The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy (77 page)

T
HE
O
VER
(5, 6)

The Manni concept of God. The soup of creation, also known as the Prim.

O
XEN
(4)

Rare animals in Mid-World. Prior to going to Mejis, Cuthbert has seen them only in pictures.

P
ATH OF THE
B
EAM
(3, 4, 4.5, 5, 6, 7)

The route marked out by thousands of years of the flow of the Beams that support the Dark Tower. The Guardians at either end are used to name these paths.

P
EDDLER'S
M
OON
(1, 4, 4.5, 5, 7)

The moon after the Kissing Moon, also known as Late-summer's Moon. The Peddler who appears on the face of this orange moon is a hunched figure with a nasty, complicitous squint-and-grin and a sackful of squealing souls thrown over one cringing shoulder.

P
OINTS
(1, 4.5, 5)

Also called Wickets. A game compared to bowling, polo and croquet. Uses a mallet and blue balls.

P
ORTALS
(3, 4, 6, 7)

The twelve doorways at the far ends of the Beams that support the Dark Tower. They lead in and out of the world. They may be as natural as the constellations or built by the Great Old Ones. Roland doesn't know where they lead and is open to the possibility that they might be outside
ka
.

P
RESENTATION
C
EREMONIES
(2)

The ceremony at which an apprentice was officially promoted to gunslinger. Pupils first kneel at Cort's feet, presenting defenseless necks, then rise and receive his congratulatory kiss and allow him to load their guns for the first time.

P
RIM
(6, 7, M)

The greater Discordia or magical soup of creation. Known as the Over by the Manni. Some people think of it as a void. Life in Mid-World arose after the Prim receded. Certain magical creatures were also beached when this happened, and some survived as demons. The Beams rose from the Prim on the airs of magic. When the Prim receded, most magic receded, too, but there was enough left to support the Beams and the Dark Tower forever.

P
YLON
(4, M)

A two-year-old rosillo, one of three horses given to Susan Delgado by Mayor Hart Thorin as an earnest gift to fulfill their contract. Susan helped foal it, but their horses and land were lost after Pat Delgado died.

P
YRAMID
(4, 7)

According to one version of the legend, Arthur Eld retrieved his sword Excalibur from the pyramid in which it was entombed. Five miles from the Dark Tower, Roland encounters a steel pyramid about thirty feet high covered with boulders to disguise it as a cairn. It has a ring of roses around its base. Could this be the same pyramid?

R
EAP OR
R
EAPTIDE
(1, 3, 4, 4.5, 5, 7, M)

Autumn. One of the seven seasons of Mid-World. It occurs between Full Earth and Year's End.

R
EAP
M
OON
(7)

The name for the moon during Reaptide.

R
EAP
M
ORN
(4)

The day after the Reap Fair, the first day of winter. The traditional time for burning. In Hambry, the ranchers would burn brush at the mouth of Eyebolt Canyon to silence the thinny.

R
EAPING
D
AY
F
AIR
(4, 4.5, 5)

A day of festivities celebrating the closing of the year, the end of the harvest and the changing of the seasons. Men steal Reap-kisses from women. Reap charms are hung around town and secreted in the bosoms of women. There are dances and fireworks. The hands of stuffy-guys are painted red in preparation for throwing them into the bonfire. After the exhausting work of finishing the harvest, putting up food and preparing for winter, sexual intercourse resumes on Reap Night, usually leading to a crop of Full Earth babies the next year.

R
ED
D
EATH
(6, 7)

The plague that killed everyone in Fedic a thousand years ago. Some people believe someone in Castle Discordia unleashed it accidentally. Others believe it came out of the abyss next to the castle. Perhaps related to the Great Poisoning unleashed by the Great Old Ones. A name inspired by an Edgar Allan Poe short story.

