He who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones first"
Chinese proverb
Frodo lay still and silent, unmoving as Aragorn gently clasped the child-like, bloodied fingers, brushed dark curls from off the hobbit's face and carded weary sword-callused fingers through the dirty, sharp-smelling strands. A fine grit of ash rasped up, clogged his throat and made him taste anew the reek of horror.
How had they survived? The mountain's evil fume was not a smoke, no dusky vapour from an ordinary fire, but an evil choking soup of gas and fine-ground rock. Searing every tissue. Blocking breath and burning lungs. He watched the thin chest rise and fall, steadily if slow. For that alone he suddenly felt grateful for his skills. He had put forth all such effort as he was able and a battle it had surely been. So close to death, smothered, seared, Frodo's spirit had mounted the top step of Namo's hall and Aragorn had ventured far to bring him back. Now it was time to turn his thoughts to the hobbit's other hurts. It would not do to miss aught more of ill.
Aragorn sat back wearily, laid the poor bound hand with its dirty rag once more upon the soft coverlet. Practised hands felt carefully for wounds about the hobbit's neck and scalp. There were none, although the dark shredded cloth of orc-rags could yet conceal a myriad of hurt, and so he loosened the neckline farther still, removed the shirt, noting with a heartsick pang the thinness of Frodo's chest, the ugly wound from Shelob's piercing. The skin about the hobbit's eyes was sunken with dehydration, mute witness to the trial endured.
All under the crushing weight of a small and golden band.
Many times Aragorn had tended the sick and injured, had laboured long to help, but had he worked with more reverence and care. The lowly go where the wise fear to walk. And walk they had. Through pits of hell and choking, poison fumes. Past fires lethal to beast and man alike. Slowly, with gentle circles, he rubbed a minted-salve across Frodo's neck and chest, across the sharp hills and valleys of his ribs. It would ease the hobbit's laboured breathing, though only time could tell if the evil winds had scarred his lungs.
With care for their survival, Frodo's orc-rags were removed and the grit and grime and blood washed clean. Salve was spread on each burn and cut. Fresh bandages soaked in a healing brew were wound about each hurt. All that could be done was done-especially for the maimed and bitten hand. Aragorn tied off a careful knot and repressed a sudden shudder, flexed his own fingers thankfully. He knew the hurt and torment such wounds could give; remembered broken, swollen and abused fingers, useless and paining with every move. He had spilled a healing tea across himself desperate to find relief, and then, barely healed, had found his Evenstar upon Cerin Amroth.
So many steps and so battles back. Yet not so very long ago.
With a last kiss upon Frodo's brow he made his weary way to the other bed. To Sam.
Now he smiled. Not with sadness but with the gentle mirth of memory. Bright spirit, Sam had strode the vale upon his final road, not so far as his Master to be sure, less of a trial but a battle still. The Gaffer's son that lay in dreaming sleep was less burly as the hobbit who had set out from Bree, who had looked suspiciously upon a Ranger from the wild and had scolded hard. He, too, had red-rimmed eyes and a scarlet throat from the acid on the wind and so he gently he tousled the hobbit's ginger mop, began his careful survey once again, taking a catalogue of the smaller hurts, the bruises, the myriad of fine raser-like cuts on hands and feet. Almost he missed it: below a small pointed ear there was a mark: a tear-shaped burn.
Memory, long buried, set him touching at a small scar upon his nape. Once, Aragorn had stolen across the muddy plain of Gorgoroth, seen it pockmarked and rent by great black slabs, crushed as if a giant had played knucklebones with crags for fun. For all the miles, all the dry, harried steps, none had been so foul as last few at Orodruin's foot. In his mind's eye he could see the black rain of ash, the searing beauty of her red-glowing river, snaking faster than a man could run across the western slope. He too had choked on the heavy air's metallic tang, had gulped greedily like a drowning man when the steady eastern wind resumed, blown the mountain's fume back aloft.
How had they survived? How had they lived where not even green could sprout?
He had no answers. Later, when he had roused them long enough to take clear water, had set them peacefully back to sleep, the Ranger stood wearily, bade an anxious healer watch his charges for a while, and lifted his face to the beech boughs of south Ithilien rustling up above. Blessed Varda. They made a song of hope amidst the quiet worry of their space, renewed a tired spirit.
He let a small sigh gust through the fresh-scented air. "I have done all that I can, my friend" he said, stretching muscles cramped from hours hunched with concentration, nodding to the figure who sat, calm and white, beside. "They will be well, but will need many days yet to heal."
"I am not surprised. Even Landroval complained about the bite of acid in his throat, and he once new the fires of Thangorodrim." Gandalf rubbed a thumb across his forehead and then arose, set a warm, gnarled hand upon Aragorn's shoulder. "But now it is time to let them rest."
The wizard guided his steps, steered his now stumbling, leaden legs from the glade, nodded to the guards who snapped to attention when they finally paused upon the threshold of a large white canvas tent.
