The Dark Tower_The Dark Tower 7

And yes, he would come. One way or the other. Knowing it was so eased
him somewhat, enabled him to remain where he was without trembling too
badly. His right hand was numb to the wrist, and Roland suspected he would
never feel it again. That was all right; it hadn’t been much of a shake since
the lobstrosities had gotten at it.
And the rose sang Yes, Roland, yes—you’ll have it again. You’ll be whole
again. There will be renewal. Only come.
Patrick plucked a petal from the rose, judged it, then plucked another to go
with it. He put them in his mouth. For a moment his face went slack with a
peculiar sort of ecstasy, and Roland wondered what the petals might taste
like. Overhead the sky was growing dark. The shadow of the pyramid that
had been hidden by the rocks stretched nearly to the road. When the point of
that shadow touched the way that had brought him here, Roland supposed he
would go whether the Crimson King still held the Tower approach or not.
“WHAT’S THEE DOING? EEEEEEEEE! WHAT DEVILTRY WORKS IN
THY MIND AND THY HEART?”
You’re a great one to speak of deviltry, Roland thought. He took out his
watch and snapped back the cover. Beneath the crystal, the hands now sped
backward, five o’clock to four, four to three, three to two, two to one, and
one to midnight.
“Patrick, hurry,” he said. “Quick as you can, I beg, for my time is almost
up.”
Patrick cupped a hand beneath his mouth and spat out a red paste the color
of fresh blood. The color of the Crimson King’s robe. And the exact color of
his lunatic’s eyes.
Patrick, on the verge of using color for the first time in his life as an artist,
made to dip the tip of his right forefinger into this paste, and then hesitated.
An odd certainty came to Roland then: the thorns of these roses only pricked
when their roots still tied the plant to Mim, or Mother Earth. Had he gotten
his way with Patrick, Mim would have cut those talented hands to ribbons
and rendered them useless.
It’s still ka, the gunslinger thought. Even out here in End-W—
Before he could finish the thought, Patrick took the gunslinger’s right hand
and peered into it with the intensity of a fortune-teller. He scooped up some
of the blood that flowed there and mixed it with his rose-paste. Then,
carefully, he took a tiny bit of this mixture upon the second finger of his
right hand. He lowered it to his painting… hesitated… looked at Roland.

Roland nodded to him and Patrick nodded in return, as gravely as a surgeon
about to make the first cut in a dangerous operation, then applied his finger
to the paper. The tip touched down as delicately as the beak of a
hummingbird dipping into a flower. It colored the Crimson King’s left eye
and then lifted away. Patrick cocked his head, looking at what he had done
with a fascination Roland had never seen on a human face in all his long and
wandering time. It was as if the boy were some Manni prophet, finally
granted a glimpse of Gan’s face after twenty years of waiting in the desert.
Then he broke into an enormous, sunny grin.
The response from the Dark Tower was more immediate and—to Roland, at
least—immensely gratifying. The old creature pent on the balcony howled in
pain.
“WHAT’S THEE DOING? EEEEEEE! EEEEEEEE! STOP! IT BURNS!
BURRRRNS! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEE!”
“Now finish the other,” Roland said. “Quickly! For your life and mine!”
Patrick colored the other eye with the same delicate dip of the finger. Now
two brilliant crimson eyes looked out of Patrick’s black-and-white drawing,
eyes that had been colored with attar of rose and the blood of Eld; eyes that
burned with Hell’s own fire.
It was done.
Roland produced the eraser at last, and held it out to Patrick. “Make him
gone,” he said. “Make yonder foul hob gone from this world and every
world. Make him gone at last.”

Eleven

There was no question it would work. From the moment Patrick first
touched the eraser to his drawing—to that curl of nostril-hair, as it happened
—the Crimson King began to scream in fresh pain and horror from his
balcony redoubt. And in understanding.
Patrick hesitated, looking at Roland for confirmation, and Roland nodded.
“Aye, Patrick. His time has come and you’re to be his executioner. Go on
with it.”
The Old King threw four more sneetches, and Roland took care of them all
with calm ease. After that he threw no more, for he had no hands with which

to throw. His shrieks rose to gibbering whines that Roland thought would
surely never leave his ears.
The mute boy erased the full, sensuous mouth from within its foam of beard,
and as he did it, the screams first grew muffled and then ceased. In the end
Patrick erased everything but the eyes, and these the remaining bit of rubber
would not even blur. They remained until the piece of pink gum (originally
part of a Pencil-Pak bought in a Norwich, Connecticut, Woolworth’s during
a back-to-school sale in August of 1958) had been reduced to a shred the boy
could not even hold between his long, dirty nails. And so he cast it away and
showed the gunslinger what remained: two malevolent blood-red orbs
floating three-quarters of the way up the page.
All the rest of him was gone.

