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Dec. 11th, 2004 03:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lastgunslingerRoland Deschain has a fever.
Every five minutes or so, he has a coughing fit. This helps neither his headache nor his sore throat. He aches all over.
Worse than this: Eddie Dean is dead.
"Quests, adventures, Towers, worlds to win," Eddie said. "Sounds better than one of those Edgar Rice Burroughs books about Mars Henry used to read me sometimes when we were kids. You left out only one thing."
"What's that?" said Roland.
"The beautiful bare-breasted girls."
The gunslinger smiled. "On the way to the Dark Tower," he said, "anything is possible."
Cuthbert. Eddie was so like Cuthbert -- a ka-mai, but a beautiful one. A canny one. A deadly one. That first night on the beach after Eddie's drawing had been difficult -- Eddie sobbing for his drug, Roland closer to death than he ever wanted to admit to himself. And yet Eddie had been a gunslinger.
"What do you want, then?" Eddie cried. "You've taken everything else -- everything I have to give! No, not even that, because in the end, I gave it to you! So what else do you want from me?"
Roland held the key locked in his fist and said nothing. His eyes held Eddie's.
After a while, understanding began to dawn in Eddie Dean's eyes.
"I have forgotten the face..." Eddie paused. Dipped his head. Swallowed. Looked up at the gunslinger once more. "I have forgotten the face of my father, gunslinger...and I cry your pardon."
Roland opened his hand and returned the small burden of the key to him who ka had decreed must carry it. "Speak not so, gunslinger," he said in the High Speech. "Your father sees you very well...loves you very well...and so do I."
Eddie had been the one who had the hardest time accepting ka -- and yet in the end, he had known. Are you not my dinh? he had asked Roland, when Roland told Eddie of Susannah's trouble and asked for Eddie's cooperation. Eddie had sounded so bewildered. Eddie had accepted ka, in the end. Had told him that even if Roland died in the path of the Beam, that he and Susannah would keep moving, as long as they could. That he wanted to see the Dark Tower for himself.
And now he never would.
Joe's words from the previous night are suddenly there in his mind: "What happens to the Tower if you die of pneumonia?"
Roland, as if in response, coughs more. He simply endures the pain; it is what he is built to do. When it passes, he turns from his side onto his back and stares at the ceiling. The fight comes back to him. Harsh words on both sides.
At least I serve something greater than money. At least I have names to sing, when I reach the Dark Tower. You have nothing.
Fuck you, fuck your Tower and fuck your honor, because it stinks like a graveyard.
More of Eddie's words come back to him now:
"I been dirty, man. If I found out anything, it's that I don't want to die dirty."
"It's not the same," said Roland.
"No? You gonna tell me you're not hooked? Who's gonna come through some magic door and save you, man? Do you know? I do. No one. You drew all you could draw. Only thing you can draw from now on is a fucking gun, because that's all you got left. Just like Balazar."
Roland said nothing.
"You want to know the only thing my brother ever had to teach me?" His voice was hitching and thick with tears.
"Yes."
"He taught me if you kill what you love, you're damned."
"I am damned already," Roland said calmly. "But perhaps even the damned may be saved."
"Are you going to get all of us killed?"
"We all die in time," the gunslinger said. "It's not just the world that moves on. But we will be magnificent." He paused. "There's more than a world to win, Eddie. I would not risk you and her -- I would not have allowed the boy to die -- if that was all there was."
"What are you talking about?"
"Everything there is," the gunslinger said calmly. "We are going to go, Eddie. We are going to fight. We are going to be hurt. And in the end we will stand."
Now it was Eddie who said nothing. He could think of nothing to say.
Roland gently grasped Eddie's arm. "Even the damned love," he said.
