The Dark Tower

You’re the one who never changes, Cort had told him once, and in his voice Roland could have sworn he heard fear . . . although why Cort should have been afraid of him—a boy—Roland couldn’t tell. It’ll be your damnation, boy. You’ll wear out a hundred pairs of boots on your walk to hell.

And Vannay: Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

And his mother: Roland, must you always be so serious? Can you never rest?

Yet the voice whispered it again

(different this time mayhap different)

and Roland did seem to smell something other than alkali and devil-grass. He thought it might be flowers.

He thought it might be roses.

He shifted his gunna from one shoulder to the other, then touched the horn that rode on his belt behind the gun on his right hip. The ancient brass horn had once been blown by Arthur Eld himself, or so the story did say. Roland had given it to Cuthbert Allgood at Jericho Hill, and when Cuthbert fell, Roland had paused just long enough to pick it up again, knocking the deathdust of that place from its throat.

This is your sigul, whispered the fading voice that bore with it the dusk-sweet scent of roses, the scent of home on a summer evening—O lost!—a stone, a rose, an unfound door; a stone, a rose, a door.

This is your promise that things may be different, Roland—that there may yet be rest. Even salvation.

A pause, and then:

If you stand. If you are true.

He shook his head to clear it, thought of taking another sip of water, and dismissed the idea. Tonight. When he built his campfire over the bones of Walter’s fire. Then he would drink. As for now . . .

As for now, he would resume his journey. Somewhere ahead was the Dark Tower. Closer, however, much closer, was the man (was he a man? was he really?) who could perhaps tell him how to get there. Roland would catch him, and when he did, that man would talk—aye, yes, yar, tell it on the mountain as you’d hear it in the valley: Walter would be caught, and Walter would talk.

Roland touched the horn again, and its reality was oddly comforting, as if he had never touched it before.

Time to get moving.

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

June 19, 1970–April 7, 2004:

I tell God thankya.

APPENDIX

ROBERT BROWNING

“CHILDE ROLAND

TO THE DARK TOWER CAME”

I

My first thought was, he lied in every word,

That hoary cripple, with malicious eye

Askance to watch the workings of his lie

On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford

Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored

Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

II

What else should he be set for, with his staff?

What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare

All travellers who might find him posted there,

And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh

Would break, what crutch ’gin write my epitaph

For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare.

III

If at his counsel I should turn aside

Into that ominous tract which, all agree,

Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly

I did turn as he pointed, neither pride

Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,

So much as gladness that some end might be.

IV

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,

What with my search drawn out through years,

my hope

Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope

With that obstreperous joy success would bring,

I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring

My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

V

As when a sick man very near to death

Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end