Chapter 7: Soul Receptacles
Author's Note: I realize this story is dying because of its limited audience, but...even if you haven't read the Mortal Engines Quartet, reviews are still in desperately low quantities (read: zero.)
Far to the east of the Shire and Airhaven are the mountains that reach the sky. The Blue Mountains, the Misty Mountains, the Mountains of Shadow... These were the marks of the new world. They appeared on no Ancient maps, and a raging debate could be found within select Historian circles of whether the peaks had formed naturally or were created in the Sixty Minute War, a mountain-making cannon from the Barefoot States.
Beyond the Misty Mountains,with its goblins and nightwights, lies a single, solitary peak, reaching on its own towards the top of the world. Once a dragon had lived here; a team of dwarves had tried to best it years ago, had been beaten, and fled only to see a peeved archer from the nearby village kill the thing with one bolt from his crossbow, bringing an end to decades of terror. The mountain's castle was deserted now, the inhabitants fled from the dragon or killed by the goblin invasion the dwarves had brought in their wake. The only things that stirred within the empty mountain were thrushes and sliders and deep, dark skulking things that preferred the company of shadows.
In the passages far below Erebor, in the realm of caves beneath the mountain, muttered sounds floated up from the bitter black recesses.
"He stoles it from us, Preciousss."
A narrow hand, pale and dirty and skeletal, reaches out of the darkness and snatches a blind fish.
"But he didn't kill us." The voice of the creature has changed. "Baggins didn't kill us."
"But he STOLE the PRECIOUS!" Weeping floats up from the blackness of the caves, then gradually subsides. The narrow hand is joined by another one, and together they begin to wrench the fish's head off.
"He stole it from us."
The fish flops frantically and gasps for air.
"We will finds him."
The fish's skin begins to tear.
"We will makes the hobbit pay."
A tear in the neck widens. The fish's tail beats frantically. White meat and unidentifiable fluids and sluggish fish blood begins to show.
"And we will take back the Precious..."
The fish's gasping head is torn off.
"For ourselves!"
The headless body of the fish is raised into the blackness by the arms. A lipless mouth meets it to sink four jagged teeth into the body. The skeletal, wide-eyed creature smiles at the taste of the meat.
"Gollum."
•••
Rain pattered on the roof of their cheap quayside motel. Tom cautiously prodded the bed with Gandalf's staff. Something large and many-jointed scurried from beneath the mattress and disappeared in the shadows of the wall.
"Isn't there anywhere nicer we could stay?" whined Tom, throwing up clouds of dust as he clubbed the bedsheets with a vengeance.
Gandalf grabbed his staff back. "Tom, all the better inns in the city have been taken by elves here for Elrond's Council tomorrow. We were lucky to find this."
"Lucky?" Tom grumbled, spotting the many-legged thing and squashing it with Bilbo's metal book.
"Thomas Daur Baggins." Gandalf was exercising his Wizard Loom again, the ceiling grown dark with flashes of lightning about him. "Are you using S.A.U.R.O.N.'s most terrible weapon to kill centipedes?!"
"Um.." Tom swallowed. "Apparently, yes."
Then he dropped the book. "It's whaaat?"
It was much later in the night, their sputtering oil table lamp the only light left in the inn. "..And so S.A.U.R.O.N. was thought dead after that second half of the Sixty Minute War, but he's just been lying in wait, biding his time," Thaddeus was saying.
"And he has been looking for his Tin Book ever since." finished Gandalf.
Tom just stared at the two of them.
"..And Bilbo just happened to find the thing in a cave sixty years ago? And he's been reading it and turning invisible ever since and S.A.U.R.O.N. never noticed?"
"Yep," said Thaddeus. "Pretty much."
"And...now it's my destiny to take this thing and drop it in a volcano in Mordor."
"Yes," said Gandalf. "But never fear. I will find a Fellowship to guide and protect you along the way."
"And most of them are probably going to get lost, or captured, or die along the way, and it'll end up being just me and maybe one other survivor breaking into Mordor ourselves."
Gandalf and Thaddeus had nothing to say to that.
