Twenty-Five: Through the Gates of Infinity
The next morning, while Aragorn and Horza helped Boromir sort through which of his possessions he would take with him and what would be left behind, Gimli and Legolas took Talion on a tour of his own through Erebor, shorter and less thorough than Horza's but just as awe-inspiring. The wraith also let Daerwen look through his eyes to see the inside of the mountain, and she was just as impressed, though she still swore she would never challenge the dwarves for their mountain.
Then they regrouped in the hills, and flew south once more. Because of the greater number of passengers and the increased weight, they went slower than before, to avoid straining Daerwen's wings, though she had grown in strength during their long journey through the Southern Reaches and the Dark Lands. It took them six days to reach Anorien, and they waited for nightfall in the Grey Wood south of Amon Dîn. Aragorn said that he contacted his beloved Arwen through ósanwe also, which she had taught to him, and that she would arrange a change of the guard so that Hithaer would be on watch with other trustworthy guardsmen, allowing Daerwen to fly them directly into the city and up to the citadel.
He said that she would be waiting for them with the Anor-stone.
While they waited the last few hours for full dark, the last golden glow of Anar fading behind the Ered Nimrais, Talion sank into the stillness of the Nazgûl and considered what he might find within the palantír. If Denethor was trapped therein, could he simply summon his spirit out, once he had direct contact with the Seeing Stone, or would he need to go in after his friend? Assuming he was caught in a loop of some kind, could he coax Denethor out, or would he need to break it by force instead?
The tomb had no answer, and neither did the glittering stars starting to shine overhead.
The wraith sighed and got to his feet. "Shall we?"
The flight from the Grey Wood to Minas Tirith was even shorter than Barad-dûr to Orodruin but felt far more weighted, at least to the necromancer. It seemed like Daerwen had barely ascended into the night sky before she was descending again to land in the Court of the Fountain before the doors of the palace - where the queen was waiting for them in the shadow of the White Tree, resplendent in silver and white like the city herself.
She was not alone. Idril and Hithaer stood guard beside her, smiling at the sight of them all, and a small boy who must have been Eldarion stood next to the queen, holding her hand and staring up at Daerwen with lips parted and eyes wide and sparkling with wonder. Faramir was there also, but his attention was solely on his brother; he looked as though he had cried already, but fresh tears fell as he watched Boromir dismount.
The instant Boromir took a step towards him, Faramir rushed to embrace him. Talion could not make out all that was said, but it seemed Faramir was apologizing for something from before his brother's death and resurrection, and saying that he had been dearly missed. Since it seemed that no weapons would make an appearance, the wraith left them to it, instead turning to the last of those who had come to greet them: a woman, tall and grey-eyed, with hair that shone gold even in the dark. She was clad in a long green dress but wore no jewelry to speak of, and had only a dagger on her belt.
Horza blinked at her, then approached with caution. "Are you Éowyn of Rohan?"
"I am," the woman answered with equal wariness, though she did not go for her blade. "Who are you?"
"Horza Shield Master. I just wanted to say - thank you. For the Witch-king," the Orc explained, when she tilted her head in confusion. "He killed my blood brother. Not even 'cause he was doin' anything wrong - he was just… in the way. And no matter how much I trained, I was never strong enough to challenge any of the Shriekers, let alone him. I know you didn't kill him for me, but still… Thank you."
Éowyn relaxed in surprise, then smiled softly in the semidarkness. "You are very welcome, Horza, and well met. Welcome to Minas Tirith."
The Orc bowed to her, a gesture she returned, then stepped back to Talion's side, whereupon the wraith bowed to her as well before greeting his adopted daughter and grandson.
Proper introductions went around, and Talion briefly raised his eyebrows when Faramir introduced Éowyn as his wife of several years. Though Denethor had never spoken ill of either of his sons, he had mentioned in their letters that one of the reasons he had never introduced Faramir to the wraith was that his youngest did not hold the "Middle Men" of Arda, those not of Númenónean descent, in high regard - including the Rohirrim, Éowyn's kin, who had been Gondor's steadfast allies since the days of Eorl more than five hundred years past.
