Navigating North, by Wild Iris (gemma @ helical-library.net)

Disclaimer: the Tolkien Estate and New Line Cinema between them own the rights to all this stuff. I can claim nothing but my flaws and errors, of which there are probably many. This story is written for non-profit entertainment purposes only.

For Soledad, in answer to her birthday challenge. Happy belated birthday, mellon-nín!


I: The Seedling

[Minas Anor (later Minas Tirith), Year 2 of the Third Age]

"This, the scion of Nimloth the Fair, I plant in the city of my brother, that he may be fitly remembered and that the city may ever stand high in the grace of the Powers. May this Tree be as tall and as hale as its brethren in the lands without bloodshed. May its flowering bring hope, and its winter bring renewal."

Isildur leaned down, and ritually pressed his hand into the earth, giving a final pack to the soil around the wand-like, white stem of the Tree. Done, he stepped back, and there was silence for a handful of minutes as our assembly contemplated the Tree. Had we truly imagined how small the last shoot of Nimloth would be? Less than an ell in height, frosted with buds like tiny seed-pearls, the sapling struggled in the wind that shouldered its way around Mindolluin. Its crown pointed now at the keep, now at the scree of the mountainside, now at the road that fell towards Osgiliath.

Then, without any command, the men knelt. The guard of the Tower formed a square on the west flank of the Tree, and Isildur's northern archers a smaller formation on the east. A general tremor ran through them, and some began to weep openly like children, their fingers digging at the flagstones.

It was small wonder that they wept, for we had passed through a victory as ruinous as any defeat that could be named. That the greater part of Gondor's garrison could assemble atop this hill was plain testimony to that. Isildur's words of memorial for my father had opened all those hard-travelled warriors to grief long kept in check, or numbed by fear. I spared a benediction myself for my father, and for my brother, felled by javelins below the walls of Mordor. Had their bodies been recovered, their barrow might have been raised where the Tree now stood in its raw depression of ground.

I looked through the ranks to Isildur. His hand was resting on that pendent talisman, concealed by his jerkin, that he wore above his heart. I had grown my own suspicions as to what that talisman might be. Then the crowd stirred, and the bristling arms of his company obscured him.

A hawk screamed from a ledge on the mountainside. Taking that as his cue, a piper in Arnor's livery struck up some tune that I had never heard. The mood lightened, and the men began to get to their feet, dazed smiles forming on their blanched faces. They clapped each other's shoulders. They cheered the banner that flew above the keep. A guard cried, "Gondor!" and the call was taken up by scores of throats: "Gondor! Gondor! Gondor and the King!"

The steward, Maercil, slipped from my side and went unnoticed through the clamour towards the keep, where we would dine that eve before making the journey back to Osgiliath. A banquet was being prepared in honour of the Tree, with whatever delicacies the war-weakened kingdom could muster; its centrepiece was to be a magnificent wild boar brought down that morning by Isildur, his Master Huntsman, and his sons. Probably there would be hard drinking, also, for the soldiers were weary and pained.

Across the court, Isildur's guard of archers was forming up to escort him away. He made a proud figure, his cloak and hair flapping freely in the wind, flanked by his fair sons. I went to him, as he expected. I bowed. I said, "My thanks, lord and cousin, for the honour you have done my father and your brother."

"Anárion will not be forgotten while that tree lives," he said. "And now, tonight we celebrate our victory. So long have I waited, cousin, to cast off the deprivation of a soldier's life! Now we shall have all such things as we desire. First shall be meat, song, and many good and many sorrowful toasts. Elendur shall sit at my right hand, and you I will place at my left." He laughed, his eyes filled with a vivid light, as though he had gazed on something more wondrous than the spindling Tree. "I am sure that my wise brother's son will not take offence at the place of second honour."

"My lord," I said, "even were I to dispute the king's apportioning of places, I am left-handed and do not judge as others would this right-left distribution. You do me an honour perfectly fit."

He laid his hand on my shoulder. "Then come, honoured cousin, let us go hence and make merry."



"White bough, white blossom, tall and fair,
Seed of lands eternal,
Possessèd of a savour rare
That – "

"Bid that churl shut his mouth," growled a knight to his drinking companion.

"That is no churl, my friend," said the other, grinning, "but one of the finest bards of Arnor. Can you not tell the polish of the Northmen?"

