The Dark Tower

Night in Thunderclap is the very definition of darkness: no moon, no stars. Yet if we were to stand outside the cave where Roland and his tet have just shared khef and will now listen to the tapes Ted Brautigan has left them, we’d see two red coals floating in that wind-driven darkness. If we were to climb the path up the side of Steek-Tete toward those floating coals (a dangerous proposition in the dark), we’d eventually come upon a seven-legged spider now crouched over the queerly deflated body of a mutie coyote. This can-toi-tete was a literally misbegotten thing in life, with the stub of a fifth leg jutting from its chest and a jellylike mass of flesh hanging down between its rear legs like a deformed udder, but its flesh nourishes Mordred, and its blood—taken in a series of long, steaming gulps—is as sweet as a dessert wine. There are, in truth, all sorts of things to eat over here. Mordred has no friends to lift him from place to place via the seven-league boots of teleportation, but he found his journey from Thunderclap Station to Steek-Tete far from arduous.

He has overheard enough to be sure of what his father is planning: a surprise attack on the facility below. They’re badly outnumbered, but Roland’s band of shooters is fiercely devoted to him, and surprise is ever a powerful weapon.

And gunslingers are what Jake would call fou, crazy when their blood is up, and afraid of nothing. Such insanity is an even more powerful weapon.

Mordred was born with a fair amount of inbred knowledge, it seems. He knows, for instance, that his Red Father, possessed of such information as Mordred now has, would have sent word of the gunslinger’s presence at once to the Devar-Toi’s Master or Security Chief. And then, sometime later tonight, the ka-tet out of Mid-World would have found themselves ambushed. Killed in their sleep, mayhap, thus allowing the Breakers to continue the King’s work. Mordred wasn’t born with a knowledge of that work, but he’s capable of logic and his ears are sharp. He now understands what the gunslingers are about: they have come here to break the Breakers.

He could stop it, true, but Mordred feels no interest in his Red Father’s plans or ambitions. What he most truly enjoys, he’s discovering, is the bitter loneliness of outside. Of watching with the cold interest of a child watching life and death and war and peace through the glass wall of the antfarm on his bureau.

Would he let yon ki’-dam actually kill his White Father? Oh, probably not. Mordred is reserving that pleasure for himself, and he has his reasons; already he has his reasons. But as for the others—the young man, the shor’-leg woman, the kid—yes, if ki’-dam Prentiss gets the upper hand, by all means let him kill any or all three of them. As for Mordred Deschain, he will let the game play out straight. He will watch. He will listen. He will hear the screams and smell the burning and watch the blood soak into the ground. And then, if he judges that Roland won’t win his throw, he, Mordred, will step in. On behalf of the Crimson King, if it seems like a good idea, but really on his own behalf, and for his own reason, which is really quite simple: Mordred’s a-hungry.

And if Roland and his ka-tet should win their throw? Win and press on to the Tower? Mordred doesn’t really think it will happen, for he is in his own strange way a member of their ka-tet, he shares their khef and feels what they do. He feels the impending break of their fellowship.

Ka-shume! Mordred thinks, smiling. There’s a single eye left in the desert-dog’s face. One of the hairy black spider-legs caresses it and then plucks it out. Mordred eats it like a grape, then turns back to where the white light of the gas-lanterns spills around the corners of the blanket Roland has hung across the cave’s mouth.

Could he go down closer? Close enough to listen?

Mordred thinks he could, especially with the rising wind to mask the sound of his movements. An exciting idea.

He scutters down the rocky slope toward the errant sparks of light, toward the murmur of the voice from the tape recorder and the thoughts of those listening: his brothers, his sister-mother, the pet billy, and, of course, overseeing them all, Big White Ka-Daddy.

Mordred creeps as close as he dares and then crouches in the cold and windy dark, miserable and enjoying his misery, dreaming his outside dreams. Inside, beyond the blanket, is light. Let them have it, if they like; for now let there be light. Eventually he, Mordred, will put it out. And in the darkness, he will have his pleasure.

CHAPTER VIII: NOTES FROM THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE

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