“The Tower?”

“Yes.”

They looked toward Susannah, but she slept on, undisturbed. Once there had been a woman named Odetta Susannah Holmes; later, there had been another named Detta Susannah Walker. Now there was a third: Susannah Dean.

Roland loved her because she would fight and never give in; he feared for her because he knew he would sacrifice her—Eddie as well—without a question or a look back.

For the Tower.

The God-Damned Tower.

“Time for a pill,” Eddie said.

“I don’t want them anymore.”

“Take it and shut up.”

Roland swallowed it with cold stream-water from one of the skins, then burped. He didn’t mind. It was a meaty burp.

Eddie asked, “Do you know where we’re going?”

“To the Tower.”

“Well, yeah,” Eddie said, “but that’s like me being some ignoramus from Texas without a road-map saying he’s going to Achin’ Asshole, Alaska. Where is it? Which direction?”

“Bring me my purse.”

Eddie did. Susannah stirred and Eddie paused, his face red planes and black shadows in the dying embers of the campfire. When she rested easy again, he came back to Roland.

Roland rummaged in the purse, heavy now with shells from that other world. It was short enough work to find what he wanted in what remained of his life.

The jawbone.

The jawbone of the man in black.

“We’ll stay here awhile,” he said, “and I’ll get well.”

“You’ll know when you are?”

Roland smiled a little. The shakes were abating, the sweat drying in the cool night breeze. But still, in his mind, he saw those figures, those knights and friends and lovers and enemies of old, circling up and up, seen briefly in those windows and then gone; he saw the shadow of the Tower in which they were pent struck black and long across a plain of blood and death and merciless trial.

“I won’t,” he said, and nodded at Susannah. “But she will.”

“And then?”

Roland held up the jawbone of Walter. “This once spoke.”

He looked at Eddie.

“It will speak again.”

“It’s dangerous.” Eddie’s voice was flat.

“Yes.”

“Not just to you.”

“No.”

“I love her, man.”

“Yes.”

“If you hurt her—”

“I’ll do what I need to,” the gunslinger said.

“And we don’t matter? Is that it?”

“I love you both.” The gunslinger looked at Eddie, and Eddie saw that Roland’s cheeks glistened red in what remained of the campfire’s embered dying glow. He was weeping.

“That doesn’t answer the question. You’ll go on, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

“To the very end.”

“Yes. To the very end.”

“No matter what.” Eddie looked at him with love and hate and all the aching dearness of one man’s dying hopeless helpless reach for another man’s mind and will and need.

The wind made the trees moan.

“You sound like Henry, man.” Eddie had begun to cry himself. He didn’t want to. He hated to cry. “He had a tower, too, only it wasn’t dark. Remember me telling you about Henry’s tower? We were brothers, and I guess we were gunslingers. We had this White Tower, and he asked me to go after it with him the only way he could ask, so I saddled up, because he was my brother, you dig it? We got there, too. Found the White Tower. But it was poison. It killed him. It would have killed me. You saw me. You saved more than my life. You saved my fuckin soul.”