The Dark Tower VII

by Stephen King

  Soon now, quite likely.

  The light he sensed behind his eyes was brighter now, and did not seem so blue. He passed a room containing Zoltan, the bird from the weed-eater’s hut. He passed a room containing the atomic pump from the Way Station. He climbed more stairs, paused outside a room containing a dead lobstrosity, and by now the light he sensed was much brighter and no longer blue.

  It was…

  He was quite sure it was…

  It was sunlight. Past twilight it might be, with Old Star and Old Mother shining from above the Dark Tower, but Roland was quite sure he was seeing—or sensing—sunlight.

  He climbed on without looking into any more of the rooms, without bothering to smell their aromas of the past. The stairwell narrowed until his shoulders nearly touched its curved stone sides. No songs now, unless the wind was a song, for he heard it soughing.

  He passed one final open door. Lying on the floor of the tiny room beyond it was a pad from which the face had been erased. All that remained were two red eyes, glaring up.

  I have reached the present. I have reached now.

  Yes, and there was sunlight, commala sunlight inside his eyes and waiting for him. It was hot and harsh upon his skin. The sound of the wind was louder, and that sound was also harsh. Unforgiving. Roland looked at the stairs curving upward; now his shoulders would touch the walls, for the passage was no wider than the sides of a coffin. Nineteen more stairs, and then the room at the top of the Dark Tower would be his.

  “I come!” he called. “If’ee hear me, hear me well! I come!”

  He took the stairs one by one, walking with his back straight and his head held up. The other rooms had been open to his eye. The final one was closed off, his way blocked by a ghostwood door with a single word carved upon it. That word was

  ROLAND.

  He grasped the knob. It was engraved with a wild rose wound around a revolver, one of those great old guns from his father and now lost forever.

  Yet it will be yours again, whispered the voice of the Tower and the voice of the roses—these voices were now one.

  What do you mean?

  To this there was no answer, but the knob turned beneath his hand, and perhaps that was an answer. Roland opened the door at the top of the Dark Tower.

  He saw and understood at once, the knowledge falling upon him in a hammerblow, hot as the sun of the desert that was the apotheosis of all deserts. How many times had he climbed these stairs only to find himself peeled back, curved back, turned back? Not to the beginning (when things might have been changed and time’s curse lifted), but to that moment in the Mohaine Desert when he had finally understood that his thoughtless, questionless quest would ultimately succeed? How many times had he traveled a loop like the one in the clip that had once pinched off his navel, his own tet-ka can Gan? How many times would he travel it?

  “Oh, no!” he screamed. “Please, not again! Have pity! Have mercy!”

  The hands pulled him forward regardless. The hands of the Tower knew no mercy.

  They were the hands of Gan, the hands of ka, and they knew no mercy.

  He smelled alkali, bitter as tears. The desert beyond the door was white; blinding; waterless; without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon. The smell beneath the alkali was that of the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death.

  But not for you, gunslinger. Never for you. You darkle. You tinct. May I be brutally frank? You go on.

  And each time you forget the last time. For you, each time is the first time.

  He made one final effort to draw back: hopeless. Ka was stronger.

  Roland of Gilead walked through the last door, the one he always sought, the one he always found. It closed gently behind him.

  Eight

  The gunslinger paused for a moment, swaying on his feet. He thought he’d almost passed out. It was the heat, of course; the damned heat. There was a wind, but it was dry and brought no relief. He took his waterskin, judged how much was left by the heft of it, knew he shouldn’t drink—it wasn’t time to drink—and had a swallow, anyway.

  For a moment he had felt he was somewhere else. In the Tower itself, mayhap. But of course the desert was tricky, and full of mirages. The Dark Tower still lay thousands of wheels ahead. That sense of having climbed many stairs and looked into many rooms where many faces had looked back at him was already fading.

  I will reach it, he thought, squinting up at the pitiless sun. I swear on the name of my father that I will.

  And perhaps this time if you get there it will be different, a voice whispered—surely the voice of desert delirium, for what other time had there ever been? He was what he was and where he was, just that, no more than that, no more. He had no sense of humor and little imagination, but he was steadfast. He was a gunslinger. And in his heart, well-hidden, he still felt the bitter romance of the quest.

  You’re the one who never changes, Cort had told him once, and in his voice Roland could have sworn he heard fear…although why Cort should have been afraid of him—a boy—Roland couldn’t tell. It’ll be your damnation, boy. You’ll wear out a hundred pairs of boots on your walk to hell.

  And Vannay: Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

  And his mother: Roland, must you always be so serious? Can you never rest?

  Yet the voice whispered it again

  (different this time mayhap different)

  and Roland did seem to smell something other than alkali and devil-grass. He thought it might be flowers.

  He thought it might be roses.

  He shifted his gunna from one shoulder to the other, then touched the horn that rode on his belt behind the gun on his right hip. The ancient brass horn had once been blown by Arthur Eld himself, or so the story did say. Roland had given it to Cuthbert Allgood at Jericho Hill, and when Cuthbert fell, Roland had paused just long enough to pick it up again, knocking the deathdust of that place from its throat.

  This is your sigul, whispered the fading voice that bore with it the dusk-sweet scent of roses, the scent of home on a summer evening—O lost!—a stone, a rose, an unfound door; a stone, a rose, a door.

  This is your promise that things may be different, Roland—that there may yet be rest. Even salvation.

  A pause, and then:

  If you stand. If you are true.

  He shook his head to clear it, thought of taking another sip of water, and dismissed the idea. Tonight. When he built his campfire over the bones of Walter’s fire. Then he would drink. As for now…

  As for now, he would resume his journey. Somewhere ahead was the Dark Tower. Closer, however, much closer, was the man (was he a man? was he really?) who could perhaps tell him how to get there. Roland would catch him, and when he did, that man would talk—aye, yes, yar, tell it on the mountain as you’d hear it in the valley: Walter would be caught, and Walter would talk.

