lastgunslinger

He agrees, faintly, to serve in an advisory capacity.

They camp on the outskirts of the barony of New Canaan, by the ruins of one of the Great Roads. Some of the folk are talking of setting up two settlements, or perhaps three or four.

In the end, some set out for Lud, and some say they'll try for the Callas, and some plan to go north and some plan to go south. The majority say it's Gilead for them. Safety in numbers. They wish each other well and promise to send runners. They leave, and split.

Roland follows the group headed for Gilead. He's pretty sure they haven't realized that he's never actually offered any advice.

***

They ask him to come to meetings for their ad hoc committee. He makes sure he's elsewhere.

This lasts for months before they start to work around him.

***

He drops into place by the fire. Both old men startle, looking up.

Roland holds up his hands. "Long days," he says, almost gently, "and pleasant nights."

One of them rubs his eyes and squints in the firelight. "May you have twice the number. Do we know you?"

"Once upon a time," Roland agrees, "mayhap. I'd share your fire for the evening, and perhaps these." He holds up a brace of rabbits and a skin of wine. "Will you have me?"

The old men agree. Soon the rabbits are roasting, and the skin of wine gets passed around.

"You knew me," Roland says, turning the spit, "quite some time ago. When I was still a young man. When all of us were still young men."

"You're a gunslinger," Dennis says suddenly. "You're that gunslinger. Thomas, he's that gunslinger."

Thomas, the fatter of the two old men, lowers the skin of wine (of which he's had a little more than his fair share, but neither Dennis nor Roland cares), and looks very closely at Roland.

"Is he still alive?" Thomas asks, and his voice is low and hungry in a way that has nothing to do with the smell of roast rabbit. "Can we not kill him, and go home at last?"

Roland adjusts the spit a little more, and sits back on his stone. "Flagg," he says, "has been dead for years."

Dennis, in the middle of rustling among their gunna, stills, his jaw dropping open. Roland does not tell him that he will catch flies like that.

Thomas, blankly: "We had to catch Flagg. It's why we left."

Roland, gently: "He caught himself. Then the world changed."

"Why are we here?" Thomas's hands shake, and -- Roland knows the difference -- it's the palsy of age, and not any kind of upset. "Why can't we go home?"

"Delain," Roland says, "is not as you knew it, King Thomas."

"Don't call me that."

"Are you not still allowed the title?" Roland tilts his head.

Thomas says nothing.

Dennis, abruptly: "Is it still there at all?"

The crackling of the fire is the only sound for nearly a minute. Finally Roland says, "You'd find some of it. There are a few folk left. Young, mostly. Untrained. It is not the home you knew. It's something new entirely. They don't remember Flagg. They don't need to."

Thomas says, hollow, "Then they don't need a king."

Roland's gaze sharpens considerably. "No, sire."

"Isn't that your name? Shouldn't I call you that?" Now Thomas sounds like a petulant child. "That was my father's name. Aren't you one and the same?"

Roland leans over and plucks the wineskin out of Thomas's hands. "Rabbit's done."

"King Roland," Thomas spits. "Isn't that what you are, King Roland. You chased after Flagg like the rest of us and you didn't find him either. You're just as bad as we are."

One thing has not changed about Roland Deschain, and it's the way he cracks a smile -- in such a way that it shocks onlookers; how could a face like that produce a smile?

"You can rest now," he tells them. "Leave off your wandering. Go home to Delain. We're done, here, our breed. What need have we for kings?"

They eat the rabbit in silence.

***

In the morning Roland leaves the forest and goes back to the camp outside the ruined walls of the castle where he was born and raised.

There's only sign of one person; one set of boot prints, one imprint of a bedroll on the earth, one retired king. No manservants. No gentlemen from Delain in search of a dead villain.

No kings, of any kind, in that circle of standing stones.

***

They have stopped asking him about governance, but they still check on him, as though to make sure he is real.

He's very real, he tells them. He does not tell him that he's made his decision, and he knows where to go.

They walk a lot. Roland doesn't walk at the head. He thinks to himself without any malice that it's like traveling with a herd of locusts. Ghosts these people may be -- probably are; he doesn't feel the need to question what happened -- but they eat. They're hungry. And he has nothing for them.

"See what there is, mayhap," he suggests. "Is there one among you that knows plants?"

Two or three step forward. Roland nods. "Teach others, if you would. And know -- " He turns to the rest. " -- that whatever they find, it will not be enough. I'd not have you go into what we're about to do blind. And if thee'd prefer, leave us."

As it turns out, nobody leaves.

***

In the Court of the Crimson King -- or what remains of it -- they find many unpleasant things.

