The Dark Tower

“Yes,” Roland said, “and to rule in his father’s place. For the Crimson King is old, and I have come more and more to believe that he is imprisoned, somehow. If that’s so, then he’s no longer our real enemy.”

“Will we go to his castle on the other side of the Discordia?” Jake asked. It was the first time he’d spoken in half an hour. “We will, won’t we?”

“I think so, yes,” Roland said. “Le Casse Roi Russe, the old legends call it. We’ll go there ka-tet and slay what lives there.”

“Let it be so,” Eddie said. “By God, let that be so.”

“Aye,” Roland agreed. “But our first job is the Breakers. The Beamquake we felt in Calla Bryn Sturgis, just before we came here, suggests that their work is nearly done. Yet even if it isn’t—”

“Ending what they’re doing is our job,” Eddie said.

Roland nodded. He looked more tired than ever. “Aye,” he said. “Killing them or setting them free. Either way, we must finish their meddling with the two Beams that remain. And we must finish off the dan-tete. The one that belongs to the Crimson King…and to me.”

Five

Nigel ended up being quite helpful (although not just to Roland and his ka-tet, as things fell). To begin with he brought two pencils, two pens (one of them a great old thing that would have looked at home in the hand of a Dickens scrivener), and three pieces of chalk, one of them in a silver holder that looked like a lady’s lipstick. Roland chose this and gave Jake another piece. “I can’t write words you’d understand easily,” he said, “but our numbers are the same, or close enough. Print what I say to one side, Jake, and fair.”

Jake did as he was bid. The result was crude but understandable enough, a map with a legend.

“Fedic,” Roland said, pointing to 1, and then drew a short chalk line to 2. “And here’s Castle Discordia, with the doors beneath. An almighty tangle of em, from what we hear. There’ll be a passage that’ll take us from here to there, under the castle. Now, Susannah, tell again how the Wolves go, and what they do.” He handed her the chalk in its holder.

She took it, noticing with some admiration that it sharpened itself as it was used. A small trick but a neat one.

“They ride through a one-way door that brings them out here,” she said, drawing a line from 2 to 3, which Jake had dubbed Thunderclap Station. “We ought to know this door when we see it, because it’ll be big, unless they go through single-file.”

“Maybe they do,” Eddie said. “Unless I’m wrong, they’re pretty well stuck with what the old people left them.”

“You’re not wrong,” Roland said. “Go on, Susannah.” He wasn’t hunkering but sitting with his right leg stretched stiffly out. Eddie wondered how badly his hip was hurting him, and if he had any of Rosalita’s cat-oil in his newly recovered purse. He doubted it.

She said, “The Wolves ride from Thunderclap along the course of the railroad tracks, at least until they’re out of the shadow…or the darkness…or whatever it is. Do you know, Roland?”

“No, but we’ll see soon enough.” He made his impatient twirling gesture with his left hand.

“They cross the river to the Callas and take the children. When they get back to the Thunderclap Station, I think they must board their horses and their prisoners on a train and go back to Fedic that way, for the door’s no good to them.”

“Aye, I think that’s the way of it,” Roland agreed. “They bypass the devar-toi — the prison we’ve marked with an 8—for the time being.”

Susannah said: “Scowther and his Nazi doctors used the hood-things on these beds to extract something from the kids. It’s the stuff they give to the Breakers. Feed it to em or inject em with it, I guess. The kids and the brain-stuff go back to Thunderclap Station by the door. The kiddies are sent back to Calla Bryn Sturgis, maybe the other Callas as well, and at what you call the devar-toi—”

“Mawster, dinnah is served,” Eddie said bleakly.

Nigel chipped in at this point, sounding absolutely cheerful. “Would you care for a bite, sais?”

Jake consulted his stomach and found it was rumbling. It was horrible to be this hungry so soon after the Pere’s death — and after the things he had seen in the Dixie Pig — but he was, nevertheless. “Is there food, Nigel? Is there really?”

“Yes, indeed, young man,” Nigel said. “Only tinned goods, I’m afraid, but I can offer better than two dozen choices, including baked beans, tuna-fish, several kinds of soup—”

“Tooter-fish for me,” Roland said, “but bring an array, if you will.”

“Certainly, sai.”

“I don’t suppose you could rustle me up an Elvis Special,” Jake said longingly. “That’s peanut butter, banana, and bacon.”

“Jesus, kid,” Eddie said. “I don’t know if you can tell in this light, but I’m turning green.”

“I have no bacon or bananas, unfortunately,” Nigel said (pronouncing the latter ba-NAW-nas), “but I do have peanut butter and three kinds of jelly. Also apple butter.”

“Apple butter’d be good,” Jake said.