{"id":6073,"date":"2026-01-04T12:51:38","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T12:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/the-dark-tower-04-wizard-and-glass-king-stephen\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T12:51:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T12:51:38","slug":"the-dark-tower-04-wizard-and-glass-king-stephen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/the-dark-tower-04-wizard-and-glass-king-stephen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dark Tower 04 – Wizard and Glass – King, Stephen"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n
\nTHE DARK TOWER<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n
\n <\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n
\nIV<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n
\n<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\nSTEPHEN<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nKING<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nwizard\u00a0 <\/span>and\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>glass<\/span>
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\n
\nILLUSTRATIONS<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n
\n\u00a0 <\/span>BY DAVE\u00a0 <\/span>MCKEAN<\/span>
\n<\/b>
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\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nA PLUME BOOK<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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\n
\nPLUME<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPublished by the Penguin Group<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPenguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPenguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPenguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 <\/span>
\nPenguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPenguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: <\/span>
\nHarmondsworth, Middlesex, England<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPublished by Plume, an imprint of Dutton Signet,<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\na member of Penguin Putnam Inc.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nA limited hardcover edition was published by Donald M. Grant, <\/span>
\nPublisher, Inc., Hampton Falls, NH.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nFirst Plume Printing, November, 1997 <\/span>
\n10\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>
\n987654321<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nCopyright \u00a9 Stephen King, 1997<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nIllustrations copyright \u00a9 Dave McKean, 1997<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAll rights reserved<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nacknowledgments<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe lyrics from “The Green Door,” words by Marvin Moore, music by Bob Davis,<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\ncopyright \u00a9 1956 Alley Music Corp. and Trio Music Co., Inc. Copyright renewed. All<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nrights reserved. Used by permission. The lyrics from “Whole Lot-ta Shakin’ Goin’ On”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nby Dave Williams and Sonny David, copyright \u00a9 1957.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n^^ REGISTERED TRADEMARK\u2014\u2014MARCA REGISTRADA LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nKing, Stephen<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nWizard and glass \/ Stephen King, <\/span>
\np.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>cm. \u2014 (The Dark Tower ; 4)<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nISBN 0-452-27917-8 I. Series: King, Stephen. Dark Tower ; 4.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPS3561.I483W59\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>1997<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n813′.54\u2014dc21\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>97-15995
CIP<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPrinted in the United States of America<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSet in Times Roman <\/span>
\nDesigned by Jesse Cohen<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nWithout limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nbe reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nby any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nprior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nBOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nOR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION,<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPENGUIN PUTNAM INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10014.<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThis book is dedicated to Julie Eugley and<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nMarsha DeFilippo. They answer the mail, and<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nmost of the mail for the last couple of years has<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nbeen about Roland of Gilead\u2014the gunslinger.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBasically, Julie and Marsha nagged me back<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nto the word processor. Julie, you nagged the<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nmost effectively, so your name comes first.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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\n
\nCONTENTS<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nARGUEMENT<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPROLOGUE<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBLAINE<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPART ONE<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRIDDLES<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPART TWO<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSUSAN<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPART THREE<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nCOME, REAP<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPART FOUR<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nALL GOD’S CHILLUN GOT SHOES<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nAFTERWORD<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nILLUSTRATIONS<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRose<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAll hail the crimson king!<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHer arms and belly and breasts breaking out in gooseflesh<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nCuthbert, meanwhile, had already reloaded<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBut he and his love were no longer children<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSmiling lips revealed cunning little teeth<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThere they died together-o<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nOf the three of them, only Roland saw her<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nIt cut the old man’s throat efficiently enough<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nA flash as the big-bang exploded<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe dark tower rearing to the sky<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe wicked witch of the East<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nARGUEMENT<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n
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\n
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\n
\nWizard and Glass <\/span>
\n<\/i>
\nis the fourth volume of a longer tale inspired by Robert Browning’s narrative poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe first volume, The Gunslinger, <\/i>tells how Roland of Gilead pursues and at last catches Walter, the man in black, who pretended friendship with <\/span>Roland’s father but who actually served Marten, a great sorcerer. Catching the half-human Walter is not Roland’s goal but only a means to an end: Roland wants to reach the Dark Tower, where he hopes the quickening de<\/span>struction of Mid-World may be halted, perhaps even reversed.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland is a kind of knight, the last of his breed, and the Tower is his ob<\/span>
\nsession, his only reason for living when first we meet him. We learn of an early test of manhood forced upon him by Marten, who has seduced Roland’s <\/span>mother. Marten expects Roland to fail this test and to be “sent west,” his fa<\/span>ther’s guns forever denied him. Roland, however, lays Marten’s plans at nines, passing the test . . .due mostly to his clever choice of weapon.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nWe discover that the gunslinger’s world is related to our own in some fundamental and terrible way. This link is first revealed when Roland meets <\/span>Jake, a boy from the New York of 1977, at a desert way station. There are doors between Roland’s world and our own; one of them is death, and that is <\/span>how Jake first reaches Mid-World, pushed into Forty-third Street and run over by a car. The pusher was a man named Jack Mort . . . except the thing <\/span>hiding inside of Mort’s head and guiding his murderous hands on this particular occasion was Roland’s old enemy, Walter.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBefore Jake and Roland reach Walter, Jake dies again … this time be<\/span>
\ncause the gunslinger faced with an agonizing choice between this symbolic <\/span>
\nson and the Dark Tower, chooses the Tower. Jake’s last words before plung<\/span>
\ning into the abyss are “Go, then\u2014there are other worlds than these.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe final confrontation between Roland and Walter occurs near the Western Sea. In a long night of palaver, the man in black tells Roland’s future with a strange Tarot deck. Three cards\u2014The Prisoner, The Lady of the <\/span>Shadows, and Death (“but not for you, gunslinger”)\u2014are especially called to Roland’s attention.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe second volume, The Drawing of the Three, <\/i>begins on the edge of the <\/span>
\nWestern Sea not long after Roland awakens from his confrontation with his <\/span>
\nold nemesis and discovers Walter long dead, only more bones in a place of <\/span>
\nbones. The exhausted gunslinger is attacked by a horde of carnivorous “lob<\/span>
\nstrosities,” and before he can escape them, he has been seriously wounded, <\/span>
\nlosing the first two fingers of his right hand. He is also poisoned by their bites, and as he resumes his trek northward along the Western Sea, Roland is <\/span>sickening … perhaps dying.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nOn his walk he encounters three doors standing freely on the beach. These open into our city of New York, at three different whens. <\/i>From 1987, <\/span>Roland draws Eddie Dean, a prisoner of heroin. From 1964, he draws Odetta <\/span>Susannah Holmes, a woman who has lost her lower legs in a subway mis<\/span>hap . . . one that was no accident. She is indeed a lady of shadows, with a vi<\/span>cious second personality hiding within the socially committed young black woman her friends know. This hidden woman, the violent and crafty Detta Walker, is determined to kill both Roland and Eddie when the gunslinger draws her into Mid-World.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBetween these two in time, once again in 1977, Roland enters the hellish <\/span>
\nmind of Jack Mort, who has hurt Odetta\/Detta not once but twice. “Death,” the man in black told Roland, “but not for you, gunslinger.” Nor is Mort the third of whom Walter foretold; Roland prevents Mort from murdering Jake Chambers, and shortly afterward Mort dies beneath the wheels of the same <\/span>train which took Odetta’s legs in 1959. Roland thus fails to draw the psychotic into Mid-World … but, he thinks, who would want such a being in any case?<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nYet there’s a price to be paid for rebellion against a foretold future; isn’t there always? Ka, maggot, <\/i>Roland’s old teacher, Cort, might have said; <\/span>Such is the great wheel, and always turns. Be not in front of it when it does, or <\/span>you ‘II be crushed under it, and so make an end to your stupid brains and useless bags of guts and water.<\/span><\/i><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland thinks that perhaps he has drawn three in just Eddie and Odetta, <\/span>
\nsince Odetta is a double personality, yet when Odetta and Detta merge as one in Susannah (thanks in large part to Eddie Dean’s love and courage), the gun<\/span>
\nslinger knows it’s not so. He knows something else as well: he is being tormented by thoughts of Jake, the boy who, dying, spoke of other worlds. Half <\/span>
\nof the gunslinger’s mind, in fact, believes there never was <\/i>a boy. In prevent<\/span>
\ning Jack Mort from pushing Jake in front of the car meant to kill him, Roland <\/span>
\nhas created a temporal paradox which is tearing him apart. And, in our world, <\/span>
\nit is tearing Jake Chambers apart as well.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Wastelands, <\/span>
\n<\/i>
\nthe third volume of the series, begins with this paradox. <\/span>
\nAfter killing a gigantic bear named either Mir (by the old people who went in fear of it) or Shardik (by the Great Old Ones who built it<\/span>
\n…<\/span>
\n for the bear turns <\/span>out to be a cyborg), Roland, Eddie, and Susannah backtrack the beast and dis<\/span>cover Path of the Beam. There are six of these beams, running between <\/span>the twelve portals which mark the edges of Mid-World. At the point where the beams cross\u2014at the center of Roland’s world, perhaps the center of all <\/span>worlds\u2014the gunslinger believes that he and his friends will at last find the Dark Tower.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBy now Eddie and Susannah are no longer prisoners in Roland’s world. In <\/span>
\nlove and well on the way to becoming gunslingers themselves, they are full participants in the quest and follow him willingly along the Path of the Beam.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nIn a speaking ring not far from the Portal of the Bear, time is mended, paradox is ended, and the real <\/i>third is at last drawn. Jake reenters Mid-World <\/span>at the conclusion of a perilous rite where all four\u2014Jake, Eddie, Susannah, and Roland\u2014remember the faces of their fathers and acquit themselves hon<\/span>orably. Not long after, the quartet becomes a quintet, when Jake befriends a <\/span>billy-bumbler. Bumblers, which look like a combination of badger, raccoon, and dog, have a limited speaking ability. Jake names his new friend Oy.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe way of the pilgrims leads them toward Lud, an urban wasteland where the degenerate survivors of two old factions, the Pubes and the Grays, <\/span>carry on the vestige of an old conflict. Before reaching the city, they come to <\/span>a little town called River Crossing, where a few antique residents still remain. They recognize Roland as a remnant of the old days, before the world moved <\/span>on, and honor him and his companions. After, the old people tell them of a monorail train which may still run from Lud and into the wastelands, along the Path of the Beam and toward the Dark Tower.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake is frightened by this news, but not really surprised; before being drawn away from New York, he obtained two books from a bookstore owned <\/span>by a man with the thought-provoking name of Calvin Tower. One is a book of riddles with the answers torn out. The other, Charlie the Choo-Choo, <\/i>is a <\/span>children’s book about a train. An amusing little tale, most might say . . . but to Jake, there’s something about Charlie that isn’t amusing at all. Something <\/span>frightening. Roland knows something else: in the High Speech of his world, <\/span>the word char <\/i>means death.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAunt Talitha, the matriarch of the River Crossing folk, gives Roland a silver cross to wear, and the travellers go their course. Before reaching Lud, <\/span>they discover a downed plane from our world\u2014a German fighter from the <\/span>
\n1930s. Jammed into the cockpit is the mummified corpse of a giant, almost <\/span>
\ncertainly the half-mythical outlaw David Quick.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nWhile crossing the dilapidated bridge which spans the River Send, Jake <\/span>
\nand Oy are nearly lost in an accident. While Roland, Eddie, and Susannah are distracted by this, the party is ambushed by a dying (and very dangerous) out<\/span>
\nlaw named Gasher. He abducts Jake and takes him underground to the Tick-<\/span>
\nTock Man, the last leader of the Grays. Tick-Tock’s real name is Andrew <\/span>
\nQuick; he is the great-grandson of the man who died trying to land an air<\/span>
\nplane from another world.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nWhile Roland (aided by Oy) goes after Jake, Eddie and Susannah find <\/span>
\nthe Cradle of Lud, where Blaine the Mono awakes. Blaine is the last above-<\/span>
\nground tool of the vast computer-system which lies beneath the city of Lud, and it has only one remaining interest: riddles. It promises to take the trav<\/span>
\nellers to the monorail’s final stop if they can solve a riddle it poses them. <\/span>
\nOtherwise, Blaine says, the only trip they’ll be taking will be to the place <\/span>
\nwhere the path ends in the clearing <\/span>
\n…<\/span>
\n to their deaths, in other words. In that case they’ll have plenty of company, for Blaine is planning to release stocks <\/span>of nerve-gas which will kill everyone left in Lud: Pubes, Grays, and gun-<\/span>slingers alike.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland rescues Jake, leaving the Tick-Tock Man for dead … but An<\/span>
\ndrew Quick is not dead. Half blind, hideously wounded about the face, he is <\/span>
\nrescued by a man who calls himself Richard Fannin. Fannin, however, also <\/span>
\nidentifies himself as the Ageless Stranger, a demon of whom Roland has been <\/span>
\nwarned by Walter.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland and Jake are reunited with Eddie and Susannah in the Cradle of <\/span>
\nLud, and Susannah\u2014with a little help from “dat bitch” Detta Walker\u2014is able to solve Blaine’s riddle. They gain access to the mono, of necessity ig<\/span>noring the horrified warnings of Blaine’s sane but fatally weak undermind <\/span>(Eddie calls this voice Little Blaine), only to discover that Blaine means to <\/span>commit suicide with them aboard. The fact that the actual mind running the <\/span>mono exists in computers falling farther and farther behind them, running be<\/span>neath a city which has become a slaughtering-pen, will make no difference <\/span>when the pink bullet jumps the tracks somewhere along the line at a speed in <\/span>excess of eight hundred miles an hour.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThere is only one chance of survival: Blaine’s love of riddles. Roland of <\/span>
\nGilead proposes a desperate bargain. It is with this bargain that The Waste<\/i><\/span>
\n
\nlands <\/span>
\n<\/i>
\nends; it is with this bargain that Wizard and Glass <\/i>begins.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nromeo: <\/span>
\nLady, by yonder blessed moon I vow,<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThat tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops\u2014<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\njuliet: <\/span>
\nO, swear not by the moon, th’ inconstant moon,<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThat monthly changes in her circled orb,<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nLest that thy love prove likewise variable.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nromeo: <\/span>
\nWhat shall I swear by?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\njuliet: <\/span>
\nDo not swear at all.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nOr, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nWhich is the god of my idolatry,<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd I’ll believe thee.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u2014Romeo and Juliet <\/i><\/span>
\nWilliam Shakespeare<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nOn the fourth day, to [Dorothy’s] great joy, Oz sent for <\/span>
\nher, and when she entered the Throne Room, he greeted her <\/span>
\npleasantly.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Sit down; my dear. I think I have found a way to get <\/span>
\nyou out of this country.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“And back to Kansas?” she asked eagerly. <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Well, I’m not sure about Kansas,” said Oz, “for I <\/span>
\nhaven’t the faintest notion which way it lies….”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u2014The Wizard of Oz <\/i><\/span>
\nL. Frank Baum<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nI asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEre fitly I could hope to play my part.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThink first, fight afterwards\u2014the soldier’s art:<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nOne taste of the old time sets all to rights!<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u2014Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRobert Browning<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPROLOGUE<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\nBLAINE<\/span>
\n
\n<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“ASK ME A RIDDLE,” Blaine invited.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Fuck you,” Roland said. He did not raise his voice.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n“WHAT <\/span>
\n<\/i>
\nDO YOU SAY?” In its clear disbelief, the voice of Big Blaine had become very close to the voice of its unsuspected twin.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I said fuck you,” Roland said calmly, “but if that puzzles you, Blaine, I can make it clearer. No. The answer is no.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThere was no reply from Blaine for a long, long time, and when he did respond, it was not with words. Instead, the walls, floor, and ceiling <\/span>
\nbegan to lose their color and solidity again. In a space of ten seconds the Barony Coach once more ceased to exist. They were now flying through <\/span>
\nthe mountain-range they had seen on the horizon: iron-gray peaks rushed <\/span>
\ntoward them at suicidal speed, then fell away to disclose sterile valleys <\/span>
\nwhere gigantic beetles crawled about like landlocked turtles. Roland saw something that looked like a huge snake suddenly uncoil from the mouth <\/span>
\nof a cave. It seized one of the beetles and yanked it back into its lair. <\/span>
\nRoland had never in his life seen such animals or countryside, and the <\/span>
\nsight made his skin want to crawl right off his flesh. Blaine might have <\/span>
\ntransported them to some other world.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“PERHAPS I SHOULD DERAIL US HERE,” Blaine said. His voice <\/span>
\nwas meditative, but beneath it the gunslinger heard a deep, pulsing rage.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Perhaps you should,” the gunslinger said indifferently.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie’s face was frantic. He mouthed the words What are you DO<\/i><\/span>
\n
\nING? <\/span>
\n<\/i>
\nRoland ignored him; he had his hands full with Blaine, and he knew <\/span>
\nperfectly well what he was doing.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YOU ARE RUDE AND ARROGANT,” Blaine said. “THESE MAY SEEM LIKE INTERESTING TRAITS TO YOU, BUT THEY ARE NOT TO ME.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Oh, I can be much ruder than I have been.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland of Gilead unfolded his hands and got slowly to his feet. He <\/span>
\nstood on what appeared to be nothing, legs apart, his right hand on his hip <\/span>
\nand his left on the sandalwood grip of his revolver. He stood as he had so many times before, in the dusty streets of a hundred forgotten towns, in a <\/span>