Twelve

The shadow of the pyramid’s tip had come to touch the road; now the sky in
the west changed from the orange of a reaptide bonfire to that cauldron of
blood Roland had seen in his dreams ever since childhood. When it did, the
call of the Tower doubled, then trebled. Roland felt it reach out and grasp
him with invisible hands. The time of his destiny was come.
Yet there was this boy. This friendless boy. Roland would not leave him to
die here at the end of End-World if he could help it. He had no interest in
atonement, and yet Patrick had come to stand for all the murders and
betrayals that had finally brought him to the Dark Tower. Roland’s family
was dead; his misbegotten son had been the last. Now would Eld and Tower
be joined.
First, though—or last—this.
“Patrick, listen to me,” he said, taking the boy’s shoulder with his whole left
hand and his mutilated right. “If you’d live to make all the pictures ka has
stored away in your future, ask me not a single question nor ask me to repeat
a single thing.”
The boy looked at him, large-eyed and silent in the red and dying light. And
the Song of the Tower rose around them to a mighty shout that was nothing
but commala.
“Go back to the road. Pick up all the cans that are whole. That should be
enough to feed you. Go back the way we came. Never leave the road. You’ll
do fine.”

Patrick nodded with perfect understanding. Roland saw he believed, and that
was good. Belief would protect him even more surely than a revolver, even
one with the sandalwood grips.
“Go back to the Federal. Go back to the robot, Stuttering Bill that was. Tell
him to take you to a door that swings open on America-side. If it won’t open
to your hand, draw it open with thy pencil. Do’ee understand?”
Patrick nodded again. Of course he understood.
“If ka should eventually lead you to Susannah in any where or when, tell her
Roland loves her still, and with all his heart.” He drew Patrick to him and
kissed the boy’s mouth. “Give her that. Do’ee understand?”
Patrick nodded.
“All right. I go. Long days and pleasant nights. May we meet in the clearing
at the end of the path when all worlds end.”
Yet even then he knew this would not happen, for the worlds would never
end, not now, and for him there would be no clearing. For Roland Deschain
of Gilead, last of Eld’s line, the path ended at the Dark Tower. And that did
him fine.
He rose to his feet. The boy looked up at him with wide, wondering eyes,
clutching his pad. Roland turned. He drew in breath to the bottom of his
lungs and let it out in a great cry.
“NOW COMES ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER! I HAVE BEEN TRUE
AND I STILL CARRY THE GUN OF MY FATHER AND YOU WILL OPEN
TO MY HAND!”
Patrick watched him stride to where the road ended, a black silhouette
against that bloody burning sky. He watched as Roland walked among the
roses, and sat shivering in the shadows as Roland began to cry the names of
his friends and loved ones and ka-mates; those names carried clear in that
strange air, as if they would echo forever.
“I come in the name of Steven Deschain, he of Gilead!
“I come in the name of Gabrielle Deschain, she of Gilead!
“I come in the name of Cortland Andrus, he of Gilead!
“I come in the name of Cuthbert Allgood, he of Gilead!
“I come in the name of Alain Johns, he of Gilead!
“I come in the name of Jamie DeCurry, he of Gilead!
“I come in the name of Vannay the Wise, he of Gilead!
“I come in the name of Hax the Cook, he of Gilead!
“I come in the name of David the hawk, he of Gilead and the sky!

“I come in the name of Susan Delgado, she of Mejis!
“I come in the name of Sheemie Ruiz, he of Mejis!
“I come in the name of Pere Callahan, he of Jerusalem’s Lot, and the roads!
“I come in the name of Ted Brautigan, he of America!
“I come in the name of Dinky Earnshaw, he of America!
“I come in the name of Aunt Talitha, she of River Crossing, and will lay her
cross here, as I was bid!
“I come in the name of Stephen King, he of Maine!
“I come in the name of Oy, the brave, he of Mid-World!
“I come in the name of Eddie Dean, he of New York!
“I come in the name of Susannah Dean, she of New York!
“I come in the name of Jake Chambers, he of New York, whom I call my
own true son!
“I am Roland of Gilead, and I come as myself; you will open to me.”
After that came the sound of a horn. It simultaneously chilled Patrick’s blood
and exalted him. The echoes faded into silence. Then, perhaps a minute later,
came a great, echoing boom: the sound of a door swinging shut forever.
And after that came silence.

Thirteen

Patrick sat where he was at the base of the pyramid, shivering, until Old Star
and Old Mother rose in the sky. The song of the roses and the Tower hadn’t
ceased, but it had grown low and sleepy, little more than a murmur.
At last he went back to the road, gathered as many whole cans as he could
(there was a surprising number of them, considering the force of the
explosion that had demolished the cart), and found a deerskin sack that
would hold them. He realized he had forgotten his pencil and went back to
get it.
Beside the pencil, gleaming in the starlight, was Roland’s watch.
The boy took it with a small (and nervous) hoot of glee. He put it in his
pocket. Then he went back to the road and slung his little sack of gunna over
his shoulder.
I can tell you that he walked until nearly midnight, and that he looked at the
watch before taking his rest. I can tell you that the watch had stopped
completely. I can tell you that, come noon of the following day, he looked at
it again and saw that it had begun to run in the correct direction once more,

albeit very slowly. But of Patrick I can tell you no more, not whether he
made it back to the Federal, not whether he found Stuttering Bill that was,
not whether he eventually came once more to America-side. I can tell you
none of these things, say sorry. Here the darkness hides him from my
storyteller’s eye and he must go on alone.

