It's not the light of the sun that wakes Sam in the end, but the soft flicker of firelight. His hand stretched out in a blind panic, reaching beyond the furs he was wrapped in, reaching for his wife and daughter. But they weren't there, nor was the sand or the sun or the road; in fact, he didn't even know where he was. He tried to sit up then, but someone pushed him back, tucked the furs tighter round his already sweltering body and placed a soft wash-cloth against his brow.

The voice that crooned to him was low and toneless, a voice that spoke no living language of Hobbit-kind. Sam could have drifted off, been carried away on that old melody of an ancient land that was no more. He might well have, if there hadn't been a softer song, more high-pitched than the greater one. It was the melody of his daughter's laugh; Elanor, his Elanor was awake, and she was happy, and she was alive. Pushing himself from the low bed of furs Sam stumbled towards the sound of his daughter's voice. A little too hard it would seem, for he almost fell face first into the fire, if it hadn't been for the large hands on his shoulders, he may well have.

'Sam?' Rose, oh his Rose. Gentle hands wrapped around his mid-drift and brought him down to a soft bed again, he couldn't see who they were for he seemed to be blind. Well just about, he could still see vague shapes, but not the things that mattered. Oh, Rosie, where were you?

'Sam, calm yourself, they aren't going to hurt us.'

'Who are they, Rose? Where are we, why didn't we die?'

'Sam, look.'

He did, and as he focused things became clearer in his sight. He could see the fire before them, and the soft white furs he, his wife and daughter rested on, and he could see their care-taker. The blue hood was pushed back, and Sam saw a hobbit, with markings on their face that were not quite of this time, where most hobbits were soft and round. Frozen from a time where the Blarney Son roamed the land and created great marvels such as has never been seen before or since.

'Good evening Sam Gamgee, I am the healer of this tribe. We are the children of the Blarney; and we welcome you cousin.'

***
Somewhere in the deserts of Rhûn, The Camp of the sons of the Blarney: F.O.01, April 6th

A lifetime and a half ago, Sam had once told Mister Frodo at the edge of Farmer Maggot's field, that this was the farthest he had ever been from home. That had been before…well, everything, so you would think that feeling, that strange unnerving feeling of being so very far away from home would… go away. As if traveling and mighty quests could dull that strange lonely feeling in the pit of his belly.

But it hadn't, not even in the slightest, and now as the strange young healer led the two hobbit parents out of the tent, that feeling, that lonely homesick feeling weighed so heavily now that Sam was certain that if he stopped walking, even just for a moment, he would be bowled over and fall to his knees in the hot sand of the Rhûn desert.

Best not to think of it, that was the only thing to do – just focus on the warm feel of Rosie's hand in his, and the scraping sound of sand between his toes. Keep moving forward, don't think about leaving Elanor behind in the healer's tent, she was perfectly fine anyway – just tired, she just needed more sleep.

Everything was fine, just fine.

Just breath in and out, and keep walking, Sam, just keep walking.

A sentiment that was a tad harder to accomplish when their guide threw his arms out, causing the two Shire hobbits to come to a crushing halt.

'Stop, hobbits of the West, we are here.'

Sam hadn't really noticed the other tents – he just assumed they were there somewhere, off to the side of his vision where his over beating heart wouldn't let him look. But this tent, he was shocked his eyes could have landed on anything else. It was a large tent, even by the standards of men, twice the size any hobbit tent should have been. Granted, not that there were a lot of those these days, least not in the west – but still. It was made of a glittering blue cloth, with traces of silver and gold woven all throughout. Simple and yet, the way it blew in the breeze like that, reminded Sam of the ripples around the boat Mister Frodo had left in. It shouldn't, but it did awfully make him tremble so.

'Well, what do you linger for Ringbearer, Chief Ka is waiting for you.'

Chief, that must mean he was their leader and…and would have some answers. Yes, yes, obviously, everything would be explained soon. And everything…everything would be fine.
Just…fine.

***
Two Minutes later, in the tent of the Chief.

'I don't think we have to say that if you tell anyone about us, when we send you on your way, your lives will be very short, tragic and bloody.'

The high chief of the Sons of Blarney was a tall hobbit, taller even than Mister Merry and Pippin, and the scowl he directed at the two Western Hobbits could have made an orc squirm.

