Stephen King's the Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance Revised and Updated (21 page)

CONROY

See
CAN-TOI

CONSTABLE HOWARD

See
TREE VILLAGE CHARACTERS
: TASLEY, HOWARD

CONSTANT READER

STEPHEN KING’s Constant Readers. This means you and me, folks!

VI:406, VII:818

CONVEIGH, REVEREND

See
MAINE CHARACTERS

COOGAN, LORETTA

See
CALLAHAN, FATHER DONALD FRANK
: ’SALEM’S LOT CHARACTERS

COOKIE (CALLA BRYN STURGIS)

See
CALLA BRYN STURGIS CHARACTERS
: RANCHERS: EISENHART, VAUGHN

COOKIE (JEFFERSON RANCH, DEBARIA)

See
SKIN-MAN
: SKIN-MAN’S VICTIMS: JEFFERSON RANCH CHARACTERS

CÖOS, RHEA

See
RHEA OF THE CÖOS

COPPERHEAD

See
GRAYS
: GRAY HIGH COMMAND

COQUINA, SISTER

See
ELURIA, LITTLE SISTERS OF

CORCORAN, JOHN

See
TOPEKA CHARACTERS

CORNWELL, AUSTIN

See
WARRIORS OF THE SCARLET EYE
: CASSE ROI RUSSE: HUMANS: FEEMALO/FIMALO/FUMALO: FIMALO (RANDO THOUGHTFUL)

CORT (CORTLAND ANDRUS)

Muscular, scarred Cortland Andrus was Roland Deschain’s mentor. Like his father FARDO before him, Cort trained generations of gunslingers in the art of war. Not only did Cort teach the apprentice gunslingers to battle with a variety of weapons, but he also taught them to navigate by the sun and stars, and to keep a clock ticking inside their heads. Described as a bald, squat man with bowlegs and a bulging belly of solid muscle, he was a violent carouser who frequented the brothels of GILEAD’s lower town. He also happened to be blind on one side—most likely the result of an ancient battle, brawling, or teaching injury. Cort called the apprentices “maggots.” Coming from him, it was an almost affectionate term. His job was to train young gunslingers as killers, and he was excellent at it. In
The Gunslinger,
we witness Roland’s coming-of-age battle with his teacher. If all gunslingers enter manhood with such a fierce fight, it is surprising that Cort has reached middle age at all. Throughout the Dark Tower series, Roland hears Cort’s cajoling, critical, and often observant voice inside his head. One of Cort’s sayings was “Never speak the worst aloud.” Another was “Always con your vantage.”

Evidently, Cort had a philosophical side. Roland believes that he often held palaver with the mystical MANNI. He was also Gilead’s finest riddler, though he was intolerant of cheaters. During one of the Fair-Day riddling contests, Cort stabbed a wandering singer and acrobat who had stolen the judge’s answers.

In
The Drawing of the Three,
we’re told that Roland’s
ka-tel,
or class of apprentice gunslingers, was Cort’s last group of students. On the day of the Presentation Ceremonies, Cort was too ill to attend, and so his final crop of pupils had to go to his cottage to kneel at his feet so that their teacher could load their guns for the first time. Nine weeks later, Cort was dead, probably of poison. Beautiful Gilead did not survive much longer. Two years after Cort’s death, In-World’s final bloody civil war had begun.

In
The Wind Through the Keyhole,
we learn that Cort had quite a different fate from the one we had previously suspected. Although in the revised version of
The Gunslinger
we’re told that Cort was in a coma for a week after Roland defeated him in GILEAD’s SQUARE YARD, in
Wind Through the Keyhole
we discover that Cort’s injuries in that coming-of-age battle were much more severe. According to
Wind,
Cort’s destruction of Roland’s hawk David was the old teacher’s last kill. Cort must have suffered brain damage during that final battle, since a full year after Roland won his guns Cort still had not regained his wits. (
Wind
begins after Roland’s return from MEJIS, and after his tragic matricide.) In the months after Roland’s mother’s death and before Roland traveled to DEBARIA, Roland spent much time in Cort’s hut, feeding him and changing his dirty clouts. (As Roland told his father, sometimes Cort couldn’t get to the jakes and sometimes he forgot he had to go.) Despite Roland’s almost constant attention, Cort only occasionally recognized his former student.

Although Roland claimed that he nursed Cort out of respect, STEVEN DESCHAIN believed that Roland was actually performing a self-imposed penance for murdering his mother, GABRIELLE DESCHAIN. We can’t help but wonder whether Steven sent his son to investigate the SKIN-MAN killings in Debaria to free Roland from his self-imposed responsibility to his old teacher. After Roland’s departure, Cort was cared for by the castle’s WHITE AMMIES.

