The Dark Tower

“Go on, say what’s on your mind, do itplease ya,” Flaherty persisted. He tried to smile and produced a gruesome grininstead—the leer of a madman. Quietly, with barely a rustle, the restpulled back. “Others will have plenty to say; why shouldn’t you start, mycully? I lost him! Be the first to carp, you ugly motherfucker!”

I’m dead, Lamla thought. After alife of service to the King, one unguarded expression in the presence of a manwho needs a scapegoat, and I’m dead.

He looked around, verifying that none ofthe others would step in for him, and then said: “Flaherty, if I’ve offendedyou in some way I’m sor—”

“Oh, you’ve offended me, sureenough!” Flaherty shrieked, his Boston accent growing thicker as his rageescalated. “I’m sure I’ll pay for tonight’s work, aye, but I think you’ll payfir—”

There was a kind of gasp in the air aroundthem, as if the corridor itself had inhaled sharply. Flaherty’s hair andLamla’s fur rippled. Flaherty’s posse of low men and vampires began to turn.Suddenly one of them, a vamp named Albrecht, shrieked and bolted forward,allowing Flaherty a view of two newcomers, men with raindrops still fresh anddark on their jeans and boots and shirts. There was trail-dusty gu

The young one fired a single shot.Albrecht’s blond hair jumped as if flicked by an invisible hand and then hecollapsed forward, fading within his clothes as he did so.

“Hile, you bondsmen of the King,” the olderone said. He spoke in a purely conversational tone. Flaherty—his handsstill bleeding from his extravagant drumming on the door through which thesnot-babby had disappeared—could not seem to get the sense of him. It wasthe one of whom they had been warned, surely it was Roland of Gilead, but howhad he gotten here, and on their blindside? How?

Roland’s cold blue eyes surveyed them.“Which of this sorry herd calls himself dinh? Will that one honor us by steppingforward or not? Not?” His eyes surveyed them; his left hand departed thevicinity of his gun and journeyed to the corner of his mouth, where a smallsarcastic smile had bloomed. “Not? Too bad. Th’art cowards after all, I’m sorryto see. Thee’d kill a priest and chase a lad but not stand and claim thy day’swork. Th’art cowards and the sons of cow—”

Flaherty stepped forward with his bleedingright hand clasped loosely around the butt of the gun that hung below his leftarmpit in a docker’s clutch. “That would be me, Roland-of-Steven.”

“You know my name, do you?”

“Aye! I know your name by your face, andyour face by your mouth. T’is the same as the mouth of your mother, who didsuck John Farson with such glee until he spewed ‘is—”

Flaherty drew as he spoke, a bushwhacker’strick he’d no doubt practiced and used before to advantage. And although he wasfast and the forefinger of Roland’s left hand still touched the side of hismouth when Flaherty’s draw began, the gunslinger beat him easily. His first bulletpassed between the lips of Jake’s chief harrier, exploding the teeth at thefront of his upper jaw to bone fragments which Flaherty drew down his throatwith his dying breath. His second pierced Flaherty’s forehead between theeyebrows and he was flung back against the New York/Fedic door with the unfiredGlock spilling from his hand to discharge a final time on the hallway floor.

Most of the others drew a split-secondlater. Eddie killed the six in front, having taken time to reload the chamberhe’d fired at Albrecht. When the revolver was empty, he rolled behind his dinhto reload, as he had been taught. Roland picked off the next five, then rolledsmoothly behind Eddie, who took out the rest save one.

Lamla had been too cu

“Not a bit,” Roland said, and cocked hisrevolver.

“Be damned to you, then, chary-ka,” saidthe taheen, and Roland of Gilead shot him where he stood, and Lamla of Galeefell down dead.

Two

Flaherty’s posse lay stacked in front ofthe door like cordwood, Lamla facedown in front. Not a single one had had achance to fire. The tile-throated corridor stank of the gunsmoke which hung ina blue layer. Then the purifiers kicked in, chugging wearily in the wall, andthe gunslingers felt the air first stirred into motion and then sucked acrosstheir faces.

Eddie reloaded the gun—his, now, sohe had been told—and dropped it back into its holster. Then he went tothe dead and yanked four of them absently aside so he could get to the door.“Susa

Do any of us, except in our dreams, trulyexpect to be reunited with our hearts’ deepest loves, even when they leave usonly for minutes, and on the most mundane of errands? No, not at all. Each timethey go from our sight we in our secret hearts count them as dead. Having beengiven so much, we reason, how could we expect not to be brought as low asLucifer for the staggering presumption of our love?

So Eddie didn’t expect her to answer untilshe did—from another world, and through a single thickness of wood.“Eddie? Sugar, is it you?”

Eddie’s head, which had seemed perfectlynormal only seconds before, was suddenly too heavy to hold up. He leaned itagainst the door. His eyes were similarly too heavy to hold open and so heclosed them. The weight must have been tears, for suddenly he was swimming inthem. He could feel them rolling down his cheeks, warm as blood. And Roland’shand, touching his back.

“Susa

Jake answered. “No, but you can.”

“What word?” Roland asked. He had beenalternating glances at the door with looks behind him, almost hoping forreinforcements (for his blood was up), but the tiled corridor was empty. “Whatword, Jake?”

There was a pause—brief, but itseemed very long to Eddie—and then both spoke together. “Chassit,”they said.

Eddie didn’t trust himself to say it; histhroat was too full of tears. Roland had no such problem. He hauled severalmore bodies away from the door (including Flaherty’s, his face still fixed inits final snarl) and then spoke the word. Once again the door between the worldsclicked open. It was Eddie who opened it wide and then the four of them wereface-to-face again, Susa

Eddie took them. He let her fingers closeover his and draw him into Fedic.

Three

By the time Roland stepped through, Eddiehad already lifted Susa

“Hile, Jake,” Roland said.

“Hile, Father.”

“Will you call me so?”

Jake nodded. “Yes, if I may.”

“Such would please me ever,” Roland said.Then, slowly—as one performs an action with which he’sunfamiliar—he held out his arms. Looking up at him solemnly, never takinghis eyes from Roland’s face, the boy Jake moved between those killer’s handsand waited until they locked at his back. He had had dreams of this that hewould never have dared to tell.

Susa