FIVE
They had been pinned down for what Roland judged to be an hour when the King tried another pair of sneetches. This time they flew on either side of the pyramid and hooked back almost at once, coming at him in perfect formation but twenty feet apart. Roland took the one on the right, snapped his wrist to the left, and blew the other one out of the sky. The explosion of the second one was close enough to buffet his face with warm air, but at least there was no shrapnel; when they blew, they blew completely, it seemed.
“TRYAGAIN!'he called. His throat was rough and dry now, but he knew the words were carrying-the air in this place was made for such communication. And he knew each one was a dagger pricking the old lunatic’s flesh. But he had his own problems. The call of the Tower was growing steadily stronger.
“COME, GUNSLJNGER!” the madman’s voice coaxed. “PERHAPS I’ll LET THEE COME, AFTER ALL! WE COULD AT LEAST PALAVER ON THE SUBJECT, COULD WE NOT?”
To his horror, Roland thought he sensed a certain sincerity in that voice.
Yes, he thought grimly. And we’ll have coffee. Perhaps even a little fry-up.
He fumbled the watch out of his pocket and snapped it open. The hands were running briskly backward. He leaned against the pyramid and closed his eyes, but that was worse. The call of the Tower
(come, Roland come, gunslinger, commala-come-come, now the journey’s done)
was louder, more insistent than ever. He opened them again and looked up at the unforgiving blue sky and the clouds that raced across it in columns to the Tower at the end of the rose-field.
And the torture continued.
SIX
He hung on for another hour while the shadows of the bushes and the roses growing near the pyramid lengthened, hoping against hope that someuiing would occur to him, some brilliant idea that would save him from having to put his life and his fate in the hands of the talented but soft-minded boy by his side. But as the sun began to slide down the western arc of the sky and the blue overhead began to darken, he knew there was nothing else. The hands of the pocket-watch were turning backward ever faster. Soon they would be spinning. And when they began to spin, he would go. Sneetches or no sneetches (and what else might the madman be holding in reserve?), he would go. He would run, he would zig-zag, he would fall to the ground and crawl if he had to, and no matter what he did, he knew he would be lucky to make it even half the distance to the Dark Tower before he was blown out of his boots.
He would die among the roses.
“Patrick,” he said. His voice was husky.
Patrick looked up at him with desperate intensity. Roland stared at the boy’s hands-dirty, scabbed, but in their way as incredibly talented as his own-and gave in. It occurred to him that he’d only held out as long as this from pride; he had wanted to kill the Crimson King, not merely send him into some null zone. And of course there was no guarantee that Patrick could do to the King what he’d done to the sore on Susannah’s face. But the pull of the Tower would soon be too strong to resist, and all his other choices were gone.
“Change places with me, Patrick.”
Patrick did, scrambling carefully over Roland. He was now at the edge of the pyramid nearest the road.
“Look through the far-seeing instrument. Lay it in that notch-yes, just so-and look.”
Patrick did, and for what seemed to Roland a very long time. The voice of the Tower, meanwhile, sang and chimed and cajoled. At long last, Patrick looked back at him.
“Now take thy pad, Patrick. Draw yonder man.” Not that he luas a man, but at least he looked like one.
At first, however, Patrick only continued to gaze at Roland, biting his lip. Then, at last, he took the sides of the gunslinger’s head in his hands and brought it forward until they were brow to brow.
Very hard, whispered a voice deep in Roland’s mind. It was not the voice of a boy at all, but of a grown man. A powerful man. He’s not entirely there. He darkles. He tincts.
Where had Roland heard those words before?
No time to think about it now.
“Are you saying you can’t?” Roland asked, injecting (with an effort) a note of disappointed incredulity into his voice. “That you can’t? That Patrick can’t? The Artist can’t?”
Patrick’s eyes changed. For a moment Roland saw in them the expression that would be there permanently if he grew to be a man… and the paintings in Sayre’s office said that he would do that, at least on some track of time, in some world. Old enough, at least, to paint what he had seen this day. That expression would be hauteur, if he grew to be an old man with a little wisdom to match his talent; now it was only arrogance.
