Wolves of the Calla
Read Wolves of the Calla Online
Authors: Stephen King
“The Dark Tower
is a humane, visionary epic and a true magnum opus. . . . It will be around for a very long time.”
—The Washington Post
ENTER THE IMAGINATIVE WORLDS OF STEPHEN KING WITH THE BRILLIANTLY REALIZED NOVELS IN THE
DARK TOWER
SERIES
THE DARK TOWER V:
WOLVES OF THE CALLA
“One of the greatest cavalcades in popular fiction. . . . Fore and aft of the showdown, King stuffs the book with juice.”
—Booklist
“The Dark Tower
is nothing if not ambitious: it blend[s] disparate styles of popular narrative, from Arthurian legend to Sergio Leone western to apocalyptic science fiction. More than that, it tries to knit the bulk of King’s fiction together in a single universe.”
—The New York Times
“One gets the feeling that this colossal story means a lot to King, that he’s telling it because he has to. . . . He’s giving
The Dark Tower
everything he’s got.”
—The San Francisco Chronicle
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
is also available from Simon & Schuster Audio.
More praise for
THE DARK TOWER V:
WOLVES OF THE CALLA
“Will surely keep his ‘Constant Readers’ in awe.”
—Publishers Weekly
THE DARK TOWER VI:
SONG OF SUSANNAH
“
The Dark Tower
series is King’s masterpiece.”
—The Florida Times-Union
“Equal parts Western, high fantasy, horror and science fiction, the series is one of the wildest pastiches ever put between covers. All through the series there are references and tips of the hat to iconic works of pop culture, including J.R.R. Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings
trilogy, films like
The Seven Samurai
or the spaghetti Westerns popularized by Clint Eastwood, and even L. Frank Baum’s Oz books. . . . King brilliantly juggles all the plot elements.”
—The Denver Post
“The suspense master takes readers right over the edge.”
—Bangor Daily News
“He’s done it again. . . . Stephen King is no ordinary wordsmith.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
THE DARK TOWER VII:
THE DARK TOWER
“Pure storytelling. . . . A fitting capstone to a uniquely American epic. . . . An absorbing, constantly surprising novel filled with true narrative magic. . . . An archetypal quest fantasy distinguished by its uniquely Western flavor, its emotional complexity and its sheer imaginative reach. . . . The series as a whole—and this final volume in particular—is filled with brilliantly rendered set pieces, cataclysmic encounters, and moments of desolating tragedy. King holds it all together through sheer narrative muscle and his absolute commitment to his slowly unfolding—and deeply personal—vision.”
—The Washington Post
“A tale of epic proportions . . . [and] brilliant complexity. . . . Those who have faithfully journeyed alongside Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy will find their loyalty richly rewarded. . . . King has certainly reached the top of his game.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Stunning . . . cataclysmic. . . . His writing is as powerful as ever.”
—Bookmarks Magazine
“Plenty of action and quite a few unforeseen bombshells.”
—Booklist
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Chapter I: THE FACE ON THE WATER
Chapter VI: THE WAY OF THE ELD
Chapter III: THE PRIEST’S TALE (NEW YORK)
Chapter IV: THE PRIEST’S TALE CONTINUED (HIGHWAYS IN HIDING)
Chapter V: THE TALE OF GRAY DICK
Chapter VIII: TOOK’S STORE; THE UNFOUND DOOR
Chapter IX: THE PRIEST’S TALE CONCLUDED (UNFOUND)
Chapter III: THE DOGAN, PART 2
Chapter V: THE MEETING OF THE
FOLKEN
This book is for Frank Muller,
who hears the voices in my head.
Wolves of the Calla
is the fifth volume of a longer tale inspired by Robert Browning’s narrative poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.” The sixth,
Song of Susannah,
was published in 2004. The seventh and last,
The Dark Tower,
was published later that same year.
The first volume,
The Gunslinger,
tells how Roland Deschain of Gilead pursues and at last catches Walter, the man in black—he who pretended friendship with Roland’s father but actually served the Crimson King in far-off End-World. Catching the half-human Walter is for Roland a step on the way to the Dark Tower, where he hopes the quickening destruction of Mid-World and the slow death of the Beams may be halted or even reversed. The subtitle of this novel is RESUMPTION.
