Wizard and Glass

How it opens

Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake and the bumbler Oy are aboard Blaine the Mono, a talking train racing southeast by night at over eight hundred miles an hour, away from the city of Lud. Blaine has made them wager their lives on a riddling contest, and he means to end his run at Topeka by striking the piers at the end of the track at better than nine hundred miles an hour. Riddle after riddle, Blaine answers almost at once, even while he stops at the Falls of the Hounds to feed his batteries with power drawn from the Beam. Sixty minutes out of Topeka, Roland is almost out of riddles, Jake waits with the hardest ones in his book, and Eddie sits lost in his own thoughts.

Who you meet early

• Roland DeschainRoland of Gilead, son of Steven, is dinh of his ka-tet and still bound for the Dark Tower, now aboard Blaine with his companions. His right hand is short two fingers. Against Blaine he has been posing old Fair-Day riddles from his boyhood, and he finds his store of them running out.
• Eddie DeanEddie Dean of New York, Susannah's husband, rides Blaine with the rest of the ka-tet. For most of the riddling he sits silent, looking at his hands and chasing a memory of Roland teaching Jake to light a fire on the way to Lud.
• Susannah DeanSusannah Dean of New York, Eddie's wife, rides Blaine with the ka-tet. In Lud she solved Blaine's gate-riddle, and on the mono she posed the contest's first riddle. She has come to love Roland in spite of herself, though she suspects the Detta in her will never forgive him for how he once seized her and dragged her off.
• Jake ChambersJake Chambers, an eleven-year-old boy from New York, is back in Roland's world and riding Blaine with the ka-tet and the bumbler Oy. Before they boarded, Gasher drove him through Lud, the Tick-Tock Man questioned him, and Roland and Oy rescued him.
• OyOy, a billy-bumbler, sticks close to Jake and follows him even into the aisle of Blaine's coach. He helped Roland rescue Jake in Lud, and he can echo bits of speech.
• Blaine the MonoBlaine the Mono is the thinking train out of Lud, and he has the ka-tet in his Barony Coach for a riddling contest with their lives at wager. He has no face but a route-map, speaks at times in borrowed movie voices, and plans to end his run by striking the piers at the end of his track.