The Dark Tower

Roland stopped for a moment still ten paces from the ghostwood door in the Tower’s base, letting the voice of the roses — that welcoming horn — echo away to nothing. The feeling of déjà vu was still strong, almost as though he had been here after all. And of course he had been, in ten thousand premonitory dreams. He looked up at the balcony where the Crimson King had stood, trying to defy ka and bar his way. There, about six feet above the cartons that held the few remaining sneetches (the old lunatic had had no other weapons after all, it seemed), he saw two red eyes, floating in the darkening air, looking down at him with eternal hatred. From their backs, the thin silver of the optic nerves (now tinted red-orange with the light of the leaving sun) trailed away to nothing. The gunslinger supposed the Crimson King’s eyes would remain up there forever, watching Can’-Ka No Rey while their owner wandered the world to which Patrick’s eraser and enchanted Artist’s eye had sent him. Or, more likely, to the space between the worlds.

Roland walked on to where the path ended at the steel-banded slab of black ghostwood. Upon it, a sigul that he now knew well was engraved three-quarters of the way up:

Here he laid two things, the last of his gunna: Aunt Talitha’s cross, and his remaining sixgun. When he stood up, he saw the first two hieroglyphics had faded away:

UNFOUND had become FOUND.

He raised his hand as if to knock, but the door swung open of its own accord before he could touch it, revealing the bottom steps of an ascending spiral stairway. There was a sighing voice—Welcome, Roland, thee of Eld. It was the Tower’s voice. This edifice was not stone at all, although it might look like stone; this was a living thing, Gan himself, likely, and the pulse he’d felt deep in his head even thousands of miles from here had always been Gan’s beating life-force.

Commala, gunslinger. Commala-come-come.

And wafting out came the smell of alkali, bitter as tears. The smell of…what? What, exactly? Before he could place it the odor was gone, leaving Roland to surmise he had imagined it.

He stepped inside and the Song of the Tower, which he had always heard — even in Gilead, where it had hidden in his mother’s voice as she sang him her cradle songs — finally ceased. There was another sigh. The door swung shut with a boom, but he was not left in blackness. The light that remained was that of the shining spiral windows, mixed with the glow of sunset.

Stone stairs, a passage just wide enough for one person, ascended.

“Now comes Roland,” he called, and the words seemed to spiral up into infinity. “Thee at the top, hear and make me welcome if you would. If you’re my enemy, know that I come unarmed and mean no ill.”

He began to climb.

Nineteen steps brought him to the first landing (and to each one thereafter). A door stood open here and beyond it was a small round room. The stones of its wall were carved with thousands of overlapping faces. Many he knew (one was the face of Calvin Tower, peeping slyly over the top of an open book). The faces looked at him and he heard their murmuring.

Welcome Roland, you of the many miles and many worlds; welcome thee of Gilead, thee of Eld.

On the far side of the room was a door flanked by dark red swags traced with gold. About six feet up from the door — at the exact height of his eyes — was a small round window, little bigger than an outlaw’s peekhole. There was a sweet smell, and this one he could identify: the bag of pine sachet his mother had placed first in his cradle, then, later, in his first real bed. It brought back those days with great clarity, as aromas always do; if any sense serves us as a time machine, it’s that of smell.

Then, like the bitter call of the alkali, it was gone.

The room was unfurnished, but a single item lay on the floor. He advanced to it and picked it up. It was a small cedar clip, its bow wrapped in a bit of blue silk ribbon. He had seen such things long ago, in Gilead; must once have worn one himself. When the sawbones cut a newly arrived baby’s umbilical cord, separating mother from child, such a clip was put on above the baby’s navel, where it would stay until the remainder of the cord fell off, and the clip with it. (The navel itself was called tet-ka can Gan.) The bit of silk on this one told that it had belonged to a boy. A girl’s clip would have been wrapped with pink ribbon.