(although he put that mostly down to Eldred Jonas, he of the quavery voice and the long gray hair, and Jonas had paid). The King had told him then that they weren't done with Roland, that the gunslinger would begin the end of matters and ultimately cause the tumble of that which he wished to save. Walter hadn't begun to believe that until the Mohaine Desert, where he had looked around one day and discovered a certain gunslinger on his backtrail, one who had grown old over the course of falling years, and hadn't completely believed it until the reappearance of Mia, who fulfilled an old and grave prophecy by giving birth to the Crimson King's son. Certainly the Old Red Thing was of no more use to him, but even in his imprisonment and insanity, he-it-was dangerous.
Still, until he'd had Roland to complete him-to make him greater than his own destiny, perhaps-Walter o' Dim had been little more than a wanderer left over from the old days, a mercenary with a vague ambition to penetrate the Tower before it was brought down. Was that not what had brought him to the Crimson King in the first place? Yes. And it wasn't his fault that the great scuttering spider-king had run mad.
Never mind. Here was his son with the same mark on his heel-Walter could see it at this very moment-and everything balanced. Of course he'd need to be careful. The thing in the chair looked helpless, perhaps even thought it was helpless, but it wouldn't do to underestimate it just because it looked like a baby.
Walter slipped the gun into his pocket (for the moment; only for the moment) and held his hands out, empty and palms up. Then he closed one of them into a fist, which he raised to his forehead. Slowly, never taking his eyes from Mordred, wary lest he should change (Walter had seen that change, and what had happened to the little beast's mother), the newcomer dropped to one knee.
"Hile, Mordred Deschain, son of Roland of Gilead that was and of the Crimson King whose name was once spoken from End-World to Out-World; hile you son of two fathers, both of them descended from Arthur Eld, first king to rise after the Prim receded, and Guardian of the Dark Tower."
For a moment nothing happened. In the Control Center there was only silence and the lingering smell of Nigel's fried circuits.
Then the baby lifted its chubby fists, opened them, and raised his hands: Rise, bondsman, and come to me.
TWO
"It's best you not 'think strong,' in any case," the newcomer said, stepping closer. "They knew you were here, and Roland is almighty Christing clever; trig-delah is he. He caught up with me once, you know, and I thought I was done. I truly did." From his gunna the man who sometimes called himself Flagg (on another level of the Tower, he had brought an entire world to ruin under that name) had taken peanut butter and crackers.
He'd asked permission of his new dinh, and the baby (although bitterly hungry himself) had nodded regally. Now Walter sat cross-legged on the floor, eating rapidly, secure in his thinkingcap, unaware there was an intruder inside and all that he knew was being ransacked. He was safe until that ransacking was done, but afterward-
Mordred raised one chubby baby-hand in the air and swooped it gracefully down in the shape of a question mark.
"How did I escape?" Walter asked. "Why, I did what any true cozener would do in such circumstances-told him the truth!
Showed him the Tower, at least several levels of it. It stunned him, right and proper, and while he was open in such fashion,
I took a leaf from his own book and hypnotized him. We were in one of the fistulas of time which sometimes swirl out from the Tower, and the world moved on all around us as we had our palaver in that bony place, aye! I brought more bones-human ones-and while he slept I dressed em in what was left of my own clothes. I could have killed him then, but what of the Tower if I had, eh? What of you, for that matter? You never would have come to be. It's fair to say, Mordred, that by allowing Roland to live and draw his three, I saved your life before your life was even kindled, so I did. I stole away to the seashore-felt in need of a little vacation, hee! When Roland