The storm is inside Dinah.
Rain washes away her calm. Thunder roars in her hot ears. Lightning flashes with her pounding pulse. And a cruel wind, low and foul, whispers in the gloomiest corners of her mind "you have failed, you have failed…"
They fly through the cold corridors of the Prancing Pony, up the old staircases and down the lonely landings. Sam seems to know the way through the dark; he boldly leads, the prowling huntresses close behind and the other two Hobbits stumbling along.
"They call him Strider," Liesel murmurs. She accepts Dinah's Bombadil daggers without pause, flipping them through her skillful fingers as if they were her own. "He's a Ranger of the North. He's been here a few weeks, but he never speaks to anyone. Every night he sits in the corner and smokes his pipe. It's as if he's been waiting for something."
"Or someone," Merry grumbles. He and Pippin have armed themselves with pieces of furniture. The candelabra he wields casts odd shadows across his deep scowl. "What are the chances that this mysterious stranger goes missing on the same night Frodo arrives?"
"This way," Sam nearly growls. When he looks over his shoulder, his eyes slide to Liesel – not like they want to, but as if they can't help it. There's a thousand shouted questions behind his silent eyes, as well as something else, something warm and light amid this chilling pursuit.
Pippin asks for him: "This may be a bad time, but… Who are you?" He trips over his own feet as he addresses Liesel.
"I'm Dinah's sister, Liesel," she introduces with a smile. If they weren't taking the stairs two at a time in desperate haste, she'd probably shake their hands.
"You don't look like sisters," he remarks.
Dinah suppresses a sigh, but Liesel laughs easily, if a little breathy from their quick pace. When was the last time she fought anyone? She holds the knives with familiarity, but that's not something that can leave memory so easily. Endurance, quickness, vigilance – those are the first casualties of a peaceful life. "That's true, I suppose," she admits. "Maybe it would make more sense to say we are sisters by heart, rather than by blood."
Merry hums, as if he means to ask another question, when Sam stops abruptly in front of a shut door. Underneath the old wooden frame, there's the soft glow of firelight and the drift of hushed voices.
"It's this one," he pants.
"Move," Dinah commands. She paces back three steps.
Liesel sighs. "Can't we just try the knob and see if-"
Dinah is already charging forward. She kicks the door down, and before the loud thud has finished ringing through the hall, Sam and the other two Hobbits sweep into the room.
"Let him go!" Sam roars. "Or I'll have you, Longshanks!" He brandishes his fists probably for the first time in his life – and means it for the first time, too.
But Frodo is under no threat, nor does he seem particularly frightened by the Man at the window. In fact, he looks more startled by their sudden, furious appearance than anything else.
The thief, the stranger… He stands in a peculiar way. He looks young, with shoulder-length hair and keen grey eyes, but he stands like someone much older, someone tired from knowing and living in the world.
He sheaths his long sword at the sight of them, and to her surprise, he smiles at Sam. "You have a stout heart, little Hobbit. But that alone will not save you."
Dinah has heard enough. She steps fully into the room, slowly pacing around the small band of little warriors to stand across from the Man. The firelight does strange things – the way she holds her twin blades causes her silhouette to look almost winged. The eyes of the Dark Heralds twinkle knowingly beneath her sure grip. If a careful, imaginative ear were to listen very closely, a faint caw might be heard on the tense air.
His face falls at the sight of her. "I have heard many tale of you," he says softly, almost as if trapped in some horrible dream. "You are the one they call the Raven."
"I am known by many names," she confirms. She can feel the curiosity of her friends on her back like little pinpricks. She wonders if Liesel, kind and good and worthy Liesel, has any idea what kind of reputation Dinah has forged for herself. "I would know yours."
"I am called many things," he evades. "We haven't the time to reflect – you know better than anyone what hunts him. They are coming."
Dinah narrows her eyes. "My companions and I left the Nazgûl on the other side of the Brandywine River at dusk. We have a few hours until they pick up our trail again."
"That was before," Strider warns. "They have heard Its call."
It.
She feels as though she has swallowed a large lump of snow. Her head rushes, and numbly, she looks at Frodo. He seems to shrink beneath her piercing gaze, paler and wanting to run, but all she can see – blurred as it is through her tunneling vision – is the bumpy outline of a chain around his neck, and where it comes to an end beneath his vestment, a circular brand pushes through the fabric.
