Chapter Two

Communion


That night they spoke in depth of how the world worked, the ridiculous need for the affiliation to protect the order of the world. The wonderment of how the power of Gilead had seeped through the world and of how it was something that just didn’t sit right with them. They discussed how if they were able to form these thoughts, surely they were not the only ones with them. And if understanding these things couldn’t people decide for themselves what the best course of action may be. His head swam with the words, he became intoxicated because here lain before was the coalescence of the thoughts he had himself. She displayed openness and willingness to discuss these things that up until now she didn’t know existed inside her. She was as awestruck as him in how the thoughts formed and the words came out. They indeed were on the same silken strand of tapestry woven over the world. How two such as them would find one another in this vast world amazed her but not him because he knew it would always be like this. Even when he didn’t know how he knew or what to do, he knew that somehow this moment would come and recognition would spark and worlds would spin about. Here was his fate and his future and his life. Splayed open like a cadaver in a morgue, gross and fascinating and full of things.

The night passed quickly as it does often when one is preoccupied with discussion. They both could see the faint glows of the day come reaching forth in the inky blackness that on one side had started to turn a slightly ashen gray. They were here among the frogs and dragonflies sharing and sharing and neither wanted this magical spell to end. They both felt sadness when a robin, perhaps, the very one who heard these things before at a certain chamber window, began to echo its morning cry and begin its search for breakfast. But were these the only ears that heard. Perhaps there was something else listening and waiting and watching, who maybe had woven part of the tapestry that these two found binding them, maybe not, but there are eyes and ears that see and hear from great distances and direct things that need directing. Later.
They each retreated to their own homes with the promise of meeting again at the Farson Inn Tea Room, a place where guests were afforded individual cubby holes to sit and talk and drink tea or wine if the time of day was right. Here they would begin in earnest the discussion that they really needed to have. They needed to make sense of it all and how to do that. They were like two children who had discovered that if you tied two cans together with string you could actually talk through them. They just didn’t know how to get the string into the can or how to get the right tension on the string so that it vibrated when you spoke. They were in essence learning. And each had to teach the other. They didn’t even have an outline of what it was that they wanted to learn nor any way to know if they were going about it correctly but they knew that together they were more than the sum of the two parts. They gelled and formed and became one in thought and in need. That afternoon at the Tea Room they began the process of punching holes in their cans and starting to feed the string in. It would require many more such discussions and many more pieces of string before they found the right combination to make it all work. But only done once begun. So they began.


Vibration

Trains rolling along a track don’t know where they are going. They could not even move forward or back without the track to guide them. But once started down the path they are the devil to stop. If you know where the tracks are you can mostly avoid being hit by the train. The people who laid the tracks know where they are and where they are going. Sometimes though the tracks have lain for so long that people forget and the people who laid them move on with the world. There used to be something but its not there in clarity, like a dream that you can catch a slight vision of but you can’t remember it all. You know it might be dangerous but you can’t be sure. You are sure however that if it was of any true consequence you would know. This assuredness usually overcomes you just before the train rounds the bend and catches you and crushes you and moves on without even noticing you were there in the first place. The train of John Farson was gearing up and fueling up and starting to take on passengers, one by one, but be sure that soon it will roll out of its (cradle) station and those that do not get on board will be crushed under its great wheels because this train has tracks that will soon run all the way to end-world itself. All aboard. All aboard. Get on the train because it’s almost time to leave.

