Full summary: An errand to the ruins of Fornost for Gandalf puts Aragorn and Legolas in grave peril when a magical artifact falls into enemy hands and unleashes a long-forgotten terror.
A/N: Set twenty years before the Fellowship, which means three years before Gandalf discovers beyond doubt that Bilbo had the One Ring. Thus, since it was still lost to Sauron's knowledge, he would theoretically be focusing his energies on finding any magical objects to boost his power.
Though I'm following some book-verse, I did have the movies in mind for characterization, so I hope I've succeeded in capturing their voices on paper.
Shout-out to my awesome beta, 29-pieces-of-me!
Disclaimer: I do not own LoTR nor profit from this story. It is written for pure enjoyment and appreciation of Tolkien's magnificent world and characters.
Chapter 1: Errands for Wizards
Aragorn pulled up short as a shaft of sun lancing through grey cloud cover reflected off a stone spire in the distance. The tower was the only part of the desolated city visible among the trees and overgrowth that had claimed Fornost over the past thousand years. Now it was a forbidding place, named Deadmen's Dike by people who believed the ruins were haunted. Rangers knew better, and sometimes visited what was left of the once great city of Númenor. But though the place was not haunted as the ignorant and superstitious thought, it sat on the south end of the North Downs, a range of hills fraught with all manner of evil creatures. So it was not a safe place to traverse, yet here was Aragorn's destination, for the wizard Gandalf suspected a magical object of great power was buried within the ruins, and wanted it secured before the Enemy could get his hands on it. That was Aragorn's errand.
Legolas stopped at his shoulder, his elven eyes able to see far more detail of the ruined city than the man could. Aragorn was glad of his friend's company on this quest, for as a Ranger he often spent time alone, wandering the wilds and protecting the inhabitants of the old realm of Arnor. Sometimes he rode with the Dúnedain, but there were different expectations of him when he functioned as their Chieftain, compared to the more carefree time he spent with his longtime friend.
"Did you ever see Fornost Erain when it was the capital of Arnor?" Aragorn asked.
The elf nodded. "The city was enclosed by fortified walls on all sides, almost as tall as the hill it sat against." He spread his arm, gesturing toward a corner of the perimeter that still stood erect, though it was completely covered in ivy and moss. "The grey granite held flecks of blue beryl that sparkled like the river Anduin in sunlight, though after many years they faded to white, and then the city walls resembled the frothing rapids. There were eight towers for the eight points of a compass, and the great hall in the rear there."
Aragorn followed Legolas's arm toward a large grass-covered mound. "That is where we should begin our search. Hopefully the chambers inside are still intact."
"Did Gandalf give any clue as to what we are looking for?"
Aragorn shook his head. "Only that it is some kind of obsidian stone. He did not tell me its name, if it even has one."
Legolas frowned. "The ruins are quite vast…"
"I suspect that's why Gandalf sent us ahead to manage the tedious searching," Aragorn replied, earning a shared smirk from the elf. "In any case, there may be surviving records that mention the object and its location." He had no illusions that their task would be easy, but Gandalf seemed to think it vitally important this magical item be retrieved, and so they would try.
"Then let us continue," Legolas said. "And hope luck will favor us that we may find the stone before Gandalf even arrives."
Aragorn's lips twitched. "The wizard is likely to show up the moment we do find it."
Legolas's eyes danced with amusement. "All the more reason to find it quickly."
Without further preamble, man and elf continued their trek on foot toward Fornost. The sun had passed its zenith by the time they reached the outer walls. Only a few sections still stood at their full height before descending in staggered, crumbling steps. Ivy climbed the stone in thick woven sheets, completely concealing most of the rock, and only its steep face and ninety-degree angles showed that it had ever been a man-made wall. Great trees populated what used to be streets. Some had grown up from the center of decimated buildings, branches pushing out and over walls like fat, green mushrooms.
Aragorn stepped lightly through the brush under his feet, eyes taking in every broken stone, not just the ones that had been worn away by time and erosion, but columns that lay scattered across the ground in shattered remains from a siege.
"One day I will rebuild this city," he said quietly. One day when he embraced his heritage, when the broken sword was reforged and the crown-less again became king. He would see the glory of Arnor restored.
Legolas paused to gaze back at him. "I look forward to seeing that day with you, mellon nîn."
Aragorn gave a slight smile. His friend also hoped for the day when the Shadow was defeated and every land it had touched was revived, including the elf's home in Mirkwood. One day, Fornost Erain and Eryn Lasgalen would be the great realms they once were.
