Forward:
The inspiration for this story lies not only with Stephen King's "Dark tower cycle", but also with such films as Resident Evil. at the same time, I began working on notes concerning another world entirely, a world that finished up in this story. I'll not say much about it here, so as not to leave an enormous spoiler at the outset for new readers. One character from that world, however, seems to fit more comfortably in the "dark tower" multiverse than anywhere else, so don't expect the crimson King to be the only all-powerful multiversal villain in these pages. I originally intended to consintrate on "ghost dog", the first volume of the "Multiverse Chronicles", but ideas kept coming for "Beyond The Tower" instead. Over the last four years, I've finished up revising the text time and time again, each time improving it. Sometimes the revisions included adding whole new sections of text to chapters, at other times whole new chapters, at still others, they consisted of no more than changing the order of chapters. In any case, I've enjoyed the on-going project and hope the ideas will keep coming.
One of those ideas, one that was in place from the beginning, was roland entering the tower and not being looped back to the start of the cycle. In order to bring that idea to fruition, however, I needed to introduce new characters. My original idea, before "Ghost Dog" came to be, was to introduce the characters of Mark and alison as already having entered All-World, but that left far too many questions. As a result of which, I began writing backwards, so to speek, but thanks to ideas coming for the third volume first, am still working backwards, whilst at the same time continuing this story. As always, reviews are always welcome. Hopefully this will be the last time the existing chapters will be reordered. The reason for this revision is the placement of the Iyana's tale chapters in what I've decided is the incorrect order. As of this update, the iyana's Tale chapters can be read one directly after the other, leaving Mark, Alison, and stephen hanging until the fourth chapter.
a word about a particular passage in chapter 4. I originally began beyond the tower as what stephen King referred to in his forward to "The Green Mile" as a "chap book". As a result, I put in a recap of the events of the first three chapters and am at a loss as to how to revise said recap out. If anyone has any ideas on how to do that, i'd apreciate the feedback.
Argument:
Beyond The Tower is the third volume of a longer tale entitled "The Multiverse Chronicles", inspired by Stephen king's "Dark Tower Cycle', which in its turn owes a debt to robert Browning's narrative poem "Child roland to the dark tower came". The multiverse Chronicles recount the adventures, in this world and many others, of Mark Rimer and Alison Hartley, a seemingly ordinary 21st century couple, who seem to attract the strangest events. The first volume, Ghost Dog, which takes place in our world, begins as Mark and Alison come into possession of the old Joe Camber place in the small town of Castle Rock, Maine.
Who are Mark and Alison? What sets them apart from others? we have some answers to those questions. We know that Mark ran away from home when he was only sixteen in an attempt to escape his insane Mother. We know that Alison was also abused. We also know that during his teen-age years, Mark traveled across America and back, some of his stops being in places in which strange events took place at one time or another.
We also know that shortly after he and Alison first met, they spent some time in up-state New York, where they encountered a young woman named Jade Jones, whose very existence was crucial to the future of all universes. We also know that following their stay in New York state, they returned to New England but had to flee their former place of residence thanks to Alison's Father, who, unlike Mark's mother, is still very much alive and extremely dangerous.
Shortly after they arrive in castle Rock, Maine, strange events begin to take place, both in their lives and in the lives of those around them.
One of the first people in town they meet is Marie Vannay-Andris-Merril-Davis, who, after the death of her husband and childhood friends in another world, crossed dimensions and was adopted by old Pop Merril, Castle Rock's sharpest traider. Marie is one of the last of the gunslingers of Mid-World and is the only law the local Walk Ins, those who cross from world to world, acknowledge.
We also possess some answers concerning Marie. We know that she was raised to the "way of the gun" in Giliad. We know that her Father was able Vannay. We also know that she was the bride of Cordland Andris, gunslinging instructor. We know that following the final battle in which the line of Eld was all but destroyed, she accidentally crossed into our world through a thin place between dimensions such as those through which the walk ins who reside in the areas surrounding Castle Rock crossed. We also know that she is connected in some way to Roland of Giliad, whose endless, questionless quest for the Dark Tower is the only thing that can ultimately save all existence from final destruction. We know that Marie's world is related to our own in certain fundimental ways. Machines, left over from an ancient advanced civilization, still exist, some of which are extremely dangerous. We know also that certain songs, Hey Jude, for instance, and the bit of doggerel that begins "Beans, beans, the musical fruit ...") have survived, as have customs and rituals oddly like those from our own romanticized view of the American west. Marie herself remembers her world, particularly Giliad, as being "filled with love and light", although how closely her memory of her world resembles what that world has become since her departure is very much open to question.