He feels a heat behind his eyes -- heat from tears, heat from fever, Roland doesn't know. Once more he is in a foreign land. Once more he is sick and feverish, as he had been on the beach where he drew Eddie and Susannah; once more his only comfort is the thought that when he reaches the tower, he will sing their names, all their names, under that sky in that field of roses with the Dark Tower rearing to the sky in infinite majesty and stately doom. The names, the names that he will sing, are the names of the dead, the lost. Cuthbert Allgood Alain Johns Jamie DeCurry Steven Deschain Gabrielle Deschain Susan Delgado Cort and so many others, and as if Jake Chambers weren't bad enough there is now Eddie Dean and for all he knows Susannah Dean and is it all for nothing?
He can't believe that. Won't believe that. It is ka, and that is enough. Ka is not some superstition -- did he not feel his first tet breaking, at Jericho Hill, when the last force of Gilead fell?
The damned love, he had told Eddie -- an age ago, it seems. Roland kills those he loves. Roland is damned. And it's all beyond him, all. Joe does not understand. The man most like him here, the man he comes closest to trusting, the only one in this godsforsaken place with whom he can hold palaver about the best thing to do for Jake -- Joe dared denigrate Roland's reason to exist, the quest Roland has been obliged to embark upon by ka, the quest that has cost the lives of so many of his loved ones, when Joe has no understanding of what it means to do such a thing. Is incapable of understanding such a thing.
Roland's honor stinks like a graveyard? Better a graveyard than a midden.
More coughing. His eyes stream tears -- his throat is aflame, his limbs ache, his head hurts -- his heart hurts. He had sent Jake away last night. He needed -- needs -- to be alone. To let his fever burn itself out.
Jake, the only one here who would have the right to say such things as Joe said, is not angry with him. Somehow, that makes it worse.
Roland lies there for an hour or more, coughing. Eventually he begins to slip in and out of sleep, in and out of fevered dreams of Jake Chambers jumping out of a hayloft into a haystack, Jake Chambers dropping into an abyss below a mountain, Joe explaining the ways of the bar to him, Joe telling him his honor stank, Eddie Dean smiling and laughing, Eddie cradling his brother's head and looking up at Roland with tear-filled, accusing eyes.
*Italicized excerpts taken from The Dark Tower 2: The Drawing of the Three and The Dark Tower 3: The Waste Lands by Stephen King.
Every five minutes or so, he has a coughing fit. This helps neither his headache nor his sore throat. He aches all over.
Worse than this: Eddie Dean is dead.
"Quests, adventures, Towers, worlds to win," Eddie said. "Sounds better than one of those Edgar Rice Burroughs books about Mars Henry used to read me sometimes when we were kids. You left out only one thing."
"What's that?" said Roland.
"The beautiful bare-breasted girls."
The gunslinger smiled. "On the way to the Dark Tower," he said, "anything is possible."
Cuthbert. Eddie was so like Cuthbert -- a ka-mai, but a beautiful one. A canny one. A deadly one. That first night on the beach after Eddie's drawing had been difficult -- Eddie sobbing for his drug, Roland closer to death than he ever wanted to admit to himself. And yet Eddie had been a gunslinger.
"What do you want, then?" Eddie cried. "You've taken everything else -- everything I have to give! No, not even that, because in the end, I gave it to you! So what else do you want from me?"
Roland held the key locked in his fist and said nothing. His eyes held Eddie's.
After a while, understanding began to dawn in Eddie Dean's eyes.
"I have forgotten the face..." Eddie paused. Dipped his head. Swallowed. Looked up at the gunslinger once more. "I have forgotten the face of my father, gunslinger...and I cry your pardon."
Roland opened his hand and returned the small burden of the key to him who ka had decreed must carry it. "Speak not so, gunslinger," he said in the High Speech. "Your father sees you very well...loves you very well...and so do I."
Eddie had been the one who had the hardest time accepting ka -- and yet in the end, he had known. Are you not my dinh? he had asked Roland, when Roland told Eddie of Susannah's trouble and asked for Eddie's cooperation. Eddie had sounded so bewildered. Eddie had accepted ka, in the end. Had told him that even if Roland died in the path of the Beam, that he and Susannah would keep moving, as long as they could. That he wanted to see the Dark Tower for himself.
And now he never would.