Sam was used to people in authority being angry at him, he'd practically had an entire childhood with every hobbit with a feather in his gab scowling down at him. It should have made him angry, and really it did, but he wasn't like his siblings. When Sam Gamgee got angry, he didn't get loud, he got polite.

'We understand sir, we didn't mean to intrude upon your people's hospitality; the storm brought us low, and we're mighty grateful for what you did for us aren't we Rose?'

Rose Gamgee said nothing, her eyes narrowed at the mighty hobbit in front of her. With his shoulders wrapped by splendid furs of some creature yet to be identified in the lands settled by the Numenor, and his crown woven from the branches of golden wood, he made quite a sight. The tattoos gracing his solid features were blue and green, swirls and jagged shapes marking him a descendent in mind if not of blood of the Blarney son.

Her family had followed the teachings of the Blarney son; they were able to manipulate the world around them into the most marvellous, and the most terrible of shapes. Why her own grandfather had been able to call forth the most terrifying of storms when he was in the worst of rages. They felt different to other kinds of storms; there was a crackle and a spark in the air that could not come from nature itself. It needed something else, a hobbit who knew how to bend the world around their whims of temper. She had felt that same spark in the air before the sand storm had hit them.

Someone wanted her family here; someone had made damn sure that her family would stop here.

'Rose? Are you okay? You've gone quite pale my love.'

Rosie met her husband's concerned eye; and forced a smile, they would need to find a more private place to discuss her fears and suspicions. She tried to convey all this with one quick glance into his soft emerald eyes. His mouth formed a determined line, and he nodded in quiet understanding.

'Yes, quite alright Sam Love; everything is just fine, I'm just a little tired. I think maybe I just need a little more rest.'

As she spoke her eyes were not fixed on her equally tired husband; but on the now very still Chief. He smiled kindly, yet he gazed at her with such a knowing look in his old eyes, that she knew he didn't believe her. He clicked his fingers and attendants in long, glittering robes appeared at the entrance to his chambers.

'Take Mistress Gamgee back to her resting chamber, I will be along in a little while, with Master Gamgee.'

They ushered Rosie out of the room, and she and Sam shared a wild panicked look with one another as they were separated.

His people were dying, this is the one truth that the reader must remember as we spin the tale of Chief Ka, and the sons of the Blarney. Particularly if they do not intend to hate him by the end. His people were dying, fruitlessly, painfully, in a war that most of them didn't even really care about.

After all, what was a Silmaril next to the power of magic – nothing, just a pretty bauble for some king to wear on his crown. And yet, here they were – throwing their lives away, placing their sons and daughters in the path of the Blue Army's wrath. He could blame it on that obnoxious monarch the fates had blessed him as a brother-in-law; able to scream at him from thousands of miles away. Help me Ka, save my people Ka, bring me the ring bearer Ka, sacrifice your medics and magicians to my war Ka.

They could have, nay they should have remained hidden in the desert, lost to the swirl of the sands. No general, or army of man would have found them then – no real army would dare to try. And yet, the royal fool wasn't wrong…how many children had lost their homes, their families, even their very lives all because one manical blue wizard had decided to go searching for a shiny rock. And if that blood-soaked joke wasn't funny enough for the universe, the wizard's generals – his heirs apparent, and head of his slavish army when the lunatic finally vanished – seemed to be even worse.

More war, more blood staining the sand; only now, for some bizarre reason, that terrible blue locus swarm of an army had developed a blood-venge level of hatred, for Ka's entire species. Nobody was entirely sure how such a hatred had begun, but it was probably the hobbits of the Kollasi Jungle's fault. It was always the hobbits of the Kollasi Jungle's fault.

And now the war had even come to the golden gates of the house of the turtle-fish, and the king needed the ring-bearer. Or, so he said, over and over again in all of his many, many letters. Ka had never understood why, what was a western myth compared to the hobbits they had right in front of them.

Samwise Gamgee was a good deal younger than the tales his people had heard sung in the west told. He seemed to be still in his forties, a boy…yet the things he had heard, well these were not the tales of a boy barely out of his own tweens. The dark lord from the West, brought low by two of Hobbick's seed. Blarney beseechs him, but he had never before heard something so…so utterly satisfying.