The two of them moved on, navigating their way through lush greens toward the mound against the base of the North Downs. Once closer, they began to see hints of stone underneath the lichen and grass. A great cleft sundered one side, and a sapling oak was slowly pushing its way up from underneath. The doors to the great hall were well-concealed, and the two seekers were gradually losing daylight as they searched along the edges for it. Aragorn ran his hands over granite and pried apart fibrous vines in a race against the waning sun. Just as he was about to give up and resign them to setting camp, his fingers hit a protrusion that turned out to be a door handle.
"Here," he called, and gave it a hard wrench. The stiff joint made a snapping sound, and Aragorn hoped it had not broken. But the door gave slightly, scraping across ground and releasing a puff of stale air in his face. Aragorn shoved his shoulder into the door, pushing it open further. The chamber inside was dark and musty.
Legolas appeared with a broken branch, and Aragorn retrieved a strip of cloth from his pack to wrap around it. Then he doused it with oil and took his flint to it. After a couple sparks, the torch caught and a whoosh of flames lit up in the deepening twilight.
"Shall we?"
Legolas's eyes narrowed a fraction as he peered into the darkness, but he didn't voice a warning that he heard or sensed anything sinister inside, so Aragorn strode forward, the elf right behind him. The Ranger paused to ease the door mostly closed behind them, leaving it open only a crack for Gandalf to find—and should anything unsavory happen upon it first, at least the grinding sound of it moving would potentially alert the elf.
Aragorn now turned his full attention to the ruined chamber. The walls bore stress cracks, and one or two supportive columns lay in pieces over a dusty floor, but the structure did not seem in danger of collapsing. If anything, the roots that had infiltrated the fortress almost served as reinforcement, binding together the fragments and filling them with swollen cords. Thorny vines had dug their claws into the cracks as they swarmed down into the room to cover half the floor. A raised mound sat in one corner, and Aragorn moved closer to inspect it. He pulled up short, however, when he spotted bleached bones sticking out from the ivy that had grown over them in a choke hold.
He stepped away from the remains. "Let's try to find a secure room for the night."
Legolas nodded once in acknowledgement, but waited for Aragorn to take the lead. The Ranger swept the torch in a half-circle to illuminate the rest of the foyer. A set of large, broken double doors stood in the back. One side hung from the hinges, while the other had been completely splintered. From the ornate relief carvings on the wood, Aragorn suspected they led to the meeting hall. He shifted to look down a passage on the right. Well, standing around debating a course would do them no good, and their entire errand was up to chance anyway.
Aragorn took the first corridor. They passed another large room, one filled with broken and overturned wooden tables, smashed pottery, and more bones. Something skittered from within, causing both man and elf to freeze. After a tense moment of listening, Legolas visibly relaxed.
"Mole-rat," he said.
Aragorn almost laughed, but something about the silent, ancient tomb kept him somber. They continued down the hallway, testing closed doors. Finally, they found one whose sides were engraved with old runes from the Númenórean kingdom. Though he could not read them, Aragorn knew they signified the room's importance. He gripped the handle and gently torqued it. Thankfully, the door gave without much resistance, though the air that escaped smelled much more stale than the rest of the underground citadel. Aragorn wrinkled his nose, and caught a similar look of distaste on Legolas's face.
The chamber appeared to be a library or study room, with bookcases lining three of the walls. Worn and weathered tomes stood back-to-back on each shelf, with rolled up scrolls stuffed around them to the brim. A large wooden table sat in the center of the room with piles of parchment sprawled across it. Some spilled over the edge like yellow starched curtains to pool on the floor. Aragorn held the torch over some stick candles in wall sconces, and a minute later the archive room was filled with a soft incandescence that banished the shadows to the corners.
"We might as well get some searching done tonight," Aragorn said, snuffing out the torch and setting it aside. He approached the table first, surveying the haphazard piles and picking one at random to start with. The paper crinkled between his fingers, and most of the ink had faded into barely discernible strokes. It may well be the information they sought had dissolved to time.
"Tomorrow we can divide our efforts between searching these records and exploring more of the fortress," he added, sparing a glance at the elf. "Do you have a preference?"
Legolas continued skimming the book he held. "Let me think: stay in this stifling room with no windows, or venture deeper underground." He tossed the Ranger a wry look.
"With a little sprucing, this place wouldn't look much different than the Mirkwood Palace," Aragorn pointed out. He set the parchment aside on a clear section of table that would serve as his discarded pile, and reached for another.
Legolas shook his head. "As we are likely to be here a while, we can alternate. I will explore more of the other chambers in the morning and we can switch for the afternoon."
Either way worked for Aragorn, so he didn't protest. The two of them searched for another two hours before Legolas suggested Aragorn sleep. The elf offered to keep perusing the archives while he kept watch, leaving Aragorn with little room to argue. He laid his bedroll down on the floor and fell asleep with orange flickers dancing across his eyelids.