\nscore of rocky canyon killing-zones, in unnumbered dark saloons with their smells of bitter beer and old fried meals. It was just another show<\/span>down in another empty street. That was all, and that was enough. It was <\/span>khef, ka, <\/span><\/i>and ka-tet. <\/i>That the showdown always came was the central fact <\/span>of his life and the axle upon which his own ka <\/i>revolved. That the battle would be fought with words instead of bullets this time made no differ<\/span>ence; it would be a battle to the death, just the same. The stench of killing <\/span>in the air was as clear and definite as the stench of exploded carrion in a swamp. Then the battle-rage descended, as it always did <\/span>…<\/span> and he was no longer really there to himself at all.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I can call you a nonsensical, empty-headed, foolish machine. I can <\/span>
\ncall you a stupid, unwise creature whose sense is no more than the sound <\/span>
\nof a winter wind in a hollow tree.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“STOP IT.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland went on in the same serene tone, ignoring Blaine completely. “You’re what Eddie calls a ‘gadget.’ Were you more, I might be ruder yet.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I AM A GREAT DEAL MORE THAN JUST\u2014”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I could call you a sucker of cocks, for instance, but you have no mouth. I could say you’re viler than the vilest beggar who ever crawled the lowest street in creation, but even such a creature is better than you; <\/span>you have no knees on which to crawl, and would not fall upon them even <\/span>if you did, for you have no conception of such a human flaw as mercy. I <\/span>could even say you fucked your mother, had you one.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland paused for breath. His three companions were holding theirs. <\/span>
\nAll around them, suffocating, was Blaine the Mono’s thunderstruck silence.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I can <\/i>call you a faithless creature who let your only companion kill herself, a coward who has delighted in the torture of the foolish and the <\/span>slaughter of the innocent, a lost and bleating mechanical goblin who\u2014”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I<\/i> COMMAND YOU TO STOP IT OR I’LL KILL YOU ALL RIGHT <\/i><\/span>
\n
\nHERE!”<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland’s eyes blazed with such wild blue fire that Eddie shrank away <\/span>
\nfrom him. Dimly, he heard Jake and Susannah gasp.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n“Kill if you will, but command me nothing!” <\/span>
\n<\/i>
\nthe <\/b>gunslinger roared. “You have forgotten the faces of those who made you! Now either kill us or be silent and listen to me, Roland of Gilead, son of Steven, gunslinger, <\/span>and lord of ancient lands! I have not come across all the miles and all the <\/span>years to listen to your childish prating! Do you understand? Now you will <\/span>listen to ME!”<\/i><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThere was another moment of shocked silence. No one breathed. <\/span>
\nRoland stared sternly forward, his head high, his hand on the butt of <\/span>
\nhis gun.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah Dean raised her hand to her mouth and felt the small smile <\/span>
\nthere as a woman might feel some strange new article of clothing\u2014a hat, <\/span>
\nperhaps\u2014to make sure it is still on straight. She was afraid this was the <\/span>
\nend of her life, but the feeling which dominated her heart at that moment <\/span>
\nwas not fear but pride. She glanced to her left and saw Eddie regarding Roland with an amazed grin. Jake’s expression was even simpler: pure <\/span>
\nadoration.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Tell him!” Jake breathed. “Kick his ass! Right!”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“You better pay attention,” Eddie agreed. “He really doesn’t give <\/span>
\nmuch of a fuck, Blaine. They don’t call him The Mad Dog of Gilead for <\/span>
\nnothing.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAfter a long, long moment, Blaine asked: “DID THEY CALL YOU <\/span>
\nSO, ROLAND SON OF STEVEN?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“They may have,” Roland replied, standing calmly on thin air above the sterile foothills.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“WHAT GOOD ARE YOU TO ME IF YOU WON’T TELL ME RIDDLES?” Blaine asked. Now he sounded like a grumbling, sulky child <\/span>who has been allowed to stay up too long past his usual bedtime.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I didn’t say we wouldn’t,” Roland said.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“NO?” Blaine sounded bewildered. “I DO NOT UNDERSTAND, YET VOICE-PRINT ANALYSIS INDICATES RATIONAL DISCOURSE. <\/span>PLEASE EXPLAIN.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“You said you wanted them right now” <\/i>the gunslinger replied. “That <\/i><\/span>
\nwas what I was refusing. Your eagerness has made you unseemly.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I DON’T UNDERSTAND.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“It has made you rude. Do you understand that?\u201d<\/i><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThere was a long, thoughtful silence. Centuries had passed since the <\/span>
\ncomputer had experienced any human responses other than ignorance, ne<\/span>
\nglect, and superstitious subservience. It had been eons since it had been <\/span>
\nexposed to simple human courage. Finally: “IF WHAT I SAID STRUCK <\/span>
\nYOU AS RUDE, I APOLOGIZE.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“It is accepted, Blaine. But there is a larger problem.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“EXPLAIN.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Close the carriage again and I will.” Roland sat down as if further <\/span>
\nargument\u2014and the prospect of immediate death\u2014was now unthinkable.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBlaine did as he was asked. The walls filled with color and the nightmare landscape below was once more blotted out. The blip on the route-<\/span>
\nmap was now blinking close to the dot marked Candleton.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“All right,” Roland said. “Rudeness is forgivable, Blaine; so I was <\/span>
\ntaught in my youth. But I was also taught that stupidity is not.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“HOW HAVE I BEEN STUPID, ROLAND OF GILEAD?” Blame’s <\/span>
\nvoice was soft and ominous. Susannah thought of a cat crouched out<\/span>
\nside a mouse-hole, tail swishing back and forth, green eyes shining with <\/span>
\nmalevolence.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“We have something you want,” Roland said, “but the only reward <\/span>
\nyou offer if we give it to you is death. That’s very <\/i>stupid.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThere was a long, long pause as Blaine thought this over. Then: <\/span>
\n“WHAT YOU SAY IS TRUE, ROLAND OF GILEAD, BUT THE QUALITY OF YOUR RIDDLES IS NOT PROVEN. I WILL NOT REWARD YOU WITH YOUR LIVES FOR BAD RIDDLES.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland nodded. “I understand, Blaine. Listen, now, and take under<\/span>
\nstanding from me. I have told some of this to my friends already. When I <\/span>
\nwas a boy in the Barony of Gilead, there were seven Fair-Days each <\/span>
\nyear\u2014Winter, Wide Earth, Sowing, Mid-Summer, Full Earth, Reaping, <\/span>
\nand Year’s End. Riddling was an important part of every Fair-Day, but it <\/span>
\nwas the most important event of the Fair of Wide Earth and that of Full <\/span>
\nEarth, for the riddles told were supposed to augur well or ill for the suc<\/span>
\ncess of the crops.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“THAT IS SUPERSTITION WITH NO BASIS AT ALL IN FACT,” Blaine said. “I FIND IT ANNOYING AND UPSETTING.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Of course it was superstition,” Roland agreed, “but you might be <\/span>
\nsurprised at how well the riddles foresaw the crops. For instance, riddle <\/span>
\nme this, Blaine: What is the difference between a grandmother and a <\/span>
\ngranary?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“THAT IS OLD AND NOT VERY INTERESTING,” Blaine said, but he sounded happy to have something to solve, just the same. “ONE IS <\/span>ONE’S BORN KIN; THE OTHER IS ONE’S CORN-BIN. A RIDDLE<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBASED ON PHONETIC COINCIDENCE. ANOTHER OF THIS TYPE, <\/span>
\nONE TOLD ON THE LEVEL WHICH CONTAINS THE BARONY OF <\/span>
\nNEW YORK, GOES LIKE THIS: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CAT AND A COMPLEX SENTENCE?”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake spoke up. “I know. A cat has claws at the end of its paws, and a <\/span>
\ncomplex sentence has a pause at the end of its clause.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YES,” Blaine agreed. “A VERY SILLY OLD RIDDLE, USEFUL ONLY AS A MNEMONIC DEVICE.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“For once I agree with you, Blaine old buddy,” Eddie said.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I AM NOT YOUR BUDDY, EDDIE OF NEW YORK.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Well, jeez. Kiss my ass and go to heaven.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“THERE IS NO HEAVEN.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie had no comeback for that one.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I WOULD HEAR MORE OF FAIR-DAY RIDDLING IN GILEAD, <\/span>
\nROLAND SON OF STEVEN.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“At noon on Wide Earth and Full Earth, somewhere between sixteen <\/span>
\nand thirty riddlers would gather in the Hall of the Grandfathers, which <\/span>
\nwas opened for the event. Those were the only times of year when common folk\u2014merchants and farmers and ranchers and such\u2014were allowed <\/span>
\ninto the Hall of the Grandfathers, and on that day they all <\/i>crowded in.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe gunslinger’s eyes were far away and dreamy; it was the expres<\/span>
\nsion Jake had seen on his face in that misty other life, when Roland had <\/span>
\ntold him of how he and his friends, Cuthbert and Jamie, had once sneaked into the balcony of that same Hall to watch some sort of dance-party. Jake <\/span>
\nand Roland had been climbing into the mountains when Roland had told <\/span>
\nhim of that time, close on the trail of Walter.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nMarten sat next to my mother and father, <\/span>
\n<\/i>
\nRoland had said. I<\/i> knew them even from so high above\u2014and once she and Marten danced, slowly <\/span>and revolvingly, and the others cleared the floor for them and clapped when it was over. But the gunslingers did not clap….<\/span><\/i><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake looked curiously at Roland, wondering again where this strange <\/span>
\nman had come from . . . and why.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“A great barrel was placed in the center of the floor,” Roland went on, <\/span>
\n“and into this each riddler would toss a handful of bark scrolls with riddles writ upon them. Many were old, riddles they had gotten from the el<\/span>ders\u2014even from books, in some cases\u2014but many others were new, made <\/span>up for the occasion. Three judges, one always a gunslinger, would pass on <\/span><\/span>
\nthese when they were told aloud, and they were accepted only if the <\/span>
\njudges deemed them fair.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YES, RIDDLES MUST BE FAIR,” Blaine agreed.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“So they riddled,” the gunslinger said. A faint smile touched his <\/span>
\nmouth as he thought of those days, days when he had been the age of the <\/span>
\nbruised boy sitting across from him with the billy-bumbler in his lap. “For <\/span>
\nhours on end they riddled. A line was formed down the center of the Hall <\/span>
\nof the Grandfathers. One’s position in this line was determined by lot, and <\/span>
\nsince it was much better to be at the end of the line than at the head, <\/span>
\neveryone hoped for a high draw, although the winner had to answer at <\/span>
\nleast one riddle correctly.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“OF COURSE.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Each man or woman\u2014for some of Gilead’s best riddlers were women\u2014approached the barrel, drew a riddle, and if the riddle was still <\/span>unanswered after the sands in a three-minute glass had run out, that con<\/span>testant had to leave the line.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“AND WAS THE SAME RIDDLE ASKED OF THE NEXT PER<\/span>
\nSON IN THE LINE?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“SO THE NEXT PERSON HAD EXTRA TIME TO THINK.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I SEE. IT SOUNDS PRETTY SWELL.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland frowned. “Swell?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“He means it sounds like fun,” Susannah said quietly.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland shrugged. “It was fun for the onlookers, I suppose, but the <\/span>
\ncontestants took it very seriously. Quite often there were arguments and <\/span>
\nfistfights after the contest was over and the prize awarded.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“WHAT PRIZE WAS THAT, ROLAND SON OF STEVEN?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“The largest goose in Barony. And year after year my teacher, Cort, <\/span>
\ncarried that goose home.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I WISH HE WERE HERE,” Blaine said respectfully. “HE MUST <\/span>
\nHAVE BEEN A GREAT RIDDLER.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Indeed he was,” Roland said. “Are you ready for my proposal, <\/span>
\nBlaine?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“OF COURSE. I WILL LISTEN WITH GREAT INTEREST, <\/span>
\nROLAND OF GILEAD.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Let these next few hours be our Fair-Day. You will not riddle us, for <\/span>
\nyou wish to hear new riddles, not tell some of those millions you already <\/span>
\nknow\u2014”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“CORRECT.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“We couldn’t solve most of them, anyway,” Roland went on. “I’m <\/span>
\nsure you know riddles that would have stumped even Cort, had they been <\/span>
\npulled out of the barrel.” He was not sure of it at all, but the time to use <\/span>
\nthe fist had passed and the time to use the feather had come.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“OF COURSE,” Blaine agreed.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Instead of a goose, our lives shall be the prize,” Roland said. “We <\/span>
\nwill riddle you as we run, Blaine. If, when we come to Topeka, you have solved every one of our riddles, you may carry out your original plan and <\/span>
\nkill us. That is your goose. But if we <\/i>pose you\u2014<\/i>if there is a riddle in ei<\/span>
\nther Jake’s book or one of our heads which you don’t know and can’t an<\/span>
\nswer\u2014you must take us to Topeka and then free us to pursue our quest. <\/span>
\nThat is our <\/i>goose.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSilence.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Do you understand?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YES.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Do you agree?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nMore silence from Blaine the Mono. Eddie sat stiffly with his arm <\/span>
\naround Susannah, looking up at the ceiling of the Barony Coach. Susan<\/span>
\nnah’s left hand slipped across her belly, stroking the secret which might <\/span>
\nbe hidden there. Jake stroked Oy’s fur lightly, avoiding the bloody tangles <\/span>
\nwhere the bumbler had been stabbed. They waited while Blaine\u2014the real <\/span>
\nBlaine, now far behind them, living his quasi-life beneath a city where all <\/span>
\nthe inhabitants lay dead by his hand\u2014considered Roland’s proposal.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YES,” Blaine said at last. “I AGREE. IF I SOLVE ALL THE RID<\/span>
\nDLES YOU ASK ME, I WILL TAKE YOU WITH ME TO THE PLACE <\/span>
\nWHERE THE PATH ENDS IN THE CLEARING. IF ONE OF YOU TELLS A RIDDLE I CANNOT SOLVE, I WILL SPARE YOUR LIVES <\/span>AND LEAVE YOU IN TOPEKA, FROM WHENCE YOU MAY CONTINUE YOUR QUEST FOR THE DARK TOWER, IF YOU SO CHOOSE. HAVE I UNDERSTOOD THE TERMS AND LIMITS OF YOUR PROPOSAL CORRECTLY, ROLAND SON OF STEVEN?”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“VERY WELL, ROLAND OF GILEAD.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“VERY WELL, EDDIE OF NEW YORK.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“VERY WELL, SUSANNAH OF NEW YORK.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“VERY WELL, JAKE OF NEW YORK.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“VERY WELL, OY OF MID-WORLD.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nOy looked up briefly at the sound of his name.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YOU ARE KA-TET; <\/i>ONE MADE FROM MANY. SO AM I. WHOSE KA-TET <\/i>IS THE STRONGER IS SOMETHING WE MUST <\/span>NOW PROVE.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThere was a moment of silence, broken only by the hard steady throb <\/span>
\nof the slo-trans turbines bearing them on across the waste lands, bearing <\/span>
\nthem along the Path of the Beam toward Topeka, where Mid-World <\/span>
\nended and End-World began.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“SO,” cried the voice of Blaine. “CAST YOUR NETS, WANDER<\/span>
\nERS! TRY ME WITH YOUR QUESTIONS, AND LET THE CONTEST <\/span>
\nBEGIN.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPART\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n
\nONE<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRIDDLES<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nCHAPTER<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n
\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>
\n1<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nb<\/span>
\neneath the<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nd<\/span>
\nemon <\/span>
\nm<\/span>
\noon <\/span>
\n(I)<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n1<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe town of Candleton was a poisoned and irradiated ruin, but not dead; <\/span>
\nafter all the centuries it still twitched with tenebrous life\u2014trundling beetles the size of turtles, birds that looked like small, misshapen dra<\/span>gonlets, a few stumbling robots that passed in and out of the rotten build<\/span>ings like stainless steel zombies, their joints squalling, their nuclear eyes <\/span>flickering.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Show your pass, pard!” cried the one that had been stuck in a corner <\/span>
\nof the lobby of the Candleton Travellers’ Hotel for the last two hundred <\/span>
\nand thirty-four years. Embossed on the rusty lozenge of its head was a <\/span>
\nsix-pointed star. It had over the years managed to dig a shallow concavity <\/span>
\nin the steel-sheathed wall blocking its way, but that was all.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Show your pass, pard! Elevated radiation levels possible south and <\/span>
\neast of town! Show your pass, pard! Elevated radiation levels possible <\/span>
\nsouth and east of town!”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nA bloated rat, blind and dragging its guts behind it in a sac like a rotten placenta, struggled over the posse robot’s feet. The posse robot took <\/span>
\nno notice, just went on butting its steel head into the steel wall. “Show <\/span>
\nyour pass, pard! Elevated radiation levels possible, dad rattit and gods <\/span>
\ncuss it!” Behind it, in the hotel bar, the skulls of men and women who had <\/span>
\ncome in here for one last drink before the cataclysm caught up with them <\/span>
\ngrinned as if they had died laughing. Perhaps some of them had.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nWhen Blaine the Mono blammed overhead, running up the night like <\/span>
\na bullet running up the barrel of a gun, windows broke, dust sifted down, <\/span>
\nand several of the skulls disintegrated like ancient pottery vases. Outside, a <\/span>
\nbrief hurricane of radioactive dust blew up the street, and the hitching<\/span>
\n post in front of the Elegant Beef and Pork Restaurant was sucked into the <\/span>
\nsqually updraft like smoke. In the town square, the Candleton Fountain <\/span>
\nsplit in two, spilling out not water but only dust, snakes, mutie scorpions, and a few of the blindly trundling turtle-beetles.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThen the shape which had hurtled above the town was gone as if it had never been, Candleton reverted to the mouldering activity which had <\/span>been its substitute for life over the last two and a half centuries . .. and then the trailing sonic boom caught up, slamming its thunderclap above <\/span>the town for the first time in seven years, causing enough vibration to tumble the mercantile store on the far side of the fountain. The posse ro<\/span>bot tried to voice one final warning: “Elevated rad\u2014” and then quit for good, facing into its corner like a child that has been bad.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nTwo or three hundred wheels outside Candleton, as one travelled along the Path of the Beam, the radiation levels and concentrations of DEP3 in the soil fell rapidly. Here the mono’s track swooped down to less <\/span>than ten feet off the ground, and here a doe that looked almost normal walked prettily from piney woods to drink from a stream in which the wa<\/span>ter had three-quarters cleansed itself.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe doe was not <\/i>normal\u2014a stumpish fifth leg dangled down from the <\/span>
\ncenter of her lower belly like a teat, waggling bonelessly to and fro when <\/span>
\nshe walked, and a blind third eye peered milkily from the left side of her muzzle. Yet she was fertile, and her DNA was in reasonably good order for a twelfth-generation mutie. In her six years of life she had given birth <\/span>
\nto three live young. Two of these fawns had been not just viable but nor<\/span>
\nmal\u2014threaded stock, Aunt Talitha of River Crossing would have called them. The third, a skinless, bawling horror, had been killed quickly by its sire.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe world\u2014this part of it, at any rate\u2014had begun to heal itself.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe deer slipped her mouth into the water, began to drink, then looked up, eyes wide, muzzle dripping. Off in the distance she could hear <\/span>a low humming sound. A moment later it was joined by an eyelash of light. Alarm flared in the doe’s nerves, but although her reflexes were fast <\/span>and the light when first glimpsed was still many wheels away across the <\/span>desolate countryside, there was never a chance for her to escape. Before <\/span>she could even begin to fire her muscles, the distant spark had swelled to a <\/span>searing wolf’s eye of light that flooded the stream and the clearing with its glare. With the light came the maddening hum of Blaine’s slo-trans en<\/span>gines, running at full capacity. There was a blur of pink above the concrete ridge which bore the rail; a rooster-tail of dust, stones, small dismembered animals, and whirling foliage followed along after. The doe <\/span>was killed instantly by the concussion of Blaine’s passage. Too large to be sucked in the mono’s wake, she was still yanked forward almost sev<\/span>enty yards, with water dripping from her muzzle and hoofs. Much of her hide (and the boneless fifth leg) was torn from her body and pulled after <\/span>Blaine like a discarded garment.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThere was brief silence, thin as new skin or early ice on a Year’s End pond, and then the sonic boom came rushing after like some noisy crea<\/span>
\nture late for a wedding-feast, tearing the silence apart, knocking a single <\/span>
\nmutated bird\u2014it might have been a raven\u2014dead out of the air. The bird <\/span>
