Roland said nothing, but his cheek went pale, as if he had seen a ghost. Or heard one.

14

The gunslinger turned to Jake, who looked back at him seriously. “I went through the trial of manhood at the age of fourteen, the youngest of my ka-tel—of my class, you would say—and perhaps the youngest ever. I told you some of that, Jake. Do you remember?”

You told all of us some of that, Susannah thought, but kept her mouth shut, and warned Eddie with her eyes to do the same. Roland hadn’t been himself during that telling; with Jake both dead and alive within his head, the man had been fighting madness.

“You mean when we were chasing Walter,” Jake said. “After the way station but before I... I took my fall.”

“That’s right.”

“I remember a little, but that’s all. The way you remember the stuff you dream about.”

Roland nodded. “Listen, then. I would tell you more this time, Jake, because you are older. I suppose we all are.”

Susannah was no less fascinated with the story the second time: how the boy Roland had chanced to discover Marten, his father’s advisor (his father’s wizard) in his mother’s apartment. Only none of it had been by chance, of course; the boy would have passed her door with no more than a glance had Marten not opened it and invited him in. Marten had told Roland that his mother wanted to see him, but one look at her rueful smile and downcast eyes as she sat in her low-back chair told the boy he was the last person in the world Gabrielle Deschain wanted to see just then.

The flush on her cheek and the love-bite on the side of her neck told him everything else.

Thus had he been goaded by Marten into an early trial of manhood, and by employing a weapon his teacher had not expected—his hawk, David—Roland had defeated Cort, taken his stick... and made the enemy of his life in Marten Broadcloak.

Beaten badly, face swelling into something that looked like a child’s goblin mask, slipping toward a coma, Cort had fought back unconsciousness long enough to offer his newest apprentice gunslinger counsel: stay away from Marten yet awhile, Cort had said.

“He told me to let the story of our battle grow into a legend,” the gunslinger told Eddie, Susannah, and Jake. “To wait until my shadow had grown hair on its face and haunted Marten in his dreams.”

“Did you take his advice?” Susannah asked.

“I never got a chance,” Roland said. His face cracked in a rueful, painful smile. “I meant to think about it, and seriously, but before I even got started on my thinking, things... changed.”

“They have a way of doing that, don’t they?” Eddie said. “My goodness, yes.”