Chapter V - Failings

"My Lord Elboron?"

I jerk my head up as the door to my study opens, blinking in the bright glare of the torch-lit hallway after hours of dim candlelight. A guard with sleepiness in his eyes stands in the doorway.

"What time of the night is it?" I ask him, suddenly realizing that I have no idea how long I have been reading.

"'Tis just before midnight, Prince," he answers cautiously, hesitantly. "Your lady wife worries for you and wishes you to come to bed. Will you not retire for the night? The healers fear you may overtax yourself…"

"The healers fret over nothing." I rub my aching brow and settle back down to my work. "I am a soldier, and I have spent more sleepless nights under the shroud of Mordor than I can recall. I will not be 'overtaxed' by reading late into the night." Chastised, the guard begins to withdraw, mumbling a sheepish apology, but I call him back.

"As for my lady, tell her that I am doing what I must. She will understand."

He leaves, and I am left alone with the crackling fireplace and the dripping candles again. My eyes linger on one line of the entry I have just finished reading: I cannot forgive my father for the coldness he showed me that day.

Shame seems to crush me from all sides as I remember…remember it all. The huge fight, the anger, and the spiteful words. I shove the parchment away from me. Reading these words in his handwriting is unbearable. It was this event, this moment, this beating at the hands of Lord Duinhir that made him fight me the way he did.

My father, beaten! Can I even imagine such a thing? I came to blows with him often about his values, but there was never a question in my mind that he was a strong, noble man. Imagining him weak and defenseless—indeed, nearly pitiful!—is beyond the ability of my mind's eye. My father was sternly proud of his accomplishments, and there is not an instance I can remember when he did not stand up for what he believed in, whether I agreed or not! Yet now, in this passage, he earns my heart's sympathy!

Lord Damrod—the third son of the late Lord Duinhir—is one of Elessar's advisors. From what I can gather from records, Damrod inherited the lordship when both Duilin and Derufin were killed unexpectedly in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. It seems cruelly fitting to me that they were slain in the battle that my father survived, though he was at the brink of death at the time.

How can I ever look Damrod straight in the face again, knowing what his father did to mine?

How can I ever look my son straight in the face again, knowing what I have done to him?

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"Ada, I do not want to!" Barahir cried, tears streaming down his face. Elboron slapped him sharply across the cheek and gave him a stern glare.

"You will do it, whether you want to or not," Elboron told him fiercely. "You are not a tiny babe, Barahir. It is time you start taking on a few responsibilities. The Citadel Guard will teach you discipline."

"I don't want to! I don't want to fight!" Barahir nearly screamed at him, shaking his head. "I don't want to fight!"

"Do not talk back to your father! You will do your duty!" Elboron gave his son another smack to put him in his place, and Barahir sobbed.

"Elboron!" Faramir's stony face was set with lines of anger. "Stay your hand! Why do you strike your son?"

"It is not your place, Father, to correct me," Elboron replied waspishly, turning to face Faramir. "My son's discipline is none of your concern. Why are you even here at this hour? Don't you have a meeting to attend with King Elessar concerning the appointment of a captain to the forces in Nurn?" The chill in Elboron's voice was as cold as ice.

"It is my job to know when I have a meeting, not yours. However, it is my place to correct you when I find you doing this to your son. Again I ask you: Why?"

Elboron could see that his father was only barely keeping his anger in check, and that infuriated Elboron more than anything else. "Keep to your politics for once and leave discipline to someone with more experience."

A flash of anger crossed behind Faramir's eyes. "I have more experience than you know. There is a difference between discipline and cruelty—a difference that you would do well to learn." Before Elboron could retort, Faramir turned to the small boy stifling his sobs behind his father. "Barahir," said Faramir gently. "Come here." Barahir glanced up at Elboron nervously and then tiptoed over to his grandfather.

Elboron watched stiffly as Faramir scooped Barahir up in his arms. Faramir made a funny face when he realized how heavy the child was, and Barahir laughed as he was placed gently back down to the floor. Elboron fumed silently. Faramir was destroying all of the careful, regimented order that Elboron had been working for so long to perfect in his son!

"Tell your grandpapa what's the matter," Faramir whispered to Barahir, still smiling. "What is it that your papa wants so badly from you?" Faramir glanced up at Elboron, and Elboron made sure that Faramir saw how furious he was.

"Papa wants me to fight," Barahir answered, biting his lip nervously. Faramir frowned. "He says that I need to join the Citadel Guard to fight, but I don't wanna fight."

"Ridiculous," Faramir snorted, turning his frown on Elboron. "Elboron, your son is only nine years old! He is far too young to be made to endure such harsh 'discipline', as you call it. Absolutely not. I won't allow it."

"It is not a matter of you allowing it," Elboron shot back, beginning to raise his voice. "As his father, I will decide what is best for him, and that is final."

