The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower #2)(55)

"I don't know about that," the gunslinger said. "Here it means duty, or destiny, or, in the vulgate, a place you must go."

Eddie managed to look dismayed, disgusted, and amused all at the same time. "Then say it twice, Roland, because words like that sound like shit to this kid."

The gunslinger shrugged. "I don't discuss philosophy. I don't study history. All I know is what's past is past, and what's ahead is ahead. The second is ka, and takes care of itself."

"Yeah?" Eddie looked northward. "Well all I see ahead is about nine billion miles of this same f**king beach. If that's what's ahead, ka and kaka are the same thing. We might have enough good shells to pop five or six more of those lobster dudes, but then we're going to be down to chucking rocks at them. So where are we going?"

Roland did wonder briefly if this was a question Eddie had ever thought to ask his brother, but to ask such a question would only be an invitation to a lot of meaningless argument. So he only cocked a thumb northward and said, "There. To begin with."

Eddie looked and saw nothing but the same reach of shell -  and rock-studded gray shingle. He looked back at Roland, about to scoff, saw the serene certainty on his face, and looked again. He squinted. He shielded the right side of his face from the westering sun with his right hand. He wanted desperately to see something, anything, shit, even a mirage would do, but there was nothing.

"Crap on me all you want to," Eddie said slowly, "but I say it's a goddam mean trick. I put my life on the line for you at Balazar's."

"I know you did." The gunslinger smiled―a rarity that lit his face like a momentary flash of sunlight on a dismal luring day. "That's why I've done nothing but square-deal you, Eddie. It's there. I saw it an hour ago. At first I thought it was only a mirage or wishful thinking, but it's there, all right."

Eddie looked again, looked until water ran from the corners of his eyes. At last he said, "I don't see anything up ahead but more beach. And I got twenty-twenty vision."

"I don't know what that means."

"It means if there was something there to see, I'd see it!" But Eddie wondered. Wondered how much further than his own the gunslinger's blue bullshooter's eyes could see. Maybe a little.

Maybe a lot.

"You'll see it," the gunslinger said.

"See what?"

"We won't get there today, but if you see as well as you say, you'll see it before the sun hits the water. Unless you just want to stand here chin-jawing, that is."

"Ka," Eddie said in a musing voice.

Roland nodded. "Ka."

"Kaka," Eddie said, and laughed. "Come on, Roland. Let's take a hike. And if I don't see anything by the time the sun hits the water, you owe me a chicken dinner. Or a Big Mac. Or anything that isn't lobster."

"Come on."

They started walking again, and it was at least a full hour before the sun's lower arc touched the horizon when Eddie Dean began to see the shape in the distance―vague, shimmering, indefinable, but definitely something. Something new.

"Okay," he said. "I see it. You must have eyes like Superman."

"Who?"

"Never mind. You've got a really incredible case of culture lag, you know it?"

"What?"

Eddie laughed. "Never mind. What is it?"

"You'll see." The gunslinger started walking again before Eddie could ask anything else.

Twenty minutes later Eddie thought he did see. Fifteen minutes after that he was sure. The object on the beach was still two, maybe three miles away, but he knew what it was. A door, of course. Another door.

Neither of them slept well that night, and they were up and walking an hour before the sun cleared the eroding shapes of the mountains. They reached the door just as the morning sun's first rays, so sublime and so still, broke over them. Those rays lighted their stubbly cheeks like lamps. They made the gunslinger forty again, and Eddie no older than Roland had been when he went out to fight Cort with his hawk David as his weapon.

This door was exactly like the first, except for what was writ upon it:

THE LADY OF SHADOWS

" So," Eddie said softly, looking at the door which simply stood here with its hinges grounded in some unknown jamb between one world and another, one universe and another. It stood with its graven message, real as rock and strange as starlight.

"So," the gunslinger agreed.

"Ka."

"Ka."

"Here is where you draw the second of your three?"

"It seems so."

The gunslinger knew what was in Eddie's mind before Eddie knew it himself. He saw Eddie make his move before Eddie knew he was moving. He could have turned and broken Eddie's arm in two places before Eddie knew it was happening, but he made no move. He let Eddie snake the revolver from his right holster. It was the first time in his life he had allowed one of his weapons to be taken from him without an offer of that weapon having first been made. Yet he made no move to stop it. He turned and looked at Eddie equably, even mildly.

Eddie's face was livid, strained. His eyes showed starey whites all the way around the irises. He held the heavy revolver in both hands and still the muzzle rambled from side to side, centering, moving off, centering again and then moving off again.