Joe's words from the previous night are suddenly there in his mind: "What happens to the Tower if you die of pneumonia?"
Roland, as if in response, coughs more. He simply endures the pain; it is what he is built to do. When it passes, he turns from his side onto his back and stares at the ceiling. The fight comes back to him. Harsh words on both sides.
At least I serve something greater than money. At least I have names to sing, when I reach the Dark Tower. You have nothing.
Fuck you, fuck your Tower and fuck your honor, because it stinks like a graveyard.
More of Eddie's words come back to him now:
"I been dirty, man. If I found out anything, it's that I don't want to die dirty."
"It's not the same," said Roland.
"No? You gonna tell me you're not hooked? Who's gonna come through some magic door and save you, man? Do you know? I do. No one. You drew all you could draw. Only thing you can draw from now on is a fucking gun, because that's all you got left. Just like Balazar."
Roland said nothing.
"You want to know the only thing my brother ever had to teach me?" His voice was hitching and thick with tears.
"Yes."
"He taught me if you kill what you love, you're damned."
"I am damned already," Roland said calmly. "But perhaps even the damned may be saved."
"Are you going to get all of us killed?"
"We all die in time," the gunslinger said. "It's not just the world that moves on. But we will be magnificent." He paused. "There's more than a world to win, Eddie. I would not risk you and her -- I would not have allowed the boy to die -- if that was all there was."
"What are you talking about?"
"Everything there is," the gunslinger said calmly. "We are going to go, Eddie. We are going to fight. We are going to be hurt. And in the end we will stand."
Now it was Eddie who said nothing. He could think of nothing to say.
Roland gently grasped Eddie's arm. "Even the damned love," he said.
He feels a heat behind his eyes -- heat from tears, heat from fever, Roland doesn't know. Once more he is in a foreign land. Once more he is sick and feverish, as he had been on the beach where he drew Eddie and Susannah; once more his only comfort is the thought that when he reaches the tower, he will sing their names, all their names, under that sky in that field of roses with the Dark Tower rearing to the sky in infinite majesty and stately doom. The names, the names that he will sing, are the names of the dead, the lost. Cuthbert Allgood Alain Johns Jamie DeCurry Steven Deschain Gabrielle Deschain Susan Delgado Cort and so many others, and as if Jake Chambers weren't bad enough there is now Eddie Dean and for all he knows Susannah Dean and is it all for nothing?
He can't believe that. Won't believe that. It is ka, and that is enough. Ka is not some superstition -- did he not feel his first tet breaking, at Jericho Hill, when the last force of Gilead fell?
The damned love, he had told Eddie -- an age ago, it seems. Roland kills those he loves. Roland is damned. And it's all beyond him, all. Joe does not understand. The man most like him here, the man he comes closest to trusting, the only one in this godsforsaken place with whom he can hold palaver about the best thing to do for Jake -- Joe dared denigrate Roland's reason to exist, the quest Roland has been obliged to embark upon by ka, the quest that has cost the lives of so many of his loved ones, when Joe has no understanding of what it means to do such a thing. Is incapable of understanding such a thing.
Roland's honor stinks like a graveyard? Better a graveyard than a midden.
More coughing. His eyes stream tears -- his throat is aflame, his limbs ache, his head hurts -- his heart hurts. He had sent Jake away last night. He needed -- needs -- to be alone. To let his fever burn itself out.
Jake, the only one here who would have the right to say such things as Joe said, is not angry with him. Somehow, that makes it worse.
Roland lies there for an hour or more, coughing. Eventually he begins to slip in and out of sleep, in and out of fevered dreams of Jake Chambers jumping out of a hayloft into a haystack, Jake Chambers dropping into an abyss below a mountain, Joe explaining the ways of the bar to him, Joe telling him his honor stank, Eddie Dean smiling and laughing, Eddie cradling his brother's head and looking up at Roland with tear-filled, accusing eyes.
*Italicized excerpts taken from The Dark Tower 2: The Drawing of the Three and The Dark Tower 3: The Waste Lands by Stephen King.
