Pippin was almost ready to give up when he turned a corner and there was Gandalf sitting on Shadowfax and frowning off into the distance, seemingly unaware of the soldiers streaming past him.
"Gandalf!" Pippin cried in glad relief and ran to him, shoving the big Men out of his way as if they were Hobbits. "Gandalf, Denethor's lost his mind. He's burning Faramir alive!"
For a moment the wizard blinked down at him without recognition then his eyes flared wide in alarm as Pippin's words registered. He reached down a hand to haul the Hobbit onto Shadowfax. "Come, we must be quick!"
They galloped up the winding avenue and passed through the gate to the fourth circle. Suddenly Shadowfax checked, coming to so sudden a halt that his riders were almost unseated. Pippin felt a downwash of air, as from giant wings, and was filled with an all too familiar dread. Peeking around Gandalf he saw a fell beast had landed almost directly in front of them. The Nazgul on its back was cloaked and masked and crowned with black iron.
"You cannot enter here." the wizard's voice rang cold and hard and unafraid. "Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!"
He was answered by an even colder and more deadly voice: "Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!" the Witch King raised his sword and red flames ran down the blade. Pippin buried his face in Gandalf's cloak.
The wizard lifted up his staff, light blazing from the tip. But this Nazgul did not blench from the white fire. Sword met staff once, twice, and on the third stroke the staff shattered with a blinding flash. Shadowfax staggered back a few steps as the Witch King laughed then checked himself. Gandalf set his hand to Glamdring's hilt but before he could draw the homeliest yet strangest of sounds froze both wizard and Witch King in their tracks and made Pippin lift up his head to look around in bewilderment for the source.
Somewhere, in some backyard coop, a cock crowed welcoming the morning in defiance of darkness and ruin. And, sure enough, though the eastern sky showed black as ever there was light in the west. Honest yellow-white sunlight seeming terribly bright in contrast with the Shadow hanging over the City, Then, as if in answer to the cock there came to their listening ears another sound faint with distance, the wild music of horns. The Nazgul pulled his beast's head around and took to the air heading out to the battlefield.
"What is it?" Pippin asked, shaking with relief, "What happened, Gandalf?"
"Day has come again," the wizard answered, sounding a little dazed himself, "and the Riders of Rohan with it." Then his old irascibility asserted itself: "There are things I should be doing, but first for Faramir!"
They found the Porter dead beside his door. "This is the work of the Enemy!" Gandalf said bitterly. "Such deeds he loves: friend at war with friend; loyalty divided in confusion of hearts."
They galloped on down the winding Rath Dinen and up the central street of the tombs turning finally into the side alley leading to the House of the Stewards. Its doors stood open. Light from the brightening sky showed them Beregond and Denethor face to face, weapons in hand.
"Stay this madness!" Gandalf thundered, and for an instant both Men looked towards him. Then Denethor raised his sword to strike and snatching a spear from a guard flanking the doors Gandalf charged forward knocking the blade from the Steward's hand. Denethor staggered back and almost fell.
As Shadowfax wheeled around beside the pyre Pippin threw himself onto it to roll Faramir, soaked in oil, into Beregond's waiting arms. The guardsman carried the unconscious Man to the bier nearby and as he did so Faramir moaned and called for his father.
At the sound of his voice the madness vanished from Denethor's face and tears filled his eyes. "Do not take my son from me!" he pleaded. "He calls for me."
"He calls," Gandalf said gently and pityingly, "but you cannot come to him yet, for he must seek healing, and maybe find it not. Your part is to go out to the battle, where maybe death awaits you. In your heart you know this."
Again Denethor wavered, trembling and looking with longing at the face of his son and it seemed to those watching that his better spirit might yet prevail.
"Come!" Gandalf urged softly. "We are needed. There is much you can yet do."
It was the wrong thing to say or perhaps there were no right words with which to call Denethor back to himself. The fey, fell fire flared again in his eyes. "I am Steward of the House of Anarion," he snarled. "I will not step down to be the dotard chamberlain of an upstart! If doom denies me my due then I will have naught neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honor abated."
"Yet you shall not rob your son of his choice." Gandalf answered.
Denethor pulled a dagger from his sleeve and took a step towards the bier, face terrible. Beregond and Pippin hastily put themselves between. He stopped. "So," he said, breathing heavily, "Your minions rob me wholly of my son at the last, Mithrandir. But in one thing at least I will have my will: I will rule my own end!"