EPILOGUE

SUSANNAH IN NEW YORK

No one takes alarm as the little electric cart slides out of nowhere an inch at
a time until it’s wholly here in Central Park; no one sees it but us. Most of
those here are looking skyward, as the first snowflakes of what will prove to
be a great pre-Christmas snowstorm come skirling down from a white sky.
The Blizzard of ‘87, the newspapers will call it. Visitors to the park who
aren’t watching the snowfall begin are watching the carolers, who are from
public schools far uptown. They are wearing either dark red blazers (the
boys) or dark red jumpers (the girls). This is the Harlem School Choir,
sometimes called The Harlem Roses in the Post and its rival tabloid, the
New York Sun. They sing an old hymn in gorgeous doo-wop harmony,
snapping their fingers as they make their way through the staves, turning it
into something that sounds almost like early Spurs, Coasters, or Dark
Diamonds. They are standing not too far from the environment where the

polar bears live their city lives, and the song they’re singing is “What Child
Is This.”
One of those looking up into the snow is a man Susannah knows well, and
her heart leaps straight up to heaven at the sight of him. In his left hand he’s
holding a large paper cup and she’s sure it contains hot chocolate, the good
kind mit schlag.
For a moment she’s unable to touch the controls of the little cart, which
came from another world. Thoughts of Roland and Patrick have left her
mind. All she can think of is Eddie—Eddie in front of her right here and
now, Eddie alive again. And if this is not the Keystone World, not quite,
what of that? If Co-Op City is in Brooklyn (or even in Queens!) and Eddie
drives a Takuro Spirit instead of a Buick Electra, what of those things? It
doesn’t matter. Only one thing would, and it’s that which keeps her hand
from rising to the throttle and trundling the cart toward him.
What if he doesn’t recognize her?
What if when he turns he sees nothing but a homeless black lady in an
electric cart whose battery will soon be as flat as a sat-on hat, a black lady
with no money, no clothes, no address (not in this where and when, say
thankee sai) and no legs? A homeless black lady with no connection to him?
Or what if he does know her, somewhere far back in his mind, yet still
denies her as completely as Peter denied Jesus, because remembering is just
too hurtful?
Worse still, what if he turns to her and she sees the burned-out, fucked-up,
empty-eyed stare of the longtime junkie? What if, what if, and here comes
the snow that will soon turn the whole world white.
Stop thy grizzling and go to him, Roland tells her. You didn’t face Blaine and
the taheen of Blue Heaven and the thing under Castle Discordia just to turn
tail and run now, did you? Surely you’ve got a moit more guts than that.
But she isn’t sure she really does until she sees her hand rise to the throttle.
Before she can twist it, however, the gunslinger’s voice speaks to her again,
this time sounding wearily amused.
Perhaps there’s something you want to get rid of first, Susannah?
She looks down and sees Roland’s weapon stuck through her crossbelt, like
a Mexican bandido’s pistola, or a pirate’s cutlass. She pulls it free, amazed at
how good it feels in her hand… how brutally right. Parting from this, she
thinks, will be like parting from a lover. And she doesn’t have to, does she?

The question is, what does she love more? The man or the gun? All other
choices will flow from this one.
On impulse she rolls the cylinder and sees that the rounds inside look old,
their casings dull.
These’ll never fire, she thinks… and, without knowing why, or precisely
what it means: These are wets.
She sights up the barrel and is queerly saddened—but not surprised—to find
that the barrel lets through no light. It’s plugged. Has been for decades, from
the look of it. This gun will never fire again. There is no choice to be made,
after all. This gun is over.
Susannah, still holding the revolver with the sandalwood grips in one hand,
twists the throttle with the other. The little electric cart—the one she named
Ho Fat III, although that is already fading in her mind—rolls soundlessly
forward. It passes a green trash barrel with KEEP LITTER IN ITS
PLACE! stenciled on the side. She tosses Roland’s revolver into this litter
barrel. Doing it hurts her heart, but she never hesitates. It’s heavy, and sinks
into the crumpled fast-food wrappers, advertising circulars, and discarded
newspapers like a stone into water. She is still enough of a gunslinger to
bitterly regret throwing away such a storied weapon (even if the final trip
between worlds has spoiled it), but she’s already become enough of the
woman who’s waiting for her up ahead not to pause or look back once the
job is done.
Before she can reach the man with the paper cup, he turns. He is indeed
wearing a sweatshirt that says I DRINK NOZZ-A-LA!, but she barely
registers that. It’s him: that’s what she registers. It’s Edward Cantor Dean.
And then even that becomes secondary, because what she sees in his eyes is
all she has feared. It’s total puzzlement. He doesn’t know her.
Then, tentatively, he smiles, and it is the smile she remembers, the one she
always loved. Also he’s clean, she knows it at once. She sees it in his face.
Mostly in his eyes. The carolers from Harlem sing, and he holds out the cup
of hot chocolate.
“Thank God,” he says. “I’d just about decided I’d have to drink this myself.
That the voices were wrong and I was going crazy after all. That… well…”
He trails off, looking more than puzzled. He looks afraid. “Listen, you are
here for me, aren’t you? Please tell me I’m not making an utter ass of
myself. Because, lady, right now I feel as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a
roomful of rocking chairs.”