\nfell like a stone and splashed into the stream.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nIn the distance, a dwindling red eye: Blaine’s taillight.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nOverhead, a full moon came out from behind a scrim of cloud, paint<\/span>
\ning the clearing and the stream in the tawdry hues of pawnshop jewelry. <\/span>
\nThere was a face in the moon, but not one upon which lovers would wish <\/span>
\nto look. It seemed the scant face of a skull, like those in the Candleton Travellers’ Hotel; a face which looked upon those few beings still alive and struggling below with the amusement of a lunatic. In Gilead, before <\/span>the world had moved on, the full moon of Year’s End had been called the <\/span>Demon Moon, and it was considered ill luck to look directly at it.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nNow, however, such did not matter. Now there were demons every<\/span>
\nwhere.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n2<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah looked at the route-map and saw that the green dot marking their present position was now almost halfway between Candleton and Rilea, Blaine’s next stop. Except who’s stopping? <\/i>she thought.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nFrom the route-map she turned to Eddie. His gaze was still directed up at the ceiling of the Barony Coach. She followed it and saw a square which could only be a trapdoor (except when you were dealing with fu<\/span>
\nturistic shit like a talking train, she supposed you called it a hatch, or something even cooler). Stencilled on it was a simple red drawing which showed a man stepping through the opening. Susannah tried to imagine <\/span>following the implied instruction and popping up through that hatch at over eight hundred miles an hour. She got a quick but clear image of a woman’s head being ripped from her neck like a flower from its stalk; she saw the head flying backward along the length of the Barony Coach, <\/span><\/span>
\nperhaps bouncing once, and then disappearing into the dark, eyes staring <\/span>
\nand hair rippling.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nShe pushed the picture away as fast as she could. The hatch up there <\/span>
\nwas almost certainly locked shut, anyway. Blaine the Mono had no inten<\/span>
\ntion of letting them go. They might win their way out, but Susannah didn’t <\/span>
\nthink that was a sure thing even if they managed to stump Blaine with a riddle.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nSorry to say this, but you sound like just one more honky motherfucker <\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n
\nto me, honey, <\/span>
\n<\/i>
\nshe thought in a mental voice that was not quite Detta Walker’s. I don’t trust your mechanical ass. You apt to be more dangerous <\/i><\/span>beaten than with the blue ribbon pinned to your memory banks.<\/span><\/i><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake was holding his tattered book of riddles out to the gunslinger as <\/span>
\nif he no longer wanted the responsibility of carrying it. Susannah knew <\/span>
\nhow the kid must feel; their lives might very well be in those grimy, well-<\/span>
\nthumbed pages. She wasn’t sure she would want the responsibility of <\/span>
\nholding onto it, either.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Roland!” Jake whispered. “Do you want this?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n“Ont!” <\/span>
\n<\/i>
\nOy said, giving the gunslinger a forbidding glance. “Olan-ont-iss!” The bumbler fixed his teeth on the book, took it from Jake’s <\/span>
\nhand, and stretched his disproportionately long neck toward Roland, of<\/span>
\nfering him Riddle-De-Dum! Brain-Twisters and Puzzles for Everyone!<\/i><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland glanced at it for a moment, his face distant and preoccupied, <\/span>
\nthen shook his head. “Not yet.” He looked forward at the route-map. <\/span>
\nBlaine had no face, so the map had to serve them as a fixing-point. The <\/span>
\nflashing green dot was closer to Rilea now. Susannah wondered briefly what the countryside through which they were passing looked like, and <\/span>
\ndecided she didn’t really want to know. Not after what they’d seen as they <\/span>
\nleft the city of Lud.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Blaine!” Roland called.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YES.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Can you leave the room? We need to confer.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nYou nuts if you think he’s gonna do that, <\/span>
\n<\/i>
\nSusannah thought, but Blaine’s reply was quick and eager.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YES, GUNSLINGER. I WILL TURN OFF ALL MY SENSORS IN THE BARONY COACH. WHEN YOUR CONFERENCE IS DONE <\/span>AND YOU ARE READY TO BEGIN THE RIDDLING, I WILL RETURN.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yeah, you and General MacArthur,” Eddie muttered.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“WHAT DID YOU SAY, EDDIE OF NEW YORK?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Nothing. Talking to myself, that’s all.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“TO SUMMON ME, SIMPLY TOUCH THE ROUTE-MAP,” said Blaine. “AS LONG AS THE MAP IS RED, MY SENSORS ARE OFF. <\/span>SEE YOU LATER, ALLIGATOR. AFTER AWHILE, CROCODILE. DON’T FORGET TO WRITE.” A pause. Then: “OLIVE OIL BUT NOT <\/span>CASTORIA.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe route-map rectangle at the front of the cabin suddenly turned a <\/span>
\nred so bright Susannah couldn’t look at it without squinting.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Olive oil but not castoria?” Jake asked. “What the heck does that <\/i><\/span>
\nmean?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“It doesn’t matter,” Roland said. “We don’t have much time. The mono travels just as fast toward its point of ending whether Blaine’s with us or not.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“You don’t really believe he’s gone, do you?” Eddie asked. “A slip<\/span>
\npery pup like him? Come on, get real. He’s peeking, I guarantee you.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I doubt it very much,” Roland said, and Susannah decided she agreed with him. For now, at least. “You could hear how excited he was <\/span>at the idea of riddling again after all these years. And\u2014”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“And he’s confident,” Susannah said. “Doesn’t expect to have much trouble with the likes of us.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Will he?” Jake asked the gunslinger. “Will he have trouble with us?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I don’t know,” Roland said. “I don’t have a Watch Me hidden up my <\/span>
\nsleeve, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s a straight game . . . but at least it’s <\/span>
\na game I’ve played before. We’ve all <\/i>played it before, at least to some ex<\/span>
\ntent. And there’s that.” He nodded toward the book which Jake had taken <\/span>
\nback from Oy. “There are forces at work here, big ones, and not all of them are working to keep us away <\/i>from the Tower.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah heard him, but it was Blaine she was thinking of\u2014Blaine <\/span>
\nwho had gone away and left them alone, like the kid who’s been chosen <\/span>
\n“it” obediently covering his eyes while his playmates hide. And wasn’t that what they were? Blaine’s playmates? The thought was somehow worse than the image she’d had of trying the escape hatch and having her head torn off.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“So what do we do?” Eddie asked. “You must have an idea, or you <\/span>
\nnever would have sent him away.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“His great intelligence\u2014coupled with his long period of loneliness and forced inactivity\u2014may have combined to make him more human <\/span>
\nthan he knows. That’s my hope, anyway. First, we must establish a kind <\/span>
\nof geography. We must tell, if we can, where he is weak and where he is strong, where he is sure of the game and where not so sure. Riddles are <\/span>
\nnot just about the cleverness of the riddler, never think it. They are also <\/span>
\nabout the blind spots of he who is riddled.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Does he have blind spots?” Eddie asked.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“If he doesn’t,” Roland said calmly, “we’re going to die on this train.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I like the way you kind of ease us over the rough spots,” Eddie said <\/span>
\nwith a thin smile. “It’s one of your many charms.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“We will riddle him four times to begin with,” Roland said. “Easy, <\/span>
\nnot so easy, quite hard, very hard. He’ll answer all four, of that I am con<\/span>
\nfident, but we will be listening for how <\/i>he answers.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie was nodding, and Susannah felt a small, almost reluctant glim<\/span>
\nmer of hope. It sounded like the right approach, all right.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Then we’ll send him away again and hold palaver,” the gunslinger <\/span>
\nsaid. “Mayhap we’ll get an idea of what direction to send our horses. <\/span>
\nThese first riddles can come from anywhere, but”\u2014he nodded gravely <\/span>
\ntoward the book\u2014”based on Jake’s story of the bookstore, the answer we <\/span>
\nreally need should be in there, not in any memories I have of Fair-Day <\/span>
\nriddlings. Must <\/i>be in there.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Question,” Susannah said.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland looked at her, eyebrows raised over his faded, dangerous eyes.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“It’s a question <\/i>we’re looking for, not an answer,” she said. “This time it’s the answers that are apt to get us killed.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe gunslinger nodded. He looked puzzled\u2014frustrated, even\u2014and <\/span>
\nthis was not an expression Susannah liked seeing on his face. But this time when Jake held out the book, Roland took it. He held it for a moment <\/span>(its faded but still gay red cover looked very strange in his big sunburned <\/span>hands . . . especially in the right one, with its essential reduction of two fingers), then passed it on to Eddie.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“You’re easy,” Roland said, turning to Susannah.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Perhaps,” she replied, with a trace of a smile, “but it’s still not a very <\/span>
\npolite thing to say to a lady, Roland.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe turned to Jake. “You’ll go second, with one that’s a little harder. <\/span>
\nI’ll go third. You’ll go last, Eddie. Pick one from the book that looks hard\u2014”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“The hard ones are toward the back,” Jake supplied.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“. . . but none of your foolishness, mind. This is life and death. The time for foolishness is past.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie looked at him\u2014old long, tall, and ugly, who’d done God knew <\/span>
\nhow many ugly things in the name of reaching his Tower\u2014and wondered <\/span>
\nif Roland had any idea at all of how much that hurt. Just that casual admo<\/span>
\nnition not to behave like a child, grinning and cracking jokes, now that their lives were at wager.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe opened his mouth to say something\u2014an Eddie Dean Special, something that would be both funny and stinging at the same time, the <\/span>kind of remark that always used to drive his brother Henry dogshit\u2014 and then closed it again. Maybe long, tall, and ugly was right; maybe it <\/span>was time to put away the one-liners and dead baby jokes. Maybe it was <\/span>finally time to grow up.<\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n3<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAfter three more minutes of murmured consultation and some quick flip<\/span>
\nping through Riddle-De-Dum! <\/i>on Eddie’s and Susannah’s parts (Jake al<\/span>
\nready knew the one he wanted to try Blaine with first, he’d said), Roland <\/span>
\nwent to the front of the Barony Coach and laid his hand on the fiercely glowing rectangle there. The route-map reappeared at once. Although <\/span>
\nthere was no sensation of movement now that the coach was closed, the <\/span>
\ngreen dot was closer to Rilea than ever.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“SO, ROLAND SON OF STEVEN!” Blaine said. To Eddie he sounded <\/span>
\nmore than jovial; he sounded next door to hilarious. “IS YOUR KA-TET <\/i><\/span>
\nREADY TO BEGIN?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes. Susannah of New York will begin the first round.” He turned to her, lowered his voice a little (not that she reckoned that would do much <\/span>
\ngood if Blaine wanted to listen), and said: “You won’t have to step for<\/span>
\nward like the rest of us, because of your legs, but you must speak fair and <\/span>
\naddress him by name each time you talk to him. If\u2014when\u2014<\/i>he answers your riddle correctly, say ‘Thankee-sai, Blaine, you have answered true.’ <\/span>
\nThen Jake will step into the aisle and have his turn. All right?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“And if he should get it wrong, or not guess at all?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland smiled grimly. “I think that’s one thing we don’t have to worry <\/span>
\nabout just yet.” He raised his voice again. “Blaine?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YES, GUNSLINGER.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland took a deep breath. “It starts now.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“EXCELLENT!”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland nodded at Susannah. Eddie squeezed one of her hands; Jake <\/span>
\npatted the other. Oy gazed at her raptly with his gold-ringed eyes.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah smiled at them nervously, then looked up at the route-map. <\/span>
\n“Hello, Blame.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“HOWDY, SUSANNAH OF NEW YORK.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHer heart was pounding, her armpits were damp, and here was some<\/span>
\nthing she had first discovered way back in the first grade: it was hard to <\/span>
\nbegin. It was hard to stand up in front of the class and be first with your <\/span>
\nsong, your joke, your report on how you spent your summer vacation . . . <\/span>
\nor your riddle, for that matter. The one she had decided upon was one <\/span>
\nfrom Jake Chambers’s crazed English essay, which he had recited to them <\/span>
\nalmost verbatim during their long palaver after leaving the old people of <\/span>
\nRiver Crossing. The essay, titled “My Understanding of Truth,” had con<\/span>
\ntained two riddles, one of which Eddie had already used on Blaine.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“SUSANNAH? ARE YOU THERE, L\u2019IL COWGIRL?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nTeasing again, but this time the teasing sounded light, good-natured. Good-humored. <\/i>Blaine could be charming when he got what he wanted. Like certain spoiled children she had known.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes, Blaine, I am, and here is my riddle. What has four wheels and <\/span>
\nflies?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThere was a peculiar click, as if Blaine were mimicking the sound of a man popping his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It was followed <\/span>
\nby a brief pause. When Blaine replied, most of the jocularity had gone <\/span>
\nout of his voice. “THE TOWN GARBAGE WAGON, OF COURSE. A <\/span>
\nCHILD’S RIDDLE. IF THE REST OF YOUR RIDDLES ARE NO BET<\/span>
\nTER, I WILL BE EXTREMELY SORRY I SAVED YOUR LIVES FOR <\/span>
\nEVEN A SHORT WHILE.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe route-map flashed, not red this time but pale pink. “Don’t get him <\/span>
\nmad,” the voice of Little Blaine begged. Each time it spoke, Susannah <\/span>
\nfound herself imagining a sweaty little bald man whose every movement was a kind of cringe. The voice of Big Blaine came from everywhere (like <\/span>
\nthe voice of God in a Cecil B. DeMille movie, Susannah thought), but Lit<\/span>
\ntle Blaine’s from only one: the speaker directly over their heads. “Please <\/i><\/span>
\ndon’t make him angry, fellows; he’s already got the mono in the red, <\/span>
\nspeedwise, and the track compensators can barely keep up. The trackage <\/span>
\nhas degenerated terribly since the last time we came out this way.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah, who had been on her share of humpy trolleys and subways <\/span>
\nin her time, felt nothing the ride was as smooth now as it had been when <\/span>
\nthey had first pulled out of the Cradle of Lud\u2014but she believed Little Blaine anyway. She guessed that if they did <\/i>feel a bump, it would be the <\/span>last thing any of them would ever feel.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland poked an elbow into her side, bringing her back to her current <\/span>
\nsituation.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Thankee-sai,” she said, and then, as an afterthought, tapped her throat <\/span>
\nrapidly three times with the fingers of her right hand. It was what Roland <\/span>
\nhad done when speaking to Aunt Talitha for the first time.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“THANK YOU FOR YOUR COURTESY,” Blaine said. He sounded amused again, and Susannah reckoned that was good even if his amuse<\/span>ment was at her expense. “I AM NOT FEMALE, HOWEVER. INSOFAR AS I HAVE A SEX, IT IS MALE.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah looked at Roland, bewildered.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Left hand for men,” he said. “On the breastbone.” He tapped to <\/span>
\ndemonstrate.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Oh.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland turned to Jake. The boy stood, put Oy on his chair (which did no good; Oy immediately jumped down and followed after Jake when he <\/span>
\nstepped into the aisle to face the route-map), and turned his attention to <\/span>
\nBlaine.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Hello, Blaine, this is Jake. You know, son of Elmer.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“SPEAK YOUR RIDDLE.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“What can run but never walks, has a mouth but never talks, has a bed <\/span>
\nbut never sleeps, has a head but never weeps?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“NOT BAD! ONE HOPES SUSANNAH WILL LEARN FROM YOUR EXAMPLE, JAKE SON OF ELMER. THE ANSWER MUST BE <\/span>SELF-EVIDENT TO ANYONE OF ANY INTELLIGENCE AT ALL, BUT A DECENT EFFORT, NEVERTHELESS. A RIVER.”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Thankee-sai, Blaine, you have answered true.” He tapped the bunched <\/span>
\nfingers of his left hand three times against his breastbone and then sat <\/span>
\ndown. Susannah put her arm around him and gave him a brief squeeze. <\/span>
\nJake looked at her gratefully.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nNow Roland stood up. “Hile, Blaine,” he said.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“HILE, GUNSLINGER.” Once again Blaine sounded amused . . . <\/span>
\npossibly by the greeting, which Susannah hadn’t heard before. Heil what? <\/i><\/span>
\nshe wondered. Hitler came to mind, and that made her think of the downed <\/span>
\nplane they’d found outside Lud. A Focke-Wulf, Jake had claimed. She <\/span>
\ndidn’t know about that, but she knew it had contained one seriously <\/i>dead <\/span>
\nharrier, too old even to stink. “SPEAK YOUR RIDDLE, ROLAND, AND <\/span>
\nLET IT BE HANDSOME.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Handsome is as handsome does, Blaine. In any case, here it is: What <\/span>
\nhas four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs at <\/span>
\nnight?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“THAT IS INDEED HANDSOME,” Blaine allowed. “SIMPLE BUT <\/span>
\nHANDSOME, JUST THE SAME. THE ANSWER IS A HUMAN BEING, WHO CRAWLS ON HANDS AND KNEES IN BABYHOOD, WALKS ON TWO LEGS DURING ADULTHOOD, AND WHO GOES <\/span>ABOUT WITH THE HELP OF A CANE IN OLD AGE.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBlaine sounded positively smug, and Susannah suddenly discovered a <\/span>
\nmildly interesting fact: she loathed the self-satisfied, murderous thing. <\/span>
\nMachine or not, it <\/i>or he, <\/i>she loathed Blaine. She had an idea she would <\/span>
\nhave felt the same even if he hadn’t made them wager their lives in a stu<\/span>
\npid riddling contest.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland, however, did not look the slightest put out of countenance. <\/span>
\n“Thankee-sai, Blaine, you have answered true.” He sat down without tapping his breastbone and looked at Eddie. Eddie stood up and stepped into <\/span>
\nthe aisle.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“What’s happening, Blaine my man?” he asked. Roland winced and <\/span>
\nshook his head, putting his mutilated right hand up briefly to shade his eyes.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSilence from Blaine.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Blaine? Are you there?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YES, BUT IN NO MOOD FOR FRIVOLITY, EDDIE OF NEW YORK. SPEAK YOUR RIDDLE. I SUSPECT IT WILL BE DIFFICULT IN SPITE OF YOUR FOOLISH POSES. I LOOK FORWARD TO IT.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie glanced at Roland, who waved a hand at him\u2014Go on, for your <\/i><\/span>
\n
\nfather’s sake, go on!\u2014<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\nand then looked back at the route-map, where the <\/span>
\ngreen dot had just passed the point marked Rilea. Susannah saw that <\/span>
\nEddie suspected what she herself all but knew: Blaine understood they <\/span>
\nwere trying to test his capabilities with a spectrum of riddles. Blaine knew <\/span>
\n. . . and welcomed it.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah felt her heart sink as any hopes they might find a quick and <\/span>
\neasy way out of this disappeared.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n4<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Well,” Eddie said, “I don’t know how hard it’ll seem to you, but it struck <\/span>
\nme as a toughie.” Nor did he know the answer, since that section of Riddle-<\/i><\/span>
\n
\nDe-Dum! <\/span>
\n<\/i>
\nhad been torn out, but he didn’t think that made any difference; <\/span>
\ntheir knowing the answers hadn’t been part of the ground-rules.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I SHALL HEAR AND ANSWER.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“No sooner spoken than broken. What is it?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“SILENCE, A THING YOU KNOW LITTLE ABOUT, EDDIE OF NEW YORK,” Blaine said with no pause at all, and Eddie felt his heart <\/span>drop a little. There was no need to consult with the others; the answer was <\/span>self-evident. And having it come back at him so quickly was the real <\/span>bummer. Eddie never would have said so, but he had harbored the hope\u2014 <\/span>almost a secret surety\u2014of bringing Blaine down with a single riddle, ker-<\/i><\/span>smash, <\/span><\/i>all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Blaine <\/span>together again. The same secret surety, he supposed, that he had harbored <\/span>every time he picked up a pair of dice in some sharpie’s back-bedroom <\/span>crap game, every time he called for a hit on seventeen while playing <\/span>blackjack. That feeling that you couldn’t go wrong because you were you, <\/i><\/span>the best, the one and only.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yeah,” he said, sighing. “Silence, a thing I know little about. Thankee-<\/span>
\nsai, Blaine, you speak truth.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I HOPE YOU HAVE DISCOVERED SOMETHING WHICH WILL <\/span>
\nHELP YOU,” Blaine said, and Eddie thought: You fucking mechanical liar. <\/i><\/span>
\nThe complacent tone had returned to Blaine’s voice, and Eddie found it of <\/span>
\nsome passing interest that a machine could express such a range of emo<\/span>
