Note: I realize my depiction of some of the rooms and passages are different both from book and movie, but as the journey took 4 days, and not all of which was fully recorded, I may well be right, yes? Ha...yeah. There can be a lot of rooms an crap in 4 days.
Reviewers:
GoldQuartz- My first reviewer, thanks a lot! I'm sorry I killed Frodo, I'm such a naughty person. But I hope you found his noble death worthy of the furthering of the story. )
Bourgeois Sounds Swell- Ha! I'm glad then, that you may finally see Legolas 'do' something. Although let's not forget! He DID kill that oliphant single-handedly, even though it did only count as 'one.' xD Thanks for the review, and I hope you keep reading!
XxA7XLoverxX- Wow, I'm so flattered! And my head-so large! Great one, am I? Teehee. Heh, anyway! I'm relieved that you think such, about me capturing the characters correctly. That's always something that makes or breaks a story, in my opinion, so it's good to hear that I did ok! Hope to read more of your reviews later! hint hint )
The Ringbearer
Deep Through Moria
Pt. II
Noontime on the Fellowship's first day of Moria brought them a macabre surprise. They stopped at a tiny chamber from which sprung three more ways, a sight already common to them. But as they scrambled through the fallen rock and broken stairs into the room, they found themselves choking and sucking desperately for breath. The air hung heavy with must and mold and something else, a sickly, horrible, scent that invaded every pore and turned the hair on their necks to needles.
"Auck! What could create such a horrible stench!" Gimli gasped. "Perhaps one of the miners tapped a underground spring that was not quite at its freshest. I bet it was ol' Qualir; he had never the hand for a pickaxe, nor the mind."
Gimli strode forward towards the center archway, but Gandalf stopped him with an outstretched arm.
"Gimli... I'm afraid there are very bad tidings." The wizard swallowed, stooped, and stretched his staff forward into the mouth of the passage, bringing things to light. At first Gimli spied piles of ancient rubbish swathed in cobwebs, but the silvery glints of helms and speartips caught his eye. He went forward carefully, and saw, bleached star-white from Gandalf's light the skeletons of dwarves tumbled and still in the grasp of their armor. They littered the whole passage, as far as he could see; a landfill of corpses.
"A battlefield..." Gimli choked. He fell to his knees, and tears welled in his small, brown, eyes.
"A tomb," amended Boromir, as he and Aragorn stepped forward, wading among the remains, and lowering their torches to study the wasted faces, caught in masks of agony. Old blood looked like rust on their armor and on the floor and walls. Panic threaded through the Fellowship. The hobbits huddled together and breathed quickly, huge eyes not leaving the stagnant passageway.
Legolas noticed them and came, touching each of their heads in turn. "Calm yourselves. This is old death, see the cobwebs? Mayhap even their ghosts do not linger here any longer."
It was the same in each of the three passages; they would have to tread through the fallen dwarves by whichever course.
Gimli lingered at the mouths of the passages, bent almost in half with grief as he searched forlornly the faces and armor and weapons, wondering if here lie the faces he once knew.
"We must go on..." Legolas reminded softly, and shepherded the hobbits forward.
Boromir glared at the walls of Moria with eyes that could cut steel, and shook his head in brooding disbelief. The death of the Ringbearer at our backs, a city of strewn corpses afore. What madness does the ring indeed bring to the minds around it? He wondered.
Gandalf took them forward through the middle passage, and they did not make sound save Gimli, who wept in gravelly tones, chin against his chained chest. This passage went on for a mile, and then opened up into a larger space, and before they'd realized it the ground sloped away on each side of them, and under foot the ground turned to stairs and led upwards to a dark landing, where another door welcomed them blackly. Aragorn and Boromir took the lead. The corpses cluttered the stairs, and could not be thrown off in fear of waking the sleeping dangers. Each foot had to be placed surely between one body and another, among this spearhead and that pile of mail.
When Legolas stepped onto the jutting landing there came a sound from above him, a tap of rock against rock. He knocked his arrow and aimed it towards the empty air above. He scoured the ceiling and the walls, each tiny dent and hole, his elfin gaze penetrating each and finding only bugs or mice, deep within the earth. The sound came again, along with a soft, wet, rasp like of breath. This time it sounded from elsewhere, to his left and more level. He spun and loosed his arrow from where the sound had come, and knocked a second.
Aragorn touched his shoulder warily, eying the gleaming flint arrowhead.
"What do you hear?" He asked calmly, though his hand was flexing around his hilt.
"A creature, and surely not an innocent one. These caves echo so that the skitter of a pebble can come from empty air, and a trickle of water from under your feet. I cannot tell where this creature lay."
"It is Gollum," said Gandalf. He beckoned them both to the landing door. "Come now, let us rest a bit and eat, and tackle this big, brutish, mountain at a later time."
Sam built a tiny, contained fire and cooked for them a batch of potatos and carrots. With it they ate dried and spiced meats, and unattractive clumps of cheese. None the less the food filled the hollowness of their bellies and gave them, for a while, some warmth. The hobbits and Gimli, with urging and consoling from Aragorn, napped fitfully. Gandalf stationed himself at the end of the tiny chamber, perched on a tumbled column as he observed a fresco of faded paintings dancing along the walls. The wizard stroked his beard and smoked without savoring, his watery blue eyes squinted. Legolas settled next to him.
"So... Gollum has found his way back to the watch of Mirkwood. I assume he must have been tracking us for a great while, then. His advanced age has given him a great craftiness, if he can follow us without my ears betraying him."
Gandalf nodded without speaking. Legolas looked at him from the corner of his eyes. Questions pressed at his teeth, but he was wary of the wizard's quick temper, and did not want to disturb his deep thought.
