Free The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy by Bev Vincent

to the Dark Tower than they are now.
    Reunited, the
ka-tet
solves Blaine’s first puzzle, which permits them to board the train. Blaine agrees to take them to Topeka, where Mid-World ends and End-World begins. However, he decides to kill everyone remaining in Lud with poison and nerve gas. Since he was created to serve, he argues that he is doing what the people wanted. They turned him into a god through their desires, and he is acting as one now, deciding when they live and die. Susannah is forced to abandon her wheelchair in the rush to leave before the gas attack obliterates everyone.
    Jake realizes that Blaine intends to commit suicide. Blaine is bored and his circuits are failing in ways that he can no longer repair. He has already talked his only companion, Patricia the Mono, into killing herself. He accelerates to a speed that is in the red zone for the tracks and switches off the sensors that would tell him if there are any breaches. It’s been a decade since he last ran this route, and there’s a good chance the track has failed since then. He uses computer-generated images to make himself invisible as he speeds up. His route takes them through postapocalyptic landscapes, some of which are the result of the Great Poisoning, places where the world is trying to heal, and some of which are so alien that they may not be in Mid-World at all. In a dream, Eddie was told that Blaine could travel across all universes.
    Blaine demands riddles from the
ka-tet
, but Roland refuses, enraging the petulant train. It turns into a classic Western showdown, with Roland adopting the stance of a gunslinger ready to draw. Blaine comes to see reason. He isn’t offering anything in return. He agrees to save their lives if they can stump him with a riddle before they cover the eight thousand miles to Topeka, which should take eight hours. He even apologizes when Roland accuses him of being rude.
    Though King knew something of what came next, he ended the book on that cliffhanger. It would be several years before he returned to his
ka-tet
.
    Characters (in order of mention): Susannah Dean, Roland Deschain, Eddie Dean, Cort, Sarah Holmes, Jack Mort, Enrico Balazar, the Great Old Ones, Henry Dean, Gloria Dean, Jake Chambers, Alain Johns, Cuthbert Allgood, Hax, Jamie DeCurry, MartenBroadcloak, Zoltan, Susan Delgado, Sheb, Allie, Nort, Sylvia Pittston, Jack Andolini, John Farson, Laurie Chambers, Elmer Chambers, Greta Shaw, Leonard Bissette, Joanne Franks, Mr. Harley, Bonita Avery, Mr. Knopf, Stan Dorfman, Calvin Tower, Wayne D. Overholser, Aaron Deepneau, Bango Skank, Mr. Hotchkiss, Engineer Bob Brooks, Raymond Martin, Mr. Briggs, Susannah Martin, Oy, Tom Denby, Si, Mercy, Bill Tudbury, Till Tudbury, Aunt Talitha Unwin, Blaine the Mono, David Quick (Lord Perth), Ageless Stranger, Maerlyn, King Arthur, Jack Mort, Vannay, Uncle Reg, Gasher, Tick-Tock Man (Andrew Quick), Copperhead, Spankerman, Luster, Winston, Frank, Jeeves, Ardis, Maud, Arthur Eld, Hoots, Patricia the Mono, Little Blaine, Steven Deschain, Tilly, Brandon, Deidre the Mad, Dewlap, Richard Fannin, Gabrielle Deschain.
    Places: The Shooting Gallery; Oxford, Mississippi; the Great West Woods; Out-World; Mystic, Connecticut; Granite City; Pricetown; Tull; Dragon’s Grave; House of Cards; Tom and Gerry’s Artistic Deli; the Dark Tower; the Portal of the Bear; Gilead; Downland Baronies; Western Sea; Dutch Hill; the Mansion; Reflections of You; Piper School; 70 Rockefeller Plaza; Sunnyvale Sanitarium; the Way Station; the Pushing Place; Mid-Town Lanes; Vassar; Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind; Chew Chew Mama’s; Tower of Power Records; the Paper Patch; Turtle Bay; United Nations Building; St. Louis, Missouri; Topeka, Kansas; Mid-World Amusement Park; Oz; Brooklyn; Co-Op City; Bleecker Street; Markey Avenue; Mid-World; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Times Square; Denby’s Discount Drug; Send River; Brooklyn Vocational Institute; Lud; Jimtown; River Road; Garlan;