The Road to Erebor
The road to Erebor was exhausting. Winter had now almost completely overtaken autumn and, when the wind wasn't blowing across the plain, we were met with rain, occasionally peppered with hail. The dark peaks of the Grey Mountains were always in the background. Also the time when there was daylight became ever shorter. This was both a blessing and a curse for us, as the likelihood of being discovered by our enemies in the darkness decreased, whereas the chance of orcs coming down from the mountains in search of food increased. We didn't see any dragons though – I took that as a plus.
We had been walking in the dark for a while when Maglor raised his hand. It was time to take a break, even if I didn't feel like it. It was cold and wet. None of us would sleep at all tonight, certainly not me. Ever since we'd left Eryn Lasgalen, I felt a restlessness in my chest that hadn't been there before. I hadn't told anyone yet, but I feared it was Morgoth looking for me. The sky was full of clouds, so I couldn't see the moon, but I knew that time was running out. And no one could know if Morgoth wouldn't lose his patience before then.
"As if even the weather wants to stop us," Gimli muttered as he wrung out the wet hood of his cloak.
"I cannot believe how it's pouring."
I simply stood still. Sitting wasn't an option anyway, because the ground was muddy. We would only be stopping briefly so that Gimli and I could eat bread and salted meat that Maglor had brought along. It was too dangerous to light a fire and also almost impossible because of the heavy rain and the lack of firewood. Legolas had spent a good few hours to inquire about the mercenaries but Maglor hadn't told him much what we hadn't known before: He knew they would be in Esgaroth so he went – and grabbed some clothes for us in the process. He didn't let on about where he got to know them or why they owed him a favor. Something that made me warry. But I couldn't change a thing, we were already on our way now.
Maglor reached into the pouch he had strapped over his back and handed out food to us. The elves didn't need any, which was something I envied them for. While I ate, Legolas made it his mission to protect me from the wind by stepping in front of me. "Only half a day's walk and we'll be there," he said when he noticed my gaze.
"I'm worried about the weather," I said as I chewed on my bread. "Will we even find the entrance?"
"We might as well use it to our advantage," Gimli intervened, also taking a bite of bread, then immediately frowning. "The guards won't get any further out of their shelters than they have to. With a bit of luck, we won't need the mercenaries."
Maglor took no part in our conversation. He stood aside, his gaze fixed on the distance. As much as the weather worked on my and Gimli's appearance, it hardly seemed to affect the elves. A chill ran down my spine and I shivered. Legolas noticed and stepped closer. "Are you well, Aspen?"
My eyes wandered back to Maglor. I didn't really want to talk about it in his presence, but what was the point of keeping it to myself? "I'm cold."
"I can keep you warm," he offered and was about to put his arms around me when I said, "It's not just the weather."
"What then?"
"It feels like something's pulling at me. On my mind, to be exact."
As expected, Maglor had been overhearing our conversation. He turned around as soon as I finished the sentence. "Morgoth."
"I think so too," I said quietly. "I can ignore it – for now. But it's getting worse."
"He will have realized that he cannot reach you in the dream realm." Legolas put his arms around me and I nestled into the wonderful warmth he radiated. "And getting impatient."
"Probably." Maglor looked at me probing. "Have you ever had this feeling before?"
I thought for an instant, then nodded. "On the way to Lothlorien."
"Where you were trapped in the dream realm for several days?"
"I think so, I can't remember it. Who knows what I revealed to him while I was there."
Gimli shoved the last piece of bread into his mouth. "Nothing he wouldn't have known anyway. Remember, we didn't have too much information ourselves at that point. Don't feel bad, lass."
"Still." Maglor's gaze remained on me. "We should keep moving. If Morgoth thinks he's waited long enough, he'll try to pull you into the dream realm again – whether you're awake or not."
"Can he do that?"
"Not while I'm with you. And that will tell him more than I would like. That's why we have to hurry."
