III Lithe 1427 SR : Election

READING official documents had never been one of Will Whitfoot's pleasures in his office, but he worked his way conscientiously through the one column of the magnificent scroll he could understand, chewing on some of the long words with his eyebrows rising higher and higher, and looked at his unexpected visitors.

"What does the other column say?"

The Thain shrugged. "The same in Sindarin, Samwise tells me. I'd have asked Peregrin but he's up at Long Cleeve talking final wedding arrangements."

Beside him Master Saradoc nodded. "And Merry and Estella aren't back from Rivendell yet, so we came via Hobbiton to check. What do you think, Will?"

"I don't know what to think. It's quite a shock. But I can see some problems straight off, as I'm sure you can too. Did Sam say anything else?"

The Master's smile had a certain edge to it. "Quite a bit, actually. I think a fair summary would be that the King's being a ninnyhammer and there'll be real trouble if we can't get this voted down, or modified at least."

Will's eyes went wide. "He called the King a ninnyhammer? I've never heard him speak of him with anything but, well, loving respect, I'd call it."

"Me too. He called him Strider, as he always does, but ninnyhammer was in there, Will. And noodle and nodcock and a few more choice words. But his reasons were interesting. He said Strider was still grieving so much for poor Frodo, and feeling guilty about him for some reason, and so tired from this war he's been having with the Umbari, he's not thinking straight about the north he hasn't seen for too long."

The Thain nodded. "And that he also feels guilty for the Troubles we had, because his … what's that word, Sara?"

"Dúnedain?"

"Yes, them, that they didn't stop the Ruffians invading us. So he's trying to make up for it, over and above that very generous wergild thing they've been sending each year. And he said things about that ring they always say caused all the trouble too, but I didn't quite follow what he was on about there."

"Nor me." The Master frowned. "But as best I grasped it, he thinks it, or the memory of it, the echo of evil he called it … I don't know, feeds the guilt, somehow, like stirring embers with fresh kindling. More to the point, though, do you think he's right about this causing real trouble?"

One thing Will did understand after so many years in office was Shire politics, such as they were and had become, and he thought it through several ways before nodding decisively.

"Yes, he is. As things stand, if we hold a vote at the Midsummer Fair, as we're asked to, most folk will agree with this. The King's proposing it, after all, and it'll fit with our old ways of thinking — keeping ourselves to ourselves and all. But the margin will be a lot smaller than the Yeas expect, and the defeated Nays will be furious, with fair reason, I have to say. It'll make life very hard for the Bree trade, and in the South Farthing, and it'll cut back on who comes to the Fair, as well as stopping the wandering men who've been coming through, and welcome. Besides, what about men who are just using the East Road? Are they supposed to go round? How could they? And if your sons feel the same way as Sam, which I imagine they will, we'll have three angry Travellers, one the Master of the Hill and the others the heirs to Buckland and Thainship, as leaders of the discontented. And there'll be at least three, maybe five or six, senior family heads amongst them too, besides us, as well as almost all the Bounders. And it'll be about something we can't change ourselves, nor even appeal to the Lord Steward, because it'll be a King's Order. I'd call that real trouble, alright."

Both Thain and Master nodded, and the Thain spoke.

"That's about where we'd got to ourselves, Will. I've not had the chance to talk to Peregrin since the scroll came, but he heard of the idea some years back, when he went south to fetch those ents, and I've heard him and Merry speak of it several times with heavy hearts." He sighed. "And though I like those old ways of thinking well enough myself, as you know, I agree many in the South Farthing won't like it one little bit. Besides, what are we supposed to do by way of enforcement? Post a permanent muster of some sort? No-one will want that duty if the Bounders don't, which you're right they won't. And what's supposed to happen to anyone who sneaks in anyway? Men could swim the Brandywine almost anywhere, in summer at least, and the sort of penalties suggested in that scroll are nothing any hobbit would agree to unless there'd been a far worse offence than trespass."

The Master leaned forward, resting hands on thighs. "And there's so much we don't know, Will. One good question Sam asked is what the Lord Steward thinks. Is Halladan having problems with men we don't know about, so as he'd be glad of a blanket ban even if it meant him too? Or is he as surprised by it as we are? And if so, which way will he jump? Then, a second question, which wouldn't have occurred to me so fast, if at all, is what others will think — elves and dwarves and ents? Strictly speaking, you could say it's none of their business, but there are Dúnedain who come with elves to visit the huorn groves, and Sam was very clear those huorns have a right to be visited by any who want to honour them. And though it made my head hurt, he had an argument about anyone, even the King, telling elves and dwarves who they could or couldn't have with them when they crossed the Brandywine Bridge or Sarn Ford."

The Thain shivered slightly. "So he did. I made the mistake of saying I couldn't see it was anyone's business but ours, and Samwise gave me a look that would have withered barley before asking me if I was willing to explain to little Elanor why she couldn't see her Uncle Damrod anymore when her Uncle Glorfindel could come when he liked. She was on his lap, staring daggers." He shivered again. "And I don't know about you, but that's one lass I've no wish at all to cross. She bids fair to be the most beautiful hobbit I've ever seen, she already speaks to Samwise in Sindarin as often as Westron, and the groves adore her. I swear I've seen a tree in Sam's Wood bend down so she could swing on the lower branches. She thanked it after, too."

"And the mallorn." The Master nodded sharply. "Merry says as soon as Elanor could walk confidently and went off to look at it he saw it drop blossoms on her hair. And Pal's right — she did look daggers, and Sam told her she could write her own letter to go with his."

"She can write already?"

"Apparently."

"And Sam's writing a letter to tell the King he's being a ninnyhammer, presumably?"

"So we understood." The Master grinned. "I'd like to see it."

"Me too." Will whistled softly. "Will it have any effect, do you think?"

"Maybe not. Sam said he'd written to Strider two years back on the matter, saying it wasn't needful, but that the few bits of trouble we've had seemed to weigh with him out of all proportion."

"What trouble? Those fellows who tried to sneak in when the Bounders turned them away?"

"Yes. And the drunken tinker who fell over Lando Gooseberry and sent them both to the healers."

"But that was Lando's fault, fair and square. He never did look where he was going."

"Man hurts Hobbit, end of story, according to Sam." The Master looked gloomily at his feet. "When we left he was muttering about going south to make his feelings clear in person."

"Was he? And with Rose due in only a week or two?" A cascade of ideas went through Will's head, and he heaved himself to his feet, grabbing his stick and limping back and forth while he thought. Thain and Master knew better than to interrupt and talked quietly to one another until Will sat again, eyes bright but brow furrowed. "I don't know if either of you are going to like this much, but there's something else I've been meaning to tell you."

"What?" The voices were simultaneous, and Will took a breath.

"I'm not standing again this year. I've had enough." He held up a hand as mouths opened. "My knee hurts too much with all the travelling, I don't have anything like the appetite I used to, and frankly, I'm out of my depth as I've never been. Wills, and marriage and property contracts, and feasts, yes, I've always dealt with them fine, and the odd disputes that get as far as the Town Hole. But I'd not have got through that roil we had about Lotho's crooked contracts and the wills Ruffians destroyed without Frodo's advice, and when it comes to the dwarves that are quarrying up at Scary, and the ents, and men that ask for Midsummer Fair licences, and those Gondorians who want to look around — I've no more idea what I'm doing than a faunt, and at eighty-six that's not a comfortable feeling."

"Tell me." The Thain nodded. "Alright, Will — I'd wondered. I know your knee's been giving you a lot of gyp. But when you said nothing I thought you must have decided to serve for one more term."

"I thought about it, but no. Five terms is more than enough, and we need someone different. There's other things I'd like to be doing as well, to be honest, now cousin Speedwell's passed and her land's come to me." Both his guests nodded, appreciating that point. "What's held me up is I know full well who ought to follow me, but I've never seen how to do it. Until now."

The Master got there first. "You mean Sam? But he'll never—"

"Exactly." Will's rare interruption signalled his frustration. "He'd walk it. The single best-loved hobbit in the Shire, bar none. And he could do it, inside and out — he already is, in a way, since Frodo left him Lobelia's properties with his own and we convinced him it was up to him to do with them as he saw fit." They all remembered how hard that had been, and that only Sam's sense of obligation to Frodo had persuaded him. "He feeds what was Baggins money into the Bounders and relief work as well, you know, and always tells me he doesn't need it, though how he keeps up Bag End and the Bywater school on what's left I've no idea. And he's easy with all sorts — elves in their own language, and men and dwarves and ents and Tom Bombadil and who knows what. But suggest he might be Mayor, which I've done twice now, and he goes the colour of ripe mulberry and spouts ten yards of old Hamfast about what's proper and how he isn't gentry." Will shook his head. "Last time I said but he was Master of the Hill and what did he think that made him, and he gave me one of those looks of his and said he was Mr Frodo's gardener, looking after what he couldn't no more, and I'd no call to make needless suggestions. Then he went off to sit by that pool he dug in his gardens, puffing smoke-rings that clustered above his head, and I gave it up as a lost chance, cursing. But now …"

Thain and Master looked at one another, brows creasing, then at Will again. "But now?"

"Now there's a cause. Tie the vote on this proposal to the Mayoral vote, with Sam standing for election to oppose the King's idea. Beat his modesty down with the need he feels, and invoke young Elanor's right to meet her Uncles Whosit and Whatnot whenever and wherever she likes. Ask him, whatever he thinks of anything else, to find out for us what the Lord Steward thinks of it all." Will drummed his fingers. "And what we need's a contested vote. There hasn't been one since I beat Sordo Brockhouse thirty-five years back to win my first term, and a real choice'll perk everyone up. They'll argue themselves blue, which'll mean actually thinking this through properly and seeing the difficulties, then vote for Sam by three to one or better, so the only problem will be the bruised pride of whoever's got themselves voted down."

The Thain looked uncertain, as he often did these days, but the Master laughed so hard he slapped his knee before recovering his breath and beaming.

"Will, that is superbly sneaky. But who'd be silly enough to stand against Sam?"

Will gave a fox-smile. "But they won't be — they'll be standing for the King's proposal. Olo Proudfoot for one will be all in favour, and as loudly as ever, if only because it'd curb traffic on the road and he's never liked having strangers through. Still calls the groves unnatural as well, and says all the fair-haired bairns from 1420 and 1421 will grow up queer in the head, the old fool."

"Isn't he just? But he's what? Eighty-one? A bit old to go for a first term, Will."

"He won't think so if he gets wound up a bit. And it doesn't have to be him anyway, just someone who'll like the idea of the ban and get upset at a move to vote it down. It's the timing we need to get right." His fingers drummed again. "We're bound to announce this anyway" — he tapped the scroll — "and as soon as may be, so we do, and the talk starts and builds up a bit. Then I announce I'm against it, but not standing again on account of my knee, and how I don't think I could deal with the trouble there'll be if this gets passed, which is no more than the truth, and ask for nominations. That'll start a buzz and no mistake. And once we've got Olo or one of his mind standing, then we get Sam to stand, with you two as the nominating family heads, and away we go. And that's still going to be the tricky bit."

"Mmm." The Thain nodded thoughtfully. "Still, I quite like this plan, Will. It's a lot better than anything Sara or I could think of, and we certainly need to get some changes to this idea of the King's. But I know one thing for sure. Samwise Gamgee won't do a thing like this if his Rose is against it, but the other half of that is that if she's for it we'd be most of the way there. So I think what we need to do first off is have a quiet word with Tom and Lily Cotton."

Sam had not been best pleased when Saradoc had asked for his company going to Bree to talk to the Lord Steward, but as Rose had briskly told him she was fine and he'd be no use until he got over being cross with the King, he found himself on the road anyway. It was in any case not an unreasonable request, as he conceded to himself, and if Rose hadn't been so near her time he'd have wanted to go ; besides, the groves were always glad to see him, as he to visit them, so by the time they reached the Bridge Inn he'd argued himself out of any gloom and was quite enjoying the late spring weather.

Saradoc had sensibly left him to his silence most of the way, save in respectfully greeting huorns, but noticed his shifting mood, and from Whitfurrows they talked about the quarrying that was going on, and the rebuilding of Annúminas for which the great dwarf-carved blocks of Scary whitestone were destined. After they'd eaten, though, the Master steered him to the private room he kept at the Inn, bringing a bottle, and turned to more pressing matters.

"I'm sorry to touch on a sad memory, Sam, but can you tell me why the King feels guilty about Frodo? You all said you'd known he'd have to go with the elves to heal, and it was the only thing that could help. I can see the grief, of course — I've that myself, like all of us — but why guilt?"

Sam sighed. "It's complicated, Sara, and I've not seen Strider in more than seven years, so I'm only guessing anyway. But remember he was trained as a healer as well as a warrior and all, and he saved Mr Frodo and me from dying, after the eagles fetched us out of Mordor, as well as Merry after he stabbed the Witch-King and Pippin after that troll fell on him, only he couldn't help Mr Frodo enough. No-one could, not even Mr Elrond or Mr Gandalf, for it weren't his body but his heart and mind it scoured out, but Strider … well, he's like a Baggins himself, that way, so he feels he should of been able to anyway."

Saradoc nodded. "Alright, that makes fair sense. And leading folk you feel responsible for all of them anyway, so I can see how that must work in. What's the complicated bit?"

"Bits. One's the Troubles here. I don't know what all he said, but when he was Deputy Mayor Mr Frodo sent a lot of long letters south — details mostly, I expect, but I'll bet there was some steam about those executions at Sarn Ford. He hated that, and he did have a way with words when he was moved to use them. And we were all hurting badly over late 1419 and into 1420, so there'd have been some of that as well — all salt in the wound. Then two's that Strider didn't get to see him again before he left, what with one thing and another. Wouldn't of done no good, but he took it hard and felt like he failed Mr Frodo again even though he shouldn't of wanted to be there anyway, because then he'd have seen Mr Elrond again, who was his dad in every way that matters, and they'd already made their last farewells. Which is three, because even though the numbers don't work out, Mr Bilbo and Mr Frodo went in the Queen's place." Sam drank from his glass, swirling the wine. "How he thinks about that, and the way his joy and his sorrow are all mixed together, I can't imagine, but I don't suppose it helps none."

Saradoc whistled, nodding more slowly. "No indeed. Elves are puzzling enough, however delightful, but to be married to one who'll die of it … my word. I've heard Merry and Pippin talk about that, and the King's letter with the first wergild was certainly very apologetic. But I hadn't quite connected that with Frodo specifically having come back to find such a mess. And if the King felt bad already because he couldn't heal him as he wished …"

"All of that, and more. You remember Strider had Mr Frodo take part in his coronation?"

"I've heard the story. Carrying the crown, wasn't it?"

"That's right — Mr Frodo took it from Mr Faramir and gave it to Mr Gandalf to set on Strider's head. It was meant as a sign." Sam ran the Sindarin words in his memory, translating them. "By the labour of many I am come into my inheritance, he said, and Mr Frodo stood for them, living and dead." He drank again. "And he meant it rightly, did Strider, not least because he was grieving deeply himself, for Mr Boromir and Mr Halladan's brother Halbarad, who was killed at the Pelennor. Other Dúnedain, too, and Denethor and Théoden, and everyone. But it had all meant something at least, with Sauron gone and all the prophecies fulfilled at last. And then he had to start facing up to the fact that Mr Frodo wasn't going to make it, long before we realised it, and when we did … well, it just didn't seem fair, and it wasn't in the past, with the dead, but right here and still to be faced. So four's that it all got mixed up together in his head. Don't you see it, Sara? He desperately wanted to be able to set everything right for Mr Frodo, the way it had been before, and he couldn't, then he heard about all the Troubles here, and was upset all over again, and then Mr Frodo had to go, and Mr Elrond and Mr Gandalf with him. And the Lady, who's the queen's gammer."

"Ah!" Saradoc's eyes lit up. "And he still wants to, and protecting the Shire like this is one way, maybe the only way, he can do it." He whistled for a second time. "Now that makes sense, for all he's wanting to push water back under the bridge."

Despite himself Sam grinned, shaking his head. "Buckland saws! Trying to put spilt milk back in the jug's what you mean. But yes, that's what he's up to, I reckon. And the last few letters he's sent me have been distracted with all the trouble them Umbari have been causing, so that's probably stirred it all up too. That's one of the things I want to ask Mr Halladan about — Strider's letters was none too long and I don't rightly know how bad it is down there."

Saradoc frowned. "I hope not so bad, obviously, but does it matter to this?"

"It matters to what and how we ask him, Sara. Or tell him. If he's got a real battle facing him, which is what it sounded like to me, he'll be hating it and stupid busy besides, and telling him off would just put his back up. And upset him when he really don't need it, which I won't do nohow. But maybe he's fought it already, and if he has he'll likely be grieving a lot of someone elses too, but he might also feel he's sorted something out." Sam shrugged. "I don't know much about Gondor's history, but I saw the Umbari ships that got captured and I heard what folk had to say about them. Slavers as well as pirates, evidently." Saradoc shuddered. "And it's a family feud, you might say, going back about fifteen centuries, if I remember right, so it's had a long time to fester. But if it's been dealt with somehow, and especially if it's been dealt with properly at last, then there'll be no reason not to tell him flat out he's being a ninnyhammer."

During the long ride to Bree next day Saradoc's questions pulled from Sam a broad but clear picture of Gondor's ruinous civil war, the creation of Umbar as an independent province in rebellion, and the Black Númenórean influence that had made its corsairs so vile and intimate a foe of the shrinking kingdom. Their long and renewed ensnarement by Sauron was there too, for Sam had spent some of the idle days of waiting in the archives of Gondor, as well as in the Houses of Healing, and had been caught by the tale of the landing of Ar-Pharazôn the Golden and the great pillar of light that had stood on a headland above the city of Umbar before Sauron had cast it down. And though Sam wasn't aware of it, Saradoc's already profound respect for him grew steadily, for though he took a general view, and was wholly sincere in saying — many times — that he knew little of Gondor's history, what he meant was that he didn't remember all the dates and titles and speeches by kings or lords the way Halladan would. But like any self-respecting hobbit he had the family relationships that had started the disaster exact to many generations, and though the horrors of the civil war and the ruin of Osgiliath appalled him, he understood in a manner Sara would bet the learned chroniclers hadn't what he called the way of evil.

"It's just giving in and giving up, Sara, very sensible and all wrong. I never got pushed past breaking, though there were days I could see how it would be, but Mr Frodo got dragged there at the last, and if a Baggins can be, anyone can. Sauron wasn't just malice, he was armies and murder and burning, just like the Ruffians. Buckland held out, but what if they'd got in? And not hundreds, but thousands, quick to beat and kill anyone who said anything? Or you could agree to do what you're told, whatever you're told, and life will get better again."

"Except."

"Oh yes. But you see how it is. And from what I read, the Black Númenóreans didn't blame Sauron for what happened, only Eru and the Valar, and sometimes their king. When you've got it all wrong as badly as that, admitting it's like killing yourself, and most won't. Don't, anyroad. Look at Ted Sandyman or that Bracegirdle lawyer — any of those we banished, really. But same as we came to the end of any patience and struck them from their family books, so Strider's all out of patience with the Umbari, I reckon. And with Men, that means killing, not banishing, which he'll hate as much as ever Mr Frodo did, but he'll force himself to all the same. And it's always hard when what's right and what's needed aren't in harness. You find that out the first time you kill, and he's had to do a lot more of it than any of us can begin to imagine."

