Dwalin paused to wipe the sweat from his brow in the warmth of Freyda's forge. The hanging hide in the doorway was drawn; dwarves went about their business in their own surrounding vestibules, unaware of Thorin's presence. Dwalin and his latest project were in even more urgent want of company, he thought. He missed the heat and hot metal smell of the smiths' workshops. Thrain and Thror at his side, supervising, guiding his hand in gloves too big to hold the tongs, dip the glowing metal into the cold water.
"A prince of a crafting people shall never be king in true with smooth hands," Thrain had repeated over and over. His own calloused hands holding close to his, and Frerin's. Thrain had never been enchanted by gold cups and rings; in its liquid form, handled in the hands of loving artisans, his lectures and lessons had been daily, as it was for steel, silver, diamond, pig iron in the right hands.
"All things, minerals or other, have worth in the right role, even if it is poor from the outside."
Thorin removed one from the fire to dunk into the cooling tub. The hiss and flow of steam filled the air. Dwalin continued to pound out the glowing metal on his anvil into a long, flattened rod. There was a bushel of eight of them in the corner, already completed, ready for further assembly.
"Gates to put up in the doors. When the babe's walking and up," Dwalin explained over the heavy clangs of his work. "Shan't be for a time but might as well start now. Freyda won't be down here for some time."
The metal cooled in the water and laid out, Dwalin slugged the cold mead Thorin had brought in a small keg. "Eda's put 'er to bed-rest until the child's come. The dwarrowdams are having a klatch before she's laid up. Mahal ye ought see 'er belly. Like a ripe watermelon. Dunno how it is that works, a lady's carrying, but it don't seem much fun to me."
"I saw a horse give birth once. For the mare it seemed an unpleasant process," Thorin shrugged, listening to the idle chatter of the dwarves in the nearby stalls, the bustle of the great forges below.
"Aye, perhaps," Dwalin swallowed an air bubble and coughed.
Thorin slapped his back. "Either way, while they are there, we are here. We could use the same as they do time to time. We have not spend such time together, Dwalin, of late, and I have missed it. You and I were joined at the hip once."
"Aye, I'll take that. Freyda's a wee bit surly to be about," he laughed, pouring himself another. "Worse than you, and she eats strange things to boot. Pickles in sweet-cream. Harth!"
Bending forward, Thorin leaned, steadying his elbows on knees, head in hands. There was a pain his chest again. "Meisar also. For different causes, you can imagine."
"Aye, I can." Dwalin wiped the foam from his beard, awkwardly. He set aside the tankard and sat down beside Thorin on the bench. "How fares she in this time?"
"I'm afraid to ask, even if I know the answer."
"She drinks a tea that tastes like swamp-water and smells even worse in the evening-tide, my lady-wife says. So far, nothing? And that root ye chew... ack!"
"It is her time anyway, the female's... certain days, thus we know it to be true. "
"It's what ye get for trusting the will o' wizards. Or giving her pass to commiserate with 'em so."
"I could not tell her otherwise, I'm afraid. But I cannot bear to see her this way, Dwalin. It's easier to avoid her, come in late when she's asleep, go to my work until the wee hours. It has always been easier to put duty ahead of desire. A convenient excuse."
"Not so much. Ye never had the luxury of otherwise."
"Until now," grumbled Thorin. "And my dutifulness does me all the less good."
Dwalin's hard hand on his back was a strange comfort. "Most like she misses ye. Might see 'er melancholy, but sadder still if ye avoid her for the sake o' it."
""It is likely she thinks I am growing cool toward her. I am not, that I swear. I am... lacking myself. She is all to me and more."
"So do ye think it of nature's misfortune, or something other? Her... lack of Freyda's luck, so to speak."
"I know not, except that it saddens her beyond measure. She dotes upon her animals like they were children, even the pig," Thorin tried to muster a smirk. It was half her height now and laid by the fire the night prior, wrapped in a blanket of her own and her, sitting over the creature humming some lullaby. He had pretended not to see.
He sighed toward Dwalin. "The wizards I suspect have their own theory, but they will not say what it is. Dis is too much sequestered with Gandalf in any case, though I hesitate to make demands of her, what they speak of or otherwise. I hope it is for Meisar's sake."
"Do ye not think it strange she would not share it if she thought she had some answer?"