For the first time in her life, Dinah hates being right. She wants to be wrong. She wishes with all her heart it wasn't true, but she knows it's the one explanation that makes the most sense. There's only one It this Man from the North could be referencing, one It that could summon the Nazgûl from their slumber, one It that could make them ride hard across leagues and leagues on a vicious, most determined hunt…
Everything that Middle Earth endured so long ago, all the precious lives that were lost, all the hope that has fought relentlessly against the encroaching clouds time and time again… Everything comes back to It, which rests on the rapidly rising and falling chest of a wide-eyed Hobbit. The One Ring. It has been found.
Dinah feels like she can't breathe.
"No…" Liesel looks between the three of them, those sweet green eyes as close to accusatory as Dinah has ever seen them. "You didn't… Why didn't you say something?" She whirls on her sister. "Don't you trust me anymore?" Then she pauses, and the room has never been so silent. The patrons downstairs shout and burp and brawl. The rain lashes at the windows. The thunder rolls.
Liesel looks at Strider. "This can't be. It's not possible. The Ri- It was lost ages ago. It's been lost. It… It still is lost. It has to be." Slowly, she turns to Frodo. Her auburn hair falls in her stricken face. "Isn't it?"
"I didn't know." Dinah finally finds her voice with a croak. She stares at Frodo, and she can't bring herself to be angry with him. Through the waves of shock and sudden, striking grief, though the world is spinning out from beneath her weary feet, the truth is immovable. Dinah has only known these Hobbits for a few hours. Their time together has been spent on the run, out in the open. In all likelihood, he would've told her tonight – or she would've figured it out for herself – as soon as they shared their stories like they had initially planned.
"I was going to tell you," he says, a full echo of her very thoughts. His big blue eyes beg for belief. "I… I'm sorry."
Sam stomps between his friend and the humans, a durable wall as there ever was. He shakes as he raises his chin, but he looks them in the eyes as he sternly speaks. "Mr. Frodo doesn't have anything to apologize for. He's just doing what Mr. Gandalf said, you see. We're supposed to keep It a secret. And if you know anything about what he's carrying, then… Then you'll understand, and you won't be hard on him."
Dinah takes a deep breath. "I do. Liesel and I… We understand, more than we would like." She lowers her head. Takes another even breath. Her heart is still pounding, but the fog of fear and horror is already starting to clear with the lighthouse of strategizing ahead. She always feels better when she has a plan. "Strider is right. We have to move." She forces herself to meet Frodo's gaze. "The burden you bear is a beacon to the Nazgûl."
"What are these Nazgûl?" Pippin suddenly asks. "You mentioned them earlier – you said that you hunt them. But why do they hunt us? Just because of a ring?"
"And who are you?" Merry eyes Strider warily.
"We will explain everything once we get you somewhere safe," Dinah reassures. She glances at Strider, daring him to argue. "We all have a part in this story to share."
"They come here," he says with authority. How does he know so much about the Black Riders? "We must create a diversion. Something to set them on a different path while we slip away."
Frodo walks down the row of Hobbit-sized beds, then stops and stares at a small carved headboard. "Dinah…" He says slowly. "You know much of the Riders. Can they… see?"
"Somewhat – better at night than they do during the day. Light of any kind blinds them." She looks at Liesel. Her tender-hearted friend stares into the cracking fireplace with crossed arms and suddenly glassy eyes, as if she sees the flames of sacked Angmar instead.
"What if we stuff the blankets?" He suggests. "We raise the fire, light as many candles as we can. They'll think we are here, asleep. They won't be able to tell the difference until it is too late."
Strider nods. "Quickly, then." With that, the Hobbits dart around the room, packing the sheets with extra pillows from the cupboard. Liesel adds logs to the fire, and Merry carefully removes each stick from his candelabra, scattering them on every flat surface. As Dinah stands guard at the door, with Strider watching the window, she thinks that if it weren't a clever tactic to trick murderous wraiths, the little scene they created would be beautiful. There's just something so soft about candlelight.
When their work is complete, Strider informs them that his room is just across the drizzling courtyard. "There we can remain unseen until we are certain they have been deceived," he explains.
Dinah wavers as the Hobbits gather themselves in the hall. Liesel comes to her side, but Dinah doesn't look away from the Man. It's unsettling, how much he knows – how his presence alone commands respect and adherence in the bones of anyone who hears his sure voice.
"I know what you're thinking, but Dinah, we have no choice," Liesel chides softly. "He hasn't done anything to prove himself dishonorable."
