Hello, all!  I’ve been rushing to get this posted before the opening of ROTK, so I’ve managed to put it together in less time than usual.  I hope you enjoy!  Tolkien-philes will notice bits of Tolkien’s actual text in here; all acknowledgements to the Professor, of course, and I hope the various bits fit in here okay.  This will probably be the last I’ll manage to post for a couple of months, anyway – it will probably be late Jan./early Feb., at the earliest.  At the New Year, we’re moving from Wyoming to Virginia – but I promise to work on the next chapter as much as I can, in the U-Haul!

Happy Yule and a joyous New Year to all of you!

Chapter Seventeen: The Lords of Gondor

           

“My Lords!”

            The young clerk who leapt up from his desk at the entrance to the Houses of Healing was the same youth I’d encountered earlier, on my first visit to Faramir.  As before, this clerk seemed little short of terrified on seeing a handful of great lords come striding up to his desk.  I told myself that I should suggest to the Healers they assign this boy to some other post, where he would be less in the line of fire.

            I started for the stairs, with Svip scurrying at my side and Imrahil and Éomer following close behind me. 

“My Lord,” the clerk stammered flusteredly, as we swept past him.  “You are wounded, sir?”

            “It is nothing.  Do you know to what rooms the Lady Éowyn and the Halfling Meriadoc have been taken?”

            “The lady is in the Tar-Amandil room; the Halfling’s room is just down the hall from hers.”

            “Thank you.”  We clattered up the stairs, the noise of our progress seeming the only token of life in the empty, torch-lit corridors.

            We encountered no one until we had reached the rooms of the highest-ranking patients.  Alerted perhaps by the sound of armoured warriors clanking down the hallway, Mithrandir stepped out from the room of Lady Éowyn.  The Wizard’s white hair and robes imparted to him a ghostly aura in the twilight.  At the same moment as Mithrandir stepped into the hall, the Chief Healer hastened out from the stairwell that connected to his office on the floor below.  The Healer nearly tripped over Svip, who gave a little yelp and huddled closer to my side.

            “Your pardon, My Lords,” the Healer said, bowing.  “The Lord Steward has summoned me.”

            I nodded, and the Man hurried on into Faramir’s room, with a look on his face as though he were summoned to his execution.   

As the Healer made his apologies, Éomer cried out, “Mithrandir!  Does my sister yet live?”

            “She lives, My Lord,” Mithrandir said gravely.  “I fear there is little else that I can tell you.  The malady that lies upon her, and on so many in this House, is no shadow that I have power to lift.”     

             The King of Rohan took a step toward his sister’s room, then, managing to recall convention even in the depths of his distress, he stopped and turned back to Imrahil and me.  “You will excuse me, My Lords?” he asked.  “I … I would sit with my sister for a time, then I will stop in to inquire how the Lord Faramir fares.”

            “Go, Éomer,” I said.  “Your sister needs you now.  Do not concern yourself with anything but that.”

            The young Man’s gaze flickered toward the door of Éowyn’s room, then back to us.  In troubled tones he murmured, “I should be standing vigil over Théoden King … It is my place to be there …”

            “And Théoden King would tell you to go to your sister,” I interposed, wondering if we would have to be debating this all night.  “Go.” 

            Éomer nodded, gave us another sickly smile, and departed into his sister’s room.

            I sighed.  “Will you sit with him a while, Mithrandir,” I asked, “that he may at least have someone to talk to?  I fear he will tear himself to pieces, else.” 

            Mithrandir nodded.  “I am sorry to have no tidings of hope for you, My Lords,” he said, grief and bitterness sounding in his tones.  “I would have been of more use had I remained upon the battlefield, for here I have done nothing save to wait and watch.”

            I hesitated, then reached out and clasped the Wizard’s shoulder.  “That may be all that is left for any of us to do.  But I thank you, Mithrandir.  Faramir would be glad that you have been here – as would Merry, as well.  Has the Halfling then fallen into this same sleep as the others?”

            “He has.  Through the morning and the early afternoon he, the lady and Lord Faramir all still spoke in their sleep.  But I think it is now three hours at the least since any of them has spoken.”

            Imrahil and I exchanged a grim glance.  Then I nodded to Mithrandir, and we hastened onward to Faramir’s room.

            The Lord Steward sat by the bedside, holding Faramir’s hand.  At the other side of the bed stood the Chief Healer, enduring with some difficulty the Steward’s glare of rage.

            “He is sweating,” my father said, in accusatory tones.  “He is sweating now, when you and your people confirm that he has not done so before, through all the hours that this fever has been upon him.  Yet none of you saw fit to take notice of this until I pointed it out to you.  And none of you can tell me what it means?”

            “I am sorry, My Lord,” managed the Healer.  “This malady is beyond our experience and our knowledge.  It may be, perhaps, a sign of hope, a sign that the unnatural course of the fever is ending, and his body is at last rallying to throw the fever from him.”

            “Yes,” the Steward snapped, “and it may be a sign that the end is closing in on him.  You say it is since the mid-afternoon that he has not spoken, and that all those who have died of this ‘malady’ have ceased speaking hours before their deaths.”

            “I am sorry, My Lord,” the Chief Healer said again.  “I do not know what I can tell you.”

            “Take my advice,” my father replied, in his most quietly intimidating voice, “and do not speak those words to me again.  If you do not know, then find out.  Get you to the wards where the other patients lie, and learn whether any of them have commenced sweating, and what has followed then.  Begone!”

            The Chief Healer bowed and made his escape.  My father followed the Healer’s exit with his gaze, then he looked at Imrahil, Svip and me.

            “So you’ve seen fit to come home,” he greeted me mockingly.  “Is the Lord Aragorn comfortably ensconced in his tent?”

            “I do not know as to his comfort, Father,” I said, vowing that I would not allow myself to get into a fight with him now.  “I did not stop to inquire of it.”

            I pulled the other chair, that had been set under the window, over to the side of the bed opposite my father’s seat.  Only those two chairs were in the room, a fact that my father made the next focus of his ire.

            One of the Healers’ Assistants hurried into the room with fresh cloths and a jug of water.  The Steward stood up and grabbed these from her, and snapped, “You, girl!  Bring another chair; are there not chairs enough in this House, that the Prince of Dol Amroth must be left standing?  And have someone come tend to the Lord Boromir’s hurts.  What manner of House of Healing is this, in which a warrior may walk with his leg streaming blood, and no Healer thinks to ask if he requires assistance?”

            The girl made a hasty curtsy and fled.  My father sat down again, poured water onto one of the cloths and commenced dabbing the cloth over Faramir’s face.

            I stared for a moment at my brother, the black of his hair a stark contrast to the pallor of his skin, where the hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat.

            I had almost forgotten Svip’s presence, until he cautiously tugged at my sleeve.  “What is it, Svip?” I asked.  “I’m sorry, we should have sent for a chair for you, too.”

            “No, it’s all right,” Svip said.  “Is it … is it all right if I go visit the other Hobbit?  Pippin’s friend?”

            “Yes.  Yes, of course.  Pippin is probably with him too.  It should be the room just the other side of Lady Éowyn’s.”

            Svip cast a wan smile at all of us, then he hastened from the room.  I wished almost that I could do the same.

“My leg is not streaming blood, sir,” I said wearily.  “The wound is hours old, and it is a shallow one, at that.”

            “Nonetheless,” my father said, “it should be seen to.  The smallest of wounds may become infected.  And these Healers must do something to earn their keep, apart from wearying us with the lists of things that they do not know.”

            The Healers’ Assistant returned with a chair for Prince Imrahil, and fled again after making the announcement that Healers were on their way to dress my wounds.  I was of more than half a mind to send the Healers packing again as soon as they arrived, for they assuredly had more pressing work to do than cleaning my scrapes.  But that, I thought, would just get my father and me into one enormous shouting match, and it really was not worth the bother.

            As we sat there in silence, my father dabbing the sweat from Faramir’s face, the memory struck me of him doing the same thing at my mother’s bedside.  I did not look over at my Uncle Imrahil, but I would have been willing to wager that he was recalling the same scene. 

            What will Father do, I wondered, if – if, not when – Faramir dies?   

I thought of the number of times that I had demanded of my father whether he loved Faramir, and if he did, when he was going to show it.  Now I thought that it would be better if he never showed it at all, than if his love were to lead him into a decline like the one he had suffered when our mother died – and apparently, when I died, as well.

Faramir would be glad for some proof of our father’s love, but that manner of proof, I thought, he would rather do without.

My reflections were interrupted by Éomer and Mithrandir, stepping quietly into the room.  The Horselord still looked upon the brink of tears, but he seemed at least calmer than when we had parted from him.  Mithrandir remained near the door while Éomer crossed to my father, bowed, and inquired after Faramir’s health.

While the Steward and Rohan’s King exchanged quiet-voiced wishes for the swift recovery of each others’ relatives, a small procession of one of the Healers, the Dame of the Household, and two frightened-looking assistants trooped into the room to see to my leg.  In the hope of averting another burst of wrath from my father, I submitted to having the leather of my breeches cut away from the area of the wound, and the wound washed out, daubed with unguents, and bound.

Again Éomer departed, saying that he would sit with his sister for some time more and then go to the Houses of the Dead to stand vigil over Théoden King.

The quiet of the room was little disturbed by the few, low voiced words of the Healers amongst themselves as they completed the binding of my wound.  But as the Dame of the Household cut off the extra fabric from the bandage and the two assistants gathered up once more their kettle of boiled water and chests of bandages and ointments, my father’s voice sliced sharply over the quiet murmur of their work.