The sheer scope of Sam's experience amazed Saradoc as much as the clear certainty in what he did see fit to say, and he was grateful for the history lesson when they met Halladan in the Prancing Pony. The Lord Steward had retired early to his rooms for the night, but only to catch up on correspondence, and welcomed them with a slight wariness that dissolved when Sam asked for news of the troubles in the south. As they ate Barliman Butterbur's good food he poured wine and told them what he knew.

"Truth to tell, I'm very relieved. Ever since he took the throne the King's being trying to sign a treaty with Umbar and never got anywhere. And since the resettlement of Harondor got under way and the Umbari started to raid again, it's gone from bad to worse. He'd have gone after them sooner, if he could, I think, but Umbar city is a stout place, and putting an army in the field takes more than food and weapons. So it dragged on until it really couldn't any more. He was as angry and frustrated as I've ever known him about the whole thing, but in the event it went better than anyone expected. I don't have much detail but the city was taken, and its walls have been razed." Halladan hesitated for a moment, then his lips firmed and his voice flattened. "It's a bad tale. Their slaves revolted and, well, they died, pretty much, along with a lot of the slaves, poor people, but the result is that Umbar's under Gondor's control again, no longer a threat, and everyone's happy about that."

Dealing with a final mouthful, Sam grunted. "Losses?"

"Inevitably, but far fewer than feared and none he named."

"Don't mean he's not grieving for them, but alright. As good as can be, then, given how it was?"

"I think so."

"Right, then." Sam laid down his knife and fork on a very clean plate and shook his head. "So what do you think of this ban on Men entering the Shire he's dreamed up meanwhile?"

Halladan blinked as several complicated emotions flickered across his face. "You don't approve of it?"

"Of course we don't, Mr Halladan." Sam sighed. "He's being a complete nodcock, and if I can guess why it still don't make a lick of sense. Unless you know otherwise? Are you in favour, for any reason?"

Halladan's voice became at once stiff with affront and yet somehow intensely curious. "No I am not, Lord Perhael, and if you can guess why the King should choose this course I should be glad to understand your thinking."

Some pungent moments later Halladan was thoughtfully topping up the hobbits' glasses so he could honourably fill his own.

"That's … very persuasive indeed, my Lord." Sam flapped a dismissive hand the Lord Steward ignored. "The King has urged me to watch the Shire in the Palantír far more than I have felt necessary, and the more so as his own attention was claimed elsewhere. And you are certainly right that he grieves the absence of Lord Iorhael, and of the Lords Elrond and Mithrandir. But though he is my kin I had not put it together as you just have, not by a long road. Leithor i-Guruthos indeed."

"Tchaa." Sam shook his head again. "Don't you start. Having elves at it is bad enough, when all I want's a bit of advice about elanor or niphredil. And it's plain as mud anyway, once you think about it. Banning his own Messengers from the East Road? Where's the sense in that?"

"He did suggest a track be made to the north, for Messengers going to Mithlond or such Men as had reason to journey to the Ered Luin." Halladan's voice was dry and Sam's reply scornful.

"Route wagons through the bog above Long Cleeve? He's not thinking at all, no more than a Baggins in a mood." Halladan blinked again, several times. "So the question is, how do we put a stop to it without hurting him more than we must?"

"We have to hold the vote he asks for at the Fair, Sam." Saradoc shrugged. "Will Whitfoot thinks it'll go against the proposal, so long as we can get folk to think it through, and so do Pal and I, but we'll have to wait and see how it tallies."

"They'd better think it through is all I can say."

"Are many in favour, Master Saradoc?"

"We've not announced it yet — Will's doing that today, I think — but some will be, yes. The ones who want yesterday back and nothing they don't already know all about. I don't think they'll persuade a majority, but we're going to have to make the case against loud and clear."

"Not hard to do."

"Even so, Sam. Tell me what it is from your point of view, my Lord, if you will."

Halladan sat back. "Difficulty of enforcement and the obstacle to trade, primarily. I don't have the resources to strengthen patrols round your Bounds by much, and though most folk using the East Road are elves or dwarves, there are men involved in the trade through Mithlond. This would come close to forbidding that, in practical terms anyway, when we've been trying to develop it. And there's the question of the spur road from Sarn Ford — is that in the South Farthing or its Bound?"

"Bound at first, then it crosses in. Waymoot's certainly in the West Farthing."

"So by rights that way would become forbidden to men too." Halladan shook his head. "Worse and worse."

"So there isn't anything it solves for you that we don't know about?"

"No. It's true there have been some who've come north I could do without — that tinker who caused all the fuss likes his drink rather too much, and there's some trying to peddle shoddy wares as well as honest traders. The wealthier folk who just come to see the long lost north are a bother too, as they must be to you, but an outright ban is taking a smith's hammer to a nut."

Saradoc grinned. "We tell them clearly at the Bridge there's no man-sized shelter or beds to hire for the next forty leagues. Mostly they stay a night or two at the Inn buying folk drinks and ride to Stock or Whitfurrows, or round Buckland a bit. The extra coin's welcome enough, especially with so much more to buy coming up from the south."

Halladan smiled. "So I've heard. And here too. But some of them go on to Hobbiton all the same, I gather. It's one of the things the King gets angry about."

"There's no call." Sam shook his head. "Noodles, most of them. But I can understand wanting to see the mallorn."

"They don't bother you?"

"They don't recognise me." Sam grinned. "Why should they?"

"Lord Gilminas did."

"Him? He was sweet, in a daft way. Rosie got the door, and he goes to one knee in the rain and asks if he has the honour of addressing Lady Perhael before giving her some very wet flowers he'd bought in the village. She was quite taken with him, and my Elanorella thought he was wonderful silly."

"And you?"

"I didn't mind him. His verses, now, them I could have done without — bad rhymes and no tale at all, though that was probably a mercy. But he meant well for all he hadn't the least sense. The mallorn was shedding and he wanted to buy a fallen leaf — offered me five gold pieces, I ask you! I gave him two leaves and told him to give the money to the Houses of Healing when he got back."

Halladan was half-smiling, half-frowning. "I hadn't heard that bit. And I don't think the King has, either — he was furious about someone pestering your wife in her own home."

"And how does he know about it at all, eh? Looking in that Palantír? He should look more carefully at what he sees, then. Rosie wasn't pestered, nor upset, no more than I was." Sam sighed. "He should calm down some now this Umbari thing's been sorted out, and I'll add something to my letter. But if you're bespeaking him, tell him to talk to Mr Gilminas himself before he does any more shouting about it. He'll see straight off he's harmless. Still …"

A thoughtful look came to his face, and after a moment while Halladan refilled glasses Saradoc cocked his head.

"A penny for them, Sam?"

"I was thinking I'd let being cross with Strider get in the way of some common sense. If he's been looking in on us, he'll have seen there is something that needs fixing. Two things. One's them as really are just passing through, and need food and a bed for the night. We could do with wayhouses for them at Waymoot and Frogmorton, as well as Michel Delving and the Bridge. And one in the South Farthing somewhere. And two's that I know keeping the converted smial for official use has been a help, but those that come to Hobbiton still have to put their heads down somewhere — the stables at the Green Dragon and Ivy Bush, mostly. And we don't want a whole lot of them coming at once, cluttering the place up. So suppose we had, what, two or three beds at the smial that were available, but they had to say in advance they was coming, and couldn't stay but one night?"

"That's an idea. How would it work, though?"

"I'm not sure, but … I was just going to tell Strider flat out no, it wasn't possible, but suppose we tried suggesting changes? It's usually better to tell someone Yes, but rather than No, if you can."

Halladan nodded. "Indeed. You mean to make it a ban, but not an absolute one?"

"Something like that. So what we need's a list of the changes. Then the vote should be a choice between with all of them or without any of them."

"Yes!" Saradoc raised his glass. "That's smart thinking, Sam. Can we make that list now?"

"Don't see why not. Let me mull a moment."

Halladan had paper to hand, and trimmed his quill as he watched Sam run through the fingers of both hands and sigh.

"It's going to be more exceptions than ban, but there's no helping it. Let's start at the top — it shouldn't apply to the King himself, nor the Lords Steward of Gondor and Arnor, nor their close kin. Merry'd have a fit if Lady Éowyn came north and wasn't to be let in, I'd have one if Mr Faramir came, and keeping you out, Mr Halladan, don't make any sense at all. We'd all have fits if he and Lady Arwen came to the Bridge and stopped. And we'd best add the princes of Gondor, as well, so as not to slight Mr Imrahil and his family, supposing he'd ever want to come this way. Are there any princes of Arnor?"

Halladan grinned. "Only you and Peregrin as the Ernil i Periannath. Though we might get round to it some day, I suppose."

"Tchaa. And any future princes of Arnor, then, so it's consistent. And then Éomer King and his family. They don't have princes either but there's the Marshals of the Mark — Merry wouldn't like keeping one of them out. And King Brand, I suppose. I can't think he'd come this far west but if he did we'd not keep him out, and his folk were very polite in Minas Tirith, asking after Mr Bilbo."

Halladan nodded thoughtfully. "I remember that. So we have the kings and close royal families of Arnor and Gondor, Rohan, and Dale, with the Princes and Lords Steward of Arnor and Gondor and Marshals of the Mark. Who else?"

"Them as wear any of those Kings' uniform or bear a personal warrant — Rangers, Messengers, soldiers, Rohirrim serving up here, those engineers up at Annúminas who visit the quarries at Scary, and anyone they choose to give a warrant when there's need." The quill scratched over the paper. "Then there's men here who are in Bree's Shire trade."

"Mmm. The population here's growing, though, and anyone can say they're hoping to trade."

Saradoc nodded. "Men born in the Breelands, then."

"Bill Ferny was born in Bree, and he was a stinker. And there'll be honest incomers too. How about men who've lived in Bree at least two years and the hobbits on the Bree Council will vouch for as honest?"

"That might work." Halladan made a note. "What of men passing through on the Roads, though?"

"They stay on the Roads and use the roadhouses. Else they need permission."

"From?"

"Master, Thain, or Mayor, of course." Sam grinned at the look on Saradoc's face. "Or whoever they choose to deal with it."

"It's all very well you grinning, Sam, but that could be a lot of work I don't have time for."

"So let's put it back where it belongs. We want the honest traders, not the rogues, and decent craftsmen and bards, not slapdash ones, so if they come from Gondor they need something with the King's seal to say they're honest and skilled as they claim. They can show it to the Bounders at the Bridge or Sarn Ford and get a note saying they've done so and can trade or sing in the Shire."

There was a gleam in Halladan's eye. "I wouldn't mind putting some of the work back on the King, I must say. And Éomer King's seal if they're from Rohan, King Brand's for Dale, and mine if they come from within Arnor?"

"Works for me. And as for them as just want to gawk at the mallorn, I don't know. Though … what if we asked Mr Butterbur to keep the list of places at the converted smial? They have to come here first. Then once a week a Messenger drops it off at the Bridge, and if their names and descriptions are on it properly they can collect a pass from the Bridge minders when they come. I don't suppose Mr Butterbur would mind well-paying guests for longer."

"And I could make sure someone had a look at them as well." Halladan thought about it. "That might work too. Let's see — those mortal men and women neither of royal nor princely person in the Kingdoms of Gondor, Arnor, Rohan, and Dale, nor duly wearing a King's colours, nor bearing a royal warrant, nor a warrant of the Breelands Council, may enter the Shire outside the East and Sarn Ford Roads only with the written approval of the Lord Steward of Arnor and the leave of Master, Thain, or Mayor."

"Now that's neat." Sam nodded approvingly. "Very neat. Sounds nice and forbidding, but means we can let in who we want. But that's the version for Strider. For the Shire vote we'll want the list as long as possible, so anyone voting for a complete ban knows they're voting to keep out Strider and you and Merry's sword-sister and Mr Éomer who's been sending us the wergild and the men working with the dwarves at Scary and all the men who helped with the Ruffians and partners in the Bree Trade and the tinker they bought a needle or a bit of ribbon from last month and the bard whose song they couldn't stop humming."

Saradoc laughed. "For the Moots, yes. And you know, Sam, I'm starting to look forward to them, if only to see Merry, Pippin, and you explaining it all."

"Me?"

"Yes of course, you. How many hobbits have even heard of Dale, never mind met its king's emissaries?"

"I'll be minding the bairns once the new one arrives, Sara, not traipsing about the Shire. And if we're setting off bright and early tomorrow, which we are, I'd best finish my letter to Strider and get my head down. I'll give it you in the morning, Mr Halladan, for the next Messenger." Sam smiled. "There'll be an enclosure, too — Elanorella's letter."

"She's writing already?"

"A bit wobbly still, but she has been from a year back. Sindarin too."

"Remarkable. May I ask what she has to say?"

"Tells him he's being a ninnyhammer, of course. Has a good question for him, too."

When the door had closed behind him Halladan let out a breath and looked at the Master. "Dealing with Samwise is something of an education, I find. I cannot recall anyone ever calling Aragorn a ninnyhammer before."

"Isn't it just? He's an amazing hobbit. But what he doesn't know, and you should, is that Will Whitfoot has decided to stand down as Mayor. He's served five terms, and his knee's never recovered from the injury he suffered in the Lockholes, during the Troubles."

"Ah, I'm sorry to hear it. Who will replace him?"

"That's another thing Sam doesn't know, but Pal, Will, and I are determined he will."

A smile spread slowly across Halladan's face. "Are you now? That sounds wise of you. Do tell."

Saradoc did, and if he regretted the lateness of his night when he had to rise before dawn, he was very satisfied all the same.

Aragorn was uneasily aware that he wasn't being altogether reasonable. To have reduced Umbar was a bone-deep satisfaction stretching back to his service as Thorongil, who had all too often had to fight their corsairs, and encompassing the frantic ride they had forced on him in the War of the Ring, with all its consequences. But though in the end the butcher's bill had been a fraction of what he'd feared, the campaign had been a horror all the same, from the burned-out settlements in Harondor they'd had to pass, giving a grim reality to the news he'd been receiving of Umbari raids, to the final unexpected outcome.

The army he'd raised with help from Faramir, Imrahil, and Éomer had been large enough to overrun all the outer settlements of Umbar easily, securing its farmland as a dozen navy ships blockaded the Neck to forestall both escape and resupply. His own casualties had come taking the outer trenchworks and fortifications of the city, but thereafter it had been a gesture that had worked, not arms, and the mystery of it plucked at him. Where the great tower of Ar-Pharazôn had once stood, on the headland beyond the city, Sauron had built a black tower, as tall and in every way opposite, drinking light rather than giving it. Many of his men had looked up at it with fear and loathing, but Gimli and the dwarves he'd brought with him had just stared and spat aside.

"If that thing was built with any of his power, it would have fallen down, wouldn't it?"

"I'd think so. The Morannon and Barad-dûr certainly did."

"Right."

And without further ado the dwarves had swapped axes for sledgehammers and set off up the headland while he set about investing Umbar completely from the land, and mapping the walls he would have to assail. But only two days later Gimli invited him and Legolas to come up to the black tower, where rubble was piled about the base and a great treetrunk had been set up in a cradle to swing forward when the rope holding it was cut. This Gimli asked Legolas to do with his knife, and when he did and the trunk slammed into and went clean through the base of the tower, the whole thing had shuddered, tottered, and collapsed safely away from everyone watching, into the sea.

"Shoddy work all round," Gimli had observed with scorn. "Could have come down in any gale, weak as it was."

The remaining rubble and stones from the base had swiftly followed the rest into the sea, clearing the site down to the remaining white foundation-stones of Ar-Pharazon's tower, and two nights later he had been roused to be told of cries and the clash of arms coming from the city. Fires had started, painting the low clouds lurid orange, and an hour before dawn the gates had been thrown open to let a few staggering figures forth. Hearing what they had to say he'd let scouts enter, and as the sun had risen followed them himself, with Éomer and Imrahil, to find bloody horror. Everywhere Gondorian, Haradri, Khandian, and Rhûnic slaves had been cut or battered down, but the Umbari had been torn apart, often literally — even women and children ; every ship in the dock and more than half the city had burned. Barely a thousand Umbari survived, barricaded in basements or inner rooms, and perhaps twice that many slaves, all dazed beyond speaking. The pyres had burned for ten days, spreading their sweet stink everywhere as dwarves and men had razed the city wall and the ghastly temple to Sauron in the main square, shattering the blocks, and the whole place had been sluiced with pumped seawater.

Former slaves had been treated so far as he and the army healers were able and those who had homes to go to released with whatever assistance he could provide, while those who hadn't had been brought back to Minas Tirith to be granted compensation and found a new life. The surviving Umbari men, with those women former slaves had identified as cruel, awaited justice of some kind in a camp in South Ithilien the rest of the women and children had stayed in Umbar to work its fields, with a newly installed garrison to watch over them. Some engineers, and several navy ships had also stayed, their commanders and crews intent on making the port what it had been in Gondor's glory, a great southern base. And all of that was good, very good, despite the horror, and the work entailed, but he still had dreams of what he'd seen that not even finding himself again in Arwen's arms had assuaged. So he'd thrown himelf into the paperwork that had inevitably accumulated in his absence, though Faramir had kept everything running smoothly, and allowed his impatience with ossified protocol and the self-importance of minor nobles freer reign than was quite wise, however satisfying and expedient in clearing his desk. With that done he'd spent long days in the Houses of Healing and elsewhere helping the former slaves, and despite craving Arwen's company too many evenings and nights wandering the city incognito, hood up, accompanied only by two Dúnedain guards, listening in inns and night-market to the stories being told of the campaign and the fate of Umbar, for the most part with quiet pain but once or twice with cutting corrections that had folk nodding respectfully and shuffling away.

Then Elladan and Elrohir arrived unexpectedly from Lothlórien, summoned, he strongly suspected, by Arwen, and over a long evening plied him with sufficient wine to spill out the horror and his grief, before putting him to bed and dreamless sleep with sweet songs. The morning after they'd been unnaturally tolerant, letting him nurse his aching head without teasing before briskly taking him off to weapons practice and sweating it out of him, then steering him via a bath to lunch. A number of favorite dishes were on offer, and by the time he'd eaten rather more than usual he'd pulled himself together enough to apologise to Arwen for being a lout, but she only smiled.

"You were in pain and distress, my heart, and I can hardly blame you for not wishing to speak to me of the horrors you had seen. But now you begin to be more at peace there is a letter I have kept from you this while, for Halladan advised me it should not come to you until you were so."

She slid it from under a side-plate and handed it to him, the familiar hand a surprise.

"From Sam?"

"With an enclosure from young Elanor, I believe."

"And I wasn't to … oh. Bother. They must not approve of the ban I proposed."

"Not your wisest plan, Estel."

"Halladan doesn't like it either, whatever he's said to you."

"No, I know." Aragorn scowled. "But I'm not having Rose and Hobbiton bothered by fools and knaves. Nor any perian crushed by drunken tinkers."

"Why don't you try reading the letter, my heart?"

"Then there will be the joy of Sam's Sindarin."

"Elanor's too, we may now hope."

"Really? Sindarin? She's only, what? Six?"

"Even so. Read."

