The Dark Tower

Susa

“You bitch, I’ll teach you to interrupt aman when he’s on a—”

“Roland, let it go!” she screamed,and he did.

Dandelo dropped, meaning to land on her andcrush the gun between them, but she was an instant too quick. She rolled asideand he landed on Roland, instead. Susa

“Stop!” he cried in a voice that wasdropping in pitch and becoming something like a cicada’s buzz. “I want to tellyou the one about the archbishop and the chorus girl!”

“Heard it,” she said, and shot him twice,one bullet following another into his brain from just above what had been hisright eye.

Two

Roland floundered to his feet. His hair wasmatted to the sides of his swollen face. When she tried to take his hand, hewaved her away and staggered to the front door of the little cottage, which nowlooked dingy and ill-lit to Susa

Roland of Gilead pulled open the door. Thewind ripped it from his grasp and threw it against the wall with a bang. Hestaggered two steps into the screaming blizzard, bent forward with his handsplaced on his lower thighs, and vomited. She saw the jet of egested material,and how the wind whipped it away into the dark. When Roland came back in, hisshirt and the side of his face were rimed with snow. It was fiercely hot in thecottage; that was something else Dandelo’s glammer had hidden from them until now.She saw that the thermostat—a plain old Honeywell not much different fromthe one in her New York apartment—was still on the wall. She went to itand examined it. It was twisted as far as it would go, beyond theeighty-five-degree mark. She pushed it back to seventy with the tip of afinger, then turned to survey the room. The fireplace was actually twice thesize it had appeared to them, and filled with enough logs to make it roar likea steel-furnace. There was nothing she could do about that for the time being,but it would eventually die down.

The dead thing on the rug had mostly burstout of its clothes. To Susa

The tidy, well-lit cottage—likesomething out of a fairy-tale, and hadn’t she seen that from thefirst?—was now a dim and smoky peasant’s hut. There were still electriclights, but they looked old and long-used, like the kind of fixtures one mightfind in a flophouse hotel. The rag rug was dark with dirt as well as splotchedwith spilled food, and unraveling in places.

“Roland, are you all right?”

Roland looked at her, and then, slowly,went to his knees before her. For a moment she thought he was fainting, and shewas alarmed. When she realized, only a second later, what was really happening,she was more alarmed still.

“Gunslinger, I was ‘mazed,” Roland said ina husky, trembling voice. “I was taken in like a child, and I cry your pardon.”

“Roland, no! Git up!” That was Detta, whoalways seemed to come out when Susa

“Give me pardon, first,” Roland said, notlooking at her.

She fumbled for the formula and found it,which was a relief. She couldn’t stand to see him on his knees like that.“Rise, gunslinger, I give you pardon in good heart.” She paused, then added:“If I save your life another nine times, we’ll be somewhere close to even.”

He said, “Your kind heart makes me ashamedof my own,” and rose to his feet. The terrible color was fading from hischeeks. He looked at the thing on the rug, casting its grotesquely misshapenshadow up the wall in the firelight. Looked around at the close little hut withits ancient fixtures and flickering electric bulbs.

“What he fed us was all right,” he said. Itwas as if he’d read her mind and seen the worst fear that it held. “He’d neverpoison what he meant to… eat.”

She was holding his gun out to him, buttfirst. He took it and reloaded the two empty chambers before dropping it backinto the holster. The hut’s door was still open and snow came blowing in. Ithad already created a white delta in the little entryway, where their makeshifthide coats hung. The room was a little cooler now, a little less like a sauna.

“How did you know?” he asked.

She thought back to the hotel where Mia hadleft Black Thirteen. Later on, after they’d left, Jake and Callahan had beenable to get into Room 1919 because someone had left them a note and

(dad-a-chee)

a key. Jake’s name and This is thetruth had been written on the envelope in a hybrid of cursive scriptand printing. She was sure that if she had that envelope with its brief messageand compared it to the message she’d found in the bathroom, she would find thesame hand made both.

According to Jake, the desk-clerk at theNew York Plaza–Park Hotel had told them the message had been left by aman named Stephen King.

“Come with me,” she said. “Into thebathroom.”

Three

Like the rest of the hut, the bathroom wassmaller now, not much more than a closet. The tub was old and rusty, with athin layer of dirt in the bottom. It looked like it had last been used…

Well, the truth was that it looked toSusa

“It’s an anagram,” she said. “Do you see?”

He studied the writing, then shook hishead, looking a bit ashamed.

“Not your fault, Roland. They’re ourletters, not the ones you know. Take my word for it, it’s an anagram. Eddiewould have seen it right away, I bet. I don’t know if it was Dandelo’s idea ofa joke, or if there are some sort of rules glammer things like him have tofollow, but the thing is, we figured it out in time, with a little help fromStephen King.”

“You figured it out,” he said. “Iwas busy laughing myself to death.”

“We both would have done that,” she said.“You were just a little more vulnerable because your sense of humor… forgiveme, Roland, but as a rule, it’s pretty lame.”

“I know that,” he said bleakly. Then hesuddenly turned and left the room.