Sixth Chapter
Divination
1
Panic, no longer a pang but a physical force, flooded the gunslinger's body. It didn't make sense! The stairway had finally ended at the landing—seemingly right where the Tower's apex should be, and where the top room felt the closest—but the landing was a dead end? Roland ran around the walls, feeling and pushing with his hands, but he found nothing. It didn't make sense.
Eyes wide, the gunslinger walked back towards the stairwell looking around the landing as he went for something—anything. He continued to the stairwell and checked for any sign he could have missed, but he only saw the central pillar and Mordred's body ahead of the countless others on the stairs.
He stopped.
Over the Tower's hum came Cort's voice blaring in his mind: 'How gods-damned slow you think, maggot!' Roland never had the level of Cuthbert's insight or Alain's touch—shine, do ya—his gifts were speed and endurance. Although these had saved him countless times since his training, his speed also caused him to miss critical details at important moments. As a result Roland had become more accustomed to feeling when he had missed something—usually when his eyes moved faster than his brain could think—and he felt that way now.
The gunslinger forced his mind to focus, bent his eyes to observe, not just see. He looked to the mural wall and saw a portrayal of himself so vivid, it could have been a fottergraph. He was standing at the stone pyramid with Patrick sketched into the background, his depleted right hand holding several rounds of ammunition, his left firing his father's revolver for the last time at the Crimson King's sneeches.
He looked back to the stairwell. Even in the new daylight he could see the orange-red pulsing glow from Mordred's ankle. Had he missed something here in haste? When he had placed Jake, Eddie and Oy at the top of the stairs he gave no thought to why Mordred's mark still had life while Mordred was dead. Thinking on it now, it seemed most likely that the Tower kept it alight. 'Because it's the mark of the Eld,' he thought.
Something about that thought began an awakening in Roland's mind. He wasn't fully aware of it—not yet—but he felt a combination of familiarity and some wisdom attempting to surface. He looked back to the mural wall and saw beyond the metallic rock pyramid, the lush blanket of Can'-Ka No Rey unfolded like a carpet leading to the Dark Tower's main door.
Roland walked slowly with the mural, retracing his steps back to the landing. He traced the path between the roses with his finger until the mural scene transitioned seamlessly to show a smaller representation of the gunslinger walking this path towards the base of the Dark Tower. He continued, awestruck, again noting the meticulous detail in the depiction, and traced the path until it ended. He pulled his finger back from the wall and looked from where it had been up to the ceiling. What he saw was an immaculate replication of the Dark Tower's front door.
This was the last image in the mural wall. At its base, he saw representations of his remaining revolver and aunt Talitha's cross, and that sensation of an awakening in Roland's mind continued as he stared at the mural wall, but it was still distant. He tapped the illustration of the concrete slab below the door repeatedly while he thought, recalling his approach to the Dark Tower. He closed his eyes and saw the roses standing at attention, heard their song, and heard the loud blast that had blown across the field. In his mind he saw the yellow flares of light begin to shine from each rose's center and into the sky where the Beams intersected above.
'In my dreams that blast is from my horn,' he remembered thinking. Yes, something about that thought felt right, correct somehow. Of course, after the battle of Jericho Hill the Horn of Eld had fallen out of the quest for the Dark Tower, but in his dreams...
'I remember thinking that coming to the Tower now was different than in my dreams,' Roland thought, still tapping the mural wall. He thought of placing his gunna and watching as the ghostwood door flashed to be like new again. Then he had entered the Dark Tower, the massive door had slammed shut, and he began his ascent.
But, that wasn't quite it either.
No, there had been two booming sounds. He had entered the Dark Tower, and then there had been the crack like a sonic boom as he passed through the door. He remembered this because the stench of burnt ozone had filled the air and blended with the sweetness of the roses outside. Then came the clap of the door slamming shut after he had been inside. Yes, that was right, but what did this all mean?
2
One thing made perfect sense. The mural had started at the base of the stairwell with a depiction of the beginning of Roland's life, and at the top of the stairs, the mural depicted present day—the end of Roland's quest. He traced the detail of the engraving, feeling the soft, subtle grooves in the ivory under his fingers like silk. In the center of the door, was the familiar hieroglyphic:
[symbol for] 'Unfound'—just as it had been in the Ghostwood door at the base of the Tower. The Tower in turn continued to beckon him as his fingers ran over the ancient text: 'Commala-come-come, Commala-come-come!'
Roland stared, mesmerized, pondering how the details of his approach to the Dark Tower had been engraved in the wall so quickly. The answer seemed obvious, if only because it was the only explanation. Since Roland now stood in the center of all existence—Gan's existence—either the Tower itself, a servant of Gan, or even Gan himself had completed the mural, right down to his gunna laid at the door. Understanding suddenly seized him. The door—it was always a door! From the drawing of his three all the way up to Susannah leaving the path of the Beam, and finally now, at the end of the mural, here was another door. Another door at the top of the Dark Tower's stairwell. This was the door to the top room!