We know that that since her arrival in our world that she has witnessed much that has occurred in castle Rock, including the arrival of a being she knows as "the Peddler", a creature who isn't really a man at all. We know that this creature, in return for her pain, gave her a neclace of black pearls which has given her endless life and causes her aging process to halt. Since that time, she has married, and her husband in our world, a man named John davis, holds dark secrets he is more than willing to kill to protect. We also know that Marie is being hunted, but we do not yet know by whom.
Mark and Alison learn from Marie that their home was once the sight of four deaths, deaths caused by a rabid dog, which was, at the end, more than just a dog, and that the murderous spirit that drove the animal may still be at large somewhere on the property. As time goes on, supernatural manifestations begin to make themselves felt, not only on the old Camber property, but elsewhere in town as well. Then, people begin to die, torn to pieces by what appears to be a savage beast.
It soon becomes clear that the restless spirit of Cujo, the dog responsible for the deaths years ago is still very much alive and even more dangerous than it was when it possessed a mortal body. After a confrontation that lasts a day and half a night, Mark, Alison, Marie, and a family who stopped to have their car fixed manage to best the marauding creature of darkness.
Shortly after this, Mark and Alison discover a free-standing door with the cryptic word "ka-tet" written or carved into it in their back field. Ghost Dog ends with Mark and Alison stepping through the door and into another world.
The second volume, The Rode to the Tower, begins several months later in Mid-World, where Mark and Alison have encountered Stephen Deschain the younger, another descendent of the ancient line of gunslingers dating back to Arthur Eld, he who once swore to defend the Dark Tower which stands at the heart of all universes and holds the whole of existence together.
Stephen has trained Mark and Alison in the ways of the gun and has persuaded them to accompany him on a quest to locate his long lost brother Roland of Gilead and his ka-tet and insure that when they reach the Tower, for which Roland has searched all his life, they reach it in the correct world. Although the tower exists in many forms in many worlds, it exists in two worlds as itself, one in "Tower Keystone," the world in which Mark and Alison find themselves after stepping through the door and one in "Tower World B," a world almost identical to Tower Keystone except for a few differences.
In Tower World B, where Roland and his ka-tet have found themselves following a crossing back to an alternate version of our world which has been ravaged by a plague, the Breakers, humans with various psychic abilities who have been abducted by agents of the Crimson King, he who seeks to bring down the tower and rule the great discord which will be all that remains, are based in a minimum security facility known as either Blue Heaven, The Devar-Toi, or Algul Siento, while in Tower Keystone, the Breakers are imprisoned in a Hell-like no-place called Din-Tah, The Burning Caves, or The Furnace Lands.
After several adventures on their rode, the three encounter another door which takes them to the deserted town of Fedic in Tower World B, where they meet Roland, Eddie Dean of New York, Susannah Dean of New York, Jake Chambers of New York, Mordred Deschain, the supernaturally conceived son of Roland and the Crimson King, and Oy, a billy-bumbler, of Mid-World. They convince Roland's ka-tet, thanks to the guns Stephen wares and his use of the High Speech of Gilead, that they are "true," and to follow them back through the door and into the proper world, since their quest in Tower World B, the freeing of the Breakers from the Devar-Toi, is finished and that the tower in Tower World B is no more than a trap designed to capture the one or ones, whose ka it is to climb the tower in Tower Key Stone and best the Crimson King, who unlike the one in Tower world B, who is trapped on a balcony two levels up the side of the false tower, is imprisoned in a sell at the top of the true tower and who still has designs on destroying it and freeing his physical being to join with his dark essence and bring about the end of all existence.
After crossing the white lands of Empathica where Mordred gives his life to save the ka-tet from destruction by a being known as Dandelo, the extended ka-tet reach Can'-Ka No Rey, which is both the name of the road to the tower and the field of roses in which the tower stands, there to climb the tower and confront that which sits, a prisoner, within. Beyond the Tower begins as Mark, Alison, Stephen, Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy approach the tower and prepare for the final battle.