"Look, I understand the Book must be destroyed. Great. That's fine. But..one does not simply walk into Mordor! This quest is...I'm a hobbit! From the Shire! Not some...Ancient god of war!"
Gandalf sighed. "We are not asking you to be a Czach Noross incarnate, Tom. But we need you to carry the Book for us."
"As it slowly eats away at my soul and turns me into a fish-eating monster."
"Why fish?" wondered Thaddeus.
"Valentine." Gandalf turned around. "You're not helping."
Tom rubbed his eyes, then looked up again. "I'm not saying I won't help destroy the Book. I just think that going to Mordor is a stupid idea. Couldn't we...say...bury the Book in the backyard of the inn?"
"And what if someone...or something...found it there?"
Tom paused. "I think an omnipotent, invisible mole is the least of our concerns."
Thaddeus snickered in the background.
"Okay. Fine. Burying the book won't work. What about...throwing it in a river? Like the Anduin? It'd wash out to sea and nobody would ever, ever find it."
"That idea has been put forwards before," said Gandalf hesitantly, "by those who, like you, do not wish to make the journey into Mordor. But there are too many problems with it. Again, what if it was found?"
"An invisible fish. I don't think we need to worry about that."
"Thaddeus. This isn't funny."
"Sorry."
Gandalf turned back to Tom. "Have you ever heard of a Watcher?"
Tom shook his head.
"They were designed," said Gandalf over the sputtering oil lamp, "as a biological weapon by Greater Asia in the years leading up to the Sixty Minute War. Needless to say, they survived the world's end and fled to the oceans. They are enormous. Intelligent. Ruthless. Dozens of long, barbed tentacles as long as this room, affixed to a body with an enormous fanged mouth. They can survive on water as well as land. Can you imagine one of those walking about a Traction City, around the Shire? Cloaked to all but S.A.U.R.O.N.? Left to their own devices?"
"I...I see," said Tom shakily. "So maybe that wouldn't work-"
"Even if all the wizards joined and sealed the book, protecting it from Watchers and all other denizens of the sea," Gandalf continued, cutting him off, "it would only guarantee our defeat. S.A.U.R.O.N. has imbued that book with part of his energy and malice – it holds a piece of his soul. Only by destroying that book may S.A.U.R.O.N. die."
"I...alright..." said Tom. "So the physical presence of S.A.U.R.O.N. has been weakened enough that he'll just die instantly when we smash his Book?"
"I would have described it differently, but...yes, that is the general idea."
"It's only possible to split your soul once, then, I'm guessing?"
Gandalf looked at Tom in surprise. "No. Theoretically..I suppose one could split their soul as many times as they wanted. Why on Earth do you ask?"
"Just a minute," said Tom. "I need to think about this."
A minute passed. Then another.
"S.A.U.R.O.N. is an idiot," said Tom, lifting his head from the table.
His statement was met by a collective "?!"
"But just think!" said Tom. "If you've only split your soul once, and you've lost your...soul container...is there a better name for that? The thing you keep your soul bit inside?"
"Most likely," said Gandalf, "but it would only be found in the tomes describing the blackest magic-"
"It's not really important..anyways..so if you've lost your soul box thing, and you know that you've been weakened enough that you'll probably die if anyone finds the thing and figures out how to smash it...then why, why, wouldn't you make another one? Or two? Why not six? And then hide them in caves or secret rooms all across Middle-Earth!"
"According to your line of reasoning, then," said Gandalf slowly, lighting a pipe, "either S.A.U.R.O.N. is, yes, an idiot...or he has made other soul receptacles."
"Yes," yawned Tom, rubbing his eyes again, "but we can't do much about that right now, can we? With the receptacle we've got..is there anything other than a volcano that can destroy it? A magic sword? Some special venom?"
"Not that I am aware of," said Gandalf, "but there may be something in the records at Minas Tirith..."
"Then we're headed to Minas Tirith, aren't we?"
"Yes. That was the original plan. After the Council and the forming of a Fellowship."
"Lovely. I've always wanted to see a Traction City. G'night."
And Tom slumped over, fast asleep.