\ntion. Had the Great Old Ones built them in, or had Blaine created an emo<\/span>
\ntional rainbow for himself at some point? A little dipolar pretty with which to pass the long decades and centuries? “DO YOU WISH ME TO <\/span>GO AWAY AGAIN SO YOU MAY CONSULT?”<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes,” Roland said.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe route-map flashed bright red. Eddie turned toward the gunslinger. <\/span>
\nRoland composed his face quickly, but before he did, Eddie saw a hor<\/span>
\nrible thing: a brief look of complete hopelessness. Eddie had never seen <\/span>
\nsuch a look there before, not when Roland had been dying of the lob<\/span>
\nstrosities’ bites, not when Eddie had been pointing the gunslinger’s own <\/span>
\nrevolver at him, not even when the hideous Gasher had taken Jake pris<\/span>
\noner and disappeared into Lud with him.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“What do we do next?” Jake asked. “Do another round of the four of us?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I think that would serve little purpose,” Roland said. “Blame must know thousands of riddles\u2014perhaps millions\u2014and that is bad. Worse, far<\/i> worse, he understands the how<\/i> of riddling … the place the mind has to go to in order to make them and solve them.” He turned to Eddie and Susannah, sitting once more with their arms about one another. “Am I right about that?” he asked them. “Do you agree?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes,” Susannah said, and Eddie nodded reluctantly. He didn’t want <\/i>to agree . . . but he did.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“So?” Jake asked. “What do<\/i> we do, Roland? I mean, there has to be a way out of this . . . doesn’t there?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nLie to him, you bastard,<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Eddie sent fiercely in Roland’s direction. Roland, perhaps hearing the thought, did the best he could. He touched Jake’s hair with his diminished hand and ruffled through it. “I think there’s always an answer, Jake. The real question is whether or not we’ll have time to find the right riddle. He said it took him a little under nine hours to run his route\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Eight hours, forty-five minutes,” Jake put in. “. . . and that’s not much time. We’ve already been running almost an hour\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“And if that map’s right, we’re almost halfway to Topeka,” Susannah said in a tight voice. “Could be our mechanical pal’s been lying to us about the length of the run. Hedging his bets a little.” “Could be,” Roland agreed. “So what do we do?” Jake repeated.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland drew in a deep breath, held it, let it out. “Let me riddle him alone, for now. I’ll ask him the hardest ones I remember from the Fair-Days of my youth. Then, Jake, if we’re approaching the point of… if we’re approaching Topeka at this same speed with Blaine still unposed, I think you should ask him the last few riddles in your book. The hardest riddles.” He rubbed the side of his face distractedly and looked at the ice sculpture. This chilly rendering of his own likeness had now melted to an unrecognizable hulk. “I still think the answer must be in the book. Why else would you have been drawn to it before coming back to this world?” <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“And us?” Susannah asked. “What do Eddie and I do?” <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n“Think, “<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Roland said. “Think,<\/i> for your fathers’ sakes.” <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n” ‘I do not shoot with my hand,’ ” Eddie said. He suddenly felt far away, strange to himself. It was the way he’d felt when he had seen first the slingshot and then the key in pieces of wood, just waiting for him to whittle them free … and at the same time this feeling was not like that at all.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland was looking at him oddly. “Yes, Eddie, you say true. A gun-slinger shoots with his mind. What have you thought of?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Nothing.” He might have said more, but all at once a strange image\u2014a strange memory\u2014<\/i>intervened: Roland hunkering by Jake at one of their stopping-points on the way to Lud. Both of them in front of an unlit campfire. Roland once more at his everlasting lessons. Jake’s turn this time. Jake with the flint and steel, trying to quicken the fire. Spark after spark licking out and dying in the dark. And Roland had said that he was being silly. That he was just being . . . well. . . silly.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“No,” Eddie said. “He didn’t say that at all. At least not to the kid, he didn’t.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Eddie?” Susannah. Sounding concerned. Almost frightened.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nWell why don’t you ask<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n him what he said, bro?<\/i> That was Henry’s voice, the voice of the Great Sage and Eminent Junkie. First time in a long time. Ask him, he’s practically sitting right next to you, go on and ask him what he said. Quit dancing around like a baby with a load in his diapers.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nExcept that was a bad idea, because that wasn’t the way things worked in Roland’s world. In Roland’s world everything<\/i> was riddles, you didn’t shoot with your hand but with your mind,<\/i> your motherfucking mind,<\/i> and what did you say to someone who wasn’t getting the spark into the kindling? Move your flint in closer, of course, and that’s what Roland had said: Move your flint in closer, and hold it steady.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nExcept none of that was what this was about. It was close, yes, but close only counts in horseshoes, as Henry Dean had been wont to say before he became the Great Sage and Eminent Junkie. Eddie’s memory was jinking a little because Roland had embarrassed him… shamed him . . . made a joke at his expense . . .<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nProbably not on purpose, but… something.<\/i> Something that had made him feel the way Henry always used to make him feel, of course it was, why else would Henry be here after such a long absence?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAll of them looking at him now. Even Oy.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Go on,” he told Roland, sounding a little waspish. “You wanted us to think, we’re thinking, already.” He himself was thinking so hard <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>(I<\/i> shoot with my mind )<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nthat his goddam brains were almost on fire, but he wasn’t going to tell old long, tall, and ugly that. “Go on and ask Blaine some riddles. Do your part.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“As you will, Eddie.” Roland rose from his seat, went forward, and laid his hand on the scarlet rectangle again. The route-map reappeared at once. The green dot had moved farther beyond Rilea, but it was clear to Eddie that the mono had slowed down significantly, either obeying some built-in program or because Blaine was having too much fun to hurry.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“IS YOUR KA-TET<\/i> READY TO CONTINUE OUR FAIR-DAY RIDDLING, ROLAND SON OF STEVEN?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes, Blaine,” Roland said, and to Eddie his voice sounded heavy. “I will riddle you alone for awhile now. If you have no objection.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“AS DINH<\/i> AND FATHER OF YOUR KA-TET,<\/i> SUCH IS YOUR RIGHT. WILL THESE BE FAIR-DAY RIDDLES?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“GOOD.” Loathsome satisfaction in that voice. “I WOULD HEAR MORE OF THOSE.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“All right.” Roland took a deep breath, then began. “Feed me and I live. Give me to drink and I die. What am I?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“FIRE.” No hesitation. Only that insufferable smugness, a tone which said That was old to me when your grandmother was young, but try again! This is more fun than I’ve had in centuries, so try again!<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I pass before the sun, Blaine, yet make no shadow. What am I?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“WIND.” No hesitation.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“You speak true, sai. Next. This is as light as a feather, yet no man can hold it for long.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“ONE’S BREATH.” No hesitation.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nYet he<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n did hesitate,<\/i> Eddie thought suddenly. Jake and Susannah were watching Roland with agonized concentration, fists clenched, willing<\/i> him to ask Blaine the right riddle, the stumper, the one with the Get the Fuck Out of Jail Free card hidden inside it; Eddie couldn’t look at them\u2014Suze, in particular\u2014and keep his concentration. He lowered his gaze to his own hands, which were also clenched, and forced them to open on his lap. It was surprisingly hard to do. From the aisle he heard Roland continuing to trot out the golden oldies of his youth.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Riddle me this, Blaine: If you break me, I’ll not stop working. If you can touch me, my work is done. If you lose me, you must find me with a ring soon after. What am I?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah’s breath caught for a moment, and although he was looking down, Eddie knew she was thinking what he was thinking: that was a good one, a damned<\/i> good one, maybe\u2014<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“THE HUMAN HEART,” Blaine said. Still with not a whit of hesitation. “THIS RIDDLE IS BASED IN LARGE PART UPON HUMAN POETIC CONCEITS; SEE FOR INSTANCE JOHN AVERY, SIRONIA HUNTZ, ONDOLA, WILLIAM BLAKE, JAMES TATE, VERONICA MAYS, AND OTHERS. IT IS REMARKABLE HOW HUMAN BEINGS PITCH THEIR MINDS ON LOVE. YET IT IS CONSTANT FROM ONE LEVEL OF THE TOWER TO THE NEXT, EVEN IN THESE DEGENERATE DAYS. CONTINUE, ROLAND OF GILEAD.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah’s breath resumed. Eddie’s hands wanted to clench again, but he wouldn’t let them. Move your flint in closer,<\/i> he thought in Roland’s voice. Move your flint in closer, for your father’s sake!<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd Blaine the Mono ran on, southeast under the Demon Moon.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nCHAPTER <\/span>II<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nTHE FALLS <\/span>
\nOF <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nTHE HOUNDS<\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n1<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake didn’t know how easy or difficult Blaine might find the last ten puzzlers in Riddle-De-Dum!,<\/i> but they looked pretty tough to him. Of course, he reminded himself, he wasn’t a thinking-machine with a citywide bank of computers to draw on. All he could do was go for it; God hates a coward, as Eddie sometimes said. If the last ten failed, he would try Aaron Deepneau’s Samson riddle (Out of the eater came forth meat,<\/i> and so on). If that one also failed, he’d probably . . . shit, he didn’t know what<\/i> he’d do, or even how he’d feel. The truth is,<\/i> Jake thought, I’m fried.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd why not? He had gone through an extraordinary swarm of emotions in the last eight hours or so. First, terror: of being sure he and Oy were going to drop off the suspension bridge and to their deaths in the River Send; of being driven through the crazed maze that was Lud by Gasher; of having to look into the Tick-Tock Man’s terrible green eyes and try to answer his unanswerable questions about time, Nazis, and the nature of transitive circuits. Being questioned by Tick-Tock had been like having to take a final exam in hell.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThen the exhilaration of being rescued by Roland (and Oy; without Oy he would almost certainly be toast now), the wonder of all they had seen beneath the city, his awe at the way Susannah had solved Blaine’s gate-riddle, and the final mad rush to get aboard the mono before Blaine could release the stocks of nerve-gas stored under Lud.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAfter surviving all that, a kind of blissed-out surety had settled over him\u2014of course<\/i> Roland would stump Blaine, who would then keep his part of the bargain and set them down safe and sound at his final stop (whatever passed for Topeka in this world). Then they would find the Dark Tower and do whatever they were supposed to do there, right what needed righting, fix what needed fixing. And then? They Lived Happily Ever After, of course. Like folk in a fairy tale.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nExcept…<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThey shared each other’s thoughts, Roland had said; sharing khef was <\/i>part of what ka-tet<\/i> meant. And what had been seeping into Jake’s thoughts ever since Roland stepped into the aisle and began to try Blaine with riddles from his young days was a sense of doom. It wasn’t coming just from the gunslinger; Susannah was sending out the same grim blue-black vibe. Only Eddie wasn’t sending it, and that was because he’d gone off somewhere, was chasing his own thoughts. That might be good, but there were no guarantees, and\u2014<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u2014and Jake began to be scared again. Worse, he felt desperate, like a creature that is pressed deeper and deeper into its final comer by a relentless foe. His fingers worked restlessly in Oy’s fur, and when he looked down at them, he realized an amazing thing: the hand which Oy had bitten into to keep from falling off the bridge no longer hurt. He could see the holes the bumbler’s teeth had made, and blood was still crusted in his palm and on his wrist, but the hand itself no longer hurt. He flexed it cautiously. There was some pain, but it was low and distant, hardly there at all.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Blaine, what may go up a chimney down but cannot go down a chimney up?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“A LADY’S PARASOL,” Blaine replied in that tone of jolly complacency which Jake, too, was coming to loathe.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Thankee-sai, Blaine, once again you have answered true. Next\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Roland?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe gunslinger looked around at Jake, and his look of concentration lightened a bit. It wasn’t a smile, but it went a little way in that direction, at least, and Jake was glad.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“What is it, Jake?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“My hand. It was hurting like crazy, and now it’s stopped!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“SHUCKS,” Blaine said in the drawling voice of John Wayne. “I COULDN’T WATCH A HOUND SUFFER WITH A MASHED-UP FOREPAW LIKE THAT, LET ALONE A FINE LITTLE TRAIL HAND LIKE YOURSELF. SO I FIXED IT UP.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“How?” Jake asked.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“LOOK ON THE ARM OF YOUR SEAT.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake did, and saw a faint gridwork of lines. It looked a little <\/b>like the <\/b>speaker of the transistor radio he’d had when he was seven or eight.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“ANOTHER BENEFIT OF TRAVELLING BARONY CLASS,” Blaine went on in his smug voice. It crossed Jake’s mind that Blaine would fit in perfectly at the Piper School. The world’s first slo-trans, dipolar nerd. “THE HAND-SCAN SPECTRUM MAGNIFIER IS A DIAGNOSTIC TOOL ALSO CAPABLE OF ADMINISTERING MINOR FIRST AID, SUCH AS I HAVE PERFORMED ON YOU. IT IS ALSO A NUTRIENT DELIVERY SYSTEM, A BRAIN-PATTERN RECORDING DEVICE, A STRESS-ANALYZER, AND AN EMOTION-ENHANCER WHICH CAN NATURALLY STIMULATE THE PRODUCTION OF ENDORPHINS. HAND-SCAN IS ALSO CAPABLE OF CREATING VERY BELIEVABLE ILLUSIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS. WOULD YOU CARE TO HAVE YOUR FIRST SEXUAL EXPERIENCE WITH A NOTED SEX-GODDESS FROM YOUR LEVEL OF THE TOWER, JAKE OF NEW YORK? PERHAPS MARILYN MONROE, RAQUEL WELCH, OR EDITH BUNKER?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake laughed. He guessed that laughing at Blaine might be risky, but this time he just couldn’t help it. “There is<\/i> no Edith Bunker,” he said. “She’s just a character on a TV show. The actress’s name is, um, Jean Stapleton. Also, she looks like Mrs. Shaw. She’s our housekeeper. Nice, but not\u2014you know\u2014a babe.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nA long silence from Blaine. When the voice of the computer returned, a certain coldness had replaced the jocose ain’t-we-having-fun tone of voice.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I CRY YOUR PARDON, JAKE OF NEW YORK. I ALSO WITHDRAW MY OFFER OF A SEXUAL EXPERIENCE.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nThat’ll teach me,<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Jake thought, raising one hand to cover a smile. Aloud (and in what he hoped was a suitably humble tone of voice) he said:<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“That’s okay, Blaine. I think I’m still a little young for that, anyway.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah and Roland were looking at each other. Susannah didn’t know who Edith Bunker was\u2014All in the Family<\/i> hadn’t been on the tube in her when. But she grasped the essence of the situation just the same;<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake saw her full lips form one soundless word and send it to the gun-slinger like a message in a soap bubble:<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nMistake.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nYes. Blaine had made a mistake. More, Jake Chambers, a boy of eleven, had picked up on it. And if Blaine had made one, he could make another. Maybe there was hope after all. Jake decided he would treat that possibility as he had treated the graf<\/i> of River Crossing and allow himself just a little.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n2<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland nodded imperceptibly at Susannah, then turned back to the front of the coach, presumably to resume riddling. Before he could open his mouth, Jake felt his body pushed forward. It was funny; you couldn’t feel a thing when the mono was running flat-out, but the minute it began to decelerate, you knew.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“HERE IS SOMETHING YOU REALLY OUGHT TO SEE,” Blaine said. He sounded cheerful again, but Jake didn’t trust that tone; he had sometimes heard his father start telephone conversations that way (usually with some subordinate who had FUB, Fucked Up Big), and by the end Elmer Chambers would be up on his feet, bent over the desk like a man with a stomach cramp and screaming at the top of his lungs, his cheeks red as radishes and the circles of flesh under his eyes as purple as an eggplant. “I HAVE TO STOP HERE, ANYWAY, AS I MUST SWITCH TO BATTERY POWER AT THIS POINT AND THAT MEANS PRE-CHARGING.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe mono stopped with a barely perceptible jerk. The walls around them once more drained of color and then became transparent. Susannah gasped with fear and wonder. Roland moved to his left, felt for the side of the coach so he wouldn’t bump his head, then leaned forward with his hands on his knees and his eyes narrowed. Oy began to bark again. Only Eddie seemed unmoved by the breathtaking view which had been provided them by the Barony Coach’s visual mode. He glanced around once, face preoccupied and somehow bleary with thought, and then looked down at his hands again. Jake glanced at him with brief curiosity, then stared back out.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThey were halfway across a vast chasm and seemed to be hovering on the moon-dusted air. Beyond them Jake could see a wide, boiling river. Not the Send, unless the rivers in Roland’s world were somehow able to run in different directions at different points in their courses (and Jake didn’t know enough about Mid-World to entirely discount that possibility); also, this river was not placid but raging, a torrent that came tumbling out of the mountains like something that was pissed off and wanted to brawl.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nFor a moment Jake looked at the trees which dressed the steep slopes along the sides of this river, registering with relief that they looked pretty much all right\u2014the sort of firs you’d expect to see in the mountains of Colorado or Wyoming, say\u2014and then his eyes were dragged back to the lip of the chasm. Here the torrent broke apart and dropped in a waterfall so wide and so deep that Jake thought it made Niagara, where he had gone with his parents (one of three family vacations he could remember; two had been cut short by urgent calls from his father’s Network), look like the kind you might see in a third-rate theme-park. The air filling the enclosing semicircle of the falls was further thickened by an up rushing mist that looked like steam; in it half a dozen moonbows gleamed like gaudy, interlocking dream-jewelry. To Jake they looked like the overlapping rings which symbolized the Olympics.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJutting from the center of the falls, perhaps two hundred feet below the point where the river actually went over the drop, were two enormous stone protrusions. Although Jake had no idea how a sculptor (or a team of them) could have gotten down to where they were, he found it all but impossible to believe they had simply eroded that way. They looked like the heads of enormous, snarling dogs.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Falls of the Hounds,<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n he thought. There was one more stop beyond this\u2014Dasherville\u2014and then Topeka. Last stop. Everybody out.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“ONE MOMENT,” Blaine said. “I MUST ADJUST THE VOLUME FOR YOU TO ENJOY THE FULL EFFECT.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThere was a brief, whispery hooting sound\u2014a kind of mechanical throat clearing\u2014and then they were assaulted by a vast roar. It was water\u2014a billion gallons a minute, for all Jake knew\u2014pouring over the lip of the chasm and falling perhaps two thousand feet into the deep stone basin at the base of the falls. Streamers of mist floated past the blunt almost-faces of the jutting dogs like steam from the vents of hell. The level of sound kept climbing. Now Jake’s whole head vibrated with it, and as he clapped his hands over his ears, he saw Roland, Eddie, and Susannah doing the same. Oy was barking, but Jake couldn’t hear him. Susannah’s lips were moving again, and again he could read the words\u2014Stop it, Blaine, stop it!\u2014<\/i>but he couldn’t hear them any more than he could hear Oy’s barks, although he was sure Susannah was screaming at the top of her lungs.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd still Blame increased the sound of the waterfall, until Jake could feel his eyes shaking in their sockets and he was sure his ears were going to short out like overstressed stereo speakers.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThen it was over. They still hung above the moon-misty drop, the moonbows still made their slow and dreamlike revolutions before the curtain of endlessly falling water, the wet and brutal stone faces of the dog-guardians continued to jut out of the torrent, but that world-ending thunder was gone.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nFor a moment Jake thought what he’d feared had happened, that he had gone deaf. Then he realized that he could hear Oy, still barking, and Susannah crying. At first these sounds seemed distant and flat, as if his ears had been packed with cracker-crumbs, but then they began to clarify.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie put his arm around Susannah’s shoulders and looked toward the route-map. “Nice guy, Blaine.