“You are crying, woman,” he said.  “Is there aught in the condition of the Lord Boromir’s wound to cause you any grief?”

“No – no, My Lord,” the Dame of the Household said hastily, wiping her face and casting me a brief attempt at a smile.  “Lord Boromir should be in no danger.  I was crying for – for the Lord Faramir, My Lord.”

My father’s knifelike gaze kept the Dame pinned for a moment longer, then he heaved a sigh and leaned back in his chair.  “He needs stronger medicine than tears,” my father said.  “It seems that we have none even in this ancient seat of learning who can provide it, and he is like to perish from its lack.” 

“Yes, My Lord,” the Dame said helplessly, her voice on the last word breaking on a sob. 

I jumped up to urge the woman from the room, for I knew of old that my father had little patience for sobbing servants about him.  But as I began, “Thank you, all of you, you may go now”, the Dame burst out, “Would that there were kings in Gondor, as there were once upon a time!  Isn’t it said in the old lore, the hands of the King are the hands of a healer, and so the rightful King could ever be known?  Why cannot we live in those days, My Lord?”

Anger leapt in my father’s gaze.  Then a bitter smile succeeded that first spark of ire.  “It is not given to any of us to choose our days, Dame Ioreth,” the Steward observed.  “Nor does it serve any purpose for us to lament the days to which we are born.  If your work is done, then get you hence.  We have no shortage of wounded in the City this night.”

Belatedly I recalled that Svip had been wounded at the same time as I – though the circumstances of our wounding, I still could not remember.  I requested that the Healer’s party visit Merry’s room and tend to Svip’s wound as well.  With fervent promises that they would do as I commanded, Dame Ioreth and the others curtsied, bowed, and took a rapid departure. 

My father watched them leave.  His smile grew more bitter still as his gaze settled on Mithrandir, where the Wizard stood beside the door.  Malice dripping from his words, the Lord Steward inquired, “Was it you, Lord Stormcrow, who paid the woman to utter that remark?”

Mithrandir’s burning gaze met my father’s and held it.  In a quiet voice the Wizard said, “Perhaps the remark came not from money, My Lord Denethor, but from honest grief and love.”

“Aye, perhaps,” my father sneered, “and perhaps it is only coincidence that the remark is made whilst your friend the Captain of the Rangers cools his heels at our doorstep.”

“Sirs,” my uncle Imrahil broke in impatiently, speaking for the first time since we had joined my father in his vigil.  “None of this wrangling will be of any help to Faramir.”

“No,” rejoined my father, “nothing will be of help to him, since our wisest Healers and even the great Mithrandir are helpless before this malady.  Or is the great Mithrandir so helpless?”  The Steward rose slowly from his chair, glaring at the Wizard in abhorrence.  “Perhaps you know very well how to heal him, but you will not do it.  Perhaps, great Wizard, this was your plan all along.  The Steward’s son is like to die, why, how convenient, it just so happens that we have a would-be king camped out at the White Tree Inn.  We send for him, he mumbles a magic spell or two and the Steward’s son awakes, and oh, how marvellous, he must be the King, let us crown him tomorrow, no need for him to go through any tedious process of proving his claim before the Council after so obvious a miracle!”

The anger that washed over Mithrandir’s face was so great, I thought that the argument might even come to blows.  Imrahil must have thought the same.  He stepped swiftly to Mithrandir’s side and took hold of the Wizard’s arm, whilst I hastened to the foot of the bed and planted myself between Wizard and Steward.

“Father; Mithrandir;” I snapped, “you have said more than enough.  Mithrandir, perhaps you should check on how Merry is doing.”

The Wizard ignored that suggestion.  Fixing my father with a gaze that would have made a lesser Man squirm, he said, “You may think and say what you please of me, Lord Denethor.  But Aragorn does not deserve your hatred, no more now than he ever did.”

“Why,” replied my father in feigned surprise, “is not hatred deserved for one who tries to worm his way into power with a show of mummery aimed to prove him as a king out of legend?”

            “Father!” I shouted.  And then, although I knew that my next words were more than likely to earn me a paternal slap across the face, I asked, “What can it hurt to try it?”

The Lord Steward turned on me his look that would freeze fire.  “I beg your pardon, Boromir?”

“What can it hurt to try it?” I insisted.  “Send for Aragorn.  King out of legend or no, I know that he has great skills of healing, that they say he learned from the Elves of Imladris.  Why should not they have healing lore preserved in their records that has been lost to us?  Let him try, My Lord, if he will.  Even if he heals Faramir, he will still have to argue his claim before the Council, and submit to their judgement.  We have nothing to lose, My Lord; send for him!”

“Great skills of healing, has he?” my father quoted sneeringly.  “And what proof have you of these skills?  What miracles of healing have you seen him accomplish?”

I clenched my fists, arguing with myself that I had never raised my hand against my father, and I did not intend to start now.  “None that I have seen myself, sir,” I grated.  “But he healed the Hobbit Frodo on their journey to Imladris, when the Hobbit was run through with a Morgul blade – ”

“They told you he healed the Hobbit Frodo, whom they told you was run through with a Morgul blade.  By the Valar, Boromir!  It is a cruel curse to have sired a gullible fool!”

“Gullible fool I may be, but I would not have my brother die because I dared not take the risk of being thought foolish!”

“Silence!  Both of you!” yelled Prince Imrahil.  “If you must continue this brawling, then take it out of Faramir’s room and into the street where it belongs!”

“Why?” my father shot back.  “Do you think it likely to disturb Faramir’s slumbers?”

For an instant I wondered if it would be Imrahil, after all, who turned this into a fistfight.  “Right,” he managed, forcing out the words as if they were choking him, “right.  You may go to blazes, Denethor.  But it is a bitter shame that you will take Faramir with you.”

With that, my uncle brushed past Mithrandir and stalked out of the room.

            My father and I were left glowering at each other.  I looked over at Faramir, and felt my anger drain from me in desperation and grief.

            “Send for him, Father,” I pleaded.  “I have no more liking for Aragorn than you have” – that was stretching the point a bit, but I thought it might well advance my cause – “but I cannot think of living with the knowledge that Faramir died and we failed to try an option that might have saved him.”

            My father gazed at me as though he would read my soul.  “You would trust your brother’s life to that mountebank?” he demanded at last.

            “What does it matter?” I exclaimed.  “My brother’s life is like to be lost already!  I do not see how the Ranger can make things worse!  Can we ignore the chance that he might be able to save him?”

            For another unending moment my father stared at me.  Then he said, in a bitter, furious whisper, “It is on your head, Boromir.  The decision is yours, and the responsibility.  Send for him if you will.  And if he kills your brother, remember that it was you who summoned him.”

            I should have left it at that, but his words sent anger slicing through me once more.  “Ah, I see, sir!” I laughed.  “If he saves Faramir, then you will take the credit for being so magnanimous as to allow Lord Aragorn to enter the City.  And if Faramir dies, you will blame me for trusting his life to a wandering charlatan!”

            “I wish nothing to do with him,” the Steward hissed.  “Credit or blame, both are yours.  But mark this – you also, Lord Mithrandir.  If he tends Faramir and Faramir dies, your precious puppet king will not live to state his claim to the Council!”

            My father turned and strode from the room, slamming the door behind him with a force that seemed it should shake the entire Sixth Level.

            For a moment I closed my eyes.  The room seemed unnaturally silent in the sudden absence of shouting.

            “I am sorry, Mithrandir,” I sighed, opening my eyes to meet the Wizard’s sorrowful gaze.  “Much was spoken that should not have been.  My father is … overwrought by his grief.”

            “I am sorry, Boromir,” Mithrandir answered quietly.  “I am sorry for … all of this.  For all that has led all of us to this place.  And yet I cannot see what other roads could have been followed.”

            “Will you go to Aragorn?” I asked.  “Go to him and bring him here, if he will come.  Ask him, from me, to do what he can for Faramir – and for the others,” I added, guiltily recalling that my brother was not alone in falling victim to the Black Sleep.

            “I will go to him,” the Wizard promised.  “And he will come.”

            I was left alone with my unconscious brother.  I crossed to the chair that my father had occupied, retrieved the damp cloth from where he had flung it at the foot of the bed, and took up the duty of wiping Faramir’s face.

            Bitterly I wondered if these ministrations were doing him any good at all.  The sweat and the water both seemed powerless to quench the burning heat of his skin. 

I winced, asking myself what manner of dreams he might be suffering in this fever’s grip.

            Like as not, I tried to comfort myself, his dreams are not any worse now than they are at any normal time.  I certainly do not see how they could get much worse.   

            But my mind answered, They can always get worse.  And there is nothing that you can do to stop them.

His breathing was so shallow that I could scarcely hear or see it.  The thought came to me that if I were standing any distance away from the bed, I would not even be able to tell when his breathing ceased.

            My imagination conjured a nightmare picture of me continuing to sit there, stroking his forehead, long after he was dead.  Perhaps I would not even realise that he was gone, until his burning skin at last began to grow cold.

            Plague take you, Boromir, stop it! I snarled to myself.  Faramir is the one who has nightmares, not you.  It is your job to make the nightmares go away. 

            How?  I wondered desperately.  How can I make them go away, if he cannot awake and tell me of them?

            “Faramir,” I said, “Mithrandir is bringing a friend to help you.  They will be here soon.  It will be all right.”

