Stephen King - The Dark Tower 2 - The Drawing Of The Three

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THE DARK TOWER II

THE DRAWING OF THE THREE

Stephen King

PLUME

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,

Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

Published by Plume, an imprint of Dutton Signet,

a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

Originally published in a limited edition by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc.,

West Kingston, Rhode Island.

First Plume Printing, March, 1989

5 7 9 11 13 12 10 8 6

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

King, Stephen.

The drawing of the three.

(The Dark tower; 2)

I. Title. II. Series: King, Stephen.

Dark tower; 2..

PS3561.I483D74 1989 813'.54 88-28018

ISBN 0-452-27961-5

Printed in the United States of America

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this

publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,

transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the

owner and the above publisher of this book.

BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE

PRODUCTS

OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING

DIVISION,

PENGUIN PUTNAM INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

To Don Grant, who's taken a chance on these novels, one by one.

CONTENTS

ARGUMENT

prologue: the sailor

THE PRISONER

1 • THE DOOR

2 • EDDIE DEAN

3 • CONTACT AND LANDING

4 • THE TOWER

5 • SHOWDOWN AND SHOOT-OUT

SHUFFLE

THE LADY OF SHADOWS

1 • DETTA AND ODETTA

2 • RINGING THE CHANGES

3 • ODETTA ON THE OTHER SIDE

4 • DETTA ON THE OTHER SIDE

RESHUFFLE

THE PUSHER

1 • BITTER MEDICINE

2 • THE HONEYPOT

3 • ROLAND TAKES HIS MEDICINE

4 • THE DRAWING

FINAL SHUFFLE

AFTERWORD

ILLUSTRATIONS

DID-A-CHICK

ROLAND

ON THE BEACH

SOUVENIR

WAITING FOR ROLAND

DETTA

WAITNG FOR THE PUSHER

NOTHING BUT THE HILT

JACK MORT

THE GUNSLINGER

ARGUMENT

The Drawing of the Three is the second volume of a long tale called The Dark

Tower, a tale inspired by and to some degree dependent upon Robert Browning's

narrative poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" (which in its turn owes a

debt to King Lear).

The first volume, The Gunslinger, tells how Roland, the last gunslinger of a

world which has "moved on," finally catches up with the man in black ... a

sorcerer he has chased for a very long time—just how long we do not yet know.

The man in black turns out to be a fellow named Walter, who falsely claimed the

friendship of Roland's father in those days before the world moved on.

Roland's goal is not this half-human creature but the Dark Tower; the man in

black—and, more specifically, what the man in black knows—is his first step on

his road to that mysterious place.

Who, exactly, is Roland? What was his world like before it "moved on?" What is

the Tower, and why does he pursue it? We have only fragmentary answers. Roland

is a gunslinger, a kind of knight, one of those charged with holding a world

Roland remembers as being "filled with love and light" as it is; to keep it from

moving on.

We know that Roland was forced to an early trial of manhood after discovering

that his mother had become the mistress of Marten, a much greater sorcerer than

Walter (who, unknown to Roland's father, is Marten's ally); we know Marten has

planned Roland's discovery, expecting Roland to fail and to be "sent West"; we

know that Roland triumphs in his test.

What else do we know? That the gunslinger's world is not completely unlike our

own. Artifacts such as gasoline pumps and certain songs ("Hey Jude," for

instance, or the bit of doggerel that begins "Beans, beans, the musical fruit .

. .") have survived; so have customs and rituals oddly like those from our own

romanticized view of the American west.

And there is an umbilicus which somehow connects our world to the world of the

gunslinger. At a way-station on a long-deserted coach-road in a great and

sterile desert, Roland meets a boy named Jake who died in our world. A boy who

was, in fact, pushed from a street-corner by the ubiquitous (and iniquitous) man

in black. The last thing Jake, who was on his way to school with his book-bag in

one hand and his • lunch-box in the other, remembers of his world—our world— I

is being crushed beneath the wheels of a Cadillac . . . and dying.

Before reaching the man in black, Jake dies again. . . this time because the

gunslinger, faced with the second-most agon-izing choice of his life, elects to

sacrifice this symbolic son. Given a choice between the Tower and child,

possibly between damnation and salvation, Roland chooses the Tower.

"Go, then," Jake tells him before plunging into the abyss. "There are other

worlds than these."

The final confrontation between Roland and Walter occurs in a dusty golgotha of

decaying bones. The dark man tells Roland's future with a deck of Tarot cards.

These cards, showing a man called The Prisoner, a woman called The Lady of

Shadows, and a darker shape that is simply Death ("but not for you, gunslinger,"

the man in black tells him), are prophe-cies which become the subject of this

volume. . . and Roland's second step on the long and difficult path to the Dark

Tower.