Prologue:
Through The Final Door.
Mark Rimer, Alison Hartley, and Stephen Deschain the younger followed as Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy began making their way, Eddie carrying Susannah, along the road which led toward the endless field of singing roses, toward the tower which stood before them in the light of the setting sun, its rising spiral of windows reflecting the day's dying light. The song of the roses was all around them, combined with that of the tower, a song that called to them all.
"Come, gunslingers, come. Embrace your ka and come. The final quest is achieved. Come, gunslingers, come and enter."
They were climbing a gently upsloping hill not much different from hundreds of others they had climbed on their final road. The overgrown road they followed was lined on either side with the remains of rock walls; wild roses grew in amiable profusion amid the tumbles of fieldstone. In the open, brush-dotted land beyond these fallen walls were strange stone edifices. Some looked like the ruins of castles; others had the appearance of Egyptian obelisks; a few were clearly Speaking Rings of the sort where demons may be summoned; one ancient ruin of stone pillars and plinths had the look of Stone-henge. One almost expected to see hooded Druids gathered in the center of that great circle, perhaps casting the runes, but the keepers of these monuments, these precursors of the Great Monument, were all gone. Only small herds of bannock grazed where once they worshipped.
Now, as they rose from each dip and topped each hill, the Dark Tower seemed to spring closer. More of the spiraling windows which ran around its great circumference became visible. How much was visible over the horizon? How much were the gunslingers looking at? A hundred feet? Perhaps as much as two hundred? They didn't know, but they could see at least twenty of the narrow slit-windows which ascended the Tower's barrel in a spiral, and they could see the oriel window at the top, its many colors blazing in the spring sunshine, the black center seeming to peer back at them like the very Eye of ToDash. The gunslingers could see two steel posts jutting from the top. The clouds which followed the Paths of the three working Beams seemed to flow away from the tips, making a great X -shape with a vertical line through it in the sky. The combined voice of the roses and the tower grew louder, and all the ka-tet realized they were singing the names of the world. Of all the worlds. they didn't know how they could know that, but they were sure of it.
They soon came to the foot of a much steeper hill. It was, the gunslingers' hearts told them, the last hill. Can'-Ka No Rey was beyond. At the top, on the right, was a cairn of boulders that had once been a small pyramid. What remained stood about thirty feet high. Roses grew around its base in a rough crimson ring. As they climbed, the top of the Dark Tower once more appeared. Each step brought a greater length of it into view. Now they could see the balconies with their waist-high railings. There was no need of binoculars or a telescope, one of which Mark carried in his pack; the air was preternaturally clear. Roland put the distance remaining at no more than five miles. Perhaps only three. Level after level rose before the gunslingers' not-quite-disbelieving eyes.
At length, they crested the final hill and looked ahead. Below them was a great blanket of red that stretched to the horizon in every direction. The road cut through it, a dusty white line perfectly straight and perhaps twelve feet wide. In the middle of the rose-field stood the sooty dark gray Tower, just as it had stood in Roland's dreams; its windows gleamed in the sun. Here the road split and made a perfect white circle around the Tower's base to continue on the other side, in a direction Roland said was now likely dead east instead of south-by-east. Another road ran off at right angles to the Tower Road: to the north and south, if he was right in believing that the points of the compass had been re-established. From above, the Dark Tower would look like the center of a blood-filled gunsight.
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, as did the others. The time of their combined destiny was come.
As they went, Roland raised the horn of Eld to his lips, winding it as he had done in a thousand forgotten dreams.
"Now I shall sing all their names," he thought.
As the echoes of the horn died away, Alison took from her purse the "Dark Bells" of the Little Sisters which Stephen Deschain had rescued from the desert where Roland had let them fall after the death of Jenna, the sister who had saved his life uncounted years ago. She donned the wimple and as she slowly shook her head the dark bells rang out. Their note, unlike that of Eld's horn, did not die away. Rather, it seemed to grow and become a sweet song of insects that sounded almost, but not quite, like crickets.