R
ICE
S
ONG
(5, 7)

A traditional song about a young man and woman planting rice and children in the spring of the year. Roland knew it when he was young. It begins “Come-come-commala, rice come a-falla,” but after that the words are difficult to understand, especially because the pace of the song increases from verse to verse. It contains hard and soft rhymes, off-rhymes and forced rhymes. It is chanted more than sung and is often accompanied by a frenetic dance that Roland performs for the people of Calla Bryn Sturgis.

R
ING
-A-L
EVIO
(7)

Roland's first dog, known as Ringo. It died when he was three.

R
OCK
-C
ATS
(5)

Pumas or cougars.

R
OMP
, T
HE
(4, 7)

A monstrous two-headed elk with a rack of antlers like a forest grove and four glaring eyes, mounted behind the bar at the Travellers' Rest in Hambry.

R
OOK'S
S
KULL
(4, M)

Cuthbert's good-luck charm. He carries it on the horn of his saddle and wears it around his neck on a gold chain, calling it his lookout. It is used as evidence against the Affiliation Brats when Eldred Jonas finds it at Citgo and plants it on Mayor Thorin's body.

R
USHER
(4)

The horse Roland rides to Mejis. A big, sensitive, quick, delicate and well-behaved gelding.

S
AITA
(5, M)

A great snake slain by Arthur Eld. In the Marvel graphic novels, a stained-glass window in Gilead depicts this scene.

S
ALT
H
OUSES
(4.5)

Caverns in the cliff faces near Little Debaria. Miners and their families live in them, and the tunnels into the mine extend from the back of them. Steven Deschain and Deputy Hugh Peavy ambushed the Crow Gang in one.

S
ANDALWOOD
(T
HROUGHOUT
)

The yellow and finely grained wood used in the stocks of Roland's guns.

S
ATAN'S
A
LLEY
(4)

A table in the Travellers' Rest in Hambry where a game that resembles craps is played.

S
ATAN'S
F
IRST
L
AW OF
M
ALIGNITY
(4, M)

If the worst can happen, it usually will.

S
EVEN
D
IALS OF
M
AGIC
(5)

Something Vannay taught student gunslingers, though he refused to say if he believed in any of them.

S
HAKE
L
OOP
(4)

A kind of knot that can be shaken free after you climb down the rope.

S
HARDIK
(3, 5, 6, 7)

The Guardian of the Portal of the Bear. Built by North Central Positronics. His serial number is AA 24123 CX 755431297 L 14. He stands seventy feet tall and is hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. The Old People tried to kill him, but incited his anger instead. He spared the warriors and killed the women and children instead. He was infected with a parasite that, coupled with old age, drove him insane as his batteries began to run down. He had a satellite dish atop his head.

S
HIPMATE'S
D
ISEASE
(2)

Roland's term for scurvy, a disease caused by subsisting on a diet that does not provide all the required vitamins. He sees signs of it in Eddie after they eat only lobstrosity meat for weeks.

S
LO
-T
RANS
E
NGINES
(3, 4, 5, 6)

Power source for Blaine the Mono. Also heard in the Green Palace and at Castle Discordia.

S
MA'
T
OOT
(4.5)

A steam-driven train that runs between Gilead and Debaria.

S
NEETCH
(5, 6, 7)

A name for the self-guided hand grenades used by the Wolves when they raid the Callas. Also called buzz-balls and stealthies. According to legend, they produce swirling blades as sharp as razors that slash people top to bottom in seconds. Spherical, about three inches in diameter, they look like they're made of steel but feel like hard rubber. The surface is gridded with lines of latitude and longitude. Next to the nameplate that identifies them as the Harry Potter model, there is a fingertip depression at the bottom of which is a button. Once activated, a curved section slides away to reveal a programmable
timer. When a drone locks onto a target, it will pursue it until running out of power. The
ka-tet
use sneetches to start fires on a delayed schedule at Algul Siento. The Crimson King takes a crate of them to the Dark Tower.

S
NUGGLEBUTT
(5)

Father Callahan's cat in Calla Bryn Sturgis.

