“R.F.,” Eddie said. “The man who was running Tick-Tock. This is from him, isn’t it?”

“Yes. He must have brought the Tick-Tock Man out of Lud.”

“Sure,” Jake said darkly. “That guy Flagg looked like someone who’d know a first-class bumhug when he found one. But how did they get here before us? What could be faster than Blaine the Mono, for cripe’s sake?”

“A door,” Eddie said. “Maybe they came through one of those special doors.”

“Bingo,” Susannah said. She held her hand out, palm up, and Eddie slapped it.

“In any case, what he suggests is not bad advice,” Roland said. “I urge you to consider it most seriously. And if you want to go back to your world, I will allow you to go.”

“Roland, I can’t believe you,” Eddie said. “This, after you dragged me and Suze over here, kicking and screaming? You know what my brother would say about you? That you’re as contrary as a hog on ice-skates.”

“I did what I did before I learned to know you as friends,” Roland said. “Before I learned to love you as I loved Alain and Cuthbert. And before I was forced to... to revisit certain scenes. Doing that has...” He paused, looking down at his feet (he had put his old boots back on again) and thinking hard. At last he looked up again. “There was a part of me that hadn’t moved or spoken in a good many years. I thought it was dead. It isn’t. I have learned to love again, and I’m aware that this is probably my last chance to love. I’m slow—Vannay and Cort knew that; so did my father—but I’m not stupid.”

“Then don’t act that way,” Eddie said. “Or treat us as if we were.”

“What you call ‘the bottom line,’ Eddie, is this: I get my friends killed. And I’m not sure I can even risk doing that again. Jake especially... I... never mind. I don’t have the words. For the first time since I turned around in a dark room and killed my mother, I may have found something more important than the Tower. Leave it at that.”

“All right, I guess I can respect that.”

“So can I,” Susannah said, “but Eddie’s right about ka.” She took the note and ran a finger over it thoughtfully. “Roland, you can’t talk about that—ka, I mean—then turn around and take it back again, just because you get a little low on willpower and dedication.”

“Willpower and dedication are good words,” Roland remarked. “There’s a bad one, though, that means the same thing. That one is obsession.”