The Gunslinger end?, with Roland sitting upon the beach of the Western Sea,

watching the sunset. The man in black is dead, the gunslinger's own future

course unclear; The Draw-ing of the Three begins on that same beach, less than

seven hours later.

-PROLOGUE:

THE SAILOR

PROLOGUE

The gunslinger came awake from a confused dream which seemed to consist of a

single image: that of the Sailor in the Tarot deck from which the man in black

had dealt (or purported to deal) the gunslinger's own moaning future.

He drowns, gunslinger, the man in black was saying, and no one throws out the

line. The boy Jake.

But this was no nightmare. It was a good dream. It was good because he was the

one drowning, and that meant he was not Roland at all but Jake, and he found

this a relief because it would be far better to drown as Jake than to live as

himself, a man who had, for a cold dream, betrayed a child who had trusted him.

Good, all right, I'll drown, he thought, listening to the roar of the sea. Let

me drown. But this was not the sound of the open deeps; it was the grating sound

of water with a throatful of stones. Was he the Sailor? If so, why was land so

close? And, in fact, was he not on the land? It felt as if—

Freezing cold water doused his boots and ran up his legs to his crotch. His eyes

flew open then, and what snapped him out of the dream wasn't his freezing balls,

which had suddenly shrunk to what felt like the size of walnuts, nor even the

horror to his right, but the thought of his guns. . . his guns, and even more

important, his shells. Wet guns could be quickly disas-sembled, wiped dry,

oiled, wiped dry again, oiled again, and re-assembled; wet shells, like wet

matches, might or might not ever be usable again.

The horror was a crawling thing which must have been cast up by a previous wave.

It dragged a wet, gleaming body laboriously along the sand. It was about four

feet long and about four yards to the right. It regarded Roland with bleak eyes

on stalks. Its long serrated beak dropped open and it began to make a noise that

was weirdly like human speech: plaintive, even desperate questions in an alien

tongue. "Did-a-chick? Dum-a-chum? Dad-a-cham? Ded-a-check?"

The gunslinger had seen lobsters. This wasn't one, although lobsters were the

only things he had ever seen which this creature even vaguely resembled. It

didn't seem afraid of him at all. The gunslinger didn't know if it was dangerous

or not. He didn't care about his own mental confusion—his temporary inability to

remember where he was or how he had gotten there, if he had actually caught the

man in black or if all that had only been a dream. He only knew he had to get

away from the water before it could drown his shells.

He heard the grinding, swelling roar of water and looked from the creature (it

had stopped and was holding up the claws with which it had been pulling itself

along, looking absurdly like a boxer assuming his opening stance, which, Cort

had taught them, was called The Honor Stance) to the incoming breaker with its

curdle of foam.

It hears the wave, the gunslinger thought. Whatever it is, it's got ears. He

tried to get up, but his legs, too numb to feel, buckled under him.

I'm still dreaming, he thought, but even in his current confused state this was

a belief much too tempting to really be believed. He tried to get up again,

almost made it, then fell back. The wave was breaking. There was no time again.

He had to settle for moving in much the same way the creature on his right

seemed to move: he dug in with both hands and dragged his butt up the stony

shingle, away from the wave.

He didn't progress enough to avoid the wave entirely, but he got far enough for

his purposes. The wave buried nothing but his boots. It reached almost to his

knees and then retreated. Perhaps the first one didn't go as far as I thought.

Perhaps—

There was a half-moon in the sky. A caul of mist covered it, but it shed enough

light for him to see that the holsters were too dark. The guns, at least, had

suffered a wetting. It was impossible to tell how bad it had been, or if either

the shells currently in the cylinders or those in the crossed gunbelts had also

been wetted. Before checking, he had to get away from the water. Had to—

"Dod-a-chock?" This was much closer. In his worry over the water he had

forgotten the creature the water had cast up. He looked around and saw it was

now only four feet away. Its claws were buried in the stone- and shell-littered

sand of the shingle, pulling its body along. It lifted its meaty, serrated body,

making it momentarily resemble a scorpion, but Roland could see no stinger at

the end of its body.

Another grinding roar, this one much louder. The crea-ture immediately stopped

and raised its claws into its own peculiar version of the Honor Stance again.

This wave was bigger. Roland began to drag himself up the slope of the strand

again, and when he put out his hands, the clawed creature moved with a speed of

which its previous movements had not even hinted.

The gunslinger felt a bright flare of pain in his right hand, but there was no

time to think about that now. He pushed with the heels of his soggy boots,

clawed with his hands, and managed to get away from the wave.