Seated at the far end of the board, these jesters clashed goblets together, and raised the same in ironic toast to the object of their irritation. I hoped that the banter – which seemed to travel unnaturally to my ears through the din of the hall; evidently, my senses were attuned to any murmur of discord – went unheard by Isildur. My royal kinsman was listening to the song with frank attention, his mind doubtless not on rhymes but on his realm and standard. The jackanapes were right on one point, though: the song was poor. It took greater genius than that of a house minstrel to pen a lasting memorial to a tree within three hours of its planting. It was difficult even to commend the singer's eagerness, as many men yet lacked ballads that had been far longer in the ground than the young tree.

The minstrel's lay concluded after a few more verses, and he approached our table to be rewarded with a silver coin, his beribboned lute tucked under one arm. He was young, and bore the sign of battle in a pale scar on his brow. He bowed to Isildur, and to Elendur and I. I realized that I had missed the end of his verse, and did not know what he had sung of that savour of which the tree was possessèd – and would my dogs not know better than to gain a syllable thus? Had it been Over all? Communal? Fraternal?

The meat course began to enter from the kitchen door: a procession of carved joints and garnishes on platters, followed by the vaunted boar in a corselet of wine gravy. The food was good, and below the salt, where guards and servitors used trenchers, soon adding its own colours to the woodwork. A fresh contingent of entertainers entered the field. These were travelling players, and altogether lighter than the bard. Perhaps, for some reason known to himself, Maercil had decided that triumphal ballads sounded finest alongside fish dishes, while acrobatics and juggling balls were congenial to those engaged in cracking bones for the marrow. The nobles of Gondor were soon cheering as five men built a steep-sided cone with their bodies, and another somersaulted from its apex. The juggling was more intricate. The troupe formed itself into a five-pointed star, passing glass spheres in an endless web with hands quick as those of any swordsman. Then one drew apart, keeping seven of the globes aloft in arcs so high that it seemed he must surely break one on the rafters of the hall, yet he did not.

Isildur gazed intently at this spectacle. His right hand, holding a temporarily forgotten rabbit leg, lay closed on the table, and the left was seeking again for the chain at his throat. His brow furrowed. What had displeased him? I wondered. That these braggart showmen had shown him, no doubt unwittingly, a symbol of Númenor? Or did he find them too unmannerly, and wish for the recall of his poetaster? Perhaps he merely misliked the food, or the dark wine of Erech; or perhaps I looked needlessly for causes for a poor mood when the deaths of fathers and brothers already provided them abundantly. Whatever, as the juggler caught his last bright sphere, Isildur swallowed the meat and joined the appreciative applause.

Soldiers revel the more feverishly after a long and terrible campaign. By the time that cheese, pastries and dancing girls were brought into the hall, little remained of the roast but bones. Some of the captains were fuddled with drink, while others tried discreetly to catch the eye of one or other of the maidens. Cards and dice appeared in several hands. I downed the remains of a goblet and saw Maercil, standing behind Isildur's shoulder, frowning. No doubt he was concerned about the impulses of the troops being freed within Osgiliath the following eve. I reminded myself to approach Isildur, when he should be amenable, about quartering his two hundred foot outside the walls. Even a small army attracts its share of hawkers, soothsayers and whores, and the people had already endured much disorder.

Some heads were beginning to nod, jerk upright, and nod once more, as wine and full bellies brought on contented drowsiness. Isildur, by contrast, seemed to sit more rather than less tall in his chair as the level of his flagon lowered. His eyes were clear and wide, and his fingers traced patterns on the tablecloth. As a servitor bearing empty bottles passed one of the long windows, the hangings fluttered and, for an instant, a stream of moonlight flowed along our table. The sight seemed to galvanize Isildur into action. He thrust back his platter and stood. Elendur followed, like his father's shadow, and I folded my napkin and stood also. The men, comfortable as they were, sat for a moment of confusion before rising in a smooth wave, hands pressed to their hearts. There they hovered, evidently wondering whether the High King intended to make a speech or quit the festivities.

"My beloved subjects and comrades," he said, holding a goblet high, "tonight we have enjoyed our triumph, and enjoyed it well." Grins and scattered laughter answered him. "I would that we should always live thus, reaping the riches of our lands, and ruling at our right will."

Cheers and stamping feet. Elendur was gazing at his father with a smile, looking remarkably youthful despite his soft beard and battle-hardened jaw. "The moon is up," Isildur continued, "and that boar-meat was the best that ever I ate. I am going forth to get another. Join me all who will!"