Yes, we had to. I knew it just as well as the others. Reluctantly I let go of Legolas' arms and pulled the hood back over my face. "Let's go then."
For the next few hours, the rain continued to pour down relentlessly in our faces. At some point, even Gimli gave up trying to shield himself from it. My fingers were so clammy that I would have found it difficult to hold my weapon, but fortunately that didn't become necessary. No one, not even the orcs, wanted to be out in such bad conditions. Maglor's plan worked – with a little help from chance.
After we had turned south and the Grey Mountains at our backs became smaller and smaller, at least the wind was less violent. When, after a few more hours, the peak of Erebor finally emerged from the veil of rain in front of us, I let out a sound of relief. My feet hurt, but not as much as my wounds, which had not yet finally closed and whose bandages were completely soaked.
We rested a second time, ate and then set off to tackle the last leg. The closer we got to the mountain, the more rugged the landscape became. But there were also sections where trees were growing, under which we were protected from the rain, briefly.
When the mountain finally loomed over of us, Gimli said: "We need to stop. If we get any closer, they'll see us." He turned to Maglor. "Where are your mercenaries now, Master Elf?"
"We're too early," Maglor replied with some tension in his voice. "Sunset isn't for another two hours."
"As if you could tell what the sun is up to," I muttered, brushing a strand of wet hair out of my face. At least we had made it to Erebor without being bothered by orcs, dragons or Morgoth himself. I should have been happy, but my gut told me it was all going too smoothly. Since we had met Maglor, the pieces of the puzzle, which had previously been reluctant to reveal their secrets, were falling into place like clockwork. I couldn't yet say whether Maglor was to blame. But the assumption was obvious. Perhaps too obvious?
"Wait here."
Gimli gave a snort. "Maybe it's just you, Master Elf, who thinks they owe you a favor."
Maglor ignored him and looked at me instead. "You know, Aspen, what will happen if I leave. Your protection from Morgoth will be weakened. You must resist him for as long as you can."
Why was he insisting on this now, when he had to leave us, even if only briefly? Was he trying to prevent us from doing something he didn't like by scaring me? I had to admit that it was working, at least a little. On the other hand, I trusted Legolas much more than Maglor and he had managed to stop Morgoth from attacking us even in the dream realm. So why was Maglor harping on about his alleged ability? I hoped he couldn't tell what I was thinking and asked, "How do I do it?"
"Just like you have done so far: stay awake and push the feeling you described to the back of your mind. As long as you are physically well, he cannot take you out of the waking world, but he can ensure that you fall asleep. Then you are at his mercy."
"And you can stop him?"
He nodded slightly. "I won't be gone long."
With that, he turned and disappeared between the trees that surrounded us. He was so adept at blending in with his surroundings in a matter of seconds that my eyes lost him as soon as I blinked.
"I don't believe a word he says," Beleg stated a second later. "He's lying."
"Aye." Legolas looked in the direction Maglor had gone. "I have feared it for some time now. His words now leave no other conclusion."
"What?" I asked, surprised that Beleg, who had kept a low profile up to this point, had the same impression as Legolas and I, and was blunt about it. Even Gimli nodded in agreement. Had this been an open secret that we had all just never spoken of?
"He can't protect you from being pulled into the dream realm by Morgoth. If that would have been Morgoth's plan all along, you're at his mercy no matter who you're with. But I already said that he's not strong enough for that. Otherwise he would have done it long ago, not trying to negotiate."
"What about the thing that happened just before Lothlorien?"
"You were unwell and kept slipping into the dream realm without his help. He was just hanging on to you. I wish I had realized that back then."
"And now? We need him to get to Erebor and also to put the Silmaril back together again. He's made himself irreplaceable," I said, unable to stop my voice from sounding bitter.