“You’re not,” she says. “Making an ass of yourself, I mean.” She’s
remembering Jake’s story about the voices he heard arguing in his mind, one
yelling that he was dead, the other that he was alive. Both of them utterly
convinced. She has at least some idea of how terrible that must be, because
she knows a little about other voices. Strange voices.
“Thank God,” he says. “Your name is Susannah?”
“Yes,” she says. “My name is Susannah.”
Her throat is terribly dry, but the words come out, at least. She takes the cup
from him and sips the hot chocolate through the cream. It is sweet and good,
a taste of this world. The sound of the honking cabs, their drivers hurrying to
make their day before the snow shuts them down, is equally good. Grinning,
he reaches out and wipes a tiny dab of the cream from the tip of her nose.
His touch is electric, and she sees that he feels it, too. It occurs to her that he
is going to kiss her again for the first time, and sleep with her again for the
first time, and fall in love with her again for the first time. He may know
those things because voices have told him, but she knows them for a far
better reason: because those things have already happened. Ka is a wheel,
Roland said, and now she knows it’s true. Her memories of
(Mid-World)
the gunslinger’s where and when are growing hazy, but she thinks she will
remember just enough to know it’s all happened before, and there is
something incredibly sad about this.
But at the same time, it’s good.
It’s a damn miracle, is what it is.
“Are you cold?” he asks.
“No, I’m okay. Why?”
“You shivered.”
“It’s the sweetness of the cream.” Then, looking at him as she does it, she
pokes her tongue out and licks a bit of the nutmeg-dusted foam.
“If you aren’t cold now, you will be,” he says. “WRKO says the
temperature’s gonna drop twenty degrees tonight. So I bought you
something.” From his back pocket he takes a knitted cap, the kind you can
pull down over your ears. She looks at the front of it and sees the words
there printed in red: MERRY CHRISTMAS.
“Bought it in Brendio’s, on Fifth Avenue,” he says.
Susannah has never heard of Brendio’s. Brentano’s, maybe—the bookstore
—but not Brendio’s. But of course in the America where she grew up, she

never heard of Nozz-A-La or Takuro Spirit automobiles, either. “Did your
voices tell you to buy it?” Teasing him a little now.
He blushes. “Actually, you know, they sort of did. Try it on.”
It’s a perfect fit.
“Tell me something,” she says. “Who’s the President? You’re not going to
tell me it’s Ronald Reagan, are you?”
He looks at her incredulously for a moment, and then smiles. “What? That
old actor who used to host Death Valley Days on TV? You’re kidding,
right?”
“Nope. I always thought you were the one who was kidding about Ronnie
Reagan, Eddie.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“That’s okay, just tell me who the President is.”
“Gary Hart,” he says, as if speaking to a child. “From Colorado. He almost
dropped out of the race in 1980—as I’m sure you know—over that Monkey
Business business. Then he said ‘Fuck em if they can’t take a joke’ and hung
on in there. Ended up winning in a landslide.”
His smile fades a little as he studies her.
“You’re not kidding me, are you?”
“Are you kidding me about the voices? The ones you hear in our head? The
ones that wake you up at two in the morning?”
Eddie looks almost shocked. “How can you know that?”
“It’s a long story. Maybe someday I’ll tell you.” If I can still remember, she
thinks.
“It’s not just the voices.”
“No?”
“No. I’ve been dreaming of you. For months now. I’ve been waiting for you.
Listen, we don’t know each other… this is crazy… but do you have a place
to stay? You don’t, do you?”
She shakes her head. Doing a passable John Wayne (or maybe it’s Blaine the
train she’s imitating), she says: “Ah’m a stranger here in Dodge, pilgrim.”
Her heart is pounding slowly and heavily in her chest, but she feels a rising
joy. This is going to be all right. She doesn’t know how it can be, but yes,
it’s going to be just fine. This time ka is working in her favor, and the force
of ka is enormous. This she knows from experience.
“If I asked how I know you… or where you come from…” He pauses,
looking at her levelly, and then says the rest of it. “Or how I can possibly