With that, he knocked away his chair and strode away towards the door, collecting a tail of men who laid down their dice and brandished their knives – though some were undoubtedly too drunk for the intricate task of killing a boar with a knife. Others glanced at one another as if speculating that the High King himself had looked too often at the bottom of his cup. Torches gusted in the wake of Isildur's passing, and the door slammed behind his ragtag hunting party like a great sea-bell.

Men were left blinking, though the musicians soon struck up again, and another hand of cards was dealt. "Master Maercil," I said. The steward glided into position at my left hand. "See to it that these men reach their beds, and that the hall is in a state fit for a king by the time we meet to break our fast. I believe I shall retire."



The stars over the Hill of the Sun were no different, no nearer, than those that roofed Osgiliath on the plain below. Yet that night they were somehow enigmatic; they withheld their purposes. I lay on the tiles as I had done since childhood in the sweeter nights of Andúnië. Before me was Menelvagor, striding across the sky on some great endeavour. When I was a youth, my grandsire had told me how, at one time, war was so foreign to the men of Númenor that that pattern of stars had been called the Swordsmith, and not the Swordsman. Then, as war returned to Númenor, its men reverted to the name used of old in Middle-earth. My grandsire told that if cloud covered the three points of Menelvagor's sword, then his blade was sheathed, and peace was at hand. If his sword was naked, strife might follow. This night, a thread of cloud wound it about, so that it seemed neither fully sheathed nor fully drawn.



When I rose in the morning, I found no boar carcass hung to bleed in the outer bailey of the keep. But I saw Isildur, soberly dressed, pacing on a strip of green below the walls. I went out to greet him. Unusually, he was not accompanied by Elendur or either of his younger sons, being alone save for two guards who kept a discreet distance from us.

I made a short bow. "Good morrow, my lord. Had you ill luck with your hunt last night?"

"In a manner of speaking," he said. "We had skill enough among the party, but saw no beasts as splendid as the one who had provided our feast."

"This country was over-hunted during the war. Game follows different trails, and can be scarce for the seeking."

"The taint of the Black Land thwarts its growth," said Isildur. His eyes closed for a moment. "The taint seeps everywhere. I feel it in the wind, like breathing sulphur."

I was silent. I had seen Isildur meet Sauron, two warriors in armour pitting the strength of one against the strength of the other; I knew that in battle he was as fierce and supple as a grey wolf. Yet it had rankled among us that he quit Gondor for the North-kingdom in the years before Dagorlad, unwilling to dwell in and defend the country after his citadel of Minas Ithil was defiled. By the expression in his eyes, I suspected that he meant to leave again not too long hence.

"We ride to Osgiliath today," he said. It was neither a command nor a question; he was opening some new line of conversation.

"We are," I agreed. "There, we will find comfort and order more fitting for the High King than this rough-and-ready fortress. Aside from the wear of the past seven years, the City of Stars should be as you remember it."

"That is well." He smiled. "I recall dwelling there many decades since, when my thirdborn Ciryon was yet a child. He was enraptured by the great Dome, and thought that the whole earth must be contained under its vault. He and his friends pretended that they were ships navigating north by the stars. The door to the great hall usually stood in for north, as I remember."

"Yes," I said, "and there would be sweetmeats awaiting a successful docking."

"Yes." Isildur's eyes wandered to the long, low shape of a barracks, built on a shelf of rock below the keep. Two off-duty guardsmen were cooking breakfast over a small fire. "We have few heralds left," he continued, steering the conversation on to another tack. "I hope to find others in the city, or borrow some from the garrison here, to proclaim my rule in the proper manner among the citizens."

"That will be good," I said. "Over a year since the death of my lord Elendil, and the people have not yet had proper leave to mourn him, nor to celebrate your succession, though of course they know of those matters well enough. I am sure that you may borrow any heralds that you need. You need only speak with Amloth, the garrison commander. Or I will speak with him, if you prefer."

He smiled. "I would appreciate that. And I have another task awaiting you. When we arrive in Osgiliath, I wish us to meet. Privately – in the inner closet or study of the king, if that still exists. There must be no interlopers or eavesdroppers."

"My father's private study is still locked from when he last left it, as far as I know. May I ask what you wish me to do?"

"To witness a document."

"Shall I send for a notary, then?"

"No. No scribe. It will not be necessary. No one but yourself, and Elendur, is to be present."

"Very well, my lord," I said. "I am at your service."

I bowed to him once more, and together we walked into the keep to break our fast. Isildur had retreated into his thoughts again, barely speaking, his eyes roaming the hall as he ate. I found myself eager to be away. The road to Osgiliath and its intrigues promised to be an interesting one.