The Dark Tower

The smiling stranger, who seemed to havesprung from the very floor, raised the hand not holding the gun to the hood ofhis parka and turned a bit of it outward. Mordred saw a flash of metal. Somekind of woven wire coated the inside of the hood.

“I call it my ‘thinking-cap,’” said thestranger. “I can’t hear your thoughts, which is a drawback, but you can’t getinto my head, which is a—”

(which is a definite advantage, wouldn’tyou say)

“—which is a definite advantage,wouldn’t you say?”

There were two patches on the jacket. Oneread U.S. ARMY and showed a bird—the eagle-bird, not the hoo-hoo bird.The other patch was a name: RANDALL FLAGG. Mordred discovered (also with nosurprise) that he could read easily.

“Because, if you’re anything like yourfather—the red one, that is—then your mental powers mayexceed mere communication.” The man in the parka tittered. He didn’t wantMordred to know he was afraid. Perhaps he’d convinced himself he wasn’tafraid, that he’d come here of his own free will. Maybe he had. It didn’tmatter to Mordred one way or the other. Nor did the man’s plans, which jumbledand ran in his head like hot soup. Did the man really believe the“thinking-cap” had closed off his thoughts? Mordred looked closer, prieddeeper, and saw the answer was yes. Very convenient.

“In any case, I believe a bit of protectionto be very prudent. Prudence is always the wisest course; how else did Isurvive the fall of Farson and the death of Gilead? I wouldn’t want you to getin my head and walk me off a high building, now would I? Although why wouldyou? You need me or someone, now that yon bucket of bolts has gone silent andyou just a bah-bo who can’t tie his own clout across the crack of his shittyass!”

The stranger—who was really nostranger at all—laughed. Mordred sat in the chair and watched him. On theside of the child’s cheek was a pink weal, for he’d gone to sleep with hissmall hand against the side of his small face.

The newcomer said, “I think we cancommunicate very well if I talk and you nod for yes or shake your head for no.Knock on your chair if you don’t understand. Simple enough! Do you agree?”

Mordred nodded. The newcomer found thesteady blue glare of those eyes unsettling—trèsunsettling—but tried not to show it. He wondered again if coming here hadbeen the right thing to do, but he had tracked Mia’s course ever since she hadkindled, and why, if not for this? It was a dangerous game, agreed, but nowthere were only two creatures who could unlock the door at the foot of theTower before the Tower fell… which it would, and soon, because the writer hadonly days left to live in his world, and the final Books of theTower—three of them—remained unwritten. In the last one that waswritten in that key world, Roland’s ka-tet had banished sai Randy Flagg from adream-palace on an interstate highway, a palace that had looked to Eddie,Susa

Too late.

There had been a day of choice, as Walterwell knew: he had been at Le Casse Roi Russe, and had seen it in theglass ball the Old Red Thing still possessed (although by now it no doubt lay forgottenin some castle corner). By the summer of 1997, King had clearly known the storyof the Wolves, the twins, and the flying plates called Orizas. But to thewriter, all that had seemed like too much work. He had chosen a book of looselyinter-locked stories called Hearts in Atlantis instead, and even now, inhis home on Turtleback Lane (where he had never seen so much as a singlewalk-in), the writer was frittering away the last of his time writing aboutpeace and love and Vietnam. It was true that one character in what would beKing’s last book had a part to play in the Dark Tower’s history as it might be,but that fellow—an old man with talented brains—would never get achance to speak lines that really mattered. Lovely.

In the only world that really mattered, thetrue world where time never turns back and there are no second chances (tell yatrue), it was June 12th of 1999. The writer’s time had shrunk to less than twohundred hours.

Walter o’ Dim knew he didn’t have quitethat long to reach the Dark Tower, because time (like the metabolism of certainspiders) ran faster and hotter on this side of things. Say five days. Five anda half at the outside. He had that long to reach the Tower with MordredDeschain’s birthmarked, amputated foot in his gu

If he could find a vehicle… or the rightdoor…

Was it too late to become the God of All?

Perhaps not. In any case, what harm intrying?

Walter o’ Dim had wandered long, and undera hundred names, but the Tower had always been his goal. Like Roland, he wantedto climb it and see what lived at the top. If anything did.

He had belonged to none of the cliques andcults and faiths and factions that had arisen in the confused years since theTower began to totter, although he wore their siguls when it suited him. Hisservice to the Crimson King was a late thing, as was his service to JohnFarson, the Good Man who’d brought down Gilead, the last bastion of civilization,in a tide of blood and murder. Walter had done his own share of murder in thoseyears, living a long and only quasi-mortal life. He had witnessed the end ofwhat he had then believed to be Roland’s last ka-tet at Jericho Hill. Witnessedit? That was a little overmodest, by all the gods and fishes! Under the name ofRudin Filaro, he had fought with his face painted blue, had screamed andcharged with the rest of the stinking barbarians, and had brought down CuthbertAllgood himself, with an arrow through the eye. Yet through all that he’d kepthis gaze on the Tower. Perhaps that was why the damned gunslinger—as thesun went down on that day’s work, Roland of Gilead had been the last ofthem—had been able to escape, having buried himself in a cart filled withthe dead and then creeping out of the slaughterpile at sundown, just before thewhole works had been set alight.

He had seen Roland years earlier, in Mejis,and had just missed his grip on him there, too (although he put that mostlydown to Eldred Jonas, he of the quavery voice and the long gray hair, and Jonashad paid). The King had told him then that they weren’t done with Roland, thatthe gunslinger would begin the end of matters and ultimately cause the tumbleof that which he wished to save. Walter hadn’t begun to believe that until theMohaine Desert, where he had looked around one day and discovered a certaingunslinger on his backtrail, one who had grown old over the course of fallingyears, and hadn’t completely believed it until the reappearance of Mia, whofulfilled an old and grave prophecy by giving birth to the Crimson King’s son.Certainly the Old Red Thing was of no more use to him, but even in hisimprisonment and insanity, he—it—was dangerous.