What had the Encroachers and their lesser vermin cousins ever done but try and beat the darkness back with a feather. Oh, how they had laughed at his kind in their history; named them, cruel, sly, untrustworthy, petty. All to ease their own wounded conscious. Samwise the Brave and Frodo of the Nine-fingers were not the first or the only child of the Ancestors to aid this land against the darkness that seeped in from the far West; but they were the only ones who could not wiped from history. Although he was certain they would certainly try.

Ka studied the stranger then, as he had said before the youth could not be older than forty or so; dull honey hair bleached nearly white gold by the sun, and skin a shade of golden brown. Scars that ran from jaw to hair line marred that young face, ageing it more than it should have been. It seemed like half his face had been clawed up by some vicious creature, and yet some of the scars did not quite match that explanation. They were too small and precise in between their larger kin, round lines upon his face as if something long and sharp had been jabbed into the flesh of the hobbit's cheeks. How strange, not the scars you would expect of a servant in the Shire – but then Sam Gamgee was hardly a servant anymore.

'Your journey has been long Samwise Gamgee, but I would hear all of it if I could. For I believe that a change is awaiting our kind, and that change begins with you. So, tell me, why have you come to this land?'

A small frown line formed between the brows of the younger hobbit, as he answered the mighty chieftain.

'I don't remember telling you my name, so long as I've been awake here sir, so unless you can read the minds of plain hobbits like myself, I reckon you've heard about my wife and I's journey before now. And I suspect you were expecting us, either way it would seem you can answer your own question.'

Ka laughed.

'My what a tongue, Master Gamgee; it is true that as a follower and descendant of the Blarney Son I have many gifts that uneducated westerners might consider…unnatural. But to read a mind such as yours or your bride, nay that is a task for one of greater strength. But let us speak plainly, if plainness is what you seek, surely you cannot still believe yourself simply a plain hobbit. Surely you must see in yourself something greater than that.'

'And if I don't?'

'Then why are you here Master Gamgee? If you saw yourself as you did before, then you wouldn't have travelled so far in search of a brother you no longer know, and a king you never shall. Perhaps there is something you found in yourself on that long trek to Mordor that frightens you, something hidden and dark, something you wish to bury in the sands of my homeland.'

'Darkness don't have nothing to do with it.'

'Then what does Samwise? Please, answer me my friend.' Ka reached out to his guest and in the manner as one might do to a treasured loved one, brushed his knuckles against the younger hobbit's scarred cheek. Samwise let his head hang forward, and a cry escaped his lips.

'I don't know rightly, just that it's terrible and it's inside me now. A terrible light that ain't good, and ain't bad, but just is so much that it consumes all else it touches. Parts of me want it gone, but I know it can't ever be; because that light is me somehow, and I know it's what drove Mister Frodo away in the end. Not the morgul blade, me, I'm what drove him away. It was all me!'

A great sob escaped Samwise then, and he collapsed forward into Ka's outstretched arms. This was not what he had been expecting.

Elanor Gamgee doesn't have a concept of time yet, not a proper one anyway. She couldn't tell you how many hours her parents had carried her across that strange hot place. It was a long time she knew that, but exact measurements… that would have been beyond her recollection even if she could form proper words yet.

So, if you were to ask her how long her parents had left her in that healing tent, well…it was probably a long time. The glowing pit that kept the tent warm had lost its colour entirely by the time the happy singing hobbit in the blue hood picked her up and took her out of the tent.

Everything was hot and warm, and it made Elanor's skin prickle. Like the kind of feeling when you've been left in the garden shoving Daisies in your mouth while your mother runs back inside to fix a cooking emergency. And by the time she gets back your head is all blotchy with red patches. Everyone was so upset after that, especially that sad hobbit who was supposed to have been watching you. He'd been lost in his bad memories, and hadn't noticed your skin going all red.

That sad hobbit wasn't around anymore, she'd heard her Daddy say once that he'd gone on a boat to a far away, pretty country. And sometimes Elanor hoped that he was alright, that he hadn't been silly and fallen over the side, because as every good hobbit knew, boats were dangerous things.

The world had gotten cooler again, and the funny singing hobbit let his blue hood flop back down. He had funny skin, it was all blue painted like one of Mummy's old cloaks. He put her down amongst other hobbit babies and older children, they were looking at something…there was…was a puppet show.