Eyes blazing, Roland reached for the mural wall and the massive handle etched perfectly in the ivory. He smirked as his hand grasped the handle, which, like the other balcony door, had been designed so well that you couldn't see it just from admiring the mural. He turned the knob, which clicked loudly, and immediately the symbols in the door blazed white for an instant and fell dark once again. In their place, the gunslinger saw the other familiar hieroglyphic:
[symbol for] 'Found'—the characters once again were smoldering in the door.
Roland pulled. There was a piercing squeal as the hinges moved for the first time in an age, and the massive door in the mural wall groaned inward amid a shower of dust and ivory shards.
3
As the door swung open, the idea that his quest could be just beginning, as it had countless times before, suddenly blared in his mind. The gunslinger had no understanding why he thought this—or why it was buried so deeply—but this notion ground in his mind like a small pebble trapped in the bottom of his boot. He had a fleeting impulse to raise his hands to shield his eyes from something terrible, and his hands actually had started to do this before sunlight washed over his face.
He was coming to the top room at long last! He would walk through the door, the sunlight would lift from his eyes, he would stand in the colors of the rainbow with dawn's light, and he would finally know and understand everything. He stepped forward, and as the sun's glare left his face, his mouth fell open and he grabbed the door to steady himself.
Roland was on a very large terrace, much greater than the balcony far below on another level of the Dark Tower. He was looking out and down from a height he had never experienced before, except when he had been in the air carriage with—in—Eddie. He was so high in fact that even his eyes could no longer make out the individual roses far below. They instead appeared to merge into a plush blanket, wrapped around the Tower's base with the paths that coincided with the Beams and the occasional jutting rock interrupting the undulating folds. Now that the Beams were safe and time and direction were healing, the gunslinger saw immediately that the sun hung low in the West, as it had when he had come to the Dark Tower, and not East, where he had assumed it was rising to a new day. In fact, the sun appeared to be very near where it had been when he had entered the Tower, gods only knew how long ago. If it was not dawn, it had to be sunset—so how many days had passed since then?
He paused and considered. Roland studied the horizon, reflected, and reached a disturbing conclusion. 'It cannot be,' he whispered, and at the same time, it seemed that it was. To confirm this he looked to the sky, found Old Star and Old Mother, and noted his position between the two. He imagined a line between them, connecting the ancient lovers, which was always the easiest way to find true North without a compass. He then found West, checked the height of the rock shadows cast over the roses, and stared in disbelief. The sun was not almost in the same position as it had been when he had arrived at the Tower, it was in the same position
It was the same day.
Roland thought of the magnitude of time it had taken him to ascend the Tower's stairs, and was dumbfounded to believe that so much time had passed without the sun setting. 'Perhaps the Tower holds the sun for me,' he thought, ignorant of his arrogance.
The view from the balcony was the grandest sight he had ever seen, and he spared first a moment, and then another gazing as far as he could see in all directions despite his desire to find the top room. He looked down the immeasurable height of the Dark Tower and awed at the Tower's massive circumference at the base below. The entire structure somehow seemed vastly larger than when he had seen it from the scarlet field. In fact, Roland thought it likely the Dark Tower was so wide that during multiple points in his climb he would have been so far from the sun that it would have appeared to dim or even to have set.
He thought of setting his watch on the ground for Patrick before he had given in—finally given in—to the Dark Tower's call. The hands had stopped, just as the pre-cogs in New York had said they might when he reached the Dark Tower. Regardless of the Beams being safe, it seemed time was no longer merely soft, but could no longer be trusted to be accurate. But nonetheless, did that mean that time had stopped?
Roland considered this possibility as he saw the final two things that he would ever see from a balcony on the Dark Tower. Once again, all thoughts faded to the back of his mind, his eyes widened, and the his mouth dropped open.
4
Roland Deschain reverently bent to one knee, one hand remaining on the mural's door, the other covering his heart. Above and behind him, just to the left, not thirty feet above where he stood at that very moment, was a window pane. Beside this, the oriel window filled with the colors of the wizard's rainbow. In the center, a perfect circle of black glass seemed to hold all of the other tinted sections together.
The Dark Tower's top room stood majestically above him, and the gunslinger understood that he was finally, at very long last, at the end.
5
Roland felt numb, amazed, and an insatiable urge to run at the same time. And he almost did run back into the Dark Tower to again search for the door to the top room, but he held to his training a moment longer, remembering that the Tower was both alive and a portal—which meant that it was also still dangerous.
