The Dark Tower

Perhaps two dozen floors above Ringo’s Room was a scattering of breadcrumbs and a limp bundle of feathers that had once belonged to a hawk named David—no pet he, but certainly a friend. The first of Roland’s many sacrifices to the Dark Tower. On one section of the wall Roland saw David carved in flight, his stubby wings spread above all the gathered court of Gilead (Marten the Enchanter not least among them). And to the left of the door leading onto the balcony, David was carved again. Here his wings were folded as he fell upon Cort like a blind bullet, heedless of Cort’s upraised stick.

Old times.

Old times and old crimes.

Not far from Cort was the laughing face of the whore with whom the boy had sported that night. The smell in David’s Room was her perfume, cheap and sweet. As the gunslinger drew it in, he remembered touching the whore’s pubic curls and was shocked to remember now what he had remembered then, as his fingers slid toward her slicky-sweet cleft: being fresh out of his baby’s bath, with his mother’s hands upon him.

He began to grow hard, and Roland fled that room in fear.

SIX

There was no more red to light his way now, only the eldritch blue glow of the windows—glass eyes that were alive, glass eyes that looked upon the gunless intruder. Outside the Dark Tower, the roses of Can’-Ka No Rey had closed for another day. Part of his mind marveled that he should be here at all; that he had one by one surmounted the obstacles placed in his path, as dreadfully single-minded as ever. I’m like one of the old people’s robots, he thought. One that will either accomplish the task for which it has been made or beat itself to death trying.

Another part of him was not surprised at all, however. This was the part that dreamed as the Beams themselves must, and this darker self thought again of the horn that had fallen from Cuthbert’s fingers—Cuthbert, who had gone to his death laughing. The horn that might to this very day lie where it had fallen on the rocky slope of Jericho Hill.

And of course I’ve seen these rooms before! They’re telling my life, after all.

Indeed they were. Floor by floor and tale by tale (not to mention death by death), the rising rooms of the Dark Tower recounted Roland Deschain’s life and quest. Each held its memento; each its signature aroma. Many times there was more than a single floor devoted to a single year, but there was always at least one. And after the thirty-eighth room (which is nineteen doubled, do ya not see it), he wished to look no more. This one contained the charred stake to which Susan Delgado had been bound. He did not enter, but looked at the face upon the wall. That much he owed her. Roland, I love thee! Susan Delgado had screamed, and he knew it was the truth, for it was only her love that rendered her recognizable. And, love or no love, in the end she had still burned.

This is a place of death, he thought, and not just here. All these rooms. Every floor.

Yes, gunslinger, whispered the Voice of the Tower. But only because your life has made it so.

After the thirty-eighth floor, Roland climbed faster.

SEVEN

Standing outside, Roland had judged the Tower to be roughly six hundred feet high. But as he peered into the hundredth room, and then the two hundredth, he felt sure he must have climbed eight times six hundred. Soon he would be closing in on the mark of distance his friends from America-side had called a mile. That was more floors than there possibly could be—no Tower could be a mile high!—but still he climbed, climbed until he was nearly running, yet never did he tire. It once crossed his mind that he’d never reach the top; that the Dark Tower was infinite in height as it was eternal in time. But after a moment’s consideration he rejected the idea, for it was his life the Tower was telling, and while that life had been long, it had by no means been eternal. And as it had had a beginning (marked by the cedar clip and the bit of blue silk ribbon), so it would have an ending.

Soon now, quite likely.

The light he sensed behind his eyes was brighter now, and did not seem so blue. He passed a room containing Zoltan, the bird from the weed-eater’s hut. He passed a room containing the atomic pump from the Way Station. He climbed more stairs, paused outside a room containing a dead lobstrosity, and by now the light he sensed was much brighter and no longer blue.

It was . . .

He was quite sure it was . . .

It was sunlight. Past twilight it might be, with Old Star and Old Mother shining from above the Dark Tower, but Roland was quite sure he was seeing—or sensing—sunlight.