The Dark Tower

“How did I escape?” Walter asked. “Why, I did what any true cozener would do in such circumstances—told him the truth! Showed him the Tower, at least several levels of it. It stunned him, right and proper, and while he was open in such fashion, I took a leaf from his own book and hypnotized him. We were in one of the fistulas of time which sometimes swirl out from the Tower, and the world moved on all around us as we had our palaver in that bony place, aye! I brought more bones—human ones—and while he slept I dressed em in what was left of my own clothes. I could have killed him then, but what of the Tower if I had, eh? What of you, for that matter? You never would have come to be. It’s fair to say, Mordred, that by allowing Roland to live and draw his three, I saved your life before your life was even kindled, so I did. I stole away to the seashore—felt in need of a little vacation, hee! When Roland got there, he went one way, toward the three doors. I’d gone the other, Mordred my dear, and here I am!”

He laughed through a mouthful of crackers and sprayed crumbs on his chin and shirt. Mordred smiled, but he was revolted. This was what he was supposed to work with, this? A cracker-gobbling, crumb-spewing fool who was too full of his own past exploits to sense his present danger, or to know his defenses had been breached? By all the gods, he deserved to die! But before that could happen, there were two more things he needed. One was to know where Roland and his friends had gone. The other was to be fed. This fool would serve both purposes. And what made it easy? Why, that Walter had also grown old—old and lethally sure of himself—and too vain to realize it.

“You may wonder why I’m here, and not about your father’s business,” Walter said. “Do you?”

Mordred didn’t, but he nodded, just the same. His stomach rumbled.

“In truth, I am about his business,” Walter said, and gave his most charming smile (spoiled somewhat by the peanut butter on his teeth). He had once probably known that any statement beginning with the words In truth is almost always a lie. No more. Too old to know. Too vain to know. Too stupid to remember. But he was wary, all the same. He could feel the child’s force. In his head? Rummaging around in his head? Surely not. The thing trapped in the baby’s body was powerful, but surely not that powerful.

Walter leaned forward earnestly, clasping his knees.

“Your Red Father is . . . indisposed. As a result of having lived so close to the Tower for so long, and having thought upon it so deeply, I have no doubt. It’s down to you to finish what he began. I’ve come to help you in that work.”

Mordred nodded, as if pleased. He was pleased. But ah, he was also so hungry.

“You may have wondered how I reached you in this supposedly secure chamber,” Walter said. “In truth I helped build this place, in what Roland would call the long-ago.”

That phrase again, as obvious as a wink.

He had put the gun in the left pocket of his parka. Now, from the right, he withdrew a gadget the size of a cigarette-pack, pulled out a silver antenna, and pushed a button. A section of the gray tiles withdrew silently, revealing a flight of stairs. Mordred nodded. Walter—or Randall Flagg, if that was what he was currently calling himself—had indeed come out of the floor. A neat trick, but of course he had once served Roland’s father Steven as Gilead’s court magician, hadn’t he? Under the name of Marten. A man of many faces and many neat tricks was Walter o’ Dim, but never as clever as he seemed to think. Not by half. For Mordred now had the final thing he had been looking for, which was the way Roland and his friends had gotten out of here. There was no need to pluck it from its hiding place in Walter’s mind, after all. He only needed to follow the fool’s backtrail.

First, however . . .

Walter’s smile had faded a little. “Did’ee say something, sire? For I thought I heard the sound of your voice, far back in my mind.”

The baby shook his head. And who is more believable than a baby? Are their faces not the very definition of guilelessness and innocence?

“I’d take you with me and go after them, if you’d come,” Walter said. “What a team we’d make! They’ve gone to the devar-toi in Thunder-clap, to release the Breakers. I’ve already promised to meet your father—your White Father—and his ka-tet should they dare go on, and that’s a promise I intend to keep. For, hear me well, Mordred, the gunslinger Roland Deschain has stood against me at every turn, and I’ll bear it no more. No more! Do you hear?” His voice was rising in fury.