"We've known him less than an hour, and during that time, he abducted Frodo."
She grimaces. "He thought Frodo was in danger. He didn't know that he was under the protection of the mighty Raven." Dinah looks at her quickly, worried. Behind Liesel's teasing smile, there's a devastating question in her eyes, one that Dinah doesn't know if she will ever have the stomach to answer. Not to Liesel, who has always seen the best in her. "Besides, what does Sage always say? 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend,' right?"
"'And if he's not my friend, he'll still make a fine drinking partner.'" Dinah rolls her eyes. "I wouldn't consider Sage someone to take advice from." Though as she says the words, she remembers how her fierce friend's coaching came clear to her at a time of great need earlier this very night, as she struggled in the cold swift current of the Brandywine.
Liesel sighs. "This Man knows more about our fated prey than anyone outside of our Nine-"
"Do you not find that incredibly strange? See reason, sister, not potential. Does it truly give you comfort that he knows so much?"
"You will only know why he is so familiar with our story if we go with him and hear his. Everyone deserves a chance to be heard." She glances at the Hobbits, who anxiously huddle in the corridor. "He's the best chance your friends have."
Begrudgingly, Dinah follows as their seven silently steals away into night, dashing across the damp courtyard and sloshing through the front stoop. Strider leads them up the back staircase. When they finally reach his dark room, the Hobbits are shivering, wet all over again after finally drying from their first escape from the Nazgûl – but the fireplace remains full of ashes, and the candles won't pop and dance. They sit in the blackness, and they wait.
Strider has settled on the window's ledge, and Dinah sits across from him in a rickety wooden chair. Liesel takes to the floor with the Hobbits, but even as she smiles at them encouragingly, they still stick close together at Dinah's feet.
She crosses her arms, feeling goosebumps painfully raise and refuse to fall in this bitter wet chill, and she clenches her teeth. Strider was right – his room offers a perfect view directly into the Hobbit one. Still, she chooses to stare at him, and he slowly looks away from the dreary downpour to return her gaze with tired eyes.
"You do not trust me," he says.
"This should not surprise you," she replies flatly.
"I have often wondered what it would be like to meet one of the Nine princesses," he shares. "Someone old who is not meant to be old. Someone who knew the Kings of Men in the before." He tilts his head, offering her a small smile. An olive branch. "You are not what I expected."
Merry and Pippin sputter. "You're a princess?" They ask in unison.
Dinah's cheeks are hot despite the rainwater dripping from her hair and the early autumn night stuck in her joints. "I am not a princess anymore," she grits.
"Don't mind her," Liesel advises. "She is a princess, as am I – no matter how much we may wish to be free of our lineage." She gives them a small smile, but unusually it does not turn the green of her eyes into spring.
Strider's brows raise. "You are a Huntress as well?"
She grins. "Did you think all of us would be so serious as dear Dinah?"
"I thought princesses lived in castles in faraway lands," Merry comments with a frown.
"And wore pretty dresses," Pippin adds. He openly eyes Dinah's mud-caked boots and tattered traveling cloak.
"We used to, a long time ago," Liesel says. Is there a note of wistfulness in her voice? She reaches over and pats Dinah's knee. "How much have you shared with your friends, sister?"
"We haven't had much time to become properly acquainted." With a grunt, Dinah forces herself to sit forward. Her eyes are bleary; she rubs at them with the heel of her palms, then drags her hands down her face and rests her elbows on her thighs. "But I owe you an explanation from my own lips – no matter how much nicer Liesel would tell the story."
Her eyes stray to the window. She finds it easier to summon the dreadful words when she's watching the pattering rain streak the fogging glass, so she stays with the storm and finds her courage in it. "Our fathers were once nine great kings who ruled over human lands. They were calculating, cold Men, always wanting more. Sauron knew this. He used their greed to corrupt them through their gifted rings.
"When our fathers became his slaves, more shadow than Man, as their daughters we were unintended heirs to their dark thrones. Our kingdoms crumbled into ruin. Our families passed on – but we cannot. We have been cursed. So long as our fathers roam Middle Earth, conductors of Sauron's bidding, we will never grow old or know lives of peace. We must hunt the ones who hunt the One Ring, and destroy them."
Dinah pauses and dares to look at her new friends. The Hobbits are listening solemnly, but not one seems repulsed by what she has just revealed, by the heinous truth of her blood.
