The Dark Tower · Book III · 1991

The Waste Lands

Two minds coming apart over one paradox, a door drawn in mud, a billy-bumbler, a dead city, and a pink train that wants a riddle.

The Waste Lands is the third Dark Tower novel, published by Donald M. Grant in 1991 with colour plates by Ned Dameron, and the one that finishes the drawing Book II began. Jake Chambers, the boy Roland let fall under the mountains, is pulled back out of a paradox and through a door; a billy-bumbler follows him; and Roland gives the group its name. Both halves take their titles from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: “Fear in a Handful of Dust” and “A Heap of Broken Images”.

The structure is two mirrored halves. Book One cross-cuts between two minds going mad from the same contradiction, Roland’s in Mid-World and Jake’s in Manhattan, until a door joins them. Book Two is a road story that narrows: a plain, a town of the very old, a bridge, a city, a tunnel, a station, and at last the inside of one train. Along the way it changes genre at will, from horror (the house on Dutch Hill) to western (the bridge) to science fiction (Shardik, the Portal, Blaine), with one long humane pause at River Crossing.

It ends mid-situation rather than mid-scene: a riddle contest for the ka-tet’s lives has been agreed and the first riddle has not been asked. Readers waited six years for Wizard and Glass to pick up the same sentence. The book was a Bram Stoker nominee, is the fan polls’ usual favourite of the seven, and takes its criticism for the ending and for the scene in the speaking ring.

Part 1

Bear and Bone

Weeks after the beach, in a clearing a mile from camp, Roland drills Susannah with one of his revolvers. He recites the gunslinger’s creed in the feminine and needles her on purpose, dragging up Detta’s anger so she can learn to make it cold; she protests that she is not a gunslinger. Back at camp Eddie whittles, a childhood talent his brother Henry sneered out of him. The narration is blunt: “Beating heroin is child’s play compared to beating your childhood.”

Something seventy feet tall is coming toward the smell of the camp: a bear centuries old, its brain eaten by parasites, sneezing worms, with a thing like a radar dish on its skull. The forest-folk called it Mir; its maker’s name for it is Shardik. It trees Eddie and shakes the trunk. Roland arrives at a run with Susannah on his shoulders and tells her to shoot the hat, the steel cap on its skull. Her first shots hit the bear’s rump; when it charges, her next takes the cap, blue fire crawls around the rod in its skull, and the bear dies. She has passed her first test.

The autopsy finds steel strands in the flesh, circuitry in an eye, and a tag naming North Central Positronics and calling the thing a Guardian. By the fire that night Roland draws twelve X’s in a circle in the dirt: twelve Portals, each with a Guardian built by the Great Old Ones; six Beams crossing at the Tower; the Bear paired with the Turtle.

Then he confesses. Since the Pusher door he has carried two memories that cannot both be true.

There was a boy. / There was no boy.

He tells them about the way station and the fall, and in a fit throws Walter’s jawbone into the fire. Eddie alone sees it become a key with crude notches and a squiggle, then a rose, and keeps that to himself. The three follow the bear’s wrecked back-trail toward its lair, Roland carrying Susannah in a sling where the wheelchair cannot go. The Portal of the Bear is a metal box nine feet high, striped yellow and black, in a clearing floored with bone dust; Roland makes Eddie recite the creed and shoot the half-dead mechanical servitors around it. Close to the box Eddie hears a litany and repeats it: “All is silent in the halls of the dead.”

The Beams, Roland explains, are the lines that bind the world together, and they are failing. A needle floated in a cup swings to the Beam, and he teaches them to see it without the cup: leaves, clouds, branches and even shadows leaning southeast. Then he unbuckles his gunbelt and hands it, with his knife, to Eddie, unfit, he says, to wear it while his mind goes an inch at a time. By a stream Eddie finds an ash branch that calls to him and starts to carve the key.

Roland stands beside Susannah in her wheelchair as she aims a revolver at targets in a sunlit forest clearing. — **III · 1 She Who Aims With Her Hand** A clearing a mile from camp, weeks after the beach, where Book One opens. Roland drills Susannah with one of his revolvers every day and recites the creed in the feminine. He also needles her on purpose, dragging up Detta’s anger so she can learn to make it cold. She tells him she is not a gunslinger. The bear that is about to prove otherwise is already walking toward the smell of their camp.

