CHAPTER XXVIII: A Most Mysterious Host
I knew not for how long I had passed into the void. The yowl and yammer of the wicked wind faded into the evernight of my empty soul – a frigid chrysalis of lost hope where dreams do not intrude. Then the faintest whistle of the wind returned -- but with a mere echo of its former virulence – baffled and buffered now as if restrained to sussurate through the empty and ambling halls of my vacant mind. And warmth there was, creeping with luxuriant insinuation around my frozen joints and brittle bones, coaxing me to consciousness in languid stages like the gradual caress of a spring thaw. What light there was flickered wanly in the darkness, cast by a sputtering fire in the mean grate of a roughhewn hearth. As my eyes became accustomed to the meager half-light, a sense of immensity impressed my vision, for I could not guess at the proportions of the room in which I laid. There was a great stone wall from which the misshapen hearth protruded, but I could neither ascertain any other walls in this airy expanse, nor descry a ceiling in the shadowy recesses that yawned above me; and no sound was there save the far-off murmur of the incessant wind.
No sooner had I propped myself up upon my elbows to gain a better perspective of my surroundings, then I heard the shambling footfall of soft boots scraping carelessly across the stone floor. Intrigued but oddly unafraid, I watched as a silent specter approached from the nether regions of the voluminous hall. As the scant light allowed, I ascertained the measure of the figure. He was cloaked in robes of battered blue, perhaps of heavenly azure once on a time, but now sullied and clouded by years of neglect until his garments were marbled and swirled like the sky at the onset of a storm. Tall this old man was and obviously robust and muscular in his prime, but like the fading of his outer raiments, he had sagged into corpulence with the mounting of the years; yet he carried this added poundage with a powerful step that belied his girth. He had the appearance of an ancient and lordly walrus whose blubber staved off the frigid climes of this northern wasteland, and, to my amusement, his long white moustaches drooped down his frazzled grey beard like prodigious tusks. There was no hair on his bald pate, save for wisps of white that encircled his head above his ears, and a formidable arch of grey eyebrows that ranged above his bright blue eyes like wintry thickets grown wild to stave off the freezing rain and hoary sea-spray from his piercing sight.
He did not acknowledge my presence at first; rather, the imposing figure placed another bit of scrap wood on the fire and mumbled what sounded like an incantation in a strange tongue. Flames immediately leapt up the flue.
With his attention still on the hearth, he muttered distractedly, "Speak you…the tongue of the…West?" The manner in which he hesitated left the impression that he had not mouthed such words in quite a long time.
I replied that I did indeed speak Westron fluently, and a good many other tongues as well, proudly rattling off an impressive list of several languages and subsidiary dialects for his edification. He turned from the fire with an odd look, almost as if he were perturbed. "Westron will do," he grumbled finally, and came closer to my bed.
Without another word, he took my wrist ('checking the pulse', a means by which healers supposedly divine the strength of one's heart by the rhythmic beat of blood through the veins). Satisfied, he laid my hand back down on the coverlet and said, "Hmmm… recovering well -- or so it seems." Before I could answer, he added brusquely, "I suppose there be some reason for laying up in the hills where I found you, but I prefer not hearing the tale as it is certain to concern me not at all…," he paused with that same look of irritation, "…and will sure to be overlong in the telling."
Unable to make a fitting reply without being insulting, I remained silent, which seemed to suit him fine and he continued, "Luckily your horse had more sense than you and sought out shelter further down the hill. That is where I found him and eventually came upon you as well. Near to death you were, having reached that state wherein body temperature drops to such a low level that internal organs cease their function. It took much of my…concentration…to bring you 'round again."
I suppose I should have thanked him for my rescue, but the sorrowful recollection of the past several weeks, and thus my whole purpose for being in this frozen wasteland, bore heavily on my mind. He seemed to catch the rueful nature of my somber mien and said with a strange gleam – one could say almost mirth – in his clear blue eyes, "Ah, my efforts were unwanted perhaps?"
I did not answer directly, averting my eyes in shame and weariness, but his twinkling gaze remained upon me. "Regrets!" he sighed sympathetically, "Who has not chastened themselves for past misdeeds?" Then, seemingly more to himself, he murmured wistfully, "Or the failure to act when called upon?" He shook off this sudden reverie and added more forcefully, "No, my young friend, there is no nobility in surrendering one's life to the bitter bite of regret. What is past cannot be undone, even in death. The meager span allotted to man, prone as he is to mischance and ills unnumbered, is far too tenuous for such self-mortification." When my eyes again met his he smiled and patted my hand. "Fear not, you shall die soon enough."