Boromir had to know as well, having lived his whole life with Faramir and watched him grow, but he made no mention when greeting Éowyn, so Talion followed his lead. They seemed happy enough, and it would not do to cause strife.
But everyone smiled when Eldarion said a soft but delighted hello to Daerwen. The dragon lowered her head so she was level with him and peered at him with a great golden eye. "Mae govannen, little prince. It's an honor to meet you as well."
Eldarion grinned shyly, then ducked behind his mother to hide, but they could all hear him giggling.
When that was done, Queen Arwen turned to the wraith and offered him the palantír. To ordinary eyes, it looked no different than any other Seeing Stone, but though there was no dark influence here to make the Seen and Unseen Worlds as one, when he took it Talion still saw at once that there was something within. "Denethor, son of Ecthelion," he called - and then inhaled when the palantír answered, an aura of necromantic green flaring bright around it like the white halo of the sun in full eclipse.
He was not the only one who saw, for he heard the others gasp as well, but he did not heed them, already casting his mind down into the palantír.
Minas Tirith was burning.
The great gates of the White City lay shattered on the stone of her streets, the faceless hordes of Sauron's armies pouring through the high arches and running rampant through the widest courtyards and narrowest alleys. The people of Gondor fled before them, just as faceless but still screaming and weeping, but they were caught anyway and beaten, violated, slain in more horrible ways than Talion cared to know. Some innocents threw themselves from the walls to escape the devastation; others fell on whatever weapons came to hand, or locked themselves in their houses to burn.
Talion whirled this way and that, seeking, calling - "Denethor! Denethor, where are you?!"
The Steward was nowhere to be seen in the Lower City - but then, he would not be, would he? He would be up in the palace, commanding such defense as could be mustered with the walls breached. But it would take too long to run through all the chaos, ascending all seven levels to the citadel; instead the wraith willed himself to smoke and streaked skyward, coming around and slamming down in the very courtyard where he stood beyond this nightmare-world.
The courtyard was empty, and the White Tree was ablaze, same as the city below.
His heart ached at the sight, but Talion sprinted past it and burst through the doors of the palace into the throne room. But there, too, was empty, the Steward's chair overturned and the king's throne smashed to pieces. The statues of past kings had been destroyed as well, shoved from their pedestals to shatter on the marble floor, and great tapestries of heraldry and history had been torn from the walls and lay shredded among the rubble.
"Denethor!"Talion shouted, but there was no reply, not even the sounds of looting and desecration.
Desecration.
Steward Denethor lost hope that the battle might be won and took then-Lord Faramir, still alive and gravely wounded but seeming dead or very near to it, to the Silent Street where past Kings and Stewards are laid to rest.
…I was told that he built himself and Faramir a pyre in the Hallows…
The wraith slammed back through the doors and swerved around the corner. There was a covered path next to the palace, leading to the ancillary hall where his trial had taken place decades ago; he scaled one of the columns to the roof, then raced over the rooftop to the edge of the citadel. He spotted the long arching path of Rath Dínen leading from the sixth level to the shoulder of Mount Mindolluin where the Houses of the Dead lay in a cleft of the mountain.
The crypts, too, were burning, but a force of Orcs battered at the door nonetheless, led by a Nazgûl standing silently at the end of the bridge, naked sword at the ready.
Talion did not need to see the face beneath the hood to know that it was himself wrapped in that dark shroud, for all the Orcs were shades and specters, glowing green under Sauron's dark clouds.
The wraith threw himself from the battlements, tucking and rolling as he hit the roofs of the sixth level but springing back to his feet at once, before he could go sliding off the sloping shingles. He continued over the rooftops at all speed until at last he leaped down onto the Silent Street itself, windmilling his arms to keep himself steady before hitting the flagstones, tucking and rolling once again.