"Now comes Roland to the dark tower!" Roland cried, "I have been true and I still carry the gun of my Father and you will open to my hand!" I come in the name of Stephen Deschain the elder, he of Gilead! I come in the name of Gabrielle Deschain, she of Gilead! I come in the name of Cortland Andris, he of Gilead! I come in the name of Marie Andris, she 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 Thomas Whitman, 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 come in the name of Mordred Deschain, he of two Fathers! I come in the name of Patrick Danville, he of America! I come in the name of Stephen Deschain the younger, the brother I never knew, he of Gilead! I come in the name of Mark Rimer, he of America! I come in the name of Alison Hartley, she of America! "I am Roland of Gilead, and I come as myself; you will open to me."
As Roland said the last words, and an answering horn blast came from the roses of Can'-Ka No Rey, Mark noticed that the ground behind them was swarming with small black insects twice the size of ants. These, he knew, were the "Little Doctors," called by the Dark Bells and he knew also why they had obeyed the summons. The Dark Bells had belonged to Sister Jenna and she was linked to them, a link that not even death or supposed death could break. Roland had told them all of how Jenna had died, struck by the rays of the rising sun, and had become nothing but a swarm of the "Doctor Bugs," as he had then called them. Now, thanks to the ringing of the Dark Bells, she had come, possibly to aid them. After all, there had yet been no sign of Los, although they had been warned that he would attempt to stop them reaching the tower by any means necessary.
Suddenly, before them stood a man robed in black, his dark eyes on them.
"Gunslingers," he said in a cold voice, "you have yet to deal with me. Did you imagine I would simply allow you to enter the tower unchallenged?"
"Martin," Roland breathed, "Martin Broadcloke. Known in some circles as the Covenant Man. Once again we meet."
"For the last time, Roland," the Dark Man replied, "remember the warning I left you when you quitted the Kansas emptied by my plague. This time I won't go away."
"And remember ours in Fedic," Mark said, moving up beside Roland and dropping his hands to the buts of the guns he wore slung low and tied down gunslinger fashion, "this time you'll die. You've caused us a great deal of trouble and we'll be rid of you for good if you don't move aside."
"Oh, Sai Rimer," said The Man In Black, turning his eyes on Mark, "you talk a good game, but can you deliver? Perhaps this time you've bitten off a bit more than you can chew. Remember, I'm not, strictly speaking, human. I darkle. I tinct. It has been given to me to live backwards in time. I am known as the Ageless Stranger, among other names. I have been called the Wizard, the Magician, and I have even been called Merlin, or Maerlyn, but who cares, for I was never that one, and..."
Before the Man In Black could go on any further, an unearthly shriek came from somewhere above them.
"Eeeeeeeeeee! Die, gunslingers! Eeeeeeeeeee!"
Mark's eyes were drawn upward toward the top of the tower. In its topmost window he spied a murderous red eye.
"Eye of the king," he thought, "Abbalah, Abbalah-doon, Can-tah Abbalah, Ram Abbalah, Sheol Munshun."
Then came high, chattering laughter that set Mark's teeth on edge; beside him, Eddie covered his ears. The lunacy in that laughter was almost unbearable.
Alison's eyes, unlike Marks' never left the Dark Man. As Mark looked toward the Tower, she drew her guns with liquid speed and leveled them at the creature before her.
"Die!" she cried, and squeezed both triggers. All twelve slugs misfired.
"Oh, but this is so boring," the Dark Man tittered, "this was tried before, but oh, you weren't there. Were you? Those won't work against me. Only misfire against me, Alison."
In front of Alison, Roland turned toward the Man In Black. In his hand was one of the weapons Dinky Earnshaw and Ted Brautigan had left for the ka-tet in Tower World B.
"You forget, Martin, or Walter, or whatever you call yourself now," he said, "the guns of my world are not all we have."
Roland squeezed off three shots, aiming directly at the head of the sorcerer who had plagued his steps for so long. The bullets struck home and just for a moment a look of surprise crossed the Man In Black's features, then the physical form inhabiting the black robes was gone and the robes fell, empty, to the ground. For a moment longer, something seemed to stand where the Dark Man had stood and then it was gone, vanishing back the way the gunslingers had come with a sound of vile wings.
Alison turned to Mark.
"Are you alright?" she asked. Mark nodded and the ka-tet went on toward the tower.
Roland 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 the gunslingers in a path to the Dark Tower, the yellow suns deep in their cups seeming to regard them like eyes.
Once more Roland winded the horn of Eld and once more the roses answered.
They 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 that had answered Roland's, echo away to nothing. The feeling of déjà vu that had come over Roland was still strong, almost as though he had been here after all. And of course he had been, in ten thousand premonitory dreams.