"Perhaps, but she is fragile. She has been since I returned, and likely ever will be. I have beleaguered her enough. It should never have been like this."
"We cannot bring her children back," Dwalin murmured sadly.
"No. But we await the next generation, and ensure we do better by them," Thorin said, his hand on Dwalin's shoulder. "I will protect yours better than I did my own. And my own the same, should they come."
Dwalin's mouth twitched in contemplation. "Perhaps Meisar knows yer sister's scheming better."
"Would she? My sister is evasive lately even with her."
"Dwarf women talk. It is their secret weapon, doncha know?"
"Gossips and idle chatter one would think," Thorin shook his head.
"Like us right now?" Dwalin guffawed sarcastically.
"Maybe we ought to do so more often then."
.
"It is very kind of ye, all of ye. I would be hard at work, but my fingers, see how they swell! And I've got so little prepared," Freyda blushed, a little embarrassed. She lowered herself heavily into the overstuffed chair in Meisar's antechamber, powder-blue gown fluttering daintily over the swell of her stomach.
She yelped as the brocade began to pip at her midsection. "Oh dearie me, I've got a soldier in there marchin' on," she guffawed against a hiccup of shock for the swift movement. The dwarrowdams all gathered around and felt her stomach.
"What a kick! I thought it would come right out your skin!" chortled Lulia, who was tailing her sister on her nursing duties that day. Virta had come to see if the swelling in Freyda's fingers could be helped. The healers, as they always did, attended most closely on the expectant mother. Eda had put her to bedrest starting in the morning until the child was born. So the dwarrowdams gathered, one last time, to fete the coming child.
"Dwalin's child, that is for certain," Freyda smirked. "A real brute this one." Her arms full of knitting and fabrics, she spread them over the low table before the fire to consider. She had been making a cap for the baby, kid-leather with a soft linen lining. There were already a few sleep-shirts and swaddling made, though precious little else. The knitting was too painful though to continue, her fingers red and swollen. Virta wrapped them in bandages soaked in green tea leaves.
"I'll take the knitting. M'very good at hats, scarves, sweaters and throws. A wee blanket won't be trouble," Brynja piped in cheerfully. She took the yarn and needles from Freyda. "What a lovely hunter-green. Will you wrap him in it when he's born?"
"Only linen for the newborn. Their skin is delicate. The yarn might itch. But it will be a lovely wrap when winter comes," Eda advised. "You might need a bit more yarn. He'll grow fast."
"Got a feelin' he'll be a behemoth to begin with," Freyda predicted, warily. She felt her own stomach, its enormous sphere shifting under the pretty blue fabric. By the fire, dogs in her lap, Meisar was seated on a cushion beside Dis, helping her to pull the uneven stitching from one of Freyda's sleep-shirts.
"You're awful quiet Meisar. Are you well?" Freyda asked tenderly. "I find it unkind of me to be takin' yer help in this, making me babe's wares. If I weren't so behind on it and so close, I would have thought it distasteful. I do, ye know."
"Please, I beg you don't burden yourself with guilt," Meisar pleaded quietly. "You deserve all happiness Freyda, and your child more clothes certainly."
"They'll go through enough in the course of a day," Emli chimed in. "I kept a cauldron of boiling water and lye soap on the fire at all hours of the day when Gimli was a babe. There are certain things they have no control over at that age that you will learn very quickly."
"Kindest thanks then," Freyda murmured. "I know my child shall love ye as I do."
The queen smiled, edgily. "I do not fear that, though I fear Thorin to be unhappy with me."
"How?" gasped Brynja, sweeping in, the rest of the dwarrowdams following. "Never!"
"None of Radagast's charms have borne any fruit. He comes in late. He lies with me when I am not in my time as now, but there is a sadness in him when he does."
Dis kept plucking the mangled stitches in silence as Brynja slid between them and drew close to Meisar, easing the hands that were furling in her lap with shame and trepidation. Her words had come from her tongue like a poison unleashed, a thing that she had wanted only to keep inside. But Brynja's wordless comfort, a coo like a pigeon's roosting, soothed her.
"Now Meisar, you know very well that Bofur cannot keep his hands from me. Or his mouth, or any other part of him for that matter," Brynja began.
"Rub it in why don't ye Brynja?" Freyda scolded. The bump of her stomach seemed to glare in their direction.
