The Dark Tower

“In . . .” He pulled in another of those great, wretched, rasping breaths. His eyes were as brilliant as gemstones. “In the clearing.” Another breath. Hand holding her hair. Lamplight casting them both in its mystic yellow circle. “The one at the end of the path.”

“Yes, dear.” Her voice was calm now, but a tear fell on Eddie’s cheek and ran slowly down to the line of jaw. “I hear you very well. Wait for me and I’ll find you and we’ll go together. I’ll be walking then, on my own legs.”

Eddie smiled at her, then turned his eyes to Jake.

“Jake . . . to me.”

No, Jake thought, panicked, no, I can’t, I can’t.

But he was already leaning close, into that smell of the end. He could see the fine line of grit just below Eddie’s hairline turning to paste as more tiny droplets of sweat sprang up.

“Wait for me, too,” Jake said through numb lips. “Okay, Eddie? We’ll all go on together. We’ll be katet, just like we were.” He tried to smile and couldn’t. His heart hurt too much for smiling. He wondered if it might not explode in his chest, the way stones sometimes exploded in a hot fire. He had learned that little fact from his friend Benny Slightman. Benny’s death had been bad, but this was a thousand times worse. A million.

Eddie was shaking his head. “Not . . . so fast, buddy.” He drew in another breath and then grimaced, as if the air had grown quills only he could feel. He whispered then—not from weakness, Jake thought later, but because this was just between them. “Watch . . . for Mordred. Watch . . . Dandelo.”

“Dandelion? Eddie, I don’t—”

“Dandelo.” Eyes widening. Enormous effort. “Protect . . . your . . . dinh . . . from Mordred. From Dandelo. You . . . Oy. Your job.” His eyes cut toward Roland, then back to Jake. “Shhh.” Then: “Protect . . .”

“I . . . I will. We will.”

Eddie nodded a little, then looked at Roland. Jake moved aside and the gunslinger leaned in for Eddie’s word to him.

ELEVEN

Never, ever, had Roland seen an eye so bright, not even on Jericho Hill, when Cuthbert had bade him a laughing goodbye.

Eddie smiled. “We had . . . some times.”

Roland nodded again.

“You . . . you . . .” But this Eddie couldn’t finish. He raised one hand and made a weak twirling motion.

“I danced,” Roland said, nodding. “Danced the commala.”

Yes, Eddie mouthed, then drew in another of those whooping, painful breaths. It was the last.

“Thank you for my second chance,” he said. “Thank you . . . Father.”

That was all. Eddie’s eyes still looked at him, and they were still aware, but he had no breath to replace the one expended on that final word, that father. The lamplight gleamed on the hairs of his bare arms, turning them to gold. The thunder murmured. Then Eddie’s eyes closed and he laid his head to one side. His work was finished. He had left the path, stepped into the clearing. They sat around him a-circle, but ka-tet no more.

TWELVE

And so, thirty minutes later.

Roland, Jake, Ted, and Sheemie sat on a bench in the middle of the Mall. Dani Rostov and the bankerly-looking fellow were nearby. Susannah was in the bedroom of the proctor’s suite, washing her husband’s body for burial. They could hear her from where they were sitting. She was singing. All the songs seemed to be ones they’d heard Eddie singing along the trail. One was “Born to Run.” Another was “The Rice Song,” from Calla Bryn Sturgis.

“We have to go, and right away,” Roland said. His hand had gone to his hip and was rubbing, rubbing. Jake had seen him take a bottle of aspirin (gotten God knew where) from his purse and dry-swallow three. “Sheemie, will you send us on?”

Sheemie nodded. He had limped to the bench, leaning on Dinky for support, and still none of them had had a chance to look at the wound on his foot. His limp seemed so minor compared to their other concerns; surely if Sheemie Ruiz were to die this night it would be as a result of opening a makeshift door between Thunder-side and America. Another strenuous act of teleportation might be lethal to him—what was a sore foot compared to that?

“I’ll try,” he said. “I’ll try my very hardest, so I will.”

“Those who helped us look into New York will help us do this,” Ted said.

It was Ted who had figured out how to determine the current when on America-side of the Keystone World. He, Dinky, Fred Worthington (the bankerly-looking man), and Dani Rostov had all been to New York, and were all able to summon up clear mental images of Times Square: the lights, the crowds, the movie marquees . . . and, most important, the giant news-ticker which broadcast the events of the day to the crowds below, making a complete circuit of Broadway and Forty-eighth Street every thirty seconds or so. The hole had opened long enough to inform them that UN forensics experts were examining supposed mass graves in Kosovo, that Vice President Gore had spent the day in New York City campaigning for President, that Roger Clemens had struck out thirteen Texas Rangers but the Yankees had still lost the night before.