A shadow puppet show, on the wall.

Elanor loved puppet shows, they were in her opinion the highest form of art. And as she stared hard at the shadows on the wall she realised with a warm feeling in her small heart, that she knew this story. It was a yule story from back home, she remembered the older children in Bagshot row dressing up in old bedsheets, painting their faces in fancy shades of green and blue, and putting on a play. She had to say, this version was by far the superior one. There were no Bollard boys messing up their lines, or screaming so loud that they hurt Elanor's ears. No here was just the story, and the pretty shadows on the wall.

The story was called the Smith's Bastard

Once upon a time, in the land that will be lost to the sea soon enough, there lived a Smith.

The Greatest Smith there will ever be.

And this Smith was married to a tree.

And with that tree he had seven sons.

***
It was not built structures – either mud hut or stone castle –where the hobbits who followed Blarney made their homes; but a network of interconnected caves. Most underground, but more than a fair few bared to the sand and the sea above.

It was into one of these caves that Rosie Gamgee nee Cotton was shoved. Around her, hobbit matrons in the shawls and long robes the Blarney sons favoured, bent over cooking pots, or clutched fishing rods in their hands as they peered over the cave's edge. Amongst a gaggle of young expecting mothers, Elanor sat on their healer's knee; giggling and cooing at the strange hobbits around her. As Rosie approached them, she couldn't help but marvel at how much her little girl, resembled her Father. It was as if there was an inner light contained between the two of them; a light that couldn't help but draw others to them. Unfortunately, that meant before they'd officially started courting, she'd had to whack more than a few stupid twits who had thought they'd stood a chance with Samwise Gamgee. He was hers; he'd been her's since childhood; her grandmother had said as much on her death-bed.

'Elanor!'

The young hobbit turned and smiled at Rose; the tattoos marking him as a healer creasing up, making them seem less like the star and snake they should have been, and more like some kind of bizarre hybrid between the two. On his lap, the baby giggled and reached out for her Mother. With a short skip and a step, Rose was there to scoop her up and back into her arms.

Once she had double checked her daughter for any signs of broken bones, she gently lowered herself to the ground and sat on one of the large cushions the other hobbit mothers had been lounging on. She accepted a small bowl of what seemed to be some kind of stew and smiled at the others when it made a pleasant spicy taste on the inside of her mouth.

'How long will your chief keep my husband in council do you think?' The question was directed at the young Healer but was answered by one of the grander looking mothers.

'My husband has much to discuss with yours, our cousins from the west do not often wander so close to us.'

The hobbit mother laid her gently glittering bejewelled hands over her pregnant belly and smiled at Rose. Her smile was tight, yet her eyes were nearly hidden by the heavy silken wrap that covered her head, so it was hard for Rosie to guess whether she was just teasing her or not.

'Tell me, if I may be permitted to ask, what caused you to seek out the sons of blarney?'

Rosie almost said something biting then, something snarky and cruel – maybe an implication that the sandstorm they had been caught in wasn't as natural as it seemed. And then she actually looked the other hobbit mother in the eye and felt shame. For they were not the eyes of a liar, or crook – they were kind black eyes, that seemed to offer comfort even when there was none in return.

'I…we got lost in a storm.'

The Chief's Wife smiled under her scarf, yet not in the mocking way so many of the well-to-do hobbits were wont to do in the Shire; but as if she not only entirely understood Rosie, but sympathized.

'As so many do, Mistress Gamgee.' Said the surprisingly deep voice of the other Mother. 'But fear not, for no one is truly lost on the path of the Blarney son.'

Her Grandmother had said the same thing, when Rosie had been a child. And the thought of her, of those long-gone happy days in the Shire, made the young mother feel a deep sense of longing. Though not for home, least not the one that existed still, but that lost hope that magic was something wonderful. Something beyond the petty hardships of day-to-day life. Something that if you only worked hard enough, master your skill, it could fix all your problems. It was a feeling she'd lost after the riots, after Sam's brother…after everything. And to get it back, even for just a moment wasn't so bad a thing at all.

'Rosie, my name's Rosie.'

'And mine is Kee, please come sit with us Rosie, and tell us of your journey.'

