Third Chapter

(First) Steps

1

'Hile, Roland Deschain…'

An ephemeral sighing voice welcomed Roland as he passed through the Dark Tower's great doorframe and into the unknown that lay beyond. Awestruck, he gazed around, not expecting to see anyone, but helpless to keep from looking for a person to place with the voice. There was no one. '...thee of the Eld…' Roland felt that he knew the voice, and that it belonged to the Dark Tower itself—as if it were a living, breathing creature—its timbre smooth, enticing and calm, but at the same time deliberate and horrible. He knew this without understanding, and he needed none. He felt it, felt the Tower, felt their ka and energy uniting.

"Tower" he simply said, his voice gravel and glass.

'Commala,' the Dark Tower replied in a voice that was neither male nor female, becking the gunslinger deeper into its chasm.

"I am come," Roland replied, "finally, I am come."

2

As he walked further into the Dark Tower the gunslinger noticed was there was a soft, constant breath of air being gently dispersed all around him. This was similar to the Holmes Tower in New York where fresh air was blown into the rooms of the building through small vents and holes in the walls. This ever-present wisp of air floated above and past him, and into the great cylindrical void of the Dark Tower's open and soaring interior, which extended beyond what even his bombardier eyes could perceive.

Despite the circulating air, the Dark Tower smelled—old. And while such a relic should smell as such Roland supposed, it also reeked of mothballs and alkali—a rank scent he had despised most of his life. He paused and considered, searching for recognition. There was something else in the air as well that made Roland think of the wolves. It was a scent that had hung in the air after the battle in the rice fields of Calla Bryn Sturgis. What Susannah had called the odor escaped his memory, but its stench was familiar in his nostrils.

He took another step into the grand foyer that he had sought and sought again with its floor of pink polished marble. In the background, he heard a faint, low-pitched humming noise—not exactly like the whirs of machines—but just a hum, simple as that. It was deep and soft, but it both soothed and unnerved him.

The rotunda was open, save for a large central pillar, which was cylindrical and shaded in the same hues and built in the same jagged design as the Dark Tower's exterior. The gunslinger guessed it to be nearly twenty feet in diameter, making it approximately one quarter the width of the Dark Tower's outermost wall. Pale blue light gleamed out at varying places from inside this pillar through narrow black slits in the cylinder's structure, which resembled the window-slits built into the Dark Tower.

'A Tower within the Dark Tower,' Roland thought, walking towards the structure.

The humming noise intensified as he neared the giant pillar and he felt the hair on his neck and arms stiffen. He stopped when the hum rose to a thrum he could hear in his ears and feel in his body. This meshed with the airy song of the roses, and Roland closed his eyes. This was the Dark Tower's song—it's call—as he had heard it forever in his dreams. The deep bass from the pillar's humming combined with the mild heat of the blue light and heavenly treble of the roses and helped Roland to vividly remember these fantasies. Standing this close to the pillar Roland felt he could all but describe everything that would happen from this point forward because he had seen it before—been here before in his dreams.

Roland looked up, knowing he would see that the pillar rose high above and beyond sight, perhaps even reaching all the way to the door that opened to the top room. He was seized with a vertigo he hadn't experienced since his palaver with the man in black in the golgotha of stones, and worlds upon worlds spun around and above him on the Dark Tower's axis. It felt like energies and power from each and every world, galaxy and universe culminated around the exact point where he stood, in the center of time and space.

Roland then looked to his right, knowing he would see the beginning of the massive grand staircase he had seen so many times before. Every fiber of his being begged him to begin his ascent, the climb he had made countless times in his dreams, until he finally reached the legendary top room, but he would linger just a moment longer, held in the awe that was the Dark Tower's song and call that—

Suddenly there was a deep crashing boom behind him, as powerful as thunder. Spinning on his heels, hands falling to a gun no longer there, the gunslinger saw that the great ghostwood door had slammed shut behind him. The peace and clairvoyance of the Tower's song fell away at once. Dust clouds rose from in front of the massive entranceway, and Roland saw at once there was no clasp, knob or latch on its inside panel. The stench that had been hanging in the air when he entered was suddenly gone and replaced with the smell of dust and earth.

Pristine and majestic when he had placed his gunna at its base, the stalwart door now again looked old and swollen in its frame. The gunslinger was not surprised. There would be no exit from the Dark Tower, and he had felt that since pulling Patrick in Ho Fat II across the last wheels before the stone pyramid on the border of Can'-Ka No Rey. The end was near, say true. Given his entire existence had been dedicated to standing exactly where he was at that moment, he cared nothing at all that he would likely never leave.

His ka-tet had stood true and remembered the faces of their fathers very well. They had killed with their hearts, and mowed down those threatening their path in the name of the Tower, the Eld, and Ka. He took the last of his moment to speak a silent word for them to any power that would hear him.

Having honored his fallen, Roland turned his attention to the smooth off-white interior walls of the Dark Tower, which slowly narrowed in diameter as they rose with the Tower's height. They first appeared to be bare, but as he walked closer he saw that there was something the last light of day made hard to perceive, but something, nonetheless. As he neared the wall he saw that, ever so faintly, there was a large picture literally engraved into it. He walked up the first few steps of the massive, open-sided stairwell, which was made of wide pink marbled steps and saw that this mural appeared to wind upwards with the countless stairs.