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I MERELY THOUGHT YOU WOULD ENJOY HEARING THE SOUND OF THE FALLS AT FULL VOLUME,” Blaine said. His booming voice sounded laughing and injured at the same time. “I THOUGHT IT MIGHT HELP YOU TO FORGET MY REGRETTABLE MISTAKE IN THE MATTER OF EDITH BUNKER.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nMy fault,<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Jake thought. Blaine may just be a machine, and a suicidal one at that, but he still doesn\u2019t like to be laughed at.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe sat beside Susannah and put his own arm around her. He could still hear the Falls of the Hounds, but the sound was now distant.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“What happens here?” Roland asked. “How do you charge your batteries?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YOU WILL SEE SHORTLY, GUNSLINGER. IN THE MEANTIME, TRY ME WITH A RIDDLE.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“All right, Blaine. Here’s one of Cort’s own making, and has posed many in its time.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I AWAIT IT WITH GREAT INTEREST.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland, pausing perhaps to gather his thoughts, looked up at the place where the roof of the coach had been and where there was now only a starry spill across a black sky (Jake could pick out Aton and Lydia\u2014Old Star and Old Mother\u2014and was oddly comforted by the sight of them, still glaring at each other from their accustomed places). Then the gunslinger looked back at the lighted rectangle which served them as Blaine’s face.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n” ‘We are very little creatures; all of us have different features. One of us in glass is set; one of us you’ll find in jet. Another you may see in tin, and a fourth is boxed within. If the fifth you should pursue, it can never fly from you. What are we?’ “<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“A AND E AND I AND O AND U,” Blaine replied. “THE VOWELS OF THE HIGH SPEECH.” Still no hesitation, not so much as a whit. Only that voice, mocking and just about two steps from laughter; the voice of a cruel little boy watching bugs run around on top of a hot stove. “ALTHOUGH THAT PARTICULAR RIDDLE IS NOT FROM YOUR TEACHER, ROLAND OF GILEAD; I KNOW IT FROM JONATHAN SWIFT OF LONDON\u2014A CITY IN THE WORLD YOUR FRIENDS COME FROM.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Thankee-sai,” Roland said, and his sai sounded like a sigh. “Your answer is true, Blaine, and undoubtedly what you believe of the riddle’s origins is true as well. That Cort knew of other worlds is something I long suspected. I think he may have held palaver with the manni<\/i> who lived outside the city.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I CARE NOT ABOUT THE MANNI,<\/i> ROLAND OF GILEAD. THEY WERE ALWAYS A FOOLISH SECT. TRY ME WITH ANOTHER RIDDLE.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“All right. What has\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“HOLD, HOLD. THE FORCE OF THE BEAM GATHERS. LOOK NOT DIRECTLY AT THE HOUNDS, MY INTERESTING NEW FRIENDS! AND SHIELD YOUR EYES!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake looked away from the colossal rock sculptures jutting from the falls, but didn’t get his hand up quite in time. With his peripheral vision he saw those featureless heads suddenly develop eyes of a fiercely glowing blue. Jagged tines of lightning leaped out of them and toward the mono. Then Jake was lying on the carpeted floor of the Barony Coach with the heels of his hands pasted against his closed eyes and the sound of Oy whining in one faintly ringing ear. Beyond Oy, he heard the crackle of electricity as it stormed around the mono.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nWhen Jake opened his eyes again, the Falls of the Hounds were gone;<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBlaine had opaqued the cabin. He could still hear the sound, though\u2014a waterfall of electricity, a force somehow drawn from the Beam and shot out through the eyes of the stone heads. Blaine was feeding himself with it, somehow. When we go on,<\/i> Jake thought, he ‘II be running on batteries. Then Lud really will be behind us. For good.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Blaine,” Roland said. “How is the power of the Beam stored in that place? What makes it come from the eyes of yon stone temple-dogs? How do you use it?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSilence from Blaine.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“And who carved them?” Eddie asked. “Was it the Great Old Ones? It wasn’t, was it? There were people even before them. Or … were<\/i> they people?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nMore silence from Blaine. And maybe that was good. Jake wasn’t sure how much he wanted to know about the Falls of the Hounds, or what went on beneath them. He had been in the dark of Roland’s world before, and had seen enough to believe that most of what was growing there was neither good nor safe.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Better not to ask him,” the voice of Little Blaine drifted down from over their heads. “Safer.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Don’t ask him silly questions, he won’t play silly games,” Eddie said. That distant, dreaming look had come onto his face again, and when Susannah spoke his name, he didn’t seem to hear.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n3<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland sat down across from Jake and scrubbed his right hand slowly up the stubble on his right cheek, an unconscious gesture he seemed to make only when he was feeling tired or doubtful. “I’m running out of riddles,” he said.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake looked back at him, startled. The gunslinger had posed fifty or more to the computer, and Jake supposed that was a lot to just yank out of your head with no preparation, but when you considered that riddling had been such a big deal in the place where Roland had grown up …<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe seemed to read some of this on Jake’s face, for a small smile, lemon-bitter, touched the comers of his mouth, and he nodded as if the boy had spoken out loud. “I don’t understand, either. If you’d asked me yesterday or the day before, I would have told you that I had at least a thousand riddles stored up in the junkbin I keep at the back of my mind. Perhaps two thousand. But. . .”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe lifted one shoulder in a shrug, shook his head, rubbed his hand up his cheek again.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“It’s not like forgetting. It’s as if they were never there in the first place. What’s happening to the rest of the world is happening to me, I reckon.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“You’re moving on,” Susannah said, and looked at Roland with an expression of pity which Roland could look back at for only a second or two; it was as if he felt burned by her regard. “Like everything else here.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes, I fear so.” He looked at Jake, lips tight, eyes sharp. “Will you be ready with the riddles from your book when I call on you?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes.”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Good. And take heart. We’re not finished yet.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nOutside, the dim crackle of electricity ceased.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I HAVE FED MY BATTERIES AND ALL IS WELL,” Blaine announced.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Marvelous,” Susannah said dryly.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Luss!” Oy agreed, catching Susannah’s sarcastic tone exactly.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I HAVE A NUMBER OF SWITCHING FUNCTIONS TO PERFORM. THESE WILL TAKE ABOUT FORTY MINUTES AND ARE LARGELY AUTOMATIC. WHILE THIS SWITCHOVER TAKES PLACE AND THE ACCOMPANYING CHECKLIST IS RUNNING, WE SHALL CONTINUE OUR CONTEST. I AM ENJOYING IT VERY MUCH.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“It’s like when you have to switch over from electric to diesel on the train to Boston,” Eddie said. He still sounded as if he wasn’t quite with them. “At Hartford or New Haven or one of those other places where no one in their right fucking mind would want to live.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Eddie?” Susannah asked. “What are you\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland touched her shoulder and shook his head.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“NEVER MIND EDDIE OF NEW YORK,” Blaine said in his expansive, gosh-but-this-is-fun voice.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“That’s right,” Eddie said. “Never mind Eddie of New York.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“HE KNOWS NO GOOD RIDDLES. BUT YOU KNOW MANY, ROLAND OF GILEAD. TRY ME WITH ANOTHER.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd, as Roland did just that, Jake thought of his Final Essay. Blaine is a pain,<\/i> he had written there. Blaine is a pain and that is the truth.<\/i> It was the truth, all right.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe stone<\/i> truth.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nA little less than an hour later, Blaine the Mono began to move again.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n4<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah watched with dreadful fascination as the flashing dot approached Dasherville, passed it, and made its final dogleg for home. The dot’s movement said that Blaine was moving a bit more slowly now that it had switched over to batteries, and she fancied the lights in the Barony Coach were a little dimmer, but she didn’t believe it would make much difference, in the end. Blaine might reach his terminus in Topeka doing six hundred miles an hour instead of eight hundred, but his last load of passengers would be toothpaste either way.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland was also slowing down, going deeper and deeper into that mental junkbin of his to find riddles. Yet he did<\/i> find them, and he refused to give up. As always. Ever since he had begun teaching her to shoot, Susannah had felt a reluctant love for Roland of Gilead, a feeling that seemed a mixture of admiration, fear, and pity. She thought she would never really like him (and that the Detta Walker part of her might always hate him for the way he had seized hold of her and dragged her, raving, into the sun), but her love was nonetheless strong. He had, after all, saved Eddie Dean’s life and soul; had rescued her beloved. She must love him for that if for nothing else. But she loved him even more, she suspected, for the way he would never, never<\/i> give up. The word retreat<\/i> didn’t seem to be in his vocabulary, even when he was discouraged … as he so clearly was now.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Blaine, where may you find roads without carts, forests without trees, cities without houses?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“ON A MAP.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“You say true, sai. Next. I have a hundred legs but cannot stand, a long neck but no head; I eat the maid’s life. What am I?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“A BROOM, GUNSLINGER. ANOTHER VARIATION ENDS, ‘I EASE<\/i> THE MAID’S LIFE.’ I LIKE YOURS BETTER.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland ignored this. “Cannot be seen, cannot be felt, cannot be heard, cannot be smelt. It lies behind the stars and beneath the hills. Ends life and kills laughter. What is it, Blaine?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“THE DARK.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Thankee-sai, you speak true.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe diminished right hand slid up the right cheek\u2014the old fretful gesture\u2014and the minute scratching sound produced by the callused pads of his fingers made Susannah shiver. Jake sat cross-legged on the floor, looking at the gunslinger with a kind of fierce intensity.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“This thing runs but cannot walk, sometimes sings but never talks. Lacks arms, has hands; lacks a head but has a face. What is it, Blaine?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“A CLOCK.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Shit,” Jake whispered, lips compressing.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah looked over at Eddie and felt a passing ripple of irritation. He seemed to have lost interest in the whole thing\u2014had “zoned out,” in his weird 1980s slang. She thought to throw an elbow into his side, wake him up a little, then remembered Roland shaking his head at her and didn’t. You wouldn’t know he was thinking, not from that slack expression on his face, but maybe he was.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nIf so, you better hurry it up a little, precious,<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n she thought. The dot on the route map was still closer to Dasherville than Topeka, but it would reach the halfway point within the next fifteen minutes or so.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd still the match went on, Roland serving questions, Blaine sending the answers whistling right back at him, low over the net and out of reach.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nWhat builds up castles, tears down mountains, makes some blind, helps others to see? SAND.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nThankee-sai.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nWhat lives in winter, dies in summer, and grows with its roots upward? AN ICICLE.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nBlaine. you say true.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nMan walks over; man walks under; in time of war he bums asunder? A BRIDGE.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nThankee-sai.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nA seemingly endless parade of riddles marched past her, one after the other, until she lost all sense of their fun and playfulness. Had it been so in the days of Roland’s youth, she wondered, during the riddle contests of Wide Earth and Full Earth, when he and his friends (although she had an idea they hadn’t all<\/i> been his friends, no, not by a long chalk) had vied for the Fair-Day goose? She guessed that the answer was probably yes. The winner had probably been the one who could stay fresh longest, keep his poor bludgeoned brains aerated somehow.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe killer was the way Blaine came back with the answer so damned promptly<\/i> each time. No matter how hard the riddle might seem to her, Blaine served it right back to their side of the court, ka-slam.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Blaine, what has eyes yet cannot see?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“THERE ARE FOUR ANSWERS,” Blaine replied. “NEEDLES, STORMS, POTATOES, AND A TRUE LOVER.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Thankee-sai, Blaine, you speak\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“LISTEN. ROLAND OF GILEAD. LISTEN, KA-TET”<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland fell silent at once, his eyes narrowing, his head slightly cocked.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YOU WILL SHORTLY HEAR MY ENGINES BEGIN TO CYCLE UP,” Blaine said. “WE ARE NOW EXACTLY SIXTY MINUTES OUT OF<\/b> TOPEKA. AT THIS POINT\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“If we’ve been riding for seven hours or more, I grew up with the Brady Bunch,” Jake said.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah looked around apprehensively, expecting some new terror or small act of cruelty in response to Jake’s sarcasm, but Blaine only chuckled. When he spoke again, the voice of Humphrey Bogart had resurfaced.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“TIME’S DIFFERENT HERE, SHWEETHEART. YOU MUST KNOW THAT BY NOW. BUT DON’T WORRY; THE FUNDAMENTAL THINGS APPLY AS TIME GOES BY. WOULD I LIE TO YOU?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes,” Jake muttered.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThat apparently struck Blame’s funny bone, because he began to laugh again\u2014the mad, mechanical laughter that made Susannah think of funhouses in sleazy amusement parks and roadside carnivals. When the lights began to pulse in sync with the laughter, she shut her eyes and put her hands over her ears.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Stop it, Blaine! Stop it!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“BEG PARDON, MA’AM,” drawled the aw-shucks voice of Jimmy Stewart. “AH’M RIGHT SORRY IF I RUINT YOUR EARS WITH MY RISABILITY.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Ruin this,” Jake said, and hoisted his middle finger at the route-map.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah expected Eddie to laugh\u2014you could count on him to be amused by vulgarity at any time of the day or night, she would have said\u2014but Eddie only continued looking down at his lap, his forehead creased, his eyes vacant, his mouth hung slightly agape. He looked a little too much like the village idiot for comfort, Susannah thought, and again had to restrain herself from throwing an elbow into his side to get that doltish look off his face. She wouldn’t restrain herself for much longer; if they were going to die at the end of Blaine’s run, she wanted Eddie’s arms around her when it happened, Eddie’s eyes on her, Eddie’s mind with hers.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBut for now, better let him be.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“AT THIS POINT,” Blaine resumed in his normal voice, “I INTEND TO BEGIN WHAT I LIKE TO THINK OF AS MY KAMIKAZE RUN. THIS WILL QUICKLY DRAIN MY BATTERIES, BUT I THINK THE TIME FOR CONSERVATION HAS PASSED, DON’T YOU? WHEN I STRIKE THE TRANSTEEL PIERS AT THE END OF THE TRACK, I SHOULD BE TRAVELLING AT BETTER THAN NINE HUNDRED MILES AN HOUR\u2014FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTY IN WHEELS, THAT IS. SEE YOU LATER, ALLIGATOR, AFTER AWHILE, CROCODILE, DON’T FORGET TO WRITE. I TELL YOU THIS IN THE SPIRIT OF FAIR PLAY, MY INTERESTING NEW FRIENDS. IF YOU HAVE BEEN SAVING YOUR BEST RIDDLES FOR LAST, YOU MIGHT DO WELL TO POSE THEM TO ME NOW.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe unmistakable greed in Blaine’s voice\u2014its naked desire to hear and solve their best riddles before it killed them\u2014made Susannah feel tired and old.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I might not have time even so to pose you all my very<\/i> best ones,” Roland said in a casual, considering tone of voice. “That would be a shame, wouldn’t it?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nA pause ensued\u2014brief, but more of a hesitation than the computer had accorded any of Roland’s riddles\u2014and then Blaine chuckled. Susannah hated the sound of its mad laughter, but there was a cynical weariness in this chuckle that chilled her even more deeply. Perhaps because it was almost sane.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“GOOD, GUNSLINGER. A VALIANT EFFORT. BUT YOU ARE NOT SCHEHERAZADE, NOR DO WE HAVE A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS IN WHICH TO HOLD PALAVER.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I don’t understand you. I know not this Scheherazade.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“NO MATTER. SUSANNAH CAN FILL YOU IN, IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW. PERHAPS EVEN EDDIE. THE POINT, ROLAND, IS THAT I’LL NOT BE DRAWN ON BY THE PROMISE OF MORE RIDDLES. WE VIE FOR THE GOOSE. COME TOPEKA, IT SHALL BE AWARDED, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nOnce more the diminished hand went up Roland’s cheek; once more Susannah heard the minute rasp of his fingers against the wiry stubble of his beard.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“We play for keeps. No one cries off.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“CORRECT. NO ONE CRIES OFF.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“All right, Blaine, we play for keeps and no one cries off. Here’s the next.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“AS ALWAYS, I AWAIT IT WITH PLEASURE.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland looked down at Jake. “Be ready with yours, Jake; I’m almost at the end of mine.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake nodded.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBeneath them, the mono’s slo-trans engines continued to cycle up-mat beat-beat-beat which Susannah did not so much hear as feel in the hinges of her jaw, the hollows of her temples, the pulse-points of her wrists.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nIt’s not going to happen unless there’s a stumper in Jake’s book,<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n she thought. Roland can’t pose Blame, and I think he knows it. I think he knew it an hour ago.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Blame, I occur once in a minute, twice in every moment, but not once in a hundred thousand years. What am I?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd so the contest would continue, Susannah realized, Roland asking and Blaine answering with his increasingly terrible lack of hesitation, like an all-seeing, all-knowing god. Susannah sat with her cold hands clasped in her lap and watched the glowing dot draw nigh Topeka, the place where all rail service ended, the place where the path of their ka-tet<\/i> would end in the clearing. She thought about the Hounds of the Falls, how they had jutted from the thundering white billows below the dark and starshot sky; she thought of their eyes.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nTheir electric-blue eyes.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nCHAPTER\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>III<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nthe fair-day goose<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n1<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie Dean\u2014who did not know Roland sometimes thought of him as ka mai, ka’s<\/i> fool\u2014heard all of it and heard none of it; saw all of it and saw none of it. The only thing to really make an impression on him once the riddling began in earnest was the fire flashing from the stone eyes of the Hounds; as he raised his hand to shield his eyes from that chain-lightning glare, he thought of the Portal of the Beam in the Clearing of the Bear, how he had pressed his ear against it and heard the distant, dreamy rumble of machinery.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nWatching the eyes of the Hounds light up, listening as Blaine drew that current into his batteries, powering up for his final plunge across Mid-World, Eddie had thought: Not<\/i> all is silent in the halls of the dead and the rooms of ruin. Even now some of the stuff the Old Ones left behind still works. And that’s really the horror of it, wouldn\u2019t ‘t you say? Yes. The exact horror of it.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie had been with his friends for a short time after that, mentally as well as physically, but then he had fallen back into his thoughts again. Eddie’s zonin.<\/i> Henry would have said. Let ‘im be.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nIt was the image of Jake striking flint and steel that kept recurring; he would allow his mind to dwell on it for a second or two, like a bee alighting on some sweet flower, and then he would take off again. Because that memory wasn’t what he wanted; it was just the way in<\/i> to what he wanted, another door like the ones on the beach of the Western Sea, or the one he had scraped in the dirt of the speaking ring before they had drawn Jake.. . only this door was in his mind. What he wanted was behind it; what he was doing was kind of… well… diddling the lock.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nZoning, in Henry-speak.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHis brother had spent most of his time putting Eddie down\u2014because Henry had been afraid of him and jealous of him, Eddie had finally come to realize\u2014but he remembered one day when Henry had stunned him by saying something that was nice. Better<\/i> than nice, actually; mind-boggling.