Most of the time, it was endless, sweltering desert. He trudged through the dunes with the roaring wind blowing stinging sand into his eyes, and images of those lost ones would flash before him, making his heart ache. He would watch them die all over again, each one's departure from this world a passing reminder of what he had destroyed in order to reach his goal- the topmost room of the cursed tower where he had opened the door into this desolate nothing.

Then he would see Susannah, leading him to the door, walking through on her strong, new legs. He only ever caught a glimpse of what was beyond that door- the swirling snow, and Eddie and Jake and Oy, waiting for him on the other side, laughing and waving and beckoning to him. How he longed to step over the threshold into that snowy wonderland…

But always at the last moment, as he was about to step through the door, Mordred would clamber up out of the dunes, slamming the door shut with one long, ugly leg. The thing would look at him with laughter in its startling blue eyes, and then it would descend back into the dunes.

It was at these times that the gunslinger wanted to give up. He wanted to lie down in the dunes and fade away to nothingness, letting the churning sands cover him until he was buried, lost, and forgotten.

But then, and always as he was about to collapse and never rise again, there was the music…

He could hear a woman singing, somewhere in the distance. Sometimes, as if from far away, it was a gentle, sweet melody. The words were not ones he could understand, but they were beautiful, like velvet - soft and smooth and warm. This song always reminded him of Jake, his son, lost forever and buried beneath a rose bush in the clearing beside a lonely highway near Lovell, Maine.

Sometimes her lovely, lilting voice would come to him, quieter and wavering, as if carried to him on the wind, singing a jaunty song that began with something about drinking wine with a bullfrog named Jeremiah. This song made little sense at all to the gunslinger, but it was so happy and full of life that he grew fond of it, despite its nonsense. In part, it was the nonsense he loved, for it reminded him of Eddie, the friend he lost at Algul Siento.

Then, at other times, sounding clearer than either of the others as if she were right next to him, would come the long, somber notes of a hymn.

"Amazing Grace," the voice sang out, "How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me…"

How sweet, indeed, this sound was. And it was saving the gunslinger, to be sure, calling him to it the way the Bright Star called the magi to the Man Jesus. The melody brought Susannah to his mind, and he could hear her speaking to him, a touch of Detta Walker coming through her voice.

"Oh, no you don't, you ugle ole honky," she would say over the beautiful melody. "You ain't jus' givin' up on us. You been to the top of the goddamn Dark Tower and you come miles and miles to get there. You done kill't wolves and Taheen and the Crimson King hisself on the way to that tower. You been across the beaches of the Western Sea, through the Wastelands on a crazy train, through the underbelly of Lud to rescue your boy. You freed all dem Breakers an' you danced the Commala for all of Calla Bryn Sturgis to see. You gone through too damn much, an' lost too damn much, for you to give up now jus' 'cause you tired."

That last word was all Detta, and she spat it like tobacco at the gunslinger's feet. In the end, it was the crazy old bitch with her taunting and her insults, along with the haunting disembodied voice on the winds, that kept the gunslinger holding on. He would continue on his way, desperate to reach the end of the swirling sands, to see his friends again, and to meet the woman whose beautiful songs had carried him across the desert.