Стивен Кинг: The Dark Tower

Such had never been his experience. In his own, memories brought only sadness. They were the food of poets and fools, sweets that left a bitter aftertaste in the mouth and throat.

Roland stopped for a moment still ten paces from the ghostwood door in the Tower’s base, letting the voice of the roses—that welcoming horn—echo away to nothing. The feeling of déjà vu was still strong, almost as though he had been here after all. And of course he had been, in ten thousand premonitory dreams. He looked up at the balcony where the Crimson King had stood, trying to defy ka and bar his way. There, about six feet above the cartons that held the few remaining sneetches (the old lunatic had had no other weapons after all, it seemed), he saw two red eyes, floating in the darkening air, looking down at him with eternal hatred. From their backs, the thin silver of the optic nerves (now tinted red-orange with the light of the leaving sun) trailed away to nothing. The gunslinger supposed the Crimson King’s eyes would remain up there forever, watching Can’-Ka No Rey while their owner wandered the world to which Patrick’s eraser and enchanted Artist’s eye had sent him. Or, more likely, to the space between the worlds.

Roland walked on to where the path ended at the steel-banded slab of black ghostwood. Upon it, a sigul that he now knew well was engraved three-quarters of the way up:

Here he laid two things, the last of his gunna: Aunt Talitha’s cross, and his remaining sixgun. When he stood up, he saw the first two hieroglyphics had faded away:

UNFOUND had become FOUND.

He raised his hand as if to knock, but the door swung open of its own accord before he could touch it, revealing the bottom steps of an ascending spiral stairway. There was a sighing voice— Welcome, Roland, thee of Eld . It was the Tower’s voice. This edifice was not stone at all, although it might look like stone; this was a living thing, Gan himself, likely, and the pulse he’d felt deep in his head even thousands of miles from here had always been Gan’s beating life-force.

Commala, gunslinger. Commala-come-come.

And wafting out came the smell of alkali, bitter as tears. The smell of . . . what? What, exactly? Before he could place it the odor was gone, leaving Roland to surmise he had imagined it.

He stepped inside and the Song of the Tower, which he had always heard—even in Gilead, where it had hidden in his mother’s voice as she sang him her cradle songs—finally ceased. There was another sigh. The door swung shut with a boom, but he was not left in blackness. The light that remained was that of the shining spiral windows, mixed with the glow of sunset.

Stone stairs, a passage just wide enough for one person, ascended.

“Now comes Roland,” he called, and the words seemed to spiral up into infinity. “Thee at the top, hear and make me welcome if you would. If you’re my enemy, know that I come unarmed and mean no ill.”

He began to climb.

Nineteen steps brought him to the first landing (and to each one thereafter). A door stood open here and beyond it was a small round room. The stones of its wall were carved with thousands of overlapping faces. Many he knew (one was the face of Calvin Tower, peeping slyly over the top of an open book). The faces looked at him and he heard their murmuring.

Welcome Roland, you of the many miles and many worlds; welcome thee of Gilead, thee of Eld.

On the far side of the room was a door flanked by dark red swags traced with gold. About six feet up from the door—at the exact height of his eyes—was a small round window, little bigger than an outlaw’s peekhole. There was a sweet smell, and this one he could identify: the bag of pine sachet his mother had placed first in his cradle, then, later, in his first real bed. It brought back those days with great clarity, as aromas always do; if any sense serves us as a time machine, it’s that of smell.

Then, like the bitter call of the alkali, it was gone.

The room was unfurnished, but a single item lay on the floor. He advanced to it and picked it up. It was a small cedar clip, its bow wrapped in a bit of blue silk ribbon. He had seen such things long ago, in Gilead; must once have worn one himself. When the sawbones cut a newly arrived baby’s umbilical cord, separating mother from child, such a clip was put on above the baby’s navel, where it would stay until the remainder of the cord fell off, and the clip with it. (The navel itself was called tetka can Gan.) The bit of silk on this one told that it had belonged to a boy. A girl’s clip would have been wrapped with pink ribbon.

’Twas my own, he thought. He regarded it a moment longer, fascinated, then put it carefully back where it had been. Where it belonged. When he stood up again, he saw a baby’s face

( Can this be my darling bah-bo? If you say so, let it be so! )

among the multitude of others. It was contorted, as if its first breath of air outside the womb had not been to its liking, already fouled with death. Soon it would pronounce judgment on its new situation with a squall that would echo throughout the apartments of Steven and Gabrielle, causing those friends and servants who heard it to smile with relief. (Only Marten Broadcloak would scowl.) The birthing was done, and it had been a livebirth, tell Gan and all the gods thankya. There was an heir to the Line of Eld, and thus there was still the barest outside chance that the world’s rueful shuffle toward ruin might be reversed.

Roland left that room, his sense of déjà vu stronger than ever. So was the sense that he had entered the body of Gan himself.

He turned to the stairs and once more began to climb.

FOUR

Another nineteen steps took him to the second landing and the second room. Here bits of cloth were scattered across the circular floor. Roland had no question that they had once been an infant’s clout, torn to shreds by a certain petulant interloper, who had then gone out onto the balcony for a look back at the field of roses and found himself betaken. He was a creature of monumental slyness, full of evil wisdom . . . but in the end he had slipped, and now he would pay forever and ever.

If it was only a look he wanted, why did he bring his ammunition with him when he stepped out?

Because it was his only gunna, and slung over his back, whispered one of the faces carved into the curve of the wall. This was the face of Mordred. Roland saw no hatefulness there now but only the lonely sadness of an abandoned child. That face was as lonesome as a train-whistle on a moonless night. There had been no clip for Mordred’s navel when he came into the world, only the mother he had taken for his first meal. No clip, never in life, for Mordred had never been part of Gan’s tet. No, not he.

My Red Father would never go unarmed, whispered the stone boy. Not once he was away from his castle. He was mad, but never that mad .

In this room was the smell of talc put on by his mother while he lay naked on a towel, fresh from his bath and playing with his newly discovered toes. She had soothed his skin with it, singing as she caressed him: Baby-bunting, baby dear, baby bring your basket here!

This smell too was gone as quickly as it had come.

Roland crossed to the little window, walking among the shredded bits of diaper, and looked out. The disembodied eyes sensed him and rolled over giddily to regard him. That gaze was poisonous with fury and loss.

Come out, Roland! Come out and face me one to one! Man to man! An eye for an eye, may it do ya!