It was nice, to talk so openly again – there was no need to hide where they were going from these hobbits, because they clearly already knew. Well, most of them anyway.

'The King? That's a fine place to seek shelter with, my cousin went to his city after the Blue Army decimated her village looking for their pebble.' It was the youngest of the mothers who had spoken*, her scarf hung loose around her shoulders, leaving her face bared to Rosie's eyes. She was younger than Rosie by a few good years, with skin darker than anyone back home in the Shire, even the Gamgees, who rumour went had a great grandfather all the way from the North. And her eyes, which were crinkled up at Rosie, were a shimmering copper. She was not a hobbit of the west, and yet the bubbling sound of her chatter was something that even the most snobbish of Fallowhides could have appreciated. Hobbits were Hobbits no matter where they came from; and if there's one thing on this currently round earth of ours that Hobbits love more than anything, it's a good gossip.

'Of course, never really saw her again after that, but that's just normal when it comes to the Blue Army. And a least she's not dead, better gone than buried as my father always used to say when he still lived.'

'I'm sorry,' said Rosie, her mind suddenly fogging over in confusion. 'But what is the blue army?'

And the others looked at her then, looked at her as if a live cockroach had just climbed out of her mouth .

'Oh, my dear,' sighed Kee. 'You really don't know, do you?'

'Don't know what?' Said Rosie, her fear rising in her throat again. 'What don't I understand? Please tell me.

And so, they did, every terrible detail; and Rosie realised then that it wasn't the fear climbing her throat anymore.

She was going to be sick.

Food was important in all aspects of a hobbit's life; it was why they had at least seven meals a day, when they could. Yet for the hobbits that followed the Blarney Son there was slightly more to it than a simple love of food. There were special rituals, and spells that could only be done through the art of a well-made meal, most hobbits didn't know them, even in the East where history was respected, only a child of the Blarney Son knew these spells well enough to risk performing them on strangers.

Samwise Gamgee was not a follower of the Blarney Son, he knew of him and for the love of his wife respected him well enough, but he had never studied his ways. And had certainly felt no great need to study his food spells. Rose Gamgee had, there was much of these strange people's ways that she would have understood better than her husband did, but she was not here. For she had been taken suddenly sick earlier in the day and had had to be rushed away for rest in the healers' tents. So, Sam and his young daughter were quite alone at their welcoming feast.

Of course, the baby hardly seemed to care, sitting on her father's lap and stuffing the contents of his plate into her small chubby face. Sam would have been wiping it clean by now, if he were more awake. The food was good, spicy and rich in a sweet sort of way that you didn't find in the palates of human cooks. Rich and spicy the taste had been at first bite; mixed well with a light and fruity wine, this feast before him had been intoxicating. Yet as he gradually ate his way through a serving of each great dish, he slowly began to feel…well sleepy was not the right word, but slow and stupid. As if the taste of the food was stripping his wits from him, until all that would be left was a snoozing shell.

Across from the Ring-Bearer Chief Ka watched with bated breath, strictly speaking he was breaking many of his people's rules of hospitality in doing this. But such things must be sacrificed for the sake of the greater good, he had to know what this hobbit of new myth was made of. The other hobbit's head flopped forward, and his young daughter squealed in surprise. Now, now they would see what made Sam Gamgee, Sam Gamgee.

'Samwise?'

'Speaking.' Said the voice that came out of Gamgee's mouth, yet judging by the look on his daughter's face, it was not the voice that should have been there.
'Who are you, Samwise Gamgee?'

'If you don't know already, then what story have you been reading,' said the voice that did not belong to a hobbit.

* At this point a curious reader may be wondering exactly how Sam and Rosie can understand the Sons (and daughters) of the Blarney son, despite the fact that by any sensible logic, both parties should be speaking entirely different languages. Ah but you see, that is a conclusion reached with human logic, not hobbit. For hobbits are creatures of habit, and things that change quickly for the race of man – like language – may not change at all for the seed of Hobbick. So thus, a tongue like 'Old Hobbitish', a language first created in the birthplace of the Ancestors, can remain recognizable to any hobbit, no matter where they come from. And as a son of a Ganyman and a follower of the Blarney son respectively, our two travellers would be entirely fluent in that old tongue.