"Are you saying you can't?" Roland asked, injecting (with an effort) a note of disappointed incredulity into his voice. "That you can't? That Patrick can't? The Artist can't?"
Patrick's eyes changed. For a moment Roland saw in them the expression that would be there permanently if he grew to be a man... and the paintings in Sayre's office said that he would do that, at least on some track of time, in some world. Old enough, at least, to paint what he had seen this day. That expression would be hauteur, if he grew to be an old man with a little wisdom to match his talent; now it was only arrogance.
The look of a kid who knows he's faster than blue blazes, the best, and cares to know nothing else. Roland knew that look, for had he not seen it gazing back at him from a hundred mirrors and still pools of water when he had been as young as Patrick Danville was now?
I can, came the voice in Roland's head. I only say it won't be easy. I'll need the eraser.
Roland shook his head at once. In his pocket, his hand closed around what remained of the pink nubbin and held it tight.
"No," he said. "Thee must draw cold, Patrick. Every line right the first time. The erasing comes later."
For a moment the look of arrogance faltered, but only for a moment. When it returned, what came with it pleased the gunslinger mightily, and eased him a litde, as well. It was a look of hot excitement. It was die look the talented wear when, after years of just moving sleepily along from pillar to post, they are finally challenged to do something that will tax their abilities, stretch them to their limits. Perhaps even beyond them.
Patrick rolled to the binoculars again, which he'd left propped aslant just below the notch. He looked long while the voices sang their growing imperative in Roland's head.
And at last he rolled away, took up his pad, and began to draw the most important picture of his life.
SEVEN
It was slow work compared to Patrick's usual method-rapid strokes diat produced a completed and compelling drawing in only minutes. Roland again and again had to restrain himself from shouting at the boy: Hurry up! For the sake of all the gods, hurry up! Can't you see that I'm in agony here?
But Patrick didn't see and wouldn't have cared in any case.
He was totally absorbed in his work, caught up in the unknowing greed of it, pausing only to go back to the binoculars now and then for another long look at his red-robed subject. Sometimes he slanted die pencil to shade a litde, dien rubbed with his thumb to produce a shadow. Sometimes he rolled his eyes back in his head, showing the world nothing but the waxy gleam of the whites. It was as if he were conning some version of the Red King that stood a-glow in his brain. And really, how did Roland know that was not possible?
I don't care what it is. Just let him finish before I go mad and sprint to what the Old Red King so rightly called "my darling."
Half an hour at least three days long passed in this fashion.
Once the Crimson King called more coaxingly than ever to Roland, asking if he would not come to the Tower and palaver, after all. Perhaps, he said, if Roland were to free him from his balcony prison, they might bury an arrow together and then climb to the top room of the Tower in that same spirit of friendliness. It was not impossible, after all. A hard rain made for queer bedfellows at the inn; had Roland never heard that saying?
The gunslinger knew the saying well. He also knew that the Red King's offer was essentially the same false request as before, only this time dressed up in morning coat and cravat. And this time Roland heard worry lurking in the old monster's voice. He wasted no energy on reply.
Realizing his coaxing had failed, the Crimson King threw another sneetch. This one flew so high over the pyramid it was only a spark, then dove down upon them with the scream of a falling bomb. Roland took care of it with a single shot and reloaded from a plentitude of shells. He wished, in fact, that the King would send more of the flying grenados against him, because they took his mind temporarily off the dreadful call of the Tower.
It's been waiting for me, he thought with dismay. That's what makes it so hard to resist, I think-it's calling me in particular. Not to Roland, exactly, but to the entire line of Eld... and of that line, only I am left.
EIGHT