Aragorn blinked into the morning sun and scrubbed his hand across his face. Why were there guards? The makeshift surgery surely had no need.
He peered inside and groaned.
His armour lay stacked neatly against a cot, Anduril ready across its foot as with any soldier's kit. The only obvious concession to imminent kingly status was a folding table and a carven chair. And a somewhat richer blanket.
Valar. Quite unconsciously he had made for his own tent though he had meant to head the other way. To find the healers on the far side of the glade.
"Come," said Gandalf, gesturing to the chair a man in black livery hastened to provide. "Sit. The healers will watch for us. Take some food yourself and rest. You have ventured far to bring them back and, if I am not mistaken, at peril to yourself."
Aragorn took a deep, measuring breath, filled his soul with the fragrance of fair Ithilien and made to turn away. "Nay. There may be others who have need of me and it is a boon to be just a healer for a moment."
A healer. Just a man of skill and not a King.
A slow smile graced the wizard's face. "There are good healers here my friend. Nor is the Black Breath so very fearsome here. The Nine were called so quickly back. Time also for a king to rest."
Aragorn looked up sharply to protest but something, the love, the grace that shone in that gaze as deep as time, made the words die before they left his lips.
It is done…
Aching shoulders slumped just a little. He took a proffered cup, paced restlessly across the dewy grass for though it was morn, and a new one, unsullied by fear or shadow, when one has been running for seventy years it is very hard to stop.
Gandalf's gaze followed each leg of the parade, frowning, and Aragorn reluctantly forced himself to still, to drink deep of the goblet, amused to taste a tonic in the dregs.
Old friend, do not worry so. I shall not falter now.
And yet, the wizard's gaze narrowed more. The cup trembled just a little as he set it down upon a handy leather chest, so much that the wry observation that huffed out was just barely tinged with exasperation. "You will get on famously with your new Steward, Elessar. You both do not know when to stop."
It seemed standing still was not enough.
The King sat more heavily than he planned upon the selfsame chest, felt it groan under his not inconsiderable bulk and then, with alacrity, switched to the chair. His legs were not jelly from the strain. No. It was only the relief, the expected release of tension when one has been working hard.
The wizard pointedly rolled his eyes.
An embarrassed cough preceded a judicious change of topic. "There is a puzzle I do not understand."
The hobbits' cuffs and pockets, every crevice of their rags had been filled with ash and larger stones: spun glass of greenish-gold. Some were straight and thin like hair, others tear-shaped and of a delicacy that seemed impossible for rock. He explained his find and took carefully from his pocket a glassy drop and brittle strand. They shimmered in the dappled morning light.
Gandalf curiously poked a finger at his upraised palm, touched the iridescent stone. It was beautiful, not sinister as one would think, formed in that hateful land.
"Ouch."
Aragorn tried not to laugh at the sight of the wizard sucking on a cut. "They are very sharp. Like shards of glass. And oddly Sam had a burn upon his skin, just the same size and shape."
"So I see." came the rueful grin. "Because the stones fall hot on every darkened slope or surface that has the fortune to be in their path."
"You have seen them?"
"Yes. Once. Long ago. On a journey best forgotten."
Aragorn turned the small green-gold but heavy drop wonderingly in his fingers. "They look so very much like tears."
"They are, my friend."
He looked up, startled. For a moment the Maia, lost in thought, let slip his guise. Shining certainty, the fair brow and face of another being reigned.
"The peoples of Middle-Earth are not the only ones to rejoice at your ascension. What Manwe's air and Aule's liquid stone have wrought together is all part of the music of the One."
"Though fearsome in her raw beauty and her strength, the mountain has a deeper heart. To see Mairon, he who marred her beauteous face, meet his justice at the last..
even Arda wept."
AN: Gwynnyd has kindly allowed me to refer to what has become my headcanon: Aragorn's experiences in Dol Gulder after the raid on Umbar that she so wonderfully told in Fell Memories and Healing Time.
Mairon is the name of the Maia Sauron was before he was corrupted utterly by Melkor.
I have modeled the tears of Arda on Pele's tears, a natural phenomena described from Hawaii and named for the Hawaiian goddess of Fire. Basaltic lava, erupted at 1200C, thrown into the air by high pressure of eruption or bursting gas bubbles in the decompressing magma, fuses nearly instantly as force and friction twist it into tear-shaped glassy droplets and even fine wires known as Pele's hair. Wind causes the light material to collect in crevices.
The gases that Frodo and Sam were breathing, based on a typical intraplate mafic eruption, would have been rich in hydrogen sulphide, carbon dioxide, hydrochloric acid and fluorine, all deleterious to the airways and likely lethal in the concentrations at Sammath Naur.
Thank you to the voters at Teitho, once again I am humbled by your support. And grateful thanks to Annafan, Thanwen and Gwynnyd for comments and critters.