"Did-a-chick?" the monstrosity enquired in its plaintive Won't you help me?

Can't you see I am desperate? voice, and Roland saw the stumps of the first and

second fingers of his right hand disappearing into the creature's jagged beak.

It lunged again and Roland lifted his dripping right hand just in time to save

his remaining two fingers.

"Dum-a-chum? Dad-a-cham?"

The gunslinger staggered to his feet. The thing tore open his dripping jeans,

tore through a boot whose old leather was soft but as tough as iron, and took a

chunk of meat from Roland's lower calf.

He drew with his right hand, and realized two of the fingers needed to perform

this ancient killing operation were gone only when the revolver thumped to the

sand.

The monstrosity snapped at it greedily.

"No, bastard!" Roland snarled, and kicked it. It was like kicking a block of

rock. . . one that bit. It tore away the end of Roland's right boot, tore away

most of his great toe, tore the boot itself from his foot.

The gunslinger bent, picked up his revolver, dropped it, cursed, and finally

managed. What had once been a thing so easy it didn't even bear thinking about

had suddenly become a trick akin to juggling.

The creature was crouched on the gunslinger's boot, tear-ing at it as it asked

its garbled questions. A wave rolled toward the beach, the foam which curdled

its top looking pallid and dead in the netted light of the half-moon. The

lobstrosity stopped working on the boot and raised its claws in that boxer's

pose.

Roland drew with his left hand and pulled the trigger three times. Click, click,

click.

Now he knew about the shells in the chambers, at least.

He bolstered the left gun. To holster the right he had to turn its barrel

downward with his left hand and then let it drop into its place. Blood slimed

the worn ironwood handgrips; blood spotted the holster and the old jeans to

which the holster was thong-tied. It poured from the stumps where his fingers

used to be.

His mangled right foot was still too numb to hurt, but his right hand was a

bellowing fire. The ghosts of talented and long-trained fingers which were

already decomposing in the digestive juices of that thing's guts screamed that

they were still there, that they were burning.

I see serious problems ahead, the gunslinger thought remotely.

The wave retreated. The monstrosity lowered its claws, tore a fresh hole in the

gunslinger's boot, and then decided the wearer had been a good deal more tasty

than this bit of skin it had somehow sloughed off.

"Dud-a-chum?" it asked, and scurried toward him with ghastly speed. The

gunslinger retreated on legs he could barely feel, realizing that the creature

must have some intelli-gence; it had approached him cautiously, perhaps from a

long way down the strand, not sure what he was or of what he might be capable.

If the dousing wave hadn't wakened him, the thing would have torn off his face

while he was still deep in his dream. Now it had decided he was not only tasty

but vulnera-ble; easy prey.

It was almost upon him, a thing four feet long and a foot high, a creature which

might weigh as much as seventy pounds and which was as single-mindedly

carnivorous as David, the hawk he had had as a boy—but without David's dim

vestige of loyalty.

The gunslinger's left bootheel struck a rock jutting from the sand and he

tottered on the edge of falling.

"Dod-a-chock?" the thing asked, solicitously it seemed, and peered at the

gunslinger from its stalky, waving eyes as its claws reached . . . and then a

wave came, and the claws went up again in the Honor Stance. Yet now they wavered

the slightest bit, and the gunslinger realized that it responded to the sound of

the wave, and now the sound was—for it, at least—fading a bit.

He stepped backward over the rock, then bent down as the wave broke upon the

shingle with its grinding roar. His head was inches from the insectile face of

the creature. One of its claws might easily have slashed the eyes from his face,

but its trembling claws, so like clenched fists, remained raised to either side

of its parrotlike beak.

The gunslinger reached for the stone over which he had nearly fallen. It was

large, half-buried in the sand, and his mutilated right hand howled as bits of

dirt and sharp edges of pebble ground into the open bleeding flesh, but he

yanked the rock free and raised it, his lips pulled away from his teeth.

"Dad-a—" the monstrosity began, its claws lowering and opening as the wave broke

and its sound receded, and the gunslinger swept the rock down upon it with all

his strength.

There was a crunching noise as the creature's segmented back broke. It lashed

wildly beneath the rock, its rear half lifting and thudding, lifting and

thudding. Its interrogatives became buzzing exclamations of pain. Its claws

opened and shut upon nothing. Its maw of a beak gnashed up clots of sand and

pebbles.

And yet, as another wave broke, it tried to raise its claws again, and when it

did the gunslinger stepped on its head with his remaining boot. There was a

sound like many small dry twigs being broken. Thick fluid burst from beneath the

heel of Roland's boot, splashing in two directions. It looked black.