The twins watched with bright eyes as Aragorn unfolded the letter, began to read, and stopped, eyebrows rising.

"Aloud, Estel, if you please."

He scowled at his brothers again, but as they'd read it anyway it wasn't worth fighting over, and a little penance would do him good. "If you insist."

"We do."

"Let's see, then. Dear Strider, I was going to tell you you're being a ninnyhammer, but my Elanorella's done it for me and added a very good question. If you mean to push on with this ban, you'd best have an answer for her she'll accept — and isolating us as an apology to Mr Frodo won't be it. Ouch." He found his fingers drumming on the table and stilled them, then sighed. "He's sharp, isn't he?"

"Samwise is an exceptional being."

"Who wrote more than one paragraph."

Aragorn took a breath, returning his attention to the letter. "Oh, and if you're going to peer into Palantíri you'd best look more carefully. Mr Gilminas did no harm … um, however in the sum of things it may be that his head moves up and down?"

Elladan and Elrohir looked at one another, grinning delightedly before Elladan dropped into Westron. "For all he's a nodcock."

"Ah. Right." Aragorn shook his head, but a smile tugged at his mouth. "Did no harm for all he's a nodcock. Rose and Elanorella liked him. So before you go getting all bebothered, talk to Mr Gilminas yourself, if he's back. You'll see in a minute he's harmless, except for his verse — not a … adhesion? Oh, patch, it must be, not a patch on old Mr Bilbo's, but he made Elanorella laugh. Huh. It didn't look to me as if he made Rose laugh much — she seemed startled out of her wits. Still, I could talk to the nodcock, I last paragraph's more serious."

"It has all been serious, Estel."

"Anger may colour how you see in a Palantír as much as or more than how you hear face to face."

"Mmm. Anyway, he goes on, I'm sorry to learn the Umbar campaign was what Mr Halladan called a bad tale, but I'm glad it was mostly someone else's bad tale, and that it's over. I'll hope also that with that settled you and Lady Arwen can plan on coming north at last, and if you think we'll let you stop at the Brandywine Bridge, think again! I'll write more when we've held the vote you've wished on us, and a nice mess that's going to be, but I'll tell you now you won't like the answer no matter how much you'd like to put all the spilt milk back in the jug. Ouch, again. But we'll see. I've not time to give any proper news tonight, but we're all well, and Rose due any day now. She asked me to send her respects, and I do, with my love. Elanor just asked me to send her letter. That's it, save the signature. Alas, I am in disgrace, then."

"So it seems, my heart. And what does Elanor have to say?"

Aragorn opened the second paper with some trepidation but immediately laughed before sobering and frowning. "Dear King Strider, Per-ada says you mean well, wanting the Shire to be safe for Periannath, even though you're setting about it like a ninnyhammer. But I want to know why, if the Shire's for Periannath, you want to tell me I can't ever invite Uncle Damrod to tea again? Your loyal but cross and puzzled servant, Elanor Gamgee."

The twins were grinning again.

"Per-ada?"

"Sam-dad."

"Marvellous."

Aragorn took another deep breath. "Who is Uncle Damrod?"

"Damrod son of Finrod, of the White Company."

"He was among those who met Sam and Frodo with Gollum at Henneth Annûn, and went north with Halladan."

"We spoke with him at Sam's wedding, where he represented Faramir as well as himself, and it was clear they had become friends."

"Ah. That Damrod."

"And Sam-dad is right yet again — it is an excellent question."

"That he has answered correctly twice."

"Though neither will satisfy Elanor. Actually, Estel, you should go north not least to meet her. That she is a beautiful child, you have seen, and in person she is enchanting."

"And more. She is beloved of trees."

"As of all who meet her, not least Glorfindel."

"Who with us attended her fifth birthday party last year, and says she would seem to be the first mortal to be born an Elf-friend since Nirnaeth Arnoediad."

Aragorn blinked. "You're serious?"

"Glorfindel named Rose an Elf-friend on that day."

"Not only for her cooking."

"As Daernaneth named Sam, some years back."

"Not that he quite understood she had."

"And who were the last couple of Elf-friends among the Secondborn?"

"We did tell you."

"But you were distracted."

"I'm listening now. Born an Elf-friend?"

"So we deem."

"Tinúviel i-Periannath."

Aragorn recovered his jaw and saw Arwen's wide smile. "Do you think that, my love?"

"How should I know while the business of Gondor ties us in the south, and forbids a meeting? But did not Mithrandir deem Samwise to have played the part of Adar? As Tinúviel's daerion, perhaps?"

"Daernaneth set somewhat of the Vanyar loose also, to judge from the golden hair."

"And in Elanor's case at least the power of mind."

"Unless that is Yavanna Kementári and the grace of the Valier."

"As well it might be, given that brick."

"Half-brick."

"What half-brick?"

"The one upon which Mithrandir destroyed the ring of cursed Curunír."

"That now shines with the grace of Aulë and Yavanna."

"And that Sam has set upon a post by the road near Bag End."

"We did tell you."

"But you were distracted."

"I'm listening now. And increasingly bebothered."

They both grinned, speaking in unison. "Why so, King Strider?"

Aragorn flapped a hand at Arwen, who was laughing. "Because though Sam's twice right, and I admit it freely, I wasn't only trying to atone for Frodo. I know the Shire's changed already and that can't be stopped, nor should it be, but some of those changes are strong attractions for a lot of people — Elves and Dúnedain go for the trees, surely, but with the wergild and the growing trade, the Shire is also gaining a reputation for wealth. And slowly but surely the population of Arnor is growing, but a lot of those going north are poorer rather than richer. Those of Enedwaith who are being pulled into Tharbad are very much poorer, including Dunlendings, and some are going on into Minhiriath and up to Bree and Annúminas, offering welcome labour. The garrison at Tharbad asks questions, and those who would use the bridge have to work there for a month and show themselves honest and sober, but rogues and worse will get through. And sooner or later I'll be taking the Court north to Annúminas, with all that entails. So I want protection for the Shire that will work in place as soon as possible, so it's strongly established before that strength is needed — which it will be."

"That is all true."

"And you were going to battle."

"Full of contingency."

"But an absolute ban is still unworkable, Estel."

"And now you have more time and less fear."

"So you must talk to the Periannath about what will work."

"Except that Sam is going to save you the trouble, we deem."

"So all you have you do is listen to him."

"Especially in Sindarin."

Aragorn gave in to the shared laugh, feeling the better for it though still deeply concerned. "Yes, yes. I do understand your joy in that game. And he is as wise as periain come, which is saying something. I hear you about young Elanor as well, and I'll speak to Glorfindel when he's next where the northern Palantír is. But as you agree, my fears are not groundless and whatever happens has to address them seriously. Do you two have immediate plans?"

Elladan shrugged. "Sister?"

"As you will."

"Daeradar will have left for Imladris by now, so there, probably."

"Then do me a favour and go by the Shire? See Sam and the others and make sure they understand? You were going to Pippin's wedding anyway, weren't you? I am sorry to be missing that — three out of three, now. And I'll write to Sam and Elanor, of course, but I'd be glad if you were on hand to answer their questions. And frankly, I'd be interested in a closer report of whatever debate the Periannath have over this than they will or the Palantír can supply. I don't have much feel for what's going on in the Shire, in itself — life seems to have settled down after that extraordinary business with the Onodrim and huorns, but they must be changing things and I only ever see the groves from the outside. Inside it's like they are when they move, except" — he paused as thoughts suddenly tumbled — "except for Sam, Rose, and Elanor in Eryn Edlothiad. As I look at Bag End most often it hadn't struck me, but after your news I wonder whether something between them and the Palantír overcomes the huorns' shadow, or if they permit me to see her."

"Interesting."

"From Fëanor to Daernaneth is but a sideways step."

"And one more from Daernaneth to Elanor."

"Or Sam."

"But not Rose, exactly."

"No. But to those huorns, for each received a grain from her garden."

"They did, didn't they? Ask them, if you will? And one of the Onodrim? But what I was saying was there has to be deep change happening there as everywhere, and though I am determined the Shire shall remain a Free Land under its own governance, I need to understand what is passing there better than I do. Halladan's been as helpful as he can, but he's very busy with Annúminas and the other watch towers, and though it's clear the Periannath like him they don't forget he's my Lord Steward."

"Whereas we are of no account?"

"Whereas you are Periannathellyn, or will be when Sam thinks of it."

They laughed. "Excellent."

"A marvellous bribe."

"Though how you expect us to understand the politics of the Periannath is a mystery."

"Those of the Edain are bad enough."

Arwen laughed. "You'd manage those well enough if you bothered, and I have gifts for Rose and Elanor to smooth your way, as well as our gifts for Peregrin and his bride. But you might ask Samwise something for me also, for I have wondered if he dreams of Frodo only as he remembers him, or if he has been offered any glimpse of him as he is now."

There was a long moment of silence.

"Now there is a thought."

"We tried to look from Emyn Beraid, but though the Palantír will show the Blessed Realm and the light, it would not show us Tol Eressëa."

"Trust you." But Aragorn's heart had leaped. "Did Glorfindel try?"

"He does not go to Emyn Beraid."

"And if he has dreamed of Tol Eressëa, he has not spoken of it to us."

"So we will certainly ask Sam." They exchanged a glance. "Though he would surely have said if he knew."

"And as he will certainly ask, tell us, Estel, when are you two now hoping to come to Arnor?"

Aragorn shrugged. "I'd like to say two years, but it'll probably be three or four. I hope no longer, but though the way is now open to forge a treaty with the Haradrim and have all settled here at last, it will take a while. I've already sent an embassy, but I don't expect to hear from them for several months and there'll have to be visits in both directions. Besides, Annúminas is in no state yet to deposit the Court upon it, and though the dwarves are working wonders they had little enough to start with."

"Well enough. But do not tarry once you need not, Estel."

"You are in sore need of renewing your own acquaintance with the Periannath."

"As Mithrandir would tell you."

"And the Court would greatly benefit from some experience of the wild north."

"Now that is a point. But they're still fussing about all the protocol I've just thrown out, and what they will be like for the first year in Arnor I dread to think."

But it was a thought Aragorn found sustaining in the week after Elladan and Elrohir had departed for the Shire, while more than one lord and functionary had kittens over the King's acceptance of oaths of fealty to the Citadel and City Guards from Haradrim and Rhûnim among the former slaves. Gradually their exotic faces and accented but fluent Sindarin and Adûnaic became familiar, and as he observed with pleasure, the city folk, after some interested caution, decided they approved. The day after another Haradri, who had been a great Umbari lord's head cook, was accepted into the Guild of Kitchen Masters, he and Arwen celebrated at a feast given by the Commander of the Citadel Guard that was so subtly spiced and blended it was a joy to summon and toast the newly hired Master of the Citadel Kitchens.

Sam had, as promised, spent the weeks after Merry-lad's birth looking after his Elanorella, Frodo-lad, and Rose-lass, while the sturdy newborn, already bidding fair to resemble his namesake in stature, was tended by his mother. Elanor kept a stern eye on Frodo-lad while Sam was occupied with the now rapidly mobile Rose-lass, and they all helped him with solemn attention in the kitchen while he explained each step he took in cooking dishes by request. About four days in he had been joined for a happy week by an excited Merry and Stella, bubbling with their time in Rivendell, where Merry had been reading up on calendar reckoning and herblore both were infatuated with Merry-lad, but when banished from Rose's side joined them all in the gardens with toad and hedgehogs. Sam's favourite times, though, came in Eryn Edlothiad, playing with the bairns in the golden-green late-spring shade of the rustling chestnuts, gathering the bounteous mushrooms that sprang for yards along the bank of the Water, and after he had made sure the huorns didn't mind a small deadwood fire, frying them up with butter and onions and diced bacon and a variety of herbs. After the children — including a dozen from the village who had mysteriously joined them as the aroma spread — were satiated, he took pity on the watching, drooling adults and did another large panful, Elanor dishing up plates with intent concentration before eating herself, settling into his arms, and asking guilelessly for a story.

Sam promptly began the tale of Pippin's entirely Tookish courtship of the beautiful Miss Diamond North-Took — a source of gossip so widespread that all had heard about it, but in this telling shot through and burnished with insights. Pippin and Diamond were sixth and seventh cousins, once removed either way, so the brothers Ferumbras II and Bandobras Bullroarer came into it, and the slow sundering of Tooks and North-Tooks. Being Thain's heir was never an easy thing when it came to marrying the attitudes of Thain Paladin and Mistress Eglantine to the northern line upped the burden by some way ; and Pippin's great height had been more of an obstacle than an attraction for Miss Diamond, over whom he towered alarmingly. But to Long Cleeve's amazement and amusement he had persevered, appealing to her feelings with fine flowers and sweet song, her stomach with receipts and food ranging from fresh game to delicious Gondorian fruits, and her mind with discussions of the Thainship and what he hoped to be able to do when his turn came and once he had won her heart he had swept away his parents' doubts with his sheer joy. So there was to be a new joining of Tooks on First Lithe, held neither in Tuckborough nor Long Cleeve but at the Fairground on the White Downs, and the renewed contact between all Tooks was already brewing friendships and increased trade. The lesson Sam chose to draw from the tale involved seeing for yourself rather than believing old prejudices and not jumping to conclusions, and the adults who'd stayed to listen smiled, recognising the underlying thrust and carrying it into the discussions that now dominated every evening in the Green Dragon and Ivy Bush alike

The King's Proposal had taken everyone by surprise, and (much as Will Whitfoot had predicted) some had been quick to welcome it while most were still ruminating. The Troubles were recent enough for every tween and adult to find merit in the idea of the Shire for hobbits and hobbits alone — saving that, as Tom Cotton pointed out more than once, that wasn't what the Proposal actually suggested, only a ban on Men entering that wouldn't do trade any good at all. The arguments had become quite involved and thoughtful when the Mayor's second announcement, with the call for nominations for the election at Midsummer, alongside the vote on the Proposal, brought them all to a swift boil. Coming round to explain his decision in person Will had been unusually blunt about the problems he thought there would be if the Proposal passed, and uncommonly sharp in answering Olo Proudfoot's predictable (and lengthy) complaint about anyone who couldn't see it was the best thing that could happen. Then he'd sighed.

"I'm sorry, Olo, that was rude of me. Forgive me — my knee's giving me a lot of gyp today. But I still say you're speaking nonsense, once again. Maintaining the East and Sarn Ford Roads is in the Shire charter, and of course there's more traffic on it these days — from which we all benefit."

"I don't call endless noise and fuss and trouble a benefit, Will, nor having campsites scattered along the road. We need no foreigners and we'll be well rid of them all."

"And what do you call the wergild, Olo? Will we be well rid of that when we stop Éomer King's men from delivering it?" Many listeners suddenly looked very thoughtful indeed. "But you're right we need to do something about those campsites, and I'm going to be looking at that with the family heads and the new mayor when we meet on Second Lithe. But the answer's not this ban — it's some proper new inns, with beds for men and dwarves, at Waymoot and Frogmorton, and down by Ringfield for folk coming up from Sarn Ford."

Olo had gone pink. "What? Inns for men, encouraging them? Your knee's not the only thing giving you bother, Will Whitfoot — your head's not working at all. We need to be giving the Brownlock smial back to a proper hobbit family, not building more beds for men we don't need nor want anywhere near us."

"You reckon so, Olo? Well, sitting here with a mug in your hand it's easy to wave your opinions about, but if you ever had to do my job you'd change your tune quick enough. Not that anyone would elect you — hobbits have more sense!"

It was an entertaining row while it lasted, but a few of the sharper heads noticed that Will seemed surprisingly cheerful after Olo had stomped out, and that Tom Cotton seemed highly amused by it all, which wasn't his usual response to Olo's dark pronouncements about foreign influence. They rather wished Sam had been there, but he'd said roundly that he knew what he thought about Strider's idea, agreed with Will entirely, and had bairns to see to ; and when he and Rose did bring young Merry-lad down to the Green Dragon to introduce him, and the row was reported to him in elaborate detail, he said only that there was no more point arguing with a Proudfoot than with a wall, which was true enough. He did, however, rivet everyone's attention by running thoughtfully through Mr Halladan's misgivings about the Proposal and then a list of men a blanket ban would affect. The idea that the King himself wouldn't be able to enter the Shire was a poser, but he told them to read the wording of the Proposal carefully, said flatly Strider would never pass a law and make an exception just for himself, and passed on through the Lords Steward and very many others to the wandering bards and tinkers all welcomed. When asked about the Brownlock smial he stunned everyone by shrugging and saying that as Mr Frodo had purchased it with his own money, not the Mayor's Funds, and left it to him with everything else, it was his decision no matter what silliness Olo Proudfoot might come up with, and would not only stay as it was whatever happened but assuming the Proposal was voted down would be made available to men who came to see the mallorn so they didn't have to beg the use of stables and the like, which wasn't fitting. That started another urgent line of argument, and when Will's idea about new inns was mentioned he not only happily agreed with it, but started a lively discussion of what they should be called.

Olo hadn't been there but once he'd caught up with the news came crossly to Bag End to ask if it was true that Sam owned the Brownlock smial and intended to use it for the bothersome visitors as well as that Lord Steward, and when told it was loudly declared it all highly irregular and left in something of a fury. In the rants that followed it was hard to tell if he was more concerned by not having known that a privately owned smial was being used for official purposes, or at the idea of Sam Gamgee being able to decide who used it and no doubt making a pretty penny along the way. Neither much bothered most people, the one having saved everyone money and the other being Sam's business, not Olo's or anyone else's ; but there was some concern about how many men might be allowed to use it, that Sam alleviated by cheerfully explaining the limits he had in mind and how he hoped the booking system would work. Rollo Goodbody had the cheek to ask how profitable it would be and got a long look that made him squirm but also the answer that the place needed keeping up, the laundry doing, and the garden properly tending, so there were costs as well as profits that would in any case mostly go the Green Dragon and the Ivy Bush as they took care of stabling and catering.

Olo was not mollified and a few days later news came from Michel Delving that he'd decided to stand for mayor and sent in his nomination. By Shire law two family heads had to endorse candidates, and besides himself as the Proudfoot he had the backing of his crony Hendo Grubb, one of whose nephews had been killed during the Troubles and who was still very bitter about it. Most people had laughed when Will had said hobbits had more sense than to vote for Olo, and confronted with the chance to do so it didn't take them long to agree that what was needed was some more nominations and the sooner the better. Nor, as word spread, was that sentiment limited to Hobbiton and Bywater, for Olo's temper and rudeness, like his father's, had long made him less than well-liked in a surprising number of places. A Boffin passing though on his journey to deliver crates of the splendid Yale strawberries to a coming-of-age party in Little Delving shook his head, observing that he couldn't think of anyone he'd less like to see officiating at his daughter's wedding, and a Took and North-Took running messages and errands between Tuckborough and Long Cleeve, who'd both stopped in Bywater to fortify themselves, promptly agreed, recounting how when Captain Peregrin had heard he'd been openly thankful Will was guaranteed for his own wedding. And two days later many eyes watched with interested surmise as Thain, Master, and Mayor rode through Bywater and Hobbiton to Bag End.

Sam greeted them with a scowl, knowing perfectly well what they wanted and strongly suspecting they'd been conspiring about it, but the arguments he'd marshalled were swept into confusion when Rose served tea, blandly asked her guests to mind the children a moment, and whisked him out to the garden.