After a moment, the gunslingers walked on to where the path ended at the steel-banded slab of black ghostwood.
At the Tower's foot Roland stopped and took the silver cross he had been given in the town of River Crossing and laid it on the ground. Before them the final door stood, on its surface a single word was written in the High Speech of Gilead. The word was "unfound." As Roland's hand touched the door the first two letters of the inscription vanished leaving the word "found."
As the door swung open and the ka-tet entered Roland said, "Look not in any of the rooms. What you would find there are mere images of the past. They are unimportant."
At their feet, a stairway spiraled upward out of sight.
There was a sighing voice, "Welcome, Roland, thee of Eld. Welcome, Stephen, thee of Eld. welcome, Eddie, thee of New York. Welcome, Susannah, thee of New York. Welcome, Jake, the of New York. Welcome, Oy, thee of Mid-World. Welcome, Mark, thee of America. Welcome, Alison, thee of America." 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 Roland had felt deep in his head even thousands of miles from here had always been Gan's beating life-force.
"Commala, gunslingers. Commala-come-come."
And wafting out came the smell of alkali, bitter as tears. The smell of…what? What, exactly? Before Roland could place it the odor was gone, leaving him to surmise he had imagined it.
The ka-tet turned to the stairs and the Song of the Tower, which Roland 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 they were not left in blackness. The light that remained was that of the shining spiral windows, mixed with the glow of sunset.
"There isn't enough room for us to spread out," Mark said, "how do we do this?
"We go in single file," Roland answered, "I will lead, then Stephen, you, Alison, then Eddie and Susannah. Jake and Oy are drogue."
"Ogue!" Oy agreed.
As they stood at the foot of the seemingly unending stairway, Roland looked toward their destination. "Now comes Roland," he called, and the words seemed to spiral up into infinity. "Thee at the top, hear and make me and my ka-tet welcome if you would. If you're our enemy, know that we mean no ill."
They began to climb, with the outer wall of the tower rising to their right. To their left, the inner wall formed an unbroken cylinder of gray stone.
Nineteen steps brought them 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 they knew, one was the face of Calvin Tower, peeping slyly over the top of an open book. The faces looked at them and they heard their murmuring.
"Welcome Roland, you of the many miles and many worlds; welcome thee of Gilead, thee of Eld." The others were likewise greeted and for each one, a title was given.
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 Roland's, Mark's, and Eddie's eyes-was a small round window, little bigger than an outlaw's peekhole. There was a sweet smell, and this one Roland identified as 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.
The room was unfurnished, but a small conglomeration of objects lay on the floor. Two of the objects were small cedar clips, their bows wrapped in bits of blue silk ribbon. Roland 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 bits of silk on these ones told that they had belonged to boys. A girl's clip would have been wrapped with pink ribbon. The clips sat atop a pile of white blankets, such as Mark, Alison, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake had seen in hospitals.
"Twas my own," Roland thought, looking at one of the clips. 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 Stephen 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.
The ka-tet left that room, Roland's sense of déjà vu stronger than ever. So was the sense that they had entered the body of Gan himself.
They turned to the stairs and once more began to climb.
Nineteen steps more, and another landing, and another door. The room thus revealed contained two home-made diapers, as well as five which were quite clearly purchased in stores in the world from which Eddie, Susannah, Jake, Mark, and Alison had come. This room contained a mingled scent of soap, warm water, and what could only be scented candles.
Roland's memories in this room were of his Father and Mother, they who had given him life, never suspecting that another of their children had lived, had been spirited away from Gilead immediately following his birth, had been marked for death by Martin Broadcloke, had been rescued from his fate by an old man who, some said, was no more a man than the sorcerer who had abducted the second child of Deschain from his cradle.
Their attention was then drawn to one of the faces carved into the curve of the wall. This was the face of Mordred, who, at the end had given his life to protect them. They 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, a state of being Mark and Alison could both identify with. 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.
Also in this room was the smell of talc put on Roland 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.
On the third landing Roland 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, Stephen 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!
The others also saw reminders of their pasts and faces they knew well.