Roland surveys the take with visible misgiving. The take: two crates full of what appear to be rations fit for an army. Substitutes for meat. They're tightly sealed.

It is a different day, he thinks. Such a place as this -- it used to be poison, through and through. But there's more life as we're leaving than there was coming in, and the sunlight doesn't appear sickly any longer.

He opens a packet. Sniffs its contents. They don't smell off -- faintly dusty, like old soil, mayhap, but nothing wrong.

If I am wrong this is the end. Roland knows it without question.

Carefully, he touches a morsel to the tip of his tongue. No reaction. He eats some, and waits overnight. When the sun rises and he's still breathing, with no discomfort, he tells them it's probably safe, but they are running a risk, and they'd be better off waiting until they can catch animals -- itself a dim prospect, considering the size of the crowd.

Most people try the rations.

As it turns out, nobody dies.

***

They keep walking. Roland stays on drogue, and stays quiet as he can. It will not do to have them become too attached; not for what he's planning.

Spring means little in southern Wyoming -- on the high plains, in the intermountain West -- when compared to the rest of the country. Snow is still piled along the weathered slatted fences designed to make the snow drift before it can get to the roads -- more than four feet deep, in some places. Wind sweeps along the drifts on the side of the road, ridging the snow, turning it into hard pack that erodes just like dirt, and it takes a while -- months -- for the sun to touch it.

Travel west along I-80 coming out of Cheyenne, headed for Laramie: wind turbines along one side of the highway, oil derricks on the other. All the while the land slopes, reslopes, a representation of a sigh. Going west, though, it's the sigh in reverse. You don't go down.

You go up.

Laramie -- forty minutes west of Cheyenne, if you do the speed limit -- sits in a wide, arcing valley between two mountain ranges: the Snowy Mountains, further west, and the Sherman Mountains, in the east. At the apex of the Shermans (at least as far as Interstate 80 is concerned), a giant bronze head of Abraham Lincoln watches over the highway. Before Eisenhower had an interstate system, the first transcontinental highway traveled the path that is today I-80, and while US 30 was its designation, its given name -- which you can still see, truncated, in cities like Cheyenne and Omaha -- was the Lincoln Highway.

That son of the Midwest, the old frontier, watches over the country at the highest point on his highway, in the middle of the mountains, bronze jaw set, with pupilless eyes. The elevation is over eight thousand feet, and Lincoln sits caged in a two-story block of Sherman granite, only his head watching over the highway.

Speaking of Sherman granite: from a distance it appears orange-red; up close, it's pink. Take a closer look and you can see that it was born from fire -- only the fire didn't do such a great job of melding the mica and the quartz. The rock is grossly knobbly -- so much so that you suspect the rock is held together by some kind of otherworldly glue, or some tenuous, yet unknown physics. Breathe too hard, you think, and the whole thing may come undone and come crashing into dust.

The crowning glory of all this rock in all these mountains, close to Lincoln's watchful eye, is Vedauwoo.

You can see Vedauwoo from the interstate: looming orange-red rock in the distance in strange, uncomfortably alien formations. When the granite weathered it did so in ways that can only be described as weird. Rock climbers like it for the strange handholds, the twisted drops and gaps. The formations are scattered across the landscape.

You get off the highway to get there. You leave the paved road.

The name is supposedly an Anglicized transliteration from the Arapaho language; translated, it means land of the earth-born spirit. For centuries humans have treaded lightly in the place. The legends are nebulous. None of them end well.



Roland Deschain, at the end of his journey, comes to Vedauwoo an hour before sundown.

He approaches from the east. The road to Vedauwoo off the interstate swings down from the West; until the last moment, there is no road or way to ease his cominng. The horse snorts beneath him, and its breath fogs in the air before disappearing.

He turns his head to the west, and the horse with it.

He knows that there's somewhat here for him, that this was the point of his long journey from Susannah's family that shouldn't be to Denver, Colorado and the high plains north and west. He knows he's slipped worlds as he's journeyed -- more than once, getting lost, but unerringly finding his way back to this place, and the rocks of sunset gold.

The gravel lot is empty of cars. He dismounts and walks the horse in with him the rest of the way, along the pole fence near-buried in snow, among the piñon pines, adding his tracks and the horse's to the caked hardpack reflecting the passage of humans, dogs, deer, rabbits. I am real, he thinks.

Roland walks. He sees the formation -- gold where the light hits -- above him; he can see the sign pointing at it. When he is close enough, he stoops: the arrow is easy enough to make out, but the rest takes some work. When he's done, he does not smile.



Roland does not smile, but his jaw sets, and those shooter's eyes gleam. Yes, he thinks, yes, there is somewhat here for me, only what?