A gigantic diseased bear with a radar dish on its skull looms through the old-growth forest. — **III · 2 Mir, the World Beneath the World** Seventy feet of bear, centuries old, its brain eaten by parasites, sneezing clouds of worms as it lumbers toward the camp. On its skull sits a thing like a radar dish. The forest-folk who once lived here called it Mir; its maker’s name for it is Shardik, and it is one of the twelve Guardians of the Beams. It believes the trio are the fire-starters who tormented it long ago. Book One, Bear and Bone.

Susannah, riding on Roland’s shoulders, fires upward at the radar dish on the bear’s head while Eddie clings to a shaking tree. — **III · 3 Her First Test** Shardik trees Eddie and shakes the trunk. Roland arrives at a run with Susannah on his shoulders and tells her to shoot the hat, the steel cap on its skull. Her first shots hit the bear’s rump. It charges, and her next takes the cap; blue fire crawls around the rod sunk in its skull, and the oldest creature in the forest goes down. Susannah has passed her first test as a gunslinger.

Roland draws a circle of twelve marks with lines meeting at a centre in the dirt by firelight as Eddie and Susannah watch. — **III · 4 Twelve X’s in the Dirt** After the autopsy, by the fire in the practice clearing, Roland draws the cosmology of the saga in the dirt: twelve X’s in a circle, lines meeting at a centre. Twelve Portals, each with a Guardian built by the Great Old Ones; six Beams that cross at the Tower; the Bear paired with the Turtle. He recites the nursery rhyme about the Turtle of enormous girth. From here on the party has a direction instead of a quest: follow the Beam.

Roland sits hollow-eyed by a campfire in which a jawbone burns, between Eddie, who stares at the flames, and Susannah. — **III · 5 There Was a Boy** The confession. Since the Pusher door Roland has carried two memories that cannot both be true: “There was a boy. / There was no boy.” He tells them about the way station, the mountains and the fall, and in a fit throws Walter’s jawbone into the fire. Eddie alone sees it become a key with crude notches and a squiggle, then a rose. He keeps that to himself.

Roland carries Susannah on his back in a sling along a trail of smashed trees while Eddie follows with the empty wheelchair. — **III · 6 Where the Chair Cannot Go** The dead bear’s cells broadcast a death-message for miles, and the three follow its wrecked back-trail toward the lair. Where the wheelchair cannot go, Roland carries Susannah in a sling and Eddie hauls the chair behind. On this trail she complains for the first time: “I hate being a cripple”. She carries one of Roland’s revolvers; when she offers it to Eddie, he tells her to keep it. The chair will make it as far as Lud.

A striped nine-foot metal box stands in a clearing of grey bone dust while Eddie aims a revolver at a mechanical rat and snake and Roland watches with folded arms. — **III · 7 The Portal of the Bear** Shardik’s lair is a nine-foot metal box with a curved roof and yellow-and-black diagonal stripes, in a clearing whose grey soil is bone crumbled to dust. Half-dead servitors still twitch around it, a steel rat and a jointed snake among them. Roland makes Eddie recite the creed and shoot them, then draws faster than Eddie can follow to kill a steel bat diving at his head. Close to the box, Eddie hears and repeats a litany: “All is silent in the halls of the dead.”

Roland points down a forest aisle where clouds stream in a line overhead and every branch and shadow leans the same way. — **III · 8 The Path of the Beam** A needle floated in a cup of water swings to the Beam, and Roland teaches Eddie and Susannah to see it without the cup: leaves turning, clouds streaming, branches and even shadows leaning southeast toward the Tower. The Beams, he says, are the lines that hold the world together, and they are failing. Before they move on, he unbuckles his gunbelt and hands it, with his knife, to Eddie.

Eddie sits on a stream bank at dusk carving a key shape from an ash branch, a heavy gunbelt beside him. — **III · 9 The Ash Key** Roland has given up his gunbelt and knife. By a stream Eddie finds an ash branch that calls to him, remembers the key he saw in the fire, and that night begins to carve. Bear and Bone ends on the loop in Roland’s head and a half-made key in Eddie’s hands. The flaw in it, an S-curve at the end, will take a demon and a hailstorm to fix.

Part 2

Key and Rose

New York, spring 1977. John “Jake” Chambers is eleven, small for his age and in his first year at the Piper School. He remembers dying in the street on the ninth of May, and remembers not dying. His father Elmer runs programming for the Network on Camels and cocaine. For three weeks his mind has been doubling: a voice says he is dead, every door looks like a way back, he draws a leaning tower. His Final Essay for Ms. Avery, “My Understanding of Truth”, is a litany he does not remember writing: a gunslinger, a prisoner, a lady of shadows, riddles, a train, a last page of choo-choo.