Copyright Steven Poe 2008

Chapter 1

Farson Comes East



NOW

John Farson, once John Gillum of Farson, for that was how and where he started, now also known as the good man, understood completely the task which had been given him. He was to end the White, to end the line of Eld and destroy the pinioned gleam of Gilead. Farson didn’t care. He had been holed up in Denta Vos for at least a year and was ready to begin his march to the Eastern Plains and to Gilead itself. He needed things from Latigo and that dumbass Jonas before he could move out of the Shaved Mountains. Exposing himself without the needed fuel for the complete journey would surely leave him and his army bleeding and dead somewhere on the Field of Alban. More importantly than that though, much more importantly, was the little bend of the rainbow that Farson needed in order to be sure of his victory. Victory was coming, that he knew, but still, it never hurt to hedge your bets a little and always have an ace up your sleeve. The Pink, as he had come to call it, was his ace and his hedge and at times his addiction but here he stood close to what he had began so long ago and so long ago was here. His future was in his past and his past stood in front of him. Like the dreams he had of the mountain hideouts and the battle that surely lay ahead of him. His time had come and he knew it, still he needed to hedge so he waited and watched and slowly lost more of his mind, of which there was now not much left to lose. John Farson, the good man, had almost run his course but his lifelong dream was about to become real. Oh Camille if only you could see. We have almost done it. But would Camille like what she saw. He didn’t dwell on that much. He didn’t need to. She was long ago dusty bones brought low by one of the very gunslingers that he knew would defend their precious Gilead. Farson intended to find this one for sure and make his skull the armrest of the great throne he would sit on when he came into Gilead as conqueror and savior. Both were the same to the good man and so he waited.