He continues down the path, leading the horse behind him. There's a slope, and the road curls down to the left to the base of Turtle Rock. There, at the bottom, a small wooden frame house, with a small porch. More to Roland's interest is the pump in front of the house, with the red handle. He tethers the horse to the porch rail, and turns to the pump.

I am here, he thinks -- thinks, for he does not think speaking overloud in this place is a very good idea. I am here. I do not know where, or why. All I know is that I am alive, and there is more for me than this. There was one sign previous, I need another.

All the while, Turtle Rock looms in front of him, in those tones of sunset gold. Roland doesn't like that: something sinister about the way the granite glows, something near reptilian. Feels like he's being watched, like the rock itself is watching him.

The pump won't prime. Roland glances up, irritable -- the feeling of somebody watching, not knowing what he should do, and no water in the shadow of this red rock? -- and that's when he sees it.



Ever-true, real, undeniable: the lightning bolt running all the way down Turtle Rock, pointing straight down, at a particular formation at the base.

Roland leaves the pump behind and

(will you partake of that last offered cup?)

walks toward the pile of granite the bolt points to.

All the while the sun sinks toward the horizon. Dusk is coming in Wyoming. If he doesn't hurry, he knows, he'll be caught out here after dark, alone.



He pulls himself up among the pines and the quaking aspens, and that's when he hears it: the deep, subaudible hum, ahead and to the left. Like a too-thick bass note resonating in his sternum.

Now -- only now -- does Roland allow himself one small smile, more smugness than anything else. On another man it might be profound joy; Roland doesn't remember what that feels like. Hard, when you've got places to go, and things to be.

Up over some granite, and to the left, he sees it.



More than sees it, he feels it. The hum develops into something deeper, here -- an established rhythm, one he knows, the one that says come, come, come.

And if I disappear, he thinks, who then will mark my passage? It could be a trick, a glammer, but will I not just disappear back into the pool once more?

The jade pendant under his shirt slips out, a little. Roland brushes the three remaining fingers on his right hand over it, and lets it drop.

He speaks, then, in that place, and the words do not resonate, they are not themselves mellifluous and beautiful in his graveled tone made worse by lack of use -- but are they not appropriate? Are they not the only possible words? Said then, and there, by this man, they make a circle. The choice was this: the boy, or the Tower? Salvation, or damnation?

And Roland can't say who he speaks to, after he climbs the rock, sees the fissure in it, sees the fissure in the earth below.

But he says it anyway as he braces his hands on the rock.

"Go, then," Roland Deschain says to Wyoming at large, to the folk in it, to the flags blowing on the fence in the lot.

Die satisfied, he thinks. I needn't die happy, but I will die satisfied.

"There are other worlds than these."

He goes in.

Silence.

Silence but for the sound of the wind as the light dies.



Life does move on, on the high plains, in the mountains. Spring comes. The wind blows. The cycles all continue in Laramie, in Cheyenne, in Denver. And meanwhile Lincoln watches, trapped on his plinth; meanwhile the legends in Vedauwoo stay nebulous; meanwhile prayers fly from their flags into the air, and I will not say if they are heard, only that they do fly.

And Roland Deschain, we may be sure, is gone.

Stealing a horse proves to be simple -- simpler, mayhap, than he expected. Roland looks the part of someone who belongs at the National Western Stock Show. It's easy enough to approach a stall, projecting stock hand with every step, and remove a likely-looking workhorse meant for the rodeo.

A little less simple: working his way out of town. The National Western complex lies in the northeastern part of the city; Roland picks up along the banks of the South Platte River, and follows it north.

Sticking to the Platte proves to be the wisest choice. Denver sits on a high plain, with hills that roll and sway like a snapshot of a great ocean. Outside town, when you fly a plane low over the terrain, the land looks like something you could pet, something you want to run your fingers through. It's not possible to do this in the northern parts of town very well, because settlement -- lights, trees, houses, the big box stores and the roads in their painfully orderly grid -- covers the quiet hills and subtle valleys like a blanket.

Roland stays quiet and goes as instinct tells him -- sweeping along the Platte to the northeast, and once he hits the outskirts of Greeley, Colorado, he switches course to straight north.

Roland used to think of flight attendants as army women. Eddie Dean clarified that for him, on one of the nights they shared stories after Jake joined them -- stewardesses, he said, or flight attendants.

He waits until the attendant asks his seatmate about a drink, and the wires come out of the young woman's ears as she requests water. Before they can go back in, Roland says, quiet and calm, "Tell me about Denver."

