The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy (11 page)

Roland ends his story with the boys' return to Gilead, where they are feted as heroes. Alain and Cuthbert are elevated to gunslingers based on their performance against Farson's troops. Roland doesn't immediately tell his father that he has the Wizard's Glass, though. It reveals a murder plot against his father, which he thwarts, though he doesn't provide details to his new
ka-tet
before they reach the Green Palace.

Eddie, Jake and Susannah tell Roland the story of
The Wizard of Oz
after they find red shoes tailored to their individual needs. The Green Palace may be their way back home—which to the New Yorkers now means Mid-World, not Manhattan.

Inside the building, over which the Crimson King's standard flies, they discover the Tick-Tock Man, who is playing the part of the wizard from the Baum novel, and a real wizard, whom Roland recognizes as Marten Broadcloak from Gilead but who is now calling himself Randall Flagg. Flagg has the pink Wizard's Glass. He tries to convince Roland to give up his quest with promises of an easier life and warns Roland's followers that everyone he has ever loved has been killed, including all the members of his original
ka-tet
.

After Flagg flees from the palace, Roland picks up the Wizard's Glass and uses it to show his friends the end of his story. The conspiracy against his father involved his mother, Gabrielle, who was Marten's lover, a fact Steven Deschain has known for years. While Roland was in Mejis, Gabrielle was at a woman's retreat in Debaria. Upon her return, she was to beg Steven for forgiveness and take him into bed, where she would kill him with a poisoned knife provided by Marten. After intercepting the knife, Roland thinks he can convince his mother to see the error of her ways and swear off the affair. However, Gabrielle stole the pink Wizard's Glass from Steven as a consolation prize for her lover. When Roland visits her chambers, the glass shows him a false vision. He thinks the person sneaking up on him from behind is the witch, Rhea, carrying a poison snake, when it is really his mother bearing the belt she made for him as a peace offering while in Debaria.

Roland kills his mother with his father's guns, a sin that he carries with him all his life. He blames himself for Susan's death, and now he has this burden to bear as well. He needed to show this part of the story to his new followers so they would understand what kind of man was leading them. It is a crucial point in their relationship. He has brought them into his world against their will and infected them with his passion for the Tower. They need to know what being a part of his team means. He offers them the chance to cry off the quest, but it is now their quest, too.

When they leave the Green Palace, they find themselves back in Mid-World on the Path of the Beam. They continue toward the Dark Tower with a new sense of understanding and commitment.

The train trip across Mid-World carried the
ka-tet
farther in several hours than Roland has covered in his entire life. After that, though, the forward momentum of Roland's quest screeches to a halt for hundreds of pages, which frustrated some fans of the series. However,
Wizard and Glass
, coming as it does at the midpoint of the series, is crucial for a number of reasons. It explains how Roland learned of the Tower's plight and when he made it his quest, and it reveals how the wide-eyed and innocent boy seen in flashbacks
in
The Gunslinger
becomes the hardened loner who has spent his life in search of the Tower. Since meeting up with the New Yorkers, Roland has learned to love again. Readers come away with a richer understanding of the man and, perhaps, much more sympathy for him.

By the time King finished
Wizard and Glass
, he knew how the series would end. In the book's afterword, he outlines the general shape of the final three books. He intended to start work on the fifth book the following year and carry through to the end because he wanted to finish before he died—a concern shared by the series' fans—or became senile.

Fate intervened in a number of ways. The following year King switched publishers, signing a contract for three books that didn't allow much room for work on the series. However, the Dark Tower was clearly still on his mind. He wrote “The Little Sisters of Eluria” in response to a request for a Dark Tower novella from Robert Silverberg and the short story “Everything's Eventual,” which would later reveal itself as a Dark Tower story. His second book for Scribner,
Hearts in Atlantis
, contained the novella “Low Men in Yellow Coats,” which introduced the concept of Breakers working on behalf of the Crimson King.

On July 19, 1999, King was struck by a van and almost killed. The Dark Tower was in grave peril. The accident significantly changed King's life, but it also provided inspiration for his writing and became an important plot element in the finale of the Dark Tower series.

W
hile Stephen King was reviewing the copyedited manuscript of
11/22/63
in 2011, he heard the Song of the Turtle again, right on schedule, a half dozen years after the “final” book in the Dark Tower series was published. He realized there was at least one hole in the narrative progression—the roughly seven-week period after Roland's
ka-tet
left the Green Palace and before they reached Calla Bryn Sturgis.

The Wind Through the Keyhole
is dedicated to Robin Furth and the gang at Marvel. Jae Lee, who did the artwork for
The Gunslinger Born
from Marvel, illustrated the Donald M. Grant limited edition. It could be read as a stand-alone novel. However, anyone familiar with the adventures of Roland and his friends will definitely get more out of the book.

In the interview found in this book, King says that three ideas came together to inspire
The Wind Through the Keyhole
. At the core was a plan to write a fairy tale—perhaps a book of them. He wanted to write about a little boy who had an evil stepfather and needed to go on a journey. Then Roland stepped in and said that this was his story. The skin-man tale was going to be something else. As he posted on his Web site, he then saw a vicious storm and a line of riders in a dusty wind, a severed head on a fencepost and a dangerous swamp. Though the book doesn't reveal much new about the
ka-tet
's quest, it does show Roland growing into himself as a young gunslinger on a mission, representing Gilead in a world that is moving on.

The novel contains three distinct parts and time periods: the “contemporary” story, Roland's reminiscences of his trip to Debaria after he returned from Mejis and the fable of Tim Ross that young Roland tells to comfort a traumatized boy.

In the contemporary story, the
ka-tet
is continuing along the Path of the
Beam, heading toward Thunderclap. They are on a road, though only barely, and do see occasional signs of life, but these people—some of them mutants—don't approach the gunslingers; nor do they seem dangerous. The number nineteen hasn't yet intrigued them. Oy is behaving strangely, which should have been a clue to Roland, but his childhood is so far behind him—perhaps as much as a thousand years—that he can be forgiven for not picking up on it right away.

When they reach the western branch of the Whye (the eastern branch or Devar-Tete Whye flows past Calla Bryn Sturgis), they meet an old man named Bix who runs a ferry service, though he hasn't had much custom for many years. Bix is friendly and welcomes company, feeding them fish popkins. He knows what Oy's behavior is all about: a starkblast—a freezing tornado—is coming, so the
ka-tet
needs to find cover. Bix directs them toward the abandoned town of Gook, where they hole up in the stone meeting hall for a few days after gathering wood and blocking the windows.