I:65, I:86, I:95, I:96–100, I:104, I:107, I:108–9, I:110, I:124
(creation of mescaline),
I:127, I:135, I:137, I:149, I:162–73
(Roland’s coming of age),
I:213, II:16, II:28, II:36, II:66, II:104, II:166, II:167, II:174, II:177, II:180, II:249, II:250, II:251, II:304, II:309, II:361, II:383, III:11, III:13
(indirect),
III:14, III:41, III:259, III:276, III:277, III:280, III:328, III:418–19, IV:8
(Gilead riddling),
IV:9, IV:33–34
(knowledge of other worlds),
IV:70, IV:107, IV:109, IV:110, IV:160
(described),
IV:178
(his father lamed Jonas),
IV:197, IV:286, IV:321, IV:325, IV:326, IV:344, IV:407
(see Cort’s father, Fardo),
IV:436, IV:479, IV:523, IV:650, IV:664, E:163–64, V:78
(taught navigation and fighting),
V:86, V:169, V:204, V:240, V:245, V:248, V:383, V:392, V:476, V:597, V:675, VI:203, VII:21, VII:34, VII:148, VII:247, VII:250, VII:473, VII:587, VII:589
(saying),
VII:778
(always con yer vantage),
VII:779, VII:801
(Cortland Andrus),
VII:824, VII:829; W:35–38
(discussed),
W:76, W:79, W:287–88

CORT’S ASSOCIATES:

FARDO:
Like his son, Cort, Fardo taught generations of apprentice gunslingers how to fight, but he was also responsible for sending many boys west in disgrace. During ELDRED JONAS’s test of manhood, Fardo had broken the boy’s leg with his ironwood club and had sent him, gunless, into exile. Like so many other failed gunslingers, Jonas eventually joined forces with Gilead’s great enemy, JOHN FARSON.

**MARK:
In the 2003 version of
The Gunslinger,
we learn that Cort’s predecessor was named Mark. He died in the yard behind the GREAT HALL, stabbed to death by an overzealous student.

WANDERING SINGER AND ACROBAT:
This man was cross-eyed and wore a cap of bells. Cort killed him for attempting to cheat in a riddling contest. III:277

COSINGTON, ADA

See
TREE VILLAGE CHARACTERS
:WOODSMEN: COSINGTON, PETER

COSINGTON, PETER

See
TREE VILLAGE CHARACTERS
: WOODSMEN

COTER, CHUGGY

See
DEAN, EDDIE
: EDDIE’S PAST ASSOCIATES

COUNCIL OF ELD

See
GUNSLINGERS

COUNTESS JILLIAN OF UP’ARD KILLIAN

See
HAMBRY CHARACTERS
: TRAVELLERS’ REST

COVAY MOVERS

See
CALLAHAN, FATHER DONALD FRANK
: CALLAHAN’S HIDDEN HIGHWAYS ASSOCIATES

COVENANT MAN

See
WALTER
: WALTER’S ALIASES

COWPUNCHERS ATTACKED BY SKINMAN

See
SKIN-MAN
: SKIN-MAN’S VICTIMS

CRAZY MARY’S

See
CALIFORNIA (STATE OF)
: SACRAMENTO: CRAZY MARY’S,
in
OUR WORLD PLACES

CRESSIA CHARACTERS

In
Wizard and Glass
we learn that during Roland’s youth, the rebel JOHN FARSON attacked the Barony of Cressia and burned its Barony seat of INDRIE to the ground. Before leaving the area, he slaughtered hundreds of people and beheaded all of the Barony officials.

IV:163

CRESSIA’S BARONY GOVERNOR:
Beheaded by FARSON. IV:163

HIGH SHERIFF:
Beheaded by FARSON. IV:163

INDRIE’S MAYOR:
Beheaded by FARSON. IV:163

**CRIMSON KING (THE RED KING, LORD OF THE SPIDERS, LOS THE RED, LORD OF DISCORDIA)

CONSTANT READERS are already familiar with the Lord of Chaos known as the Crimson King. We met him in one of STEPHEN KING’s other novels, namely
Insomnia.
If Roland is a soldier of the WHITE, then the Crimson King is his natural enemy. This prince of chaos is a shape-shifter whose true dual form vacillates between that of a satanic red-eyed Santa Claus and a scuttling spider.

In the 2003 version of
The Gunslinger,
SYLVIA PITTSTON claims that the Crimson King is the Antichrist who will lead men into the flaming bowels of perdition. He is behind every fleshly pleasure and is the wicked force that created the destructive machines imprinted with LaMERK FOUNDRY. However, despite her sermons, Sylvia Pittston has already been seduced by the Crimson King’s power. Believing that WALTER was the King’s angel, she let him impregnate her with his master’s demonic child. Roland removes the demon by inserting his gun into Pittston’s vagina and screwing her with it. The child dies, but in response, Pittston raises her congregation against Roland.