love you already…?”
She smiles. It feels good to smile, and it no longer hurts the side of her face,
because whatever was there (some sort of scar, maybe—she can’t quite
remember) is gone. “Sugar,” she tells him, “it’s what I said: a long story.
You’ll get some of it in time, though… what I remember of it. And it could
be that we still have some work to do. For an outfit called the Tet
Corporation.” She looks around and then says, “What year is this?”
“1987,” he says.
“And do you live in Brooklyn? Or maybe the Bronx?”
The young man whose dreams and squabbling voices have led him here—
with a cup of hot chocolate in his hand and a MERRY CHRISTMAS hat in
his back pocket—bursts out laughing. “God, no! I’m from White Plains! I
came in on the train with my brother. He’s right over there. He wanted a
closer look at the polar bears.”
The brother. Henry. The great sage and eminent junkie. Her heart sinks.
“Let me introduce you,” he says.
“No, really, I—”
“Hey, if we’re gonna be friends, you gotta be friends with my kid brother.
We’re tight. Jake! Hey, Jake!”
She hasn’t noticed the boy standing down by the railing which guards the
sunken polar bears’ environment from the rest of the park, but now he turns
and her heart takes a great, giddy leap in her chest. Jake waves and ambles
toward them.
“Jake’s been dreaming about you, too,” Eddie tells her. “It’s the only reason I
know I’m not going crazy. Any crazier than usual, at least.”
She takes Eddie’s hand—that familiar, well-loved hand. And when the
fingers close over hers, she thinks she will die of joy. She will have many
questions—so will they—but for the time being she has only one that feels
important. As the snow begins to fall more thickly around them, landing in
his hair and in his lashes and on the shoulders of his sweatshirt, she asks it.
“You and Jake—what’s your last name?”
“Toren,” he says. “It’s German.”
Before either of them can say anything else, Jake joins them. And will I tell
you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does.
But there was happiness.
And they did live.

Beneath the flowing and sometimes glimpsed glammer of the Beam that
connects Shardik the Bear and Maturin the Turtle by way of the Dark Tower,
they did live.
That’s all.
That’s enough.
Say thankya.

CODA

FOUND

One

I’ve told my tale all the way to the end, and am satisfied. It was (I set my
watch and warrant on it) the kind only a good God would save for last, full
of monsters and marvels and voyaging here and there. I can stop now, put

my pen down, and rest my weary hand (although perhaps not forever; the
hand that tells the tales has a mind of its own, and a way of growing
restless). I can close my eyes to Mid-World and all that lies beyond Mid-
World. Yet some of you who have provided the ears without which no tale
can survive a single day are likely not so willing. You are the grim, goal-
oriented ones who will not believe that the joy is in the journey rather than
the destination no matter how many times it has been proven to you. You are
the unfortunate ones who still get the lovemaking all confused with the
paltry squirt that comes to end the lovemaking (the orgasm is, after all,
God’s way of telling us we’ve finished, at least for the time being, and
should go to sleep). You are the cruel ones who deny the Grey Havens,
where tired characters go to rest. You say you want to know how it all comes
out. You say you want to follow Roland into the Tower; you say that is what
you paid your money for, the show you came to see.
I hope most of you know better. Want better. I hope you came to hear the
tale, and not just munch your way through the pages to the ending. For an
ending, you only have to turn to the last page and see what is there writ
upon. But endings are heartless. An ending is a closed door no man (or
Manni) can open. I’ve written many, but most only for the same reason that I
pull on my pants in the morning before leaving the bedroom—because it is
the custom of the country.
And so, my dear Constant Reader, I tell you this: You can stop here. You can
let your last memory be of seeing Eddie, Susannah, and Jake in Central Park,
together again for the first time, listening to the children’s choir sing “What
Child Is This.” You can be content in the knowledge that sooner or later Oy
(probably a canine version with a long neck, odd gold-ringed eyes, and a
bark that sometimes sounds eerily like speech) will also enter the picture.
That’s a pretty picture, isn’t it? I think so. And pretty close to happily ever
after, too. Close enough for government work, as Eddie would say.
Should you go on, you will surely be disappointed, perhaps even
heartbroken. I have one key left on my belt, but all it opens is that final door,

the one marked . What’s behind it won’t improve your love-life,

grow hair on your bald spot, or add five years to your natural span (not even

five minutes). There is no such thing as a happy ending. I never met a single

one to equal “Once upon a time.”

Endings are heartless.

Ending is just another word for goodbye.

Two

Would you still?
Very well, then, come. (Do you hear me sigh?) Here is the Dark Tower, at
the end of End-World. See it, I beg.
See it very well.
Here is the Dark Tower at sunset.

