Seven
Standing outside, Roland had judged the Tower to be roughly six hundred feet high. But as he peered into the hundredth room, and then the two hundredth, he felt sure he must have climbed eight times six hundred. Soon he would be closing in on the mark of distance his friends from America-side had called a mile. That was more floors than there possibly could be—no Tower could be a mile high!—but still he climbed, climbed until he was nearly running, yet never did he tire. It once crossed his mind that he’d never reach the top; that the Dark Tower was infinite in height as it was eternal in time. But after a moment’s consideration he rejected the idea, for it was his life the Tower was telling, and while that life had been long, it had by no means been eternal. And as it had had a beginning (marked by the cedar clip and the bit of blue silk ribbon), so it would have an ending.
Soon now, quite likely.
The light he sensed behind his eyes was brighter now, and did not seem so blue. He passed a room containing Zoltan, the bird from the weed-eater’s hut. He passed a room containing the atomic pump from the Way Station. He climbed more stairs, paused outside a room containing a dead lobstrosity, and by now the light he sensed was much brighter and no longer blue.
It was…
He was quite sure it was…
It was sunlight. Past twilight it might be, with Old Star and Old Mother shining from above the Dark Tower, but Roland was quite sure he was seeing—or sensing—sunlight.
He climbed on without looking into any more of the rooms, without bothering to smell their aromas of the past. The stairwell narrowed until his shoulders nearly touched its curved stone sides. No songs now, unless the wind was a song, for he heard it soughing.
He passed one final open door. Lying on the floor of the tiny room beyond it was a pad from which the face had been erased. All that remained were two red eyes, glaring up.
I have reached the present. I have reached now.
Yes, and there was sunlight, commala sunlight inside his eyes and waiting for him. It was hot and harsh upon his skin. The sound of the wind was louder, and that sound was also harsh. Unforgiving. Roland looked at the stairs curving upward; now his shoulders would touch the walls, for the passage was no wider than the sides of a coffin. Nineteen more stairs, and then the room at the top of the Dark Tower would be his.
“I come!” he called. “If’ee hear me, hear me well! I come!”
He took the stairs one by one, walking with his back straight and his head held up. The other rooms had been open to his eye. The final one was closed off, his way blocked by a ghostwood door with a single word carved upon it. That word was
ROLAND.
He grasped the knob. It was engraved with a wild rose wound around a revolver, one of those great old guns from his father and now lost forever.
Yet it will be yours again, whispered the voice of the Tower and the voice of the roses—these voices were now one.
What do you mean?
To this there was no answer, but the knob turned beneath his hand, and perhaps that was an answer. Roland opened the door at the top of the Dark Tower.
He saw and understood at once, the knowledge falling upon him in a hammerblow, hot as the sun of the desert that was the apotheosis of all deserts. How many times had he climbed these stairs only to find himself peeled back, curved back, turned back? Not to the beginning (when things might have been changed and time’s curse lifted), but to that moment in the Mohaine Desert when he had finally understood that his thoughtless, questionless quest would ultimately succeed? How many times had he traveled a loop like the one in the clip that had once pinched off his navel, his own tet-ka can Gan? How many times would he travel it?
“Oh, no!” he screamed. “Please, not again! Have pity! Have mercy!”
The hands pulled him forward regardless. The hands of the Tower knew no mercy.
They were the hands of Gan, the hands of ka, and they knew no mercy.
He smelled alkali, bitter as tears. The desert beyond the door was white; blinding; waterless; without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon. The smell beneath the alkali was that of the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death.
But not for you, gunslinger. Never for you. You darkle. You tinct. May I be brutally frank? You go on.
And each time you forget the last time. For you, each time is the first time.
He made one final effort to draw back: hopeless. Ka was stronger.
Roland of Gilead walked through the last door, the one he always sought, the one he always found. It closed gently behind him.
Eight
The gunslinger paused for a moment, swaying on his feet. He thought he’d almost passed out. It was the heat, of course; the damned heat. There was a wind, but it was dry and brought no relief. He took his waterskin, judged how much was left by the heft of it, knew he shouldn’t drink—it wasn’t time to drink—and had a swallow, anyway.
For a moment he had felt he was somewhere else. In the Tower itself, mayhap. But of course the desert was tricky, and full of mirages. The Dark Tower still lay thousands of wheels ahead. That sense of having climbed many stairs and looked into many rooms where many faces had looked back at him was already fading.
I will reach it, he thought, squinting up at the pitiless sun. I swear on the name of my father that I will.
And perhaps this time if you get there it will be different, a voice whispered—surely the voice of desert delirium, for what other time had there ever been? He was what he was and where he was, just that, no more than that, no more. He had no sense of humor and little imagination, but he was steadfast. He was a gunslinger. And in his heart, well-hidden, he still felt the bitter romance of the quest.
You’re the one who never changes, Cort had told him once, and in his voice Roland could have sworn he heard fear… although why Cort should have been afraid of him—a boy—Roland couldn’t tell. It’ll be your damnation, boy. You’ll wear out a hundred pairs of boots on your walk to hell.
And Vannay: Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
And his mother: Roland, must you always be so serious? Can you never rest?
Yet the voice whispered it again
(different this time mayhap different)
and Roland did seem to smell something other than alkali and devil-grass. He thought it might be flowers.
He thought it might be roses.
He shifted his gunna from one shoulder to the other, then touched the horn that rode on his belt behind the gun on his right hip. The ancient brass horn had once been blown by Arthur Eld himself, or so the story did say. Roland had given it to Cuthbert Allgood at Jericho Hill, and when Cuthbert fell, Roland had paused just long enough to pick it up again, knocking the deathdust of that place from its throat.
This is your sigul, whispered the fading voice that bore with it the dusk-sweet scent of roses, the scent of home on a summer evening—O lost!—a stone, a rose, an unfound door; a stone, a rose, a door.
This is your promise that things may be different, Roland—that there may yet be rest. Even salvation.
A pause, and then:
If you stand. If you are true.
He shook his head to clear it, thought of taking another sip of water, and dismissed the idea. Tonight. When he built his campfire over the bones of Walter’s fire. Then he would drink. As for now…
As for now, he would resume his journey. Somewhere ahead was the Dark Tower. Closer, however, much closer, was the man (was he a man? was he really?) who could perhaps tell him how to get there. Roland would catch him, and when he did, that man would talk—aye, yes, yar, tell it on the mountain as you’d hear it in the valley: Walter would be caught, and Walter would talk.