The thing arched and wriggled in a frenzy. The gunslinger planted his boot

harder.

A wave came.

The monstrosity's claws rose an inch . . . two inches . . . trembled and then

fell, twitching open and shut.

The gunslinger removed his boot. The thing's serrated beak, which had separated

two fingers and one toe from his living body, slowly opened and closed. One

antenna lay broken on the sand. The other trembled meaninglessly.

The gunslinger stamped down again. And again.

He kicked the rock aside with a grunt of effort and marched along the right side

of the monstrosity's body, stamp-ing methodically with his left boot, smashing

its shell, squeez-ing its pale guts out onto dark gray sand. It was dead, but he

meant to have his way with it all the same; he had never, in all his long

strange time, been so fundamentally hurt, and it had all been so unexpected.

He kept on until he saw the tip of one of his own fingers in the dead thing's

sour mash, saw the white dust beneath the nail from the golgotha where he and

the man in black had held their long palaver, and then he looked aside and

vomited.

The gunslinger walked back toward the water like a drunken man, holding his

wounded hand against his shirt, looking back from time to time to make sure the

thing wasn't still alive, like some tenacious wasp you swat again and again and

still twitches, stunned but not dead; to make sure it wasn't following, asking

its alien questions in its deadly despairing voice.

Halfway down the shingle he stood swaying, looking at the place where he had

been, remembering. He had fallen asleep, apparently, just below the high tide

line. He grabbed his purse and his torn boot.

In the moon's glabrous light he saw other creatures of the same type, and in the

caesura between one wave and the next, heard their questioning voices.

The gunslinger retreated a step at a time, retreated until he reached the grassy

edge of the shingle. There he sat down, and did all he knew to do: he sprinkled

the stumps of fingers and toe with the last of his tobacco to stop the bleeding,

sprinkled it thick in spite of the new stinging (his missing great toe had

joined the chorus), and then he only sat, sweating in the chill, wondering about

infection, wondering how he would make his way in this world with two fingers on

his right hand gone (when it came to the guns both hands had been equal, but in

all other things his right had ruled), won-dering if the thing had some poison

in its bite which might already be working its way into him, wondering if

morning would ever come.

CHAPTER 1

THE DOOR

Three. This is the number of your fate.

Three?

Yes, three is mystic. Three stands at the heart of the mantra.

Which three?

The first is dark-haired. He stands on the brink of robbery and murder. A demon

has infested him. The name of the demon is HEROIN.

Which demon is that? I know it not, even from nursery stories.

He tried to speak but his voice was gone, the voice of the oracle, Star-Slut,

Whore of the Winds, both were gone; he saw a card fluttering down from nowhere

to now here, turning and turning in the lazy dark. On it a baboon grinned from

over the shoulder of a young man with dark hair; its disturbingly human fingers

were buried so deeply in the young man's neck that their tips had disappeared in

flesh. Looking more closely, the gunslinger saw the baboon held a whip in one of

those clutching, strangling hands. The face of the ridden man seemed to writhe

in wordless terror.

The Prisoner, the man in black (who had once been a man the gunslinger trusted,

a man named Walter) whispered chummily. A trifle upsetting, isn't he? A trifle

upsetting ... a trifle upsetting ... a trifle—

The gunslinger snapped awake, waving at something with his mutilated hand, sure

that in a moment one of the monstrous shelled things from the Western Sea would

drop on him, desperately enquiring in its foreign tongue as it pulled his face

off his skull.

Instead a sea-bird, attracted by the glister of the morning sun on the buttons

of his shirt, wheeled away with a frightened squawk.

Roland sat up.

His hand throbbed wretchedly, endlessly. His right foot did the same. Both

fingers and toe continued to insist they were there. The bottom half of his

shirt was gone; what was left resembled a ragged vest. He had used one piece to

bind his hand, the other to bind his foot.

Go away, he told the absent parts of his body. You are ghosts now. Go away.

It helped a little. Not much, but a little. They were ghosts, all right, but

lively ghosts.

The gunslinger ate jerky. His mouth wanted it little, his stomach less, but he

insisted. When it was inside him, he felt a little stronger. There was not much

left, though; he was nearly up against it.

Yet things needed to be done.

He rose unsteadily to his feet and looked about. Birds swooped and dived, but

the world seemed to belong to only him and them. The monstrosities were gone.

Perhaps they were nocturnal; perhaps tidal. At the moment it seemed to make no

difference.

The sea was enormous, meeting the horizon at a misty blue point that was

impossible to determine. For a long moment the gunslinger forgot his agony in

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