Whirling he snatched the torch sputtering in the hand of a guard and sprang up upon the pyre before any could stop him. Smiling viciously directly at Gandalf he cast the brand into the oiled wood. It caught at once. But it seemed to Pippin that Denethor's eyes turned one last time to Faramir with a look of love and grief in the instant before the flames engulfed him.
"No!" he cried and started forward.
Beregond held him back. "It is too late, Peregrin. It has been too late for him for a long time."
The flames roared, licking hungrily at the nearer stone biers and the long dead Stewards lying upon them. "Out!" Gandalf shouted. "Everybody out!"
They fled carrying Faramir with them. The Wizard reached down to slam the doors shut on the inferno, and as he did so they heard a single, agonized cry, from the dying Man. Pippin collapsed in the street in tears.
"Thus passes Denethor son of Ecthelion." Gandalf said heavily. He turned to the dazed guards and waiting gentlemen. "As for you, servants of the Steward, blind in your obedience -"
"Let them be, Mithrandir," Beregond interrupted. "His will was strong. He overbore them."
The wizard looked at the guardsman for a long moment then he nodded slowly. "Very well, Beregond. No reproaches. Come, let us leave this place."
He took Pippin up behind him on Shadowfax and the shaken guards lifted up Faramir and bore him after trailed by the gentlemen in waiting. As they reached the opening to the Rath Dinen there came a great noise from behind them. Turning they saw the dome of the Stewards' House collapse in on itself in a flurry of sparks. No one said anything, they but looked for a moment then wearily began the long climb back to the City of the living.
"Mithrandir," Beregond said in a soft yet carrying voice. Wiping his eyes Pippin saw the guardsman had come alongside Shadowfax and that he carried Denethor's cloak bundled in his arms. "The Steward looked into the Anor-Stone. It showed him that which drove him to this final frenzy."
Gandalf bowed his head. "So that is how Sauron's will entered into the very heart of the City – through its lord."
"What do you mean?" Pippin whispered for both Man and wizard had kept their voices very low.
"There was a palantir kept in the White Tower as well as at Orthanc." Ganadalf answered. "As the peril to his realm grew Denethor dared to look into it."
"But…but he would have seen -" Pippin's voice failed as he remembered the horror of his own experience.
"Seen Sauron," the wizard agreed heavily, "and matched his will against the Dark Power. He was too great to be subdued, but he could be deceived. He saw only that which Sauron permitted him to see and those visions fed the despair of his heart until it overthrew his mind." He turned back to Beregond. "Denethor had it with him in the tomb? What became of it?"
"I have it here," the Man answered and Pippin shuddered, realizing what the furred robe must contain. "It is now the Lord Faramir's charge but -"
"He is not fit to bear it," Gandalf finished for him and gave him a piercing look. "And so I give it into your keeping, Beregond. Guard it well and give it up to none save its rightful owner."
"I will." The Man promised.
They didn't carry Faramir all the way back to the Citadel but only as far as the Houses of Healing, now crowded with wounded, who overflowed into the usually peaceful cloisters surrounding the courts.
"Papa!" Bergil came hurtling out of a doorway to his father's arms. He was followed more slowly by the weary and harried looking Man who was Warden of the Houses.
"Of course we can find room for the Lord Faramir, Lord Mithrandir." he assured the Wizard and looked ruefully around his crowded courtyard, "Somewhere."
"Master Peregrin here will stay with him -" Gandalf began.
"No I will not." Pippin interrupted decidedly. Men and wizard starred at him. "I am a soldier of Gondor not a nurse, and it's high time I acted like one," he continued defiantly and glared up at Gandalf. "Boromir taught us to fight and I will do what little I can in defense of his City for him, and for Faramir, and for my Lord Denethor too!"
"Bergil and I will tend the Lord Faramir." Beregond put in quietly. He looked significantly at the wizard. "I have now a charge that I may not leave."
For a moment Pippin couldn't imagine what he was talking about - then he remembered; of course the palantir.
Gandalf still hesitated, clearly displeased. Pippin braced himself for an argument, but instead the wizard sighed. "Very well, Peregrin Took." he said resignedly. "Let us go down and see how the battle has fared without us."