On the thirty-first of May, certain the essay has exposed his madness, he walks out of school four days before term ends and drifts down Second Avenue, following a pull. At the Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind, a used bookshop, the owner Calvin Tower greets him with a mock-heroic flourish and Tower’s chess partner, the lawyer Aaron Deepneau, gives him the answer to Samson’s riddle. Jake buys two children’s books: Charlie the Choo-Choo by Beryl Evans, a 1942 picture book about an engine whose grin cannot be trusted, and Riddle-De-Dum!, whose answer pages have been torn out.

The pull ends at Second Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street, a vacant lot behind a board fence where a deli called Tom and Gerry’s used to stand. The graffiti on the fence is about the Turtle. In the weeds lies a key, the shape from his dreams, with a jolt of power when he lifts it, and beyond it a single wild rose growing from purple grass. He looks into the rose, sees suns and other worlds, blacks out against a brick and sleeps for five hours. At home his father rages about truancy and Ms. Shaw hands him the essay, marked A+. With the key in his hand the voices go quiet.

Jake sits at a school desk under fluorescent light with a handwritten essay in front of him, other children blurred around him. — **III · 10 My Understanding of Truth** New York, spring 1977. Jake Chambers, eleven, remembers dying on the ninth of May and remembers not dying. For three weeks a voice has told him he is dead and every door has looked like a way back. His Final Essay for Ms. Avery’s English class, “My Understanding of Truth”, is a litany he does not remember writing: a gunslinger, a prisoner, a lady of shadows, riddles, a train, and a last page of choo-choo. Key and Rose begins here.

A small boy in a school blazer walks alone down a hot Manhattan avenue, the school behind him. — **III · 11 Four Days Before Term Ends** On the thirty-first of May, certain the essay has exposed his madness, Jake walks out of the Piper School four days before the end of the year and drifts down Second Avenue. He is following a pull he cannot name. It will take him to a bookshop, a vacant lot and a rose. He will not be back: by the next morning, as far as he is concerned, school has been cancelled for good.

A boy in a blazer stands at a cluttered bookshop counter holding two small books while two older men sit at a chessboard. — **III · 12 The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind** A used bookshop with a chalkboard of literary specials. Its owner, Calvin Tower, greets Jake with a mock-heroic flourish; his chess partner, an old lawyer named Aaron Deepneau, gives him the answer to Samson’s riddle. Jake buys two children’s books: *Charlie the Choo-Choo*, in which an engine’s grin cannot be trusted, and *Riddle-De-Dum!*, whose answer pages have been torn out. Both will matter on a train in Book Two.

A boy kneels in a weed-choked lot between city buildings before a single glowing red rose. — **III · 13 The Rose in the Vacant Lot** The corner of Second Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street, a vacant lot behind a board fence where a deli used to stand and condominiums are promised. In the weeds lies a key with a jolt of power in it, and beyond it a single wild rose growing from purple grass. Jake looks into the rose and sees suns and other worlds, blacks out against a brick, and sleeps for five hours. The saga’s centre has been found.

Close on a boy’s hand holding an ornate old key up to a bedside lamp, a stack of essay pages on the desk behind. — **III · 14 The Key Quiets the Voices** Home. His father rages about truancy; the housekeeper hands him the essay marked A+ for merging stream of consciousness with symbolic language, and Jake laughs until he cannot stop. At bedtime the voices come back. With the key in his hand they stop, and the key’s shape, crude notches and a squiggle at the tip, is the one Eddie is carving in another world. Key and Rose closes on the quiet.

Part 3

Door and Demon

In Mid-World, Eddie hands Roland the unfinished ash key, and the voices stop; Roland sleeps holding it. Jake dreams of a stone marker reading TRAVELLER, BEYOND LIES MID-WORLD, and of a boy at a Brooklyn basketball court who tells him to take the subway to Co-Op City around three. He packs his old backpack with clothes and the two books, takes his father’s .44 Ruger from the study, and leaves a note. Roland’s party finds the same marker on the Great Road. Eddie stalls on the key, hears Henry’s sneer, feels his first heroin craving in months and hands it back.

From a hilltop they see the towers of a city, the River Send, and a speaking ring of standing stones that Roland calls a thin place; when Eddie panics, Roland slaps him and then tells him, in the High Speech, that he loves him. That night Eddie finishes the key and whittles a stake.