            Of a sudden I felt a surge of understanding and sympathy for our father.  Sitting there where he had been sitting, dabbing at Faramir’s face in the useless attempt to break through the fever that held him, I felt the urge to do just as my father had done – to summon the Healers, yell at them, tear them apart for not knowing how to help Faramir.  I wanted every last member of their staff to labour around the clock on Faramir’s behalf, wanted them to ignore every other patient they had and perform whatever miracles were required to save my brother’s life.   

            But perhaps there is to be no miracle, my mind whispered.  Perhaps even then, Faramir would not be saved; and countless others would be lost who need not have been.

            I heard the door open, and turned to see Uncle Imrahil step into the room.  With an expression part of concern and part of embarrassment, he took up one of the chairs and moved it around the bed to set it beside mine.

            “How is he doing?” the Prince asked quietly as he sat down.

            “The same,” I murmured.  “Still burning in this fever.”

            I glanced over at my uncle, and had to smile a little at the look on his face, grim but yet somehow sheepish.  “Where have you been?” I whispered.  “Somewhere beating your head against a wall?”

            He grimaced.  “I feel like it,” he muttered.  “No.  I’ve just done a couple of rounds of pacing the gardens of the Houses, kicking all the pebbles on the path and wishing they were my brother-in-law.” 

A snort of laughter escaped me before I could restrain myself.  My uncle heaved a sigh and went on, “Boromir, I apologise for my behaviour just now.  It was uncalled-for.”

            I looked at him in surprise.  “You apologise for your behaviour!  Believe me, Uncle, your behaviour was nothing for which to apologise.”

            He shook his head.  “I should have kept my temper under closer control.”  With a faint, rueful smile, he pointed out, “I ought to be used to your father by now.”

            “So should I,” I said.  “Sometimes I think that being used to him does not help.”

            Briefly I told Imrahil what had passed after he left; of my father’s departure and of Mithrandir’s mission to fetch Aragorn. 

His expression thoughtful, Imrahil said, “I’m surprised that your father would even allow you to summon him.  I’d have thought the Lord Steward more likely to post the entire army at the Gate, to prevent Lord Aragorn’s setting foot within.”

            “But Father does love Faramir,” I argued.  “Perhaps he hopes that Aragorn can save him, but he is too proud to admit holding such a hope himself.”

            “Perhaps.”  Imrahil looked far from convinced.  The Prince’s troubled frown made me think that he might be pondering whatever past encounter had taken place between the Steward and Aragorn, and it caused me to hope that he could be persuaded to speak of it.

            “Uncle,” I asked, “what is it that has passed between Aragorn and my father?  When and how have they encountered each other?  I must know, if I am to be of any use in what lies ahead.  I will be as a Man blindfolded as I try to help my father steer Gondor through the rocks, if I am still fighting to make sense out of meaningful glares, half truths and insinuations.”

            Imrahil hesitated, then he shook his head.  “I am sorry, Boromir.  It is your father’s place to tell you of it, not mine.  Your father’s or the Lord Aragorn’s.”

            “Then you condemn me to ask Father about it,” I sighed, only slightly exaggerating the grimness I felt at that prospect, “for I would not summon his ire by hearing Aragorn’s version of it before I hear his.  Not,” I admitted, “that that is likely to do me much good.  Father is like to accuse me of plotting with Aragorn to ease his way to the throne, no matter what I do.”

For a time we sat in silence.  My thoughts turned from my father, Aragorn, and whatever lay between them, and back to my brother. 

Again and again, the questions began to creep into my mind of what I would do, and what Father would do, if Faramir died. 

I had confronted such thoughts before, but always I had shied from them, told myself that I would not think of it unless the time came when I had no other choice.  The thought of life without my brother as part of it was a darkness that I had never truly faced.

And I will not face it now, I told myself.  I will not think of it; it will not happen.  Aragorn will save him.

But what if he does not?

At last I thought that if I did not do something, I would soon be gibbering with fear.  I asked my uncle, “Will you stay with him?  I should visit the Lady Éowyn, and Merry, and let those who tend them know that Aragorn has been summoned.”

Éomer King sat at his sister’s bedside, with one of her hands held in his.  He fought bravely to keep his voice steady as he greeted me, but I could guess only too well at the desperate dread that he felt, the same fear as my own.

The Lady Éowyn’s pallor seemed, if anything, even more startling than Faramir’s.  Her golden hair and waxen skin seemed that of an effigy, not of any living being.  Like Faramir, the lady seemed hardly to breathe.

“Is she feverish?” I asked of Éomer, in a whisper – though why we whispered, I could scarcely say, since as my father had pointed out, even shouting at the tops of our lungs did nothing to wake these sufferers.

“I do not think so,” Éomer whispered back.  “Her skin is cold – so cold, that I keep asking myself if she lives.  Only her breath is still warm – and I keep watching for it to cease.”

A glimmer of hope came to Éomer’s eyes as I told him that Aragorn had been sent for, and spoke of the reports I had heard of the Ranger’s healing skills.

“Aye,” murmured Éomer, nodding slowly, “I can well believe that Lord Aragorn would have such skill.  Already I have seen him accomplish more than mortal Man should have been able to achieve.”

I felt an unworthy twinge of jealousy at hearing that simple statement from Éomer.  Firmly I ordered myself to squelch that feeling.  I told myself, Aragorn is a warrior of formidable skills, and perhaps he is indeed a Man whose fate has marked him for greatness.  To resent that would only diminish you, not him.  And we have enough complexities to navigate in your father’s hatred of him, without having to throw in yours into the bargain.

Bidding Éomer to hold to his hope, I went to look in on the Hobbits and Svip.

Poor Merry seemed pathetically tiny lying in that bed, as though he were lost adrift on a great sea of pillows and sheets.  Pippin and Svip both were seated cross-legged on the bed, Pippin holding Merry’s hand and Svip quietly talking.  From the sound of it as I stepped into the room, Svip was telling Pippin the story of our escape from the flood at Lilla Howe.

Svip eyed me with curiosity and some concern when I told of Aragorn’s summoning.  I suppose the water creature had realised somewhere along the line that I was not entirely pleased at the Ranger Chieftain’s presence in our realm.  Pippin, on the other hand, grinned in pure delight, and was hard-pressed to keep his voice under the restraints normally demanded in a sick-room.

            “Strider!” Pippin whispered.  “How splendid!  Do you know, Boromir, I guessed it was him in those black ships, when everyone was shouting ‘Corsairs’ and they wouldn’t listen to me.  We could see the ships from the windows in the corridor, and all of the Healers were running around like chickens and for a while they wouldn’t stop to listen to anyone, even when one of the girls started shouting that the first ship bore the flag of Gondor.  How did Strider do it, how did he get the ships from the pirates?”

            “I don’t know, Pippin,” I said.  “You will have to get him to tell you and Merry the story, over a few pints.”

            Pippin nodded, trying to keep hold of his cheerful expression.  But his smile wavered as he turned and looked at Merry’s motionless face.

            I left my small friends with a few more words of encouragement, and walked into the hallway once more.  There I paced back to Faramir’s room.  But cowardly though I knew it to be, I stopped without going inside. 

            You have got to go to him, I told myself.  If he dies while you are malingering out here in the corridor, you know that you will never forgive yourself.

            And what does it matter if you are in there with him? my thoughts snapped back at me.  In the hallway or at his bedside, there is nothing you can do to help him.

            There is nothing you can do.

            All of his life I had tried to protect him.  I knew very well that he was a Man grown, with his own risks to take and with the courage, intelligence and skill to protect himself.  I knew that my wish to keep him away from harm was nothing I could ever achieve – and that he would groan and would have a few sharp words for me if ever he heard me speak of it.               

            But that did not change the fact that from my first memories of him, I had wanted more than anything else to keep him safe.

            I stared at the door to his room.  Instead of seeing it, I saw the scene of my earliest clear memory of Faramir.

            It was an afternoon in winter; I remember the weak, pale light of the winter sun struggling through the windows, and the fire blazing upon the hearth.  Faramir had just learned to crawl, and I had the duty and honour of minding him.  At least, so my memory presented it to me.  I doubt not that in fact our nurse was near at hand, ready to swoop down and rescue both of us should any peril seem imminent.  But to my five-year-old eyes, that afternoon the all-important duty of looking after my baby brother had been assigned to me.

            He was delighted with crawling, and seemed determined to crawl over every inch of the floor.  I had started out by running after him, but then decided that it would be much more practical just to crawl after him instead.  We crawled under tables and chairs, over carpets and flagstones.  But one spot that Faramir seemed particularly determined to investigate, was the fireplace.

            Over and over he would crawl toward the hearth, smiling in seeming wonder as he trundled toward the bright, crackling flames.  Over and over I would crawl faster and outflank him, turn him around, and send him crawling away from the fireplace again.  But always he would find his way back, the chubby little baby with his shock of black hair and his lacy white dress, looking fearless and fascinated as he crawled toward the fire.

            I think at last he fell asleep, and I was relieved of my duty of guarding him – just in time, in all likelihood, for my own nap. 

But, I thought, that duty was one that I had never truly given up, from that moment until this.

            All of his life, I thought, I have tried to keep Faramir out of the fire.  And now at last I have failed. 

            Footsteps along the corridor roused me from my bitter reverie.  I looked up to see Mithrandir and Aragorn.  The Ranger had doffed the star he had worn upon his brow during the battle, and he walked beside the Wizard like a grey shadow wrapped in his Elven cloak.