Remembering

The plan had been conceived in his youth when he was nothing but a courtier in the hall of the Mayor of Farson, a town on the eastern edge of the Northern Barony. He had been given a position of worth because of his father’s loyalty to the affiliation. This had begun simply enough with just a word from his father.
“Try, John, try”. Hosia Gillum, father of John, said.
And his son had been earnest in his attempt but he was so easily distracted. He had thoughts of battlements and of a field of blood that plagued his dream but he considered this only to be the imagination stirred in him from the stories he had read of the Eld. He of Arthur, and Excalibur, whose metal had been turned into the irons with the sandalwood grips, now carried by the descendants of that fabled line. Loyalty to this group brought you strength and power and that was how John had come into his current position. He understood how the power of the affiliation radiated out from Gilead and how the subservience to the affiliation radiated back in again. He was part of that great circle and he had gained because of it. He was however loyal to no one but himself as his mother, the dear and sweet, had often reminded him.
“Be true to you, never think that you are not worthy.” she had told him, from the earliest clout days to when he left home to live in the Mayor’s house as his court (jester) reader and all around information guy.
It was here that he met Camille, the dearer and the sweeter. She had beautiful brown hair and an almost olive skin. Her face was round with full lips and high cheekbones. She was slenderly built but not entirely slender. She had the right curves in the right places and she herself admired the outward slope of her breast and inward slope of her middle when she stepped fresh from her bath a glanced into the mirror that stood at the end of her tub. She was one of the young ladies of court who had no position but had entrance and with it, power. Her close association to the inhabitants of the house and the quasi-royalty who were the guest of these had made her a one of the perfumed and perfunctory to be seen and admired and make the place look and smell better. But of thoughts and speech it was better for her to have none. The dinners of state, such as they were, had been haughty affairs which had made many of the younger participants drunk with glee and wine and many of the old inhabitants loose of tongue. It was always these that Camille would seek out because babble was so much more entertaining to her than groping and ogling. She had made great use of the babble with an occasional word to the babbler at a later date which informed them she knew more than she should of the babbler and his or her true thoughts. This led to her showing them a discreetness which they appreciated with earnest. And earnestness gained her entrance to more and more babbling because once you are considered to be discreet you can learn many things that you may otherwise go through life without. She had learned for instance that on one occasion the Mayor himself had accepted a favor from an unremarkable yet wholly disloyal rogue who wanted nothing more in return than a job in the kitchen. The favor was of the shivin type that the Mayor, man that he was, would not like for the other men of court to find out about. This little secret was known only, as far as she knew, to her, the Mayor and the disloyal rogue. Which of the two had divulged it to her would remain a secret. She is after all very discreet.
Camille was not the only one who had been discreet to the right people at the right time. Apparently John of Farson had learned this little trick too. He was although not entirely free to divulge information for he truly had no one to divulge it to. John of Farson was a loner outside of court and was looked upon as a sort of a weird one by the people with whom he had contact. Always short and curt and not wholly encumbered with the frivolity of chat, he rarely made opinionated comments on most subjects and seemed to play his cards close. He had actually gained a reputation as sort of a dullard and for that he was thankful. The less people knew of how he thought and what he thought the better. The latter was probably more important because his thoughts were filled with grandeur that no one in this hovel would ever understand. The glory of himself was all consuming and he could see it so clearly that he could even hear the regalia his name would someday bring as he passed. Daydreaming had become almost a hobby and John of Farson had to remind himself that even though it was real to him, making it real to everybody would be a frightfully difficult task. He would no doubt need help and where he would find it was not as readily apparent to him as the end result. He had no close associates and even if he did, he didn’t know how one became regaled and honored and feared, yes fear was something he desperately wanted certain people to feel from him as he passed. He was sure that fear and loyalty went hand and hand because that was how things in this world worked. But he needed help. Gather close to him one who would show him how to become what he was supposed to become. Here is where ka, something he did not entirely discount, stepped in and delivered to him his angel of (death) hope.
John was sitting more than a few seats down from the Mayor at the biggest dinner in the history of Farson. A true gunslinger was in town on affiliation business and was to be welcomed with the formality of a dinner of state. The purple sashes and gold trimmed pants would be worn by all because this was a lord of light come to pay a visit to this humble community on the edge of the Northern barony. Rare were these visits and rarer still was that one would be staying for dinner. Usually a gunslinger found his way here coming down from The Queden by way to the Northern road returning from the duty of the Eld, which is to say collecting tribute or delivering justice which in these days was the only thing left to do. Unless, of course, you still believed that the Dark Tower was something real. And that the last bound duty of the Eld was to protect it from any who would harm it. Those stories were most assuredly legend meant to give a spiritual lift to those who needed to believe in a higher purpose. If the gunslingers had a higher purpose they didn’t seemed to be overly eager to share the knowledge they had about it.