Before he had to keep deliberating, however, Gandalf turned his head and nodded, raising a tangled, bushy, eyebrow in encouragement.
" What danger will he bring us, think you?" Legolas whispered.
Gandalf closed his eyes and breathed deep from his long-stemmed pipe. He drew up his bony knee and set his arm across it, the pipe hanging from his fingers, smoldering. "It would seem obvious to any man or elf that Gollum can only bring us danger and destruction, yet there is a stirring in my heart, a shadowy voice from realms away that says otherwise. That Gollum may have yet some part to play, and that it could be for an ultimate end that is good."
He took another pull from his pipe and the smoke eddied around his beard. A translucent doubt had fallen across his face. Legolas pulled at his sleeve.
"What is it, Gandalf? You make speak freely to me." His voice sounded concerned, almost desperate. With the burden of the ring over his head, he found himself nearly terrified of being withheld information concerning it.
"This voice..." he murmured. "Now that I bring myself to think of it, I have not heard such a voice, nor again felt such an internal warning concerning Gollum. Not since Frodo... not since have I felt this aversion to the harm of the one who was Smeagol. In fact, more than one whispering of the soul has changed or vanished, since Frodo passed from this realm."
The wizard and the elf searched each other's eyes gravely, each excavating for the answers of the questions in their heart.
Gandalf broke away and stood up, joints squeaking, and ate gratefully the vegetables that Sam offered him. When their hurried rest and sup was ended, wistful memories of green grass and blue sky would not let them tarry longer.
The chamber opened onto yet another towering passage, shaped slim like a parting between two stone curtains, revealing its tongue of serpentine stairs. They clambered this upwards for a good distance and then curved sharply and steeply downwards. Here on the narrow steps, they could not help the pebbles and chinks of broken chain mail that shifted under their feet and tumbled down the flight ahead of them like hail. They froze after each such rain of hissing,clinking, noise, listening until the pounding of their own blood in their ears seemed painful. The stairs eventually stopped at a series of rickety catwalks, in an area that had been under heavy construction. The catwalks spanned the diameter of a huge hollow column in the eart; they could not see ceiling or floor, save Legolas, and he did not have the heart to tell them how far away they hung and lay. The wood creaked and shuddered, and when it did it let out rains of dust and splinters. Sam and Merry could barely be coaxed along the sickeningly swaying platforms, and inched their way little by little through, arms fastened around the handrails. Legolas stepped ahead of the company nimbly, testing the planks with his toes, stroking the rope to feel for frays and thinning. They made it without incident, though they went slowly.
At the last catwalk they climbed a ladder to a roughly constructed arch and passed through. By that time the sky outside would be flooding with the color of crushed violet, and stars would begin to pierce through the lemon-rosy horizon. Inside it was night as it had ever been.
They marched on for another hour, and then stopped. Under better circumstances they may have gone on longer, but disconsolation mingled with fear, and drained them. They stopped in what looked to have been a kitchen or storeroom. None of them wished to investigate its shadowy, spider webbed shelves however, for whatever might be left could only feed the mouths of the skeletons they had piled in one corner. Bugs were rampant in that room, millipedes as long as Pippin's forearm and spiders bigger than his hand; leaders of an army of others, scuttling along the walls and through the dead dwarf's eye sockets and through the Fellowship's hair and clothes.
Pippin yelped and batted at his sleeve as something prickly marched below his sleeve. Tears of fear and frustration glittered in the hobbit's eyes. "Is there no other place to stay, Legolas? Gandalf?"
Legolas drew himself up tall and peered down at the struggling one, biting his lip from the inside so none could see. He could not help feel a bitter hint of personal failure, even from such a small remark. But Gandalf touched the elf's back and shook his head at Pippin.
"I'm truly sorry, my dear hobbit. It looks as if this is the first grotto in a line of ones similar. I don't know how long we'd have to go one to find better shelter. You'd like a sufficient rest, now, wouldn't you?"
Pippin wrapped his arms around himself and glanced at a pair of shiny, green-backed beetles as they vanished in a crack. Then he leaned his head against Merry's shoulder and decided he was tired more than afraid, and nodded pitifully at Gandalf.
They ate again, lighter this time, for they did not want to encourage their skittering company, nor did the insects inspire great appetites. They did not build a fire.
"I will take first watch," Gandalf announced.
"And I will take second!" Boromir volunteered immediatly.
They all settled down to rest, save Legolas who reposed on a crooked stool in the corner, watching over the Fellowship like a guardian angel. He was utterly still, and he seemed to draw the muted light from Gandalf's staff around him like a cloak, until even the tips of his pale hair glowed with celestially cerulean light. Gandalf fixed him with a keen eye, and the illusion died.
"You may as well get your rest now, Ringbearer. Elf though you may be, you never know when the chance to sleep will come again in this accursed land."
"I find myself fearful to sleep," admitted Legolas, and he fingered the bow across his knees. "But not just for the sake of orcs and goblins, but for the sake of dreams, and the strange magic of the enemy that I do not completely understand, and therefore can not risk to underestimate." He paused, seeming to consider carefully, and in a quieter voice said: "I have heard stories of him launching attacks through dreams, and through the mind, even though he is not face to face with you."
Gandalf nodded in understanding. "You consider your situation well, and I too share your thoughts. However, I highly doubt the Eye will reach you here. Even so, you are surrounded by those that would protect you from it. We are in danger of orcs and goblins, yes, but the Eye must wait until we are no longer in the heart of a great mountain, whose skin even He shall find hard to penetrate."
Legolas came down from his seat and found a place to rest, near Aragorn, with whom he founds himself always most comforted. He folded his pale hands over his breast, and slept with half-open eyes cast down.