But then he cursed and started sprinting for the Houses of the Dead; the mortar between the stones vanished, and the bridge began to crumble under his feet in a terrible crash of masonry, falling like rain to break on the mountainside below.
The Nazgûl turned to meet him, his evil Urfael at the ready, but this phantom did not have his skill; they exchanged only a handful of blows before he ran his dark mirror through. He fell away, dissolving into mist, and the shades vanished with him.
Talion hit the doors - locked, even against his Ring-enhanced strength. Locked, but not indestructible.
The wooden plank that barred the doors rotted swiftly under the power of Isildur's Ring, and he kicked the doors open to see Denethor standing on the yet-unlit pyre even as the Houses of the Dead burned around him. Boromir and Faramir lay on firewood piled either side of him, drenched in oil and still as death. The rest of the world was washed out, even the dancing flames faded to shades of gray like the wraith world, but the Steward alone was in full color, though still in robes of black, unadorned, like his father before him, and all Stewards of the House of Húrin since the departure of Eärnur.
The Man wept at the sight of the Nazgûl. "Of course it would be you, Talion!" he cried. "Of course it would be you the Enemy sent forth against me, a foe with the face of a friend to drag me and my sons to heel alive or dead! But we are Stewards of the House of Anárion, and we will not be so easily chained!"
"Denethor, snap out of it!" Talion shouted. "This is only a nightmare!"
But Denethor either did not hear him, or did not heed him. There was a servant attending the pyre, as faceless as everyone else in the nightmare-realm, and carrying a flaming torch. The Steward nearly ripped the torch from their hands, the servant crumbling away at once with the sound of glass breaking, and threw the flaming brand down onto the pyre. The oil-soaked wood went up at once.
"Fire has ever been your enemy," Denethor pronounced gravely even as the building groaned around him, the ancient wood splintering and even the stone starting to crack and give way, "and now it will set us free."
No!
The necromancer had never truly commanded the souls of the fallen before, not as Isildur had. While his mind was his own, he had never broken their wills and demanded obedience without thought or question. He asked, always, and the spirits answered - or refused.
This time, as he ran for the pyre, he commanded. "Denethor, son of Ecthelion!" he bellowed, and felt Isildur's Ring come alive with his intent, invisible chains unspooling from within the glowing jewel. Then the chains snapped outward and coiled around the Steward, binding his spirit such that he could not resist when Talion dragged him off the pyre.
The roof of the crypt at last collapsed under its own weight, compromised by the growing fire, and crashed down onto the pyre, burying Boromir and Faramir under the rubble. Denethor howled like it was him who had been crushed, but now something like self-preservation overwhelmed him; willing or not, he staggered after the wraith and let himself be shoved out through the doors of the crypt, just before the rest of the building collapsed in on itself.
Fresh air swirled through the ruins, sending the flames higher, belching black smoke that merged with Sauron's wall of cloud high overhead. "Faramir! Boromir! My sons!" Denethor cried, fighting against the wraith to return to the fire, causing them both to overbalance and go sprawling over the stone. "No, no, no! You will not take them - I will not surrender their souls to the dark, not even to you!"
"Snap out of it, Denethor!" Talion shouted again, this time with the command of Isildur's Ring behind it. He managed to wrestle the Man around to look him in the eye. "This is only a nightmare! Wake up!"
And at last, Denethor heard him and went still, panting, staring at him and clutching at his armor. "Talion…?"
The wraith relaxed and released the command, gently setting the Man on his feet again. "It's all right, my friend. The One has been destroyed, and Sauron with it. The war is over."
He could see disbelief on the Steward's face, the same that he himself had felt when he woke to sunshine in Gorgoroth, the air free of miasma and the sky free of cloud. But Denethor was as shrewd as ever, his mind swift and immediately turning to - "Faramir?" he whispered. "I killed myself here - did I kill him too?"
