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The novel begins a few minutes after its predecessor ended. After fruitlessly riddling Blaine the Mono for several minutes, Eddie defeats the computer with one of his signature talents.

Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy disembark at the Topeka cradle, which to their surprise is in Topeka, Kansas, of the 1990s. The city is deserted, as this version of the world has been depopulated by a plague similar, but not identical to, the influenza of King's novel The Stand.

The ka-tet leaves the city via the Interstate, and as they camp one night next to an eerie dimensional hole which Roland calls a "thinny," the gunslinger tells his apprentices of his past, and his first encounter with a thinny.

Roland has just earned his guns, the youngest in memory to become a gunslinger at the age of fourteen. He did it because he has discovered his father's sorcerer, Marten Broadcloak, is having an affair with his mother, Gabrielle Deschain. Roland's father, Steven, forbids him from taking action against Marten, and instead sends him east, away from Gilead, for his own protection from Marten. Roland leaves with two companions, Cuthbert Allgood and Alain Johns.

Soon after their arrival in the distant Barony of Mejis, Roland falls in love with Susan Delgado, which clouds his reasoning for a time and nearly results in a permanent split between him and his previously unseparable friend Cuthbert. He and his ka-tet also discover a plot between the Barony's elite and John "The Good Man" Farson, the leader of a rebel faction, to fuel Farson's war machines with Mejis oil. Roland's ka-tet manages to destroy the oil and the detachment Farson sent to transport it, as well as the Mejis traitors. The battle ends at Eyebolt Canyon, where Farson's troops are tricked into charging to their deaths into a thinny.

Ther ka-tet also captures the pink-colored Wizard's Glass, a mystical, malevolent orb. When the Glass gives Roland a choice between saving Susan's life and searching for the Dark Tower, he chooses the Tower. The glass then shows him a vision of his future, and also of Susan's death (for the crime of colluding with Roland). The visions send him into a stupor, which he eventually recovers from--at which point the glass torments him with other visions, this time of events that he was not present for but nonetheless shaped his fate and Susan's. Such is the nature of the Wizard's Glass.

In the present, Roland's new ka-tet comes to a suspiciously familiar Emerald City. The Wizard of Oz parallels continue inside, where Oz is revealed to be Marten Broadcloak, also known as Randall Flagg, who flees. In his place he leaves the grapefruit Wizard's Glass, which shows the ka-tet the day Roland accidentally killed his own mother. Roland, it has been explained time and again, tends to be very bad medicine for his friends and loved ones. Nonetheless, when given the choice, Eddie, Susannah and Jake all refuse to swear off the quest; and as the novel closes, the ka-tet once more sets off for The Dark Tower.

The Wizard's Rainbow

The Wizard's Rainbow was introduced in Wizard and Glass and this is how it is currently understood. There are 13 glass balls, one for each of the Twelve Guardians and one for the Dark Tower. Roland's father refers to them as Bends in the rainbow. The Bends are identified by color in two sections, the first when Roland is talking with his father just before leaving for Mejis and the Outer Arc, and the second when the ka-tet are standing in front of the glass gate. Those identified are the Pink, Black, Blue, Green, Orange, Yellow and Purple. The only color that is associated with certainty is Black which stands in the middle of the Rainbow for the Dark Tower. It could be seen, in hindsight, the Pink Bend previewed in Blaine the Mono. If this is the case, the Bear would most likely be the Guardian associated with the Pink Bend, however, the Green Bend, according to Roland's father, is reputed to be in Lud, therefore, the Bear could be either Green or Pink. The Orange Bend was last known to be in Dis, and the Blue was last seen with a band of Slow Mutants, however, they lost it around 63 years before we first meet Roland on the trail of the Man in Black.