Three

He came to it with the oddest feeling of remembrance; what Susannah and
Eddie called déjà vu.
The roses of Can’-Ka No Rey opened before him in a path to the Dark
Tower, the yellow suns deep in their cups seeming to regard him like eyes.
And as he walked toward that gray-black column, Roland felt himself begin
to slip from the world as he had always known it. He called the names of his
friends and loved ones, as he had always promised himself he would; called
them in the gloaming, and with perfect force, for no longer was there any
need to reserve energy with which to fight the Tower’s pull. To give in—
finally—was the greatest relief of his life.
He called the names of his compadres and amoras, and although each came
from deeper in his heart, each seemed to have less business with the rest of
him. His voice rolled away to the darkening red horizon, name upon name.
He called Eddie’s and Susannah’s. He called Jake’s, and last of all he called
his own. When the sound of it had died out, the blast of a great horn replied,
not from the Tower itself but from the roses that lay in a carpet all around it.
That horn was the voice of the roses, and cried him welcome with a kingly
blast.
In my dreams the horn was always mine, he thought. I should have known
better, for mine was lost with Cuthbert, at Jericho Hill.
A voice whispered from above him: It would have been the work of three
seconds to bend and pick it up. Even in the smoke and the death. Three
seconds. Time, Roland—it always comes back to that.
That was, he thought, the voice of the Beam—the one they had saved. If it
spoke out of gratitude it could have saved its breath, for what good were

such words to him now? He remembered a line from Browning’s poem: One
taste of the old times sets all to rights.
Such had never been his experience. In his own, memories brought only
sadness. They were the food of poets and fools, sweets that left a bitter
aftertaste in the mouth and throat.
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.
‘Twas my own, he thought. He regarded it a moment longer, fascinated, then
put it carefully back where it had been. Where it belonged. When he stood
up again, he saw a baby’s face
(Can this be my darling bah-bo? If you say so, let it be so!)
among the multitude of others. It was contorted, as if its first breath of air
outside the womb had not been to its liking, already fouled with death. Soon
it would pronounce judgment on its new situation with a squall that would
echo throughout the apartments of Steven and Gabrielle, causing those
friends and servants who heard it to smile with relief. (Only Marten
Broadcloak would scowl.) The birthing was done, and it had been a
livebirth, tell Gan and all the gods thankya. There was an heir to the Line of
Eld, and thus there was still the barest outside chance that the world’s rueful
shuffle toward ruin might be reversed.
Roland left that room, his sense of déjà vu stronger than ever. So was the
sense that he had entered the body of Gan himself.
He turned to the stairs and once more began to climb.

Four

Another nineteen steps took him to the second landing and the second room.
Here bits of cloth were scattered across the circular floor. Roland had no
question that they had once been an infant’s clout, torn to shreds by a certain
petulant interloper, who had then gone out onto the balcony for a look back
at the field of roses and found himself betaken. He was a creature of
monumental slyness, full of evil wisdom… but in the end he had slipped,
and now he would pay forever and ever.
If it was only a look he wanted, why did he bring his ammunition with him
when he stepped out?
Because it was his only gunna, and slung over his back, whispered one of
the faces carved into the curve of the wall. This was the face of Mordred.
Roland saw no hatefulness there now but only the lonely sadness of an
abandoned child. That face was as lonesome as a train-whistle on a moonless
night. There had been no clip for Mordred’s navel when he came into the

world, only the mother he had taken for his first meal. No clip, never in life,
for Mordred had never been part of Gan’s tet. No, not he.
My Red Father would never go unarmed, whispered the stone boy. Not once
he was away from his castle. He was mad, but never that mad.
In this room was the smell of talc put on by his mother while he lay naked
on a towel, fresh from his bath and playing with his newly discovered toes.
She had soothed his skin with it, singing as she caressed him: Baby-bunting,
baby dear, baby bring your basket here!
This smell too was gone as quickly as it had come.
Roland crossed to the little window, walking among the shredded bits of
diaper, and looked out. The disembodied eyes sensed him and rolled over
giddily to regard him. That gaze was poisonous with fury and loss.
Come out, Roland! Come out and face me one to one! Man to man! An eye
for an eye, may it do ya!
“I think not,” Roland said, “for I have more work to do. A little more, even
yet.”
It was his last word to the Crimson King. Although the lunatic screamed
thoughts after him, he screamed in vain, for Roland never looked back. He
had more stairs to climb and more rooms to investigate on his way to the top.

Five

On the third landing he looked through the door and saw a corduroy dress
that had no doubt been his when he’d been only a year old. Among the faces
on this wall he saw that of his father, but as a much younger man. Later on
that face had become cruel—events and responsibilities had turned it so. But
not here. Here, Steven Deschain’s eyes were those of a man looking on
something that pleases him more than anything else ever has, or ever could.
Here Roland smelled a sweet and husky aroma he knew for the scent of his
father’s shaving soap. A phantom voice whispered, Look, Gabby, look you!
He’s smiling! Smiling at me! And he’s got a new tooth!
On the floor of the fourth room was the collar of his first dog, Ring-A-Levio.
Ringo, for short. He’d died when Roland was three, which was something of
a gift. A boy of three was still allowed to weep for a lost pet, even a boy with
the blood of Eld in his veins. Here the gunslinger that was smelled an odor
that was wonderful but had no name, and knew it for the smell of the Full
Earth sun in Ringo’s fur.