The look of a kid who knows he’s faster than blue blazes, the best, and cares to know nothing else. Roland knew that look, for had he not seen it gazing back at him from a hundred mirrors and still pools of water when he had been as young as Patrick Danville was now?
I can, came the voice in Roland’s head. I only say it won’t be easy. I’ll need the eraser.
Roland shook his head at once. In his pocket, his hand closed around what remained of the pink nubbin and held it tight.
“No,” he said. “Thee must draw cold, Patrick. Every line right the first time. The erasing comes later.”
For a moment the look of arrogance faltered, but only for a moment. When it returned, what came with it pleased the gunslinger mightily, and eased him a litde, as well. It was a look of hot excitement. It was die look the talented wear when, after years of just moving sleepily along from pillar to post, they are finally challenged to do something that will tax their abilities, stretch them to their limits. Perhaps even beyond them.
Patrick rolled to the binoculars again, which he’d left propped aslant just below the notch. He looked long while the voices sang their growing imperative in Roland’s head.
And at last he rolled away, took up his pad, and began to draw the most important picture of his life.
SEVEN
It was slow work compared to Patrick’s usual method-rapid strokes diat produced a completed and compelling drawing in only minutes. Roland again and again had to restrain himself from shouting at the boy: Hurry up! For the sake of all the gods, hurry up! Can’t you see that I’m in agony here?
But Patrick didn’t see and wouldn’t have cared in any case.
He was totally absorbed in his work, caught up in the unknowing greed of it, pausing only to go back to the binoculars now and then for another long look at his red-robed subject. Sometimes he slanted die pencil to shade a litde, dien rubbed with his thumb to produce a shadow. Sometimes he rolled his eyes back in his head, showing the world nothing but the waxy gleam of the whites. It was as if he were conning some version of the Red King that stood a-glow in his brain. And really, how did Roland know that was not possible?
I don’t care what it is. Just let him finish before I go mad and sprint to what the Old Red King so rightly called “my darling.”
Half an hour at least three days long passed in this fashion.
Once the Crimson King called more coaxingly than ever to Roland, asking if he would not come to the Tower and palaver, after all. Perhaps, he said, if Roland were to free him from his balcony prison, they might bury an arrow together and then climb to the top room of the Tower in that same spirit of friendliness. It was not impossible, after all. A hard rain made for queer bedfellows at the inn; had Roland never heard that saying?
The gunslinger knew the saying well. He also knew that the Red King’s offer was essentially the same false request as before, only this time dressed up in morning coat and cravat. And this time Roland heard worry lurking in the old monster’s voice. He wasted no energy on reply.
Realizing his coaxing had failed, the Crimson King threw another sneetch. This one flew so high over the pyramid it was only a spark, then dove down upon them with the scream of a falling bomb. Roland took care of it with a single shot and reloaded from a plentitude of shells. He wished, in fact, that the King would send more of the flying grenados against him, because they took his mind temporarily off the dreadful call of the Tower.
It’s been waiting for me, he thought with dismay. That’s what makes it so hard to resist, I think-it’s calling me in particular. Not to Roland, exactly, but to the entire line of Eld… and of that line, only I am left.
EIGHT
At last, as the descending sun began to take on its first hues of orange and Roland felt he could stand it no longer, Patrick put his pencil aside and held the pad out to Roland, frowning. The look made Roland afraid. He had never seen that particular expression in the mute boy’s repertoire. Patrick’s former arrogance was gone.
Roland took the pad, however, and for a moment was so amazed by what he saw there that he looked away, as if even the eyes in Patrick’s drawing might have the power to fascinate him; might perhaps compel him to put his gun to his temple and blow out his aching brains. It was that good. The greedy and questioning face was long, the cheeks and forehead marked by creases so deep they might have been bottomless. The lips within the foaming beard were full and cruel. It was the mouth of a man who would turn a kiss into a
