DISCLAIMER: Well, I own most of this chapter. The ULU, Bob, Joe, Sandra and Mary . . . I don't own Middle-earth or Maglor. That's about it. Oh, or St. Paul's.

Linguistics

The phone rang, waking Joseph Nesmith from a light sleep. The young Professor of Linguistics sat up in his chair, and picked up the handset.

"Hello, Professor Nesmith, Linguistics, United London Universities, how can I help you?"

"Hi Joe, it's Robert Taylor."

"Bob? Long time no see. Where are you working these days?"

"My team's based up in Felixstowe, but I'm on site in London right now. In fact, it's about that that I need to talk to you."

Joe sat up straighter. Bob's team had their own linguist, one of his own students, Sandra Newton, so for them to need to call him in . . . "You've found something? Something rare?"

There was a crackling noise at the other end of the line, and then, "You know those books by . . . that guy, uh, the ones about Middle-earth."

Joe smiled. Bob had never been too good with names. "You mean Tolkien?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right. Anyway, you know you'd said you'd learned those Elvish languages of his?"

Joe frowned. This all seemed very irrelevant. "Yes . . ."

Bob was silent for a long moment, and then said, "We've got something here you really need to see. Could you come over to St. Paul's? As in, now?"

Joe thought for a moment. Unlike the various establishments that had existed in pre-Fire London, the ULU had a flexible schedule, to allow staff and students to spend time assisting in rebuilding their city. No one would comment if he took a day off. And besides, he was intrigued. "Okay Bob, I'll be there in two hours."

"We'll be waiting," replied Bob, and hung up.

An hour and a half later, Joe Nesmith stood at the top of the shaft in the centre of St. Paul's Cathedral, looking down at the marrow stairway he had to descend. Next to him stood the loudspeaker, through which Bob had welcomed him and told him to descend the stair. That very fact reinforced Joe's view that something big had been found – normally, Bob would greet any guests personally, so for him to stay in the pit, it had to be a big find. Either that, or they were running some sort of huge practical joke on him.

As Joe descended the stair, he watched the walls beside him, as Bob had done when making the very same journey. When he came to the carving, however, he stopped dead. Tengwar! he thought.

The first lines of the inscription were formed of the letters J.R.R. Tolkien had invented for his world. Almost unconsciously, Joe translated the words they spelled, reading the Quenya almost as quickly as he would English.

I, Maglor son of Fëanor, departed this world . . . something about the year 532 of the Fifth Age of the Sun. The sentence . . . must be phrase . . . is . . . some sort of punctuation mark, probably an inverted comma . . . I want to see. This must be some sort of joke . . . but this carving is so old . . they couldn't have faked it . . . It must be real.

By the time he reached the bottom, Joe was prepared to see just about anything. Nevertheless, the sight of a glowing wall with a map of Third Age Middle-earth was a shock. He stood at the bottom of the stair and stared. After a moment Bob, who stood with his team around the map, fiddling with some cartographical equipment, turned and saw him. "Joe! Hi! Like it?"

"It's, uh . . . what is it?"

Bob looked up at the wall. "It's a map, of Middle-earth. We used the code word from that inscription – do you already know what it says?" Joe nodded. "Good. Anyway, we said that phrase, and this thing lit up. We've been trying to set up a map grid on it, but with no scale or reference point, we haven't got very far."

He paused for a moment, and then added, "Oh, and we've got this inscription we need you to translate." He indicated the tengwar lettering running around the edge of the map. "Can you do that?"

Joe stared at him. "Uh, yes . . . is this real?"

Bob nodded. "Very real, Joe. Very real, and very old."

Joe nodded slowly. "So Tolkien was telling the truth after all – he did translate it all from the Red Book. I wonder what the world will make of this?"

Bob smiled. "After you've translated it for us, you'll have all the time you want to tell them."

"Excellent," replied Joe, pulled out his notebook, and began to translate.

The ULU was formed after the Fire - which wasn't all that long before the current narrative - due to the inability of what few staff remained to run separate universities.

The inscription, as it turns out, could almost all be translated into Quenya from the words we know. Don't worry, this trend will not continue.

Cloaked Eagle