The Dark Tower-Part 1#-2#(60)

He suspected it was emotional upset, as well-grief over the Pere-but to let Jake know he thought that would likely just increase the boy's unhappiness over Callahan's passing.

"You don't have any," Jake said. "Skin's as clear as a bell.

"Huck-ee."

"No pimples," Roland agreed, and smoked. Below them in the seeping light was the village. The peaceful village, Jake thought, but it looked more than peaceful; it looked downright dead.

Then he saw two figures, little more than specks from here, strolling toward each other. Hume guards patrolling the outer run of the fence, he presumed. They joined together into a single speck long enough for Jake to imagine a bit of their palaver, and then the speck divided again. "No pimples, but my hip hurts like a son of a bitch. Feels like someone opened it in the night and poured it full of broken glass. Hot glass. But this is far worse." He touched the right side of his head. "It feels cracked."

"You really think it's Stephen King's injuries you're feeling?"

Instead of making a verbal reply, Roland laid the forefinger of his left hand across a circle made by the thumb and pinky of his right: that gesture which meant I tell you the truth.

"That's a bummer," Jake said. "For him as well as you."

"Maybe; maybe not. Because, think you, Jake; think you well. Only living things feel pain. What I'm feeling suggests that King won't be killed instandy. And that means he might be easier to save."

Jake thought it might only mean King was going to lie beside the road in semi-conscious agony for awhile before expiring, but didn't like to say so. Let Roland believe what he liked. But there was something else. Something that concerned Jake a lot more, and made him uneasy.

"Roland, may I speak to you dan-dinh?"

The gunslinger nodded. "If you would." A slight pause. A flick at the left corner of the mouth that wasn't quite a smile. "If thee would."

Jake gathered his courage. "Why are you so angry now? What are you angry at? Or whom?" Now it was his turn to pause. "Is it me?"

Roland's eyebrows rose, then he barked a laugh. "Not you, Jake. Not a bit. Never in life."

Jake flushed with pleasure.

"I keep forgetting how strong the touch has become in you. You'd have made a fine Breaker, no doubt."

This wasn't an answer, but Jake didn't bother saying so.

And the idea of being a Breaker made him repress a shiver.

"Don't you know?" Roland asked. "If thee knows I'm what Eddie calls royally pissed, don't you know why?"

"I could look, but it wouldn't be polite." But it was a lot more than that. Jake vaguely remembered a Bible story about Noah getting loaded on the ark, while he and his sons were waiting out the flood. One of the sons had come upon his old man lying drunk on his bunk, and had laughed at him. God had cursed him for it. To peek into Roland's thoughts wouldn't be the same as looking-and laughing-while he was drunk, but it was close.

"Thee's a fine boy," Roland said. "Fine and good, aye." And although the gunslinger spoke almost absently, Jake could have died happily enough at that moment. From somewhere beyond and above them came that resonant CLICK! sound, and all at once the special-effects sunbeam speared down on the Devar-

Toi. A moment later, faintly, they heard the sound of music:

"Heyjude," arranged for elevator and supermarket. Time to rise and shine down below. Another day of Breaking had just begun.

Although, Jake supposed, down there the Breaking never really stopped.

"Let's have a game, you and I," Roland proposed. 'You try to get into my head and see who I'm angry at. I'll try to keep you out."

Jake shifted position slightly. "That doesn't sound like a fun game to me, Roland."

"Nevertheless, I'd play against you."

"All right, if you want to."

Jake closed his eyes and called up an image of Roland's tired, stubbled face. His brilliant blue eyes. He made a door between and slightly above those eyes-a litde one, with a brass knob-and tried to open it. For a moment the knob turned. Then it stopped. Jake applied more pressure. The knob began to turn again, then stopped once again. Jake opened his eyes and saw that fine beads of sweat had broken on Roland's brow.

"This is stupid. I'm making your headache worse," he said.

"Never mind. Do your best."

My worst, Jake thought. But if they had to play this game, he wouldn't draw it out. He closed his eyes again and once again saw the little door between Roland's tangled brows. This time he applied more force, piling it on quickly. It felt a little like arm-wrestling. After a moment the knob turned and the door opened. Roland grunted, then uttered a painful laugh. "That's enough for me," he said. "By the gods, thee's strong!"

