What? What did I do to give myself away?! the Man of Steel thinks
to himself, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Stacy, who'd only recently gotten back from a strange, pun infested land
by basically highjacking a truck (after knocking it's laconic, unhelpful
driver out) and storming the castle, as it were.
She'd basically gunned the truck and nearly drove down the owner of the
mansion (Charle's Mansion) and driven through a shimmering doorway
to end back here. The doorway had closed behind her, and she
somehow knew (though she didn't know just how) that she'd barely gotten
back in time.
There had ben something very....malignant just underneath the surface of
that land she'd just left, and her very instincts had cried out against it.
It had made her desperate (she usually didn't go about highjacking other
people's trucks) to leave.
She'd spent the next few minutes panting heavily in reaction, then come
back to find this....scene.
"Ma'am," Roland says softly, coming over to her, "If you could, I would
have of you what you know of Randal Flagg. It's vitally important, you
see."
"And just who are you?" Dana Scully asks, rather rudely (very
much put out of sorts by people just appearing out of thin air like
that).
Roland just gives her a look, and despite herself she felt herself
drawing back a little bit.
"Roland of Gilead, son of Steven, and lord of ancient lands," Roland
said quietly, "and in direct lineage from Arthur Eld who'd come out from
his pyramid to rule and restore order to my land."
"Roland the Gunslinger?" Scully barks laughter, remembering the book
she'd read just recently (Wizard and Glass wasn't it?).
Clark Kent (aka Superman) is about to ask a few questions of his own
(like what the $%^#$ was going on here) when Betty spoke up, giggling in an
most unhealthy manner.
"
Childe Roland To The Dark Tower
Came"
-Robert Browning
I
My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary
cripple, with the malicious eye
Askance to watch
the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suprpression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one
more victim gained thereby.
II
What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to
waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travelers who
might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in
the dusty thoroughfare,
III
If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous
tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark
Tower. Yet acquiesingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end described,
So much as
gladness that some end might be.
IV
For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my
search drawn out through years, my hope
Dwindled into a
ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,-
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made,
finding failure in its scope.
V
As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead
indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and
takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside, (since all is o'er, he saith,
And the
blow fallen no grieving can amend;)
VI
While some discuss if near the other graves
Be room enough
for this, and when a day
Suits best for
carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves:
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame
such tender love and stay.
VII
Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure
prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times
among The Band- to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
Their steps- that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt
was now- should I be fit?
VIII
So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
That hateful
cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he
pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see
the plain catch its estray.
IX
For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the
plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to
throw backward a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; gray plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on;
naught else remained to do.
X
So, on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved
ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers- as
well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
You'd think; a
burr had been a treasure trove.
XI
No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange
sort, were the land's portion. See
Or shut your
eyes, said Nature peevishly,
It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place,
Calcine its clods
and set my prisoners free.
XII
If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates,
the head was chopped; the bents
Were jealous
else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to balk
All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk
Pashing their
life out, with a brute's intents.
XIII
As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin
dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath
looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past
service from the devil's stud!
XIV
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red
gaunt and collapsed neck a-strain,
And shut eyes
underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked
to deserve such pain.
XV
I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
As a man calls
for wine before he fights,
I asked one
draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards- the soldier's art:
One taste of the
old time sets all to rights.
XVI
Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
Beneath its
garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till
I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place,
That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
Out went my
heart's new fire and left it cold.
XVII
Giles then, the soul of honor- there he stands
Frank as ten
years ago when knighted first.
What honest man
should dare (he said) he durst.
Good - but the scene shifts - faugh! what hangman-hands
Pin to his breast a parchment? His own hands
Read it. Poor
traitor, spit upon and curst!
XVIII
Better this present than a past like that;
Back to my
darkening path again!
No sound, no
sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my
thoughts and change their train.
XIX
A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpexted as
a serpent comes.
No sluggish tide
congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend's glowing hoof- to see the wrath
Of its black eddy
bespate with flakes and spumes.
XX
So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
Low scrubby
alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows
flung themselves headlong in a fit
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all wrong,
Whate'er that
was, rolled by, deterred no whit.
XXI
Which, while I forded,- good saints, how I feared
To set my foot
upon a dead man's cheek,
Each step, or
feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
- It may have been a water rat I speared,
But, ugh! it
sounded like a baby's shriek.
XXII
Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better
country. Vain presage!
Who were the
strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats in a
red-hot iron cage-
XXIII
The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
What penned them
there, with all the plain to choose?
No footprint
leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his
pastime, Christians against Jews.
XXIV
And more than that- a furlong on- why, there!
What bad use was
that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not
wheel- that harrow fit to reel
Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to
sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.
XXV
Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh, it
would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and
done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
Changes and off he goes!) within a rood-
Bog, clay and
rubble, sand and stark black dearth.
XXVI
Now blotches rankling, colored gay and grim,
Now patches where
some leanness of the soil's
Broke into moss
or substance like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a disturbed mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death,
and dies while it recoils.
XXVII
And just as far as ever from the end!
Naught in the
distance but the evening, naught
To point my
footstep further! At the thought,
A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,
Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my
cap- perchance the guide I sought.
XXVIII
For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
'Spite of the
dusk, the plain had given place
All round to
mountains- with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surprised me,- solve it, you!
How to get from
them was no clearer case.
XXIX
Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick
Of mischief
happened to me, God knows when-
In a bad dream
perhaps. Here ended, then,
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one more time, came a click
As when a trap
shuts- you're inside the den!
XXX
Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the
place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two
bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the left, a tall scalped mountain...
Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life
spent training for the sight!
XXXI
What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat
turret, blind as the fool's heart,
Built of brown
stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen self
He strikes on,
only when the timbers start.
XXXII
Not see? because of night perhaps?- why, day
Came back again
for that! before it left,
The dying sunset
kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,-
Now stab
and end the creature- to the heft!
XXXIII
Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a
bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost
adventurers my peers,-
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost! one
moment knelled the woe of years.
XXXIV
There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last
of me, a living frame
For one more
picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips set,
And blew.
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.
"What's with her?" Special Agent Mulder asks, munching on something he'd
gotten from a vending machine while all this was happening.
Something soon became apparent to Queen Astra, after a brief talking
with him and Special Agent Fox. The refused to believe the carefully
explained facts presented to them. Clark Kent looked worried, but he at
least looked like he was getting it (and also getting spooked by it). One
up for Superman, but.....
"Jeeze, you guys are slow on the uptake!" Eddie finally says, exasperated
with the FBI agents, "The truth may be out there, but it's sure safe from
you two!!"
The FBI agents looked rather put off by that one, but Dragon Synizn
interrupts before more could be said.
-
"Be that as it may, I believe something must be done for this poor woman here," the dragon mage says, pointing at the daffily smiling Betty, "Her mind needs healing, and I can do just that through my magic."
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