On the floor of the fourth room was the collar of Roland's 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 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 gunny he had played at Watch Me that night, as Marie, Able Vannay's daughter had been not yet a gunslinger, and he had not been about to violate the vow he had made to her and take a whore. So he had instead passed the time at cards till the place had closed, at which time he had returned to the castle, where his Father had found him the next morning. The smell in David's Room was that of frying pork, pickles, salted beef, bacon, frying fish, eggs, and apple-beer.
As the others followed Roland, they noticed that close to the physical remains of David, was a home-made sling, and several unfired bullets.
"I do not shoot with my hand," Roland thought, "he who shoots with his hand..."
"The tower is telling our story," Alison whispered in wonder.
"But it tells of only the death," Roland said, "and I have sown much death in my quest to reach it."
"But out of death came life," Stephen added, "and not all the deaths were of your making."
"He always blames himself," Eddie contributed, "it's something I've been trying to get him to quit, but he just won't, no matter what Suse or I say."
"It's not just telling of the death," Mark said as the ka-tet looked into the room above David's and saw a pair of apprentice revolvers, another pair of guns, these ones the big ones with the sandalwood grips, a gun Jake recognized as belonging to his Father, a duplicate of Roland's knife, and, strangest of all, a set of tools Mark recognized as the first ones with which he had ever repaired a car.
"Think you that these reminders of the past are a distraction?" Stephen inquired as they began climbing again.
"I know not," Roland answered, "I know only that we must press on."
"Here's a question nobody thought to ask," Mark said, "how the hell'd you know what'd be in the rooms in the first place? Furthermore, how'd you know there'd be rooms inside the tower? For all any of us knew, the tower contained just stairs and nothing else."
To this, Roland made no answer.
There was no more red to light their way now, only the eldritch blue glow of the windows, glass eyes that were alive, glass eyes that looked upon the intruders. Outside the Dark Tower, the roses of Can'-Ka No Rey had closed for another day. Part of Roland's 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 have lain where it had fallen on the rocky slope of Jericho Hill if not for his picking it up when he had crawled from the dead pile in which he had hidden following that fateful last battle.
"And of course I've seen these rooms before! They're telling my life, after all, all our lives."
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, together with those of his tet. 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), Roland wished to look no more. This one contained the charred stake to which Susan Delgado had been bound. They did not enter, but looked at the face upon the wall. That much Roland owed her. She had been loved by Sheemie, a love that was eventually returned by her, but, love or no love, in the end she had still burned.
"This is a place of death," Roland said, "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. But there is hope, this time. For you have finally learned that those you met on your long journey are not simply tools for you to use and then discard, stepping stones on your path to the tower. Your humanity has been won. There is hope, this time, may it please ya?"
After the thirty-eighth floor, Roland climbed faster, the others matching his pace.
Standing outside, Roland had judged the Tower to be roughly six hundred feet high. But as the ka-tet peered into the hundredth room, and then the two hundredth, they felt sure they must have climbed eight times six hundred. Soon they would be closing in on the mark of distance Mark, Alison, and the others from America-side called a mile. That was more floors than there possibly could be, no Tower could be a mile high! but still they climbed, climbed until they were nearly running, yet never did they tire. It once crossed Roland's 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 they sensed behind their eyes was brighter now, and did not seem so blue. They passed a room containing Zoltan, the bird from the dweller's hut on the edge of the desert Roland had crossed alone in search of the Man In Black. They passed a room containing the atomic pump from the Way Station. They climbed more stairs, paused outside a room containing a dead lobstrosity, and by now the light they sensed was much brighter and no longer blue.
It was…
Roland 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.
The ka-tet climbed on without looking into any more of the rooms, without bothering to smell their aromas of the past.
As the ascent continued, the gunslingers began to notice a sound coming from above. It seemed to be the ticking of thousands, or possibly millions of clocks.
The source of the sound became apparent when they reached the landing Mark guessed as the one-thousand, nine-hundreth, which is nineteen times a hundred, may it please ya. The room revealed by the open door seemed to be filled with every type of clock imaginable, all of which were running, all of which seemed to be set to a different time.
"What are they?" Eddie breathed.
"They are the clocks that keep time for all who live," Roland replied.
They moved on, stopping again at the next landing, whose door revealed what appeared to be a well filled with a glowing liquid.
"The Well of Life," Susannah said in awe, "this is where it all starts."
"It was not like this any of the other times," Roland said, his face betraying the fact that something was going on inside his head.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Eddie asked.
