Beams

The Beams enter The Dark Tower series in The Waste Lands, as the hidden architecture of Roland's world. In Mid-World's oldest teaching, six Beams cross at the Dark Tower, the axis of all worlds, making twelve ends, and at each end stands a Guardian, an animal of legend such as the Bear and the Turtle. All things serve the Beam, the saying runs, and the world shows it: birds turn along a Beam's path, trees and their shadows lean the same way, and clouds run down its groove in the sky. A traveler who finds a Beam can follow it toward the Tower, which is what makes them matter to a gunslinger on a quest. The world has moved on, and the Beams belong to what still holds.