Where the Shadows Lie

A Tale Of The Ring

"The Dark Lord has Nine.  But we have One, mightier than they: the White Rider.  He has passed though the fire and the abyss, and they shall fear him.  We will go where he leads."

Epilogue:

          And so it ends.

          The Ring is destroyed.  My mission is accomplished, and I stand now upon the shores of my home, warm and gentle waves lapping at my feet, feeling at peace for the first time in I know not how long.  I am home; I am at last free.  If I close my eyes, I can almost believe that nothing has changed.

          Almost.

          Instead, I must mourn.  I mourn, first, for Samwise Gamgee, who I sent upon the quest, knowing in my heart that he would play a crucial part – but never guessing what that might be.  I knew that he would be Frodo's strength, Frodo's conscience, even Frodo's savior, but I never knew that duty would take his life.  Rather, I thought of the brightness in his future, of the changes for the better the quest would bring in him…and I thought that Frodo needed him.  Only in the end did I know how right that was.  Unshed tears well up in my eyes, now, for I do mourn him, but I cannot regret, and that fact I hate the most.  I hate knowing that I did the right thing.

          Sam did fulfill his destiny.  He did save Frodo – but, rather than enabling Frodo to destroy the Ring, he took upon himself Sauron's hatred and anger, the violence born of the moment when the Dark Lord would have slain Frodo, and Samwise Gamgee guaranteed that Frodo remained alive to give me the Ring.  He guaranteed that the Ring could be destroyed, although he sacrificed his life for that end.  And he died not knowing what good he had wrought.  But I know – and it hurts.  I cannot describe how much it hurts.

          Every time I look upon Frodo, I share his pain.  The scars crisscrossing his soul are deep, and although they will someday heal – such is the magic of what mortals and elves call Valinor – he will carry them forever, much like the wound in his shoulder caused by the undead blade of Sauron's Ringwraith.  Even here, upon the shores of the West, the taint of darkness survives in those of use who have borne it.

          Even I have changed.  I am no longer Olórin – or perhaps it would be better to say that I am no longer merely Olórin, wisest of the Maiar.  I am, too, Gandalf, both Gray and White, one who came so close to being the next Dark Lord that the stain of evil will forever rest upon my soul.  No one knows, save I, how close to losing myself I came, or how the Ring nearly took my heart and shred it underneath the trappings of power and cruelty.  No one knows, for I have not spoken of it and never, ever, will, that the voice of the Ring still whispers in my mind, distantly and nearly beyond comprehension, but always, always and forever, by my side.  Its call will never leave my mind completely.

          In my more sardonic moments, I have wondered if I should have joined the One in its final journey into the depths of Mount Doom and therefore eradicated its touch completely from the world, but I know better.  That choice, at least, was not my own, and in it, perhaps, is my redemption.  Elrond and Galadriel did not have to pull me back from the abyss.  I could have fallen, and at the moment, it was all I wanted to do.  I desired an end to it all, a conclusion to the pain, to the struggle, to the suffering – I desired peace, which I believed that I would never again have.

          Standing now, on the shores of my home, I know otherwise.

          Yet I wish it had not been so.  What went wrong?  Such is a question I will forever ask myself, in the darkest moments of the night when I yearn for what has been lost.  Perhaps that is the change in me, the Gandalf in me, speaking, for I have become, although not mortal, unlike the others of my kind.  Some might call it corrupted by power; in fact, many have, those of Aiwendil's ilk, who believe that I should have been destroyed before setting foot upon our sacred shores again, but when I asked, Manwë merely smiled.  He gave no answer, but I knew.

          And some still wonder why Aiwendil will never return home again.

          Five they sent, and two were lost; yet another fell to darkness, and the last to his own pride.  Why was it I, then, who became the only to return?  I tell myself that I never wanted this, that I did not ask to come – but I asked to return.  I alone took my mission to heart, and for that I was the Enemy of Sauron.  For a time, I was even Sauron himself.

          For my lost innocence, I grieve, though I am the stronger for its loss.  My days will now be spent in peace, which I have long craved, and amongst friends, whom I have long loved.  Perhaps it is just, that it ends so, for I would rathered have taken the pain and the burden of the One than allow any other to suffer so, even when I thought that I dared not do so.  I know the truth for what it is, though: Gandalf the Grey would have become the Black.  Gandalf the White, Olórin, would not.  I could ask myself why, but I think that is too simple a question.  It is also too complicated, now.

          Suddenly, I laugh, and the sound surprises even me.  There it is again, my humanity, my mortality, speaking – why do I ask questions to which I care not the answers?  The others would laugh at me, whom they deem so wise.  I will never relieve them, of course, of that illusion.  They would not thank me for it.  The tale of the Ring has passed, now, into legend and into fact.  The future beckons me, now, brightly, and I wonder why I hesitate.  All debts have been paid.  The war is at an end.  I did what had to be done.

          What a fine end to Bilbo's book.

~~~~~~~~~~Thanks, Morwen, for the fix.  I was a bit tired last night. J.