"Samwise Gamgee, you're the cleverest hobbit in the Shire, as well as the best, and you took all of a minute to see why your Strider was wanting this ban. So you tell me now why you're so determined you shouldn't be Mayor, when you know full well it's what everyone wants and that you'd be the best hobbit we could possibly have doing the job with all that's happening."

He did understand himself all too well, and couldn't flannel Rosie with his Gaffer's old saws and closed mind about what was proper.

"Because it should be Mr Frodo, of course. And I know that makes no more sense than Strider's thinking. But it's so unfair, Rosie. And he'd be the best hobbit for the job by a long way."

"Would he, Sam? Truly? The old Mr Frodo, maybe. But not the one who came back. Remember what you told me about that evening during the Trials when you had to settle things between him and Mr Halladan? He did a wonderful job sorting out the mess but I don't know he'd be the best choice now, when we've all these changes to face up to. And it's all just wishing anyway, Sam. The best hobbit we could possibly have, I said, and I stand by it."

He stared at her. "You want me to do it, Rosie?"

"I think we all need you to do it."

"But I'm not selling Bag End, and I'm bothered if I'm going to spend every week away from home."

"You won't have to, Sam-love. There's no rule the Mayor has to be in the Town Hole when he witnesses or does whatever else, only that wills and contracts are filed there. Oh you'd have to go there once or twice a month, I expect, and for weddings of course — but you could make the Thain and Master promise to do more of those, as they have been these last years on account of Mr Will's knee."

The penny dropped in Sam's head. "They came to see you, Rosie?"

She dimpled. "Mr Will did, when you was in Bree."

"The old schemer!"

The dimples deepened. "Yes, he is, but they were all in on it, and he had a point, Sam. Lots of them. And he knew you wouldn't do it unless I was happy for you to, and I thought about all the problems and we talked them through a bit. We can make it work well enough without being apart too much. And anyway, Sam, have you asked yourself what Mr Frodo would tell you?"

He had, and knew better than to argue with Frodo and Rose at once, never mind Merry and Pippin. And in his heart he knew there were a lot of things that needed doing but Will hadn't had the vision or the energy to see to. Strider's proposal might be unworkable but he was right there were problems coming up the Roads that needed thinking about, and other than himself only Merry, Pippin, and Sara had the wits and knowledge to understand what would be involved. And the only hobbits forbidden by law from becoming Mayor were Thain and Master.

"You're sure, Rosie love? It'll mean a lot of work for you too. And for the children, soon enough."

"I don't mind work, and neither will they."

So that was that, though he made Rose promise to play along and gave Will a hard time for a while, until even he had to admit the old schemer and Sara between them really had thought it through. There was no reason documents sent for signature to the Town Hole couldn't be sent to Bag End, and it made no odds whether the Clerk of Records received the week's batch from the Mayor's hands or a Mayor's Messenger. Thain and Master were indeed prepared to undertake more weddings and such other formalities as were likely to drag a Mayor about the Shire, and also perfectly happy with there being a Deputy Mayor or two who undertook such tasks in the further reaches of the Farthings.

"Actually, Sam, we rather think that will have to happen anyway. We've started a bulge in numbers with all those 1420 and '21 babies, and you and Rose haven't been the only ones helping it along, so common sense says the Mayor's job's going to grow. And in any case, it's not really for that we want you to stand — there are other hobbits who could do that sort of thing well enough. It's for dealing with outside we need you, Sam, and no-one else."

"Sara's right." Thain Paladin had been quiet but now spoke crisply. "I couldn't see it at the time, Samwise, but you were right about bringing in the Lord Steward to deal with those Ruffians, and right again about sending for the ents. And from all Sara says about what he heard in Bree, you can speak for the Shire as none other could hope to do except Merry and Pippin, and neither of them can serve as Mayor."

"Mr Halladan listens fair to everyone."

"Surely he does." Sara sat forward. "But when you speak, Sam, he listens close and sits straight. He don't stand on formalities much more than you, save when he has to, and he'll happily call you Samwise same as we will, even though you still mister him half to death, but he also knows bone-deep in a way we don't that you're the Lord Perhael Cormacolindo Elvellon, thank you very much, and a Prince of the West to boot." The Master grinned at Sam's expression. "I had a long chat with him after you left us in Bree, and got his version of what those eagles that rescued you and Frodo had to say about it all. But more than that, even, he knows you won't ever throw all that weight around without good cause, but when you do no-one sensible will be on the other side."

Sam glared but Rosie was beaming and Will only laughed.

"I'm not just an old schemer, Sam, I'm a good one. Thirty-five years in this job and I'd better be. But you — you don't scheme, you just do, and a bit later everyone else catches up with you. I was proud to marry you and Rose, and I'll be prouder still to hand over to you."

"I've still to beat old Olo, you know."

But that made them all laugh, and the Bywater Moot, the first to be held, showed them right. One Moot for contested elections was held in each farthing, at Bywater, Hardbottle, Stock, and Longbottom, and the news of Sam's nomination by the Took and the Brandybuck brought low whistles and high turnouts at all four, but after Bywater it was mostly a process of Olo Proudfoot digging himself ever deeper into a hole and Sam explaining the way of saying Yes, but to the King, and what the buts would be, and why. But the tale of the Bywater Moot was told for years.

From Sam's point of view the trouble started with Elanor insisting she be allowed to come with him to the Moots, and enlisting the Gaffer (who had surprised everyone by taking only a moment to decide he was far prouder than offended) in her cause.

"She can understand, Sam, and she got the right to see her dad do something important."

"Mr Olo's going to be right cross, you know, Gaffer, and he's not got the brains he was born with, so who knows what he might say? Elanorella's only six, for all she's as bright as a button."

"Him not behaving proper's no reason for you not to, Samwise Gamgee."

That had been a stumper, and the argument had been taken clean out of Sam's hands by the unexpected arrival of Elanor's Uncles Elladan and Elrohir, who had been ambushed by her with shrieks of delight as they passed Eryn Edlothiad, listened gravely, and by the time they arrived at Bag End had promised to guard her against any possible evil her Per-ada could imagine. Sam knew an irresistible force when he met three of it, and besides his own pleasure in seeing the twins, the apologetic and informative but still stern letters they carried from Strider, to him and Elanor, and the charming letters from Lady Arwen to Rose and Elanor, left him precious little room to manoeuvre, supposing he'd wanted to. Even so, it felt very odd indeed to walk onto the platform that had been erected on Bywater green with not only Rose and Elanorella but Master and Thain, as well as their heirs, and two overdressed elves, to be greeted with a breathless hush followed by a lot of unnecessary applause.

Will Whitfoot was in charge, and after announcing that Lords Elladan and Elrohir, the King's elven cousins, were here as observers for him, solemnly asked Sam and Olo Proudfoot who would speak first. Olo knew so little he insisted it be him, citing his age, regular headship of his family, and the date of his nomination, and was clearly taken aback by Sam's instant agreement. And speak he did, showing with every word he still thought all he had to do was stir up natural fears, and had no more idea he was already on a hiding to nothing than how to fly. But the unresponsiveness of the audience, swollen by hobbits from far around, ate at him and he became wilder in his claims, Big folk had ever been nothing but a nuisance, were corrupted by goblins and who knew what, leading to terrible things, and it wasn't just men but all foreigners who should be banned, unnatural trees and strange dwarves and peculiar elves and all, so honest hobbits could live decent lives free from anything strange. He'd glanced sideways at the twins as he denounced elves, but they were wholly serene ; then he made the irreparable mistake of saying that the strange fair children born after Mr Gamgee's use of some horrid elven magic after his return from foreign parts only went to show why all contact with Outside was Bad News.

Elanor slipped from her Gaffer's lap in an instant, raising her hand politely, and the twins were on their feet flanking her. Olo glanced aside, scowled, and ploughed on. Elanor looked at Will Whitfoot, who shrugged, for Olo didn't have to take questions until he was done, and after a moment she turned to the twins, who knelt and listened, and rose to gesture the goggling audience to protect their ears before putting fingers to mouths and producing whistles that silenced Olo as effectively as a blade.

"Our apologies for interrupting, Mr Proudfoot, but Miss Elanor has a question."

"A very good question you have certainly invited."

"And you seemed to be ignoring her."

"Which is neither wise nor polite."

"We're sure it was an oversight."

"No-one could be that silly, surely?"

There had been a deep silence while Elanor thanked them both in Sindarin that made them grin, and then turned back to a severely discommoded Olo Proudfoot.

"Mr Proudfoot, sir, I'm only young, so maybe I've not understood something, but what I heard was that you've just as good as said there's something wrong with me because I have fair hair. Is that right?"

There was an even deeper silence while Olo blanched.

"Well, I take it that's a yes. And if so, Mr Proudfoot, you're a …. Sam-dad, what's that word they use in Gondor for someone who says one thing one day and something different the next? Like you do with grass and hair?"

Sam managed to keep a straight face. "Trimmer, do you mean, Elanorella?"

"Yes, that's the one. Thank you. A trimmer, Mr Proudfoot, for I heard you say in the Green Dragon only a few weeks ago that a pint of 1420's a grand thing. So if you like the beer from Lady Galadriel's and Lady Yavanna's blessing, why don't you like the children?" This time Olo's silence produced some foot-tapping from Elanor that seemed to hold everyone enthralled. "And you do realise Lady Galadriel is Uncle Elladan's and Uncle Elrohir's gammer? Even thinking she'd harm hobbits after all she did to help us with the trees the Ruffians killed — well, shame on you, Mr Proudfoot, shame on you." An already beautifully furry foot stamped decisively. "You must apologise to them. What ever were you thinking to say such a thing? How would you feel if they said such wicked and silly things about your gammer Linda you always say was how a hobbit ought to be?"

Olo's stammering apology, gravely accepted by the twins, followed by his silent abandonment of the platform had left Sam little choice but to rise himself at Will's look, torn between pride and laughter and hastily revising how he'd meant to begin.

"Well now, Elanorella's saved me a job, I reckon. Even a faunt could see it, we say, and how's that for an example?" He let the relieving laughter run its course before holding up a hand. "But before he let his tongue run away with him, Mr Proudfoot said some things we do need to think about. Things are changing, and we all know it. How could they not when there's a King again for the first time in more than a thousand years? And they're going to change more. Most of it's pretty good, too, like those pints of 1420, but of course there's bad mixed in, same as with everything, and we need to be thinking long and carefully. That's what the King's trying to do, but his plan can't nor won't work as it stands, and I'll show you why."

Merry and Pippin rose and unfurled a great scroll, holding it high between them so everyone could see. It was an enlarged and simplified copy of Merry's map, showing Gondor and Arnor, Eriador and Rhovanion, with the full length of the East–West and North–South Roads marked in bright red and the Shire lightly shaded so they showed through it with their joining at Waymoot. Pelargir, Minas Tirith, Edoras, Erebor and Dale, Tharbad, Bree, Fornost, Annúminas, and Mithlond were also marked, and Sam pointed each out with a slim stick he'd fashioned. There were more detailed copies of the map at Brandy Hall and the Great Smials, and the influence of those who'd been as far as Isengard among Tooks and Brandybucks, but most hobbits had never seen such a thing and there was much exclaiming as the sheer size of the world was taken in.

"Interesting, isn't it? The map'll be available after for you all to look at more closely. But the thing is the Roads, because they're what joins everything together. Even if trade goes by sea, from Pelargir to Tharbad, up the river, or to Mithlond" — he traced the sea-routes — "it still needs the Roads, and they meet right here in the Shire. Waymoot it's called, and a waymoot it is. The waymoot, even. Now when I was a lad, learning my gardening from my Gaffer, I didn't think about a thing like trade, nor understand how it worked. Why would I? But I knew what happens to a big rock if you drop it into a little rill and block it, because that don't stop more water arriving — the rock don't win and it gets mighty wet in the process. Now, trade's like a river flowing along those Roads, whether it's dwarf goods from Erebor or the Ered Luin, or where Mr Gimli has his caves in Rohan, or Gondor's fruits and grains coming to us, or our pipeweed and weavings going east to Bree or Dale or south to Gondor. And what the ban would do is turn the Shire into a rock blocking everyone else." He let them digest it for a minute and then became brisker. "So what we need's not a ban we can't control ourselves but a way of managing what happens, and I've given some thought to that."

Merry and Pippin turned the map round, revealing on the back a simplified version of the points Sam and Sara had worked out at Bree. Sam ran through them, lumping together the royalty and senior figures of the assorted kingdoms, but saying more about the various licensings by the King, his Lord Steward, the Breelands Council, or Thain, Master, and Mayor and how they'd work.

"Now, I've spoken about this to Thain Paladin, Master Saradoc, and Mayor Will, as well as Mr Halladan, and it's agreed that the vote on the King's Proposal won't be a straight yes or no, but a straight yes, or a yes, but, which is all these extra provisions and what I'm recommending and will be voting for myself, or a straight no. And I'll say one more thing, loud and clear, because whatever you choose, it'll be me or Mr Proudfoot who'll have to be dealing with it, and if it's me, well, this'll only be the start. There's not just a king again, there's a kingdom, and a free Shire will play a part in it. When Mr Frodo and Merry and Pippin and me had to leave back in 1418, on account of Sauron and that horrid Ring of his, you all thought we was cracked, even more than when we went to Buckland. Off to foreign parts? Whatever next? You'd have been more in agreement with Mr Proudfoot then." They had the grace to laugh at themselves and Sam smiled. "We thought we was pretty cracked ourselves, what with one thing and another, but we learned better, and so have you all. We are changing, and for the better, and if you elect me I'll be pushing that change along as best I can as well as making sure it is for the better. Building those new inns on the Roads, for starters. And what I won't be doing, no matter what anyone says or wants, is holding to our old ways when they don't work no more. So don't say I didn't tell you fair and square."

He collected Elanorella from the Gaffer's lap, hoisting her on his hip and returning to his speaking place.

"I don't know what my Elanorella's life will be like, and nor does she. The Shire's her home, and always will be, same as it's mine and all of ours, but that don't mean she'll always stay here. She knows there's a world out there, and she wants to see some of it, and she will. Who knows? Maybe she has a destiny in Bree or Annúminas when it's all rebuilt, or somewhere else. And what I'm standing for is for her to be able to do that safely and sensibly, respected as a Hobbit among Men and Dwarves and Elves and all. Mr Proudfoot thinks what he's standing for is locking Men out, but what it is really is locking all of us and our children in. That's it, saving questions, and you'll want a look at the map before that."

They did, and Sam had made a stand it could go on with both sides visible, so an orderly queue formed with Merry and Pippin answering geographical questions while he enjoyed what he thought was a well-earned pint of 1420. Will, the Thain, and Sara suppressed their cackles while he did answer questions, most about the licensing and some about the inns and what else he might have in mind, but once they were back in Bag End all three gave into mirth and insisted between fits of helpless laughter on toasting both Sam and Elanor several times.

"Oh it was just beautiful." Will wiped his eyes. "I'm sorry I couldn't interrupt him myself, Elanor, but that's the rule. The serving mayor shall preside and ensure each candidate may speak freely, favouring none over any other and restricting himself to the conduct of the Moot. Don't say nothing about elves and whistles, though." He went off into another gale of laughter. "His face was a picture. And what'll he say next time he downs a pint of 1420, eh?"

"It's a fair thing?" Saradoc grinned. "More to the point, though, is the result's a done deal now. And that's not just Elanor's doing, Sam, perfect as that was, it's yours. That was a very good speech, and I'll have some more of those maps done. You should too, Pal, and one for Michel Delving, Will, so all can see at their leisure. The proper copies take so long I've let that slip, but that simple version needn't take more than a few hours. Good version of the list, too. And an excellent line about king and kingdom."

"Oh yes." The Thain raised his glass to Sam again. "There's not just a king again, there's a kingdom, and a free Shire will play a part in it. Everyone can see the sense of that."

"That's because it's common sense."

"Maybe so, Sam, but uncommonly well put." Will had recovered himself. "One thing I wondered, though. What was it you said, Elanor, that made your uncles grin?"

Elanor blushed slightly. The twins were sitting cross-legged, Elrohir letting Frodo-lad inspect his boots while Rose-lass in Elladan's lap played with his hair, and both looked up, eyes glinting.

"She merely thanked us, Mr Whitfoot."

"For gaining the nodcock's attention."

Will laughed again. "There's a Sindarin word for nodcock?"

"There is now."

"Thanks to Sam."

"I'm sorry, Sam-dad, but I knew he wouldn't understand Sindarin and he had been very rude and silly."

"So he had, Elanorella. Do you hear me telling you off for it? Politeness is one thing and being provoked another. But don't go assuming folk won't understand a language."

She snuggled into him, relieved, but after the children were all abed and the adults had eaten, the twins opened a more serious conversation by explaining Aragorn's request to understand more clearly the way the Shire was changing. The discussion went on for a while before the older hobbits flagged, and Sam was left with Rose, Merry and Pippin, and the elves, who glanced at one another before Elladan spoke.

"There was one other question our sister wanted us to ask you, Sam. Have you ever dreamed of Frodo in Aman?"

Sam sighed and shook his head. "No. I dream of him as he was, sometimes, when he went on the ship. And a few times I've had a dream that I reckon must be of Aman, a great mountain by the sea, all filled with light, and when I wake up I feel he's safe and happy, despite missing us as we miss him. But I've never seen him there."

"You haven't told that to Estel."

"Nor Pip and me, Sam."

"What could I say, Merry? It's only a feeling, and it's what we all want to believe. I told Rosie because I reckon she's a right to know of the good dreams, same as she's no choice but to know of the bad, and I've said to you both and to Strider as I do believe it. But I don't know, no more than anyone, and it don't prove nothing."

"But maybe it does, Sam. Does the great mountain have three lesser peaks on the seaward side?"

"A great and shining hall upon its summit?"

"And a city of the Teleri at its base?"

"I don't know if it's of the Teleri, but yes, I saw a city one time, a port with ships, and the three peaks every time. I don't see no hall, though, just a great blaze of light. You know it?"

"It is Taniquetil, Sam, where Lord Manwë dwells with Lady Varda. All Calaquendi dream of it sometimes."

"And Glorfindel often."

"But our Adar taught us that Lord Irmo will not show it nor any part of Aman in the dreams of any Secondborn without Lord Manwë's permission."

"So if you have dreamed of Taniquetil and felt comforted when you woke, it is a true dream."

"And a true comfort. The Valar are often silent, but they do not lie. So Frodo is indeed safe and happy."

"Halladan is coming to your wedding, Pippin, is he not? Then we will ask him to bring the Palantír, and ask you to tell Estel yourself of these dreams, Sam. He grieves yet for Frodo, and his mind will be greatly eased."

Sam's wonder and relief were laced with fresh distress. "I'd have told him if I'd known."

"Or if he had thought to ask, as our sister did."

"It is a joy, not a blame."

"And there is no bar so far as we know to any in Aman dreaming of aught in Arda."

"So we may hope Frodo will dream of tonight, and rejoice with us in Elanor Elvellon."

"Who really should go with you to the other Moots."

Protesting, however fruitlessly, got Sam over his immediate sense of guilt, and a sense of surety about Frodo was a boon, but knew he owed Strider an apology for calling him a ninnyhammer when he'd been being such a noodle himself.

