The Dark Tower (81 page)

Well,
maybe
not. But if the devil tempting her were to throw in a pair of earmuffs—

And it would have taken so little, really, to make them comfortable. She thought of this constantly. They had the food, and they had water, too, because at fifteen-mile intervals along the path they came to pumps that still worked, pulling great cold gushes of mineral-tasting water from deep under the Badlands.

Badlands
. She had hours and days and, ultimately, weeks to meditate on that word. What made lands bad? Poisoned water? The water out here wasn’t sweet, not by any means, but it wasn’t poisoned, either. Lack of food? They had food, although she guessed it might become a problem later on, if they didn’t find more. In the meantime she was getting almighty tired of corned beef hash, not to mention raisins for breakfast and raisins if you wanted dessert. Yet it was food. Body-gasoline. What made the Badlands bad when you had food and water? Watching the sky turn first gold and then russet in the west; watching it turn purple and then starshot black in the east. She watched the days end with increasing dread: the thought of another endless night, the three of them huddled together while the wind whined and twined its way through the rocks and the stars glared down. Endless stretches of cold purgatory while your feet and fingers buzzed and you thought
If I only had a sweater and a pair of gloves, I could be comfortable. That’s all it would take, just a sweater and a pair of gloves. Because it’s really not that cold.

Exactly how cold
did
it get after sundown? Never below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, she knew, because the water she put out for Oy never froze solid. She guessed that the temperature dropped to around forty in the hours between midnight and dawn; on a couple of nights it might have fallen into the thirties, because she saw tiny spicules of ice around the edge of the pot that served Oy as a dish.

She began to eye his fur coat. At first she told herself this was nothing but a speculative exercise, a way of passing the time—exactly how hot did the bumbler’s metabolism run, and exactly how warm did that coat (that thick,
luxuriantly
thick, that
amazingly
thick coat) keep him? Little by little she recognized her feelings for what they were: jealousy that muttered in Detta’s voice.
L’il buggah doan feel no pain after the sun go down, do he? No, not him! You reckon you could git two sets o’ mittens outta that hide?

She would thrust these thoughts away, miserable and horrified, wondering if there was any lower limit to the human spirit at its nasty, calculating, self-serving worst, not wanting to know.

Deeper and deeper that cold worked into them, day by day and night by night. It was like a splinter. They would sleep huddled together with Oy between them, then turn so the sides of them that had been facing the night were turned inward again. Real restorative sleep never lasted long, no matter how tired they were. When the moon began to wax, brightening the dark, they spent two weeks walking at night and sleeping in the daytime. That was a little better.

The only wildlife they saw were large black birds
either flying against the southeastern horizon or gathered in a sort of convention atop the mesas. If the wind was right, Roland and Susannah could hear their shrill, gabby conversation.

“You think those things’d be any good to eat?” Susannah asked the gunslinger once. The moon was almost gone and they had reverted to traveling during the daytime so they could see any potential hazards (on several occasions deep crevasses had crossed the path, and once they came upon a sinkhole that appeared to be bottomless).

“What do
you
think?” Roland asked her.

“Prob’ly not, but I wouldn’t mind tryin one and finding out.” She paused. “What do you reckon they live on?”

Roland only shook his head. Here the path wound through a fantastic petrified garden of needle-sharp rock formations. Further off, a hundred or more black, crowlike birds either circled a flat-topped mesa or sat on its edge looking in Roland and Susannah’s direction, like a beady-eyed panel of jurors.

“Maybe we ought to make a detour,” she said. “See if we can’t find out.”

“If we lost the path, we might not be able to find it again,” Roland said.

“That’s bullshit! Oy would—”

“Susannah, I don’t want to hear any more about it!” He spoke in a sharply angry tone she had never heard before. Angry, yes, she had heard Roland angry many times. But there was a pettiness in this, a sulkiness that worried her. And frightened her a little, as well.