She clears her throat and forces herself to continue. "There were nine of us. One of the wraiths, now the Witch-king, took the kingdom of Angmar many decades ago. It was there that our number was cut down to three." She stares at her worn boots. "Until we complete our task, our sisters will never have their rest. We are all that remains to right the Wrong of Man. I am Dinah, daughter of Jûru, the Herald of Mourning. She is Liesel, daughter of Sâkhla, the Cruel One. And…" She bites her lower lip. "Our other sister, who is somewhere in this world unknown to us, is Sage, daughter of Orôm, the Warmonger."
Somehow, Frodo is the easiest to speak to. "I found you this night after tracking the Nazgûl from Minas Morgul to your Shire. For months now I have heard much tale of their suspected movements, and I was determined to know why." Her eyes lower to Frodo's chest. "And now I do. War is coming to Middle Earth once again."
"No, don't say such a thing," Liesel interrupts. "I will not live through another war, and neither will you." She brings her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them. Her long skirt fans out on the floor, like she is the center of a poppy.
"Dinah is right," Strider relents. "I have been searching for answers myself. The Wild knows when Darkness is coming before any other place." His knuckles trace a drop on the pane as he checks the streets below. "I was sent here by Gandalf, to wait for your party in case he was delayed." He turns to Frodo. "I trust you know he would not miss your meeting if it were not beyond his power."
"You think Gandalf's in danger?" Frodo wonders.
"I think something has befallen him that even our wise Grey Wizard could not have foreseen." He rests his hand on the long sword at his side. "These are dark times, and they will only grow the grimmer. We must be cautious."
Dinah is very aware of the sharpness in her voice when she asks, "How did the One Ring come into your possession?"
"My uncle had It," Frodo explains. He seems to recede beneath his heavy wet cloak. "He has kept It hidden and safe for sixty years. He didn't know what It was, only that It kept him from aging, and could turn him invisible." His hand raises, almost as if he wants to touch the Ring, but then clenches his fist instead. "Gandalf said Bilbo got It from the creature Gollum, who was tortured for information about the Ring's whereabouts by the servants of Sauron. That's how they knew where to find It. I was meant to hide It, and now they know It has left." He hangs his head.
"Don't talk that way," Sam gently scolds. "Mr. Gandalf trusted you with the Ring's keeping, Mr. Frodo, and that trust wasn't given lightly, neither. He knew you were the best chance at getting the Ring out of the Shire, and look how far we've come!"
"And how far we still have to go," Frodo remarks gravely. "Gandalf isn't here, and I don't know where he would want us to go next."
"I can think of one place in the world that Gandalf the Grey would have you go with such a burden," Strider says. "I know the way. But we will not speak of it anymore until morning, when the shadows that chase you have passed and we have all rested. I see them now."
Dinah leans forward, the chair creaking beneath her as she peers out. Sure enough, dark shapes move in the little lit room across the rainy way. Blades held tall are cast across the walls, and they move decisively up and down, creating a shower of feathers.
Then come the wails.
They can be heard even over the booming thunder, even over the drumming rain, rife with immense ire. The Hobbits cringe, and even Liesel shivers.
"What are they now?" Merry breathes. He doesn't sound as though he really wants to know. "Your fathers."
"Wraiths," Dinah tells, numb. She watches as the inn doors burst open and the furious Black Riders disappear into the most wretched night. "They are neither living nor dead, forever damned by their choices, yet slaves to a will that was never their own. Rings of Power distort the wearer's heart, showing them their deepest desires and manipulating the innocence of their dreams all at once."
She crosses her arms again. "Whenever you put on the One Ring, Frodo, they will come. As long as you carry It, they will still hunt you. They never tire, never hunger, never feel anything but duty and pain."
"I should've warned Butterbur," Liesel suddenly laments. "He has been so good to me. How terrified he must be right now, and to think that I could've-"
Strider regards her, a hint of fondness hidden in his scruff. "There is no amount of warning that could ever render a soul ready to hear the cry of the Nine-"
"Eight."
Dinah doesn't know why she decided to tell them now, in this way. She didn't even really decide, it just slipped out without her thinking about the gravity of her confession.
Six pairs of eyes descend upon her laden shoulders.
Liesel is the first to find her voice. "Dinah… Do you mean-"
"Yes," she breathes. Is this head-to-toe flush something of relief? Her heart is racing, her palms clammy. Not even the grip of her swords can soothe the powerful tide of her anxiety. "As of tonight, there are Eight."