In the 2003 version of
The Gunslinger,
Walter tells Roland that the Red King already controls the DARK TOWER and that the Earth has been delivered into his hand. Although the Crimson King may turn his blazing red eyes toward the kingdoms of the mortal worlds, he is far from mortal himself. Roland has a larger and more powerful enemy than he ever imagined, and that enemy has opposed him from the beginning. Even FARSON, who bore the Red King’s
sigul
of the staring red eye, was but a pawn of this destructive monster.

In
Song of Susannah
we learn that our favorite
kas-ka Gan
has also had a long and involved history with this most unsavory of were-spiders. The first time Stephen King encountered Los the Red—in the form of tiny red spiders feeding on the intestines of dead chickens—King was seven years old and sawing wood in his aunt and uncle’s barn. The young King was saved from the spiders (and from their deadly bites, which would have turned him into a VAMPIRE) by CUTHBERT ALLGOOD and EDDIE DEAN. Needless to say, the Crimson King never forgave Stephen King for evading his clutches, or for converting to the cause of the White.

It is probably safe to assume that, like his half-son MORDRED, the Crimson King is able to transform his shape at will. He is also probably the BEAST and Keeper of the Tower that Walter spoke of in the original version of
The Gunslinger.
As the artist PATRICK DANVILLE realizes when he tries to draw him perched on a balcony of the Dark Tower, the Red King
darkles
and
tincts
like the AGELESS STRANGER, whom Walter also mentioned during his long palaver with Roland in the GOLGOTHA.

As was stated earlier, in his human form the Crimson King resembles a satanic Santa Claus, with a huge hooked nose, full red lips (overhung by a single tusk-like tooth), an enormous white beard, and long, snowy-white hair. Like Saint Nick, he wears a red robe, though Los’s is dotted with lightning bolts and kabbalistic symbols, not cuffed and trimmed with fur. Although in
Wolves of
the Calla
we came to suspect that BLACK THIRTEEN, the nastiest ball of the WIZARD’S RAINBOW, was actually one of the Red King’s eyes, in
The Dark Tower
we learn that it isn’t. The Crimson King’s eyes are as red as the roses of CAN’-KA NO REY, and when Roland sees him shouting from a balcony of the Dark Tower, he is still in possession of both of them.

Not only is the Red King ugly, but he is also completely mad. Many years before our story began, he flooded THUNDERCLAP with poison gas, darkening the land and killing everything that lived there. Although he probably originally had an hourglass-shape on his back (a
sigul
which Mordred still has and which is the
dan-tete
’s key to the Dark Tower) somehow or other, the Red King managed to destroy his. Hence, he cannot enter the Tower proper without some
sigul
of the ELD—either his half-son’s mark or Roland’s guns.

Although the Red King is Roland’s nemesis, he is also Roland’s kinsman. According to Walter (the Crimson King’s prime minister), they are both descended from ARTHUR ELD. However, whereas Roland’s family branch is dedicated to the protection of the Tower, the Red King (always Gan’s crazy side) is focused on its destruction. It is he, the Lord of Chaos, who enslaves the BREAKERS and who forces them to destroy the BEAMS that hold the Tower in place.

Just as the gunslingers serve the White, the WARRIORS OF THE SCARLET EYE serve the Crimson King and the cause of the Outer Dark. These servants include the WOLVES, VAMPIRES, TAHEEN, and CAN-TOI (or LOW MEN) of END-WORLD. Companies such as NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, the SOMBRA CORPORATION, and LaMERK INDUSTRIES (all existing in versions of our world) also owe allegiance to the Crimson King.

When Roland and SUSANNAH journey to LE CASSE ROI RUSSE (the Red King’s palace) on their way to the Dark Tower, they find out from AUSTIN CORNWELL that while they were battling the Wolves in CALLA BRYN STURGIS, the Red King foresaw their victory—both in the Calla and in the DEVAR-TOI—in one of MAERLYN’s magic seeing spheres. (Six of them were in his possession at the time.) Enraged, Los forced all but three of his castle servants to eat rat poison. After watching them die from his throne of skulls, he smashed the six globes of Wizard’s Rainbow and killed himself by swallowing a sharpened spoon. In his new undead form—which was safe even from Roland’s guns (the barrels of which were made from Arthur Eld’s sword EXCALIBUR)—he mounted his gray horse NIS and galloped for the Tower. Although he could not enter the Tower proper, he took up a position on one of its balconies. From there, he hoped to keep his fearsome enemy Roland at bay with his huge supply of sneetches. Luckily, the Crimson King was not destined to succeed.