S
ONG OF THE
T
OWER
(7)

The irresistible song that comes from the Dark Tower on the Beam and is carried by the roses, calling anyone from the line of Eld to draw near. Roland realizes that he has always heard this song, even when he lived in Gilead, where it hid in his mother's voice as she sang to him. The song stops when he enters the Tower.

S
ONG OF THE
T
URTLE
(3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

A voice that provides advice, guidance, warnings and condemnation. The voice of
ka
or the Beam or Gan. Roland believes the Beam is sentient enough to understand how seriously it is threatened and wants to protect itself. He hears it inside the pink Wizard's Glass. It tells Stephen King when to write about Roland. It may also tell Calvin Tower to keep the vacant lot. Known as Ves'-Ka Gan, the Voice of the Turtle, the Voice of the Beam, Susannah's Song and the Cry of the Bear. It chides Roland for failing to pick up the Horn of Eld in Jericho Hill, which seems pointless at the time, but the Beam may be telling Roland what he needs to learn to succeed.

S
OWING
N
IGHT
(1, M)

Festival night associated with the ritual of planting in the spring. The season of Sowing includes the month of June. During the Sowing Night Cotillion, young Roland watched his mother dance with Marten Broadcloak.

S
PEAKING
R
INGS OR
S
PEAKING
C
IRCLES
(1, 3, 4, 7)

Circles made out of tall standing rocks, often inhabited by demons that can be summoned and forced to act as oracles, usually in return for sexual favors. They are thin places and often provide access between worlds, such as the one where Jake returned to Mid-World. Roland encounters one after leaving the Way Station and finds a number of them at the end of Tower Road.

S
PIRIT OF
T
OPEKA
(7)

The atomic locomotive (hot-enj) that carried Susannah, Ted, Sheemie and a few others from Algul Siento to Fedic after the Breakers were freed. It could travel up to three hundred miles per hour. The last nine of twelve cars—all empty—fell into the chasm outside Fedic when the trestle collapsed.

S
TARKBLAST
(4.5)

According to Daria: “A fast-moving storm of great power. Its features include steep and sudden drops in temperature accompanied by strong winds. It has been known to cause great destruction and loss of life in civilized portions of the world. In primitive areas, entire tribes have been wiped out.” A period of unusually warm weather lasting a few days usually heralds the storm. Like tornadoes, starkblasts form funnels and can travel for hundreds of miles before lifting into the sky and vanishing. Billy-bumblers have a talent for predicting them, and they're known to bring strange dreams. They often travel along and are intensified by a Beam. They struck the forest north of Gilead each year but never reached the city.

S
UNSHINE
(4.5)

Widow Ardelia Smack's burro. Tim Ross fed, watered and walked the burro many times.

S
WORD OF
E
LD

See Excalibur.

T
ALES OF
A
RTHUR
(5)

A book filled with stories of the days of Arthur Eld. Father Callahan has a copy.

T
HINNY
(4, 5, M)

A place where the fabric of existence is almost worn away. A sore on the skin of existence, a cavity at the center of the universe able to exist only because things are going wrong in all worlds. They are doorways between worlds, though dangerous. They spread and grow. There have been more of them since the Dark Tower began to fail. They shimmer as if they were silvery water. They issue a low, liquid warbling sound that is disturbing on a psychic level, the effect of which is cumulative. Blaine the Mono passed through one to get the
ka-tet
to Topeka. The sound reminds Jake of Hawaiian music. The
ka-tet
is able to block the sound using bullets from Mid-World, but not ones from the real world. It tingles when they come into contact with it. Being inside it is claustrophobic, purgatorial. The one at the far end of Eyebolt Canyon—the first Roland ever saw—has been there since before Susan was born but not before her father was born. An earthquake may have accompanied its arrival. Viewed from above, it looks like a slow-burning peat fire or a swamp full of scummy green water. The light green mist (silvery in the moonlight) that rises off it sometimes looks like long, skinny arms with hands at the end. It has seductive, cajoling voices that can draw people in to their deaths. The locals burned it quiet each fall because the animals reacted badly to the sound.