"My point is," Brynja went on, in spite of Freyda's grumpy glance. "For all we commune together, look here." She pressed Meisar's hand into the soft hollow of her belly. "No baby yet. You are not alone, Meisar. After all, aren't we stubborn sometimes, even in coming to be?"
Meisar gave her a vague nod of agreement. Her kind, hale face tilted and tried to lift the queen's expression. With the tilt of Brynja's head she could see Dis was watching the brown-headed dwarrowdam, listening, assessing. Her hands on the baby's shirt moved without her, lost in some thought.
"I am a loss to speculate what the cause of this… emptiness in you could be. But as to the other, I dare say you will not tempt him back to you with any enthusiasm dressed like a Gondorian matron," Emli bluntly suggested, breaking a pause.
"I've never seen a Gondorian matron. What would I know of that?" responded Meisar, a little irritated. Her stomach twisted and bunched, painfully.
"Buttoned up to the neck in dull colors and ugly headdresses," Emli retorted smartly. She strode over and plucked the veil and cap from Meisar's head, letting the flame of her hair with its flyaways blend against the firelight.
"When have you ever been to Gondor, Emli?" Siv questioned, legs in powder-blue stockings slung over the chair.
"As a child with my father," Emli answered, never taking her hawkish focus from undoing the buttons at Meisar's neckline, opening the partlet and giving an approving appraisal to the paleness of her neck and chest, the charming little freckles over it. "Selling the finest diamonds and rubies to the noble men and women. A dreadful thing to see their crones and widows dressed like crows and pale as the walls of Minas Tirith itself to boot. It makes them look dead already."
"Then enlighten us, Emli, with your vast knowledge of Gondorian women, what our dwarf queen ought do about her trousseau, in such a time no less, when we have nothing else to concern ourselves with," challenged Aroin caustically, from behind a stack of contracts and payment agreements. "I suppose I will keep up with the governance if you all want to sit there and pity yourselves all day."
"It is spring nearly summer. Where are your daffodil-yellows and sky-blues? Your rose and peach? I should think your wardrobe needs updating if nothing else. You are the queen. At least keep up appearances, my dear," Emli went on.
"I have a gown of foam-green in the armoire. Unfasten the sleeves I shall wear a chemise of rose beneath it. It won't match my hair but... I have not thought of the changing of the seasons I'm afraid," Meisar conceded.
Only the changing of the world.
"Well that is why we are here, no?" Emli said more sympathetically. "Lucky for you to have a guide as fashionable as I to be your advocate in these matters. I shall send for a few yards of fern-green silk. You'll need at least one new dress, and green will complement your hair."
"Thank you," Meisar croaked, holding back want of tears.
"We'll stay with you, Meisar," Brynja offered.
"We should bed anyway then. I grow tired," Dis said. The dwarrowdams all nodded in agreement, doffing their day-clothing with the aid of the maidservants to gather on the broad bed in their base linens for night. Only Emli took her leave.
Emli nudged her and whispered at the door. "Which have you left to employ of these charms?"
"Only one, and when my time ends, I will exhaust every drop of it, and wait, and hope."
"Poor lamb," Emli shook her head sympathetically. "Have courage, my dear queen. You have summoned so much already it would be foolhardy to give up now."
"It may only be the beginning," Dis gave her a furtive smile from across the room as she closed the door after Emli. She was watching Brynja, arms full of yarn and Freyda's mangled work still. It was one of those days that Brynja, sweet, loving Brynja had a bit of a waddle to her step, and not like Freyda's with the soreness of her ankles and her hugeness from the child in her. Freyda in the meantime hauled herself upon the bed with help from Eda and Virta, on her side barely able to roll over into a more comfortable position. She lay on her right side with several pillows underneath her, one clutched between her knees and two at her ribcage.
She fell asleep and the others went on into the night with their sewing and kvetching, eight sleep-shirts, a fur wrap for winter, a set of bottom-swaddlings and more long shirts that could be tucked under the child, the leather cap, and a blanket, finished by Brynja long after the others had fallen asleep. Dis sat up in her chair by the bed, determined to complete booties until sleep took her right there.
Their snoring and warmth was a strange comfort though it kept her awake. Siv spread out and Gyda had a habit of kicking her in her sleep. Thorin's was a light snoring like the rumble of a distant thunder, inhalations of a pitched nature that indicated some night terror or another. If he were there she would soothe him without waking him, hair and face stroked until he was quiet again. Dwalin would be with him that night in Dis's room; she doubted he could be so tender. Even so...