With the clairvoyance afforded to him standing by the central pillar gone, Roland had no memory of the mural, but believed in all his travels he had never seen such intricate and perfect art. He ran his hand across its smooth surface and sighed in silent fascination. The engraving marks had all been shaded in a charcoal hue to bring the entire work to life in contrast to its off-white canvas.

Beginning at the base of the grand staircase, the engraved images showed a small bassinette in the center of a majestic bedroom suite. Inside, an infant, looking only days old, gazed indifferently into the eyes of its presumed mother and father, who were kneeling beside their new baby. Even in the fading light of day, the faces of Steven and Gabrielle Deschain were unmistakable, etched to perfection beside the winding stairs.

3

The gunslinger moved several steps upward. The mural, more detailed than anything he had ever seen, transitioned seamlessly from one scene to the next using the end of one event to begin the next. The first of this began from the master bedroom where his parents knelt beside his bassinette, the curtains at the great window were blowing inside a bit, perhaps from the help of a summer Gileadian breeze. Behind one of these curtains stood Marten, the man of many faces and names and Stephen Deschain's wizard, hiding from sight. Marten's head was turned from the room, eyes narrowed and cunning, glaring out the window at a group of young boys standing in a straight line on a large field. The gunslinger easily recognized he and his ka-mates Cuthbert Allgood, Alain Johns, Jaime De Curry, no doubt listening to whatever lesson Cort was belting out that particular day.

'It's a picture of my life,' Roland thought, humbled at the meticulous detail and beauty he had only ever seen before from Patrick's hands. But despite his awe and desire to follow the Tower's limn of his life's journey, he forced himself back from the wall. His heart thumped in his chest and he shielded his eyes from seeing more before he could become entranced.

Roland had burned for the top room of the Dark Tower with every step of his quest—and now that fire was roaring with a ferocity that was all but intolerable. He knew that the ascent to the pinnacle would not be easy, and the last light of day reminded him of how quickly time was fleeting. As most of his journey had been, the way to the top room could be laden with traps.

'Like yon mural, there will be much that will seek to slow me down,' he hold himself, 'I must go.'

Though he had been exhausted for literally years, the gunslinger had felt the most fatigued on the final leg of his journey with Patrick in tow behind him. In this state Roland had been unable to shake the thought that he had been so focused on just reaching the Dark Tower that he hadn't considered the implications or strategy for ascending it. Thus, he had refused Stuttering Bill's truckomobile that would have carried he, Patrick, Susannah and Oy to the field of Can'-Ka No Rey from the Federal, a hundred and twenty wheels back in much less time. And yet, now that he was here, he found that he was still unprepared for the Tower's enormity.

'Yet I would reach the top room before sundown,' he thought, the call of the Tower still in his ears, 'and see the glare of the rainbow in its full glory.'

The idea of reaching the top room at any other time was not something something Roland had considered. The prophecy had always been that he would come to the Dark Tower at sunset, and he wanted the day's last light to blaze through the top room's stained glass and fall over him—to cleanse him—and become the finest hour of his existence. He wanted it, and now it was finally possible. As Eddie Dean had said and shown so many times, starting with the whittled key that had re-drawn Jake into Mid-World, all things were possible.

'…before sundown…' ran like a wild mantra in his brain.

He looked back to the massive stairwell and saw that there was still adequate light seeping into the Tower through the slim windows that lined its black-gray exterior. He began his ascent to the top room at a blurred pace, struggling to not look at his apparent life history engraved into the ivory walls running at pace with him. He raced on—at times taking two steps at a clip—for at long last, his true quest for the Dark Tower's top room had begun, and he ran like hell itself was behind him.

4

As he ran Roland thought of New York and the symbolic Holmes "Tower" that stood there. He wondered how many other wheres and whens he had not seen, and presumably never would, and how their respective Towers aligned with the Dark Tower. He remembered the odd wonder that had been Feemalo, Fimalo and Fumalo at Le Casse Roi Russe. They had spoken of such things—and such Towers.

Roland then thought of the rose in the vacant lot in New York and its sweet nectar of song. It was a song that he heard faintly now as well, seeping through the narrow slit windows. He remembered being pulled into the golden hue of the rose's epicenter, as if being moved from his very body and into all possible realms—all possible wheres and whens. He sighed, knowing he would likely never see that lot or the rose again.

He looked upward as he continued his ascent. The stairway was colossal and extended far beyond sight into the soaring limits of the Tower's vast interior. Roland watched the central pillar as he ran, its flashes of faint blue light gleaming out as he passed the narrow slits in its structure. After climbing for several minutes, the gunslinger saw from below he had barely made any progress in the Tower's awesome height. He wondered how it was possible that so many wheres and worlds could be contained in the center of a single rose, but he could run outright for as long as he had and hardly have gone anywhere.

The muscles in Roland's legs began to burn and cramp, but he hardly noticed.

The humming noise and moving circulating air continued as the gunslinger raced up the marble steps. He saw nothing ahead, and surely it was too soon to look for the top room's door, but Roland could feel something around him—some new grander force was culminating outside his control. Something was here, all but pulling at Roland to respond in some way. But time was short, and what would come would come. He continued his relentless ascent, the stairs before him winding seemingly forever upward. There were countless steps to climb before the sun's final orange sliver way to dusk. How could he possibly make it in time?

He silenced his mind—what would come would come.