They went on in silence for the next half an hour, Roland pulling Ho Fat’s Luxury Taxi and Susannah
riding. Then the narrow path (Badlands Avenue, she’d come to call it) tilted upward and she hopped down, catching up with him and then going along beside. For such forays she’d torn his Old Home Days tee-shirt in half and wore it wrapped around her hands. It protected her from sharp stones, and also warmed her fingers, at least a little.

He glanced down at her, then back at the path ahead. His lower lip was stuck out a bit and Susannah thought that surely he couldn’t know how absurdly willful that expression was—like a three-year-old who has been denied a trip to the beach. He couldn’t know and she wouldn’t tell him. Later, maybe, when they could look back on this nightmare and laugh. When they could no longer remember what, exactly, was so terrible about a night when the temperature was forty-one degrees and you lay awake, shivering on the cold ground, watching the occasional meteor scrape cold fire across the sky, thinking
Just a sweater, that’s all I need. Just a sweater and I’d go along as happy as a parakeet at feeding time
. And wondering if there was enough hide on Oy to make them each a pair of underdrawers and if killing him might not actually be doing the poor little beastie a favor; he’d just been so
sad
since Jake passed into the clearing.

“Susannah,” Roland said. “I was sharp with you just now, and I cry your pardon.”

“There’s no need,” she said.

“I think there is. We’ve enough problems without making problems between us. Without making resentments between us.”

She was quiet. Looking up at him as he looked off into the southeast, at the circling birds.

“Those rooks,” he said.

She was quiet, waiting.

“In my childhood, we sometimes called them Gan’s Blackbirds. I told you and Eddie about how my friend Cuthbert and I spread bread for the birds after the cook was hanged, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“They were birds exactly like those, named Castle Rooks by some. Never Royal Rooks, though, for they were scavenger birds. You asked what yonder rooks live on. Could be they’re scavenging in the yards and streets of
his
castle, now that he’s departed.”

“Le Casse Roi Russe, or Roi Rouge, or whatever you call it.”

“Aye. I don’t say for sure, but . . .”

Roland didn’t finish and didn’t need to. After that she kept an eye on the birds, and yes, they seemed to be both coming and going from the southeast. The birds might mean that they were making progress after all. It wasn’t much, but enough to buoy her spirits for the rest of that day and deep into another shivering rotten-cold night.

The following morning, as they were eating another cold breakfast in another fireless camp (Roland had promised that tonight they would use some of the Sterno and have food that was at least warm), Susannah asked if she could look at the watch he had been given by the Tet Corporation. Roland passed it over to her willingly enough. She looked long at the three siguls cut into the cover, especially the Tower with its ascending spiral of
windows. Then she opened it and looked inside. Without looking up at Roland she said, “Tell me again what they said to you.”

“They were passing on what one of their good-minds told them. An especially talented one, by their accounts, although I don’t remember his name. According to him, the watch may stop when we near the Dark Tower, or even begin to run backward.”

“Hard to imagine a Patek Philippe running backward,” she said. “According to this, it’s eight-sixteen AM or PM back in New York. Here it looks about six-thirty AM, but I don’t guess that means much, one way or the other. How’re we supposed to know if this baby is running fast or slow?”

Roland had stopped storing goods in his gunna and was considering her question. “Do you see the tiny hand at the bottom? The one that runs all by himself?”

“The second-hand, yes.”

“Tell me when he’s straight up.”

She looked at the second-hand racing around in its own circle, and when it was in the noon position, she said, “Right now.”

Roland was hunkered down, a position he could accomplish easily now that the pain in his hip was gone. He closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around his knees. Each breath he exhaled emerged in a thin mist. Susannah tried not to look at this; it was as if the hated cold had actually grown strong enough to appear before them, still ghostlike but visible.

“Roland, what’re you d—”

He raised a hand to her, palm out, not opening his eyes, and she hushed.

The second-hand hurried around its circle, first
dipping down, then rising until it was straight up again. And when it had arrived there—

Roland opened his eyes and said, “That’s a minute. A
true
minute, as I live beneath the Beam.”

Her mouth dropped open. “How in the name of heaven did you do that?”