With the women about, there were fewer people to disappoint.
She reached stealthily to touch the heaving mound of Freyda's pregnant belly, the dips and waves of skin moving with the restlessness of the child. Exhausted, she was too far gone to notice. She felt the beat of the child's very life steady inside that protective sphere, the feet quick, the heart steady. Tears stung at the corner of her eyes, wide and fixed, her hand moving without her will over the rise and mound, petting it over and over. She saw Brynja's eyes blinking wide with curiosity on the other side of Freyda and withdrew hastily.
"I won't tell," Brynja whispered with a wink. She climbed silently over Freyda, settled next to Meisar on the other side of the bed. "I'd be curious too."
"You're been married longer than I have," Meisar intoned.
Brynja's mouth set itself in a sad line. "I thought it would have happened by now if it were meant," shrugged Bofur's wife.
"You're young to be married, Brynja. It may be that your body is not ready for it."
"I'm a woman grown, young or no," Brynja protested.
She hugged the pillow under her head quietly. Brynja's presence was the only one she had any regard for at the moment. Brynja nestled against her, her scent warm like fresh bread, her braids unattended to and full of flyaways that tickled her face, as wiry as Thorin's beard. "I'm not too young and you're not too old. Maybe it is something else," Brynja suggested in a whisper. "Something greater than us."
"Is it what you most desire, Brynja?" Meisar whispered.
"Oh yes. I don't want to tell Bofur of my disappointment. It'd make him sad I think, and needn't any more of that now."
"I understand the feeling." Meisar caught the sight of Dis through the narrow parting between the pillows, where she couldn't see her in return. Awake again, stirred by whispers as always, and watching, the robin's-egg blue a strange light in the dying candle beside her.
"What if I was not the only one who knew then, what you most desired? What if even your soul could not hide it?" Meisar breathed.
"If that's the truth then? What?" Brynja replied. "I always thought I was a good keeper of secrets."
"So did I."
II
The blue and white of her gown and light hooded cloak were subtle enough to make her look the part of any other wealthy dwarrowdam strolling through the city on the silversmiths' market day. Oliada tailed a distance, watching for anyone who might follow.
"There," Oliada pointed to the gray hat moving above the heads of the dwarves meddling and kvetching throughout the foyer. Meisar trailed him from the pipe-maker's stall to the edge of the city foyer. His steps were quick and intent, and hers struggled to keep pace.
"Why you need chase the wizard? I thought he was here for you and your trouble," Oliada inquired cautiously. Her eyes regarded Gandalf with extra suspicion, narrow and set.
"He is, and so is Radagast, but I suspect there may be more to his purpose here. I would like to find out."
Gandalf made his way up the stairs, high above the terraces on the mountain's facade, into the levels of the city that were mostly the apartments of the wealthiest citizens of Erebor, treasure vaults long cleared, and other places she had not entertained much reason to explore yet. The scars of the dragon's wrath were still on the walls no matter how much they tried to scrub or chisel it away. Gandalf slipped past a high double door, as imposing as the gates of the throne hall itself, but un-guarded entirely. Meisar followed, her cowl drawn.
The enormous chamber was hollowed out by the great calamity of the dragon on one side, its repair lacking except for the haphazard way the surviving tomes had been piled and preserved, some shelved again on what remained of the high stone stacks, carved into the walls on one side, standing alone in the middle of the cavernous chamber in rows on the other. Parchments littered the ground, half-burnt, a part of the floor that could not be scraped away without destroying the texts. There Gandalf was crouched over one, muttering to himself aloud.
"They told me I would find you here," Meisar announced herself behind him. Gandalf shot up, alarmed.
"Who told you?"
"The dwarves of this city pointed me in your direction. You are hard to miss, Gandalf."
"Well I do suppose I am. May I be of service my lady?"
"Mazalumazarbul," she observed, glancing upward at the ceiling, where a sparrow was flapping his wings in the dark, trying to get down to the bottom again. The ceiling itself was black with dragon's-breath. "What are you doing here?"
"Seeking answers," Gandalf barely acknowledged her presence, combing through half-burned papers on the floor with the tip of his staff.
"Do you seek out some answer to my inquiry in here?" Meisar asked cautiously.
"I seek out answers."