            “Boromir,” said Aragorn, hurrying to me in concern and placing a hand on my arm.  “I hope Lord Faramir is no worse?”

            “I do not believe so,” I said, hastily trying to blink from my eyes the tears that I had not realised had gathered there.  “I thank you for coming, Aragorn.”

            Frowning he murmured, “There will be time enough to thank me when I have been of use.”

            In close succession, Aragorn and Mithrandir went first to Faramir, then to the Lady Éowyn and to Merry.  Aragorn said little as he touched Faramir’s face, examined his arrow wound, and heard from Prince Imrahil the story of Faramir’s wounding.  When the Ranger and the Wizard went to their other patients, Imrahil and I stayed with Faramir, barely looking at each other that we might avoid confronting the fear on each other’s faces.  

            It was not long, I suppose, before Aragorn and Mithrandir returned, but it seemed one of the most interminable waits of my life.  In the corridor outside Faramir’s room, we heard the voices of Aragorn and Mithrandir, at least one other Man, and a woman, raised in argument or something akin to it.  At last Aragorn and the Wizard stepped back into the room, Aragorn shaking his head in anger and Mithrandir red in the face as though he were likely to burst from indignation.

            Aragorn muttered to the Wizard, “I hope there is someone in this House with less lore and more sense, who can find for us athelas without needing to look it up in every healing treatise before he brings it!”

            “If there be none in the House,” Mithrandir vowed grimly, “I will ride to the woods of Lossarnach with Ioreth to fetch it, and Shadowfax will show her the meaning of haste.”

            Anger gave way to sorrow and weariness in Aragorn’s face as he gazed on Faramir once more.  He sighed and said, “Here I must put forth all such power and skill as is given to me.  Would that Elrond were here, for he is the eldest of all our race, and has the greater power.”

            Aragorn crossed to the head of the bed.  I stood as he approached, and though panic screamed in my mind as I spoke the words, I asked, “Will you not tend to the Lady Éowyn first?  Faramir would not wish her placed in any greater peril by the delay, should you tend to his hurts before hers.”  

            The Northman gave a melancholy smile.  “No, Boromir.  Most soon for Faramir, time is running out.”

Surprised that my voice remained steady, I offered Aragorn my chair by Faramir’s side.  Solemnly he declined, and instead he knelt by the bedside, holding a hand upon Faramir’s brow.

            In silence the others of us watched; Mithrandir by the foot of the bed, Imrahil by the window, I standing gripping the back of the chair, as though some great calamity would befall should I let it go.

            Aragorn kept his hand on Faramir’s forehead, and as we waited and watched, it seemed as though the colour drained slowly from Aragorn’s face, leaving it grey with weariness.  Now and again he spoke Faramir’s name, but each time the name seemed to come more faintly to my hearing, as if Aragorn himself were moving farther and farther away from us.

            Dame Ioreth and two of the assistants entered hurriedly, bearing bowls of hot water.  One of these Mithrandir grabbed from Ioreth, and he bade them take the other bowls to the rooms of Éowyn and Merry. 

Of none of this did Aragorn take any heed.  Only when another young Healers’ Assistant came running into the room, gasping for breath in her haste, did Aragorn seem to return to the room around us.

            “Here is kingsfoil, sir,” said the girl, holding out a handkerchief from which protruded a handful of dark, dried leaves.  “It is not fresh as you asked; it is two weeks old at the least.  Will it still serve, My Lord?”

            Aragorn smiled.  “It will serve,” he said.  “The worst is past.”  He took two of the leaves from the girl, blew softly upon them and then crushed them in his hands.  Calling for Mithrandir to bring the bowl of steaming water to him, Aragorn cast the crushed leaves into the bowl, and held it close by Faramir’s face.

            The smell of the leaves spread through the room, putting me in mind of the forests of Ithilien.  The thought came to me that perhaps that would bring Faramir back to us even if nothing else could: the hope that if he lived, he might someday walk in the Ithilien woods again.

            On Aragorn’s request, Gandalf took the bowl of herbs from him and set it down on a table near the door.  Aragorn again put his hand on Faramir’s brow, and softly called his name.

Of a sudden, Faramir’s breathing changed.  From being so shallow as to be all but inaudible, it took on the cadence on normal sleep, even and plain to hear.

            I felt nigh as though my own breathing ceased.  I stared at my sleeping brother, and at the Ranger of the North who knelt at his bedside. 

For a moment more we waited.  And then with a simple ease that seemed to wipe out all memories of dread and despair, Faramir opened his eyes.

I heard myself gasp in a breath, gripping the back of the chair as I wondered if I could believe the evidence of my sight.

Faramir seemed fully awake in that first instant, his gaze as clear-sighted and thoughtful as ever.  He studied Aragorn’s face, and then with a faint smile he murmured, “My Lord, you called me.  I am here.  What does the King command?”

I will not deny that I felt a twinge of foreboding in the midst of my joy, as the thought struck me of how Father would react when he heard of Faramir acknowledging the claim of the would-be king.  But still my heart soared.  As I smiled in wonder, I realised that my face was damp with tears.

Aragorn said softly, “Walk no more in shadows, but awake.  You are weary.  Rest a while, Son of Gondor, and take food.  Regain your strength, that you may be well and whole again, to answer your country’s call.”

“I will, My Lord.”  Faramir blinked for a moment in the sort of disorientated exhaustion that one might have expected to see when first he awoke, then he turned his head on the pillow until his gaze lit on me.

“Hello, Troll,” my brother whispered.  “You’re still alive.”

“Hello, Halfling,” I answered him.  “So are you.”

Now I truly knew, if any more proof were needed, that Faramir had hovered upon the door of death.  It was decades since we had used those childhood nicknames save in written birthday wishes, or when sorely wounded or ill to the point of delirium. 

Aragorn stood up and stepped away from Faramir.  Pulling the chair closer to the bed, I sat and reached out to take Faramir’s hand.

Wonder swept me anew as I grasped his hand, for his skin seemed to hold no trace of fever.  I ran the fingers of my other hand over his forehead, and found it as cool to the touch as though his fever had never been.

As I smiled at my brother, one of my tears rolled free to land on his hand.  He smiled back at me, the whisper-faint grasp of his fingers gaining strength as they tightened around mine.

“My Lord Boromir,” came Aragorn’s quiet tones, “I must go to the others.  The Lord your brother is well enough, I think, that you may speak with him for some little while.  But he still needs much rest.  The more rest he has now, the more swiftly his strength will be restored.”

“I understand.” I had barely glanced at Aragorn since Faramir first spoke to me, but I knew that I must speak some word of gratitude before he left Faramir’s room if I wished not to appear as a supremely ungrateful churl.  I looked up at him, and saw him watching us with a sort of wistful half-smile. 

“My Lord, I thank you,” I said. 

Aragorn nodded once, his smile seeming to become more heart-felt.  Then he turned and strode from the room, with Mithrandir close behind him.  Uncle Imrahil bowed low to Aragorn and the Wizard as they departed, then he grabbed the chair at the other side of the bed, dragged it closer and sat down. 

“Uncle,” Faramir breathed, managing to weakly raise his other hand a few inches from the bed.  Imrahil took his hand and moved it back down to rest on Faramir’s chest.

“You had us worried, Nephew,” our uncle said gently, affection writ plain on his face and in his tone.

“Worried!” I echoed.  “You had me terrified, little brother.  Don’t ever do that again.”

Faramir rejoined, with a good deal of spirit despite the faintness of his voice, “Not any more terrified than you had me, when you were dead.  I won’t do it again if you won’t.”

“Fair enough,” I grinned.

The Healers’ Assistant had been lingering by the doorway, watching the scene with eyes wide with awe.  She asked now if we required anything else, and when I thanked her and told her no, she curtsied low and then left the room almost at a run.

I smiled, wondering just how swiftly the news of Faramir’s recovery would spread through the Houses of Healing.

A frown touched Faramir’s brow, as he gazed around the room as though seeking for one who was not there.

“What’s happened?” Faramir murmured.  “How long have I been here?  Are we besieged?  Where’s Father?  Is he all right?”

“Father is unharmed,” I said.  Angrily I wished that our father had seen fit to be here when Faramir awoke.  But then again, I did not, for like as not he would say something snide and uncalled-for in the midst of welcoming Faramir back, and I did not want my brother having to gird himself for an encounter with the Lord Steward just yet.

Uncle Imrahil put in, “It has been two days since you were wounded.  Minas Tirith has been besieged, and the siege is broken.”

Faramir’s brows drew together again.  “How …?” he began.  “The King – I mean…”

“The Lord Aragorn,” Imrahil said quietly.

“The Lord Aragorn,” Faramir repeated.  “How did he – how did he get here?  How was the siege broken?  Tell me everything!”

“All right, all right!” I chided.  “We’re going to.  You’re supposed to be getting your rest, remember?”

“I’ll rest while you tell me.”

So we told him.  Taking turns in recounting the portions of the battle in which we had played a part, Uncle Imrahil and I gave Faramir a brief account of the siege and the battle that followed. 

I hesitated a moment as I wondered if we would do better not yet to break the news of Théoden King’s death.  But Faramir, I knew, would not thank us for keeping him in the dark.  The news would bring grief to him no matter when he heard it.