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nA bunch of them had been sitting in the alley behind Dahlie’s, some of them eating Popsicles and Hoodsie Rockets, some of them smoking Kents from a pack Jimmie Polino\u2014Jimmie Polio, they had all called him, because he had that fucked-up thing wrong with him, that clubfoot\u2014had hawked out of his mother’s dresser drawer. Henry, predictably enough, had been one of the ones smoking.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThere were certain ways of referring to things in the gang Henry was a part of (and which Eddie, as his little brother, was also a part of); the argot of their miserable little ka-tet.<\/i> In Henry’s gang, you never beat anyone else up; you sent em home with a fuckin rupture.<\/i> You never made out with a girl; you fucked that skag til she cried.<\/i> You never got stoned; you went on a fuckin bombin-run.<\/i> And you never brawled with another gang; you got in a fuckin pisser.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe discussion that day had been about who you’d want with you if you got in a fuckin pisser. Jimmie Polio (he got to talk first because he had supplied the cigarettes, which Henry’s homeboys called the fuckin cancer-sticks)<\/i> opted for Skipper Brannigan, because, he said, Skipper wasn’t afraid of anyone. One time, Jimmie said, Skipper got pissed off at this teacher\u2014at the Friday night PAL dance, this was\u2014and beat the living shit out of him. Sent THE FUCKIN CHAPERONE<\/i> home with a fuckin rupture, if you could dig it. That was his homie Skipper Brannigan.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEveryone listened to this solemnly, nodding their heads as they ate their Rockets, sucked their Popsicles, or smoked their Kents. Everyone knew that Skipper Brannigan was a fuckin pussy and Jimmie was full of shit, but no one said so. Christ, no. If they didn’t pretend to believe Jimmie Polio’s outrageous lies, no one would pretend to believe theirs.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nTommy Fredericks opted for John Parelli. Georgie Pratt went for Csaba Drabnik, also known around the nabe as The Mad Fuckin Hungarian. Frank Duganelli nominated Larry McCain, even though Larry was in Juvenile Detention; Larry fuckin ruled,<\/i> Frank said.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBy then it was around to Henry Dean. He gave the question the weighty consideration it deserved, then put his arm around his surprised brother’s shoulders. Eddie,<\/i> he said. My little bro. He’s the man.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThey all stared at him, stunned\u2014and none more stunned than Eddie. His jaw had been almost down to his belt-buckle. And then Jimmie Polio said. Come on. Henry, stop fuckin around. This a serious question. Who ‘d you want watching your hack if the shit was gonna come down?<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nI<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n am being serious.<\/i> Henry had replied.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nWhy Eddie?<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Georgie Pratt had asked, echoing the question which had been in Eddie’s own mind. He couldn\u2019t ‘t fight his way out of a paper bag. A <\/i>wet one. So<\/i> why the fuck?<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHenry thought some more\u2014not, Eddie was convinced, because he didn’t know why, but because he had to think about how to articulate it. Then he said: Because when Eddie’s in that fuckin zone, he could talk the devil into setting himself on fire.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe image of Jake returned, one memory stepping on another. Jake scraping steel on flint, flashing sparks at the kindling of their campfire, sparks that fell short and died before they lit.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nHe could talk the devil into setting himself on fire.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nMove your flint in closer,<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Roland said, and now there was a third memory, one of Roland at the door they’d come to at the end of the beach, Roland burning with fever, close to death, shaking like a maraca, coughing, his blue bombardier’s eyes fixed on Eddie, Roland saying, Come a little closer, Eddie\u2014come a little closer for your father’s sake!<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nBecause he wanted to grab me,<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Eddie thought. Faintly, almost as if it were coming through one of those magic doors from some other world, he heard Blaine telling them that the endgame had commenced; if they had been saving their best riddles, now was the time to trot them out. They had an hour.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nAn hour! Only an hour!<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHis mind tried to fix on that and Eddie nudged it away. Something was happening inside him (at least he prayed it was), some desperate game of association, and he couldn’t let his mind get fucked up with deadlines and consequences and all that crap; if he did, he’d lose whatever chance he had. It was, in a way, like seeing something in a piece of wood, something you could carve out\u2014a bow, a slingshot, perhaps a key to open some unimaginable door. You couldn’t look too long, though, at least to start with. You’d lose it if you did. It was almost as if you had to carve while your own back was turned.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe could feel Blaine’s engines powering up beneath him. In his mind’s eye he saw the flint flash against the steel, and in his mind’s ear he heard Roland telling Jake to move the flint in closer. And don’t<\/i> hit it with the steel, Jake;<\/i> scrape it.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nWhy am I here? If this isn’t what I want, why does my mind keep coming hack to this place?<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nBecause it\u2019s as close as I can get and still stay out of the hurt-zone. Only a medium-sized hurt, actually, but it made me think of Henry. Being put down by Henry.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nHenry said you could talk the devil into setting himself on fire.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nYes. I always loved him for that. That was great.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd now Eddie saw Roland move Jake’s hands, one holding flint and the other steel, closer to the kindling. Jake was nervous. Eddie could see it; Roland had seen it, too. And in order to ease his nerves, take his mind off the responsibility of lighting the fire, Roland had\u2014<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nHe asked the kid a riddle.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie Dean blew breath into the keyhole of his memory. And this time the tumblers turned.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n2<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe green dot was closing in on Topeka, and for the first time Jake felt vibration … as if the track beneath them had decayed to a point where Blaine’s compensators could no longer completely handle the problem. With the sense of vibration there at last came a feeling of speed. The walls and ceiling of the Barony Coach were still opaqued, but Jake found he didn’t need to see the countryside blurring past to imagine it. Blaine was rolling full out now, leading his last sonic boom across the waste lands to the place where Mid-World ended, and Jake also found it easy to imagine the transteel piers at the end of the monorail. They would be painted in diagonal stripes of yellow and black. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES,” Blaine said complacently. “WOULD YOU TRY ME AGAIN, GUNSLINGER?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I think not, Blaine.” Roland sounded exhausted. “I’ve done with you; you’ve beaten me. Jake?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake got to his feet and faced the route-map. In his chest his heartbeat seemed very slow but very hard, each pulse like a fist slamming on a drumhead. Oy crouched between his feet, looking anxiously up into his face.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Hello, Blaine,” Jake said, and wet his lips.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“HELLO, JAKE OF NEW YORK.” The voice was kindly\u2014the voice, perhaps, of a nice old fellow with a habit of molesting the children he from time to time leads into the bushes. “WOULD YOU TRY ME WITH RIDDLES FROM YOUR BOOK? OUR TIME TOGETHER GROWS SHORT.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes,” Jake said. “I would try you with these riddles. Give me your understanding of the truth concerning each, Blaine.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“IT IS FAIRLY SPOKEN, JAKE OF NEW YORK. I WILL DO AS YOU ASK.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake opened the book to the place he had been keeping with his finger. Ten riddles. Eleven, counting Samson’s riddle, which he was saving for last. If Blaine answered them all (as Jake now believed he probably would), Jake would sit down next to Roland, take Oy onto his lap, and wait for the end. There were, after all, other worlds than these.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Listen, Blaine: In a tunnel of darkness lies a beast of iron. It can only attack when pulled back. What is it?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“A BULLET.” No hesitation.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Walk on the living, they don’t even mumble. Walk on the dead, they mutter and grumble. What are they?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“FALLEN LEAVES.” No hesitation, and if Jake really knew in his heart that the game was lost, why did he feel such despair, such bitterness, such anger?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nBecause he’s a pain, that’s why. Blaine is a really BIG pain, and I’d like to push his face in it, just once. I think even making him stop is second to that on my wish-list.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake turned the page. He was very close to Riddle-De-Dum’s<\/i> tom-out answer section now; he could feel it under his finger, a kind of jagged lump. Very close to the end of the book. He thought of Aaron Deepneau in the Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind, Aaron Deepneau telling him to come back anytime, play a little chess, and oh just by the way, old fatso made a pretty good cup of coffee. A wave of homesickness so strong it was like dying swept over him. He felt he would have sold his soul for a look at New York; hell, he would have sold it for one deep lung-filling breath of Forty-second Street at rush hour.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe fought it off and went to the next riddle.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I am emeralds and diamonds, lost by the moon. I am found by the sun and picked up soon. What am I?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“DEW.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nStill relentless. Still unhesitating.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe green dot grew closer to Topeka, closing the last of the distance on the route-map. One after another, Jake posed his riddles; one after another, Blaine answered them. When Jake turned to the last page, he saw a boxed message from the author or editor or whatever you called someone who put together books like this: We hope you’ve enjoyed the unique combination of imagination and logic known as RIDDLING!<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nI haven’t,<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Jake thought. I haven’t enjoyed it one little bit, and I hope you choke.<\/i> Yet when he looked at the question above the message, he felt a thin thread of hope. It seemed to him that, in this case, at least, they really had<\/i> saved the best for last.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nOn the route-map, the green dot was now no more than a finger’s width from Topeka.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Hurry up, Jake,” Susannah murmured.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Blaine?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YES, JAKE OF NEW YORK.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“With no wings, I fly. With no eyes, I see. With no arms, I climb. More frightening than any beast, stronger than any foe. I am cunning, ruthless, and tall; in the end, I rule all. What am I?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe gunslinger had looked up, blue eyes gleaming. Susannah began to turn her expectant face from Jake to the route-map. Yet Blaine’s answer was as prompt as ever: “THE IMAGINATION OF MAN AND WOMAN.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake briefly considered arguing, then thought, Why waste our time? <\/i>As always, the answer, when it was right, seemed almost self-evident. “Thankee-sai, Blaine, you speak true.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“AND THE FAIR-DAY GOOSE IS ALMOST MINE, I WOT. NINETEEN MINUTES AND FIFTY SECONDS TO TERMINATION. WOULD YOU SAY MORE, JAKE OF NEW YORK? VISUAL SENSORS INDICATE YOU HAVE COME TO THE END OF YOUR BOOK, WHICH WAS NOT, I MUST SAY, AS GOOD AS I HAD HOPED.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Everybody’s a goddam critic,” Susannah said sotto voce. She wiped a tear from the comer of one eye; without looking directly at her, the gunslinger took her free hand. She clasped it tightly.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes, Blaine, I have one more,” Jake said.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“EXCELLENT.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came sweetness.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“THIS RIDDLE COMES FROM THE HOLY BOOK KNOWN AS ‘OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE OF KING JAMES.'” Blaine sounded amused, and Jake felt the last of his hope slip away. He thought he might cry\u2014not so much out of fear as frustration. “IT WAS MADE BY SAMSON THE STRONG. THE EATER IS A LION; THE SWEETNESS IS HONEY, MADE BY BEES WHICH HIVED IN THE LION’S SKULL. NEXT? YOU STILL HAVE OVER EIGHTEEN MINUTES, JAKE.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake shook his head. He let go of Riddle-De-Dum!<\/i> and smiled when Oy caught it neatly in his jaws and then stretched his long neck up to Jake, holding it out again. “I’ve told them all. I’m done.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“SHUCKS, L\u2019IL TRAILHAND, THAT’S A PURE-D SHAME,” Blaine said. Jake found this drawly John Wayne imitation all but unbearable in their current circumstances. “LOOKS LIKE I WIN THAT THAR GOOSE, UNLESS SOMEBODY ELSE CARES TO SPEAK UP. WHAT ABOUT YOU, OY OF MID-WORLD? GOT ANY RIDDLES, MY LITTLE BUMBLER BUDDY?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Oy!” the billy-bumbler responded, his voice muffled by the book. Still smiling, Jake took it and sat down next to Roland, who put an arm around him.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“SUSANNAH <\/b>OF NEW <\/b>YORK?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nShe shook her head, not looking up. She had turned Roland’s hand over in her own, and was gently tracing the healed stumps where his first two fingers had been.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“ROLAND SON OF STEVEN? HAVE YOU REMEMBERED ANY OTHERS FROM THE FAIR-DAY RIDDLINGS OF GILEAD?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland also shook his head . . . and then Jake saw that Eddie Dean was raising his. There was a peculiar smile on Eddie’s face, a peculiar shine in Eddie’s eyes, and Jake found that hope hadn’t deserted him, after all. It suddenly flowered anew in his mind, red and hot and vivid. Like . . . well, like a rose. A rose in the full fever of its summer.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Blaine?” Eddie asked in a low tone. To Jake his voice sounded queerly choked.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YES, EDDIE OF NEW YORK.” Unmistakable disdain.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I have a couple of riddles,” Eddie said. “Just to pass the time between here and Topeka, you understand.” No, Jake realized, Eddie didn’t sound as if he were choking; he sounded as if he were trying to hold back laughter.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“SPEAK, EDDIE OF NEW YORK.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n3<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSitting and listening to Jake run through the last of his riddles, Eddie had mused on Roland’s tale of the Fair-Day goose. From there his mind had returned to Henry, travelling from Point A to Point B through the magic of associative thinking. Or, if you wanted to get Zen about it, via Trans-Bird Airlines: goose to turkey. He and Henry had once had a discussion about getting off heroin. Henry had claimed that going cold turkey wasn’t the only way; there was also, he said, such a thing as going cool<\/i> turkey. Eddie asked Henry what you called a hype who had just administered a hot shot to himself, and, without missing a beat, Henry had said. You call that<\/i> baked turkey.<\/i> How they had laughed . . . but now, all this long, strange time later, it looked very much as if the joke was going to be on the younger Dean brother, not to mention the younger Dean brother’s new friends. Looked like they were all going to be baked turkey before much longer.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nUnless you can yank it out of the zone.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nYes.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nThen do it, Eddie.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n It was Henry’s voice again, that old resident of his head, but now Henry sounded sober and clear-minded. Henry sounded like his friend instead of his enemy, as if all the old conflicts were finally settled, all the old hatchets buried. Do it\u2014make the devil set himself on fire. It ‘II hurt a little, maybe, but you’ve hurt worse. Hell, I hurt you worse myself, and you survived. Survived just fine. And you know where to look.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nOf course. In their palaver around the campfire Jake had finally managed to light. Roland had asked the kid a riddle to loosen him up, Jake had struck a spark into the kindling, and then they had all sat around the fire, talking. Talking and riddling.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie knew something else, too. Blaine had answered hundreds of riddles as they ran southeast along the Path of the Beam, and the others believed that he had answered every single one of them without hesitation. Eddie had thought much the same . . . but now, as he cast his mind back over the contest, he realized an interesting thing: Blaine had<\/i> hesitated.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nOnce.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nHe was pissed, too. Like Roland was.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe gunslinger, although often exasperated by Eddie, had shown real anger toward him just a single time after the business of carving the key, when Eddie had almost choked. Roland had tried to cover the depth of that anger\u2014make it seem like nothing but more exasperation\u2014but Eddie had sensed what was underneath. He had lived with Henry Dean for a long time, and was still exquisitely attuned to all the negative emotions. It had hurt him, too\u2014not Roland’s anger itself, exactly, but the contempt with which it had been laced. Contempt had always been one of Henry’s favorite weapons.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nWhy did the dead baby cross the road?<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Eddie had asked. Because it was stapled to the chicken, nyuck-nyuck-nyuck!<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nLater, when Eddie had tried to defend his riddle, arguing that it was tasteless but not pointless, Roland’s response had been strangely like Blaine’s: \/ don’t care about taste. It’s senseless and unsolvable, and that’s what makes it silly. A good riddle is neither.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBut as Jake finished riddling Blaine, Eddie realized a wonderful, liberating thing: that word good<\/i> was up for grabs. Always had been, always would be. Even if the man using it was maybe a thousand years old and could shoot like Buffalo Bill, that word was still up for grabs. Roland himself had admitted he had never been very good at the riddling game. His tutor claimed that Roland thought too deeply; his father thought it was lack of imagination. Whatever the reason, Roland of Gilead had never won a Fair-Day riddling. He had survived all his contemporaries, and that was certainly a prize of sorts, but he had never carried home a prize goose. I could always haul a gun faster than any of my mates, but I’ve never been much good at thinking around corners.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie remembered trying to tell Roland that jokes were riddles designed to help you build up that often overlooked talent, but Roland had ignored him. The way, Eddie supposed, a color-blind person would ignore someone’s description of a rainbow.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie thought Blaine also might have trouble thinking around comers.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe realized he could hear Blaine asking the others if they had any more riddles\u2014even asking Oy. He could hear the mockery in Blaine’s voice, could hear it very well. Sure he could. Because he was coming back. Back from that fabled zone. Back to see if he could talk the devil into setting himself on fire. No gun would help this time, but maybe that was all right. Maybe that was all right because\u2014<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nBecause I shoot with my mind. My mind. God help me to shoot this overblown calculator with my mind. Help me shoot it from around the corner.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Blaine?” he said, and then, when the computer had acknowledged him: “I have a couple of riddles.” As he spoke, he discovered a wonderful thing: he was struggling to hold back laughter.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n4<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“SPEAK, EDDIE OF NEW YORK.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nNo time to tell the others to be on their guard, that anything might happen, and from the look of them, no need, either. Eddie forgot about them and turned his mil attention to Blaine.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“What has four wheels and flies?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“THE TOWN GARBAGE WAGON, AS I HAVE ALREADY SAID.” Disapproval\u2014and dislike? Yeah, probably\u2014all but oozing out of that voice. “ARE YOU SO STUPID OR INATTENTIVE THAT YOU DO NOT REMEMBER? IT WAS THE FIRST RIDDLE YOU ASKED ME.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nYes,<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Eddie thought. And what we all missed\u2014because we were fixated on stumping you with some brain-buster out of Roland’s past or Jake’s book\u2014is that the contest almost ended right there.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“You didn’t like that one, did you, Blaine?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I FOUND IT EXCEEDINGLY STUPID,” Blaine agreed. “PERHAPS THAT’S WHY YOU ASKED IT AGAIN. LIKE CALLS TO LIKE, EDDIE OF NEW YORK, IS IT NOT SO?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nA smile lit Eddie’s face; he shook his finger at the route-map. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Or, as we used to say back in the neighborhood, ‘You can rank me to the dogs and back, but I’ll never lose the hard-on I use to fuck your mother.’ “<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Hurry up!” Jake whispered at him. “If you can do something, do<\/i> it!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“It doesn’t like silly questions,” Eddie said. “It doesn’t like silly games. And we knew<\/i> that. We knew it from Charlie the Choo-Choo.<\/i> How stupid can you get? Hell, that<\/i> was the book with the answers, not Riddle-De-Dum,<\/i> but we never saw it.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie searched for the other riddle that had been in Jake’s Final Essay, found it, posed it.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Blaine: when is a door not a door?