"For my sake or for your own. Or Dis's. You spend all of your time with her. For what cause?" Meisar asked, stepping closer into his peripheral.
"My lady, grant me patience and time and-"
"I am the queen. I have the right to know." Her shoulders drew back, her chest at height, the shepherdess's austere glare coming to find his gray eyes underneath the bushy brows, which narrowed in response as she stood silently waiting.
"What is happening here, Gandalf? What are you not telling me? Nothing has borne fruit. What make you of that now?"
"Your sadness is mine also, my lady. For I know the importance of an heir, under this mountain of all places, and one that shall be of you and Thorin's bearing. I seek answers to this dilemma."
"If he can bear to look at me," Meisar lamented darkly. "It is not a queen's way of things. It is more than my own sadness."
"A dwarf's way of things is that love shall never abet, nor loyalty. He finds your grief at this absence... most troubling," Gandalf tried to reassure her. "Have you exhausted all of Radagast's charms?"
"You have spoken with him, my husband?"
"I-"
"Indeed you do have a right, if I may say so," a familiar voice chimed in behind them. Dis strode in, lifting her skirts so not to further disorganize the chaos of parchment sheaves and half-charred books on the floor.
"I did not think you would come, my lady princess," Gandalf interceded. "I have been busying myself in the meantime."
"The candles at their tombs needed replacing. Kili never liked the dark," Dis replied flatly.
"I see," murmured Gandalf in recession, but green with some secret worry. "You spend far too much time there, my lady."
"I will be the judge of that, Gandalf," Dis retorted sharply. She kissed Meisar on both cheeks. "Now sister, I think it is time we were honest with each other. Myself to you, more so. I know what you've been thinking. You followed him here from the foyer marketplace with that sentry of yours."
"Perhaps that there is something ominous about all of this," Meisar answered. "Spying and hiding. It was never supposed to be as such, not between us."
"What is ominous is the state of this mountain. Rebuilt, repopulated, thriving in its markets and friendly with its neighbors again. But denied its most important asset. Why do you think that that is?" Dis inquired.
"I do not know. Perhaps you could enlighten me. One of you anyway."
"You were brought here for more reason than to be my brother's wife and the mother of his heir," Dis said. "Mother of his heir you will be. It is what you most desire?"
"Of course," Meisar half-breathed.
"Poor girl of yours, the one with the twin braids, from Ered Luin. Married more than a year, and no child either. Do you think I don't see how her heart breaks for it too?"
"I would not question what you know of heartbreak," Meisar murmured.
"Never mind what we desire for a moment. What is our purpose in this world? Our duty? Our craft? You were brought here to hear this very thing that I will tell you. The truth speaks to you through the earth itself. Listen to it. It is a gift; you may trust it." Dis took her hands.
"What of the earth? What of my child? Or lack thereof?"
"You feel the rhythms of the earth, sister. You felt in Eriador, long ago, some wretched thing that crept unseen beneath the ground, and you went to Ered Luin for fear of it, did you not? You feel the movement of some great power, elsewhere, or here. This mountain, you feel its heartbeat, its aching. I know you do. Tell me, what do you feel here? We are inside a great entity, this mountain. It is weeping. Don't you feel it?"
"What should I feel? I feel nothing," She could have been lying, but she wasn't sure. The air around her felt as if its life-giving power had been sucked out of the whole chamber.
"Of course you do. It is in you, as it is in the heart of the mountain."
"The heart of the mountain?" Meisar repeated. She looked to Gandalf, who was silently awaiting on Dis's continuation. The princess's hands were folded before her, primly, if grimly. The fingers moved with the speed of her thoughts, clasped together.
"The Arkenstone, sister. Do you know of its allure? My grandfather was besotted by that stone. He adored it, at his worst, even more than my own grandmother, even whilst she still lived. He wept for that stone even as the bodies of his people littered his path from the Long Lake to the southern tip of the Greenwood. It takes from us the things we most love, like a drunkard's coin at a tavern counter while his wife and children weep and beg for bread. It blinds whoever holds it to the truth, and holds hostage the thing they love most."
"Gandalf?" Meisar felt woozy.
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. It is an answer I seek for my own reasons as well. If this does not from Radagast's efforts… bear fruit, then perhaps I will have that answer for sure," said Gandalf.
"I have availed myself of everything he has brought, and no luck," Meisar said. "Perhaps you have your answer already then."