For the next two days, Aragorn and Legolas searched the records in the archive room and ventured deeper into the underground fortress looking for a treasure store or some place that one would keep a magical artifact. On the second day, Aragorn had found a repository of gold and jewels, but after hours of sifting through it, he hadn't found anything resembling the stone Gandalf had described. The wizard should be joining them soon, and hopefully would have a better idea of where to look, for the ceaseless searching was growing tedious.
It was now the third morning since their arrival at Fornost, and Legolas had gone outside to watch for Gandalf's arrival. Aragorn sat in a creaky old chair in the records room, the words on the parchment before him blurring already, despite the rest he'd taken the night before. Though it was his turn to take the scrolls, he considered asking Legolas to trade with him so he could stretch his legs.
The faint rustle of hurried footsteps snapped him to full alertness just as Legolas appeared in the doorway, shoulders taut and expression dark.
Aragorn surged to his feet. "What is it?"
"Orcs," the elf spat with venom. He whirled back around, and Aragorn abandoned the scrolls to sprint after him, down the corridors and out the door. Legolas leaped up the jagged steps of a dilapidated wall, footsteps lithe and quick across the crumbling stone. Aragorn followed, albeit more cautiously. At the top thirty feet above, Legolas dropped to his knees, and Aragorn quickly did the same when he caught up. He tensed at the large mass of black bodies currently camped on the eastern edge of the ruins. They must have arrived during the night and had stopped to take shelter from the sun on the open plains. At least, Aragorn desperately hoped they were merely passing through, though his gut told him otherwise. He counted about fifty of their number.
Legolas's jaw looked tight. "They bear the mark of Gundabad."
Aragorn swallowed an oath. Though the beasts were too far away for his human eyes to make out such a detail, he could tell that several of the orcs were taller and broader in stature than the more common Misty Mountain orcs that mingled with them.
"Gundabad's forces were heavily culled from the Battle of Five Armies," Aragorn said carefully. Were these remnants from the dark stronghold aimlessly wandering the northern wilds? Or were they here on a specific mission?
"A new leader may have risen after Azog's and Bolg's demise," Legolas replied, gaze briefly flickering with memory. "I doubt their arrival here is a coincidence."
Aragorn sighed. "As do I. If they seek that which we do, we cannot let them get it."
Legolas nodded in agreement. After another moment of surveying the arrivals, they finally backed away and carefully descended the wall to return to the underground chambers. Aragorn's earlier weariness had been banished with the new sense of urgency. He could only hope the orcs would not search the mound first, for he did not like the idea of he and Legolas holding off a siege until Gandalf arrived.
The two of them returned to the archive room by unspoken agreement and attacked the remaining records with renewed vigor. This time, rather than taking care of the ancient papers, they merely dropped them on the floor once they determined the information wouldn't help them. Aragorn couldn't allow regret at the mistreatment of his lineage's history, not when more important things were at stake.
"Aragorn," Legolas's voice shattered the man's concentration, and he looked up as the elf approached with an open tome. The page detailed the construction of a secret vault built inside the mountain.
"Well, if I had an item of great power, that is where I'd put it for safekeeping." There was no mention of an obsidian stone specifically, but they had little time and not much more to go on. Aragorn skimmed the rest of the page, trying to determine where the door to this vault was located. "I saw a schemata for the fortress interior our first day here." Only where had he set it?
Legolas put the open book on the table and began sorting through the larger parchments. Aragorn checked his discarded pile, which had long ago overflown onto the floor, and spotted a corner with part of a diagram. He pulled it up and spread it across the table, pressing down the curling ends.
"Here is the symbol used in the ledger," he said, tapping an index finger on a rune that marked a door in the rear of the fortress.
Legolas studied it. "I scouted that area yesterday, but saw no signs of a door." His brow furrowed in thought. "There was a mural carved into a stone wall…"
"Entrance to a secret vault, perhaps?" Aragorn finished.
"How do you propose we open it?"
Good question. It probably would have benefitted them to have a dwarf-smith on this mission. Not that Legolas would have appreciated that. "Was there mention of a key?"
"No." Legolas's frown deepened. "Nor do we have time to search for one when we still have yet to find our true quarry."
"And orcs may be descending on our heads any minute." Aragorn sighed. "Let us take a look at this secret door and hope an answer presents itself."
They blew out the candles in the archive room and gathered up their things. Legolas took the map and the book mentioning the vault, and stashed them behind a series of thick tomes on a top shelf. Though orcs were more likely to smash and destroy than read, it was best not to take any chances.
After checking the corridor to make sure nothing had entered the underground fortress while they'd been occupied, Legolas exited the room first and led the way toward the mural he had seen, and where a secret door might very well lay hidden.