The Dark Tower

Now Roland witnessed an amazing thing: whenPatrick took the rose, he wasn’t cut. Not so much as scratched. Roland pulledhis own lacerated glove off with his teeth and saw that not only was his palmbadly slashed, but one of his remaining fingers now hung by a single bloodytendon. It drooped like something that wants to go to sleep. But Patrick wasnot cut. The thorns did not pierce him. And the terror had gone out of hiseyes. He was looking from the rose to his drawing, back and forth with tendercalculation.

“ROLAND! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? COME,GUNSLINGER, FOR SUNSET’S ALMOST NIGH!”

And yes, he would come. One way or theother. Knowing it was so eased him somewhat, enabled him to remain where he waswithout trembling too badly. His right hand was numb to the wrist, and Rolandsuspected he would never feel it again. That was all right; it hadn’t been muchof a shake since the lobstrosities had gotten at it.

And the rose sang Yes, Roland,yes—you’ll have it again. You’ll be whole again. There will be renewal.Only come.

Patrick plucked a petal from the rose,judged it, then plucked another to go with it. He put them in his mouth. For amoment his face went slack with a peculiar sort of ecstasy, and Roland wonderedwhat the petals might taste like. Overhead the sky was growing dark. The shadowof the pyramid that had been hidden by the rocks stretched nearly to the road.When the point of that shadow touched the way that had brought him here, Rolandsupposed he would go whether the Crimson King still held the Tower approach ornot.

“WHAT’S THEE DOING? EEEEEEEEE! WHATDEVILTRY WORKS IN THY MIND AND THY HEART?”

You’re a great one to speak of deviltry,Roland thought. He took out his watch and snapped back the cover. Beneath thecrystal, the hands now sped backward, five o’clock to four, four to three,three to two, two to one, and one to midnight.

“Patrick, hurry,” he said. “Quick as youcan, I beg, for my time is almost up.”

Patrick cupped a hand beneath his mouth andspat out a red paste the color of fresh blood. The color of the Crimson King’srobe. And the exact color of his lunatic’s eyes.

Patrick, on the verge of using color forthe first time in his life as an artist, made to dip the tip of his rightforefinger into this paste, and then hesitated. An odd certainty came to Rolandthen: the thorns of these roses only pricked when their roots still tied theplant to Mim, or Mother Earth. Had he gotten his way with Patrick, Mim wouldhave cut those talented hands to ribbons and rendered them useless.

It’s still ka, the gunslingerthought. Even out here in End-W—

Before he could finish the thought, Patricktook the gunslinger’s right hand and peered into it with the intensity of afortune-teller. He scooped up some of the blood that flowed there and mixed itwith his rose-paste. Then, carefully, he took a tiny bit of this mixture uponthe second finger of his right hand. He lowered it to his painting… hesitated…looked at Roland. Roland nodded to him and Patrick nodded in return, as gravelyas a surgeon about to make the first cut in a dangerous operation, then appliedhis finger to the paper. The tip touched down as delicately as the beak of ahummingbird dipping into a flower. It colored the Crimson King’s left eye andthen lifted away. Patrick cocked his head, looking at what he had done with afascination Roland had never seen on a human face in all his long and wanderingtime. It was as if the boy were some Ma

Then he broke into an enormous, su

The response from the Dark Tower was moreimmediate and—to Roland, at least—immensely gratifying. The oldcreature pent on the balcony howled in pain.

“WHAT’S THEE DOING? EEEEEEE! EEEEEEEE!STOP! IT BURNS! BURRRRNS! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

EEEE! ”

“Now finish the other,” Roland said.“Quickly! For your life and mine!”

Patrick colored the other eye with the samedelicate dip of the finger. Now two brilliant crimson eyes looked out ofPatrick’s black-and-white drawing, eyes that had been colored with attar ofrose and the blood of Eld; eyes that burned with Hell’s own fire.

It was done.

Roland produced the eraser at last, andheld it out to Patrick. “Make him gone,” he said. “Make yonder foul hob gonefrom this world and every world. Make him gone at last.”

Eleven

There was no question it would work. Fromthe moment Patrick first touched the eraser to his drawing—to that curlof nostril-hair, as it happened—the Crimson King began to scream in freshpain and horror from his balcony redoubt. And in understanding.

Patrick hesitated, looking at Roland forconfirmation, and Roland nodded. “Aye, Patrick. His time has come and you’re tobe his executioner. Go on with it.”

The Old King threw four more sneetches, andRoland took care of them all with calm ease. After that he threw no more, forhe had no hands with which to throw. His shrieks rose to gibbering whines thatRoland thought would surely never leave his ears.

The mute boy erased the full, sensuousmouth from within its foam of beard, and as he did it, the screams first grewmuffled and then ceased. In the end Patrick erased everything but the eyes, andthese the remaining bit of rubber would not even blur. They remained until thepiece of pink gum (originally part of a Pencil-Pak bought in a Norwich,Co

All the rest of him was gone.

Twelve

The shadow of the pyramid’s tip had come totouch the road; now the sky in the west changed from the orange of a reaptidebonfire to that cauldron of blood Roland had seen in his dreams ever sincechildhood. When it did, the call of the Tower doubled, then trebled. Rolandfelt it reach out and grasp him with invisible hands. The time of his destinywas come.

Yet there was this boy. This friendlessboy. Roland would not leave him to die here at the end of End-World if he couldhelp it. He had no interest in atonement, and yet Patrick had come to stand forall the murders and betrayals that had finally brought him to the Dark Tower.Roland’s family was dead; his misbegotten son had been the last. Now would Eldand Tower be joined.

First, though—or last—this.

“Patrick, listen to me,” he said, takingthe boy’s shoulder with his whole left hand and his mutilated right. “If you’dlive to make all the pictures ka has stored away in your future, ask me not asingle question nor ask me to repeat a single thing.”

The boy looked at him, large-eyed andsilent in the red and dying light. And the Song of the Tower rose around themto a mighty shout that was nothing but commala.

“Go back to the road. Pick up all the cansthat are whole. That should be enough to feed you. Go back the way we came.Never leave the road. You’ll do fine.”

Patrick nodded with perfect understanding.Roland saw he believed, and that was good. Belief would protect him even moresurely than a revolver, even one with the sandalwood grips.

“Go back to the Federal. Go back to therobot, Stuttering Bill that was. Tell him to take you to a door that swingsopen on America-side. If it won’t open to your hand, draw it open withthy pencil. Do’ee understand?”

Patrick nodded again. Of course heunderstood.

“If ka should eventually lead you toSusa