Forelithe was a golden month, animated by the remaining Moots and the avid discussions they and elves and the copies of the map provoked. An increasingly stiff and weary Olo Proudfoot was very careful to say nothing whatever about 1420 or 1421 while still grimly plugging his fearful dislike of all that was strange and trying his best to ridicule Sam's proposed changes as more holes than net, and cumbersome besides. Sam cheerfully admitted the first charge, as that was the whole point — the groans didn't make it less true — and had reduced the list to Kings, King's Men, honest traders, and those with permission of Thain, Master, or Mayor, a litany that made clear sense to all. The second charge he refuted, saying thoroughness always meant work, no shame to it, and pointing out that most of that work would be done elsewhere, it being the job of anyone who wanted to trade or visit to show themselves worthy of the privilege — which also went down well.

But it was Elanor's presence that really did for Olo. The story had spread as fast as hobbits could gossip, and the mere sight of her sitting politely through one of his leaden harangues, if often shaking her head at his foolishness, had everyone's eyes bright with amusement. She'd been to Brandy Hall and Tuckborough before, but not the Moot venues, and even without the twins happily letting her settle on one or another lap her shining hair would have drawn all eyes. As it was, the Longbottom Moot produced another memorable moment when Olo wound up, asking for questions, and a venerable Hornblower gammer stood to say she'd no question to ask Mr Proudfoot but she'd like to ask young Miss Gamgee why she'd been shaking her head so. Elanor had looked at Sam, who looked back at her steadily, and then slipped to her feet.

"I don't want to be rude, Missus Hornblower, but I think Mr Proudfoot's being mean as well as silly and wrong. I've uncles among Sam-dad's friends who are men, and a dwarf and elves, and they're none of them even a bit like Mr Proudfoot says. They're good people. And the trees in the groves are good trees. So I'm sad he can't see that and wants to stop me seeing them. And cross. But Sam-dad told me I mustn't interrupt him again unless he said something really bad, and I can see that's right though I want to when he says such silly things, so I shake my head to show I disagree. And stop from bursting."

Smiles spread across everyone's faces, including the gammer's.

"Well, you're a fair-spoken faunt, aren't you? And a wise one before it could be looked for. I'd heard Gamgees was out of the ordinary way but sensible with it, and I see it's true."

Afterwards a grinning Elladan and Elrohir had pressed both Sam and Elanor to say 'out of the ordinary way but sensible with it' in Sindarin, collecting several possibilities, and declared they would write a Ballad of Elanorella. Sam rolled his eyes, Elanor beamed, and various possible verses were sung to them at different times, but as Forelithe settled into a general buzz of anticipation the twins also asked permission of Thain Paladin to wander at large as the King's eyes and ears, and did just that, splitting up to circle the Farthings, listening and answering in fair voices, and ending evenings with songs and hymns that by all accounts had folk sighing pleasure. They stayed overnight in huorn groves, astounding people by bowing low to the trees, speaking softly to them with hands on boles, and then climbing them to lie back on boughs that shifted to cradle them, and gaze at the summer stars. Returning to Bag End, they also told Sam, Rose, and Elanor about the other question Estel had asked, reporting that the huorns all said they neither would nor could hide Gamgees from the true king's gaze, but their own business was their own and none of his or anyone else's.

"So it would seem to be you three and Estel that matter, not the Palantíri."

"Or Daernaneth, though she may have some hand in it."

"But if you and Elanor are willing, it would be interesting to see how the Palantír reacts to her hands as well as to yours."

Elanor knew about Palantíri, as Uncle Merry spoke fondly of his glimpse of the Shire from Orthanc though Uncle Pippin sometimes spoke of them with lingering dread and suspicion, and she looked doubtful. But though Sam had his own doubts he and Rose were persuaded to play it by ear when the time came, and the twins lulled Elanor's fears by going with her to Eryn Edlothiad and before another mushroom feast speaking clearly to the huorns of what they'd asked and receiving rustles and the fall of a single, very early chestnut by way of indifferent approval.

As Lithe neared preparations for the Fair and the great Took wedding stepped up. Both Thain Paladin and Gondobras North-Took, Diamond's father, had gone all out, and wagons of food began to roll towards Michel Delving from just about everywhere, with legions of cooks and helpers from Tuckborough and Long Cleeve. Strangers also began to arrive — first Men, mostly wandering tinkers and bards, but also some in the Bree trade, on their own account and concerned as to how the vote would go, then a wagonload of dwarves to start setting up their traditional smithy and craftwork booths along the hedges that marked out the Fairground. To the surprise of everyone save the twins Gildor and other elves also appeared to set up their own booth, a silken-looking pavilion where they said they would be trading cloth, jewellery, and plant-starts and seeds for food and other Shire produce. And as the countdown started in earnest, with shops shutting up and everyone preparing to be away from home for the better part of a week save those who'd drawn the short straw and would have to mind animals, Legolas and Gimli arrived, Gimli again driving a wagon laden with gifts for Pippin and Diamond as well as many Gamgees. They also had letters from Aragorn and Arwen, reporting cheerfully about the freed slaves and gloomily about how slow the Haradrim were being, but more importantly saying that Arwen was increasing and the child expected towards the end of the year. That was not yet for general consumption but an announcement would be made in the autumn, and the beacon fires used to relay news of the birth ; so many toasts were drunk at Bag End, not least by the delighted twins, both to King and Queen and to Estella, who'd come with Merry to stay until the wedding and was prompted to declare her own condition.

On the last of the month they set out early for Michel Delving, and were caught on the Road just past Waymoot by Halladan and a large riding that as well as his escort included Glorfindel, other elves of Rivendell, and a deputation of Breelanders, big and little. Tom Bombadil and Goldberry were there too, with Quickbeam, who had returned to Fangorn after Merry's wedding but come north again earlier in the year, and there was much merriment and laughter and news given and heard as they rode (or strode) through Michel Delving to the camp surrounding the Fairground. Though it hadn't been planned, the sight of such a mixed group — Elanor and Rose-lass perched with sunny smiles before elves on their horses and Frodo-lad beside Gimli at the reins of the wagon, Rose chatting with Legolas, Sam with the Lord Steward, and Merry and Estella with Quickbeam — was a declaration of everything Sam had been saying in his speeches, and left many nodding appreciation for what they took as a strategy. The Thain had offered Sam and his family a room at one of the Michel Delving inns, which he and Gondobras had taken over wholesale, and Sam had accepted for the Gaffer, but with the weather dry and warm Rose and the children were happy to camp beside the elves in the huorn grove at the south-eastern corner of the Fairground. In the evening Sam and Merry found themselves hanging on to a gabbling Pippin, so nervous he could barely see, never mind think, but a lot of athelas tea helped calm him down and the laughing elves sang him asleep with hymns to Irmo.

The next morning he and Diamond looked radiant receiving gifts, including another magnificent mantle sewn by Arwen and a diamond pendant from Aragorn that made eyes pop, and when it came to it Pippin stood tall and proud, still towering over his bride but with such tenderness in his voice that most of the enormous assembly of guests were sighing and dabbing their eyes. Even Will had to blow his nose before pronouncing them well and truly wed, and did as Frodo had done at Sam's and Rose's wedding in inviting the Lord Steward and other representatives to sign as witnesses beyond the seven required hobbits, including Damrod for Faramir and Éowyn. Then a feast began, with speeches as fulsome as the food and a lot of cheering and applause, not to mention toasts. Sam made sure his own wine was well-watered, and blessed himself when he rose bright and early to check on the voting arrangements and sign as required that he was satisfied with them, well before a bleary-eyed Olo Proudfoot appeared to do the same and let voting start.

There were two distinct ballots, one on yellowish paper with the names Gamgee and Proudfoot, and the other on grey bearing the words Yes, Yes But and No. The list of changes covered by the 'but' was displayed in full and summary forms, all clearly labelled, and the stern-faced Clerk of Records and his assistants happily talked themselves hoarse repeating the instructions to underline in red only one choice on each ballot, and what to do if you didn't have your letters, and to be sure you put each completed vote in the rightful box. Candidates weren't allowed into the voting area after their initial inspection, save to vote themselves, but Olo hung about with a few cronies outside, looking miserable, while Sam collected the Gaffer and took him with Rose and the children to the Fair, introducing them to dwarves. elves, and men of his widening acquaintance and buying Rose a glorious elven shawl in the most delicate colours, that she could use when she needed to feed Merry-lad, as well as dwarf-made toys and a variety of sticky treats for the children. He also bought the Gaffer a wonderfully soft scarf in South Farthing wool against the winter chill he felt so badly these days, ignoring his half-hearted protests. Outgoing Mayor, Thain, and Master were wandering about, bending ears and urging people to vote sooner than later, but Sam shook his head when they suggested he join them, told them he and Rose had voted first thing, with the Gaffer, and after a delightful lunch at a stall where a Breeland man and hobbit had an interesting array of roasted and baked vegetables he deposited the Gaffer with Marigold and Tom, and the younger children with the twins, before taking Rose and Elanor off for a long talk with Quickbeam about huorns and Palantíri.

"Hrrm. Truly, Samwise, I do not know, and so I told the King's brothers when they asked. The craft of the Eldar is no part of any ent's knowledge, and the Palantíri were made by Fëanor himself, very long ago even by my reckoning. But it is true the elven gift you shared with the huorns has given them greater awareness and kindness than most, and I was not surprised to learn their shade defeats the gaze even of a Palantír, nor that your lights shine through it, nor that they would not have it otherwise."

"Our lights?" Rose was puzzled.

"The glow of your minds and spirits, that the Eldar taught us to see in all living things, as they do. Those of animals are usually quite dim, though pleasant, those of the Free Peoples brighter, yours strongly so, and those of Samwise and Elanor brightest of all save the great among the Eldar and the King. And the light of Elf-friendship is clear in you all. The huorns and all trees are drawn to you as to the light of Anor, rejoicing in your presence."

"Huh." Sam scratched his head but Elanor looked charmed by the idea and Rose thoughtful. "Well, Rose and Elanorella are lights to me, so I suppose that makes sense. And you don't think there's any harm in her looking in the Palantír, as Elladan and Elrohir suggest?"

"I cannot say. Fëanor's great works stirred much trouble and grief among the Eldar in ages past, as I was taught when I was an enting, but they were never said to be anything but beautiful themselves. And surely the light of Eärendil is so."

"Then it's up to you, Elanorella. I'm a bit nervous about this myself, but I feel I have to, to tell Strider about those dreams I've had, so we can see after that, if you want."

Thanking Quickbeam they returned to the Fairground, seeing the long line of folk now waiting to vote, and watched a dwarf smith as he swiftly clinched a loose horse-shoe in place for one of Halladan's men and returned to his forge, where he was adding twining iron vines and flowers to a clearly hobbit-sized garden gate. Recognising his audience he bowed deeply to them, naming himself as Althjof son of Mothvjitnir, and to Sam's considerable surprise both blushed with pleasure when introduced to Rosie and Elanor and let them watch more closely as he reheated some of the flowers and added detail with a fine burin. The work was beautiful, and Sam found himself thinking of his own garden gates, functional but nothing so attractive after some discussion, in which Sam (even more surprised and slightly indignant) rejected any notion that the work might be done at cost, they agreed Althjof would come to Bag End before he went back to the Ered Luin.

Halladan had told them he usually spoke to the king in the early evening, and as the time neared both Sam and Elanor felt sufficently nervous that he steered everyone back to the huorn grove and brewed some athelas tea, with the side-benefit of sending the younger children to sleep. Gildor was there, watching the bustle with elven amusement at something, and happy to watch over sleeping or even waking faunts for a while, so with a deep breath Sam took Rose's and Elanor's hands and they set off. The Lord Steward had set up his pavilion at the western end of the camp, not far from the raised bank in the Fairground where announcements were made, and he was waiting for them with Elladan and Elrohir.

"All ready? Come, then."

Within the pavilion the Palantír was already set on a low stool at hobbit height, its surface smooth and dark, and Halladan directed them to the north-west side, so they were facing far-off Gondor.

"The Palantíri do not transmit speech, but thought. I find it easier to speak my thought aloud at the same time, and I think you may too, but it is not needful and the King's brothers use thought alone."

He knelt to place his hands on the stone. Light swirled in its depths and after a moment they saw his smile as he spoke greetings in Sindarin, though they could see only a glow, not any images. Sam heard him say the wedding had been splendid and the Fair very lively and interesting, before he stood and the twins knelt for a swift, silent exchange that had the stone flickering with colours that seemed to Sam joyous, and he wondered if they were speaking to their sister as well as to Strider. Then they summoned him forward, and with his heart beating fast he set his hands hesitantly on the crystal. It was cool to his touch but at once leapt with golden light, and he found himself looking at a smiling Strider and Lady Arwen, standing with inner arms round one another and outer ones clearly resting on their Palantír. Words glimmered in his mind.

Sam, it is wonderful to see you again. It has been too long. You are well?

"Hello, Strider, my lady. It's good to see you too. And yes, we're all well, for all you've landed me with standing for mayor. Is all well with you, my lady?"

It is, Perhael. Arwen smile was radiant. I lack the experience of your Rose but I am assured all is as it should be. And my brothers tell me you have an answer to the question I bid them ask you.

"Seems I do." Sam's gaze sought Strider's. "I'm so sorry I didn't say nothing before, only I didn't know it was any more than a dream and a feeling."

How should you, Sam? There was no blame in Strider's voice and Sam felt something inside him relax. But tell us now of this dream and feeling.

So he did, describing the great mountain with its glowing top and lesser peaks, and the sea that foamed at its base with the swan-necked ships that sometimes sailed there, explaining how he always woke from the dream feeling that Mr Frodo was well, but never saw him or any figure and as he spoke he saw their faces gladden, though there were tears in their eyes.

It can only be Taniquetil.

And the comfort a true sending and Lord Manwë's blessing. Oh Sam, it is a weight from my heart. I believed him well, but from all you said he was clearly far faded by the time he took ship. And now we may be sure he is healed. Thank you.

And my thanks also, Perhael, for it is to you this blessing is given and yet it blesses us also.

"I'm just sorry I didn't know to say sooner. I've been feeling a right noodle since Elladan and Elrohir told me."

Strider laughed. And I for not asking you sooner if aught had come to you in dreams. Arwen is the only sensible one among us, I often think.

He grinned back. "There's my Rose and Elanorella too, and they're here to say hello as well."

Rose had hoisted Elanor to her hip, and tentatively put her free hand on the Palantír as Elanor leaned forward to add her own. At Rose's touch the golden light became shaded with silver and at Elanor's with what Sam thought of as starlight though he couldn't have said why. They both exclaimed as they saw the king and queen and again as they found words in their minds that Sam could hear too.

Ah, Rose and Elanor, it is good to meet you at last.

Rose was blushing because she couldn't curtsey. "Your Majesty."

No formalities are needed between us. And it seems quite wrong for a Gamgee to call me anything but Strider.

Elanor was too fascinated to think of protocol. "I can hear you in my mind."

So you can, Elanor, and we hear you in the same way. It is the virtue of the Palantíri. And I am told you have been a great help to your Sam-dad of late.

Elanor considered this for a moment while Sam's sense of starlight deepened. "I didn't do very much, just sat and listened to Mr Proudfoot say a lot of silly things and shake my head. He said everything the same way every time, but Sam-dad's speeches were more interesting even though he had to say the same things over and over." Her attention went to Arwen while Strider grinned. "You're very beautiful."

And so are you, Elanor, as golden as your nameflower, though the Palantír surrounds you with starlight.

"You see that too?"

We do, Sam. From all Elladan and Elrohir say it is like the light of Elanor's being, which only the Eldar perceive. The Palantír is responding to you all in a most unusual way. It must be why I can see the three of you within Eryn Edlothiad, though never into any of the huorn groves unless one of you is there.

"Ents see them lights too, Mr Quickbeam said."

Do they? I did not know that.

"Does this seeing us in the groves matter?"

Not in any alarming way. But it is a curiosity. The stones acknowledge me as the heir of Elendil but that does not give me his knowledge of them and the craft of Fëanor is ever complex and subtle. I will say, though, that I now believe you could use the stone. Even that it would willingly serve you. And I will tell Halladan so. You have only to ask him if need arises.

Sam wanted to scratch his head but didn't have a free hand. "I'll remember, though I don't see as how I'd ever need to. And it won't show Mr Frodo, I'm told."

No, alas. To look into the West is forbidden save for the Palantír at Emyn Beraid that looks only to Aman, and that stone the Eldar reserve to themselves. But it would not show Frodo either when my brothers tried to look.

He nodded understanding. "Shame, but it seems right enough, too."

Yes. But it need not be an emergency, Sam. Your letters are a boon, and Elanor's, but it is better to speak. So if the mayoral duties you say I have landed you with should take you to Bree or Annúminas when Halladan is there, we might speak again.

"Huh. I'm not Mayor yet."

But you will be tomorrow. Did Halladan tell you Gandalf thought it would be so?

"No he didn't!"

Strider grinned. Frodo also wrote to me once that he had dreamed of you in office with yet more children than you have already.

"Huh. He did say that, the day we left Bag End and met Lady Galadriel and Mr Elrond and all, going to Mithlond. But Mr Gandalf never said nothing, and I didn't think much of it until Will Whitfoot started his scheming and you came up with this notion of yours and dropped me in it."

Well, I am glad my foolishness served such a good purpose, Sam. And I shall look forward to the Shire's formal response. From what Halladan has told me you and Master Saradoc had some very useful ideas. But we should part now — use of the Palantíri is more tiring than one quite understands at the time and I would not have you suffer from it. Go with our blessings, Rose and Elanor. We are eager to come north and see you in person. Thank you again, Sam, for a great blessing, and all luck with your new office. Farewell.

The Palantír darkened and they removed their hands, suddenly conscious that Aragorn had been right and that their heads felt a little tender, as if bruised inside. But Elladan and Elrohir produced flasks of miruvor and insisted they all sip, even Elanor, whose eyes watered at the fiery warmth of the cordial but said almost immediately that she felt better and that it had been a very strange experience. Knowing his hobbits Halladan had food waiting, and when Sam protested that they needed to get back to the bairns showed them out to see a table set with Frodo-lad already tucking in, Damrod feeding Rose-lass small pasties she could grasp and chew, and Gildor and Glorfindel between them just about managing to distract Merry-lad. Rose took him, arranging her new shawl with a smile for its softness and beauty, and Sam fed her some of the pasties until she could set him down, already drifting back into sleep, and address the food properly herself. And very good food it was, certainly hobbit-cooked, as Sam laughingly remarked.

Halladan grinned. "Of course it is, Samwise. I do not come to the Shire and ask men to cook, or even elves."

But it was Elanor who turned things to a more serious vein by asking her Uncles Elladan and Elrohir if they had found out what they wanted.

"We are not sure, Elanor."

"But we learned something. And Glorfindel might enlighten us."

"Might I?"

"The Palantír glowed with the colours of Sam's fëa."

"And Rose's and Elanor's."

"Estel agreed."

"You heard that?"

"We did, Sam. The Palantíri acknowledge the sons of Elendil, but we are of that blood, though further back, and they know us."

"But you they recognise on merit, and it seems Rose and Elanor with you."

"Is it Daernaneth's blessing, think you, Glorfindel?"

"Or something else?"

