Aunt Talitha, the matriarch of the River Crossing folk, gives Roland a silver cross to wear, and the travellers go their course. Before reaching Lud, they discover a downed plane from our world-a German fighter from the 1930s. Jammed into the cockpit is the mummified corpse of a giant, almost certainly the half-mythical outlaw David Quick.
While crossing the dilapidated bridge which spans the River Send, Jake and Oy are nearly lost in an accident. While Roland, Eddie, and Susannah are distracted by this, the party is ambushed by a dying (and very dangerous) outlaw named Gasher. He abducts Jake and takes him underground to the Tick-Tock Man, the last leader of the Grays. Tick-Tock’s real name is Andrew Quick; he is the great-grandson of the man who died trying to land an airplane from another world.
While Roland (aided by Oy) goes after Jake, Eddie and Susannah find the Cradle of Lud, where Blaine the Mono awakes. Blaine is the last above-ground tool of the vast computer-system which lies beneath the city of Lud, and it has only one remaining interest: riddles. It promises to take the travellers to the monorail’s final stop if they can solve a riddle it poses them. Otherwise, Blaine says, the only trip they’ll be taking will be to the place where the path ends in the clearing… to their deaths, in other words. In that case they’ll have plenty of company, for Blaine is planning to release stocks of nerve-gas which will kill everyone left in Lud: Pubes, Grays, and gun-slingers alike.
Roland rescues Jake, leaving the Tick-Tock Man for dead… but Andrew Quick is not dead. Half blind, hideously wounded about the face, he is rescued by a man who calls himself Richard Fannin. Fannin, however, also identifies himself as the Ageless Stranger, a demon of whom Roland has been warned by Walter.
Roland and Jake are reunited with Eddie and Susannah in the Cradle of Lud, and Susannah-with a little help from “dat bitch” Detta Walker-is able to solve Blaine’s riddle. They gain access to the mono, of necessity ignoring the horrified warnings of Blaine’s sane but fatally weak undermind (Eddie calls this voice Little Blaine), only to discover that Blaine means to commit suicide with them aboard. The fact that the actual mind running the mono exists in computers falling farther and farther behind them, running beneath a city which has become a slaughtering-pen, will make no difference when the pink bullet jumps the tracks somewhere along the line at a speed in excess of eight hundred miles an hour.
There is only one chance of survivaclass="underline" Blaine’s love of riddles. Roland of Gilead proposes a desperate bargain. It is with this bargain that The Wastelands ends; it is with this bargain that Wizard and Glass begins.
Romeo: Lady, by yonder blessed moon I vow,
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops-
Juliet: O, swear not by the moon, th’ inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
Romeo: What shall I swear by?
Juliet: Do not swear at all.
Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
Which is the god of my idolatry,
And I’ll believe thee.
On the fourth day, to [Dorothy’s] great joy, Oz sent for her, and when she entered the Throne Room, he greeted her pleasantly.
“Sit down; my dear. I think I have found a way to get you out of this country.”
“And back to Kansas?” she asked eagerly. “Well, I’m not sure about Kansas,” said Oz, “for I haven’t the faintest notion which way it lies…”
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards-the soldier’s art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights!
Prologue
BLAINE
“ASK ME A RIDDLE,” Blaine invited.
“Fuck you,” Roland said. He did not raise his voice.
“WHAT DO YOU SAY?” In its clear disbelief, the voice of Big Blaine had become very close to the voice of its unsuspected twin.
“I said fuck you,” Roland said calmly, “but if that puzzles you, Blaine, I can make it clearer. No. The answer is no.”
There was no reply from Blaine for a long, long time, and when he did respond, it was not with words. Instead, the walls, floor, and ceiling began to lose their color and solidity again. In a space of ten seconds the Barony Coach once more ceased to exist. They were now flying through the mountain-range they had seen on the horizon: iron-gray peaks rushed toward them at suicidal speed, then fell away to disclose sterile valleys where gigantic beetles crawled about like landlocked turtles. Roland saw something that looked like a huge snake suddenly uncoil from the mouth of a cave. It seized one of the beetles and yanked it back into its lair. Roland had never in his life seen such animals or countryside, and the sight made his skin want to crawl right off his flesh. Blaine might have transported them to some other world.
“PERHAPS I SHOULD DERAIL US HERE,” Blaine said. His voice was meditative, but beneath it the gunslinger heard a deep, pulsing rage.
“Perhaps you should,” the gunslinger said indifferently.
Eddie’s face was frantic. He mouthed the words What are you DOING? Roland ignored him; he had his hands full with Blaine, and he knew perfectly well what he was doing.
“YOU ARE RUDE AND ARROGANT,” Blaine said. “THESE MAY SEEM LIKE INTERESTING TRAITS TO YOU, BUT THEY ARE NOT TO ME.”
“Oh, I can be much ruder than I have been.”
Roland of Gilead unfolded his hands and got slowly to his feet. He stood on what appeared to be nothing, legs apart, his right hand on his hip and his left on the sandalwood grip of his revolver. He stood as he had so many times before, in the dusty streets of a hundred forgotten towns, in a score of rocky canyon killing-zones, in unnumbered dark saloons with their smells of bitter beer and old fried meals. It was just another showdown in another empty street. That was all, and that was enough. It was khef, ka, and ka-tet. That the showdown always came was the central fact of his life and the axle upon which his own ka revolved. That the battle would be fought with words instead of bullets this time made no difference; it would be a battle to the death, just the same. The stench of killing in the air was as clear and definite as the stench of exploded carrion in a swamp. Then the battle-rage descended, as it always did… and he was no longer really there to himself at all.
“I can call you a nonsensical, empty-headed, foolish machine. I can call you a stupid, unwise creature whose sense is no more than the sound of a winter wind in a hollow tree.”
“STOP IT.”
Roland went on in the same serene tone, ignoring Blaine completely. “You’re what Eddie calls a ‘gadget.’ Were you more, I might be ruder yet.”
“I AM A GREAT DEAL MORE THAN JUST-”
“I could call you a sucker of cocks, for instance, but you have no mouth. I could say you’re viler than the vilest beggar who ever crawled the lowest street in creation, but even such a creature is better than you; you have no knees on which to crawl, and would not fall upon them even if you did, for you have no conception of such a human flaw as mercy. I could even say you fucked your mother, had you one.”