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nOnce again, for the first time since Susannah had asked Blaine what had four legs and flies, there came a peculiar clicking sound, like a man popping his tongue on the roof of his mouth. The pause was briefer than the one which had followed Susannah’s opening riddle, but it was still there\u2014Eddie heard it. “WHEN IT’S A JAR, OF COURSE” Blaine said. He sounded dour, unhappy. “THIRTEEN MINUTES AND FIVE SECONDS REMAIN BEFORE TERMINATION, EDDIE OF NEW YORK-WOULD YOU DIE WITH SUCH STUPID RIDDLES IN YOUR MOUTH?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie sat bolt upright, staring at the route-map, and although he could feel warm trickles of sweat running down his back, that smile on his face widened.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Quit your whining, pal. If you want the privilege of smearing us all over the landscape, you’ll just have to put up with a few riddles that aren’t quite up to your standards of logic.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“YOU MUST NOT SPEAK TO ME IN SUCH A MANNER.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Or what? You’ll kill me? Don’t make me laugh. Just play. You agreed to the game; now play it.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThin pink light flashed briefly out of the route-map. “You’re making him angry,” Little Blaine mourned. “Oh, you’re making him so<\/i> angry.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Get lost, squirt,” Eddie said, not unkindly, and when the pink glow receded, once again revealing a flashing green dot that was almost on top of Topeka, Eddie said: “Answer this one, Blaine: the big moron and the little moron were standing on the bridge over the River Send. The big moron fell off. How come the little moron didn’t fall off, too?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“THAT IS UNWORTHY OF OUR CONTEST. I WILL NOT ANSWER.” On the last word Blaine’s voice actually dropped into a lower register, making him sound like a fourteen-year-old coping with a change of voice.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland’s eyes were not just gleaming now but blazing. “What do you say, Blaine? I would understand you well. Are you saying that you cry off?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“NO! OF COURSE NOT! BUT\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Then answer, if you can. Answer the riddle.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“IT’S NOT A<\/i> RIDDLE!” Blaine almost bleated. “IT’S A JOKE, SOMETHING FOR STUPID CHILDREN TO CACKLE OVER IN THE PLAY YARD!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Answer now or I declare the contest over and our ka-tet<\/i> the winner,” Roland said. He spoke in the dryly confident tone of authority Eddie had first heard in the town of River Crossing. “You must answer, for it is stupidity you complain of, not transgression of the rules, which we agreed upon mutually.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAnother of those clicking sounds, but this time it was much louder\u2014 so loud, in fact, that Eddie winced. Oy flattened his ears against his skull. It was followed by the longest pause yet; three seconds, at least. Then:<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“THE LITTLE MORON DID NOT FALL OFF BECAUSE HE WAS A LITTLE MORE ON.” Blaine sounded sulky. “MORE PHONETIC COINCIDENCE. TO EVEN ANSWER SUCH AN UNWORTHY RIDDLE MAKES ME FEEL SOILED.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie held up his right hand. He rubbed the thumb and forefinger together.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“WHAT DOES THAT SIGNIFY, FOOLISH CREATURE?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“It’s the world’s smallest violin, playing ‘My Heart Pumps Purple Piss for You,’ ” Eddie said. Jake fell into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. “But never mind the cheap New York humor; back to the contest. Why do police lieutenants wear belts?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe lights in the Barony Coach began to flicker. An odd thing was happening to the walls, as well; they began to fade in and out of true, lunging toward transparency, perhaps, and then opaquing again. Seeing this phenomenon even out of the comer of his eye made Eddie feel a bit whoopsy.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Blaine? Answer.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Answer,” Roland agreed. “Answer, or I declare the contest at an end and hold you to your promise.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSomething touched Eddie’s elbow. He looked down and saw Susannah’s small and shapely hand. He took it, squeezed it, smiled at her. He hoped the smile was more confident than the man making it felt. They were going to win the contest\u2014he was almost sure of that\u2014but he had no idea what Blaine would do if and when they did.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“TO … TO HOLD UP THEIR PANTS?” Blame’s voice firmed, and repeated the question as a statement. “TO HOLD UP THEIR PANTS. A RIDDLE BASED UPON THE EXAGGERATED SIMPLICITY OF\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Right. Good one, Blaine, but never mind trying to kill time\u2014it won’t work. Next\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I INSIST YOU STOP ASKING THESE SILLY\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Then stop the mono,” Eddie said. “If you’re that upset, stop right here, and I will.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“NO.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Okay, then, on we go. What’s Irish and stays out in back of the house, even in the rain?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThere was another of those clicks, this time so loud it felt like having a blunt spike driven against his eardrum. A pause of five seconds. Now the flashing green dot on the route-map was so close to Topeka that it lit the word like neon each time it flashed. Then: “PADDY O’FURNITURE.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe correct answer to a joke-riddle Eddie had first heard in the alley behind Dahlie’s, or at some similar gathering-point, but Blaine had apparently paid a price for forcing his mind into a channel that could conceive it: the Barony Coach lights were flashing more wildly than ever, and Eddie could hear a low humming from inside the walls\u2014the kind of sound your stereo amp made just before its shit blew up.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPink light stuttered from the route-map. “Stop!” Little Blaine cried, his voice so wavery it sounded like the voice of a character from an old Warner Bros. cartoon. “Stop it, you’re killing him!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nWhat do you think he’s trying to do to us, squirt?<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Eddie thought.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe considered shooting Blaine one Jake had told while they’d been sitting around the campfire that night\u2014What’s green, weighs a hundred tons, and lives at the bottom of the ocean? Moby Snot!\u2014and then didn’t. He wanted to stick further inside the bounds of logic than that one allowed . . . and he could do it. He didn’t think he would have to get much more surreal than the level of, say, a third-grader with a fair-to-good collection of Garbage Pail Kids cards in order to fuck Blaine up royally … and permanently. Because no matter how many emotions his fancy dipolar circuits had allowed him to mimic, he<\/i> was still an it\u2014<\/i>a computer. Even following Eddie this far into riddledom’s Twilight Zone had caused Blaine’s sanity to totter.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Why do people go to bed, Blaine?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“BECAUSE … BECAUSE … GODS DAMN YOU, BECAUSE …”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nA low squalling started up from beneath them, and suddenly the Barony Coach swayed violently from right to left. Susannah screamed. Jake was thrown into her lap. The gunslinger grabbed them both.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“BECAUSE THE BED WON’T COME TO THEM, GODS DAMN YOU! NINE MINUTES AND FIFTY SECONDS!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Give up, Blaine,” Eddie said. “Stop before I have to blow your mind completely. If you don’t quit, it’s going to happen. We both know it.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“NO!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I got a million of these puppies. Been hearing them my whole life.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThey stick to my mind the way flies stick to flypaper. Hey, with some people it’s recipes. So what do you say? Want to give?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“NO! NINE MINUTES AND THIRTY SECONDS!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Okay, Blaine. You asked for it. Here comes the cruncher. Why did the dead baby cross the road?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe mono took another of those gigantic lurches; Eddie didn’t understand how it could still stay on its track after that, but somehow it did. The screaming from beneath them grew louder; the walls, floor, and ceiling of the car began to cycle madly between opacity and transparency. At one moment they were enclosed, at the next they were rushing over a gray daylight landscape that stretched flat and featureless to a horizon which ran across the world in a straight line.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe voice which came from the speakers was now that of a panicky child: “I KNOW IT, JUST A MOMENT, I KNOW IT, RETRIEVAL IN PROGRESS, ALL LOGIC CIRCUITS IN USE\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Answer,” Roland said.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I NEED MORE TIME! YOU MUST GIVE IT TO ME!” Now there was a kind of cracked triumph in that splintered voice. “NO TEMPORAL LIMITS FOR ANSWERING WERE SET, ROLAND OF GILEAD, HATEFUL GUNSLINGER OUT OF A PAST THAT SHOULD HAVE STAYED DEAD!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“No,” Roland agreed, “no time limits were set, you are quite right. But you may not kill us with a riddle still unanswered, Blaine, and Topeka draws nigh. Answer!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Barony Coach cycled into invisibility again, and Eddie saw what appeared to be a tall and rusty grain elevator go flashing past; it was in his view barely long enough for him to identify it. Now he fully appreciated the maniacal speed at which they were travelling; perhaps three hundred miles faster than a commercial jet at cruising speed.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Let him alone!” moaned the voice of Little Blaine. “You’re killing him, I say! Killing him!”<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Isn’t that ’bout what he wanted?” Susannah asked in the voice of Detta Walker. “To die? That’s what he said. We don’t mind, either. You not so bad, Little Blaine, but even a world as fucked up as this one has to be better with your big brother gone. It’s just him takin us with him we been objectin to all this time.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Last chance,” Roland said. “Answer or give up the goose, Blaine.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I … I … YOU . . . SIXTEEN LOG THIRTY-THREE . . . ALL COSINE SUBSCRIPTS … ANTI … ANTI … IN ALL THESE YEARS . . . BEAM . . . FLOOD . . . PYTHAGOREAN . . . CARTESIAN LOGIC . . . CAN I … DARE I … A PEACH . . . EAT A PEACH … ALLMAN BROTHERS . . . PATRICIA . . . CROCODILE AND WHIPLASH SMILE … CLOCK OF DIALS . . . TICK-TOCK, ELEVEN O’CLOCK, THE MAN’S IN THE MOON AND HE’S READY TO ROCK . . . INCESSAMENT . . . INCESSAMENT, MON CHER …<\/i> OH MY HEAD . . . BLAINE . . . BLAINE DARES . . . BLAINE WILL ANSWER … I …”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBlaine, now screaming in the voice of an infant, lapsed into some other language and began to sing. Eddie thought it was French. He knew none of the words, but when the drums kicked in, he knew the song perfectly well: “Velcro Fly” by Z.Z. Top.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe glass over the route-map blew out. A moment later, the route-map itself exploded from its socket, revealing twinkling lights and a maze of circuit-boards behind it. The lights pulsed in time to the drums. Suddenly blue fire flashed out, sizzling the surface around the hole in the wall where the map had been, scorching it black. From deeper within that wall, toward Blaine’s blunt, bullet-shaped snout, came a thick grinding noise.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“It crossed the road because it was stapled to the chicken, you dopey fuck!” Eddie yelled. He got to his feet and started to walk toward the smoking hole where the route-map had been. Susannah grabbed at the back of his shirt, but Eddie barely felt it. Barely knew where he was, in fact. The battle-fire had dropped over him, burning him everywhere with its righteous heat, sizzling his sight, frying his synapses and roasting his heart in its holy glow. He had Blaine in his sights, and although the thing behind the voice was already mortally wounded, he was unable to stop squeezing the trigger: I shoot with my mind.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“What’s the difference between a truckload of bowling balls and a truckload of dead woodchucks?” Eddie raved. “You can’t unload a truck-load of bowling balls with a pitchfork!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nA terrible shriek of mingled anger and agony issued from the hole where the route-map had been. It was followed by a gust of blue fire, as if somewhere forward of Barony Coach an electric dragon had exhaled violently. Jake called a warning, but Eddie didn’t need it; his reflexes had been replaced with razor-blades. He ducked, and the burst of electricity went over his right shoulder, making the hair on that side of his neck stand up. He drew the gun he wore\u2014a heavy .45 with a worn sandalwood grip, one of two revolvers which Roland had brought out of Mid-World’s ruin. He kept walking as he bore down on the front of the coach .. . and of course he kept talking. As Roland had said, Eddie would die<\/i> talking. As his old friend Cuthbert had done. Eddie could think of many worse ways to go, and only one better.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Say, Blaine, you ugly, sadistic fuck! Since we’re talking riddles, what is the greatest riddle of the Orient? Many men smoke but Fu Manchu! Get it? No? So solly, Cholly! How about this one? Why’d the woman name her son Seven and a Half? Because she drew his name out of a hat!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe had reached the pulsing square. Now he lifted Roland’s gun and the Barony Coach suddenly filled with its thunder. He put all six rounds into the hole, fanning the hammer with the flat of his hand in the way Roland had shown them, knowing only that this was right, this was proper . . . this was ka,<\/i> goddammit, fucking ka,<\/i> it was the way you ended things if you were a gunslinger. He was one of Roland’s tribe, all right, his soul was probably damned to the deepest pit of hell, and he wouldn’t have changed it for all the heroin in Asia.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I HATE YOU!” Blaine cried in his childish voice. The splinters were gone from it now; it was growing soft, mushy. “I HATE YOU FOREVER!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“It’s not dying that bothers you, is it?” Eddie asked. The lights in the hole where the route-map had been were fading. More blue fire flashed, but he hardly had to pull his head back to avoid it; the flame was small and weak. Soon Blaine would be as dead as all the Pubes and Grays in Lud. “It’s losing<\/i> that bothers you.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“HATE . . . FORRRRrmr . . .”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe word degenerated into a hum. The hum became a kind of stuttery thudding sound. Then it was gone.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie looked around. Roland was there, holding Susannah with one arm curved around her butt, as one might hold a child. Her thighs clasped his waist. Jake stood on the gunslinger’s other side, with Oy at his heel.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nDrifting out of the hole where the route-map had been was a peculiar charred smell, somehow not unpleasant. To Eddie it smelled like burning leaves in October. Otherwise, the hole was as dead and dark as a corpse’s eye. All the lights in there had gone out.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nYour goose is cooked, Blaine,<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Eddie thought, and your turkey’s baked. Happy fuckin Thanksgiving.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n5<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe shrieking from beneath the mono stopped. There was one final, grinding thud from up front, and then those sounds ceased, too. Roland felt his legs and hips sway gently forward and put out his free hand to steady himself. His body knew what had happened before his head did:<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBlaine’s engines had quit. They were now simply gliding forward along the track. But\u2014<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Back,” he said. “All the way. We’re coasting. If we’re close enough to Blaine’s termination point, we may still crash.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe led them past the puddled remains of Blaine’s welcoming ice sculpture and to the back of the coach. “And stay away from that thing,” he said, pointing at the instrument which looked like a cross between a piano and a harpsichord. It stood on a small platform. “It may shift. Gods, I wish we could see where we are! Lie down. Wrap your arms over your heads.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThey did as he told them. Roland did the same. He lay there with his chin pressing into the nap of the royal blue carpet, eyes shut, thinking about what had just happened.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I cry your pardon, Eddie,” he said. “How the wheel of ka<\/i> turns! Once I had to ask the same of my friend Cuthbert . . . and for the same reason. There’s a kind of blindness in me. An arrogant<\/i> blindness.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I hardly think there’s any need of pardon-crying,” Eddie said. He sounded uncomfortable.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“There is. I held your jokes in contempt. Now they have saved our lives. I cry your pardon. I have forgotten the face of my father.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“You don’t need any pardon and you didn’t forget anybody’s face,” Eddie said. “You can’t help your nature, Roland.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe gunslinger considered this carefully, and discovered something which was wonderful and awful at the same time: that idea had never occurred to him. Not once in his whole life. That he was a captive of ka\u2014 <\/i>this he had known since earliest childhood. But his nature<\/i> … his very nature. ..<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Thank you, Eddie. I think\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBefore Roland could say what he thought, Blaine the Mono crashed to a final bitter halt. All four of them were thrown violently up Barony Coach’s central aisle, Oy in Jake’s arms and barking. The cabin’s front wall buckled and Roland struck it shoulder-first. Even with the padding (the wall was carpeted and, from the feel, undercoated with some resilient stuff), the blow was hard enough to numb him. The chandelier swung forward and tore loose from the ceiling, pelting them with glass pendants. Jake rolled aside, vacating its landing-zone just in time. The harpsichord-piano flew off its podium, struck one of the sofas, and overturned, coming to rest with a discordant brrrannnggg<\/i> sound. The mono tilted to the right and the gunslinger braced himself, meaning to cover both Jake and Susannah with his own body if it overturned completely. Then it settled back, the floor still a little canted, but at rest.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe trip was over.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe gunslinger raised himself up. His shoulder was still numb, but the arm below it supported him, and that was a good sign. On his left, Jake was sitting up and picking glass beads out of his lap with a dazed expression. On his right, Susannah was dabbing a cut under Eddie’s left eye. “All right,” Roland said. “Who’s hur\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThere was an explosion from above them, a hollow Pow!<\/i> that reminded Roland of the big-bangers Cuthbert and Alain had sometimes lit and tossed down drains, or into the privies behind the scullery for a prank. And once Cuthbert had shot some big-bangers with his sling. That had been no prank, no childish folly. That had been\u2014<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah uttered a short cry\u2014more of surprise than fear, the gunslinger thought\u2014and then hazy daylight was shining down on his face. It felt good. The taste of the air coming in through the blown emergency exit was even better\u2014sweet with the smell of rain and damp earth.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThere was a bony rattle, and a ladder\u2014it appeared to be equipped with rungs made of twisted steel wire\u2014dropped out of a slot up there.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“First they throw the chandelier at you, then they show you the door,” Eddie said. He struggled to his feet, then got Susannah up. “Okay, I know when I’m not wanted. Let’s make like bees and buzz off.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Sounds good to me.” She reached toward the cut on Eddie’s face again. Eddie took her fingers, kissed them, and told her to stop poking the moichandise.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Jake?” the gunslinger asked. “Okay?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes,” Jake said. “What about you, Oy?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Oy!”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Guess he is,” Jake said. He raised his wounded hand and looked at it ruefully.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Hurting again, is it?” the gunslinger asked.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yeah. Whatever Blaine did to it is wearing off. I don’t care, though\u2014I ‘m just glad to still be alive.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes. Life is good. So is astin.<\/i> There’s some of it left.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Aspirin, you mean.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland nodded. A pill of magical properties, but one of the words from Jake’s world he would never be able to say correctly.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Nine out of ten doctors recommend Anacin, honey,” Susannah said, and when Jake only looked at her quizzically: “Guess they don’t use that one anymore in your when, huh? Doesn’t matter. We’re here, sugarpie, right here and just fine, and that’s what matters.” She pulled Jake into her arms and gave him a kiss between the eyes, on the nose, and then flush on the mouth. Jake laughed and blushed bright red. “That’s what matters, and right now that’s the only thing in the world that does.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n6<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“First aid can wait,” Eddie said. He put his arm around Jake’s shoulders and led the boy to the ladder. “Can you use that hand to climb with?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes. But I can’t bring Oy. Roland, will you?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes.” Roland picked Oy up and tucked him into his shirt as he had while descending a shaft under the city in pursuit of Jake and Gasher. Oy peeked out at Jake with his bright, gold-ringed eyes. “Up you go.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake climbed. Roland followed close enough so that Oy could sniff the kid’s heels by stretching out his long neck.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Suze?” Eddie asked. “Need a boost?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“And get your nasty hands all over my well-turned fanny? Not likely, white boy!” Then she dropped him a wink and began to climb, pulling herself up easily with her muscular arms and balancing with the stumps of her legs. She went fast, but not too fast for Eddie; he reached up and gave her a soft pinch where the pinching was good. “Oh, my purity!” Susannah cried, laughing and rolling her eyes. Then she was gone. Only Eddie was left, standing by the foot of the ladder and looking around at the luxury coach which he had believed might well be their ka-tet’s<\/i> coffin.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nYou did it, kiddo.<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Henry said. Made him set himself on fire. I knew you could, fuckin-A. Remember when I said that to those scag-bags behind Dahlie’s? Jimmie Polio and those guys? And how they laughed? But you did it. Sent him home with a fuckin rupture.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nWell, it worked, anyway,<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Eddie thought, and touched the butt of Roland’s gun without even being aware of it. Well enough for us to walk away one more time.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe climbed two rungs, then looked back down. The Barony Coach already felt dead. Long<\/i> dead, in fact, just another artifact of a world that had moved on.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n“Adios,<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Blaine,” Eddie said. “So long, partner.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd he followed his friends out through the emergency exit in the roof.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
