The Gunslinger Part 21

"Size, gunslinger... size size...

"Yet suppose further. Suppose that all worlds, all universes, met in a single nexus, a single pylon, a Tower. And within it, a stairway, perhaps rising to the G.o.dhead itself. Would you dare climb to the top, gunslinger? Could it be that somewhere above all of endless reality, there exists a Room?...

"You dare not."

And in the gunslinger's mind, those words echoed: You dare not. You dare not.

VI.

"Someone has dared," the gunslinger said.

"Who would that be?"

"G.o.d," the gunslinger said softly. His eyes gleamed. "G.o.d has dared... or the king you spoke of... or... is the room empty, seer?"

"I don't know." Fear pa.s.sed over the man in black's bland face, as soft and dark as a buzzard's wing. "And, furthermore, I don't ask. It might be unwise."

"Afraid of being struck dead?"

"Perhaps afraid of... an accounting."

The man in black was silent for a while. The night was very long. The Milky Way sprawled above them in great splendor, yet terrifying in the emptiness between its burning lamps. The gunslinger wondered what he would feel if that inky sky should split open and let in a torrent of light.

"The fire," he said. "I'm cold."

"Build it up yourself," said the man in black. "It's the butler's night off."

VII.

The gunslinger drowsed awhile and awoke to see the man in black regarding him avidly, unhealthily.

"What are you staring at?" An old saying of Cort's occurred to him. "Do you see your sister's b.u.m?"

"I'm staring at you, of course."

"Well, don't." He poked up the fire, ruining the precision of the ideogram. "I don't like it." He looked to the east to see if there was the beginning of light, but this night went on and on.

"You seek the light so soon."

"I was made for light."

"Ah, so you were! And so impolite of me to forget the fact! Yet we have much to discuss yet, you and I. For so has it been told to me by my king and master."

"Who is this king?"

The man in black smiled. "Shall we tell the truth then, you and I? No more lies?"

"I thought we had been."

But the man in black persisted as if Roland hadn't spoken. "Shall there be truth between us, as two men? Not as friends, but as equals? There is an offer you will get rarely, Roland. Only equals speak the truth, that's my thought on't. Friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of regard. How tiresome!"

"Well, I wouldn't want to tire you, so let us speak the truth." He had never spoken less on this night. "Start by telling me what exactly you mean by glammer."

"Why, enchantment, gunslinger! My king's enchantment has prolonged this night and will prolong it until our palaver is done."

"How long will that be?"

"Long. I can tell you no better. I do not know myself." The man in black stood over the fire, and the glowing embers made patterns on his face. "Ask. I will tell you what I know. You have caught me. It is fair; I did not think you would. Yet your quest has only begun. Ask. It will lead us to business soon enough."

"Who is your king?"

"I have never seen him, but you must. But before you meet him, you must first meet the Ageless Stranger." The man in black smiled spitelessly. "You must slay him, gunslinger. Yet I think it is not what you wished to ask."

"If you've never seen your king and master, how do you know him?"

"He comes to me in dreams. As a stripling he came to me, when I lived, poor and unknown, in a far land. A sheaf of centuries ago he imbued me with my duty and promised me my reward, although there were many errands in my youth and the days of my manhood, before my apotheosis. You are that apotheosis, gunslinger. You are my climax." He t.i.ttered. "You see, someone has taken you seriously."

"And this Stranger, does he have a name?"

"O, he is named."

"And what is his name?"

"Legion," the man in black said softly, and somewhere in the easterly darkness where the mountains lay, a rockslide punctuated his words and a puma screamed like a woman. The gunslinger s.h.i.+vered and the man in black flinched. "Yet I do not think that is what you wished to ask, either. It is not your nature to think so far ahead."

The gunslinger knew the question; it had gnawed him all this night, and he thought, for years before. It trembled on his lips but he didn't ask it... not yet.

"This Stranger is a minion of the Tower? Like yourself?"

"Yar. He darkles. darkles. He He tincts. tincts. He is in all times. Yet there is one greater than he." He is in all times. Yet there is one greater than he."

"Who?"

"Ask me no more!" the man in black cried. His voice aspired to sternness and crumbled into beseechment. "I know not! I do not wish to know. To speak of the things in End-World is to speak of the ruination of one's own soul."

"And beyond the Ageless Stranger is the Tower and whatever the Tower contains?"

"Yes," whispered the man in black. "But none of these things are what you wish to ask."

True.

"All right," the gunslinger said, and then asked the world's oldest question. "Will I succeed? Will I win through?"

"If I answered that question, gunslinger, you'd kill me."

"I ought ought to kill you. You need killing." His hands had dropped to the worn b.u.t.ts of his guns. to kill you. You need killing." His hands had dropped to the worn b.u.t.ts of his guns.

"Those do not open doors, gunslinger; those only close them forever."

"Where must I go?"

"Start west. Go to the sea. Where the world ends is where you must begin. There was a man who gave you advice... the man you bested so long ago-"

"Yes, Cort," the gunslinger interrupted impatiently.

"The advice was to wait. It was bad advice. For even then my plans against your father had proceeded. He sent you away and when you returned-"

"I'd not hear you speak of that," the gunslinger said, and in his mind he heard his mother singing: Baby-bunting, baby dear, baby bring your basket here. Baby-bunting, baby dear, baby bring your basket here.

"Then hear this: when you returned, Marten had gone west, to join the rebels. So all said, anyway, and so you believed. Yet he and a certain witch left you a trap and you fell into it. Good boy! And although Marten was long gone by then, there was a man who sometimes made you think of him, was there not? A man who affected the dress of a monk and the shaven head of a penitent-"

"Walter," the gunslinger whispered. And although he had come so far in his musings, the bald truth still amazed him. "You. Marten never left at all." Marten never left at all."