When in reply I gaped at him with astonishment, he rolled his eyes as if his remarks were misinterpreted. "I meant 'soon' only in a manner of speaking," he grumbled apologetically, and then his gaze searched past me in the darkness and his voice fell to a husky whisper: "I foresee that you still have many, many years of productive life ahead of you." He shrugged and then concluded, "At least, according to the measure of your sickly race."
My unease did not abate. "Who are you?" I gasped, struck by the stranger's candor and his seeming detachment, nay, utter disinterest, for the race of Man. He spoke as if he were divorced from mankind, although to my eyes he was clearly not of the immortal Elvish kindred.
"Who am I?" he grunted sullenly, "Better to ask 'who once were you?' than dwell on this present miserable incarnation. I was a member of an ancient order and the keeper of a sacred trust, but I abandoned that mission long ago." He gazed at the fire despondently and whispered, "and those of my order have departed…or are lost."
No more would he intimate at that time (although my natural curiosity grew apace with his cryptic replies), save that his name (or at least, what some men called him) was Pallando, and that he had lived in this cave (for that is what this place was) on the edge of the Northern Sea for years long past counting. He remained an enigmatic figure (to my great annoyance) all through the weeks I convalesced, remaining unfathomable and circumspect (to my mind belligerently so) even to my most diplomatic inquiries. But, despite the outward appearance of aloofness, he showed an intense interest in the current state of affairs in the world outside his self-imposed confinement, particularly the resurrection of Mordor and of Urzahil, the self-proclaimed Dark Lord of that dismal and savage land, who even now was laying siege to Bajazet with his vast legions. I was chagrined to find he cared little for my personal travails (which he would brusquely interrupt with an impatient grunt and a sour frown), but would always attempt to lead our rather one-sided dialogue back to the foreboding situation in the East (and to Urzahil foremost, paying little heed to the bitter feuds and ever-changing rule of the khanates along the Gold Coast).
"Urzahil? a rather strange name for this period in history, don't you think?" he drawled quizzically. "It is of the Adunaic tongue, I believe – that of the drowned land of Numenor – where again did you say this Urzahil was from?"
I replied with chagrin that I knew little of Numenor or its language, but that I was certain this Urzahil had proclaimed himself to be a lieutenant of Sauron, a man with the ominous title of 'The Mouth of Sauron' in the chronicles of Minas Tirith. To my recollection, he had studied sorcery under the tutelage of the Dark Lord himself.
"A man you say?" Pallando said studying me keenly. "That is highly doubtful. If, as you say, this man lived during the time of Sauron's reign, he would now be perhaps three hundred or more years old, which is preposterous! Even at their zenith, the Numenoreans were not granted such a span of life; at least, none but the likes of Elros and his immediate successors." His sparkling blue eyes became hooded beneath his beetling brows. "And a sorcerer to boot, eh? Hmmm….well, say not sorcery but necromancy – the summoning of spirits -- and perhaps you shall be closer to the mark."
Again, I could not follow his line of reasoning, and he did not expound further. "Given the seemingly limitless and arcane gifts given to the Men of the West in their prime, and of their intermingling with the race of Elves," I blurted in exasperation, "I had never considered that their could be natural limits to men's life spans – at least not in specific cases (particularly when eldritch powers were involved)." I thought back to my youth and the audience with King Eldarion Telcontar, who seemed ageless beyond count of mere mortals. "Could not those of the same Numenorean line, or those enhanced by preternatural beings such as Sauron, be so endowed?"
"No!" Pallando snapped with a finality that stunned me to silence. "Neither Sauron, nor his master, Morgoth, could prolong or create life. That ability was beyond them."
"But…what of the Nascgaol, the Ringwraiths of Sauron?" I stuttered futilely, trying my best to perhaps prolong the dialogue with the usually reticent Pallando. "Did they not have unnatural long life; for they were only men, albeit men of great power and influence?"
"The Nazgul?" Pallando said, correcting my pronunciation in Westron. "Their life as 'men' ceased to exist once they fell to power of the Rings," he growled as if uttering a curse. "They were what you might call the 'undead' -- spirits trapped in the waking world, held in lifeless thrall to the whims of Sauron -- animated only by the calling of the One Ring."
I attempted to reply, but now my host was livid. Grasping my shoulders as if to quell my thirst for knowledge, Pallando spat, "No, I tell you! Such powers were lost to them ere their fall! Lost before the errant moon first staggered its drunken course or the sun mounted resplendent in the sky!"
"But..how…how could you know such things?" I stammered timidly. Having fallen prey to the storm raging in my host's eyes, I suddenly feared to hear the answer. "There are naught now any that live under the sun who could attest to such knowledge. Errr…are there?"