  Roland touched the horn again, and its reality was oddly comforting, as if he had never touched it before.

  Time to get moving.

  The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

  June 19, 1970–April 7, 2004:

  I tell God thankya.

  Robert Browning

  “Childe Roland

  to the Dark Tower Came”

  I

  My first thought was, he lied in every word,

  That hoary cripple, with malicious eye

  Askance to watch the workings of his lie

  On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford

  Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored

  Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

  II

  What else should he be set for, with his staff?

  What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare

  All travellers who might find him posted there,

  And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh

  Would break, what crut
ch ’gin write my epitaph

  For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare.

  III

  If at his counsel I should turn aside

  Into that ominous tract which, all agree,

  Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly

  I did turn as he pointed, neither pride

  Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,

  So much as gladness that some end might be.

  IV

  For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,

  What with my search drawn out through years, my hope

  Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope

  With that obstreperous joy success would bring,

  I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring

  My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

  V

  As when a sick man very near to death

  Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end

  The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,

  And hears one bid the other go, draw breath

  Freelier outside, (‘since all is o’er,’ he saith

  ‘And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;’)

  VI

  When some discuss if near the other graves

  Be room enough for this, and when a day

  Suits best for carrying the corpse away,

  With care about the banners, scarves and staves

  And still the man hears all, and only craves

  He may not shame such tender love and stay.

  VII

  Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,

  Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ

  So many times among ‘The Band’ to wit,

  The knights who to the Dark Tower’s search addressed

  Their steps—that just to fail as they, seemed best,

  And all the doubt was now—should I be fit?

  VIII

  So, quiet as despair I turned from him,

  That hateful cripple, out of his highway

  Into the path he pointed. All the day

  Had been a dreary one at best, and dim

  Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim

  Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

  IX

  For mark! No sooner was I fairly found

  Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,

  Than, pausing to throw backwards a last view

  O’er the safe road, ’twas gone; grey plain all round:

  Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.

  I might go on, naught else remained to do.

  X

  So on I went. I think I never saw

  Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:

  For flowers—as well expect a cedar grove!

  But cockle, spurge, according to their law

  Might propagate their kind with none to awe,

  You’d think; a burr had been a treasure trove.

  XI

  No! penury, inertness and grimace,

  In some strange sort, were the land’s portion. ‘See

  Or shut your eyes,’ said Nature peevishly,

  ‘It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:

  ’Tis the Last Judgement’s fire must cure this place

  Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.’

  XII

  If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk

  Above its mates, the head was chopped, the bents

  Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents

  In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk

  All hope of greenness? ’tis a brute must walk

  Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.

  XIII

  As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair

  In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud

  Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.

  One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,

  Stood stupefied, however he came there:

  Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud!

  XIV

  Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,

  With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain.

  And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;

  Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;

  I never saw a brute I hated so;

  He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

  XV

  I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart,

  As a man calls for wine before he fights,

  I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,

  Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.

  Think first, fight afterwards, the soldier’s art:

  One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

  XVI

  Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face

  Beneath its garniture of curly gold,

  Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold

  An arm to mine to fix me to the place,

  The way he used. Alas, one night’s disgrace!

  Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold.

  XVII

  Giles then, the soul of honour—there he stands

  Frank as ten years ago when knighted first,

  What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.

  Good—but the scene shifts—faugh! what hangman hands

  Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands

  Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

  XVIII

  Better this present than a past like that:

  Back therefore to my darkening path again!

  No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.

  Will the night send a howlet or a bat?

  I asked: when something on the dismal flat

  Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

  XIX

  A sudden little river crossed my path

  As unexpected as a serpent comes.

  No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;

  This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath

  For the fiend’s glowing hoof—to see the wrath

  Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

  XX

  So petty yet so spiteful! All along,

  Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;

  Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit

  Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:

  The river which had done them all the wrong,

  Whate’er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.

  XXI

  Which, while I forded—good saints, how I feared

  To set my foot upon a dead man’s cheek,

  Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek

  For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!

  —It may have been a water-rat I speared,

  But, ugh! it sounded like a baby’s shriek.

  XXII

  Glad was I when I reached the other bank.

  Now for a better country. Vain presage!

  Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,

  Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank

  Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank

  Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage—

  XXIII

  The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque,

  What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?

  No footprint leading to that horrid mews,

  None out of it. Mad brewage set to work

  Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk

  Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

  XXIV

  And more than that—a furlong on—why, there!

  What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,

  Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel

  Men’s bodies out like silk? With all the air

  Of Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware

  Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of ste
el.

  XXV

  Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,

  Next a marsh it would seem, and now mere earth

  Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,

  Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood

  Changes and off he goes!) within a rood—

  Bog, clay and rubble, sand, and stark black dearth.

  XXVI

  Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,

  Now patches where some leanness of the soil’s

  Broke into moss, or substances like boils;

  Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him

  Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim

  Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

  XXVII

  And just as far as ever from the end!

  Naught in the distance but the evening, naught

  To point my footstep further! At the thought,

  A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom friend,

  Sailed past, not best his wide wing dragon-penned

  That brushed my cap—perchance the guide I sought.

  XXVIII

  For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,

  ’Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place

  All round to mountains—with such name to grace

  Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.

  How thus they had surprised me—solve it, you!

  How to get from them was no clearer case.

  XXIX

  Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick

  Of mischief happened to me, God knows when—

  In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then

  Progress this way. When, in the very nick

  Of giving up, one time more, came a click

  As when a trap shuts—you’re inside the den.

  XXX

  Burningly it came on me all at once,

  This was the place! those two hills on the right,