ELEVEN
There was no question it would work. From the moment Patrick first touched the eraser to his drawing-to that curl of nostril-hair, as it happened-the Crimson King began to scream in fresh pain and horror from his balcony redoubt. And in understanding.
Patrick hesitated, looking at Roland for confirmation, and Roland nodded. "Aye, Patrick. His time has come and you're to be his executioner. Go on with it."
The Old King threw four more sneetches, and Roland took care of them all with calm ease. After that he threw no more, for he had no hands with which to throw. His shrieks rose to gibbering whines that Roland thought would surely never leave his ears.
The mute boy erased the full, sensuous mouth from within its foam of beard, and as he did it, the screams first grew muffled and then ceased. In the end Patrick erased everything but the eyes, and these the remaining bit of rubber would not even blur.
They remained until the piece of pink gum (originally part of a Pencil-Pak bought in a Norwich, Connecticut, Woolworth's during a back-to-school sale in August of 1958) had been reduced to a shred the boy could not even hold between his long, dirty nails. And so he cast it away and showed the gunslinger what remained: two malevolent blood-red orbs floating three-quarters of the way up the page.
All the rest of him was gone."
TWELVE
The shadow of the pyramid's tip had come to touch the road; now the sky in the west changed from the orange of a reaptide bonfire to that cauldron of blood Roland had seen in his dreams ever since childhood. When it did, the call of the Tower doubled, then trebled. Roland felt it reach out and grasp him with invisible hands. The time of his destiny was come.
Yet there was this boy. This friendless boy. Roland would not leave him to die here at the end of End-World if he could help it. He had no interest in atonement, and yet Patrick had come to stand for all the murders and betrayals that had finally brought him to the Dark Tower. Roland's family was dead; his misbegotten son had been the last. Now would Eld and Tower bejoined.
First, though-or last-this.
"Patrick, listen to me," he said, taking the boy's shoulder with his whole left hand and his mutilated right. "If you'd live to make all the pictures ka has stored away in your future, ask me not a single question nor ask me to repeat a single thing."
The boy looked at him, large-eyed and silent in the red and dying light. And the Song of the Tower rose around them to a mighty shout that was nothing but commala.
"Go back to the road. Pick up all the cans that are whole.
That should be enough to feed you. Go back the way we came.
Never leave the road. You'll do fine."
Patrick nodded with perfect understanding. Roland saw he believed, and that was good. Belief would protect him even more surely than a revolver, even one with the sandalwood grips.
"Go back to the Federal. Go back to the robot, Stuttering Bill that was. Tell him to take you to a door that swings open on America-side. If it won't open to your hand, draiu it open with thy pencil. Do'ee understand?"
Patrick nodded again. Of course he understood.
"If ka should eventually lead you to Susannah in any where or when, tell her Roland loves her still, and with all his heart."
He drew Patrick to him and kissed the boy's mouth. "Give her that. Do'ee understand?"
Patrick nodded.
"All right. I go. Long days and pleasant nights. May we meet in the clearing at the end of the path when all worlds end."
Yet even then he knew this would not happen, for the worlds would never end, not now, and for him there would be no clearing. For Roland Deschain of Gilead, last of Eld's line, the path ended at the Dark Tower. And that did him fine.
He rose to his feet. The boy looked up at him with wide, wondering eyes, clutching his pad. Roland turned. He drew in breath to the bottom of his lungs and let it out in a great cry.
"NOW COMES ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER! I HAVE BEEN TRUE AND I STILL CARRY THE GUN OF MY FATHER AND YOU WILL OPEN TO MY HAND!"
Patrick watched him stride to where the road ended, a black silhouette against that bloody burning sky. He watched as Roland walked among the roses, and sat shivering in the shadows as Roland began to cry the names of his friends and loved ones and ka-mates; those names carried clear in that strange air, as if they would echo forever.
"I come in the name of Steven Deschain, he of Gilead!
"I come in the name of Gabrielle Deschain, she of Gilead!
"I come in the name of Cortland Andrus, he of Gilead!
"I come in the name of Cuthbert Allgood, he of Gilead!
"I come in the name of Alain Johns, he of Gilead!
"I come in the name of Jamie DeCurry, he of Gilead!
"I come in the name of Vannay the Wise, he of Gilead!
"I come in the name of Hax the Cook, he of Gilead!
"I come in the name of David the hawk, he of Gilead and the sky!
"I come in the name of Susan Delgado, she of Mejis!