The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy (13 page)

Maerlyn reveals that he was trapped in this form by one of the Red King's servants, who tricked him when he was drunk. The Great One won't be happy that the Covenant Man's unauthorized high jinks ended up freeing Maerlyn. His days collecting taxes for Gilead are likely over. Maerlyn then tells Tim that he is destined to be a gunslinger and that he will be buried with his father's lucky coin around his neck.

He shows Tim how to turn the magic napkin into a flying carpet that will take him home. The feather, which is from the tail of Garuda, the Guardian of the Beam of the Bird, helps him navigate. On the way, he sees the destruction caused by the starkblast. Fagonard is ruined and the dragon—which spared his life—is dead.

In Tree, the damage is minor, except for the sawmill, which has been destroyed. Tim rushes home to administer the eyedrops to his mother and give her his father's ax. Then he discovers that Widow Smack, who sat with his mother during the storm, has been killed. Bern Kells erupts into the room in a murderous rage. The reason for Maerlyn's instructions becomes apparent. Nell buries Jack Ross's ax in Kells's head, killing him.

Young Roland finishes his tale by saying that Tim carried the gun Widow Smack gave him for the next ten years and later carried bigger ones, six-shooters. When he was twenty-three, three gunslingers passed through Tree, hoping to raise a posse. Tim was the only one who joined them. They called him the “left-handed gun” because of how he drew. He eventually became one of the few gunslingers not from the proven line of Eld, though Roland admits that Arthur Eld had many children from three wives and many more illegitimate children. He eventually became known as Tim Stoutheart and took his mother to Gilead.

Tim promises himself he will go to the Dark Tower someday. He saw Maerlyn once more, when he was an old man—but that, like so many incidents Roland mentions, is a story for another day.

When Roland and his
ka-tet
emerge from the stone meeting hall, Gook is gone. Susannah asks Roland about the final two lines in his mother's note—a note he carried with him until the wind carried it away, as the wind eventually takes all things. One line offered Gabrielle Deschain's forgiveness and the other asked for Roland's. With a rare smile on his face, Roland says that, yes, he was able to forgive his mother.

The next morning, the
ka-tet
returns to the Path of the Beam heading toward Calla Bryn Sturgis and the Dark Tower beyond.

W
hen they heard of King's near-fatal accident in 1999, Dark Tower fans despaired that he would ever finish the series. King, too, worried that he might not write again, but before long he was back at it, writing in longhand during his rehabilitation. Then he and Peter Straub decided to work on a sequel to
The Talisman
. King eagerly accepted Straub's suggestion that they lace the book with Dark Tower mythos.

Shortly before
Black House
was published in September 2001, King announced that he had returned to the land of the gunslinger and intended to publish the remaining three books all at once. He felt like if he didn't push through to the finish then, he might never be able to. He listened to Frank Muller's audio versions of the first four books and hired Robin Furth as a research assistant to document every important person, place and thing from the earlier books.

He toyed with different titles for the fifth book. His first idea was
The Crawling Shadow
, but he decided that was corny. According to
Song of Susannah
, he also considered calling it
The Werewolves of End-World
.

True to his word, he wrote the final three books back-to-back-to-back before any of them appeared. Two excerpts from
Wolves of the Calla
came out prior to publication. King posted the prologue on his Web site and “The Tale of Grey Dick” appeared in
McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales
, edited by Michael Chabon, in February 2003. The prologue also appeared in the Viking reprint of
Wizard and Glass
, a rare case of publisher cross-promotion.

Wolves of the Calla
came out in November 2003. The six-year gap between the appearance of the fourth and fifth installments of the series equaled the longest interval between books. It is dedicated to audiobook narrator
Frank Muller, who'd suffered a debilitating accident. King calls him the man who hears the voices in his head.

King returns to one of the influences for the Dark Tower series,
The Magnificent Seven
. In the John Sturges Western, a small Mexican village is raided regularly by a group of bandits led by Calvera. The citizens decide to arm themselves against their return but are instead advised to hire gunslingers to defend the village.

Wolves of the Calla
uses this concept as the story's launching point. In the film, some townspeople who disagree with the plan betray the seven gunmen, leading to their capture. The hired guns never anticipated waging a full-out war against the bandits—they believed their presence would be enough to discourage Calvera and his men. But Calvera is desperate, so a battle ensues during which many of the hired guns are killed. The townspeople take up arms in their own defense and rout the bandits. The surviving gunslingers ride off into the sunset, feeling like the town has won but they've lost.

The “bandits” who raid Calla Bryn Sturgis once a generation aren't hungry, desperate men but are instead fearsome Wolves who ride in on horseback. They aren't after crops—they're after twins, which are the rule rather than the exception in the Callas that are spread along the Whye River, a kind of fertile crescent similar to the Mississippi region. They take one of every twin from as young as three to late adolescence.

Taking the children is torment enough. However, the stolen children are returned via train in a condition described as “roont” (ruined). Something has been extracted from them, causing a permanent mental handicap. Some can function better than others, but even the best require full-time care. Eventually they will undergo a painful growth spurt that turns them into oversized galoots, unable even to control their bodily functions. They age and die prematurely. It's almost insult to injury—the Calla-folken might have been better off without the added burden of having to look after their roont offspring. Some come up with creative solutions. Tian Jaffords uses his sister as a mule for his plow when trying to reclaim a rocky patch of farmland.

News of the pending arrival of the Wolves is delivered by Andy the Messenger Robot, a seven-foot-tall Asimov robot built by North Central Positronics who is good for little other than casting horoscopes, singing and spreading gossip. On the subject of the Wolves, though, he is never wrong. The Calla-folken have a month to prepare for their coming.

There is dissension among the townspeople about whether to hire the
gunslingers who are reportedly passing by on the Path of the Beam northeast of town—mostly among the richest citizens who have the most to lose financially if the strategy fails and the Wolves destroy the town and farms. However, they are also the ones with the least to lose in terms of children, as most of them don't have any vulnerable twins.

Tian Jaffords is the unlikely hero of the piece. Most people in the Calla are resigned to their fate. The Wolves have been coming for five or six generations, and any attempts to fend them off have been disastrous. The Wolves are heavily armed, with light sabers and self-guided grenades (sneetches), whereas the Calla-folken have nothing more than a few rusty old guns. As in
The Magnificent Seven
, the idea Tian proposes at a town meeting is not to defend themselves but to enlist the aid of professionals.