, then to the eyes in his picture.
And this time Roland understood.
NINE
Patrick didn’t want to get them. When Roland gestured to him to go, the boy shook his head at once, whipping his hair once more from side to side, his eyes wide. He made a whistling noise between his teeth that was a remarkably good imitation of an oncoming sneetch.
“I’ll shoot anything he sends,” Roland said. “You’ve seen me do it. If there was one close enough so that I could pick it myself, I would. But there’s not. So it has to be you who picks the rose and me who gives you cover.”
But Patrick only cringed back against the ragged side of the pyramid. Patrick would not. His fear might not have been as great as his talent, but it was surely a close thing. Roland calculated the distance to the nearest rose. It was beyond their scant cover, but perhaps not by too much. He looked at his diminished right hand, which would have to do the plucking, and asked himself how hard it could be. The fact, of course, was that he didn’t know. These were not ordinary roses. For all he knew, the thorns growing up the green stem might have a poison in them that would drop him paralyzed into the tall grass, an easy target.
And Patrick would not. Patrick knew that Roland had once had friends, and that now all his friends were dead, and Patrick would not. If Roland had had two hours to work on the boy—possibly even one—he might have broken through his terror. But he didn’t have that time. Sunset had almost come.
Besides, it’s close. I can do it if I have to … and I must.
The weather had warmed enough so there was no need for the clumsy deerskin gloves Susannah had made them, but Roland had been wearing his that morning, and they were still tucked in his belt. He took one of them and cut off the end, so his two remaining fingers would poke through. What remained would at least protect his palm from the thorns. He put it on, then rested on one knee with his remaining gun in his other hand, looking at the nearest rose. Would one be enough? It would have to be, he decided. The next was fully six feet further away.
Patrick clutched his shoulder, shaking his head frantically.
“I have to,” Roland said, and of course he did. This was his job, not Patrick’s, and he had been wrong to try and make the boy do it in the first place. If he succeeded, fine and well. If he failed and was blown apart here at the edge of Can’-Ka No Rey, at least that dreadful pulling would cease.
The gunslinger took a deep breath, then leaped from cover and at the rose. At the same moment, Patrick clutched at him again, trying to hold him back. He grabbed a fold of Roland’s coat and twisted him off-tr
ue. Roland landed clumsily on his side. The gun flew out of his hand and fell in the tall grass. The Crimson King screamed (the gunslinger heard both triumph and fury in that voice) and then came the approaching whine of another sneetch. Roland closed his mittened right hand around the stem of the rose. The thorns bit through the tough deerskin as if it were no more than a coating of cobwebs. Then into his hand. The pain was enormous, but the song of the rose was sweet. He could see the blaze of yellow deep in its cup, like the blaze of a sun. Or a million of them. He could feel the warmth of blood filling the hollow of his palm and running between the remaining fingers. It soaked the deerskin, blooming another rose on its scuffed brown surface. And here came the sneetch that would kill him, blotting out the rose’s song, filling his head and threatening to split his skull.
The stem never did break. In the end, the rose tore free of the ground, roots and all. Roland rolled to his left, grabbed his gun, and fired without looking. His heart told him there was no longer time to look. There was a shattering explosion, and the warm air that buffeted his face this time was like a hurricane.
Close. Very close, that time.
The Crimson King screamed his frustration—“EEEEEEEEEEE!”—and the cry was followed by multiple approaching whistles. Patrick pressed himself against the pyramid, face-first. Roland, clutching the rose in his bleeding right hand, rolled onto his back, raised his gun, and waited for the sneetches to make their turn. When they did, he took care of them: one and two and three.
“STILL HERE!” he cried at the old Red King. “STILL HERE, YOU OLD COCKSUCKER, MAY IT DO YA FINE!”
The Crimson King gave another of his terrible howls, but sent no more sneetches.
“SO NOW YOU HAVE A ROSE!” he screamed. “LISTEN TO IT, ROLAND! LISTEN WELL, FOR IT SINGS THE SAME SONG! LISTEN AND COMMALA-COME-COME!”