"No, we don't need him," Gimli said into the silence that had followed my words with a highly pleased expression on his face. "Because I bent the truth as well. Clearly better than Maglor, though. They don't guard this part of Erebor because they don't know the entrance exists. A mountain like this can't be taken unless you go through the front door. And, of course, they keep an eye on that day and night. It would be a waste of resources to guard the whole mountain when you know there's no other way in."
Everyone stared at the dwarf, who was leaning on his axe as if he had not just dropped a bomb of tremendous magnitude. Even Legolas was speechless.
Gimli shrugged his shoulders. "I wanted to see how well Maglor was prepared. I had already figured that something was up with his mercenaries. But we won't be rid of him for long, so we should get going immediately."
I was still staring at him with my mouth open. "Gimli," I finally managed. "You're... bloody cunning."
The dwarf grinned. "Thank me later. C'mon."
We didn't have time to talk about Gimli's brilliant move, because he was right. We had to get going and that as quickly as possible. Although I couldn't shake the thought that not everything Maglor had said had been a lie, my gut knew it was the right decision to leave before he came back. Even if that meant I had to put the Silmaril together on my own.
My mind continued to race as I trailed behind Beleg, tripping through the trees. We had fallen into a slight running pace, led by Gimli. Why was Maglor lying? The others had convinced me that he did. But what did he gain from it? What was his goal? I had no answer to this and a part of me hoped I never would.
Gimli stopped so abruptly that I almost ran into Beleg, who was walking behind the dwarf. We had left the trees and were struggling over increasingly stony terrain. The mountain above us, close enough to touch. And absolutely no one got in our way, just as Gimli had promised.
"It must be here somewhere." He looked around searching. "I'm certain."
The rain fell heavily on the rocks, making them dangerously slippery. I nearly lost my footing more than once, but Legolas' good arm was always there to keep me from falling.
"Ha!" Gimli exclaimed. "I knew it. Give me a hand, there it is."
I slid down a small slope until I was standing next to the dwarf, but even now I couldn't see anything that would indicate an entrance to the mountain. "Where?" I asked.
"Right here, lass." Gimli led me to an absolutely plain-looking stone that reached roughly up to my shoulders. "We have to push it aside."
"This chunk?"
"We'll be fine," the dwarf said, as if the stone wasn't the size of a large boulder. But to my astonishment, together with Beleg and a little help from Legolas, he actually managed to move the rock. When they had rolled it far enough to the side for us to slip through, Gimli muttered, "We must leave the entrance open or we won't be able to get back."
"Then they'll find it," Legolas pointed out.
"Yes." Pause. "That's why we have to be faster than Maglor and his mercenaries."
Not an encouraging outlook, but what else could we do? It was impossible to seal the entrance from the inside, and even if we could: Then we would be locked in with the dwarves, who would certainly give us anything but a friendly welcome if they found out that we wanted to steal Thorin's jewel. At least it was dry.
My eyes were slow to adjust to the darkness. The little light that shone in from outside didn't even extend three meters, behind it nothing but inky darkness. "How are we supposed to find our way around here?" Beleg asked. "It's so dark that I can't see a hand in front of my eyes." Coming from an Elf that was frightening.
We looked at each other in bewilderment – we had thought of bringing torches, but they were useless after the storm outside. I somehow had pushed the thought aside until the last minute but I had an idea now: I hurriedly searched through the bundle of old clothes that I had strapped over my back and in which I had kept my cell phone as well as a spare knife, which I hadn't been able to stow directly on my body due to the lack of a belt. It had somehow survived all the hardships, the escape and the fear. Unbreakable – at least that's what I was hoping for. I turned it on last in the Woodland Realm, before we were given the chance to experience the cells from the inside. The elves hadn't taken it from me because I had hidden it in my bodice, just like the Silmaril shards. It was a little wonder the Smartphone somehow always made it with me. As if someone knew I would need it now.
I found it hard to open the bundle because my hands were so stiff from the cold, but once I did, I pulled out the device and pressed the on button with a pounding heart. I briefly feared that the water had damaged it or the battery was low, but then the display lit up.