Roland shook his head. He didn’t know. He only knew that Cort had told them they must always be able to keep time in their heads, because you couldn’t depend on watches, and a sundial was no good on a cloudy day. Or at midnight, for that matter. One summer he had sent them out into the Baby Forest west of the castle night after uncomfortable night (and it was scary out there, too, at least when one was on one’s own, although of course none of them would ever have said so out loud, even to each other), until they could come back to the yard behind the Great Hall at the very minute Cort had specified. It was strange how that clock-in-the-head thing worked. The thing was, at first it didn’t. And didn’t. And didn’t. Down would come Cort’s callused hand, down it would come a-clout, and Cort would growl
Arrr, maggot, back to the woods tomorrow night! You must like it out there!
But once that headclock started ticking, it always seemed to run true. For awhile Roland had lost it, just as the world had lost its points of the compass, but now it was back and that cheered him greatly.

“Did you count the minute?” she asked. “Mississippi-one, Mississippi-two, like that?”

He shook his head. “I just know. When a minute’s up, or an hour.”

“Bol-she-
vecky
!” she scoffed. “You guessed!”

“If I’d guessed, would I have spoken after exactly one revolution of the hand?”

“You mought got lucky,” Detta said, and eyed him shrewdly with one eye mostly closed, an expression Roland detested. (But never said so; that would only cause Detta to goad him with it on those occasions when she peeked out.)

“Do you want to try it again?” he asked.

“No,” Susannah said, and sighed. “I take your word for it that your watch is keeping perfect time. And that means we’re not close to the Dark Tower. Not yet.”

“Perhaps not close enough to affect the watch, but closer than I’ve ever been,” Roland said quietly. “Comparatively speaking, we’re now almost in its shadow. Believe me, Susannah—I know.”

“But—”

From over their heads came a cawing that was both harsh and oddly muffled:
Croo, croo!
instead of
Caw, caw!
Susannah looked up and saw one of the huge blackbirds—the sort Roland had called Castle Rooks—flying overhead low enough so that they could hear the labored strokes of its wings. Dangling from its long hooked bill was a limp strand of something yellowy-green. To Susannah it looked like a piece of dead seaweed. Only not
entirely
dead.

She turned to Roland, looked at him with excited eyes.

He nodded. “Devilgrass. Probably bringing it back to feather his mate’s nest. Certainly not for the babies to eat. Not
that
stuff. But devilgrass always goes last when you’re walking into the Nowhere Lands, and always shows up first when you’re walking back out of them, as we are. As we finally are. Now listen to me, Susannah, I’d have you listen, and I’d have you push that tiresome bitch
Detta as far back as possible. Nor would I have you waste my time by telling me she’s not there when I can see her dancing the commala in your eyes.”

Susannah looked surprised, then piqued, as if she would protest. Then she looked away without saying anything. When she looked back at him again, she could no longer feel the presence of the one Roland had called “that tiresome bitch.” And Roland must no longer have detected her presence, because he went on.

“I think it will soon look like we’re coming out of the Badlands, but you’d do well not to trust what you see—a few buildings and maybe a little paving on the roads doesn’t make for safety or civilization. And before too long we’re going to come to his castle, Le Casse Roi Russe. The Crimson King is almost certainly gone from there, but he may have left a trap for us. I want you to look and listen. If there’s talking to be done, I want you to let me do it.”

“What do you know that I don’t?” she asked. “What are you holding back?”

“Nothing,” he said (with what was, for him, a rare earnestness). “It’s only a feeling, Susannah. We’re close to our goal now, no matter what the watch may say. Close to winning our way to the Dark Tower. But my teacher, Vannay, used to say that there’s just one rule with no exceptions:
before victory comes temptation
. And the greater the victory to win, the greater the temptation to withstand.”

Susannah shivered and put her arms around herself. “All I want is to be warm,” she said. “If nobody offers me a big load of firewood and a flannel union suit to cry off the Tower, I guess we’ll be all right awhile longer.”

Roland remembered one of Cort’s most serious maxims—
Never speak the worst aloud!
—but kept his own mouth shut, at least on that subject. He put his watch away carefully and then rose, ready to move on.