"No." Talion shook his head. "He lives, and is whole and hale, as far as I can tell - and Boromir also." When Denethor's eyes shot wide, the wraith smiled. "His body was intact and his soul had not gone beyond my reach, so I called him back. Both of your sons are alive, Denethor. Will you not come out to see them?"
As with the Silmaril before it, later Talion could not say why or how he did it, but even so: he plunged his Ring-hand into the palantír almost to the shoulder, a feat that should have been impossible but one he accomplished nonetheless. And when he felt a spectral hand catch his own, he drew back, and pulled Denethor's spirit free of the Seeing Stone.
The pain and weariness of all the years of wrestling with Sauron in the palantír had fallen from the Steward as if they had never been; he was young again, hale and strong as he had been when they first met, tall and dark-haired like his elder son but more wise and lordly than his younger.
Both sons of Denethor were there in an instant, catching their father when he stumbled, and the Man stared in awe at them both, ghostly tears falling. "Boromir… Faramir… oh, my sons…" He embraced them both, and they held him just as tight, tears of their own raining down.
Talion stepped away to give them the space to talk in relative privacy, as he would have wanted to speak with Dirhael, if he had ever mustered up the courage to call for him. Instead, he offered the palantír back to the queen. But she refused it with a soft smile, then bowed deeply to him in gratitude. "Thank you, Talion," she said.
"There is no need to thank me, Your Majesty," said the wraith, "not for this."
"Even so," she said, and then stepped aside to allow the king to approach.
Elessar, too, was smiling. Talion offered him the stone, and the Man said, "I will take it back if you insist, but I would much rather you kept it, and used it for your own purposes. We hardly have need of two of them here, and certainly we will be better off if we can speak swiftly from afar. There are no more Ringwraiths to threaten us all, but the Corsairs still linger, and there will likely be others after them."
He was not wrong. The wraith sighed, and watched for a moment as Faramir presented Éowyn to his father, before turning back to the king. "I will take it if you insist," he returned, making both royals laugh.
"I do," said Elessar, and the Nazgûl sighed again. It would be good to have a palantír again, if only for the security it offered, letting him check up on friends and allies from afar.
And also… though Maglor had never gone into any great detail, for there had been no need at the time, he had spoken as if it was possible to look not just through space with the Seeing-stones, but also through time. Perhaps…
His thoughts turned again to Celebrimbor and Eltariel. Perhaps he could find some answers at last.
But though his sons were sad to see him go, Denethor was at last ready to depart in peace, having beheld them both and looked out over the city that he had long guarded to see that all was well. So Talion took them all out to the Farthest Shore - the king and queen, the sons of the Steward, Éowyn, Idril and Hithaer, and even Horza and Daerwen and little Eldarion - so that they might behold the bliss and peace that lay beyond the walls of the Arda. Then he released Denethor's spirit, and the Man stepped over the edge of eternity and disappeared into the light of the rising sun.
You are not tempted to read the letters?
No need. I know the heart of my people, so I know what they say.
"I have the watch, my friend," the wraith whispered, and knew that Denethor heard him. Then he drew them back to Minas Tirith.
"It's beautiful," said Arwen, to Horza's murmured agreement when they returned to themselves. "I cannot speak for anyone else, but I can say this: I will not seek it out, but neither will I fear death when it finally comes."
But they all agreed with her. Then they bade Talion farewell also, for it was late and though he wanted to stay awake, Eldarion was still young and falling asleep even on his feet. Boromir also needed to be resettled in his rooms while they debated an explanation for his return - and for the equally-sudden reappearance of the Sceptre of Númenor.