Gimli and Beleg took a step back, but Legolas raised his hand in reassurance. "Don't worry," he said, "it's not dangerous."
"It certainly looks like it," Gimli replied, suspicion in his voice. "What is that?"
I looked up. "Something from my home. It will show us the way."
"Did you deprive Mithrandir of his staff, lass?"
"No," I said with a small smile, "I wish it was that magical." With a click, I activated the flashlight feature and deliberately held the light away from the others, into the narrow tunnel that was now clearly visible ahead of us. "How long will it take us, Gimli?"
"An hour, maybe two."
"That should be enough." My eyes wandered to the battery display. It was half full. "But we should hurry, and not just because of Maglor and Morgoth."
I stepped aside to let the dwarf through. Still eyeing the smartphone warily, he squeezed past me and went ahead. Because Gimli was much shorter than me, I was still able to light the way. I noticed Beleg's curious look, but said nothing, because Gimli was right: we had to keep going.
As we squeezed our way through the corridors, which forced everyone except for Gimli to walk crouched down, I silently thanked whatever had let me keep the cell phone. We would never have found our way in the dark and it would have been hours before wood was dry enough to burn. Maybe even longer.
The path was not particularly interesting: stone walls to the left and right, the trail in front of us consisting of sand and more gravel, which was frequently interrupted by passages where we had to climb or push our way through openings. When some time had passed, Gimli let us know that we had to be extra quiet from now on. We were approaching the heart of Erebor. Something that made me joyous yet terrified me at the same time.
I put one foot in front of the other as carefully as possible, but our steps still echoed as loudly as gun shots in the silence. When we finally came to a halt in front of a wall, Gimli pointed downwards. There was a low passageway that was clearly not of natural origin. I wanted to ask him if he had cut it into the stone himself or if someone else had done it, but he immediately put his finger to his lips again. Then he went through and disappeared. Beleg, Legolas and I remained in place for a moment until Gimli had secured the scene, then we followed.
Before I reached the other side, I turned off the light on my smartphone and stowed it in my bodice next to the real Silmaril shards. As I got up on the other side with Beleg's help, I forgot to breathe for a second. We were in a mausoleum. But nothing about this was even remotely like the mausoleums I knew – crypt-like and cramped. It was quite the opposite: the room was so high that I couldn't see the ceilings, but several corridors branched off from it in a star shape. All of them had to lead to burial chambers. In the middle, there was a basin set into the floor where water was pooling. It glittered like silver in the flames of the torches that were attached to the walls all around.
After Legolas was the last to slip through the passage, Gimli led us on. If I had felt the tension before, now it was palpable. I was aware that we could be surprised at any time by a guard or someone who wanted to grieve. I also knew nothing about the dwarven customs. Did they pay visits to their dead? Did they have special days? And how important was death to them over all?
But we didn't meet anyone on the way to Thorin's burial chamber. It was completely empty, almost suspiciously quiet. When this thought popped into my head, I looked at Legolas, who returned my gaze. I didn't know if he noticed my unease or just did it for no reason, but he reached for my hand and soothingly brushed his thumb over my skin.
Still, I kept thinking that it was all too damn easy: the fact that we had managed to shake off Maglor just in time, that we hadn't met anyone on the way and that we had found the entrance without any major problems.
No.
Something was wrong.
But what should I do? Turn back? That wasn't an option. We had to keep going – no matter what. We were so close. So very close. And yet...
The moment we entered the burial chamber, I knew we had walked into a trap. Legolas realized it even before I did, but it was too late.
Thorin's tomb had already been opened. The Arkenstone was no longer lying on his chest, but on the lid of the tomb, which had been hastily pushed shut again. It glittered in so many different colors that I could hardly look at it. What I saw very clearly, however, was Maglor standing next to the tomb. When our eyes met, he said: "I would have thought you were smarter, Aspen. But I am fine with it as it is."
