Эрнест Клайн - Ready Player Two

I let out a heavy sigh, thinking I was going to have to suffer the embarrassment of telling Aech that I’d teleported both of us to the wrong planet. But after searching my memory, I recalled something Aragorn said in The Fellowship of the Ring, when he was telling the story of Beren and Lúthien to the Hobbits.

In those days, the Great Enemy, of whom Sauron of Mordor was but a servant, dwelt in Angband in the North….

I checked my map again, looked to the north, and located Angband right away. It was in the middle of the Ered Engrin, a vast mountain range that stretched across the northern reaches of the continent. In the common tongue, they were called the Iron Mountains. And Angband was also known as the Iron Prison.

That was one of the many things that made navigating Middle-earth difficult—everything and everyone had at least two or three different names, each in a different made-up language. It got confusing, even for a massive geek like me.

I pulled up my digital copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and located the sentence where Aragorn first mentions Angband. A few paragraphs beneath it, I found the passage I was looking for….

Tinúviel rescued Beren from the dungeons of Sauron, and together they passed through great dangers, and cast down even the Great Enemy from his throne, and took from his iron crown one of the three Silmarils, brightest of all jewels, to be the bride-price of Lúthien to Thingol her father.

That seemed to confirm my theory—here on this iteration of Arda, Morgoth’s throne was located in his dungeon fortress of Angband. And it was just eighty miles to the north of our current location. Bingo! That had to be why the shards had brought us here….

I turned toward Aech.

“We’re headed to Angband, Morgoth’s dungeon fortress, about eighty miles north of here.”

I pointed out over the lake and the dark hills beyond it, to the growing mass of dark clouds roiling above the distant northern horizon. They were lit by eruptions of red lightning from within, and by the enormous silver globe of the moon, shining high in the eastern sky, which cast a pale glow over everything beneath it.

Aech looked out over the lake, toward those dark clouds on the northern horizon.

“Eighty miles?” Aech repeated.

“Yeah,” I said. “And magic items or spells that give you the ability to fly won’t function here. Since we can’t teleport there either, we’ll have to travel by land.”

Aech reached down and tapped the stripes on the sides of the white Adidas she was wearing. When she did, the stripes changed color, from blue and black to yellow and green, and the shoes themselves began to glow and crackle with bolts of energy that were the same combination of colors.

“Got blue and black ’cause I like to chill,” Aech recited. “And yellow and green when it’s time to get ill.” She pointed down at her glowing, crackling sneakers. “My Adidas give me the ability to run at three times the normal speed. Do you want me to cast Mordenkainen’s Mojo on you, so you can keep up with me?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got a better idea.”

From my own inventory, I removed two small glass figurines shaped like horses. Both were silver-gray in color. I set them gently on the ground in front of us and backed away several steps.

“Figurines of Wondrous Power?” Aech asked.

I nodded and she immediately took several steps backward too. Once she was clear, I spoke the activation words.

“Felaróf!” I shouted. “Shadowfax!”

Both figurines instantly grew and morphed into a pair of full-size horses, which abruptly came to life, snorting and whinnying as they reared back on their mighty hind legs. They were stunningly beautiful creatures, with nearly identical silver-gray coats. They were both decked out in Mithril plate armor that I’d purchased for them, along with custom-made saddles carved from dark-green Elven wood, inlaid with bands of gold that were engraved with their names in Fëanorian script.

“These are the two fastest land animals ever to roam Middle-earth,” I said. “I obtained them by completing quests on Arda III, but they should have the same speed and abilities here. Just make sure to hold on tight. They can really move, OK?”

Aech nodded and powered down her Adidas. Then she put one of them in Felaróf’s stirrups and swung herself up into the saddle on his back. I walked over to Shadowfax and patted him gently on the neck and told him it was good to see him again in Sindarin. Then I pulled myself up into his saddle and moved him alongside Aech and Felaróf.

I removed two magic swords that I’d acquired on Arda III from my inventory. One was the ithilnaur broadsword named Glamdring wielded by Gandalf during the War of the Ring, and I equipped it in the scabbard on my avatar’s back. The other was a two-handed sword, and I took hold of it by its blade and held it out to Aech, hilt-first.

“Here,” I said. “You’re gonna need this. Andúril, the Flame of the West. Reforged from the shards of Narsil by—”

Aech waved the sword away.

“No thanks, Z,” Aech said. “I’ve already got plenty of swords of my own.”

I continued to hold the sword out to her.

“Take it,” I said. “Only magical weapons forged by the Elves of Middle-earth can affect the servants of Morgoth, OK? I do know one or two things about this place.”

Aech relented and took the sword, then she equipped it in its scabbard at her side.

“Happy now?” she asked.

“I’ll be happy once we’ve got the last two shards,” I said. “We’re almost to the end. You ready, Aech?”

She flashed her Cheshire grin at me. Then, doing her best Jack Burton impression, she said, “Z, I was born ready.”

I laughed, and together, we both spurred our horses forward.

Shadowfax and Felaróf launched us north with the speed of loosed arrows. Their hooves thundered against the ground beneath us, like the steady beat of war drums, as they carried us away from Tarn Aeluin, across the moonlit highlands, toward the increasingly dark clouds looming on the horizon.

We raced our magical steeds at top speed across the heather-covered hills and plains of Dorthonion. When we reached a dense forest of pines along its northern border called Taur-nu-Fuin, our mounts were forced to slow their pace slightly as they weaved their way through it. But they still raced through, around, and under the trees at such blinding speed that I kept imagining myself as a doomed Stormtrooper on a speeder bike. But our steeds were magical creatures known as Mearas, who had the ability to glide across the landscape at incredible speed, regardless of the terrain beneath their hooves.

I heard Aech ride up behind me. When I glanced over at her, she was staring at me aghast. I didn’t understand why, until her eyes shifted to the browser window I still had open in front of me, displaying the Gunterpedia entry about Angband. I’d forgotten to change my privacy settings, so any browser windows I opened were still automatically visible to my fellow clan members.

“You don’t have any idea what we’re supposed to do when we get there, do you?” she said. “You were looking it up! I just saw you looking it up!”

“I was just refreshing my memory, Aech. That’s all.”

“OK,” Aech replied. “Then tell me, what do we do when we get there? How do we get inside his fortress? And how the fuck are we supposed to get the shards out of Morgoth’s Crown? You said the dude was invincible.”

She continued to stare over at me as we both bounced up and down in our saddles, awaiting my answer.

“I’m not sure yet,” I admitted. “I know that Beren and Lúthien were able to ‘cast down’ Morgoth and steal one of the jewels from his crown, but I don’t know how they did it. I think that story is in The Silmarillion, and I never finished reading that. But I’ll skim the CliffsNotes on our way to Angband, OK? I’ll figure out what we need to do, I promise!”