Trouble darkened Faramir’s gaze as Imrahil and I told what we knew of Théoden’s passing.  Briefly Faramir tried to sit up, but his muscles refused to obey him.  Nor would Imrahil or I have permitted him to stay sitting for long even had he managed it. 

Faramir asked what arrangements had been made, and I told him of our father’s order that Théoden King lie in state in the House of the Stewards.

“Éomer and his swordthains will be standing vigil over him tonight,” I said.  “I plan on joining them soon, and giving at least an hour or two to the vigil – and no, don’t even think of saying that you’ll stand vigil too.  They will understand that you are in no condition to be present.  My presence will serve for us both.”

With an effort, Faramir nodded.  “Don’t worry,” he whispered, “I wasn’t going to try it.  I don’t think I’d be able to stand up long enough to bother.”

We continued our tale of the battle, I swiftly glossing over the segments of the combat of which my memory was missing.  Faramir knew well enough that there was something about this that I was not telling him.  But though he frowned, he did not attempt to quiz me on it. 

It was only a temporary reprieve, I knew.  When his strength returned he would get the story out of me, and he would then give me hell for taking such risks with my health – though I thought that I had a good argument this time, since I couldn’t very well have made it to the River much sooner, with the Hosts of Mordor between me and the water.

Faramir listened closely to most of the tale.  But when we had told of Aragorn’s arrival, and Imrahil was giving his account of the skirmishes that he, my father and the cavalry had engaged in near the close of the day, my brother’s eyelids gradually drifted closed.

Imrahil ceased his recital, smiling fondly at his sleeping nephew.  I carefully extracted my hand from Faramir’s, and stood, whereupon Faramir immediately opened his eyes.

“Go on,” he insisted, “I’m listening.” 

“In your sleep?” I asked.  “Don’t worry, little brother.  We will tell you the rest tomorrow.”  As much to Imrahil as to Faramir, I said, “I will go check in on Lady Éowyn and the Hobbits.  Then I will pay my respects to Théoden King.”

The Prince nodded.  “I will stay here – at least until Faramir accepts that he has fallen asleep.”

Taking Faramir’s hand once more, I told him, “I’ll see you tomorrow.  Sleep well, do you hear me?  No dreams.”

He smiled faintly.  “Don’t worry,” he murmured.  “No dreams.”

I had no need to set foot in the Lady Éowyn’s room, to learn what had transpired there.  The moment I stepped into the corridor I found myself in a maelstrom of excitedly talking Healers and Assistants, the Chief Healer himself standing outside Éowyn’s door and rather overwhelmedly attempting to quiet his people.

Smiling and nodding in reply to myriad congratulations and good wishes for my brother’s health, I made my way through the crowd to the Chief Healer’s side.

“The Lady Éowyn is recovered, then?” I asked of the harried-looking Man.

Dame Ioreth, standing nearby, began to chatter a reply.  The Chief Healer glared at her and managed to talk over her until she subsided. 

“Recovered, My Lord?” he repeated.  “As to that, I do not know.  But she is awake, which is success more than any of the rest of us achieved.  Who is this Ranger of the North, Lord Boromir, and how has he acquired such skills of healing?”

“Who is he?” Dame Ioreth sallied into the discussion again.  “Why, have you not heard, sir, that he sailed into the Harlond under the banner of Gondor’s King?  And who else should he be but the King himself, when the mere touch of his hand is enough to heal those of whose lives all others despaired – ”

“Take advice that is friendly meant, Dame Ioreth,” I cut in, “and speak not of kings until such time as the Council may decree that he is King indeed.  Until that time, if that time comes, he is Chieftain of the Dúnedain of the North, neither more nor less.  The Lord Steward will not take kindly to all and sundry chattering of kings.”

“No, My Lord,” agreed Ioreth, lowering her eyes and looking suitably chastened.  I wondered how many seconds she would wait after I was out of earshot, before once more taking up her talk of the King and his healing hands.

I was about to ask the Chief Healer if Aragorn were now with Merry, when Aragorn himself stepped out from Merry’s room.  Mithrandir followed close behind him, softly shutting the door.

Aragorn paused to lean against the wall, the clusters of Healers and Assistants more or less falling silent as they turned to stare at him in awe.  There was a ghastly greyish hue to the Northman’s face, worse by far it seemed than when he had knelt by Faramir’s bedside, calling his name.  I supposed that was to be expected, if Aragorn had now gone through that same process twice more.  

His hideous pallor notwithstanding, Aragorn smiled as he stood there, his gaze distant as though he were seeing once more some beautiful sight that he had glimpsed before only in dreams. 

I crossed to the Ranger and the Wizard, with the Chief Healer trailing behind me.

“Will you be all right, Aragorn?” I asked, reaching out to tentatively touch his shoulder.  “You look – forgive me for using the expression, but you look like death.”

He blinked and slowly dragged his attention back into our world.  “I will be fine,” he murmured.  “Thank you.  I am – only a little tired.”

The thought crossed my mind, I would hate to see you when you are very tired, then, but I made no such comment.  Instead I asked him, “How is Merry?”

Some sparkle of life and amusement returned to Aragorn’s face.  “He will do very well.  Already he has remarked upon how hungry he is, and he is asking Pippin for his pipe.”

The Chief Healer observed, nodding thoughtfully, “They are a remarkable race, these Perians.  Very tough in the fibre, I deem.”

“It is likely that he will be fit to arise tomorrow, for a short while,” Aragorn continued.  “Let him do so, if he wishes.  He may walk a little in the care of his friends.”

“What of Faramir and the Lady Éowyn?” I inquired.  “Would you give the same advice concerning them?”

A slight frown crossed Aragorn’s brow.  “I would not, but I know it will be no easy task to make either of them keep to their beds.”  He said to the Healer, “The Lady Éowyn will wish soon to rise and depart; but she should not be permitted to do so, if you can in any way restrain her, until at least ten days be passed.  As for the Lord Faramir, my recommendation is the same for him – but I know how little chance there is that he will be prevailed upon to obey it.”

“As little chance with the lady,” I remarked, “if she shares in the stubbornness prevalent among her kin.”

Aragorn and Mithrandir both nodded solemnly.  For a moment we stood without speaking. 

I knew very well what I must ask of Aragorn next.  Yet I demanded of myself if I had indeed the right to ask it; if after the strain that he had already put himself through for us, I could ask yet more of him.

Right or no right, I had no choice but to ask. 

“Aragorn – ” I began, “you have done more already for our people than Gondor has power to thank you for.  But forgive me, I must ask more.  Is there a chance that you can do for the others in this House what you have done for Faramir, the lady, and Merry?  All of the patients here, I believe, lie under this black sleep; those who did not were moved to other locations in the fear that the sleep might spread to them.”  I glanced at the Chief Healer, who nodded in confirmation of my words.  I went on, “Many have been in the clutches of this curse for days; some of them for days before Faramir was struck down – though I do not know if any of those yet survive.”

The Ranger Chieftain nodded.  “I will go to them,” he said.  “But I would ask first a boon of the Warden of the Houses: some food, if there be any swiftly to hand.”

The Chief Healer nodded eagerly.  “Of course, My Lord!  You will have the best that our kitchens can provide.”

“The best will not be necessary, but rather the swiftest.  I have not eaten since the dark before dawn, nor should the sufferers in this House wait while I sit down to banquet.”

The Healer turned and snapped out orders to the ever-present Dame Ioreth, who had sidled her way near us that she might catch the words of the legendary King.  The woman cast a beaming smile at Aragorn and bustled away.

“What of the athelas?” put in Mithrandir impatiently.  “The kingsfoil?  Was that which the girl brought all there was to be had in this House?”

“I fear that it was,” the Chief Healer answered, frowning.  “But I will set our people to searching on every shelf of every cupboard.  If there be any other here, we shall find it.”

“There is like to be more in the City,” I pointed out.  “I have heard of folk using it to drive away moths, or to freshen stale air in their houses.  If you think it needful in healing these people, I will dispatch a detachment of the Guard to search the City and inquire for it in every house.”

“I thank you, Boromir,” Aragorn said, nodding briskly.  Hope seemed to spread upon his face, where before there had been weariness and determination only.  “I think it needful indeed.”

The Chief Healer bowed to us and moved off to restore some order among his people and to set them hunting for kingsfoil.  As the Healer moved out of hearing, Aragorn said to me in a lower tone, “I do not wish to place you in a difficult position with the Lord your father.  But if you feel that you can give your permission for it, I would send for two who have journeyed and fought at my side: Elladan and Elrohir, the sons of the Lord Elrond.  Their father taught them the arts of healing even as he taught me; together we may succeed in saving far more than did I labour alone.”

I nodded, wondering in surprise if I had seen the two Elven lords amongst Aragorn’s retinue on the battlefield.  If I had, I had certainly not recognised them.  Though I supposed that was not too startling, removed as their setting now was from the moonlight, singing and poetry contests of Elrond’s court. 

What was more startling, I thought, was that Elves would bother to fight alongside us at all – although to be sure, Legolas had bothered.  And it was assuredly not for us that the Elven brothers were fighting, I reminded myself, but rather for Aragorn.

“I will give my permission, of course,” I said, “though I do not see that my permission is needed.  You heard my father welcome you and all of your company into the City.  The welcome he extended to all of your troops, he would certainly extend to two who may be able to save the lives of our Men.  But yes, use my authority if you wish; I have no fear of giving it in this cause.”

“I will bring them,” Mithrandir said.  “It will save time, and Shadowfax has grown used to being our carrier pigeon this night.”