"This is not the first time I have reached the tower," Roland answered, "every other time, I reached and entered the tower alone, and according to Stephen, I was not even in the right world. I have been through the loop eighteen times, and on none of those occasions did I possess Eld's horn. I never stopped to pick it up when it fell from Cuthbert's hands at Jericho Hill. But this time, when I found myself back in the desert, it was hanging from my gunbelt, just behind my right gun, and I remembered picking it up."
"This makes it your nineteenth time," Eddie said, "that fucking number keeps on popping up, but that can't be the only reason things are different this time, can it?"
"Stephen, Mark, and Alison found us this time and made certain we found our way back to where we should have been," Roland said, "it is ka."
The others had expected such a response from him. After all, 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, even if he now knew that this journey to the top of the tower had not been the first, or the second, or even the tenth.
"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?"
From that point on, the gunslingers ceased looking into the rooms, as the landing above the well-room contained a miniature of a landscape whose contours and angles were off, wrong in a way that made the eyes and mind hurt.
"Parkus told of the upper levels of the Tower," Stephen said, "it is best not to look. Mayhap he has seen what lies within them, but they are not for such as us to see."
Every nineteen steps the ka-tet came to another level and soon they lost count of how many levels they had passed. The outer wall gradually sloped inward causing the ka-tet to turn nearly sideways as they walked up the seemingly endless spiral of stairs. From behind them came not only the ticking of the clocks in the room below, but the song of the Little Doctors, which seemed to be growing in volume, as if the insects were following their course. Yes, and there was sunlight, commala sunlight inside their eyes and waiting for them. It was hot and harsh upon their skin. But it seemed to be not the light of a single sun, but of two. The sound of the wind was louder, and that sound was also harsh. Unforgiving. For a moment Mark wondered if a stark blast were on the horizon, but a moment's reflection disabused him of that notion. the wind they could hear didn't sound as if it were one that carried cold with it. As they made their way toward the final door, the voice of the tower spoke again, but this time only Stephen heard it.
"All will not be as it seems. Not all death is death. Ka-tet will not be broken. Beneath the doubled sun lies deception."
Finally, they came to the place where the stairs ended and before them stood one last door, this one firmly shut. It was like, but yet unlike the door Roland had come to at the end of all his other quests for the tower. On it was written not "Roland," but the word in the High Speech "Ka."
The door was, like the one in the Tower's base, composed of black ghostwood, its golden knob sculpted with the shape of a wild rose wound round a revolver. As Roland touched it, the door swung open, revealing, not the Desert, but a chamber that appeared much larger than the space at the top of the tower could permit. This space was, however, contained within the tower, as evidence the grey stone walls that could dimly be seen surrounding it. In the exact center of this vast enclosure was a throne-like chair carved of dull orange rock. On this throne, bound by chains of some glowing metal none of the ka-tet could even attempt to place, let alone recognize, sat a being that had, at some time in the distant past before the world had moved on, taken the form of an old man with an enormous nose, hooked and waxy; red lips that bloomed in the snow of a luxuriant beard; snowy hair that spilled down its back almost all the way to its scrawny bottom. Its pink-flushed face held crimson eyes that seemed to reflect the ToDash darkness itself. The robes in which it was clad were of a brilliant red and dotted here and about with lightning strokes and cabalistic symbols. To Susannah, Eddie, Jake, Mark, and Alison he looked like Father Christmas. To Roland and Stephen Deschain he looked like what he was: Hell, incarnate.
Before any of the gunslingers could step through, however, a great wind which came from nowhere and everywhere at once plucked Mark, Alison, and Stephen Deschain the younger from their place on the landing before the door and swept them through together with the swarm of Little Doctors, whose song never wavered. For a moment Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy saw their ka-mates within the enclosure and then the door slammed shut with a flat, no nonsense bang. From behind it came a shriek of madness, rage, and hatred, a shriek that seemed to be, at first, one of triumph, and then one of cheated fury. A moment later the door opened again and a voice, the voice of the tower itself said, "Come Roland of Gilead. Come Eddie of New York. Come Susannah of New York. Come Jake of New York. Come Oy of Mid-World. The battle awaits. Your enemy is at hand. The king is in his tower, eating bread and honey. The breakers in the basement, making all the money. Commala-come-come, The battle's now begun! And all the foes of men and rose Rise with the setting sun."