Prologue: Long Shadow of the Empire


Talion sensed the shadow behind him just as he was about to step over the edge of eternity. He could see the point of no return only a hair's breadth away, the promise of peace after so many years of devastating war; it took the form of a bubbling brook of crystal clear water, cutting a wavy line through fields of green grass turned gold by the sunrise on the Farthest Shore. Still, he paused out of respect and waited for her to speak.

"So this is it then?" Shelob almost sighed behind him. Despite the size of her great spider form, her clawed feet barely rustled the long grass, and left no mark on the soil. "Your final farewell to Middle-Earth."

"The One Ring is at last destroyed, and the Nine with it," he replied, then shivered against his will. He was no longer corrupted by the dark power of Isildur's Ring, and the sound of his own voice was strange and chilling; the warped echo of the Ring had grown familiar with the long years of his descent into shadow. He had been a Ringwraith longer than he had ever been a living Man. He pressed on regardless. "My time has come. Even if I want to stay, there is nothing to bind me to Middle-earth."

"Are you sure."

An absolute stillness of heart and mind settled over him, familiar almost to the point of pain: the quiet, endless patience of a Nazgûl awaiting instruction. After he had fallen into darkness, he had stood still and silent seemingly for ages uncounted under the flaming Eye, but Sauron had not commanded him until almost the bitter end, delighting at the sight of his soul twisted at long last into a faithful servant of the Dark Tower.

Talion turned his head just slightly, and waited. The spider had his full attention, even if he still watched the pure sun rise over the Farthest Shore. Its golden light shone off glittering marble just out of reach: a city of Men, of graven pillars and jeweled spires as fine as Gondolin the Fair long lost, a path of white stone, so white it almost glowed, leading up to mithril gates flung wide in welcome.

After a moment it came, a twang as of a string being plucked inside his soul, no longer a choke-chain binding him to Sauron's will but a lifeline he could choose to cut - or hold, and follow back. "The One Ring is destroyed, yes," Shelob said, her voice soft, almost a purr, "but the New Ring yet remains - and so also the Nine and the Seven and the Three.

"Well. Most of them."

As it had many times before, his sight blurred away into the vision she granted, clear as day in his mind's eye. The Three were carried faithfully by two Eldar and a Maia, and four of the Seven were consumed by dragonfire, the rest reclaimed by Sauron and lost in the destruction of Barad-dûr. The Witch-king himself had been cut down on the field of battle by a woman of Rohan, his Ring lost in the battle-churned grass of the Pelennor Fields - for now.

But the others...

Shelob plucked the thread again, and he felt it vibrate in his core like a physical thing, sending ripples and shivers through his again-bright soul, the Ring's shadows banished by the light of this unknown sun. "And I cannot help but notice… that you are the only one of the remaining Eight leaving Middle-earth for the Farthest Shore."

She was right. They had all gone down on the slopes of Orodruin, but this path that the Ringwraiths took was empty of the faces he had come to know under deep hoods of cloth and shadow. He and Shelob were alone at the edge of the world, and cold fear filled his heart, poured into his veins.

"I asked you once," said the spider. "I asked you twice. And now I ask a third, and final time. Talion of Gondor…"

Twang.

"How much are you willing to sacrifice?"