Стивен Кинг - The Dark Tower

( tusk )

tooth, and he thought the lips of the drawing might come to life and part as he looked, revealing a mouthful of fangs: one mere wink of white (which was only a bit of unmarked paper, after all) made the imagination see all the rest, and even to smell the reek of meat that would accompany each outflow of breath. Patrick had perfectly captured a tuft of hair curling from one of the King’s nostrils, and a tiny thread of scar that wove in and out of the King’s right eyebrow like a bit of string. It was a marvelous piece of work, better by far than the portrait the mute boy had done of Susannah. Surely if Patrick had been able to erase the sore from that one, then he could erase the Crimson King from this one, leaving nothing but the balcony railing before him and the closed door to the Tower’s barrel behind. Roland almost expected the Crimson King to breathe and move, and so surely it was done! Surely . . .

But it was not. It was not, and wanting would not make it so. Not even needing would make it so.

It’s his eyes, Roland thought. They were wide and terrible, the eyes of a dragon in human form. They were dreadfully good, but they weren’t right. Roland felt a kind of desperate, miserable certainty and shuddered from head to toe, hard enough to make his teeth chatter. They’re not quite r —

Patrick took hold of Roland’s elbow. The gunslinger had been concentrating so fiercely on the drawing that he nearly screamed. He looked up. Patrick nodded at him, then touched his fingers to the corners of his own eyes.

Yes. His eyes. I know that! But what’s wrong with them?

Patrick was still touching the corners of his eyes. Overhead, a flock of rusties flew through a sky that would soon be more purple than blue, squalling the harsh cries that had given them their name. It was toward the Dark Tower that they flew; Roland arose to follow them so they should not have what he could not.

Patrick grabbed him by his hide coat and pulled him back. The boy shook his head violently, and this time pointed toward the road.

“I SAW THAT, ROLAND! ” came the cry. “YOU THINK THAT WHAT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE BIRDS IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU, DO YOU NOT? EEEEEEEEE! AND IT’S TRUE, SURE! SURE AS SUGAR, SURE AS SALT, SURE AS RUBIES IN KING DANDO’S VAULT — EEEEEEEE, HA! I COULD HAVE HAD YOU JUST NOW, BUT WHY BOTHER? I THINK I’D RATHER SEE YOU COME, PISSING AND SHAKING AND UNABLE TO STOP YOURSELF!”

As I will, Roland thought. I won’t be able to help myself. I may be able to hold here another ten minutes, perhaps even another twenty, but in the end . . .

Patrick interrupted his thoughts, once more pointing at the road. Pointing back the way they had come.

Roland shook his head wearily. “Even if I could fight the pull of the thing—and I couldn’t, it’s all I can do to bide here—retreat would do us no good. Once we’re no longer in cover, he’ll use whatever else he has. He has something, I’m sure of it. And whatever it is, the bullets of my revolver aren’t likely to stop it.”

Patrick shook his head hard enough to make his long hair fly from side to side. The grip on Roland’s arm tightened until the boy’s fingernails bit into the gunslinger’s flesh even through three layers of hide clothing. His eyes, always gentle and usually puzzled, now peered at Roland with a look close to fury. He pointed again with his free hand, three quick jabbing gestures with the grimy fore-finger. Not at the road, however.

Patrick was pointing at the roses.

“What about them?” Roland asked. “Patrick, what about them?”

This time Patrick pointed first to the roses, then to the eyes in his picture.

And this time Roland understood.

NINE

Patrick didn’t want to get them. When Roland gestured to him to go, the boy shook his head at once, whipping his hair once more from side to side, his eyes wide. He made a whistling noise between his teeth that was a remarkably good imitation of an oncoming sneetch.

“I’ll shoot anything he sends,” Roland said. “You’ve seen me do it. If there was one close enough so that I could pick it myself, I would. But there’s not. So it has to be you who picks the rose and me who gives you cover.”

But Patrick only cringed back against the ragged side of the pyramid. Patrick would not. His fear might not have been as great as his talent, but it was surely a close thing. Roland calculated the distance to the nearest rose. It was beyond their scant cover, but perhaps not by too much. He looked at his diminished right hand, which would have to do the plucking, and asked himself how hard it could be. The fact, of course, was that he didn’t know. These were not ordinary roses. For all he knew, the thorns growing up the green stem might have a poison in them that would drop him paralyzed into the tall grass, an easy target.

And Patrick would not. Patrick knew that Roland had once had friends, and that now all his friends were dead, and Patrick would not. If Roland had had two hours to work on the boy—possibly even one—he might have broken through his terror. But he didn’t have that time. Sunset had almost come.

Besides, it’s close. I can do it if I have to . . . and I must .

The weather had warmed enough so there was no need for the clumsy deerskin gloves Susannah had made them, but Roland had been wearing his that morning, and they were still tucked in his belt. He took one of them and cut off the end, so his two remaining fingers would poke through. What remained would at least protect his palm from the thorns. He put it on, then rested on one knee with his remaining gun in his other hand, looking at the nearest rose. Would one be enough? It would have to be, he decided. The next was fully six feet further away.

Patrick clutched his shoulder, shaking his head frantically.

“I have to,” Roland said, and of course he did. This was his job, not Patrick’s, and he had been wrong to try and make the boy do it in the first place. If he succeeded, fine and well. If he failed and was blown apart here at the edge of Can’-Ka No Rey, at least that dreadful pulling would cease.

The gunslinger took a deep breath, then leaped from cover and at the rose. At the same moment, Patrick clutched at him again, trying to hold him back. He grabbed a fold of Roland’s coat and twisted him off-true. Roland landed clumsily on his side. The gun flew out of his hand and fell in the tall grass. The Crimson King screamed (the gunslinger heard both triumph and fury in that voice) and then came the approaching whine of another sneetch. Roland closed his mittened right hand around the stem of the rose. The thorns bit through the tough deerskin as if it were no more than a coating of cobwebs. Then into his hand. The pain was enormous, but the song of the rose was sweet. He could see the blaze of yellow deep in its cup, like the blaze of a sun. Or a million of them. He could feel the warmth of blood filling the hollow of his palm and running between the remaining fingers. It soaked the deerskin, blooming another rose on its scuffed brown surface. And here came the sneetch that would kill him, blotting out the rose’s song, filling his head and threatening to split his skull.

The stem never did break. In the end, the rose tore free of the ground, roots and all. Roland rolled to his left, grabbed his gun, and fired without looking. His heart told him there was no longer time to look. There was a shattering explosion, and the warm air that buffeted his face this time was like a hurricane.

Close. Very close, that time.

The Crimson King screamed his frustration— “EEEEEEEEEEE!” —and the cry was followed by multiple approaching whistles. Patrick pressed himself against the pyramid, face-first. Roland, clutching the rose in his bleeding right hand, rolled onto his back, raised his gun, and waited for the sneetches to make their turn. When they did, he took care of them: one and two and three.