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\n
\nCHAPTER\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>IV<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\ntopeka<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n1<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake stood on the slightly tilted roof of Blame the Mono, looking southeast along the Path of the Beam. The wind riffled his hair (now quite long and decidedly un-Piperish) back from his temples and forehead in waves. His eyes were wide with surprise.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe didn’t know what he had expected to see\u2014a smaller and more provincial version of Lud, perhaps\u2014but what he had not<\/i> expected was what loomed above the trees of a nearby park. It was a green roadsign (against the dull gray autumn sky, it almost screamed with color) with a blue shield mounted on it:<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland joined him, lifted Oy gently out of his shirt, and put him down. The humbler sniffed the pink surface of Blaine’s roof, then looked toward the front of the mono. Here the train’s smooth bullet shape was broken by crumpled metal which had peeled back in jagged wings. Two dark slashes\u2014they began at the mono’s tip and extended to a point about ten yards from where Jake and Roland stood\u2014gored the roof in parallel lines. At the end of each was a wide, flat metal pole painted in stripes of yellow and black. These seemed to jut from the top of the mono at a point just forward of the Barony Coach. To Jake they looked a little like football goalposts.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Those are the piers he talked about hitting,” Susannah murmured.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland nodded.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“We got off lucky, big boy, you know it? If this thing had been going much faster …”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n“Ka, “<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n Eddie said from behind them. He sounded as if he might be smiling.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland nodded. “Just so. Ka.”<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake dismissed the transteel goalposts and turned back toward the sign. He was half convinced it would be gone, or that it would say something else (mid-world toll road, <\/span>perhaps, or beware of demons), <\/span>but it was still there and still said the same thing.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Eddie? Susannah? Do you see that?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThey looked along his pointing finger. For a moment\u2014one long enough for Jake to fear he was having a hallucination\u2014neither of them said anything. Then, softly, Eddie said: “Holy shit. Are we back home? If we are, where are all the people? And if something like Blaine has been stopping off in Topeka\u2014our<\/i> Topeka, Topeka, Kansas\u2014how come I haven’t seen anything about it on Sixty Minutes?”<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“What’s Sixty Minutes’?”<\/i> Susannah asked. She was shading her eyes, looking southeast toward the sign.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“TV show,” Eddie said. “You missed it by five or ten years. Old white guys in ties. Doesn’t matter. That sign\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“It’s Kansas, all right,” Susannah said. “Our<\/i> Kansas. I guess.” She had spotted another sign, just visible over the trees. Now she pointed until Jake, Eddie, and Roland had all seen it:<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“There a Kansas in your world, Roland?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“No,” Roland replied, looking at the signs, “we’re far beyond the boundaries of the world I knew. I was far beyond most of the world I knew long before I met you three. This place . ..”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe stopped and cocked his head to one side, as if he was listening to some sound almost too distant to hear. And the expression on his face … Jake didn’t like it much.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Say, kiddies!” Eddie said brightly. “Today we’re studying Wacky Geography in Mid-World. You see, boys and girls, in Mid-World you start in New York, travel southeast to Kansas, and then continue along the Path of the Beam until you come to the Dark Tower . .. which happens to be smack in the middle of everything. First, fight the giant lobsters! Next, ride the psychotic train! And then, after a visit to our snackbar for a popkin or two\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Do you hear anything?” Roland broke in. “Any of you?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake listened. He heard the wind combing through the trees of the nearby park\u2014their leaves had just begun to turn\u2014and he heard the click of Oy’s toenails as he strolled back toward them along the roof of the Barony Coach. Then Oy stopped, so even that sound\u2014<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nA hand seized him by the arm, making him jump. It was Susannah. Her head was tilted, her eyes wide. Eddie was also listening. Oy, too; his ears were up and he was whining far down in his throat.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake felt his arms ripple with gooseflesh. At the same time he felt his mouth tighten in a grimace. The sound, though very faint, was the auditory version of biting a lemon. And he’d heard something like it before. Back when he was only five or six, there had been a crazy guy in Central Park who thought he was a musician . . . well, there were lots<\/i> of crazy guys in Central Park who thought they were musicians, but this was the only one Jake had ever seen who played a workshop tool. The guy had had a sign beside his upturned hat which read world’s greatest <\/span><\/span>
\nSAW-PLAYER! SOUNDS HAWAIIAN DOESN’T IT! PLEASE CONTRIBUTE TO MY WELFARE!<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nGreta Shaw had been with Jake the first time he encountered the saw-player, and Jake remembered how she had hurried past the guy. Just sitting there like a cellist in a symphony orchestra he’d been, only with a rust-speckled handsaw spread across his open legs; Jake remembered the expression of comic horror on Mrs. Shaw’s face, and the quiver of her pressed-together lips, as if\u2014yes, as if she’d just bitten into a lemon.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThis sound wasn’t exactly<\/i> like the one<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n(SOUNDS HAWAIIAN DOESN’T IT)<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nthe guy in the park had made by vibrating the blade of his saw, but it was close: a wavery, trembly, metallic sound that made you feel like your sinuses were filling up and your eyes would shortly begin to gush water. Was it coming from ahead of them? Jake couldn’t tell. It seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere; at the same time, it was so low he might have been tempted to believe the whole thing was just his imagination, if the others hadn’t\u2014<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Watch out!” Eddie cried. “Help me, you guys! I think he’s going to faint!”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake wheeled toward the gunslinger and saw that his face had gone as white as cottage cheese above the dusty no-color of his shirt. His eyes were wide and blank. One corner of his mouth twitched spastically, as if an invisible fishhook were buried there.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Jonas and Reynolds and Depape,” he said. “The Big Coffin Hunters. And her.<\/i> The Coos. They were the ones. They were the ones who\u2014”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nStanding on the roof of the mono in his dusty, broken boots, Roland tottered. On his face was the greatest look of misery Jake had ever seen.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Oh Susan,” he said. “Oh, my dear.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n2<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThey caught him, they formed a protective ring around him, and the gunslinger felt hot with guilt and self-loathing. What had he done to deserve such enthusiastic protectors? What, besides tear them out of their known and ordinary lives as ruthlessly as a man might tear weeds out of his garden?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe tried to tell them he was all right, they could stand back, he was fine, but no words would come out; that terrible wavery sound had transported him back to the box canyon west of Hambry all those years ago. Depape and Reynolds and old limping Jonas. Yet most of all it was the woman from the hill he hated, and from black depths of feeling only a very young man can reach. Ah, but how could he have done aught else but hate them? His heart had been broken. And now, all these years later, it seemed to him that the most horrible fact of human existence was that broken hearts mended.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nMy first thought was, he lied in every word\/That hoary cripple, with malicious eye<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n …<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nWhat words? Whose poem?<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe didn’t know, but he knew that women could lie, too; women who hopped and grinned and saw too much from the comers of their rheumy old eyes. It didn’t matter who had written the lines of poesy; the words were true words, and that was all that mattered. Neither Eldred Jonas nor the crone on the hill had been of Marten’s stature\u2014nor even of Walter’s\u2014when it came to evil, but they had been evil enough.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThen, after… in the box canyon west of town . . . that sound . . . that, and the screams of wounded men and horses . . . for once in his life, even the normally voluble Cuthbert had been struck silent.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nBut all that had been long ago, in another when;<\/i> in the here and now, the warbling sound was either gone or had temporarily fallen below the threshold of audibility. They would hear it again, though. He knew that as well as he knew the fact that he walked a road leading to damnation.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe looked up at the others and managed a smile. The trembling at the comer of his mouth had quit, and that was something.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I’m all right,” he said. “But hear me well: this is very close to where Mid-World ends, very close to where End-World begins. The first great course of our quest is finished. We have done well; we have remembered the faces of our fathers; we have stood together and been true to one another. But now we have come to a thinny. We must be very careful.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“A thinny?” Jake asked, looking around nervously.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Places where the fabric of existence is almost entirely worn away. There are more since the force of the Dark Tower began to fail. Do you remember what we saw below us when we left Lud?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThey nodded solemnly, remembering ground which had fused to black glass, ancient pipes which gleamed with turquoise witchlight, misshapen bird-freaks with wings like great leathern sails. Roland suddenly could not bear to have them grouped around him as they were, looking down on him as folk might look down on a rowdy who had fallen in a barroom brawl.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe lifted his hands to his friends\u2014his new friends. Eddie took them and helped him to his feet. The gunslinger fixed his enormous will on not swaying and stood steady.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Who was Susan?” Susannah asked. The crease down the center of her forehead suggested she was troubled, and probably by more than a coincidental similarity of names.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland looked at her, then at Eddie, then at Jake, who had dropped to one knee so he could scratch behind Oy’s ears.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I’ll tell you,” he said, “but this isn’t the place or time.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“You keep sayin that,” Susannah said. “You wouldn’t just be putting us off again, would you?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland shook his head. “You shall hear my tale\u2014this part of it, at least\u2014but not on top of this metal carcass.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yeah,” Jake said. “Being up here is like playing on a dead dinosaur or something. I keep thinking Blaine’s going to come back to life and start, I don’t know, screwing around with our heads again.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“That sound is gone,” Eddie said. “The thing that sounded like a wah-wah pedal.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“It reminded me of this old guy I used to see in Central Park,”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nJake said.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“The man with the saw?” Susannah asked. Jake looked up at her, his eyes round with surprise, and she nodded. “Only he wasn’t old when I used to see him. It’s not just the geography that’s wacky here. Time’s kind of funny, too.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a brief squeeze. “Amen to that.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah turned to Roland. <\/b>Her look was not accusing, but there was a level and open measurement in her eyes that the gunslinger could not help but admire. “I’m holding you to your promise, Roland. I want to know about this girl that got my name.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“You shall hear,” Roland repeated. “For now, though, let’s get off this monster’s back.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n3<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nThat was easier said than done. Blaine had come to rest slightly askew in an outdoor version of the Cradle of Lud (a littered trail of torn pink metal lay along one side of this, marking the end of Blaine’s last journey), and it was easily twenty-five feet from the roof of the Barony Coach to the cement. If there was a descent-ladder, like the one which had popped conveniently through the emergency hatch, it had jammed when they crunched to a halt.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland unslung his purse, rummaged, and removed the deerskin harness they used for carrying Susannah when the going got too rough for her wheelchair. The chair, at least, would not worry them anymore, the gunslinger reflected; they had left it behind in their mad scramble to board Blaine.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“What you want that for?” Susannah asked truculently. She always sounded truculent when the harness came into view. I hate them honky mahfahs down in Miss’ippi worse’n I hate that harness,<\/i> she had once told Eddie in the voice of Detta Walker, but sometimes it be a close thing, sugar.<\/i><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Soft, Susannah Dean, soft,” the gunslinger said, smiling a little. He unbraided the network of straps which made up the harness, set the seat-piece aside, then pigtailed the straps back together. He wedded this to his last good hank of rope with an old-fashioned sheetbend knot. As he worked, he listened for the warbling of the thinny … as the four<\/b> of them had listened for the god-drums; as he and Eddie had listened for the lobstrosities to begin asking their lawyerly questions (“Dad-a-cham? Did-a-chee? Dum-a-chum?”) as they came tumbling out of the waves each night.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nKa is a wheel,<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n he thought. Or, as Eddie liked to say, whatever went around came around.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nWhen the rope was finished, he fashioned a loop at the bottom of the braided section. Jake stepped a foot into it with perfect confidence, gripped the rope with one hand, and settled Oy into the crook of his other arm. Oy looked around nervously, whined, stretched his neck, licked Jake’s face.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“You’re not afraid, are you?” Jake asked the humbler.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n” ‘Fraid,” Oy agreed, but he was quiet enough as Roland and Eddie lowered Jake down the side of the Barony Coach. The rope wasn’t quite long enough to take him all the way down, but Jake had no trouble twisting his foot free and dropping the last four feet. He set Oy down. The bumbler trotted off, sniffing, and lifted his leg against the side of the terminal building. This was nowhere near as grand as the Cradle of Lud, but it had an old-fashioned look that Roland liked\u2014white boards, overhanging eaves, high, narrow windows, what looked like slate shingles. It was a Western<\/i> look. Written in gold gilt on a sign which stretched above the terminal’s line of doors was this message:<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nATCHISON, TOPEKA, AND SANTA FE<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nTowns, Roland supposed, and that last one sounded familiar to him; had there not been a Santa Fe in the Barony of Mejis? But that led back toward Susan, lovely Susan at the window with her hair unbraided and all down her back, the smell of her like jasmine and rose and honeysuckle and old sweet hay, smells of which the oracle in the mountains had been able to make only the palest mimicry. Susan lying back and looking solemnly up at him, then smiling and putting her hands behind her head so that her breasts rose, as if aching for his hands.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nIf you love me, Roland, then love me . . . bird and bear and hare and fish…<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“. . . next?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe looked around at Eddie, having to use all of his will to pull himself back from Susan Delgado’s when. There were thinnies here in Topeka, all right, and of many sorts. “My mind was wandering, Eddie. Cry your pardon.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Susannah next? That’s what I asked.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nRoland shook his head. “You next, then Susannah. I’ll go last.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Will you be okay? With your hand and all?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I’ll be fine.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nEddie nodded and stuck his foot into the loop. When Eddie had first come into Mid-World, Roland could have lowered him easily by himself, two fingers short the full complement or no, but Eddie had been without his drug for months now, and had put on ten or fifteen pounds of muscle. Roland accepted Susannah’s help gladly enough, and together they lowered him down.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Now you, lady,” Roland said, and smiled at her. It felt more natural to smile these days.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Yes.” But for the nonce she only stood there, biting her lower lip.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“What is it?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHer hand went to her stomach and rubbed there, as if it ached or griped her. He thought she would speak, but she shook her head and said, “Nothing.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I don’t believe that. Why do you rub your belly? Are you hurt? Were you hurt when we stopped?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nShe took her hand off her tunic as if the flesh just south of her navel had grown hot. “No. I’m fine.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Are you?”<\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nSusannah seemed to think this over very carefully. “We’ll talk,” she said at last. “We’ll palaver,<\/i> if you like that better. But you were right before, Roland\u2014this isn’t the place or time.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“All four of us, or just you and me and Eddie?”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Just you and me, Roland,” she said, and poked the stump of her leg through the loop. “Just one hen and one rooster, at least to start with. Now lower away, if you please.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe did, frowning down at her, hoping with all his heart that his first idea\u2014the one that had come to mind as soon as he saw that restlessly rubbing hand\u2014was wrong. Because she had been in the speaking ring, and the demon that denned there had had its way with her while Jake was trying to cross between the worlds. Sometimes\u2014often\u2014<\/i>demonic contact changed things.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nNever for the better, in Roland’s experience.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nHe pulled his rope back up after Eddie had caught Susannah around the waist and helped her to the platform. The gunslinger walked forward to one of the piers which had torn through the train’s bullet snout, fashioning the rope’s end into a shake-loop as he went. He tossed this over the pier, snubbed it (being careful not to twitch the rope to the left), and then lowered himself to the platform himself, bent at the waist and leaving boot-tracks on Blaine’s pink side.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Too bad to lose the rope and harness,” Eddie remarked when Roland was beside them.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“I ain’t sorry about that harness,” Susannah said. “I’d rather crawl along the pavement until I got chewin-gum all the way up my arms to the elbows.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“We haven’t lost anything,” Roland said. He snugged his hand into the rawhide foot-loop and snapped it hard to the left. The rope slithered down from the pier, Roland gathering it in almost as fast as it came down.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Neat trick!” Jake said.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Eat! Rick!” Oy agreed.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Cort?” Eddie asked.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“Cort,” Roland agreed, smiling.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n“The drill instructor from hell,” Eddie said. “Better you than me, Roland. Better you than me.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Read the full book by downloading it below.<\/p>\n

DOWNLOAD EPUB<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book Preview \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 THE DARK TOWER IV STEPHEN KING wizard\u00a0 and\u00a0\u00a0 glass ILLUSTRATIONS \u00a0 BY DAVE\u00a0 MCKEAN \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 A PLUME BOOK \u00a0 PLUME Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[413],"class_list":["post-6073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-stephen-king"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}