The cup in her hands shakes a little as she turns to look at him, and she won't meet his eyes. "Excuse me?"

"I need to know about Denver." He hasn't forgotten the light of recognition in her eyes, when she first saw him. He's curious; they do say curiosity killed the cat, and Roland can't afford delays. "Will you tell me?"

The woman opens her mouth, and closes it. She looks out the window. Below the country is dark, with splotches of light like varicolored beads spreading over the land, and thin chains of smaller lights connecting them. To the window, she says, "The reason I'm flying tonight is I need to be back at work tomorrow. I just left my friends."

"I as well," Roland says.

"I'd be driving if I could."

"Say on."

"There's the East Coast, and there's the West Coast, and there's what's in the middle. Nobody thinks much about what's in the middle as long as they keep their mouths shut. They vote Republican and they're run by agribusiness and they're really poor, so we can write them off. That's how the thinking goes. And, you know, I kind of bought into the whole deal. And then I left the East Coast and went out to Denver, and it was really, really amazing. There was all this... stuff that I started to understand -- about this country, and about history, and land use and why it's important that we think about that kind of stuff before we go off developing the land and turning it into more strip malls without thinking about it. That's what it was like where I came from, and it's kind of why I left. But out there..." She shakes her head. "It's different."

Strip malls, Roland thinks. I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean what I think it means.

"We're not going to come in the right way," she says. "I wish you could see the right way. When I came out the first time it was dusk and I couldn't figure out what was the clouds and what was the mountains. And you come along I-70 running west, and you're in the middle of eastern Colorado, and it's all plains and hills and it's boring as hell. And then... there are all these lights, and up there it's the mountains, and then there's just this massive metro area with all the lights that go with it. Out of the middle of nothing, there's... there's this outpost."

She's silent for a moment. The plane shakes a little, then settles.

"The point -- the point is that Denver's kind of the city of last chance for a couple hundred miles around, minimum -- I mean, God knows Colorado Springs doesn't count. Both because it sucks, and because that's kind of Denver's place in American cultural consciousness. You got banks and finance and stuff, and a big safety-net hospital system, and what people from the East Coast might think of as culture. And it's weird -- I've noticed just being here that there's kind of this divide between the people who've lived in Colorado all their lives and the people who've imported themselves. And everybody just keeps coming to Colorado, or they know somebody who lives out here. I've got random family down in Alamosa, and my mother found out that one of her cousin's sons just picked up and moved out here, just like I did. It's a magnet. And it can't just be the weather or the skiing or what have you, it's got to be something else. I can't think of any other explanation, except... it's just something in the air."

She turns a little, not quite facing him, but facing more forward. "And at least for me... it's impossible for me to forget that I'm living on the edge of nothing. It'd be easy for me to get in my car during a snowstorm and make it out past the bounds of town and get stuck and die in a blizzard. I'm two hours away from the middle of nowhere in pretty much every direction you could think of. And the mountains -- they're like this massive wall, except they're one you can't see over the top, but you know something's over there. I guess..."

She trails off.

"I guess it's just that the illusion of safety and civilization -- or whatever the hell's passing for it these days -- it's... a lot easier to see it's an illusion out here."

Roland nods, thoughtfully, and sees that she sees it out of the corner of her eye.

Her smile is small, and a little bitter. "Did... was that what you wanted?"

"Yar," Roland says peaceably. "Less glammer. All I needed to know."

And it's exactly what he thought.

She sips water. Offers him some.

He takes it.

The plane continues its trip through the flyover country.

If you ask this guy who's in the position to know, he'll tell you there's a language-pool, a myth-pool, where we all go down to drink and cast our nets. Every single one of us. We read a story and we go to the pool where the water is cool and clear -- where we soak in story.

For lack of a better word, we can call it magic.





Three men are in a dusty bar. Two men are at a table; there's a tarot deck between them. The third -- not a man, not really, he's too young for that -- paces.

All three of these men look like they escaped from a movie set in some unknown version of the American West. So does the bar.

His stitches aren't strictly even, but they're small, and painstaking.

It's been a while since he's had to work on something like this -- deerskin, yes, but not heavy cloth.

And it's important, this. Making his old brown duster River-sized.

He's sitting in his chair, in Room 99. His hands hurt. So does his neck.

Sometimes you relish pain.

Kaylee's swing has a small scrim of snow on the seat. Roland notices it vaguely as he comes out the lake door.

Gabriel Tam follows him.

It is Cold outside.

There's a figure standing by a gaily painted swing outside. He's smoking. Gloveless. And hatless. And coatless.

Somebody really ought to tell Roland to put his coat on. Somebody who can tell him what's what without getting glared at.