The Dark Tower

Eddie didn’t exactly like being called bondsman, but he drank his water. Roland knelt before him and put a brief, dry kiss on Eddie’s lips. “I love you, Eddie,” he said, and outside in the ruin that was Thunderclap, a desert wind arose, carrying gritty poisoned dust.

“Why . . . I love you, too,” Eddie said. It was surprised out of him. “What’s wrong? And don’t tell me nothing is, because I feel it.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Roland said, smiling, but Jake had never heard the gunslinger sound so sad. It terrified him. “It’s only ka-shume, and it comes to every ka-tet that ever was . . . but now, while we are whole, we share our water. We share our khef. ’Tis a jolly thing to do.”

He looked at Susannah.

“Do you call me dinh?”

“Yes, Roland, I call you dinh.” She looked very pale, but perhaps it was only the white light from the gas lanterns.

“Will you share khef with me, and drink this water?”

“With pleasure,” said she, and took up the plastic cup.

“Drink, bondswoman.”

She drank, her grave dark eyes never leaving his. She thought of the voices she’d heard in her dream of the Oxford jail-cell: this one dead, that one dead, t’other one dead; O Discordia, and the shadows grow deeper.

Roland kissed her mouth. “I love you, Susannah.”

“I love you, too.”

The gunslinger turned to Jake. “Do you call me dinh?”

“Yes,” Jake said. There was no question about his pallor; even his lips were ashy. “Ka-shume means death, doesn’t it? Which one of us will it be?”

“I know not,” Roland said, “and the shadow may yet lift from us, for the wheel’s still in spin. Did you not feel ka-shume when you and Callahan went into the place of the vampires?”

“Yes.”

“Ka-shume for both?”

“Yes.”

“Yet here you are. Our ka-tet is strong, and has survived many dangers. It may survive this one, too.”

“But I feel—”

“Yes,” Roland said. His voice was kind, but that awful look was in his eyes. The look that was beyond mere sadness, the one that said this would be whatever it was, but the Tower was beyond, the Dark Tower was beyond and it was there that he dwelt, heart and soul, ka and khef. “Yes, I feel it, too. So do we all. Which is why we take water, which is to say fellowship, one with the other. Will you share khef with me, and share this water?”

“Yes.”

“Drink, bondsman.”

Jake did. Then, before Roland could kiss him, he dropped the cup, flung his arms about the gunslinger’s neck, and whispered fiercely into his ear: “Roland, I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said, and released him. Outside, the wind gusted again. Jake waited for something to howl—perhaps in triumph—but nothing did.

Smiling, Roland turned to the billy-bumbler.

“Oy of Mid-World, do you call me dinh?”

“Dinh!” Oy said.

“Will you share khef with me, and this water?”

“Khef! Wat’!”

“Drink, bondsman.”

Oy inserted his snout into his plastic cup—an act of some delicacy—and lapped until the water was gone. Then he looked up expectantly. There were beads of Perrier on his whiskers.

“Oy, I love you,” Roland said, and leaned his face within range of the bumbler’s sharp teeth. Oy licked his cheek a single time, then poked his snout back into the glass, hoping for a missed drop or two.

Roland put out his hands. Jake took one and Susannah the other. Soon they were all linked. Like drunks at the end of an A.A. meeting, Eddie thought.

“We are ka-tet,” Roland said. “We are one from many. We have shared our water as we have shared our lives and our quest. If one should fall, that one will not be lost, for we are one and will not forget, even in death.”

They held hands a moment longer. Roland was the first to let go.

“What’s your plan?” Susannah asked him. She didn’t call him sugar; never called him that or any other endearment ever again, so far as Jake was aware. “Will you tell us?”

Roland nodded toward the Wollensak tape recorder, still sitting on the barrel. “Perhaps we should listen to that first,” he said. “I do have a plan of sorts, but what Brautigan has to say might help with some of the details.”

FIVE