Jake’s crossing day runs through a museum tour, a policeman the key talks out of his questions, and a subway to Co-Op City in freak heat. There he recognises Eddie Dean at twelve and Henry at eighteen, and follows when Eddie talks Henry into a look at the Mansion on Dutch Hill: a condemned, slate-roofed wreck in a trash-strewn yard. The brothers turn back at the gate. Jake goes in, to a hall floored in small bones, not all of them animal, and the front door slams behind him. He finds a door marked THE BOY with a golden knob, and drops the key between the floorboards. Roland’s voice tells him to pull up the next board. The walls wake. The doorkeeper is not in the house; the doorkeeper is the house.

At the ring Roland takes his gun back from Eddie. Under a storm whose rain turns to hail, the demon comes, invisible and reeking of gin. Susannah draws it onto herself and, with Detta’s help, holds it there to keep it off Eddie, while Eddie, under a hide Roland holds over him, draws a door in the mud with his stake and carves its keyhole. On Dutch Hill Jake digs out the key and turns it in THE BOY’s lock, but earth fills the doorway; he swings on a lamp, kicks out of his jeans and is dragged toward the thing’s mouth. Eddie’s key will not turn until he sees its flaw, the S-curve at the end, and makes one scrape with Roland’s knife. On Roland’s word Susannah lets the demon go; Roland seizes it, leaps through the opened door, feeds it to the doorkeeper, grabs Jake and fires into the plaster hand, and Eddie hauls them out by Roland’s hair. The Mansion swallows itself from the outside in. “You won’t let me drop this time?” Jake asks. Roland tells him never again, and privately wonders whether that is true where the Tower is concerned.

A boy with a backpack stands at a desk in a wood-panelled study in early morning light, lifting a pistol from a drawer. — **III · 15 The Note and the Ruger** The morning after the rose. Jake wakes at twenty past six, his knees scraped as they were in his dream of a stone marker and a boy at a Brooklyn basketball court who told him where to be and when. He packs his old grammar-school backpack with clothes and the two books, takes his father’s .44 Ruger and a box of shells from the study, leaves a note signed with love, and is out by 6:45 with eight hours to kill.

A boy with a backpack stands at the gate of a condemned slate-roofed house in a trash-strewn yard while two older boys walk away down the street. — **III · 16 The Mansion on Dutch Hill** Co-Op City in freak heat. On Markey Avenue Jake has recognised Eddie Dean at twelve and his brother Henry at eighteen, and followed when Eddie talked Henry into a look at the Mansion on Dutch Hill: a condemned, slate-roofed wreck in a yard of trash. At the gate Eddie begs off and the brothers turn back. Jake goes in, to a hall floored with small bones, not all of them animal, and the front door slams behind him.

In a ruined hallway a boy pries at floorboards before a door with a golden knob as a vast plaster face and hands swell out of the wall above him. — **III · 17 The Doorkeeper Is the House** Deep in the house Jake finds a door with a golden knob and the words THE BOY across it, and then drops the key between the floorboards. Roland’s voice in his head tells him to pull up the next board. The walls wake: plaster bulges into a face with jagged wooden teeth and dust drifting from its mouth. The doorkeeper is not in the house. The doorkeeper is the house.

In a ring of standing stones under hail, Eddie kneels beneath a hide drawing a door shape in the mud while Susannah strains against something invisible nearby. — **III · 18 A Door Drawn in Mud** The thin place. At its edge Roland takes his gun back from Eddie. Under a breaking storm the demon of the ring comes, invisible and reeking of gin; Susannah draws it onto herself and, with Detta’s help, holds it there to keep it off Eddie. Under a hide Roland holds over him, Eddie draws a door in the mud with his stake and carves its keyhole. The flaw in his key is the S-curve at the end; he sees it, makes one scrape, and the door is real.

In a hail-lashed stone ring, Eddie lies at the edge of a door-shaped opening in the mud, hauling Roland up by the hair as Roland clutches a boy and plaster fingers reach up from the dusty hallway below. — **III · 19 Roland Goes Through** On Dutch Hill Jake digs out the key and turns it in THE BOY’s lock, but earth fills the doorway; he swings on a hanging lamp, kicks out of his jeans, and the doorkeeper drags him toward its mouth. Eddie’s key turns at last. On Roland’s word Susannah lets the demon go; Roland seizes it, leaps through the door, feeds it to the doorkeeper, grabs Jake and fires into the plaster hand. Eddie hauls them back by Roland’s hair, and the Mansion eats itself.

Roland kneels in the mud of the stone ring holding a boy against his chest while Eddie and Susannah sit exhausted nearby as blue sky breaks through the clouds. — **III · 20 Not Ever Again** The hail turns back to rain and blue sky shows over the plain. The drawing that began on the beach in Book II is complete: the boy Roland let fall under the mountains is in his arms in the mud of the speaking ring, and the doubling in both their heads is over. “You won’t let me drop this time?” Jake asks. Roland tells him never again, and privately wonders whether that is true where the Tower is concerned.