As the Wizard hastened away, I said to Aragorn, “I will go and give my best wishes to Merry, if he has not already fallen asleep over his pipeweed.   Then I will dispatch the Guard with orders to bring to you any kingsfoil they may discover.”  For a moment more I hesitated.  “Thank you,” I said again at last, as I shook hands with the Northman and wished that I could find more eloquent words to express my gratitude.  

Aragorn gave a solemn nod.  I stepped to Merry’s door, rapped softly upon it, and was answered by three voices calling, “Come in.”  

The sight that greeted me was a welcome change from my previous visit to that room.  Merry sat propped up by a multitude of pillows, and sure enough, a tendril of smoke was wafting upward from the pipe he held in his hand.  Pippin and Svip were sitting on the bed, Pippin apparently in the midst of showing Svip how to tamp a pipe.

An enormous grin lit up Merry’s face, which seemed already to have thrown off all trace of its deathly pallor. 

“Boromir!” Merry exclaimed.  “I thought I remembered seeing you on the battlefield, in the rain.  But it was so like a dream.  Are you certain you’re real?  I don’t want to find you disappearing on us, just when we start believing you’re really here.”

I grinned back at him and sat on the edge of the bed.  Svip and Pippin both scooted over to sit closer to me.  “I am real enough, Master Meriadoc,” I answered, “to choke on that pipeweed of yours befouling the air.  So your brush with death has not cured you of this vile habit?”

The shadow of trouble succeeded Merry’s grin.  “Well,” Merry said sadly, “I thought that I might give it up … now that the King isn’t here to smoke with us.  But Strider and Pippin talked me out of that.”

It took me a moment to realise that by “the King” Merry must mean Théoden, not Aragorn. 

I wondered at the stories behind Merry’s words.  But it was too soon by far for me to tax him with asking for those tales.  Even a Hobbit’s love of story-telling would not outweigh the pain of loss.  I could see plainly enough that the death of Théoden King was a wound as deep to him as it was to any of us.

Pippin put in hastily to change the subject, “You are a heathen, Boromir.  I’ve just about given up hope for you, after all our efforts teaching you to appreciate a fine Longbottom Leaf.”

“What about you, Svip?” I asked.  “Will the Hobbits succeed in making a pipeweed smoker out of you?”

“They will not!” declared the water being.  “It smells even worse than when you burned that fish!”

“I didn’t burn it, I cooked it.”  I eyed the bandage around Svip’s left upper arm.  “How is your wound?” I asked.  “Is it giving you any trouble?”

“No,” he shrugged, “it isn’t anything.  I just let the Healers bind it so they would go away again.  How’s yours?” Svip added.

“It’s fine,” I answered.  “I just let the Healers bind it so my father wouldn’t yell at me.”

“Really?” asked Merry, taking his pipe from his mouth and looking at me in surprise.

“Wait ’till you meet his father,” Pippin advised.  “You wouldn’t want him to yell at you either.”

I smiled at my three friends, then reluctantly I got to my feet.  “I can’t stay any longer tonight, I’m afraid,” I said.  “I’ll be back to check on you tomorrow, Merry – if the Warden hasn’t kicked you out before then for stinking up his nice clean Houses.”

Merry held out his hand to me.  I was glad to the depths of my heart that this time when I grasped his hand, I could feel it.

“I’ll stay with Pippin and Merry for a while,” Svip said, “if it’s all right, if you won’t need me – you’re not riding anywhere, are you?”

“No, it’s all right,” I assured him.  “I’m not riding anywhere ’till the morning.  Don’t stay up too late, Svip – you should get some sleep if you want me to ride you to the Council tomorrow.  I don’t have to, of course, if you don’t want to come along …”

“Of course I want to come along!  I’ll get some sleep.  I’ll go to the Fountain soon, I promise.”

I left the three of them in that room with its oddly blended perfume of kingsfoil and pipeweed.  Swiftly I made my way through the Houses of Healing, the halls suddenly aflurry with life as folk rushed from room to room on the quest for kingsfoil.

My first stop was a few paces beyond the entrance to the Houses, at the Sixth Level’s gate.  Here I sought out the Officer of the Guard, and gave him my orders that a detachment should scour the City for any speck of kingsfoil, fresh or dried, and should deliver it to the Lord Aragorn Son of Arathorn, in the Houses of Healing.

I hastened on through the gate, scant moments more bringing me to my townhouse.

I’d had no chance to spend any time in the house since my return, nor did I have that leisure now.  I strode through the courtyard and the great hall, exchanging nods and greetings with the guards in the courtyard, my servants, and the Healers and wounded Men who’d been evacuated from the Houses of Healing in the hope of shielding them from exposure to the dark sleep.

Gavrilo my seneschal got wind of my presence almost immediately, with that strange omniscience that all good servants possess.  He caught up with me in the great hall.  Hurrying behind me he worriedly expressed his hope that I approved of the arrangements he had made for the Healers and their patients, assigning them room in the great hall, the laundry rooms, and the servants’ dining hall.

“You have done well, Gavrilo,” I assured him, “I have no objections.  I must change clothes and pay my respects to Théoden King, in the Mansions of the Dead.  Send Balamir to me with my dress helmet and armour.”  Only in that moment did I recall that I had last seen my young esquire and his sister and cousin on the First Level of the City, volunteering with the fire-fighting corps.  I asked, “I trust that Balamir and the girls are returned to the house in safety?”

“Yes, My Lord.  They returned a few hours ago, after the rain had quenched the worst of the fires.”

In my chamber I found another of the Orc’s Head barrels of river water awaiting me.  I gratefully availed myself of this in washing off the worst grime of battle, then I dressed in my most formal tunics and breeches, in the black and silver traditional to our house.  

Balamir arrived in haste, bearing my mithril helm and my silver breast-and-back plate embossed on the fore with the emblem of the White Tree.  The boy seemed more subdued than his wont as he fastened the armour’s straps on one side and I fastened them upon the other. 

I did not marvel at Balamir’s uncharacteristic pondering, for his experiences on this day would be the closest he had yet come to actual battle.

As he handed me my helmet, Balamir said, “We lost many Men today, My Lord.  Didn’t we?”

“We did,” I told him quietly.  “But we can face the morn with more hope this night, than we could for many a night past.”

As the boy gazed trustingly up at me I sought for some reassurance that I could truthfully give him, something I could say that would lift his spirits without promising any false certainty of ultimate victory.

I said, “The leader of the troops that arrived in the Corsairs’ ships is a Healer of great learning; he and several of his captains also.  They are now at the Houses of Healing, labouring to restore our Men who lie in the dark sleep.  Their leader has already succeeded in awakening Faramir.  It is said that Faramir is out of danger, and I have no doubt that many others will soon be so as well.”

“In truth, My Lord?” Balamir exclaimed.  “How wonderful!  The whole household will rejoice at this news!  May I have your leave to tell it to them?”

“You may,” I granted, grinning at the exuberance of his delight.  “I thank you and all of the household, for my brother and for myself.” 

The thought occurred to me that if Balamir was going to be running all over the whole house anyway, we might as well kill two birds with one stone.  “That reminds me, Balamir.  The foreign healers seek the herb kingsfoil for their work, and there is a shortage of it in the Houses of Healing.  I’ve set the Guards to collecting it throughout the City.  Inquire of all the household if we have any kingsfoil about the house, and any that may be found, send it to the Houses of Healing at once.”

“I will, My Lord!”

Once more I hastened to the Sixth Level, but this time I bypassed the Houses of Healing.  I made my way westward along the street, toward the porter’s cottage at Fen Hollen, and the Houses of the Dead beyond. 

It seemed a strange pilgrimage for me to be hurrying alone to the Hallows, instead of pacing there slowly in the ranks of a funeral procession.  And it was a long time, as well, since I had set foot in the Mansions of the Dead by night. 

To be sure, I censured myself, it was probably far longer than it ought to have been since I’d set foot in the Hallows at all, at any hour of the day or night. 

Like a wooden dancing figure on some mechanical clock, the porter popped out from his cottage as I approached.  The glow of his lantern cast deep, skull-like shadows onto his face.

The porter bowed low to me, and hurried before me to unlock the Closed Door.  Silently as ever, the door swung wide.

“I’m glad to see you, Lord Boromir,” murmured the porter, with another deep bow.

“I thank you,” I told him, restraining the scarcely respectful remark that had leapt into my head.  It had been on the tip of my tongue to observe that I was glad he saw me entering the Hallows on my own two feet, rather than being carried there in state.

On an ordinary night, the long stairs leading down to the Silent Street would be unlit.  One would need either to bring a lantern of one’s own, to take the porter’s from him, or to make one’s way down by feel or by memory.  But this night, the passing of Théoden King was acknowledged even along the curving route of the Road of Stairs.  On the looming walls by every third step, a lit torch gleamed.

I reached at last the bottom of the stairs, and set out along the Silent Street.  Here also torches burnt, glimmering to either side from out of the shadowed porticos of the domed marble halls.

I thought again how strange it seemed to see the Houses of the Dead in this torchlight.  No ceremony that I had ever attended here had taken place at night.  Rath Dínen by night was normally lit only by moon, stars and the lights of the City, and peopled only by the occasional stray cat patrolling the silent cobblestones.

I had ventured into the Hallows at night a few times when I was a boy; to prove to myself that I could, and to investigate whether any spirits of the dead might make their appearance here during the hours of darkness.  And I had visited the Mansions of the Dead by night more than a few times, five years ago when Théodhild and Findemir were not long in their tomb.  On many a sleepless night my thoughts had driven me from my bed, and had brought me here, where I might be closer to them.