The Dark Tower is Roland’s obsession, his grail, his only reason for living when we meet him. We learn of how Marten tried, when Roland was yet a boy, to see him sent west in disgrace, swept from the board of the great game. Roland, however, lays Marten’s plans at nines, mostly due to his choice of weapon in his manhood test.
Steven Deschain, Roland’s father, sends his son and two friends (Cuthbert Allgood and Alain Johns) to the seacoast barony of Mejis, mostly to place the boy beyond Walter’s reach. There Roland meets and falls in love with Susan Delgado, who has
fallen afoul of a witch. Rhea of the Cöos is jealous of the girl’s beauty, and particularly dangerous because she has obtained one of the great glass balls known as the Bends o’ the Rainbow . . . or the Wizard’s Glasses. There are thirteen of these in all, the most powerful and dangerous being Black Thirteen. Roland and his friends have many adventures in Mejis, and although they escape with their lives (and the pink Bend o’ the Rainbow), Susan Delgado, the lovely girl at the window, is burned at the stake. This tale is told in the fourth volume,
Wizard and Glass
. The subtitle of this novel is REGARD.
In the course of the tales of the Tower we discover that the gunslinger’s world is related to our own in fundamental and terrible ways. The first of these links is revealed when Jake, a boy from the New York of 1977, meets Roland at a desert way station long years after the death of Susan Delgado. There are doors between Roland’s world and our own, and one of them is death. Jake finds himself in this desert way station after being pushed into Forty-third Street and run over by a car. The car’s driver was a man named Enrico Balazar. The pusher was a criminal sociopath named Jack Mort, Walter’s representative on the New York level of the Dark Tower.
Before Jake and Roland reach Walter, Jake dies again . . . this time because the gunslinger, faced with an agonizing choice between this symbolic son and the Dark Tower, chooses the Tower. Jake’s last words before plunging into the abyss are “Go, then—there are other worlds than these.”
The final confrontation between Roland and Walter occurs near the Western Sea. In a long night of palaver, the man in black tells Roland’s future with a Tarot deck of strange device. Three
cards—the Prisoner, the Lady of Shadows, and Death (“but not for you, gunslinger”)—are especially called to Roland’s attention.
The Drawing of the Three,
subtitled RENEWAL, begins on the shore of the Western Sea not long after Roland awakens from his confrontation with Walter. The exhausted gunslinger is attacked by a horde of carnivorous “lobstrosities,” and before he can escape, he has lost two fingers of his right hand and has been seriously infected. Roland resumes his trek along the shore of the Western Sea, although he is sick and possibly dying.
On his walk he encounters three doors standing freely on the beach. These open into New York at three different
whens
. From 1987, Roland draws Eddie Dean, a prisoner of heroin. From 1964, he draws Odetta Susannah Holmes, a woman who lost her legs when a sociopath named Jack Mort pushed her in front of a subway train. She is the Lady of Shadows, with a violent “other” hidden in her brain. This hidden woman, the violent and crafty Detta Walker, is determined to kill both Roland and Eddie when the gunslinger draws her into Mid-World.
Roland thinks that perhaps he has drawn three in just Eddie and Odetta, since Odetta is really two personalities, yet when Odetta and Detta merge as one into Susannah (largely thanks to Eddie Dean’s love and courage), the gunslinger knows it’s not so. He knows something else, as well: he is being tormented by thoughts of Jake, the boy who spoke of other worlds at the time of his death.
The Waste Lands,
subtitled REDEMPTION, begins with a paradox: to Roland, Jake seems both alive and dead. In the New York of the late 1970s, Jake Chambers
is haunted by the same question: alive or dead? Which is he? After killing a gigantic bear named either Mir (so called by the old people who went in fear of it) or Shardik (by the Great Old Ones who built it), Roland, Eddie, and Susannah backtrack the beast and discover the Path of the Beam known as Shardik to Maturin, Bear to Turtle. There were once six of these Beams, running between the twelve portals which mark the edges of Mid-World. At the point where the Beams cross, at the center of Roland’s world (and all worlds), stands the Dark Tower, the nexus of all
where
and
when
.