Jake paid no attention to that. He opened his eyes. "The writer? King? Why are you mad at him?"

Roland sighed and cast away the smoldering butt of his cigarette; Jake had already finished with his. "Because we have two jobs to do where we should have only one. Having to do the second one is sai King's fault. He knew what he was supposed to do, and I think that on some level he knew that doing it would keep him safe. But he was afraid. He was tired." Roland's upper lip curled. "Now his irons are in the fire, and we have to pull them out. It's going to cost us, and probably a-dearly."

"You're angry at him because he's afraid? But … " Jake frowned. "But why wouldn't he be afraid? He's only a writer. A tale-spinner, not a gunslinger."

"I know that," Roland said, "but I don't think it was fear that stopped him, Jake, or not jurffear. He's lazy, as well. I felt it when I met him, and I'm sure that Eddie did, too. He looked at the job he was made to do and it daunted him and he said to himself,

"All right, I'll find an easier job, one that's more to my liking and more to my abilities. And if there's trouble, they'll take care of me. They'll have to take care of me.' And so we do."

"You didn't like him."

"No," Roland agreed, "I didn't. Not a bit. Nor trusted him.

I've met tale-spinners before, Jake, and they're all cut more or less from the same cloth. They tell tales because they're afraid of life."

"Do you say so?" Jake thought it was a dismal idea. He also thought it had the ring of truth.

"I do. But … " He shrugged. It is what it is, that shrug said.

Ka-shume, Jake thought. If their ka-tet broke, and it was King's fault …  If it was King's fault, what? Take revenge on him? It was a gunslinger's thought; it was also a stupid thought, like the idea of taking revenge on God.

"But we're stuck with it," Jake finished.

"Aye. That wouldn't stop me from kicking his yellow, lazy ass if I got the chance, though."

Jake burst out laughing at that, and the gunslinger smiled.

Then Roland got to his feet with a grimace, both hands planted on the ball of his right hip. "Bugger," he growled.

"Hurts bad, huh?"

"Never mind my aches and mollies. Come with me. I'll show you something more interesting."

Roland, limping slightly, led Jake to where the path curled around the flank of the lumpy little mountain, presumably bound for the top. Here the gunslinger tried to hunker, grimaced, and settled to one knee, instead. He pointed to the ground with his right hand. "What do you see?"

Jake also dropped to one knee. The ground was littered with pebbles and fallen chunks of rock. Some of this talus had been disturbed, leaving marks in the scree. Beyond the spot where they knelt side by side, two branches of what Jake thought was a mesquite bush had been broken off. He bent forward and smelled the thin and acrid aroma of the sap. Then he examined the marks in the scree again. There were several of them, narrow and not too deep. If they were tracks, they certainly weren't human tracks. Or those of a desert-dog, either.

"Do you know what made these?" Jake asked. "If you do, just say it-don't make me arm-rassle you for it."

Roland gave him a brief grin. "Follow them a little. See what you find."

Jake rose and walked slowly along the marks, bent over at the waist like a boy with a stomach-ache. The scratches in the talus went around a boulder. There was dust on the stone, and scratches in the dust-as if something bristly had brushed against the boulder on its way by.

There were also a couple of stiff black hairs.

Jake picked one of these up, then immediately opened his fingers and blew it off his skin, shivering with revulsion as he did it. Roland watched this keenly.

"You look like a goose just walked over your grave."

"It's awful!" Jake heard a faint stutter in his voice. "Oh God, what was it? What was w-watching us?"

"The one Mia called Mordred." Roland's voice hadn't changed, but Jake found he could hardly bring himself to look into the gunslinger's eyes; they were that bleak. "The chap she says I fathered."

"He was here? In the night?"

Roland nodded.

"Listening … ?"Jake couldn't finish.

Roland could. "Listening to our palaver and our plans, aye,

I think so. And Ted's tale as well."

"But you don't know for sure. Those marks could be anything."

Yet the only thing Jake could think of in connection with those marks, now that he'd heard Susannah's tale, were the legs of a monster spider.

"Go thee a little further," Roland said.