"How should I know? Fëanor's art was ever deep. But I am minded it was Artanis who gave the seven Palantíri in Arda to Amandil, after the civil war in Númenor."

Sam was surprised into speaking before even the twins. "It was? The Akallabêth don't say that, only that they was gifts of the Eldar."

Glorfindel shrugged. "Artanis did not care that it be known. But they had come to Celebrimbor through his father Curufin, the fifth son of Fëanor, and he had sense enough between his realisation of Annatar's true nature and the fall of Eregion to send much that he possessed to Lothlórien. What Artanis might have done to them while they rested with her is more than I can say, but it is no surprise to me they recognise those she has blessed, Elendil's blood or no."

"You might have said."

"Might I, Elladan? Perhaps so. But I might say many things, and few serve any purpose."

"What does it mean for me, Uncle Glorfindel?"

His face softened. "Only that you may trust a Palantír, I deem, Elanor, as you trust huorns, and they you."

"Truly? It was uncomfortable, and Uncle Pippin doesn't."

"He has reason, Elanor, for it was through a Palantír he met the mind of Sauron directly. And he does not have Artanis's blessing in the same way as your adar and you, I think. But Sauron is no more, and Estel is sure the Morgul-stone was destroyed in the fall of Barad-dûr, so his experience cannot be repeated, however deep it seared. And only Sauron has ever used the Palantíri to dominate. Fëanor made them in innocence, to serve kin far sundered, and that is all they will do unless one greater than he commands them otherwise. Those that remain are safe enough now."

Halladan stirred. "Fascinating. But you look dubious, Samwise?"

"Oh, I don't know. I was just thinking."

"About?"

"Palantíri. Working through Mr Frodo's stuff these last years, I've wondered about them more than once."

"Mr Frodo's stuff?"

"His papers, and the Red Book."

The twins and Gildor exchanged glances.

"Bilbo's Red Book that Gildor delivered?"

"There and Back Again, or whatever he finally called it?"

"Yes." Sam grinned. "He did have a lot of titles, didn't he? But Mr Frodo called his bit The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King, which makes plain sense."

"Frodo wrote a tale?"

"It sounds more like a chronicle."

"A bit of both. He gave it me when he left, saying the rest of the pages were for me." Sam sighed. "But you saw what he was like by then, Mr Gildor. A lot of the time he spent writing was when he was too weak to be doing anything else, and when I came to read it all, well, it wouldn't do. He'd left himself out mostwise, and he didn't have everything straight, not by a long way, especially what happened to Merry and Pippin, and in Minas Tirith. To be fair, Pippin didn't make much sense telling it back then, but I've talked to him and Merry about it since, and I've been making a copy with the facts set as straight as I can and Mr Frodo put back in as he should be." There was a deep silence and Sam looked round. "What?"

"How long was Frodo's account, Sam?"

"And how long is yours?"

"He wrote a few hundred pages of the Red Book, same as Mr Bilbo did. I've kept all he said, and it's up to about a thousand by now."

"Is it finished?"

"May we read it?"

"Finished? I suppose so, pretty much. I've brought it up to our getting back from seeing him off at Mithlond. And yes, you can read it if you want, though I can't see as there's much you don't already know. He tried to write each bit based on what we knew at the time, and I've stuck to that, and it wasn't until Mr Elrond and your sister turned up at Minas Tirith he understood what was happening. It was hobbits he was writing for. That's why he left himself out so much, partly. You'd find it all very dull."

"Oh we doubt that."

"Very much."

"Have you a spare copy?"

"No I haven't! I only got it to where it is a few months back, and then all this nonsense started happening. I'm meaning to make one when I can, but pages don't write themselves and I'm going to have other things on my plate, it seems."

"If we may read, Sam, we will copy as we go."

"Estel would not soon forgive us otherwise."

Halladan stirred again. "Also fascinating. And if I may send a copyist, Samwise, I would also welcome the chance to read this Red Book."

"If you want. But he'll have to have his own paper — I've nothing like enough on hand."

"Surely. But why did it make you wonder about the Palantíri?"

"Oh, because of Pippin's experience at first. Even more than breathing troll's blood, that memory hurts him worst."

Halladan frowned. "I imagine so. But — at first?"

Sam shrugged. "The rest's just me getting glimpses."

"What sort of glimpses?"

"Well, Pippin says he just fumbled the Orthanc stone out from Mr Gandalf's elbow any old how, and set it down the same. But given what happened, he must have set it right way up and sat more or less due west of it. Just chance?"

"If chance you call it. Indeed. What else?"

"Plenty. Wormtongue just chooses to throw it out the window, and Pippin happens to be closest, and all else aside he's a Took, so he looks in it even though he knows he shouldn't. And Sauron thinks — what? He's looking for hobbits for all he's worth, and now he's found one he must have thought a prisoner at Orthanc."

"So Mithrandir deemed."

"But you believe he thought he beheld the Cormacolindo?"

"I reckon." Sam shrugged. "Who knows? But it seems likely. And it's a comfort to Pippin to think what he did helped keep the Eye fixed westward. And then …"

"Then?"

"Well, Strider looked in it too. Must've been a nasty shock for Sauron. And his masterstroke with them Umbari coming up river was defeated because of what Strider saw in it. More looking west, and not noticing what was happening at Cirith Ungol and on Gorgoroth. One stupid choice by Wormtongue, and events, I don't know, cascade, I suppose. Like dominoes stood on end."

"So they do."

"Leithor i-Guruthos."

"Truly."

"Oh hush, the lot of you. Honestly." Sam glared at the twins and Halladan, while Glorfindel grinned. "Anyway, that's only the half of it. When Mr Frodo asked him Pippin remembered well enough what Mr Gandalf said as they rode to Minas Tirith, and it's plain how Saruman got caught and corrupted."

"Yes. Orthanc stone to Morgul stone."

"What of it?"

"Well, for one thing, why did the Ringwraiths know so little about the Shire? Saruman was trading for pipeweed and food for sixty years or more before they crossed the Anduin. He must have been keeping a lot to himself, however he'd fallen. And for another, what of Mr Denethor? I didn't never meet him, but I heard tales from Mr Boromir and Mr Faramir both, and later Pippin, and Strider a bit, talking about when he was being Mr Thorongil, and it's plain Mr Denethor had been got at some how, so as he despaired of everything when he needn't of. And the reason's plain enough too."

"The Anor stone."

"You think Sauron overcame him also?"

"Maybe. Or just ground him down, like the Ring did Mr Frodo." Sam shivered, remembering, despite the balmy night air, and Elanor slipped from Glorfindel's lap to climb into his for a calming hug. "From what I know he was big on being sure he'd win in the end, was Sauron. Fight all you like, I'll end up on top was what he thought. And that's what Mr Denethor seems to have thought too, so much he wanted to kill himself and Mr Faramir as the last defence. But the thing is, that let Mr Gandalf take charge when he was needed, and though Strider's never said I reckon he looked in the Palantír again before he ordered everyone to march to the Morannon."

"He did."

"But he could not see you or Frodo. Only the orcs and enslaved men massing on Gorgoroth and in the Vale of Udûn. And he dared not search too hard."

"He sought to clear your path to Orodruin by drawing them north."

"I know. So does Pippin. But that's down to his having the Orthanc Palantír, too."

"You think it Eru's design?"

"As Gollum was?"

"I think it cost a lot of lives, even if it couldn't have been done no different. But whatever hand the Lady had in this, yes, I reckon Eru had a hand as well. Or Lord Manwë and Lady Varda, how should I know? Mr Frodo and me, we had to give all we could, and Mr Frodo more than he could, but something held the way open while we did. And the Palantíri was deep in that, whatever it was."

All the elves and Halladan were intent, as well as Rose and Elanor, though Frodo-lad was struggling to keep his eyes open and the younger children were fast asleep.

"A lot of what faded Mr Frodo was echoing Sauron in that great design. He couldn't bear that, not at all. But if the Palantíri was part of it too, that means the Morgul stone as well." He took a breath. "And it minds me of what Mr Frodo used to say sometimes about the Ring having a will of its own, and trying to turn in his hand, or slip on or off his finger when it shouldn't. Sauron must have been right pleased when he got the Ithil stone and made it the Morgul stone, but it turned in his hand too."

"Ah yes." Glorfindel nodded. "I had not thought of it thus, but truly that has the feel of Eru's way. Ever he turns evil against itself."

"Don't he just? Like all them orcs killing one another over Mr Frodo's mithril shirt. But anyway, there's the First Age, all bebothered by Fëanor's silmarils, and here's the Third turning on his Palantíri. And I don't know if any of the other rings had writing on them, but the One did, and Mr Frodo said it was in a kind of Tengwar — and those were made by Fëanor too. It makes a body think."

"Wisdom indeed. We live with Fëanor's deeds still. And the library at Imladris must have this book of yours and Frodo's also, Sam. There is a copy of Bilbo's tale of Erebor, of course, and of his many translations from Sindarin and Quenya, but the account of the Cormacolindor would be read by many."

"If you want one, of course." Sam couldn't help feeling pleased, but only shrugged. "It's all questions, though, and no answers."

"But you ask such good questions."

"They may even make two bodies think."

"Tchaa. That'll be the day. But Frodo-lad's about to fall off the bench and Elanorella's drooping, so we'd best get them to bed."

The elves helped bear sleepy children back to the grove, and Sam was glad to find his own bedroll, though he and Rose spoke softly for a while of Strider and his wondrous queen, and the starlight that had spilled from their Elanorella.

It was a landslide, of course. Not a single hobbit voted for the straight 'No', and fewer than a hundred for the straight 'Yes', while the stacks of 'Yes, but' votes reached the ceiling of the counting-room in the Town Hole. Olo had done a bit better than 'Yes', garnering just over two hundred votes, but Sam's margin of victory was more than four thousand, and even he couldn't say that was anything but clear.

Hobbits seeing, as usual, no reason for unnecessary fuss but every reason for things to be done properly, the handover was formal but brisk. Will Whitfoot called out the results, the Clerk of Records affirmed their accuracy, Olo conceded with what grace he could muster, Sam thanked him (which brought grins) and called for thanks to the outgoing mayor for his long service (which brought a lot of warm approval), and Will swore him in, wished him luck, and handed over the chain of office by settling it round Sam's neck — which brought a deafening cheer and a storm of applause that wouldn't die down until he called Elanor to him and lifted her to his hip.

"Well, you've gone and done it now, and after I warned you all fair and square." When the laughter stopped he shook his head. "I've made enough speeches for a lifetime already, so I'll not go on now. But while you're all here, and listening, there's two things. One's the new inns — I've heard some good suggestions for names, but we're going to need more than that, starting with hobbits to run them. It's a family job, with linens and food and beer and stabling all to do, so think on it. Who reckons they might like to run inns for travellers at Frogmorton, Waymoot, and Ringfield? Send me a note at Bag End, eh? And them as volunteer quickish can have a say in what and how we build, so don't dawdle."

That set off a buzz of conversation and he had to raise his voice.

"You can wait till I'm done, though. Two things, I said, and the other's for you all to chew on before next Midsummer Fair. We've just agreed who can visit us. But what about us visiting them?" Conversation fell to nothing. "It's a poser, isn't it? We aren't strong, like Dwarves, nor tall, like Men, and even on ponies we're slower than folk on horses, so what can we do? There's one thing, though — we cook better than any of them, and forage. So with more wagon trains running between north and south, what d'you all reckon to having hobbit cooks to give them decent food? I'm still thinking over how it might work, and there's plenty needs working out, so you all think too. Now, I'll tell you I've asked a bit about the sort of wage there might be, with Mr Halladan and some of the Breefolk in that trade, and it looks like a hobbit who did a journey south and back, over about five months, and didn't spend it all in Minas Tirith or Edoras, could wind up with what I'd reckon a good year's coin. So there's more to it than seeing new places, and learning a bit about the world. But there's this, too — we've just decided what makes a Man welcome here, and if they're not on King's business they'll need to show themselves an honest tradesman or visitor. But what do we think will make a hobbit welcome out there, besides being a good cook and forager? They'll need their letters, in Westron at least, and to know how to be polite to anyone they might meet. And they'll need to learn about southern plants and what's good or dangerous to eat. That's common sense. But how old do they need to be? We could just say of age, but it's a thing older tweens might do well. And if we did decide to let older tweens do it, do they get the coin themselves? We'll need to be careful about that, and there's bound to be things I'm missing, so think on because I'll be wanting firm answers this time next year." He grinned into the silence. "See you all then. Just now Elanorella wants her elevenses, and I want mine."

Sara, waiting with Will and others just off the raised bank, grinned as Sam came down, conversation rising in a great buzz as folk took it in.

"You've lost no time putting another cat among the pigeons. Good points about age and coin, though."

Sam nodded. "I'll be writing to Strider as well, with the official response, to see what he reckons. Public cooks in Gondor have to have guild training, I found, so they don't cook the wrong mushrooms or whatever, and know good meat from bad."

"Really? Every hobbit knows all that."

"I know, Sara, but they'll have to prove it all the same."

"Mmm."

"And I've some more cats to set this afternoon, but I really do want my elevenses. All this speechifying is hungry work."

He resisted all badgering to say more at once, collecting Rose and the children for elevenses that flowed into a lunch Legolas and Gimli had laid on with hobbit help. Quickbeam was speaking sonorous entish to the huorns but everyone else was round the long tables, men, elves, dwarf, hobbits, and whatever Tom Bombadil and Goldberry were, liquid Sindarin and earthier Westron mingled. Sam nearly choked when he heard the Gaffer say approvingly to Lily Cotton that new brooms always swept clean, and not before time neither, and saw the merriment dancing in Rose's eyes ; but when the old hobbit insisted on proposing a toast to Mayor Gamgee, calling today the proudest day of his life, Sam was left very emotional indeed. And if ever proof of change were needed the sight of Hamfast Gamgee talking happily to Elanor while she sat on Legolas's knee and let his clever fingers braid her hair back in elven style was it.

Halladan and the twins came with the various family heads present when they left for the traditional meeting, Merry and Pippin also accompanying their fathers. It was held in a corner of the Fairground, and while there was always some audience this year's was more of a surrounding crowd whom Sam eyed, shaking his head.

"Still not enough speeches for you? Well, pin your ears back, then. First up, Mr Halladan's here because we'll be needing him before we're done, and Lords Elladan and Elrohir are still observing for the King, so as he knows what we're thinking and why. But seeing as we don't want to be all day about it, we'll deal with these disputes first and only get to the big stuff after."

As one of the disputes was a perennial Nobottle argument that involved a boundary stone being shifted ten feet one way by one party and back again by the other, and Will said it had been driving him to distraction for at least twenty years, Sam had thought some incentive was needed, and after the grievance had been aired yet again on both sides briskly asked both the minor family heads involved if they would split the difference. When they indignantly refused, he sighed.

"Then how about this? I'll ask the dwarves up at Scary to cut us a boundary stone ten feet wide and too heavy for either of you to go pushing about. Then it'll be where both of you want. Or you can agree to having five foot of usable land each and we'll make it too heavy to shift by having it tall instead."

They gaped at him while grins spread everywhere.

"You wouldn't!"

"Watch me. You're both being stubborn as mules for no good reason except the fun of it and wasting time. Only now you've made it my time you're wasting." He looked round. "You'll not win a vote, neither of you. So which'll it be?"

With that disposed of and a family head from Brockenborings cheerfully agreeing to carry the commission to the dwarves they moved on to the other, sadder dispute, a teen from Pincup whose father had died in the Troubles and who'd been left an orphan this last winter by a severe cold that had settled into her mother's lungs. The problem was that by law she was a ward of her father's family, poor woodcutters in the Green Hills, but the smial she lived in, presently with a maternal aunt, had been her mother's inherited property, and the head of that family wanted a ruling that it would remain her property and not be considered to pass to her legal guardian, who wanted to sell it. There were precedents both ways, and several lawyers present were drawing breath and looking excited when Sam held up a hand.

"Miss Begonia's sitting right there, you know. Why don't we find out what she wants, first?"

She was a wisp of a thing, and very surprised to be called on.

"I don't rightly know, Mayor Gamgee, sir. Everyone's been so kind, only they will insist on arguing about it all."

"Do you want to stay in that smial?"

"Oh yes, sir. I've lived there all my life, and it's all I've left now of my Ma and Da. But I know Uncle Oldwood needs the money, what with Cousin Ivy getting married and all."

"Right, then." Sam turned to the senior lawyer present, among Thain Paladin's party. "Mr Took, the smial was properly deeded by will, as I understand it. Is that right?"

"It is, Mayor. All as it ought to be."

"So we've a clash between Mr Oldwood's need, as our law allows it, and Miss Begonia's need. And seeing as she's surely lost enough already, I can't see it right to take more. I'm also thinking that half of this at least goes back to the Troubles, when her poor father died, and that we've plenty of wergild still. So would you all be willing for Miss Begonia to keep her rightful inheritance, and Mr Oldwood to be compensated with a fair price for the smial, paid out of wergild?"

There was some dickering about how a fair price would be agreed, but with both parties basically satisfied and the Thain willing to oversee things, the matter was agreed to be settled. Then it was the business of the inns and where exactly they would be situated, with the land purchases involved and how to handle it. Sam's argument that it should be considered a part of their duty by charter to maintain the Roads, and that while running the inns would be a family business they should be officially owned and rented to the innkeeps, was accepted, and Halladan was drawn in to promise the loan of an engineer from Annúminas to help with the larger-than-usual buildings that would be needed. The issue of names produced lively discussion, and Sam had sternly to veto calling them all the King's Folly despite Elladan's and Elrohir's pleading looks, before it was more sensibly settled that the one at Ringfield would be the Thain's Halt, the one at Waymoot the Moothalt, and the one at Frogmorton the Middle Halt, and that with the Lord Steward's permission (promptly granted) all three would show as their sign the Tree, Crown, and Stars of the United Realms.

With the formal agenda completed, Sam stood and surveyed the family heads, checking his mental tally with the added benefit of making them squirm slightly.

"Now then, you all heard me earlier, and I meant every word. This time next year we'll need to make a decision about what's required to cross our bounds outwards. Every Shire hobbit that goes out is going to be representing us all, and giving big folk a new idea of us, same as we've taken a notion of King's Men from those who came here for the Trials, and who've come since. So we're all going to be voting on it, and you're all going to be guiding your families as they think it through over the coming year. All common sense, right?"

They couldn't see otherwise and nodded warily.

"Only, how are you going to do that, do you suppose, when by my count a good three-quarters of you have never been out of the Shire yourselves?" He couldn't help grinning at their collective look. "Don't fret. I'm not proposing to send you off to Gondor. Not yet, anyway. But it seems right to me that a family head now, with all that's happening and will go on happening, ought at least to have been to Bree. No, listen up before you get all bebothered. We're going to be different from Bree, because we'll not have men living here, but seeing how Big and Little do get along there — well, it's a way of doing things you ought to know about. And you'll be able to talk to some of the traders running those wagon trains, and get a sense of who someone in your family might wind up working for. And that's common sense too, as well you know for all you're busy thinking up reasons you shouldn't have to go. Now being Mayor don't mean I can tell you you have to go, but I can take a low view of being disappointed in you. And I will, I promise. A very low view indeed. So that's the stick, and you don't want to find out what it's like. But there's a carrot, too. I know it costs, and not everyone has much to spare, so I'll be making some ponies available for anyone to borrow, freely, so long as they're riding to Bree, while Mr Butterbur will be offering special rates at the Prancing Pony. And I know going out of the Shire first time's a frightening thing, so I've had a word with Mr Halladan, and there'll be some extra King's Men available as escorts from Bridge Inn to Bree gate and back. Now Mr Halladan's going to tell you when he expects to be in Bree, and when various things'll be happening there — when their Council meets, when he'll be sitting in justice, and the like. And he'll be holding some dinners at the Prancing Pony for Shire family heads too, one a month starting in Wedmath, so before you leave you can book yourselves a seat. And as Thain, Master, and others can tell you, a dinner at Mr Butterbur's tables isn't to be missed. Nor yet his beer."

