It's his teacher's voice that does it, at the last. He remembers thinking of Cort, at some time previous which seems very distant from the here and now. He'd wished for Cort, as much as he is capable of wishing for such impossible things. Cort, he remembers thinking, had known black from white.

Cort had also known him. His final student. It'll be your damnation, boy, he'd said and, when Roland's been run down to something heavy and heartsick, worn to his thinnest under the weight of dreaming, he hears that voice again. You'll wear out a thousand boots on your way to hell.

There's a siren call, feeling very alien, very much of this place, singing its dark and wet call inside Roland's heart now. He answers it.