Part 4

Town and Ka-Tet

Four days on, Jake’s spider bite from the Mansion is treated and the doubling has stopped for both of them. A young, thin billy-bumbler with a bite wound shadows the camp. Jake calls to it as boy; it answers Oy. Roland says bumblers were pets once and parrot speech, and Oy follows “Ake” from then on.

The Great Road is cobbled now, lined with farmsteads aged into ruin, and two-headed bison graze the plain. As they near the first town, Eddie asks for the Ruger, and Jake gives it to him. River Crossing looks abandoned and hides a community of the very old: Si and his wife Mercy, blinded by harriers years ago; the albino twins Bill and Till; and the Old Mother, Aunt Talitha Unwin, a hundred and five. They know a gunslinger and feast the travellers in a hidden garden. Jake, unprompted, asks whether they know about trains, and Talitha answers with a name: Blaine. They tell of Lud, the last fortress-refuge of the world that was, and of a civil war centuries old between the Grays and the Pubes. Blaine used to run to Lud with sonic booms that knocked cups off shelves; blind Mercy heard a mono leave the city, without the boom, seven or eight years ago. At parting Roland kneels in the square and Talitha hangs on him a silver cross she has worn for more than a hundred years, to lay at the foot of the Dark Tower.

The next day the Send bridge comes into view, no longer level, a dead ringer for the George Washington Bridge. At a palaver Roland gives them their name.

We are ka-tet—one from many

Each tells their tale. All three New Yorkers knew Charlie the Choo-Choo; Jake’s rose held everything, and something was wrong with it. They decide to go through Lud rather than around. That night Eddie tells Roland they are coming of their own accord, and Roland cries his pardon.

A boy crouches on a grassy roadside at morning holding out food to a small striped long-necked animal with gold-ringed eyes. — **III · 21 Enter Oy** Book Two, Town and Ka-Tet. A young, thin billy-bumbler with a bite wound shadows the camp and will not leave. Jake calls to it as boy; it answers Oy, and the name sticks. Roland says bumblers were pets once and parrot speech; Eddie is less complimentary. Oy follows “Ake” from here on. He makes them five, and he is the one who will count six taps on steel under Lud.

Five travellers on a cobbled road cross a wide plain where a herd of bison, some with two heads, grazes beneath a vast sky. — **III · 22 Lud, One Hundred and Sixty Wheels** The Great Road is cobbled now and lined with farmsteads that have aged into ruin rather than burned. Herds of bison graze the plain, and now and then a mutant among them, two-headed, a reminder of whatever the Old Ones did here. The ka-tet is five and walking into the open for the first time; in the square of the first town a stone marker will give the distance to Lud: a hundred and sixty wheels.

Very old people and five travellers share a laden table in a walled garden in late sun, an ancient tiny woman at its head. — **III · 23 River Crossing** A town that looks abandoned and hides a community of the very old: Si and his blinded wife Mercy, the albino twins Bill and Till, and the Old Mother, Aunt Talitha Unwin, a hundred and five. They know a gunslinger and feast the travellers in a hidden garden behind a ruined church. Jake asks whether they know about trains, and Talitha answers with a name, Blaine, whose sonic booms once knocked cups off their shelves.

Roland kneels in the dust of a town square before a tiny ancient woman who hangs a silver cross around his neck. — **III · 24 Aunt Talitha’s Cross** At parting Roland kneels in the town square for Talitha’s blessing, and she hangs on him a silver cross she has worn for more than a hundred years, bidding him lay it at the foot of the Dark Tower. He will keep that vow in Book VII. The next day the Send bridge comes into view, no longer level, and at a palaver Roland gives them their name: ka-tet, one from many.

Part 5

Bridge and City

Three days out they pass a crashed Focke-Wulf, its pilot a giant mummy in a spiked helmet: David Quick, the outlaw prince who meant to take Lud from the air. On watch, Eddie finally places the city’s drums: the drum track of ZZ Top’s “Velcro Fly”. Hearing gunfire from the city on his own watch, Jake puts the plan in a line: “Blaine is a pain, but we have to take the train.”