Halladan was equally brisk, and though a few of the family heads did manage to slip away into the crowd without being caught most were rounded up and chivvied into agreeing a date which he gravely noted. Sam took a copy, blandly observed he'd be sending reminders and would look forward to reports, encouraging those already caught to pursue the remaining defaulters,. Then he declared the meeting closed, and with it the Midsummer Fair. Halladan had invited those who'd been at the lunch table to join him for a farewell cup (with tea thrown in for hobbits), and once they were seated in the pavilion and finger-food was circulating he raised his glass to Sam.

"That was beautiful to watch, Samwise."

"Wasn't it?" Will Whitfoot was still laughing about the boundary stone as well as the mass despatch of family heads on adventures. "And you called me an old schemer, Sam."

"Because you are, Will. Where do you suppose I learned it?"

He laughed harder than ever, and even the Thain, mellow with the wedding successfully concluded, was both amused and approving, less unusual a combination for him that it had been but still striking.

"A day in Bree'll do them no harm at all, Samwise. And you're right it's common sense, given all we've to think about. Though I fear you'll find yourself sorely tried, Lord Steward — they'll be jumpier than squirrels."

Halladan smiled serenely. "I shall be inviting the Bree hobbit family heads by turns also, so I am sure it will work out well enough."

Gimli snorted. "Good luck with that." His voice grew more thoughtful. "But I have to say I'm impressed with the way of things here, as well as Sam's mastery of them. If dwarves faced a like decision it would not have been made so swiftly nor so peacefully. And I'm curious to know what you two will be reporting to Aragorn about what you've seen."

"That the Shire is in very capable hands."

"And the Periannath are taking their rightful place in Arnor."

"And have devised answers to his concerns."

"But mostly we shall present him with the response Sam now has to write."

"Don't remind me." Sam groaned. "It'll take a week at least."

"An eyeblink."

"And we have the Red Book to read and copy."

"Which we shall also give to Estel, Master Dwarf."

"If only because it will distract him beautifully."

Neither Merry and Pippin, nor Legolas and Gimli, had been present the previous evening, and after some swift questions Sam found himself the subject of accusing looks.

"You didn't tell us you'd finished it, Sam."

"Though we've answered enough questions."

"You didn't tell us you'd started it."

"Nor that that was what all the questions were in aid of."

"I've only just finished it and I didn't start it. Mr Bilbo did, and Mr Frodo carried on as best he could, and now I've tidied it up a bit."

"While more than doubling its length."

"And putting Frodo back in properly."

"You two keep out of it."

"Why? You are such fun to tease."

"And we are saving you the trouble of making the copy Estel would insist on having."

"A copy?"

"Two."

"Four"

Will had been listening intently. "A proper, written account of what all happened to the four of you out there? I'd like to read that."

Sam let go of his hair with an effort. "Go ahead, Will. Only you find the paper and the scribe."

"Mmm. The Clerk of Records is always at a loose end after a vote, though. And there's plenty of paper stored in the Town Hole."

Halladan leaned forward. "There are three among my men with good hands also. I can spare them for a week or ten days, and it is clear as many copies as can be made will be wanted."

Sam took hold of his hair again, but the net result, when most farewells had been made, was a sizeable return to Bag End. To Will's disappointment the Clerk had cried off, but Glorfindel, Gildor, Elladan, and Elrohir took turns reading the whole thing aloud, while the other three as well as Merry, Pippin, Legolas, Gimli, and Halladan's three men wrote as fast and fair as they could. Sam stayed out of it, having Althjof to deal with when he turned up and his own paperwork to tackle, but he laid down some rules first. Rose had read it, and Elanor knew the outline as well as Mr Bilbo's tale, which he'd read to her at bedtimes two years back, but there were things in the full tale she wasn't ready for yet, and as well as her promise not to listen he had everyone on their toes about what they said over meals. It wasn't easy, for there was much they exclaimed over and wanted to discuss, and there were parts that for Merry and Pippin especially both stirred the evil memories and gave them new understandings of what Frodo had endured. But once children were abed they also insisted that the experience of seeing it all written down felt as if it helped.

"It took me right back, Sam," Pippin said thoughtfully of what he'd written about the Uruk-hai, "but I think when I dream of it now it'll be more like something I read than something I experienced."

"Mmm. For me too, Pip. A tale as much as a memory."

That interested Sam, for he'd found writing experiences down had something of the same effect ; and he was frankly relieved that Legolas and Gimli felt he'd got their parts right too, while both were amused though critical about the account of their bickering themselves into friendship.

"That's all Mr Frodo," Sam told them truthfully. "It made him smile. And because of all the bad feeling there's been between dwarves and elves, it was something good as he could see coming of it all, even when he was feeling like there wasn't much light left anywhere."

It was interesting too how some things were much easier with hindsight, like Mr Gandalf and the balrog, because you knew it had come out alright, despite everything, and other things were worse. It had taken Sam more than a year to expand what little Frodo had been able to write about Cirith Ungol and their journey through Mordor, because he had found it so hard to make himself remember the detail. Broken up by the war against Minas Tirith as it was, those pages affected everyone, as did the account of Gollum, which for Sam had been among the easier parts to write. And what he'd finally managed to say about the spider Mr Frodo had called Shelob, a very old Shire term, had Merry and Pippin hugging him, while Legolas insisted with bright eyes that the ballads of Eryn Lasgalen would be made yet longer and more admiring. The evening after they'd read of his temptations by the Ring while he'd worn it high in Cirith Ungol, Glorfindel found him in the garden, tending the lilies on Gollum's pond in the twilight .

"I recall what you said of Sauron's Ring on the day you made this place, Sam, and I understand it better now. Couldn't think hobbit-sized at all. Truly spoken. Yet I will say this, that I cannot think of one among the Eldar, even our greatest, who could have thrown off such temptation so swiftly and surely."

"Lady Galadriel did, when Mr Frodo offered it, and Mr Elrond wouldn't touch it, no more than you would yourself."

"Because we feared its temptations, Sam. And Artanis was riven to the quick in her moment of refusal. But you, wearing it, and under the greatest stress and pain, in but a moment remembered whence it came, and" — he grinned widely, his golden hair bright in the summer dusk — "dismissed it with disdain for its foolishness, as one might an insolent and ignorant child. So Gil-galad told me he dismissed Annatar, when he came with fair seeming and fell purpose. And you know I believe Eru so arranged events that Sauron's last sense was fierce chagrin at his own blindness. Now I believe also that the part of him imbued in the Ring would have been mortified at its pure failure even to scratch your will, or Frodo's." He grew still, eyes resting on Sam with almost palpable weight. "I have read ahead also, to your deeds in the tower of Cirith Ungol and in crossing Gorgoroth, and having known that Frodo could not have come to the Sammath Naur without you did not prepare me for the reality of it. So I have another echo for you to consider."

"Haven't we had enough?"

"There is no end to Eru, Sam. And I think you will like this one, for Frodo deemed his maiming an echo only of Sauron's, forgetting Beren Erchamion."

Sam brightened. "Lost finger and lost hand, you mean? Well, that's a thought. Though Gollum wasn't no Carcharoth."

"Was he not? A ravening spirit that came at the last to bite and to slay, yet in a strange way not to kill? And the tale we tell is not of Beren alone, but of Tinúviel also, without whom, nothing. So this thought has come to me today, that Undómiel's surrender of her place to Bilbo, Frodo, and you recognises a deeper truth than any have yet realised, for Tinúviel's part was transferred not only to her but also to you. Your song took the Ring for ever from Sauron's grasp, as hers the silmaril from Morgoth's."

Sam stared. "That can't be right."

"Why not? Eru is no more constrained by generations than by kind. We know you echoed Elrond, helpless beside Isildur. But if Elanor's light minds me of Tinúviel, the contrast of yours and Rose's minds me of Thingol and Melian. And Melian was of Yavanna, even as you and Rose are."

Sam took a very deep breath. "I don't think I quite understand, Mr Glorfindel."

"Do you not? Then say every echo is weaker than what it echoes, but you echo the greatest there have ever been."

He dropped a kiss on Sam's forehead and left him to the water-lilies with thoughts churning in his head. Frodo of the Nine Fingers and Beren One-Hand he could understand after a fashion, and he wished he'd been aware of it for it might have comforted Frodo. Beren too had failed at the last, being slain, and been granted a strange second life for all he'd managed to do against Morgoth, so that felt right. But the rest was a shining muddle he couldn't get his head round at all. He tried to explain to Rose, telling her what Glorfindel had said, and explaining the tale of Lúthien and Beren as best he knew it, but neither of them knew what to think, so after a while he left it to stew on its own and got back to what he needed to be doing.

Althjof had added a pattern of roses to the front garden gate and the smaller side-gate of the back gardens, work Gimli inspected with approval before looking thoughtful and asking if he might use the forge himself that evening. Sam had intended to have the larger bottom-gate of the back gardens done the same way, but when it came to it a different vision blossomed in his mind. Elladan and Elrohir were happy to provide drawings, and after some discussion Althjof set about creating an image of the young White Tree, not in stylised form but as it now stood in the Place of the Fountain. It took him several days, with some conferences with Gimli, and when they were done they insisted on waiting until after dark to show him. Somewhat baffled Sam agreed, but when he and Rose and Elanor were shown first the petals of the roses and then the bole and leaves of the Tree edged with glittering moonlight tears came to his eyes.

"Ithildin?"

"Not quite." Gimli had shrugged gruffly, embarrassed by emotions. "It lacks the magic to sleep until spoken awake, but you wouldn't want that anyway. But it is ithildin in that it mirrors only moonlight and starlight."

"It's beautiful, Uncle Gimli."

"I hoped you'd like it, Elanor. Starlight for you, and moonlight for your Ma, from what the Elf says. And a bit of mithril that's faint now but it'll shine in the sun, and that's for your Da."

"You haven't! I thought it was too scarce now to use for anything much."

"No longer, Sam. A treasury's worth was recovered from Khazad-dûm last year, with some ingots of ithildin. And such things are for use, not hoarding. They have lain idle long enough."

Sam was uneasily conscious of having garden gates worth a fortune but Althjof assured him he wasn't out of pocket, and even with Sam insisting on paying him when he'd offered to work for free, would have very happily worked for free anyway just for the experience of handling mithril and ithildin. Gimli's beetling stare dared him to make anything of it, so he, Rose, and Elanor spent the next day making a serious fruit cake and icing it with the image of the tree in silver and green frosting ; Lily Cotton came by to add the delicate roses that were a specialty of her renowned baking, and Gimli blushed as deep a red as Sam had ever seen a dwarf manage when they presented it to him at tea. But he had a more sombre tale to tell also, delivered with much stroking of his beard.

"Besides the mithril in the old treasuries, our chief aim in entering Khazad-dum was to discover what more we might of Balin's ill-fated expedition, but there was nothing the Book of Mazarbul had not told us already, or let us guess. But Durin's Bridge being thrown down, we entered by the West Doors. The trees had indeed been felled, I am sorry to say, but we have planted fresh. And we undammed the Sirannon, which also drained that foul lake." Gimli had given him a look beneath drawn brows. "Not without some trepidation, Sam, as you will understand, but the falling waters revealed nothing save drowned plants and scoured rock. Whatever that thing we encountered was has either fled elsewhere, beneath the roots of the mountains, or perished in Sauron's fall. Even Aragorn said he could not tell which. But the doors now stand open, and the Stair Falls sound sweetly again, as they should."

That was at once a blessing and a troubling puzzle, Sam not liking the idea of such a creature being unaccounted for, but there was nothing to be done about it and he had to turn his mind to writing. The formal response to the King Elessar Envinyatar Telcontar wasn't hard, just long, with all sorts of bits needing to be clear, so it took him several drafts to have it laid out to his satisfaction. Turning it into a formal fair copy was then just a chore, though he was sadly aware that he didn't have Frodo's gift with such things, his hand less elegant and altogether lacking the skill to add borders or decorations. Writing a scroll was also to his mind more bother than it was worth, but a scroll had been sent so a scroll would be returned, and the final result was pleasing enough to his eye and could be sent by Mayor's Messenger for Thain and Master to add their signatures and seals to his own as Mayor. But that left him with the personal letter to accompany it, and he found it unexpectedly awkward, his usual ease shaded by his new official role until he decided he was being a ninnyhammer again and should just write what he felt. That turned out to mean a long, cheerful account of Will's scheming and Elanorella's part in stopping Olo Proudfoot's frightened meanness in its tracks, which led to Glorfindel's odd ideas and a request for help in understanding them. Then he got onto his idea about cooks and was surprised to see how many pages he'd written about the things that would need sorting out for hobbits to work in Gondor without falling foul of any laws or guild rules, but it didn't stop him adding several more about what he was with Halladan's help forcing on the family heads and his amusement at finding himself in the position of making adventures respectable things to have. Then there was smaller personal news, with an account of Pip's wedding and the delights of seeing Frodo-lad and Rose-lass and Merry-lad growing. And seeing as the formal scroll was perfectly clear, he mentioned it only at the end to say he hoped Strider felt his concerns were properly addressed even if it was more holes than net, and anyway they came down to Kings, King's Men, honest traders, and those with permission of Thain, Master, or Mayor, and that's what everyone was happy with.

Eventually all was done and the many guests left, bearing copies of the Red Book bound using Frodo's press and tools, and in the twins' case both the formal scroll in the same elaborate case the proposal had arrived in and Sam's letter, which was more of a packet. Parting from friends was a sadness, but in a way Sam was glad to have the smial rather calmer and less cluttered again, and Rose relieved to pursue her more normal round for a while. Sam had insisted years before that they have a maid to help with the cleaning and laundry, a big family being a great joy but no joke when it came to the work involved, and now Rose would have things to do as the Mayor's wife as well as Mistress of the Hill they faced up to the need for more help. Daisy's eldest was now a tween, and delighted to help with the kitchen and children, while Hamson's youngest had green fingers and no interest in ropemaking, so Sam took him as an apprentice and was relieved of some of the duller garden chores. A steady stream of documents arrived by post or messenger for him to read and countersign, or occasionally send back for rewriting, but it wasn't too bad, and he took a certain pleasure in sending out reminders of Halladan's first dinner in plenty of time, and in dealing with Sara to arrange the use of some Buckland ponies for two of the family heads.

Then as Afterlithe simmered into Wedmath he'd just sent off the week's documents for filing when the doorbell chimed and he answered it to find a sturdy-looking hobbit he didn't recognise standing somewhat nervously on the doorstep.

"Mayor Gamgee, sir. I'm Aldo Brewer, of the Little Delving Brewers, and I'm sorry to disturb you but I was wondering if I could have a word about this inn that's to be built, the Moothalt?"

Sam smiled and offered a hand. "Of course you can, Mr Brewer, and welcome. Come on in."

With nothing worse than the disorganised slowness of the Haradri to vex him, and all Gondor running smoothly so far as he could tell, Aragorn had found a more relaxed and satisfying routine. Breakfast and early morning were sacrosanct, times for him and Arwen alone in all consciousness of the life growing within her and the uncertainties inevitably attending it. Before lunch he dealt with whatever business came up, receiving, reading, signing, corresponding, and occasionally having to sit in justice afternoons varied between the Houses of Healing, weapons training with the Citadel and City Guards, the rebuilding work at Osgiliath, the continuing settlement of the former slaves, and just walking openly in the city, visiting shops and markets, inns and guildhalls, asking and listening. Faramir and Éowyn had undertaken the wearing task of interviewing the Umbari prisoners, sifting grim and often clashing testimony, and sooner or later there would have to be formal hearings and sentences, but not yet. Unless there was an official dinner he always ate with Arwen, and any friends who were in the city, but afterwards used the Palantír to survey his realms, seeking problems to solve or avert, observing the slow greening of Mordor, and speaking to Halladan about what passed in Arnor — though his Lord Steward had become distinctly reticent about the Shire, telling him only that the Periannath would let him know themselves what they had decided.

Arwen's condition was becoming visible, so he had made the formal announcement that an heir was expected to be born near mettarë. There had been much jubilation but also a new descent of noble ladies far more eager to surround Arwen than she to be surrounded, shocked to find that even now she preferred working in the garden or with her needles to sitting idle, and disinclined to respect her choices or need for privacy until Aragorn became sufficiently irritated to post additional guards with stringent instructions. Peace was then restored to their breakfast-times until a warm Úrui morning when they had barely sat down to eat before the door swung open to admit Elladan and Elrohir, who had apparently arrived overnight and were both appallingly cheerful. Their joy in seeing Arwen and her delight in them were a boon, as always, but they also bore packages — several of them, including a scroll-case he recognised and something large and heavy — and had an air of elven satisfaction that stirred a degree of alarm not eased when they sat and Elladan promptly filched the bread he'd just buttered.

"We come bearing much, Estel."

"And have done King Strider's bidding."

"So we have much to say of the Shire and the Periannath."

"Observing whom is hungry work."

"So I see." He went to ask the duty maid for more breakfast to be brought. "Did the Periannath not feed you? That seems unlike them."

"Oh they fed us well."

"But we were working so hard we needed it."

"And since then we have ridden the long leagues of Eriador and Rohan."

"With only our own cooking to savour."

"A sad fate, I grant. So what are these things you bear?"

"A scroll, a letter, and a book."

"You may not be so happy with the scroll."

"But you have no choice about it."

"The vote was overwhelming."

"And it does address your concerns."

"Rather well, actually."

"Though not all your guildmasters may think so."

"And from what Sam told us the letter may have them hopping also."

"Though you should like it better."

"The book will rivet your attention for a week."

"And leave you wondering about many things."

"So you get it last."

"And the scroll first."

Elrohir handed him the case, and after clearing a space on the table he opened it, slid out the large, tightly coiled scroll it contained, and unrolled enough to begin reading.

"This is Sam's hand?"

"At his most formal."

"With some advice from a perian who is their Clerk of Records and believes in swashing a capital most thoroughly."

"So I see."

It was addressed to him with every title and dignity he possessed, declared itself to be sent by the duly elected Mayor of the Shire with the consent and endorsement of Thain Paladin II Took and Saradoc Brandbuck, Master of Buckland, and further declared that it faithfully represented the will of the Periannath of the Shire as expressed in a vote held on Midsummer Day, 1427 SR, in accord with his request. Then it got down to business. The Periannath were delighted that he should proclaim the Shire a Free Land within his Kingdom of Arnor, under their Thain and with control of their own laws and business, and expressed thanks for his care of them in proposing that Men should be forever excluded from it — but respectfully submitted that this would make for grave difficulties with trade would moreover conflict with Charter duties concerning the maintenance of Roads imposed on and accepted by them from the late King Arvedui and would in any case make it impossible both for them to host his majestical self when he came north, as they hoped and expected him to do, and for individuals among them to host such friends among Men as they might wish to invite. They could therefore only accept his proposal if certain clear provisions were attached, as wide debate and a decisive poll confirmed, and a long list began. He was halfway through the first item when he came to a halt.