"As the Steward of Gondor, I swear to you that I will not allow it," Faramir said. "If I must, I will draft a law prohibiting any child under the age of twelve to enter military service. Must I do that, Elboron? Must you be so difficult? Or can you listen to me as a father for once instead of as a lord?"

"I will not listen to you as a father!" Elboron snapped. "You are wrong!"

"No, Elboron." Faramir's voice was now steely and cold. "You are wrong. You are wrong for forcing this upon your son, and you are doubly wrong for ever laying a hand on him. No man who strikes his own child or allows harm to come that child deserves to be called a father."

"You raised me with that distorted philosophy, and I had to learn discipline on my own!" Elboron shouted. "There is nothing wrong with knowing one's place and obeying higher command!"

"Yes, but there is a lot wrong with being forced into a life that one will always despise!"

"And what exactly is that supposed to mean? My son will be a soldier like me—his father—and yes, even like yourself! Do you mean to tell me that you did not serve in Gondor's army as a supposed loyal soldier as you have told?"

"The boy is born to be a scholar!" Faramir cried. "You see nothing of the talent he has, because you do not wish to see it! The life of a soldier is not the only path that should be offered to a young child! Just because that is the path you have chosen does not mean you have the right to force that choice on your son! You have no right to have such high expectations—expectations that he may never be able to fulfill for you! If you do this to him now, you will break his spirit! He will live always trying to make others happy and never himself!"

"That is absurd," Elboron spat.

"It is the truth, whether you want to face it or not!"

"No, I will not accept your twisted version of the truth!"

"I will not sit idle and watch this happen again, Elboron."

"Again?"

"If you refuse to back down, I will have that law passed. I hold the respect of many of the committee. You know that I can do it."

"Fine!" Elboron snarled. "Then I am leaving this damned city! If Elessar needs a captain in Mordor, then he shall have one! And the instant Barahir turns twelve, he will enter the Citadel Guard!" Elboron took his son by the hand and led him swiftly from the room without looking back.

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When my son looked upon me, I always interpreted the look in his eye to be reverence. Could it be that it was truly fear? Could it be that he keeps a record of his own story, like my father did, and writes of how cruel and heartless I have been to him? Of the choices I never let him make? Of how much he thinks I hate him?

Could it be that my son will go soon to die in Nurn, never to live the dreams he should have lived?

I blow out every candle in the room and slip silently from the room. The guards outside jump to attention at my exit, asking what they can do for me, but I cannot reply. They ask if they should accompany me, and I grumble a soft, "No."

The balcony of the tallest tower in Imeryn is empty and cold. Even Eärendil's Star seems to gleam pale and wan tonight. From the tower, I can see the great peak of Mindolluin, and beneath it the peak of the White Tower of Ecthelion, pinnacle of Minas Tirith. I remember the day I left it, headed for Nurn, nearly six full years ago, carrying with me the authority of a captain and a bitter grudge against my father.

How could I have ever known that that was to be the last time I ever spoke to my father except for the final, fleeting moments before his death? I shiver and turn my eyes to the gardens far below in one of the courtyards—the gardens where I watched my father's breath languish and fade.

He said then that I had always been my mother's son—a fighter, first and last. Am I my mother's son, I wonder, or more truly Denethor's grandson? A shadow seems to follow me now, haunting my steps, ever since the funeral in Rath Dínen. I wonder if, by some device of magic or sorcery, my soul called out to its kindred spirit and summoned my long-dead grandfather from the grave to walk beside me in testament to our bondage.

I give my head a vigorous shake to dismiss the demons there and seat myself beneath the stone wall that surrounds the top tower. I breathe in—quickly at first, but then slower. In and out, in and out, in and out. The chill night freezes my throat with ice; this spring air is not yet warm.

Once again my eyes find Minas Tirith far away beyond the Anduin, and I count the days since I rode hither. Five days and five nights and one, it has been, since Eldarion gave me leave to depart the White City. How much longer can I wait, haunted thus by the stories and the memories and the dreams? How much longer can the King and the country wait without a Steward?

Do they look down on me? Do they perceive me as weak, overwhelmed by such a common occurrence as death? What must they think of my captaining? I can imagine their whispers, rumors that I swoon at each loss and that my constitution is lacking for one supposedly so heroic on the battlefield.

What of Laurelindë? What thinks she of me, her once valiant husband, now troubled so by ghosts of the past? How she and the other ladies must grumble in delicate, plaintive voices of my failings!

Yes, my failings. I have failed in all—as a husband and as a father, as a soldier and as a Steward. And moreover, I failed as a son. I am nothing, nothing, nothing but a shadow and an echo of my proud and vain grandfather who is such a villain in my father's life! For the first time, I can feel fear creeping into the bottom of my heart. Fear that everything I have built has been for naught, for vanity, for monstrosity, for anything but for truth. Fear that someday my end shall follow my grandfather's—in shame and complete disgrace.

Ada

(Father)