But his father had had much more to say. About Marten. About Roland’s mother, who was, perhaps, more sinned against than sinning. About harriers who called themselves patriots. And about John Farson, who had indeed been in Cressia, and who was gone from that place now—vanished, as he had a way of doing, like smoke in a high wind. Before leaving, he and his men had burned Indrie, the Barony seat, pretty much to the ground. The slaughter had been in the hundreds, and perhaps it was no surprise that Cressia had since repudiated the Affiliation and spoken for the Good Man. The Barony Governor, the Mayor of Indrie, and the High Sheriff had all ended the early summer day which concluded Farson’s visit with their heads on the wall guarding the town’s entrance. That was, Steven Deschain had said, “pretty persuasive politics.”

It was a game of Castles where both armies had come out from behind their Hillocks and the final moves had commenced, Roland’s father had said, and as was so often the case with popular revolutions, that game was apt to be over before many in the Baronies of Mid-World had begun to realize that John Farson was a serious threat... or, if you were one of those who believed passionately in his vision of democracy and an end to what he called “class slavery and ancient fairy-tales,” a serious agent of change.

His father and his father’s small ka-tet of gunslingers, Roland was amazed to learn, cared little about Farson in either light; they looked upon him as small cheese. Looked upon the Affiliation itself as small cheese, come to that.

I’m going to send you away, Steven had said, sitting there on the bed and looking somberly at his only son, the one who had lived. There is no true safe place left in Mid-World, but the Barony of Mejis on the Clean Sea is as close to true safety as any place may be these days... so it’s there you’ll go, along with at least two of your mates. Alain, I suppose, for one. Just not that laughing boy for the other, I beg of you. You’d be better off with a barking dog.

Roland, who on any other day in his life would have been overjoyed at the prospect of seeing some of the wider world, had protested hotly. If the final battles against the Good Man were at hand, he wanted to fight them at his father’s side. He was a gunslinger now, after all, if only a ’prentice, and—

His father had shaken his head, slowly and emphatically. No, Roland. You don’t understand. You shall, however; as well as possible, you shall.