The Dark Tower - Stephen King [271]
Roland was nodding. In his eyes Susannah saw an entirely new expression: glad surprise. Maybe he does know how to win, she thought. “Then eventually what has moved on might return again,” the gunslinger said. “Perhaps Mid-World and In-World.” He paused. “Perhaps even Gilead. The light. The White.”
“No perhaps about it,” Fimalo said. “For ka is a wheel, and if a wheel be not broken, it will always roll. Unless the Crimson King can become either Lord of the Tower or its Lord High Executioner, all that was will eventually return.”
“Lunacy,” said Fumalo. “And destructive lunacy, at that. But of course Big Red always was Gan’s crazy side.” He gave Susannah an ugly smirk and said, “That’s Frooood, Lady Blackbird.”
Feemalo resumed. “And after the Balls were smashed and the killing was done—”
“This is what we’d have you understand,” said Fumalo. “If, that is, your heads aren’t too thick to get the sense of it.”
“After those chores were finished, he killed himself,” Fimalo said, and once more the other two turned to him. It was as if they were helpless to do otherwise.
“Did he do it with a spoon?” Roland asked. “For that was the prophecy my friends and I grew up with. ’Twas in a bit of doggerel.”
“Yes indeed,” said Fimalo. “I thought he’d cut his throat with it, for the edge of the spoon’s bowl had been sharpened (like certain plates, ye ken—ka’s a wheel, and always comes around to where it started), but he swallowed it. Swallowed it, can you imagine? Great gouts of blood poured from his mouth. Freshets! Then he mounted the greatest of the gray horses—he calls it Nis, after the land of sleep and dreams—and rode southeast into the white lands of Empathica with his little bit of gunna before him on the saddle.” He smiled. “There are great stores of food here, but he has no need of it, as you may ken. Los’ no longer eats.”
“Wait a minute, time out,” Susannah said, raising her hands in a T-shape (it was a gesture she’d picked up from Eddie, although she didn’t realize it). “If he swallowed a sharpened spoon and cut himself open as well as choking—”
“Lady Blackbird begins to see the light!” Fumalo exulted, and shook his hands at the sky.
“—then how could he do anything?”
“Los’ cannot die,” Feemalo said, as if explaining something obvious to a three-year-old. “And you—”
“You poor saps—” his partner put in with good-natured viciousness.
“You can’t kill a man who’s already dead,” Fimalo finished. “As he was, Roland, your guns might have ended him…”
Roland was nodding. “Handed down from father to son, with barrels made from Arthur Eld’s great sword, Excalibur. Yes, that’s also part of the prophecy. As he of course would know.”
“But now he’s safe from them. Has put himself beyond them. He is Un-dead.”
“We have reason to believe that he’s been shunted onto a balcony of the Tower,” Roland said. “Un-dead or not, he never could have gained the top without some sigul of the Eld; surely if he knew so much prophecy, then he knew that.”
Fimalo was smiling grimly. “Aye, but as Horatio held the bridge in a story told in Susannah’s world, so Los’, the Crimson King, now holds the Tower. He has found his way into its mouth but cannot climb to the top, ’tis true. Yet while he holds it hard, neither can you.”
“It seems old King Red wasn’t entirely mad, after all,” Feemalo said.
“Cray-zee lak-a de focks!” Fumalo added. He tapped his temple gravely…and then burst out laughing.
“But if you go on,” said Fimalo, “you bring to him the siguls of the Eld he needs to gain possession of that which now holds him captive.”
“He’d have to take them from me first,” Roland said. “From us.” He spoke without drama, as if merely commenting on the weather.
“True,” Fimalo agreed, “but consider, Roland. You cannot kill him with them, but it is possible that he might be able to take them from you, for his mind