With an unhappy surge of guilt, I thought again of how long it had been since I had made any regular visits to the Hallows.

I had stopped briefly to visit Théodhild and Findemir’s tomb, and my mother’s, last July before I set forth on my journey to Imladris.  But before that?

How long was it since I had visited on the first day of the New Year as I used to, or on the anniversaries of their deaths?

I had the excuse, of course, that over these last few years I had been scarcely ever at home upon the dates in question.  But I told myself, that did not give me any excuse for not visiting at the first opportunity, as soon as I did return home.

Don’t be an ass, Boromir, I ordered myself.  Do not tear yourself up over this.  I am sure that Théodhild, Findemir and your mother all understand.

And why are you so sure of that? my thoughts rejoined.  Will you understand and forgive, when it is your turn to lie among your ancestors, and the visits to your resting place grow farther and farther apart until they finally stop? 

I certainly trust, I argued back, that there is more to occupy one’s thoughts in the afterlife than brooding over the lack of visits to one’s tomb.

My echoing footsteps took me past the dark and silent Mansions of the nobles and Captains of Gondor.  At last the House of the Kings loomed before me.  And to the left, the multitude of torches giving it more the air of a hall lit for some great feast, stood the House of the Stewards.

I climbed the broad marble stairs.  Like carven sentinels, two of the Rohirrim warriors stood guard at either side of the open door.  The two Riders bowed to me as I reached the topmost step, and I nodded to them and walked within.

The white banners of our house gleamed golden in the torches’ light.  I paid little notice this time, as I stepped inside, to the many rows of my ancestors, embalmed forms lying as they had lain for centuries upon their pallid marble beds.  Nor did I turn, as I more often did, to the enclosed tombs along the edges of the hall, where lie the women and children of the family of the Stewards.

This time I turned to one of the marble tables on the left, the first in the next row of tables that did not yet hold their permanent occupants.  On the stone table where, in all likelihood, my father would someday lie, that night there lay the body of Théoden King of Rohan.

I paused and bowed before I approached.  At the sides and head of that table stood the Riders of Rohan, the gold of their helms and mail and flaxen hair imparted a barbaric splendour by the torchlight.  Scores more of them lined the great chamber’s walls, standing like statues between the tombs of the women.  Each Rider held his spear in his right hand, but the spears were turned downward, their points planted upon the floor.

As I walked toward the table, Éomer King stepped from his place of guard at the table’s head and strode to meet me.  We stood a little ways apart, that our words might not intrude upon the fallen king’s vigil.  

“I thank you for coming, Lord Boromir,” Éomer said quietly.  “Is the Lord Faramir awakened?” 

“He is,” I answered.  “And I believe that he is well upon the mend.  And the Lady your sister?  She wakes as well?”

“She does,” said Éomer, with a rueful half smile.  “And she retains at least her pride and her temper as of old, for she cursed bitterly the weakness that would not let her rise from her bed and pay her respects this night to Théoden King.  Mithrandir and the Lord Aragorn told me that some shadow may yet lie upon her; but they bade me hope that she will recover in full, now that she has wakened from her slumbers in that cold darkness.”

“I rejoice to hear it,” I said.  “She is a gallant lady and a credit to your house.”

“Yes.  She is.”  The Horselord gazed for a moment at the slain king and his silent guards, then he turned back to me.  “Will your duties permit you to stand guard with us, My Lord?”

“They will, for a little time at least.  I would be honoured to stand with you.”

“The honour is ours.  Stand by me at the table’s head; the place is yours in right, as one who was daughter’s-husband to our lord the King.”

I bowed, then followed Éomer to his place by Théoden’s head.

Lit candles stood at each corner of the table.  I glanced at their height and told myself that I would judge as near as possible two hours, by my own reckoning and the candles’ decrease, before I returned from the Houses of the Dead into the living world.  As Théoden’s son-in-law, by rights I should truly stand all the night with his Riders.  But other tasks and duties called to me, not least the need to go to my father, to tell him of Faramir’s waking, and if I could find any possible way of doing so, to prise from him the story of how in blazes he had come to know Aragorn Son of Arathorn.

I gazed at Théoden King, and I had to ask myself if indeed he was dead.  There could be no mistake? I wondered.  No chance that he lies only in the sleep of the enemy as did his niece, and Faramir, and Merry, and so many others of our Men?

A golden cloth was spread over him.  His sword, unsheathed, lay upon his breast, and his shield at his feet.  His face bore little mark of death as yet, seeming in very truth more as one who slept.  His pure white hair gleamed in the torchlight like sun caught in the spray of the Fountain of the Tree. 

Somehow in death, the King’s face appeared younger than I recalled it, all lines of sorrow and pain wiped from it.  But the look of peace that lay upon him was what told me that he was dead.  For that peace, I thought, was beyond the grasp of any living Man.

The thought sprang to my mind of the last time that Théoden’s fate had brought him within these walls, when we laid to rest his daughters and his grandson.

It was an irony of which none of us dreamt on that day, that five years later Rohan’s King would lie in state a few feet only from their tombs.

I thought of the other Lord of Rohan who had stood here with us five years ago, Prince Théodred who lay now in one of the flower-blanketed Barrows of the Kings in the field of the Golden Hall.  And I thought of how very close the royal house of Rohan had come to being wiped out utterly, almost in one single blow.

We may thank all the gods, I thought, that Éomer and Éowyn came through this battle alive.  Without them, not one of the House of Eorl would be left.

Aye, and then, came my bitter and hardly respectful thought, for a thousand or so years some other noble house would rule in their stead, until a foreign stranger from some distant branch of their line would pop out of the woodwork and demand to be hailed as King.

I sought to turn my thoughts from that particularly unhelpful course.

I wondered what arrangements Éomer would choose to make for the body of the late King, after this night of vigil.  It depended, I supposed, on what course the living Rohirrim chose to follow themselves – and upon the choices made by all of us.  If the Rohirrim rode back to their plains in these next days, returning to the defence of their own lands, their army would serve as Théoden’s funeral train.  But if they stayed here, if they chose to remain with us in defence of Minas Tirith – or indeed, if some plan should be formed to take the battle to the enemy – then they must either send Théoden’s body home with a smaller escort, or they must leave the slain King here until such time as his people could return home.

And in that eventuality, I thought, there was little chance that any of them would return to their lands.  For what real likelihood was there of our survival, let alone our victory, against the hordes of the Dark Lord?

The army that had near overwhelmed us in the day past, before the Ringwraiths lost their Captain and the Rohirrim and Aragorn’s fleet had come to our aid, was by report only a miniscule portion of the forces that the Lord of Mordor held in reserve.  We would fight, yes, fight to the last Man – but was I not fooling myself, if I clung to the notion that we had any hope of winning?

Stubbornly I dragged my mind back from its musings of doom.  I repeated to myself my father’s old adage, despair is a luxury that the house of the Stewards cannot afford.

Once more I forced my thoughts back onto more practical pathways. 

If Théoden’s body were to remain here in the plan of eventually taking him back to his country, the embalmers would need to begin their work, as soon as possible after that decision was taken.  I knew that it was not the tradition of the Rohirrim to make use of such techniques, but tradition would have to bend when faced with a king slain so far from his realm.

Involuntarily I shuddered at the thought of the embalmers, although I knew very well how stupid that reaction was.

As I had many times before, I thanked the Valar that our ancestors had settled upon the tradition of embalming and displaying only the leaders of the ruling households; the Kings themselves and the Stewards in later times.  It was a loathsome vision that had given me more than one nightmare in the past, to imagine that the tradition had followed a slightly different path, and that all of our family were to lie here forever in the dusty hall of the House of the Stewards, sleeping upon pillows of stone.

By the gods, I was glad that it was only their marble tomb I had to look upon, when I made my now all-too-infrequent visits to my wife and my son.  To think of having to look upon them as I must presumably someday have to look upon my father – to imagine their pallid semblance of life, and the dust that despite the ministrations of the Tenders of the Tombs would settle upon their clothing and their faces and their hair – those thoughts filled me with a horror unmitigated by the fact that the scene was imagination only.

It was bad enough to think of someday having to see my father’s body thus – always presuming, of course, that I did not end up getting myself permanently killed some time before my father’s passing.  It was no particularly pleasant thought to imagine myself lying here embalmed, either.  I thought, the Rohirrim have got a damned sight more sense than we have.  Better to lie in one of their barrows – or better yet, for one’s body to be devoured in flame, as is said was the custom of the Men of ancient times.  I thought that I would prefer that by far, than to lie here in a mockery of life, my face forgotten by all except the Tenders of the Tombs who would come by to dust me once a week.

Boromir, I told myself, you have done enough thinking.  Enough and a good deal more.  Stand there and do not think; we have nightmares enough in these days without giving ourselves more of them.

Slowly the candles’ height wore down to what I judged should mark two hours’ passing.  I took a step away from the stone table and bowed to Éomer, who again left his post and walked a few paces away to speak with me.

“Forgive me for leaving so soon,” I said. 

He nodded.  “I thank you for standing with us, My Lord,” said Rohan’s king.  “I will see you on the morrow, at the council.”

I took my echoing way back along the Silent Street, up the long winding stairs and through the door of Fen Hollen, that the porter locked behind me as I strode once more onto the streets of the living.