"Shire law really defines 'close kin' as great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, siblings, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, spouses, parents- and siblings-in-law, and all cousins on both sides within three degrees?"

"It does."

"Sam showed us the records."

"It is a term used in their law in many respects."

"Be glad the definition of distant kin was not required."

He shook his head and went back to reading, ignoring the bustle as food arrived in generous quantity. Everything was exquisitely precise and at first heavy with nobility, though he found himself smiling at the careful wording surrounding any future creation of Princes of Arnor, the supposition that they would in their nature be of equal rank with the Princes Faramir and Imrahil, and the distinction to be drawn between any such princes and the duly appointed Lords Steward of Gondor and Arnor, however they might at any given time be one and the same. The shift to Éomer and the Marshals of the Riddermark, all with their respective close kin, surprised him until he realised Merry would have insisted, and the next item brought him to another halt.

"King Bard? Why should Sam think Dalemen would visit the Shire?"

"He doesn't."

"But he thought it would be rude to allow two kings and ban a third."

"And he said Bard's ambassadors had been very polite when he met them."

"With which Halladan agreed."

"Huh."

Then he came to the provision about King's Men, widely defined, and any to whom a King of Gondor, Arnor, Rohan, or Dale gave a warrant.

"Do they not see how dangerous that could become? I cannot bind my successors to be careful in such a thing, nor Bard at all."

"We made that point."

"And Sam said, if the King's Warrant didn't guarantee sense and moderation, no King's Law would prevent trouble."

"Which is true."

"And the matter was raised at two of their Moots, and that argument accepted."

"I suppose. They're also asking me to let Éomer and Bard know."

"Naturally. You have ambassadors at both courts already."

"And any travelling to the Shire must cross Arnor."

"Mmm. That's true enough." He read on. The Men of Bree had troubled him from the start, and the provision concerning those resident in the Breelands for at least two full years, whom the Breeland Council (meeting in due session with a quorum of both Big and Little members) would unanimously agree to be of good character and honest practice, was one he could genuinely accept with a good heart. But then came merchants whom he, Éomer King, and King Bard, or their duly appointed and properly competent deputies in such matters, equally agreed to certify as good and honest, and he blinked.

"I'm supposed to certify everyone going to Arnor?"

"No, Estel. Only those wishing to trade."

"Halladan approved whole-heartedly."

"He did? It'll be a nightmare."

"Nonsense. And you are ignoring politics."

"Guild politics."

"Eh? The guilds'll be foremost in denouncing this."

"And what is it to do with them?"

"They are guilds of Gondor."

"And they must have your approval to trade in Arnor."

"As must anyone of Gondor."

"Whatever a guild might say."

"We deemed it a marvellous opportunity."

"You did?" Aragorn sat back, scowling. "And how did you manage that? The guilds are far too narrow in their memberships and obsessed with wealth and status above competence and honesty."

"So we have heard you say."

"More than once."

"And now your appointed and instructed deputy can ask, in a most sorrowful and concerned voice, how it is that a certain merchant or craftsman, clearly honest and well qualified, as shown by his or her licence to trade in Arnor, is deemed unsuitable for admission to his or her proper guild."

"Or alternatively, how it might be that a merchant plainly neither honest nor well qualified, and quite unable to gain a licence for Arnor, is accepted of a guild in Gondor."

Arwen's laughter was golden. "Oh, you have heeded my chastisement about studying the politics of the Edain. Adar would laugh. You know I have made a start with the Embroiderers and Seamstresses, my heart, as you with the Healers and Kitchen Masters. But we have neither of us had purchase with the rest, and this gives us much. Just think — you can appoint men and women of Lebennin, Lamedon, Dol Amroth, Anórien, and Ithilien, who will judge strictly by merit and be delighted past measure to embarrass the more stubborn guilds."

Aragorn thought about it, and found himself smiling again. "Yes, alright. I shall have to summon Faramir and Imrahil to finesse this, which will delay the Umbari trials. But I can live with that, I dare say."

"Dare you, Estel?"

"Keep reading."

He did, scowling slightly, and discovered the final clause.

"Anyone approved by Thain, Master, or Mayor? That's anyone at all!"

"Whom they choose."

"As is their right, Estel."

"Would you accept their rules about who might visit you?"

"You wouldn't like it."

"And neither did they, rightly."

"It's those gawkers, isn't it? They want them to come?"

"They do not mind them."

"And they welcome the coin."

"Sam says he can understand folk wanting to see the mallorn."

"Which is a truly wondrous tree."

"Think of a mallorn attuned to Periannath"

"A hobbity one."

"Like Sam's Sindarin."

"And you have it. Marvellous."

Aragorn scowled some more and Elladan shrugged.

"This enables them to limit numbers."

"And deal with those who might come for better reasons than gawking."

"Did you speak to the nodcock?"

Arwen laughed again and Aragorn had to smile. "Lord Gilminas? Yes, we had him to tea one day, much to his surprise, and Sam was quite right about him — more than one arrow short of a quiver but rather charming with it. Except for his verse, which was unspeakable."

"But harmless, as our sister's laugh attests."

"So what is the problem?"

He went back to scowling. "Sam really doesn't mind stupid nobles turning up to gape at him? I find that hard to believe."

Elrohir sat back, sighing, and idly snagged some bacon from Elladan's plate. "Sam is sometimes a great deal more sensible than you, Estel."

"Including this time. He thinks the gawkers are noodles, nodcocks, and ninnyhammers."

"Or nafflewits and naplacks."

"But he also thinks they come to honour Iorhael, as well as the mallorn, and both ends very proper. That they come to honour him does not cross his mind, nor does he quite believe it even if they say they do, and so long as they observe common courtesy he is content."

"And if they don't?"

Elrohir grinned. "Then he … Sindarin lacks a word, but the Westron would be squelches them, most wonderfully. We saw a minor lord of Pinnath Gelin who had come with his family, and whose half-grown son audibly observed that such very short beings as Periannath could not have cast down Sauron. Sam looked at him in a way that made him wriggle a great deal, and observed that if he yet believed physical stature most important he was quite the addlepate, and did he suppose Lúthien had been bigger than Morgoth?"

"At which point Bregalad, who had been resting beside the mallorn, picked the foolish child up, very gently, turned him to look him in the eye, and said with exceptional gravity that while the Periannath were undoubtedly hasty the Lord Perhael was most wise, and he would be well advised to listen, as the Onodrim had done."

"The child spent half an hour in his grasp, returning to earth both chastened and wiser."

"And the parents made a very handsome donation to the Mayor's Fund before they left."

"It was as fine a set-down as Adar could have delivered."

"Or Glorfindel, who also saw it and laughed himself silly."

"And who has decided Frodo echoed Beren Erchamion as well as Sauron."

Aragorn blinked again. "He has?"

"He has."

"So it is time for Sam's letter."

Having made sure the rest of the scroll was only formal signatures and seals he returned it to its case and opened the packet Elrohir handed over. It contained a thick sheaf of numbered sheets and as he read he passed them to Arwen, who passed them in turn to her brothers. The self-mocking account of how Sam had been tricked and baffled into running for Mayor made him smile, the description of one of Olo Proudfoot's speeches made him frown, and the tale of how Elanor had (with the twins' whistling assistance) brought him low nearly made him choke on a sip of tea.

"I said observe, not intervene."

"Elanor intervened."

"We merely assisted her."

"At her request."

"It was splendid."

"She actually stamped her foot."

"And asked him if he realised Daernaneth was our gammer."

Arwen laughed. "Shall you call Daeradar gaffer then? I wish to be there when you try."

"We considered it."

"But believe discretion may be the better part of valour."

"And have instead made a Ballad of Ellanorella, which we will sing for you later."

Aragorn shook his head. "A rare outbreak of sense. And Sam does say it stopped this Olo Proudfoot's unpleasantness very effectively, so I suppose you did right. Is there much of this ugly scaremongering about the fair-haired children?"

"No. They are deemed a sign of the blessing of the bounteous year, no more."

"And those others we saw, while fair of face as well as hair, have nothing of Elanor's beauty nor her precocity and fierce intelligence."

"Now she is much wondered at, as well she might be. But she is already beloved of many."

"So it's really just the Proudfoot and some few cronies?"

"That we saw. He is fearful where most are only wary, and mean-minded with it."

"He received fewer than one in thirty votes, Estel."

"And though we cannot know, the ballot being secret, those few who supported him openly were all older, rejecting any change."

"And some yet grieving and embittered by losses during their Troubles."

Aragorn nodded. "Alright. Good. I have to say I'm surprised there isn't more of that sort of feeling."

"Thank Sam. Those trials Halladan held set a strong marker, while the collaboration of some of their own made for much heart-searching."

"And then the huorn groves have made the strange more welcome than feared."

"The wergild has helped also, and is used wisely and well."

"In which we think Sam has had a greater hand than appears. Mayor Whitfoot implied as much, telling us about things Sam has done with the monies and properties left to him by Iorhael, including the Sackville-Baggins bequest."

"But read on."

As he did so Aragorn's eyebrows rose considerably, and when he came to the end of a section disturbed by things Glorfindel had said he waited to let that sheet circulate.

"Thingol and Melian? What has possessed Glorfindel?"

Elladan shrugged. "You saw Sam's and Rose's lights in the Palantír, Estel. The favour of Lady Yavanna is clear to see, and Glorfindel avers the contrast reminds him of them, as Elanor's of Tinúviel. We did tell Sam no-one else yet in Arda save Daeradar could give an opinion."

"Unless it is Iarwain Ben-adar, maybe."

"As he writes, he finds the thought of Iorhael and Beren Erchamion comforting, and he told us he hoped it was something Iorhael had been led to understand in Tol Eressëa, to set against his self-loathing for echoing Sauron in Eru's design."

"We believe Glorfindel thinks that is so."

"But he was very close about it."

Arwen was frowning slightly. "But what made Glorfindel say anything in the first place? It is unlike him to speak of such things without cause."

"There was cause, sister." Elrohir tapped the remaining heavy package. "But it must wait a little yet."

"And will it help me to answer Sam, as he asks?"

"Yes and no."

"Wonderful."

"He is merely disturbed by the idea of his own greatness, Estel. It will settle."

"He is growing into himself most wonderfully, as you will see if you read on."

"Gah." But Sam's crisp, clear, and thoughtful discussion of the talents of the Periannath for cookery and foraging, the possibility of their serving with wagon trains, and the interesting issues raised by Gondorian law and guild practice was impressive, while news of his scheming to make adventures respectable things to have made Aragorn laugh aloud. Mindful of the twins' bland looks he read on through the personal news to the end, amused by the account of Pippin's wedding nerves and the emotions of the vows, and sat back.

"Well, plainly you are right I have no choice but to accept all their special provisions, and while I might still wish for more it is well enough, I suppose. Éomer and Bard will be scratching their heads, I dare say, but that will be their problem. But this business of cooks, now — how does Sam know so much about Gondor's laws and guild rules?"

"Only those concerning food."

"He says the cook assigned to the house you had them use mentioned it, and he was curious."

"So he then asked food-sellers in the markets and cooks in the inns and eating-houses they visited."

"He was struck that anyone could not know good food from bad."

"Trust a Perian. But it's a good idea and an interesting problem. And I like the idea of having Periannath coming to the city more often. We'll have to be careful, though — people will be very curious and excited."

"True, my heart, but if all happens as Sam hopes it will become routine soon enough. And I will be glad to meet more Periannath — knowing well only dear Bilbo, and the four travellers but a little, my view is rather biased, I fear. And those others who came to Orthanc with Merry and Pippin were fair-spoken and interesting."

"You need not wait so long to know many more by report, sister. For this" — Elladan at last unwrapped the package to reveal a large, plainly bound book — "is a window on many things."

"And a new thing in Arda."

"Yet not entirely what it proclaims itself."

"Oh? How so?"

"Read the title."

Elrohir handed the book across and Aragorn set it down so Arwen could see as well, before turning back the cover and a protective end-paper, curiosity bubbling. Then his heart lurched.

The Downfall

of the

Lord of the Rings

and the

Return of the King

(As seen by the Little People ; being the memoirs of Bilbo and

Frodo of the Shire, supplemented by the accounts of their friends

and the learning of the Wise.)

He took a very deep breath, mind spinning. "Frodo wrote this? The hand is yours."

"We copied it for you."

"And how is it not what this proclaims?"

"It is no less, but it is more."

"That Bilbo had written his tale we all knew, and that Gildor took it at his request to Frodo."

"Who added his own tale, to his own satisfaction."

"But not to Sam's, because he left himself out, it seems."

"And Sam has put him back in, with much else besides. Half of it at least is his, but he would not allow the title Frodo used to be changed."

Aragorn turned the page with a hand that trembled slightly and found a list of chapter-heads divided into groups. The first long group he recognised from readings Bilbo had sometimes given in Rivendell, but the shorter groups after that were new and yet utterly familiar. His own name leapt out at him, then Elrond's, Galadriel's, Boromir's, and he saw the shape the tale must take as the single journey had become many and rejoined again. He leafed on, frowning, then looked at some random pages further on.

"A prose tale of this length?"

"Oh yes, and such a tale, Estel. No Elda, Man, or Dwarf would write such a thing in such a way — it would be either epic verse or bald chronicle. But two Bagginses and a Gamgee have between them made a new form as well as bearing witness to twist the heart."

"And it shows, better than anything we have ever seen, the hand and design of Eru so cunningly woven in events that none save the wisest catch even a glimpse of it."

"Frodo had seen how the design affected himself."

"But Sam sees more. Much more. His conversation after he spoke to you with Rose and Elanor was exceptional."

"And all is there, seen rightly, with a good deal more to command deep thought while bringing hearts to mouths. We think it was his account of his temptation by the Ring in Cirith Ungol that prompted Glorfindel to speak."

"Though he was also very interested in a moment at Amon Sûl, when you would not let Frodo tell aught of Gil-galad and instead yourself sang the meeting of Beren and Lúthien."

Aragorn's mind went back, marvelling. "There is that kind of detail?"

"Throughout, Estel. We spoke of it with Legolas and Gimli as we rode, and they affirm all, even for those times when no perian was present."

"They have read it?"

"They have copied it." Elrohir grinned. "As did Glorfindel, Legolas, Gimli, three of Halladan's men, Merry, and Pippin. Arnor is about to have an outbreak of reading."

"You should start, as our sister already has, for it will take you a week."

"And we will tell the court you are not available for anything less than a matter of life and death."

It wasn't quite that easy, of course, but Aragorn did cancel everything he could to spend the hours turning pages, Arwen beside him, and when eyes grew tired they would speak of what they had read. If the harried days from Bree to Parth Galen were already familiar to him, he yet marvelled at the tale that had been wrought from them, so much broader and more detailed than a lay could be but possessed of its own patterns and disciplines, and for Arwen it was a glut where there had been only outline. The twins had taken care copying the few illustrations, and the deadly force of the Ring's inscription in ancient Fëanorian characters yet the Black Speech made them both shudder, while the sharp detail in which Frodo or Sam had recalled the design of the Moria gate was astounding. Khazad-dûm and the fall of Mithrandir terrified, Lothlórien consoled, and Arwen was enchanted with the descriptions through hobbit eyes yet left shaken by the account of her Daernaneth's refusal of the Ring. And as Gollum joined them, knowing now the end to which he had come, Aragorn began to see what the twins meant about Eru's subtle and binding design: at the time he had thought it just his ill-luck that the creature had found their trail, but now the orc-assisted escape from Thranduil's guards glimmered as another strand of the pattern whereby evil undid itself.

The first real shock came with the account of the breaking of the Fellowship. Of Frodo's experience with Boromir and on Amon Hen he had known something from Boromir's own words, from what little Frodo had told Faramir at Henneth Anun, and from Mithrandir, but to read it so vividly set forth was painful and what followed made him cry out his surprise.

"I have spoken to none of Boromir's last words save to Faramir, and that only last year, when he asked me directly. Yet here they are set down even as I heard them."

"Lord Irmo must have given it to one of them to see, my heart. How strange! Yet perhaps it is no surprise that in all of this the Valar desire the truth to be known."

"Even so, love. I must be glad I told Faramir, yet I must also now tell him many will know."

"Certainly he and Éowyn must see this as soon as may be."

But when he mentioned this to the twins they shook their heads.

"We asked Sam about that bit, and he said it is exactly as Frodo set it down."

"He believes that once they had learned of Boromir's death from Faramir the Ring showed Frodo visions of it."

"As of much else, perhaps. Certainly it assailed him, and grief is an opening."

"And who can say what its powers were as it waxed? Certainly they increased greatly, as you will see in Cirith Ungol."

"That is a grim thought."

But the accuracy of what followed concerning events in Rohan and Gondor was indeed striking, and though Aragorn remembered Frodo having taken various notes when all the surviving Fellowship had been reunited in Cormallen and Minas Tirith there were details he was sure had never been mentioned. Arwen reminded him that Legolas had said he and Gimli had spoken of much at Sam's wedding, and more at Merry's, as well as exchanging regular letters with Sam. Aragorn wasn't convinced but even that nagging wonder was swept aside by the tale of Frodo and Sam with Gollum in Ithilien, and their passage of Cirith Ungol had his and Arwen's hands tightly entwined as they read. The unfolding disaster had both wanting to leap ahead but they forced themselves to keep on through the return to Rohan and Gondor and Aragorn's sense of amazement returned with force.

"Elladan and Elrohir are surely right about the hand of Eru."

Arwen nodded thoughtfully. "Of a surety. And if Sam had seen so much about the use made of the Palantíri, it is no wonder he was wary of looking into one."

That was a thought to ponder, and to read of the cascading effects of the Palantíri once the Orthanc stone made its unexpected appearance disturbed him, despite Arwen's soothing. Both were transfixed by the journey in Mordor and the account of the Sammath Naur, in which Frodo's self-indictment was softened by Sam's understanding. And it was Arwen who needed his comfort as they read of her parting with her father. When at last they came to the end, returning with Sam to his waiting family, they went hand in hand first to the gardens, talking softly, and then to the Place of the Fountain. Elladan and Elrohir found them there, looking out over the great sweep of the Anduin and the green flanks of the Ephel Duath notched by the pass of Cirith Ungol.

"You have finished it?" Aragorn nodded.

"And what do you think?"

"I do not know what to think, only to be amazed."

"We agree about the hand of Eru, though." Arwen had one of the kitchen cats on her lap, slim fingers inducing a rumbling purr. "And I am humbled so to be made aware of all that was endured that I might sit here now, joyous and free."

Her brothers were uncharacteristically solemn.

"That we all may, sister."

"But what has struck us most is that the design is unfolding still."

"Sam ends by saying he is back."

"When but for Rose and Elanor he might have gone with Frodo."

"And look at what has flowed from his return."

"And continues to flow."

It wasn't until the sun had set behind the Ered Nimrais that they went in.