When he had turned to walk back inside, Roland saw something above the mural door that made him think of the other balcony far below. More letters of the High Speech, also faded to the point of enigma were stamped into the Dark Tower's coaly exterior. As before, the entire prose was warped and unreadable from the passage of time:
T re h y od, ran d lo des,
Tov ew th ela ome
Is w hem an Ikn wth mal
Da tle st slu orn omy li s I se
Though far higher than the other excerpts, the gunslinger saw the great letters well enough. He thought it no coincidence that he was seeing a second, perhaps similar passage, and used all of his will to focus and memorize the fragments and letters. This took a moment longer to accomplish than the first piece had—as this was twice as long and severely jumbled and warped from the harsh lashings of time and weather. The writings could mean nothing, but they could also be a part of the khef that Roland shared with the Dark Tower. Either way, it was too late to leave such things to chance, or even ka.
When he was certain he had the fragments memorized, Roland went back inside the Dark Tower without another look over the balcony, rehearsing the letters he had seen. As soon as he was back inside, the mural door slammed shut behind him for the final time. The crack was nearly deafening and reverberated across the small landing, reminding Roland of when he had first entered the Dark Tower's rotunda.
He stopped cold in his tracks as the report of the door closing faded. He felt the something that had been trying to awaken in his mind finally surface. It suddenly made sense—the crack, the letters on the Tower's exterior,the sonic boom, the great blast in the field—and he understood why he was unable to proceed.
There was one thing left to do here.
6
Several things happened at the same time.
The gunslinger saw a collection of dust and off-white shards from the wall when the mural door had slammed shut. He knelt, aware that he again smelled 'ohzhone' lingering in the air, and focused on collecting his thoughts. Early in their quest, Roland and Eddie had a conversation about 'shrenks,' and how the human mind had an unconscious that functioned beneath one's own awareness. This had pleased Roland, for he knew it to be true from Vannay's teachings. He felt the thoughts awaken now as he knelt.
'Stanzas,' he thought, 'the words on the side of the Dark Tower are from sai Browning's stanzas.' He had read sai Browning's Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came countless times after the writer had left it for him, but he had no memory of where the copy was now—lying amid the pieces of Ho Fat II seemed most likely. Roland closed his eyes, breathed deeply, then began to recite the corresponding stanzas that he had memorized.
"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."
He spoke the words aloud and slowly. That had been the first piece—the words above the door of The Prisoner on the lower balcony, he was certain of it. He recalled the other stanza more quickly after speaking the first:
"There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, 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."
The gunslinger wasn't sure which stanza the first had been, but he was sure that this was the final stanza. He was also suddenly sure that if he had discovered a way out to the other balconies on the Dark Tower, he would have found the other stanzas etched in the same fading, warped font. And why not? Was he not the childe Roland now come to the very Dark Tower from this poem?
The gunslinger opened his eyes and began to spread the dust from the mural door into a rough rectangle. In it he traced what he had seen on the first balcony above the Prisoner door:
E it yic o l ho e t la m at.
Oet at o tho d i me ses al t ri s
The great letters looked different when written on a flat, even surface. Without the curve of the Tower's exterior to distort the letters, the effect of the weather and warping disappeared. It only took a moment to see where the remaining letters belonged. Roland carefully traced them into the dust so that he saw:
Ere fitly i could hope to play my part.
One taste of the old time sets all to rights.
This did not match how Browning had written it, but it had been what Roland could see on the Tower's exterior. The gunslinger considered this for a moment, and then brushed the dust and ivory bits away, smoothing them out again. He next traced in the letters from what he had seen on the balcony near the top room's stained glass:
T re h y od, ran d lo des,
Tov ew th ela ome
Is w hem an Ikn wth mal
Da tle st slu orn omy li s I se
Again the gunslinger noted how different the letters appeared when drawn plain on the flat of the floor. It took just another moment to recall the words that fit in Browning's final stanza, and he drew them in quickly:
There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet,
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
"And blew," Roland finished aloud when he came to the final line.
"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."
Again, the order of the prose was incorrect, and the gunslinger supposed that it could have been due to the effect of centuries of erosion, but in his heart, he believed that it was something more. More than just ka or the wordslinger's creative power in his world, Roland thought it most likely the Dark Tower was showing him these specific phrases through their peculiar khef. This both disturbed and delighted him, as he supposed there simply weren't words in any language to express what it felt like to experience a connection like this to the nexus of time and space. The closest words he could think of, however, were bitterness and euphoria.
The bitterness he felt came from knowing that the Dark Tower had chosen for Susannah to leave and for Eddie and Jake to die, and had, in fact chosen the deaths of all the others that were displayed on the great stairwell, of that he was sure. His euphoria came from knowing he was now somehow in all existences in some form and was destined to fulfill Eld's ancient prophecy. The combination of these polar emotions and his level of khef collectively felt like everything around him would pull him in a different direction, tearing him limb from limb.
That was when he saw it.
