The Dark Tower

Susannah nodded. She had been taught roughly the same thing in a high school science class, although the teacher had admitted a lot of what they knew about how Stone Age people got along wasn’t true knowledge at all, but only informed guesswork. She wondered how much of what Roland had just told her was also guesswork, and so she asked him.

“It’s not guessing, but I can’t explain it. If it’s the touch, Susannah, it’s not such as Jake had. Not seeing and hearing, or even dreaming. Although . . . do you believe we have dreams sometimes we don’t remember after we awaken?”

“Yes.” She thought of telling him about rapid eye movement, and the REM sleep experiments she’d read about in Look magazine, then decided it would be too complex. She contented herself with saying that she was sure folks had dreams every single night that they didn’t remember.

“Mayhap I see him and hear him in those,” Roland said. “All I know is that he’s struggling to keep up. He knows so little about the world that it’s really a wonder he’s still alive at all.”

“Do you feel sorry for him?”

“No. I can’t afford pity, and neither can you.”

But his eyes had left hers when he said that, and she thought he was lying. Maybe he didn’t want to feel sorry for Mordred, but she was sure he did, at least a little. Maybe he wanted to hope that Mordred would die on their trail—certainly there were plenty of chances it would happen, with hypothermia being the most likely cause—but Susannah didn’t think he was quite able to do it. They might have outrun ka, but she reckoned that blood was still thicker than water.

There was something else, however, more powerful than even the blood of relation. She knew, because she could now feel it beating in her own head, both sleeping and waking. It was the Dark Tower. She thought that they were very close to it now. She had no idea what they were going to do about its mad guardian when and if they got there, but she found she no longer cared. For the present, all she wanted was to see it. The idea of entering it was still more than her imagination could deal with, but seeing it? Yes, she could imagine that. And she thought that seeing it would be enough.

TWO

They made their way slowly down the wide white downslope with Oy first hurrying at Roland’s heel, then dropping behind to check on Susannah, then bounding back to Roland again. Bright blue holes sometimes opened above them. Roland knew that was the Beam at work, constantly pulling the cloud-cover southeast. Otherwise, the sky was white from horizon to horizon, and had a low full look both of them now recognized. More snow was on the come, and the gunslinger had an idea this storm might be the worst they’d seen. The wind was getting up, and the moisture in it was enough to numb all his exposed skin (after three weeks of diligent needlework, that amounted to not much more than his forehead and the tip of his nose). The gusts lifted long diaphanous scarves of white. These raced past them and then on down the slope like fantastical, shape-changing ballet-dancers.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Susannah asked from behind him, almost wistfully.

Roland of Gilead, no judge of beauty (except once, in the outland of Mejis), grunted. He knew what would be beautiful to him: decent cover when the storm overtook them, something more than just a thick grove of trees. So he almost doubted what he saw when the latest gust of wind blew itself out and the snow settled. He dropped the tow-band, stepped out of it, went back to Susannah (their gunna, now on the increase again, was strapped to the sledge behind her), and dropped on one knee next to her. Dressed in hides from top to toe, he looked more like a mangy bigfoot than a man.

“What do you make of that?” he asked her.

The wind kicked up again, harder than ever, at first obscuring what he had seen. When it dropped, a hole opened above them and the sun shone briefly through, lighting the snowfield with billions of diamond-chip sparkles. Susannah shaded her eyes with one hand and looked long downhill. What she saw was an inverted T carved in the snow. The cross arm, closest to them (but still at least two miles away) was relatively short, perhaps two hundred feet on either side. The long arm, however, was very long, going all the way to the horizon and then disappearing over it.

“Those are roads!” she said. “Someone’s plowed a couple of roads down there, Roland!”

He nodded. “I thought so, but I wanted to hear you say it. I see something else, as well.”

“What? Your eyes are sharper than mine, and by a lot.”

“When we get a little closer, you’ll see for yourself.”

He tried to rise and she tugged impatiently at his arm. “Don’t you play that game with me. What is it?”

“Roofs,” he said, giving in to her. “I think there are cottages down there. Mayhap even a town.”

“People? Are you saying people?”

“Well, it looks like there’s smoke coming from one of the houses. Although it’s hard to tell for sure with the sky so white.”