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.
He climbed on without looking into any more of the rooms, without
bothering to smell their aromas of the past. The stairwell narrowed until his
shoulders nearly touched its curved stone sides. No songs now, unless the
wind was a song, for he heard it soughing.
He passed one final open door. Lying on the floor of the tiny room beyond it
was a pad from which the face had been erased. All that remained were two
red eyes, glaring up.
I have reached the present. I have reached now.
Yes, and there was sunlight, commala sunlight inside his eyes and waiting
for him. It was hot and harsh upon his skin. The sound of the wind was
louder, and that sound was also harsh. Unforgiving. Roland looked at the
stairs curving upward; now his shoulders would touch the walls, for the
passage was no wider than the sides of a coffin. Nineteen more stairs, and
then the room at the top of the Dark Tower would be his.
“I come!” he called. “If’ee hear me, hear me well! I come!”
He took the stairs one by one, walking with his back straight and his head
held up. The other rooms had been open to his eye. The final one was closed
off, his way blocked by a ghostwood door with a single word carved upon it.
That word was

ROLAND.

He grasped the knob. It was engraved with a wild rose wound around a
revolver, one of those great old guns from his father and now lost forever.
Yet it will be yours again, whispered the voice of the Tower and the voice of
the roses—these voices were now one.
What do you mean?
To this there was no answer, but the knob turned beneath his hand, and
perhaps that was an answer. Roland opened the door at the top of the Dark
Tower.
He saw and understood at once, the knowledge falling upon him in a
hammerblow, hot as the sun of the desert that was the apotheosis of all
deserts. How many times had he climbed these stairs only to find himself
peeled back, curved back, turned back? Not to the beginning (when things

might have been changed and time’s curse lifted), but to that moment in the
Mohaine Desert when he had finally understood that his thoughtless,
questionless quest would ultimately succeed? How many times had he
traveled a loop like the one in the clip that had once pinched off his navel,
his own tet-ka can Gan? How many times would he travel it?
“Oh, no!” he screamed. “Please, not again! Have pity! Have mercy!”
The hands pulled him forward regardless. The hands of the Tower knew no
mercy.
They were the hands of Gan, the hands of ka, and they knew no mercy.
He smelled alkali, bitter as tears. The desert beyond the door was white;
blinding; waterless; without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the
mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon. The smell beneath the
alkali was that of the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares,
death.
But not for you, gunslinger. Never for you. You darkle. You tinct. May I be
brutally frank? You go on.
And each time you forget the last time. For you, each time is the first time.
He made one final effort to draw back: hopeless. Ka was stronger.
Roland of Gilead walked through the last door, the one he always sought, the
one he always found. It closed gently behind him.

Eight

The gunslinger paused for a moment, swaying on his feet. He thought he’d
almost passed out. It was the heat, of course; the damned heat. There was a
wind, but it was dry and brought no relief. He took his waterskin, judged
how much was left by the heft of it, knew he shouldn’t drink—it wasn’t time
to drink—and had a swallow, anyway.
For a moment he had felt he was somewhere else. In the Tower itself,
mayhap. But of course the desert was tricky, and full of mirages. The Dark
Tower still lay thousands of wheels ahead. That sense of having climbed
many stairs and looked into many rooms where many faces had looked back
at him was already fading.
I will reach it, he thought, squinting up at the pitiless sun. I swear on the
name of my father that I will.
And perhaps this time if you get there it will be different, a voice whispered
—surely the voice of desert delirium, for what other time had there ever

been? He was what he was and where he was, just that, no more than that, no
more. He had no sense of humor and little imagination, but he was steadfast.
He was a gunslinger. And in his heart, well-hidden, he still felt the bitter
romance of the quest.
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

“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”

Robert Browning

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
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside, (‘since all is o’er,’ he saith
‘And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;’)

VI

When some discuss if near the other graves
Be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame such tender love and stay.

VII
Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among ‘The Band’ to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower’s search addressed
Their steps—that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt was now—should I be fit?

VIII
So, quiet as despair I turned from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway

Into the path he pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

IX
For mark! No sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backwards a last view
O’er the safe road, ‘twas gone; grey plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.
I might go on, naught else remained to do.

X
So on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers—as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind with none to awe,

You’d think; a burr had been a treasure trove.

XI
No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land’s portion. ‘See
Or shut your eyes,’ said Nature peevishly,
‘It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
‘Tis the Last Judgement’s fire must cure this place
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.’

XII
If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped, the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
All hope of greenness? ‘tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.

XIII
As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud!

XIV
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain.
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;

I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

XV
I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart,

As a man calls for wine before he fights,

I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.

Think first, fight afterwards, the soldier’s art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

XVI
Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face

Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm to mine to fix me to the place,
The way he used. Alas, one night’s disgrace!
Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold.

XVII
Giles then, the soul of honour—there he stands

Frank as ten years ago when knighted first,
What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
Good—but the scene shifts—faugh! what hangman hands
Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands

Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

XVIII
Better this present than a past like that:
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

XIX
A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend’s glowing hoof—to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

XX
So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
Whate’er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.

XXI
Which, while I forded—good saints, how I feared

To set my foot upon a dead man’s cheek,
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
—It may have been a water-rat I speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby’s shriek.

XXII
Glad was I when I reached the other bank.

Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,

Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage—

XXIII
The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque,
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?