Gandalf beckoned them both to sit on a fallen-over shelf. "What I seek here are the thoughts of those whom Thror had his disagreements with. Concerning matters of a king's right. The lady-princess "
"I don't follow, I'm afraid."
"Jewels are powerful corrupters, my lady. You are not the only one in Middle Earth that knows all too well. People will suffer for the lust of them, and those around them… for the worse. There were scrolls that concerned certain elements of this mountain, meticulously researched by several dwarven scholars of Thror's time, and presented to him with great urgency. Whatever their content, Thror ordered them locked away in the chamber of records, never to be reckoned with again," replied Gandalf.
"The extraction of the Arkenstone was the beginning of the end. So they believed. Princely of all liars this stone, armies, peoples who would pledge their loyalty to its wielder not for the power of loyalty but the corrupting influence of its very presence. It breathes its hate and its pain onto the world, and draws what it is dark near to it. They told him to destroy it. You can imagine how my grandfather reacted," Dis continued.
"Like the Silmarils themselves?" Meisar intoned. "I have heard such tales."
Gandalf knelt before Meisar to look her in the eye. "No, not as Feanor's creations were. Creations, were those. But this mountain is more than the sum of its gems and stone. It is an entity of its own some say. With a mind of its own. A will of its own. A heart of its own torn from its place, and cursed beyond measure."
"Then you know what must be done," Dis chided.
"Patience, Dis. I asked you for that, and that alone," Gandalf admonished back.
"I thought wizards were not meant to meddle," Meisar challenged Gandalf gently.
"Only for the sake of the world itself do we, and here, I just may." He placed his hand delicately on Meisar's shoulder. "It may yet be that the most unexpected of people may have a hand in the turning of the world. A force beyond our reckoning may yet gather strength, to which even the wisest of those who are guardians of the good may be powerless against. We fought something worse in that battle than a few armies out for a rabble, something bigger I fear. I shall leave soon, seeking out what it may be."
"Leave?"
"The weather warms, the season opens the doors for me to do so, cross the mountains if I must. Perhaps I shall even follow the trail you made toward Mount Gundabad. I do not like what I have heard of this expedition. It concerns me."
"Will you give me some absolution then, Gandalf?" Dis pleaded.
"I will give what is wise of me to give, and in return you shall be prudent, my lady princess."
"As you please, Gandalf. But now let me ask my sister this," Dis stepped into her peripheral and took her hands. "Close your eyes, Meisar."
She did as Dis bid her, in silence, and darkness.
"Do you feel it?" Dis asked her. "The heartbeat? Deep, deep below our feet. You know where. Use the power you know is within you. Concentrate."
The forges rang at midday with industrious pace. But theirs was a clang mostly uneven, punctuated in the roars of great bellows and the vloooosh of molten metal cascading in hot viscous tides from cauldrons as big as an oliphaunt. Not a beat, of a living thing anyway. She forced her senses to descend, further and further down, Dis's hands pulling from hers, lifting her from her own body to penetrate stone and descend, as was in her darkness, past diamond-studded walls and the way the miners' candlesticks made them flicker all at once, exhausted mines revived as homey quarters of living, the cacophony of The Pits, giving way to the silence of the tombs above a great vast hollow.
And then it was, a pulse that started in her fingertips as Dis's reconnected with hers and squeezed, dry and cold and ice. Did the dead feel so cold? Dis's breath across from her was calm and meditative but in the silence of the necropolis a heart beat furious, angry. She tried to see its place in that darkness, but her mind would allow no more. She came up, as if from the floor of a sea, to breathe again. Dis's blue eyes were serene.
"I felt it. I felt..." Her head was suddenly light, the room spinning.
"It sees you. It knows your presence. It is a heart, and hearts know the desires of other hearts. They are not so different, any of them. It makes mortar of your tears and your grief, and seals your midarin in a slab of stone as thick as the tomb it lies in now."
"How could that possibly be? How could you know of such a thing?" Meisar gasped, even dizzier.
"Sister," Dis reached to touch her cheek with that cold hand, steadying her. "Do you trust me?"
"Courage and wisdom," Gandalf counseled before she could answer. "Courage and wisdom. I shall need that from both of you, in equal measure."
.
Harth- Awful
Mazalumazarbul- Chamber of Records
Midarin- Womb