When the doors of the palace swung shut behind them, and only Talion, Horza, and Daerwen were left in the courtyard, the wraith finally turned towards a presence that had been prickling in the back of his mind since they arrived, lurking in the shadow of one of the outbuildings nearby cast by the silver moon rising in the east. Daerwen followed his gaze, and Horza too, and at last a veil dropped, revealing an Elf-lord, very tall, with long silver hair, and dressed in fine robes of white and silver - like his granddaughter.
Though Talion had never seen him before, he knew him from another's description. "Lord Celeborn," he said, and bowed to the Elf. Horza did the same, and Daerwen dipped her head as well. "To what do we owe this honor?"
The Elf-lord hummed quietly and approached. Even the sigh of his shoes over the flagstones was graceful. "A request," he said finally, "from my wife, on behalf of some who knew you."
Some?
"Eltariel made it back, then?" Horza asked. When Celeborn nodded, he said, "Good. She was a sharp one; I didn't like the thought of her getting popped off right there at the end."
Talion exchanged a quick glance with Daerwen, both of them thinking of Mozû and Tamnaeth. At least this was better than whatever Krimp the Enchanted had had going on. Then they returned their attention to the Elf-lord as he stopped in front of them. "Indeed, she was not 'popped off'," he said, amused. "She made it all the way back to Lothlórien unaided, where we believed we might have to send a significant force to retrieve her. I will not deny I was impressed.
"But she did not return alone."
The wraith went still. There was only one it could be. "Celebrimbor."
Celeborn nodded. "He survived his time in the Eye with Sauron, and was freed with the destruction of the One Ring. But he was gravely wounded indeed, and though Galadriel did all she could for him, and Elrond also, he had no choice except to sail in all haste and seek healing in Valinor. They left for the Grey Havens within a month of the fall of Barad-dûr.
"But… hoping against hope for you, they left this behind."
The New Ring shimmered softly in the moonlight, its engraved script glowing a steady blue, its aura cold but not evil as it bonded itself to him, recognizing him once more as its master. Talion sighed. It seemed that Shelob had been right, even if she had not known everything - or at least not revealed it. He accepted its claim on him and reached for it - but it came of its own accord, leaping from the Elf-lord's hand to slam down onto his finger, shattering Isildur's Ring into a million glittering pieces. But the shards of metal and splinters of gemstone hung in the air for a moment, against the pull of gravity, before they were just as suddenly drawn into the New Ring.
At once, the open grave in his mind changed. Before he had simply followed the souls he knew to their respective afterlives, groping blindly through the pitch dark of the mausoleum for whatever paths they took to their own Farthest Shores. Now, in a sense, he could see as if it was daylight in the tomb - could see the well-trod roads of Men and Orcs and Elves and dwarves, and even others less familiar: the dragons and drakes, the legendary skin-changers of the North, the mythical tree-herding Ents, and more stranger still. He could sense the walls of Arda, the edge of eternity beyond which there was no returning, forever dividing the living from the true dead, and also all the little lights of the lives around him, not just people but plants and animals, pulsing faintly with every beat of their hearts. He could sense the thought-threads of ósanwe-bonds, not only his own but Celeborn's as well, stretching off into the distance.
And though he could not touch it, as with the rest, he still could sense the Straight Road into the West. When he turned his mind to it, he heard the rush of the wind, the cry of the gulls, the crash of the surf on the shores of Valinor far away.
Talion returned to himself with a blink in time to hear Horza say, "…Huh. That was weird."
Daerwen snorted. Celeborn huffed a quiet laugh of his own but agreed. "Indeed. Certainly my wife's Ring, Nenya, never behaved so, but then, it was not made specifically for her, as this was for you. Use it well, Lord Gravewalker."
The wraith bowed again, and swore that he would. Celeborn bade them farewell and departed, returning to the palace. Then Talion and Horza climbed into Daerwen's saddle, and returned to Mordor.
AN: I wanted to imply some Aragorn/Arwen/Boromir shenanigans in this chapter, but I couldn't quite make it work. Alas :( I guess it will live on only in my dreams.
