Кирилл Еськов: The Last Ringbearer

“Look at the map – see any lines leading to Emyn Arnen? Looks like His Highness the Prince of Ithilien has kept up his pre-war games with the East and handed Denethor’s palantír to those spawn of Morgoth, the asshole! I wish Aragorn had strangled him back at that hospital…”

“Now, now, Gandalf! What if Aragorn and Faramir had simply made a secret alliance against the Elves, using the remnants of the Orcs? Then it could’ve been Elessar Elfstone himself that gave the Minas Tirith palantír to the Orcs. I mean, everybody is now working against the Elves, including ourselves, just separately.”

Even so, Gandalf thought in consternation, the overall picture is no clearer. Vakalabath’s prophecy has many possible meanings, but it can be read as “Magic will depart Middle Earth with the palantíri ” – today at noon – or not at all. How can this be? He stared at the dark-blue rays again: one goes through Barad-Dur and the eastern part of Núrnen, the other slightly to the west, through Gorgoroth and Orodruin… Orodruin?! So that is what they’ve decided to do!

Or, perhaps… no, there are no such coincidences! Looks like those Mordorian idiots have decided to drop their crystal into the Eternal Fire, thereby destroying it. What do they hope to accomplish? Sure, this will tweak the magic fields of the other palantíri and even the Mirror, but, really, not as drastically as to banish magic from Middle Earth! Even if another palantír that happens to be in receiving mode is destroyed at the same time…

“Gandalf, look! Something strange is happening to the eastern ray!”

The head of the White Council has already noticed something weird about the ray going through eastern Mordor: it started changing color and brightness at fixed intervals, as if storm clouds were moving across an evening sky.

“But that’s impossible!” the wizard in the blue cloak spoke again. “There’s only one thing in all of Middle Earth capable of influencing a palantír ’s field – the Mirror. But the Mirror is with the Elves in Lórien while the palantír is in Mordor…”

A terrible guess pierced Gandalf’s brain. “That palantír is not in Mordor,” he rasped, pointing at the map. “Its ray goes through eastern Mordor, true, but first it goes through Caras Galadhon – look at the map! – and that’s where it is, right by the Mirror!”

“Wait – could this be a coincidence? The Elves of Lórien have never had a palantír , and Kirden’s is in place.”

“They haven’t before, but they do now! I don’t know who made Lady Galadriel this gift – Aragorn, Faramir, or the Orcs – but she put the crystals together for some reason. At noon the Orcs – or maybe they aren’t Orcs, how am I to know? – will drop their palantír into Orodruin, the Eternal Fire will jump from the Orodruin palantír to the Lórien one and from there to the Mirror, and then it really will be all over! And when the Mirror is destroyed, all the other Seeing Stones will turn into clots of Eternal Fire, including ours.” At those words the White wizards shrank back involuntarily, as if the deadly fire was already singeing their faces. “There’s Vakalabath’s prophecy for you! Make a triangle, quick! Help me – perhaps we’ll be in time…”

Gandalf kneeled in front of the palantír. A dense chain of blue-violet sparks shimmered into existence between his palms, and he began winding it around the crystal exactly as if he was winding woolen thread into a ball; a tangy freshness came into the air, as if a lightning had struck somewhere nearby. The other three wizards have already poured all their power into the head of the White Council and now stood around him motionless and silent, like statues; none of them dared think of the all-consuming fiery dragon that could hatch out of its crystal egg at any moment. Gandalf’s hands moved faster and faster; hurry, White Wizard, there’s a lot at stake! A lot? How about everything?

Finally he sank to the floor and just sat there for a few seconds, eyes closed. He had to use his teeth to uncork the flask of Elvish wine – his hands were now forever numb, as if frozen. Holding the flask between insensate palms, he drank a couple of swallows and handed the flask to Radagast without looking. They made it, despite everything… The ray of light going from their palantír to the one at Orodruin was now scarlet-purple rather than blue; the moment those guys take their crystal out of its protective silver net, Gandalf’s spell will coil around it like a blue snake. He wouldn’t want to be the one to touch that ball… Now it’s time to catch my breath and consider how we might grab that palantír which will surely remain lying there among the rocks of Orodruin.

Haladdin tore himself away from contemplating the scarlet gold-tinged lava boiling almost at his feet in the crater. Squinting and shielding his eyes with his palm, he estimated the position of the sun, already a bit past noon. Lórien lies substantially to the west of Mordor, so noon at Orodruin should be about a quarter-hour before Lórien’s. Looks like it’s time to take the palantír out of its bag and wait for the Mirror to appear in it – provided that Kumai did his job… He rebuked himself: don’t dare think that! You know with absolute certainty that he did everything exactly as requested. You can look forward to killing that woman – all right, Elf-woman, what’s the difference – in just a few minutes. Well, that’s been mulled over a thousand times. I suppose I could ask Tzerlag (there he is, snoozing by the rocks – nerves of steel!) to ‘carry out the sentence,’ but that’d be really…

The voyage to Orodruin was not too hard. Runcorn accompanied them to the Hotont pass – the ranger wanted to scout a good place for a house in the upper reaches of the Otter Creek anyway – where Matun met them. Matun viewed the rendezvous with ‘Haladdin’s scouting team’ as a short vacation from the front lines – war still raged home in Mordor, whereas here, beyond the Mountains of Shadow, everything was nice and quiet. By that time Faramir had made every possible effort to make peace with the Shadow Mountain Trolls, fully succeeding in his diplomatic efforts last week when a delegation of three Trollish elders visited Emyn Arnen. Someone – let’s not point fingers – did not like this rapport one bit, so a special assassination team waited for the elders at the outskirts of the Settlement. However, Baron Grager’s intelligence service acquitted itself admirably: not only did it avert the attempt, it proved that the provocation was directed from beyond the Anduin. The assassins that survived the battle were let go with an order to ask His Majesty to vary his methods a bit. In any event, Grager’s proofs were enough for the elders: they broke a traditional flatbread with the Prince of Ithilien and departed, leaving their younger sons to serve in the prince’s personal guard as a sign of their covenant. By that time the Ithilienians have already established lively barter trade with the Trolls without waiting for any royal permissions. The Elves controlling the Cirith Ungol pass watched all that with hot fury but could do nothing about it – not enough manpower.

“How’s Ivar doing, Matun? How’s maestro Haddami – still amusing you all with his jokes?”

“Haddami got killed,” the Troll answered solemnly. “Gods rest his soul, he was a worthy man, even though Umbarian…” He looked at Haladdin’s face and mumbled in embarrassment: “My apologies, sir! I wasn’t thinking. What about that Gondorian of yours?”

“He got killed, too.”

“I see.”

They only spent a few hours in Ivar’s camp. The lieutenant tried several times to detail guards to accompany them to Orodruin (“It’s real dicey on the plains right now, Easterling patrols are all over the place”), but the sergeant only chuckled: “You hear that, Matun? They’re gonna lead me through the desert!” He was right: helping an Orocuen in the desert is like teaching a fish to swim, and a smaller company is much better in their situation. So the two of them made the journey together, ending the way they started.