‘Twas my own, he thought. He regarded it a moment longer, fascinated, then put it carefully back where it had been. Where it belonged. When he stood up again, he saw a baby’s face
(Can this be my darling bah-bo? If you say so, let it be so!)
among the multitude of others. It was contorted, as if its first breath of air outside the womb had not been to its liking, already fouled with death. Soon it would pronounce judgment on its new situation with a squall that would echo throughout the apartments of Steven and Gabrielle, causing those friends and servants who heard it to smile with relief. (Only Marten Broadcloak would scowl.) The birthing was done, and it had been a livebirth, tell Gan and all the gods thankya. There was an heir to the Line of Eld, and thus there was still the barest outside chance that the world’s rueful shuffle toward ruin might be reversed.
Roland left that room, his sense of déjà vu stronger than ever. So was the sense that he had entered the body of Gan himself.
He turned to the stairs and once more began to climb.
Four
Another nineteen steps took him to the second landing and the second room. Here bits of cloth were scattered across the circular floor. Roland had no question that they had once been an infant’s clout, torn to shreds by a certain petulant interloper, who had then gone out onto the balcony for a look back at the field of roses and found himself betaken. He was a creature of monumental slyness, full of evil wisdom… but in the end he had slipped, and now he would pay forever and ever.
If it was only a look he wanted, why did he bring his ammunition with him when he stepped out?
Because it was his only gunna, and slung over his back, whispered one of the faces carved into the curve of the wall. This was the face of Mordred. Roland saw no hatefulness there now but only the lonely sadness of an abandoned child. That face was as lonesome as a train-whistle on a moonless night. There had been no clip for Mordred’s navel when he came into the world, only the mother he had taken for his first meal. No clip, never in life, for Mordred had never been part of Gan’s tet. No, not he.
My Red Father would never go unarmed, whispered the stone boy. Not once he was away from his castle. He was mad, but never that mad.
In this room was the smell of talc put on by his mother while he lay naked on a towel, fresh from his bath and playing with his newly discovered toes. She had soothed his skin with it, singing as she caressed him: Baby-bunting, baby dear, baby bring your basket here!
This smell too was gone as quickly as it had come.
Roland crossed to the little window, walking among the shredded bits of diaper, and looked out. The disembodied eyes sensed him and rolled over giddily to regard him. That gaze was poisonous with fury and loss.
Come out, Roland! Come out and face me one to one! Man to man! An eye for an eye, may it do ya!
“I think not,” Roland said, “for I have more work to do. A little more, even yet.”
It was his last word to the Crimson King. Although the lunatic screamed thoughts after him, he screamed in vain, for Roland never looked back. He had more stairs to climb and more rooms to investigate on his way to the top.
Five
On the third landing he looked through the door and saw a corduroy dress that had no doubt been his when he’d been only a year old. Among the faces on this wall he saw that of his father, but as a much younger man. Later on that face had become cruel—events and responsibilities had turned it so. But not here. Here, Steven Deschain’s eyes were those of a man looking on something that pleases him more than anything else ever has, or ever could. Here Roland smelled a sweet and husky aroma he knew for the scent of his father’s shaving soap. A phantom voice whispered, Look, Gabby, look you! He’s smiling! Smiling at me! And he’s got a new tooth!
On the floor of the fourth room was the collar of his first dog, Ring-A-Levio. Ringo, for short. He’d died when Roland was three, which was something of a gift. A boy of three was still allowed to weep for a lost pet, even a boy with the blood of Eld in his veins. Here the gunslinger that was smelled an odor that was wonderful but had no name, and knew it for the smell of the Full Earth sun in Ringo’s fur.
Perhaps two dozen floors above Ringo’s Room was a scattering of breadcrumbs and a limp bundle of feathers that had once belonged to a hawk named David—no pet he, but certainly a friend. The first of Roland’s many sacrifices to the Dark Tower. On one section of the wall Roland saw David carved in flight, his stubby wings spread above all the gathered court of Gilead (Marten the Enchanter not least among them). And to the left of the door leading onto the balcony, David was carved again. Here his wings were folded as he fell upon Cort like a blind bullet, heedless of Cort’s upraised stick.
Old times.
Old times and old crimes.
Not far from Cort was the laughing face of the whore with whom the boy had sported that night. The smell in David’s Room was her perfume, cheap and sweet. As the gunslinger drew it in, he remembered touching the whore’s pubic curls and was shocked to remember now what he had remembered then, as his fingers slid toward her slicky-sweet cleft: being fresh out of his baby’s bath, with his mother’s hands upon him.
He began to grow hard, and Roland fled that room in fear.
Six
There was no more red to light his way now, only the eldritch blue glow of the windows—glass eyes that were alive, glass eyes that looked upon the gunless intruder. Outside the Dark Tower, the roses of Can’-Ka No Rey had closed for another day. Part of his mind marveled that he should be here at all; that he had one by one surmounted the obstacles placed in his path, as dreadfully single-minded as ever. I’m like one of the old people’s robots, he thought. One that will either accomplish the task for which it has been made or beat itself to death trying.
Another part of him was not surprised at all, however. This was the part that dreamed as the Beams themselves must, and this darker self thought again of the horn that had fallen from Cuthbert’s fingers—Cuthbert, who had gone to his death laughing. The horn that might to this very day lie where it had fallen on the rocky slope of Jericho Hill.
And of course I’ve seen these rooms before! They’re telling my life, after all.
Indeed they were. Floor by floor and tale by tale (not to mention death by death), the rising rooms of the Dark Tower recounted Roland Deschain’s life and quest. Each held its memento; each its signature aroma. Many times there was more than a single floor devoted to a single year, but there was always at least one. And after the thirty-eighth room (which is nineteen doubled, do ya not see it), he wished to look no more. This one contained the charred stake to which Susan Delgado had been bound. He did not enter, but looked at the face upon the wall. That much he owed her. Roland, I love thee! Susan Delgado had screamed, and he knew it was the truth, for it was only her love that rendered her recognizable. And, love or no love, in the end she had still burned.
This is a place of death, he thought, and not just here. All these rooms. Every floor.
Yes, gunslinger, whispered the Voice of the Tower. But only because your life has made it so.
After the thirty-eighth floor, Roland climbed faster.