“It is true, you whelp! Foolish whelp! Say your atonement or I’ll strip the hide from your very—”

“They were together!” he burst out. “Your wife and your minister—your magician! I saw the mark of his mouth on her neck! On my mother’s neck!” He reached for the gun and picked it up, but even in his shame and fury was still careful not to let his fingers stray near the trigger; he held the apprentice’s revolver only by the plain, undecorated metal of its barrel. “Today I end his treacherous, seducer’s life with this, and if you aren’t man enough to help me, at least you can stand aside and let m—”

One of the revolvers on Steven’s hip was out of its holster and in his hand before Roland’s eyes saw any move. There was a single shot, deafening as thunder in the little room; it was a full minute before Roland was able to hear the babble of questions and commotion from below. The ’prentice-gun, meanwhile, was long gone, blown out of his hand and leaving nothing behind but a kind of buzzing tingle. It flew out the window, down and gone, its grip a smashed ruin of metal and its short turn in the gunslinger’s long tale at an end.

Roland looked at his father, shocked and amazed. Steven looked back, saying nothing for a long time. But now he wore the face Roland remembered from earliest childhood: calm and sure. The weariness and the look of half-distracted fury had passed away like last night’s thunderstorms.

At last his father spoke. “I was wrong in what I said, and I apologize. You did not forget my face, Roland. But still you were foolish—you allowed yourself to be driven by one far slyer than you will ever be in your life. It’s only by the grace of the gods and the working of ka that you have not been sent west, one more true gunslinger out of Marten’s road... out of John Farson’s road... and out of the road which leads to the creature that rules them.” He stood and held out his arms. “If I had lost you, Roland, I should have died.”

Roland got to his feet and went naked to his father, who embraced him fiercely. When Steven Deschain kissed him first on one cheek and then the other, Roland began to weep. Then, in Roland’s ear, Steven Deschain whispered six words.

16

“What?” Susannah asked. “What six words?”

“‘I have known for two years,’” Roland said. “That was what he whispered.”

“Holy Christ,” Eddie said.