Now, as they crossed the great open space,that third pair of snowshoes was still holding together, and because she feltas though she’d made some sort of contribution, Susannah was able to let Rolandpull her along without too much guilt. She did wonder about Mordred fromtime to time, and one night about ten days after they had crossed thesnow-boundary, she came out and asked Roland to tell her what he knew. Whatprompted her was his declaration that there was no need to set a watch, atleast for awhile; they could both get a full ten hours’ worth of sleep, ifthat’s what their bodies could use. Oy would wake them if they needed waking.
Roland had sighed and looked into the firefor nearly a full minute, his arms around his knees and his hands claspedloosely between them. She had just about decided he wasn’t going to answer atall when he said, “Still following, but falling further and further behind.Struggling to eat, struggling to catch up, struggling most of all to staywarm.”
“To stay warm?” To Susannah thisseemed hard to believe. There were trees all around them.
“He has no matches and none of the Sternostuff, either. I believe that one night—early on, this would havebeen—he came upon one of our fires with live coals still under the ash,and he was able to carry some with him for a few days after that and so have afire at night. It’s how the ancient rock-dwellers used to carry fire on theirjourneys, or so I was told.”
Susannah nodded. She had been taught roughlythe same thing in a high school science class, although the teacher hadadmitted a lot of what they knew about how Stone Age people got along wasn’ttrue knowledge at all, but only informed guesswork. She wondered how much ofwhat Roland had just told her was also guesswork, and so she asked him.
“It’s not guessing, but I can’t explain it.If it’s the touch, Susannah, it’s not such as Jake had. Not seeing and hearing,or even dreaming. Although… do you believe we have dreams sometimes we don’tremember after we awaken?”
“Yes.” She thought of telling him aboutrapid eye movement, and the REM sleep experiments she’d read about in Lookmagazine, then decided it would be too complex. She contented herself withsaying that she was sure folks had dreams every single night that they didn’tremember.
“Mayhap I see him and hear him in those,”Roland said. “All I know is that he’s struggling to keep up. He knows so littleabout the world that it’s really a wonder he’s still alive at all.”
“Do you feel sorry for him?”
“No. I can’t afford pity, and neither canyou.”
But his eyes had left hers when he saidthat, and she thought he was lying. Maybe he didn’t want to feel sorryfor Mordred, but she was sure he did, at least a little. Maybe he wanted tohope that Mordred would die on their trail—certainly there were plenty ofchances it would happen, with hypothermia being the most likely cause—butSusannah didn’t think he was quite able to do it. They might have outrun ka,but she reckoned that blood was still thicker than water.
There was something else, however, morepowerful than even the blood of relation. She knew, because she could now feelit beating in her own head, both sleeping and waking. It was the Dark Tower.She thought that they were very close to it now. She had no idea what they weregoing to do about its mad guardian when and if they got there, but she foundshe no longer cared. For the present, all she wanted was to see it. The idea ofentering it was still more than her imagination could deal with, but seeing it?Yes, she could imagine that. And she thought that seeing it would be enough.
Two
They made their way slowly down the widewhite downslope with Oy first hurrying at Roland’s heel, then dropping behindto check on Susannah, then bounding back to Roland again. Bright blue holessometimes opened above them. Roland knew that was the Beam at work, constantlypulling the cloud-cover southeast. Otherwise, the sky was white from horizon tohorizon, and had a low full look both of them now recognized. More snowwas on the come, and the gunslinger had an idea this storm might be the worstthey’d seen. The wind was getting up, and the moisture in it was enough to numball his exposed skin (after three weeks of diligent needlework, that amountedto not much more than his forehead and the tip of his nose). The gusts liftedlong diaphanous scarves of white. These raced past them and then on down theslope like fantastical, shape-changing ballet-dancers.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Susannahasked from behind him, almost wistfully.
Roland of Gilead, no judge of beauty(except once, in the outland of Mejis), grunted. He knew what would bebeautiful to him: decent cover when the storm overtook them, something morethan just a thick grove of trees. So he almost doubted what he saw when thelatest gust of wind blew itself out and the snow settled. He dropped thetow-band, stepped out of it, went back to Susannah (their gunna, now on theincrease again, was strapped to the sledge behind her), and dropped on one kneenext to her. Dressed in hides from top to toe, he looked more like a mangybigfoot than a man.
“What do you make of that?” he asked her.
The wind kicked up again, harder than ever,at first obscuring what he had seen. When it dropped, a hole opened above themand the sun shone briefly through, lighting the snowfield with billions ofdiamond-chip sparkles. Susannah shaded her eyes with one hand and looked longdownhill. What she saw was an inverted T carved in the snow. The crossarm, closest to them (but still at least two miles away) was relatively short,perhaps two hundred feet on either side. The long arm, however, was verylong, going all the way to the horizon and then disappearing over it.
“Those are roads!” she said. “Someone’splowed a couple of roads down there, Roland!”
He nodded. “I thought so, but I wanted tohear you say it. I see something else, as well.”
“What? Your eyes are sharper than mine, andby a lot.”
“When we get a little closer, you’ll seefor yourself.”
He tried to rise and she tugged impatientlyat his arm. “Don’t you play that game with me. What is it?”
“Roofs,” he said, giving in to her. “Ithink there are cottages down there. Mayhap even a town.”
“People? Are you saying people?”
“Well, it looks like there’s smoke comingfrom one of the houses. Although it’s hard to tell for sure with the sky sowhite.”
She didn’t know if she wanted to see peopleor not. Certainly such would complicate things. “Roland, we’ll have to becareful.”
“Yes,” he said, and went back to thetow-band again. Before he picked it up, he paused to readjust his gunbelt,dropping the holster a bit so it lay more comfortably near his left hand.
An hour later they came to the intersectionof the lane and the road. It was marked by a snowbank easily eleven feet high,one that had been built by some sort of plow. Susannah could see tread-marks,like those made by a bulldozer, pressed into the packed snow. Rising out ofthis hardpack was a pole. The street sign on top was no different from thoseshe’d seen in all sorts of towns; at intersections in New York City, for thatmatter. The one indicating the short road said
ODD’S LANE.
It was the other that thrilled her heart,however.
TOWER ROAD,
it read.
Three
All but one of the cottages clusteredaround the intersection were deserted, and many lay in half-buried heaps,broken beneath the weight of accumulating snow. One, however—it was aboutthree-quarters of the way down the lefthand arm of Odd’s Lane—was clearlydifferent from the others. The roof had been mostly cleared of its potentiallycrushing weight of snow, and a path had been shoveled from the lane to thefront door. It was from the chimney of this quaint, tree-surrounded cottagethat the smoke was issuing, feather-white. One window was lit a wholesome butter-yellow,too, but it was the smoke that captured Susannah’s eye. As far as she wasconcerned, it was the final touch. The only question in her mind was who wouldanswer the door when they knocked. Would it be Hansel or his sister Gretel?(And were those two twins? Had anyone ever researched the matter?) Perhaps itwould be Little Red Riding Hood, or Goldilocks, wearing a guilty goatee ofporridge.