Where the sunken road opens out, the mono’s golden trestle lies collapsed in the Send with a blue mono under it; Jake, who has dreamed of Blaine, knows Blaine is pink. The bridge is three-quarters of a mile long, three hundred feet up, with a gap of twenty or thirty feet in its walkway. Oy panics in the wind; Jake goes back and holds him one-handed over the drop while Oy bites down to stay on; Eddie drops the wheelchair and runs the cable to grab the boy by the hair and a strap. Waiting beyond the gap is Gasher, one-eyed, yellow-scarfed, his face purple with the sores of mandrus, a grenade in his fist. The price of passage is the boy. Jake walks to him carrying Oy, and Gasher drags him into the city at a run.

Roland splits the party: Eddie and Susannah to find the Cradle and Blaine, firing Jake’s Ruger every half hour so he can track them; he and Oy after the boy. Gasher’s route is salted with traps and ends at a manhole; Roland springs the worst of them on purpose so Gasher will think him dead, and goes down. Eddie, pushing Susannah in the recovered wheelchair, meets the Pubes, who hang one of their own at every drum-roll to appease the ghosts in the machines; after a firefight, two of them lead the pair to the Cradle: white marble, water sheeting down its walls, a gilded gunslinger on its roof. Inside are Patricia’s empty berth and Blaine, pink and sleek, its two front windows like eyes. A small frightened voice, Little Blaine, begs them not to wake Big Blaine; it wakes anyway, in a John Wayne voice, demands a riddle on pain of electrocution, answers Jake’s orphan riddle (a shadow) and sets a second for the gate.

Under the city Gasher delivers Jake to the Tick-Tock Man, Andrew Quick, great-grandson of the pilot in the plane, a giant with a glass-cased clock whose hands run backward, who kills a woman for laughing too loud. Oy scouts the ducts, taps out six on steel for Roland, then drops onto Tick-Tock’s face and claws out an eye. Jake shoots him in the leg and then in the head, a graze as it turns out; Roland bursts in and kills Gasher and the rest, sparing one woman who begs. Blaine leads the three along moving walkways through its own dying computer banks and up an escalator into the Cradle, and the ka-tet is whole. Blaine announces that in twelve minutes it will release the city’s stockpiled chemical and biological weapons. Below, a stranger calling himself Richard Fannin finds the dying Tick-Tock, shows him a cache of gas masks and recruits him.

Five travellers at a road junction under a dead traffic light face a vast ruined city skyline, a collapsed golden trestle and a blue train lying in the river beside them. — **III · 25 The God-Drums** The road sinks between high concrete embankments, then opens at a junction under a dead traffic light, and Lud rises ahead: Mid-World’s twin of New York, and the source of drums Eddie has placed as the drum track of ZZ Top’s “Velcro Fly”. The mono’s golden trestle lies collapsed in the Send with a blue train beneath it. That one is Patricia. Jake, who has dreamed of Blaine, knows Blaine is pink.

On a tilted, rusted suspension bridge high above a river, a boy holds a small animal over a gap in the walkway while a young man runs along the cable toward him. — **III · 26 The Gap in the Walkway** Three-quarters of a mile of bridge, three hundred feet up, and a gap of twenty or thirty feet in the walkway. Oy panics in the wind; Jake goes back for him and holds him one-handed over the drop while Oy bites down to stay on; Eddie drops the wheelchair and runs the cable to grab the boy by the hair and a strap. The chair goes no further than Lud. The western that was promised at River Crossing starts here.

A one-eyed man in a yellow headscarf holds up a grenade on a ruined bridge as a boy carrying a small animal walks toward him. — **III · 27 The Price of Passage** Waiting beyond the gap is Gasher: crossbow, yellow headscarf, big earrings, one eye bandaged over a weeping socket, a face purple with the sores of mandrus, and a grenade in his fist. The price of passage is the boy. Jake walks to him carrying Oy. Gasher drags Jake into the city at a run, lobbing the grenade behind them, and Roland splits the ka-tet: Eddie and Susannah to find the Cradle and Blaine, he and Oy after the boy.

A young man pushes a woman in a wheelchair across a vast plaza toward a white marble building with water streaming down its walls and a gilded statue on its roof, ragged figures in blue scarves watching. — **III · 28 The Cradle of Lud** Eddie and Susannah fall in with the Pubes, who hang one of their own at every drum-roll to appease the ghosts in the machines. A grenade-carrying dwarf dies to Susannah’s gun, fired from her chair; a dying man begs their pardon on learning what they are; and two of the Pubes lead them to the Cradle: white marble, water sheeting down the walls, a sixty-foot gilded gunslinger on the roof. The first autumn storm breaks as they arrive.