The gunslinger sat at the Mayors right hand and even though he seemed perfectly at ease he also seemed somewhat unimpressed by all the attention and grandeur that this party had opened up to him. It was then that John of Farson understood just how small a hovel and how so unimportant this place was to likes of the Gilead brethren. He had a slight sense of resentment and a tinge of jealousy that one would have knowing that the décor and frivolity paled in comparison of what he imagined the great hall of Gilead to be. He also understood very well that he, John of Farson, should also have that same privilege of detachment as the Knight of Eld. It was in this inner rage and self-indulgence that he happened to glance headlong at the opposite side of the table and there he saw what could have been a (twin) mirror reflection of the emotions he held inside. He caught the look of the one called Camille and she returned his gaze with a slightly raised eyebrow.
The moment between them lasted but a fleck of time but over this fleck a great chasm had been breeched. The place where their eyes met, somewhere over the potatoes and the pork, a bridge had been formed and both understood that they were, if not kindred spirits, attuned to the same rhythm. He held her in his sight as she looked to the old woman next to her and began listening intently to what the old crow had to say. She looked at the woman with great attention. A neat trick, keep them talking as though you cared because they might actually say something useful. He felt something stir in him that until this point only his visions of grandeur and his dreams of battle had stirred. It was a lusting and a thirst that he didn’t know how to quench. Only now he thought he did. He needed to find a way to speak to her and to confide in her and to question her. He wanted desperately to be finished with this formality and to find a place to talk with the fair Camille if for no other reason to confirm that they had indeed shared a thought over dinner. If he were wrong, though, if he were wrong he might be laughed at by her or worse. He didn’t care. His caution was not in play because he needed greatly to find out. If he were wrong then he was wrong. Still he needed to find the approach. Climbing the Mah Te Han Mountain might be easier because he had no idea how to approach this woman. The dinner was beginning to wind down and the trays of desert were removed so that the guest could indulge in the evening conversation, however before the gunslinger even started he had finished, begging pardon but the ride to Gilead must be accomplished tomorrow and he needed to rest and how grateful he was for the feast prepared in his honor and how he knew in his heart that the affiliation was strong here and how thankful he was and so forth and so on and on. All this John heard and was relieved when it ended. Good night and good night and good night.
As the guest began to retreat, his thoughts again turned to the fair Camille. As he stood in the arched walkway leading into the courtyard, reserved for the Mayor’s kin and counsel, thinking hard about what to say and how to say it, a slight hand reached over his forearm and gave a little squeeze. John was startled and jumped slightly at the touch until he looked at the person the hand was attached to. It seemed his worry over how to approach Camille was for naught for here was Camille doing the approach and the breech and the broach. He wondered later if that was what truly attracted him to her. The fact that she didn’t mind the slight impropriety of approaching a young man without him first approaching her. Of the many things he would come to love about Camille the fact that she cared not a whim about what was proper was probably the first thing he loved. He loved her that instant because in all his life, short as it had been, this was the first woman that came to him, save his mother, of her own free will. Later, as he would think hard on this, he wondered if she was not also the last.
”Might we speak for a moment?” Camille asked casually
“I would be greatly disappointed if we didn’t.” came the reply from John.
“I was wondering about what you thought of our wonderful dinner and our honored guest at tonight’s festivities?” Camille gently inquired.
Smooth as silk was the first thought in his head. She had been able to bring up the subject and had laced her question with just the right amount of sarcasm that John knew he was on safe ground. Oh, thank ka and Gan and the man Jesus for her. She surely was here to help, but help him do what. That didn’t matter now only that he had found a confidant and maybe, just maybe, a friend.
“Glitz and glee and glory be, I am always honored by the presence of the Gilead stock and also thankful to be part of the circle of light that cozens our small hamlet so that I may bathe in the perfume of such as you.” John began.
“Oh, I thought that maybe you were different from the other sashed fools that fill this hall, but I see that your only interest in me is what resides below my neck.” Camille sharply replied.
“Nay, lady, I was only trying to give you proper indulgence in case the moment we had shared across the table was not what I had thought it was. I see now that I was wrong and right at the same time and cry your pardon.”
“Well don’t start crying pardon too soon, you may need to store it up so that it really counts when you do manage to actually offend me.” Camille slyly said.
The small arch of her eyebrows had returned as she spoke and John once again
caught the spark of recognition. This was to be an interesting evening after all and John was full of anticipation.
“Might you like to accompany me to the garden so that we continue our discussion among the jasmine and lilac with only the ears of frogs and the eyes of dragonflies to follow us around?”
“Well it sounds to me like you would speak of things best not spoken of in the open. I would like that very much for I have a habit of having to speak things to a certain robin that nests next to my chamber window in order to keep my sanity.” Camille said
“So tonight let me be the robin and you shall be mine so that we may both speak in such a manner as to relieve our fear of insanity, if for no other reason.” John said as he reached his hand and laid it over hers. Together they turned and headed out towards the sound of the frogs and the crickets and even though they didn’t know it at the time, they were taking the first steps of the long journey that would lead to the end of in-world, mid-world and perhaps even of all-world.

COPYRIGHT STEVEN POE 2008

Welcome you Gilead Brethren

Thank you for visiting this unique blog. Back in 1990 I got copy of The Gunslinger by Stephen King while I was deployed to Desert Storm with the 82nd Airborne Division. As I lay there in the desert reading by flashlight the story of Roland consumed me. Almost 17 years later I finished the last page of The Dark Tower and was relieved. I found the circular story to be the most appropriate way to finish the tale, because it always allows you to know that all is okay because Roland is still on his quest to save the Tower.

I began writing The Fall of Gilead just for my own amusement. I wanted the story to sing through me and the story that came was The Good Man.



This is his story.....