The man in black t.i.ttered. "At your service."

"I ought to kill you now."

"That would hardly be fair. Besides, all of that was long ago. Now comes the time of sharing."

"You never left," the gunslinger repeated, stunned. "You only changed."

"Sit," the man in black invited. "I'll tell you stories, as many as you would hear. Your own stories, I think, will be much longer."

"I don't talk of myself," the gunslinger muttered.

"Yet tonight you must. So that we may understand."

"Understand what? My purpose? You know that. To find the Tower is my purpose. I'm sworn."

"Not your purpose, gunslinger. Your mind. Your slow, prodding, tenacious mind. There has never been one quite like it, in all the history of the world. Perhaps in the history of creation.

"This is the time of speaking. This is the time of histories."

"Then speak."

The man in black shook the voluminous arm of his robe. A foil-wrapped package fell out and caught the dying embers in many reflective folds.

"Tobacco, gunslinger. Would you smoke?"

He had been able to resist the rabbit, but he could not resist this. He opened the foil with eager fingers. There was fine crumbled tobacco inside, and green leaves to wrap it in, amazingly moist. He had not seen such tobacco for ten years.

He rolled two cigarettes and bit the ends of each to release the flavor. He offered one to the man in black, who took it. Each of them took a burning twig from the fire.

The gunslinger lit his cigarette and drew the aromatic smoke deep into his lungs, closing his eyes to concentrate the senses. He blew out with long, slow satisfaction.

"Is it good?" the man in black inquired.

"Yes. Very good."

"Enjoy it. It may be the last smoke for you in a very long time."

The gunslinger took this impa.s.sively.

"Very well," the man in black said. "To begin then: "You must understand the Tower has always been, and there have always been boys who know of it and l.u.s.t for it, more than power or riches or women... boys who look for the doors that lead to it..."

VIII.

There was talk then, a night's worth of talk and G.o.d alone knew how much more (or how much was true), but the gunslinger remembered little of it later... and to his oddly practical mind, little of it seemed to matter. The man in black told him again that he must go to the sea, which lay no more than twenty easy miles to the west, and there he would be invested with the power of drawing. drawing.

"But that's not exactly right, either," the man in black said, pitching his cigarette into the remains of the campfire. "No one wants to invest you with a power of any kind, gunslinger; it is simply in in you, and I am compelled to tell you, partly because of the sacrifice of the boy, and partly because it is the law; the natural law of things. Water must run downhill, and you must be told. You will draw three, I understand... but I don't really care, and I don't really want to know." you, and I am compelled to tell you, partly because of the sacrifice of the boy, and partly because it is the law; the natural law of things. Water must run downhill, and you must be told. You will draw three, I understand... but I don't really care, and I don't really want to know."

"The three," the gunslinger murmured, thinking of the Oracle.

"And then the fun begins! But, by then, I'll be long gone. Goodbye, gunslinger. My part is done now. The chain is still in your hands. 'Ware it doesn't wrap itself around your neck."

Compelled by something outside him, Roland said, "You have one more thing to say, don't you?"

"Yes," the man in black said, and he smiled at the gunslinger with his depthless eyes and stretched one of his hands out toward him. "Let there be light."

And there was light, and this time the light was good.

IX.

Roland awoke by the ruins of the campfire to find himself ten years older. His black hair had thinned at the temples and there had gone the gray of cobwebs at the end of autumn. The lines in his face were deeper, his skin rougher.

The remains of the wood he had carried had turned to something like stone, and the man in black was a laughing skeleton in a rotting black robe, more bones in this place of bones, one more skull in this golgotha.

Or is it really you? he thought. he thought. I have my doubts, Walter o' Dim... I have my doubts, Marten-that-was. I have my doubts, Walter o' Dim... I have my doubts, Marten-that-was.

He stood up and looked around. Then, with a sudden quick gesture, he reached toward the remains of his companion of the night before (if it was indeed the remains of Walter), a night that had somehow lasted ten years. He broke off the grinning jawbone and jammed it carelessly into the left hip pocket of his jeans-a fitting enough replacement for the one lost under the mountains.

"How many lies did you tell me?" he asked. Many, he was sure, but what made them good lies was that they had been mixed with the truth.

The Tower. Somewhere ahead, it waited for him-the nexus of Time, the nexus of Size.

He began west again, his back set against the sunrise, heading toward the ocean, realizing that a great pa.s.sage of his life had come and gone. "I loved you, Jake," he said aloud.

The stiffness wore out of his body and he began to walk more rapidly. By that evening he had come to the end of the land. He sat on a beach which stretched left and right forever, deserted. The waves beat endlessly against the sh.o.r.e, pounding and pounding. The setting sun painted the water in a wide strip of fool's gold.

There the gunslinger sat, his face turned up into the fading light. He dreamed his dreams and watched as the stars came out; his purpose did not flag, nor did his heart falter; his hair, finer now and gray at the temples, blew around his head, and the sandalwood-inlaid guns of his father lay smooth and deadly against his hips, and he was lonely but did not find loneliness in any way a bad or ign.o.ble thing. The dark came down and the world moved on. The gunslinger waited for the time of the drawing drawing and dreamed his long dreams of the Dark Tower, to which he would someday come at dusk and approach, winding his horn, to do some unimaginable final battle. and dreamed his long dreams of the Dark Tower, to which he would someday come at dusk and approach, winding his horn, to do some unimaginable final battle.

* For a fuller discussion of the Bulls.h.i.+t Factor, see For a fuller discussion of the Bulls.h.i.+t Factor, see On Writing On Writing, published by Scribner's in 2000.