No footprint leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

XXIV
And more than that—a furlong on—why, there!
What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,

Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel
Men’s bodies out like silk? With all the air

Of Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

XXV
Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,

Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
Changes and off he goes!) within a rood—
Bog, clay and rubble, sand, and stark black dearth.

XXVI
Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil’s

Broke into moss, or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him

Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

XXVII
And just as far as ever from the end!
Naught in the distance but the evening, naught
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom friend,
Sailed past, not best his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my cap—perchance the guide I sought.

XXVIII
For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
‘Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains—with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surprised me—solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.

XXIX
Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick

Of mischief happened to me, God knows when—
In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts—you’re inside the den.

XXX
Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the left a tall scalped mountain… Dunce,
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life spent training for the sight!

XXXI
What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

XXXII
Not see? because of night perhaps?—why day

Came back again for that! before it left
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:

The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—
‘Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!’

XXXIII
Not hear? When noise was everywhere! it tolled

Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers, my peers—
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

XXXIV
There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met

To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! In a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.’

Author’s Note

Sometimes I think I have written more about the Dark Tower books than I
have written about the Dark Tower itself. These related writings include the
ever-growing synopsis (known by the quaint old word Argument) at the
beginning of each of the first five volumes, and afterwords (most totally
unnecessary and some actually embarrassing in retrospect) at the end of all
the volumes. Michael Whelan, the extraordinary artist who illustrated both
the first volume and this last, proved himself to be no slouch as a literary
critic as well when, after reading a draft of Volume Seven, he suggested—in
refreshingly blunt terms—that the rather lighthearted afterword I’d put at the
end was jarring and out of place. I took another look at it and realized he was
right.
The first half of that well-meant but off-key essay can now be found as an
introduction to the first four volumes of the series; it’s called “On Being
Nineteen.” I thought of leaving Volume Seven without any afterword at all;
of letting Roland’s discovery at the top of his Tower be my last word on the
matter. Then I realized that I had one more thing to say, a thing that actually
needed to be said. It has to do with my presence in my own book.
There’s a smarmy academic term for this—“metafiction.” I hate it. I hate the
pretentiousness of it. I’m in the story only because I’ve known for some time
now (consciously since writing Insomnia in 1995, unconsciously since
temporarily losing track of Father Donald Callahan near the end of ‘Salem’s
Lot) that many of my fictions refer back to Roland’s world and Roland’s
story. Since I was the one who wrote them, it seemed logical that I was part
of the gunslinger’s ka. My idea was to use the Dark Tower stories as a kind
of summation, a way of unifying as many of my previous stories as possible

beneath the arch of some über-tale. I never meant that to be pretentious (and
I hope it isn’t), but only as a way of showing how life influences art (and
vice-versa). I think that, if you have read these last three Dark Tower
volumes, you’ll see that my talk of retirement makes more sense in this
context. In a sense, there’s nothing left to say now that Roland has reached
his goal… and I hope the reader will see that by discovering the Horn of Eld,
the gunslinger may finally be on the way to his own resolution. Possibly
even to redemption. It was all about reaching the Tower, you see—mine as
well as Roland’s—and that has finally been accomplished. You may not like
what Roland found at the top, but that’s a different matter entirely. And don’t
write me any angry letters about it, either, because I won’t answer them.
There’s nothing left to say on the subject. I wasn’t exactly crazy about the
ending, either, if you want to know the truth, but it’s the right ending. The
only ending, in fact. You have to remember that I don’t make these things up,
not exactly; I only write down what I see.
Readers will speculate on how “real” the Stephen King is who appears in
these pages. The answer is “not very,” although the one Roland and Eddie
meet in Bridgton (Song of Susannah) is very close to the Stephen King I
remember being at that time. As for the Stephen King who shows up in this
final volume… well, let’s put it this way: my wife asked me if I would
kindly not give fans of the series very precise directions to where we live or
who we really are. I agreed to do that. Not because I wanted to, exactly—
part of what makes this story go, I think, is the sense of the fictional world
bursting through into the real one—but because this happens to be my wife’s
life as well as mine, and she should not be penalized for either loving me or
living with me. So I have fictionalized the geography of western Maine to a
great extent, trusting readers to grasp the intent of the fiction and to
understand why I treated my own part in it as I did. And if you feel a need to
drop in and say hello, please think again. My family and I have a good deal
less privacy than we used to, and I have no wish to give up any more, may it
do ya fine. My books are my way of knowing you. Let them be your way of
knowing me, as well. It’s enough. And on behalf of Roland and all his ka-tet
—now scattered, say sorry—I thank you for coming along, and sharing this
adventure with me. I never worked harder on a project in my life, and I
know—none better, alas—that it has not been entirely successful. What
work of make-believe ever is? And yet for all of that, I would not give back
a single minute of the time that I have lived in Roland’s where and when.

Those days in Mid-World and End-World were quite extraordinary. Those
were days when my imagination was so clear I could smell the dust and hear
the creak of leather.

Stephen King
August 21, 2003