Inside a cathedral-like marble hall a long pink bullet-nosed train rests in its berth, two forward windows like eyes, a man and a woman in a wheelchair small before it. — **III · 29 Blaine the Mono** Inside, Patricia’s berth is empty and Blaine is pink and sleek, its two front windows like eyes. Under an intercom sits a diamond of numerals. A small frightened voice, Little Blaine, begs them not to wake Big Blaine; Big Blaine wakes anyway, in a John Wayne voice, and demands a riddle on pain of electrocution. Susannah gives it Jake’s orphan riddle and it answers, a shadow. Then it sets a second riddle for the gate.

In a tall neon-lit underground chamber a giant man with a clock on his chest sits on a throne-like chair while a one-eyed harrier stands behind a boy, and a small striped animal crouches in a duct opening above. — **III · 30 The Tick-Tock Man** Gasher delivers Jake to Andrew Quick, the Tick-Tock Man, great-grandson of the pilot in the plane, a giant with a glass-cased clock whose hands run backward. He kills a woman for laughing too loud and goes white at the name Lord Perth. Oy, who has tapped out six on steel for Roland, drops onto his face; Jake shoots him in the leg and then in the head; Roland comes through the door and kills Gasher. Tick-Tock will be found alive by a stranger called Richard Fannin.

Roland, a boy and a small striped animal ride a moving walkway through dim banks of ancient computers lit by flickering screens. — **III · 31 The Mind Under the City** A glass eye in the wall of the lair is Blaine, which wants riddles from Roland too. A steel sphere leads the three along moving walkways through the computer banks that are Blaine’s brain, while screens show Lud’s citizens leaping from bridges and the train paraphrases Prufrock. An escalator lifts them into the Cradle and the ka-tet is whole. Blaine gives the city twelve minutes before it releases the stockpiled gas.

Part 6

Riddle and Waste Lands

The gate riddle turns on a pump that primes backwards. Susannah reaches down to Detta, who learned the primes from her father’s Sieve of Eratosthenes, chalks them on the marble and keys them from 97 downward; the gate opens with about fifty seconds to spare. Blaine’s passenger coach has a bar, sleepers, a harpsichord, and an ice sculpture of Roland, missing fingers and all. Susannah realises her wheelchair has been left behind in Lud. Jake reads the terminus off the back of Charlie the Choo-Choo, Topeka, and Blaine is shaken. The route runs Candleton, Rilea, the Falls of the Hounds, Dasherville, Topeka, just over eight thousand wheels in under nine hours; Blaine has not run in nine years.

Purple gas rolls through Lud as the train pulls out, and Jake sees a face below whose eye sockets fill with blood. Blaine makes the walls transparent, and the title arrives: sludge rivers, plains of black glass, stunted trees, things like pterodactyls, scarlet lava, pink stork-like creatures. Blaine confesses boredom and madness, tells of Patricia, the blue mono who went mad and killed herself in the river, and says it means to derail at Topeka with them aboard.

Roland refuses the command to riddle. He stands in the gunslinger’s stance and dresses the train down as a lost and petulant machine, with such fire in his eyes that Eddie shrinks from him, and then makes an offer: a Fair-Day Riddling for their lives, as Gilead held them in the Hall of the Grandfathers, where Cort took the goose every year. Stump Blaine and go free at Topeka; fail and die there. Blaine accepts, naming each of them.

You are ka-tet; one made from many. So am I.

“CAST YOUR NETS, WANDERERS!” The contest begins, and the book stops there, with no riddle asked. Wizard and Glass (1997) opens on the same train, seconds later.

A woman on a white marble floor presses buttons on a diamond-shaped panel beside a closed steel gate as four companions crowd behind her, an empty wheelchair forgotten nearby. — **III · 32 Ninety-Seven, Eighty-Nine, Eighty-Three** The gate riddle turns on a pump that primes backwards. Susannah reaches down to Detta, who learned the primes from her father’s Sieve of Eratosthenes, chalks them on the marble and keys them from 97 downward. The gate opens with about fifty seconds to spare. Riddle and Waste Lands opens on this gate; once they are aboard, Susannah realises her wheelchair has been left behind in Lud.

A long pink train slides out of a marble terminal on an elevated rail above a ruined city whose streets are filling with purple fog under storm clouds. — **III · 33 Twelve Minutes** Blaine keeps its word. As the train pulls out, purple gas rolls through the streets of Lud, and Jake sees a face below and what the gas does to its eyes. The city that was the last fortress-refuge of the world that was dies in a few minutes, Grays and Pubes together; Blaine’s only word for River Crossing is that the wind blows the other way. Underground, a stranger with gas masks has already recruited the Tick-Tock Man.

Inside a luxurious train car with transparent walls, five travellers watch a poisoned landscape of lava, black glass and stunted trees stream past. — **III · 34 The Waste Lands** Blaine’s coach has a bar, a video lounge, a harpsichord on a lit plinth and an ice sculpture of Roland, missing fingers and all. Then Blaine makes the walls transparent and the title arrives: sludge rivers, plains of black glass, stunted trees, flying things like pterodactyls, scarlet lava, pink stork-like creatures. Roland thinks it worse than any nuclear war. Blaine tells them it means to derail at Topeka with them aboard.

Roland stands in the aisle of the transparent-walled train car facing a blank glowing panel, his companions seated behind him. — **III · 35 A Fair-Day Riddling** Roland refuses the command to riddle. He stands in the gunslinger’s stance, dresses the train down as a lost and petulant machine, and offers it a Fair-Day Riddling for their lives, as Gilead held them with Cort taking the goose every year: stump Blaine and go free at Topeka, fail and die there. Blaine accepts, naming each of them: “You are ka-tet; one made from many. So am I.” The book ends before the first riddle.

What the 2017 film took from this book

The 2017 film is a sequel or next turn of the wheel rather than an adaptation, and its New York half owes more to this book than to any other: Jake’s visions of the Tower, the gunslinger and the Man in Black, drawn obsessively and dismissed by the adults as trauma, with a therapist and a threatened stay at a psychiatric facility standing in for the Piper School essay crisis.
A mother and a stepfather replace Elmer and Laurie Chambers; in the film Jake’s father, a fireman, died in a fire.
Dutch Hill survives: Jake finds a derelict Brooklyn house from his drawings and a portal inside it. The production described the house as a guardian demon that wakes around intruders, which is the doorkeeper rebuilt as a set-piece. The portal is a machine, and the colour-coding of portals is the film’s invention.
The “shine”, children’s psychic power harvested to crack the Tower, replaces ka and the Beam as the engine of the plot; the rose survives only among Jake’s drawings.
Nothing of Shardik, River Crossing, Lud, Blaine or the riddles.

Continuity notes

The party: Roland, Eddie and Susannah at the start; Jake comes through the Dutch Hill door in Door and Demon and Oy joins four days later. Roland names them ka-tet at a palaver the day the Send bridge comes into view.
Roland’s right hand: two fingers short throughout; Blaine’s ice sculpture reproduces the missing fingers.
Roland’s guns: at the opening one revolver rides in a holster Roland has rigged to Susannah’s wheelchair and the other hangs at camp, where Eddie grabs it to face the bear. On the bear’s trail Susannah still carries one. Roland hands his gunbelt and knife to Eddie at the Portal clearing during his breakdown and asks for his gun back at the edge of the speaking ring. From River Crossing on, Roland and Susannah each carry one of his revolvers while Eddie carries Jake’s Ruger (Reactor, Town and Ka-Tet 3–5); Susannah fires hers in Lud.
Jake’s Ruger: taken from his father’s study with its clip and a box of shells, carried in his pack; handed to Eddie as they approach River Crossing; Eddie carries it in his waistband in Lud and fires it for signal shots. Who holds it at the end of the book is not stated. The sources for this book do not mention the docker’s clutch Jake wears later, so the frames show him without it.
Susannah’s wheelchair: Roland carries her in a sling where it cannot go. Eddie drops it on the Send bridge during the Oy rescue, but it is recovered: Eddie pushes her through Lud in it and rolls it into the Cradle. It is left behind there, and she boards Blaine without it.
Jake’s gear: grammar-school backpack, Charlie the Choo-Choo, Riddle-De-Dum! with its answer pages torn out, a Seiko digital watch that goes haywire in Mid-World. He kicks out of his jeans in the Mansion. Gasher’s run costs him the backpack; Roland finds it and carries it to the Cradle. Whether the key from the vacant lot crosses with him is not stated.
Objects: Walter’s jawbone burns in Bear and Bone; Eddie’s ash key is finished and used, its fate unstated; Aunt Talitha’s silver cross goes on Roland here, passes out of his hands in a later book and comes back to him before he lays it at the Tower in Book VII.
Deaths: Shardik; Gasher; the population of Lud. The Tick-Tock Man survives Jake’s shots with a torn scalp and an eye lost to Oy, and leaves the book in the company of Richard Fannin. Patricia, the blue mono, has been dead in the Send for about nine years.
Location: the Great Woods east of the Western Sea at the start; aboard Blaine crossing the waste lands toward Topeka at the end.

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