Only slightly more appealing, I thought, than my last duty, was the task that now lay before me: to beard my father in his lair, and demand that he tell me where in the Valar’s names he had previously encountered Aragorn.

I was nearly running by the time I reached the Citadel, although I told myself there was no sense in working myself up to battle frenzy before I knew even if we would have this conversation.  As like as not, I would not manage to see my father again tonight at all.  There was a better than even chance that he had retired to his chamber at the top of the White Tower, and even if I did feel brave enough to request an audience of him there, the likelihood was that he would just ignore me.  If he did deign to let me into his sanctum, I could certainly kiss goodbye to any hope of a reasonable discussion with him; for when he repaired to the Tower’s peak, he tended to be in so black a mood that I might as well attempt a conversation with Sauron.

Svip was not in the Fountain as I passed it, and I hoped that he would not spend the entire night chattering with the Hobbits.  I had to remind myself that Svip was three thousand and some years older than I, and that he probably did not need me worrying about him staying up past his bedtime. 

Well, the Hobbits are still younger than I am, I answered myself.  It’s not quite so ridiculous for me to worry about them getting their sleep!

At the Citadel Gate, the door to the White Tower, and again at the entrance to the Tower’s stairs, I had inquired of the guards whether my father was within.  Each answer had been in the affirmative, but I kept waiting grimly for the answer that would confirm my fears, and tell me that the Lord Steward had betaken himself to his chamber at the Tower’s peak.

To my surprise, that confirmation did not come.  The guard on the Tower’s second floor, outside the door to my father’s sitting room and office, informed me that the Steward had been working there since early in the evening.  

I cast up a swift prayer of thanks to the Valar, then knocked on the door before I had time to talk myself out of it.

“Come,” my father’s voice sounded through the door, with his usual impatience of any interruption.

I pushed open the creaking door and stepped within, taking off my mithril helm and setting it down upon the table to the right of the door.

The Lord Steward sat at his desk, reading a parchment that he held in his hand.  A good many other parchments were stacked neatly on the desk before him.  He glanced up and fixed his gaze on me, and I wondered for a moment how many hundreds of times we had enacted this precise same scene.

At least this time, I told myself, I do not have to tremble before him because I have botched my schoolwork.

Noting my formal clothing, my father inquired, “You have paid your respects to Théoden King?”

“I have.”

“Good.”  He turned again to the parchment, looking on it with thinned mouth and frowning gaze.  I sighed to myself, wondering as I had so many times in my life if he were actually reading those documents, or if he just enjoyed putting me on edge by giving the impression that he was ignoring me.

“My Lord,” I said, “Faramir has awakened.”

That at least had the effect I desired.  He looked up sharply, the documents in his hand momentarily forgotten.  No emotion showed on his face as he gazed at me, nor did any sound in his voice when he finally asked, “How is he?”

“Well on the road to recovery, I believe.  We talked for about an hour, before he fell asleep.  His fever appears entirely past.  It seems that rest is the medicine he most requires now.  I doubt not that he will be on his feet again in a few days.”

The Steward looked at me unreadably some moments longer, then he gave a brisk nod.  “That is well,” he said, dropping his glance to the parchment once more.

Father, I thought, would it kill you to look happy at the news I have just brought to you?

You know what he’s like, I told myself.  What do you expect?

It wasn’t anything that I expected from him, I realised.  Rather, it was what I wanted.  It was the same thing I had always wanted, for nearly as long as I could remember.  The same thing I had always wanted, but that it seemed I would never have.

I wanted this wretched, useless war between Father and Faramir to end.

My father asked without looking at me, “It was the Ranger who revived him?”

“It was, sir.  With the use of the herb kingsfoil.”  I thought I heard an irritated little snort from my father at the herb’s name.  Taking good care not to mention Aragorn’s other, more mystical methods of healing, and the possibility that he might indeed have “the hands of a healer”, I went on.  “He and two Rivendell Elves of his retinue, Lords Elladan and Elrohir the Sons of Elrond, remain in the Houses of Healing, tending to our other Men who are caught in this dark sleep.  I authorised the Guard to make search for all kingsfoil as may be in the City and bring it to them.”

Still ostensibly paying more heed to the document than to our conversation, the Steward inquired of me, “Should we expect the Sons of Elrond to claim the kingship as well?  Shall we throw open the race for the throne to all who possess more skill than our own Healers – which, it seems, must be quite a number?”

I sighed again, wishing that just once I might get through an entire conversation with my father without encountering his sarcasm.  “No mention was made of any claims to the throne, Father.  I believe he is acting more from concern for the afflicted, than for thrones and crowns.”

“Yes, of course,” came my father’s snide answer.  “Precisely as he wishes you to believe.”

Why, I asked myself wearily, did you ever tell your father you believed that?  You had to know what he would say.

I sought to change the subject, and found a topic that in truth required attention.  “Have steps been taken to provision the troops garrisoning the Harlond?  The Army’s warehouse must be re-supplied, and there will be little provender left after the enemy’s sojourn there – ”

“I have already seen to it, my son.  The first supply wagons left some hours ago under the command of Ivarr Son of Yngvar, while you were still with your friends the Elven healers.”

Valar’s balls, I wondered, why do I even bother?

With a harsh sigh, the Steward threw the parchment down upon his desk.  He continued to scowl at the document where it lay.  “Our house is rare in surviving this day intact,” he observed in bitter tones.  “Few Lords of the Outlands can say the same.  Forlong of Lossarnach and Hirluin of Pinnath Gelin both are slain.  Duilin of Morthond was trampled on the field, and I have just been informed that his brother who was injured with him has now perished as well.  The Rohirrim lost not only Théoden himself but also nine of their chief Men.  It is a mighty host that live no more to face with us the Dark Lord’s next assault.  And we, I suppose, are expected to rejoice, for our King has come back to us!”

That list of the slain was sobering indeed, but I told myself that I did not have the leisure now to ponder or grieve over it.  What I needed most at that moment was to uncover once and for all the tale of how my father knew Aragorn, and of why he hated the Northman with such deathly intensity.

“Sir,” I said, “I must respectfully demand that you no longer keep me in the dark.  If I am to act to the best of my abilities for the weal of Gondor, I must know the history with which we are dealing.  Where and when have you encountered Aragorn?  What do you know of him?  I must know, My Lord.”

The Steward studied me piercingly; seeking, I suppose, some sign in my face that would tell him I had already sworn my allegiance to Aragorn.  Finally he sighed quietly, leaning back in his carven chair.  “Take a seat then, son,” he said, in a voice bitter and weary.  “It may be no long tale, but any time spent in speaking of him seems long to me.  I would not have you stand through all of it.”

That admission was a remarkable one, coming from my father.  I took care not to make any comment on it as I grabbed a chair from the edge of the room and brought it to the side of his desk, lest my comment anger him and send him off onto some other irritated tangent.

When I had taken my seat, my father gazed on me still with challenging and measuring eyes.  At last he said, “The Lord Aragorn has visited Gondor before.”

“So I gathered, My Lord,” I said, then immediately I cursed myself for opening my mouth.

My father snapped, “If you wish to hear this tale, you had best refrain from interrupting every time I end a sentence.”

“I’m sorry, sir.  I am listening.”

The Lord Steward eyed me irritably, then he shook his head and went on.  “He was last within our realm – the last occasion of which I am aware, although he may of course have sneaked into the country on any number of occasions – in the twenty-seventh year of your grandfather’s reign.”

My mouth dropped open in astonishment.  I just managed to catch myself and shut it again before I could make any kind of exclamation.

 I thought, The twenty-seventh year of my grandfather’s reign was nearly forty years ago!  In the twenty-seventh year of my grandfather’s reign, I was two years old!

Had Aragorn been brought to Gondor as a child?  What was it that he could have done then to make my father so hate him – unless the hatred was inspired by the child’s guardians, rather than the child himself?

But my father had recognised Aragorn when they met upon the Pelennor fields.  He could have been no child, when my father had seen him last.

“Are you listening to me, Boromir?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It was in the period when your grandfather opened up the ranks of Gondor’s forces to encourage foreign captains and adventurers to fight in our service.  Your friend the Captain of the Rangers went then by the name of Thorongil.  He had served under Thengel of Rohan, and came to us with his recommendation.”

My father paused in his tale.  When he did not seem immediately inclined to continue, I risked a comment. 

“Thorongil,” I muttered, frowning and searching my memory.  “I have read his name, I believe; in the chronicles and campaign reports.”

“I’ve no doubt that you have.  He rose high and swiftly in your grandfather’s service, and in your grandfather’s estimation.  Within a year of joining us he became the second-highest in rank of all Gondor’s captains.”

The second-highest, I thought.  Second only, presumably, to my father himself, to my father who was then the Steward’s Heir and Captain-General of Gondor.

“He commanded several successful campaigns in Ithilien, and in 2980 he led our fleet against the Corsairs of Umbar, assaulting their stronghold in the raid that crippled them until these recent years when we have seen them rebuilding their numbers and their strength.”

I thought that it must be costing my father a good deal of effort for him to admit that Aragorn – or Thorongil – had performed glorious deeds in Gondor’s service.  I supposed that my father must know and accept, even as I did, that Aragorn was a Man of great ability.  If he were not so, I thought, my father would not see him as a threat.

The Steward went on, “Captain Thorongil took great care to preserve the mystery of his background and his origins.  That he had served in Rohan was all he would readily admit, although he did make occasional references to a childhood spent with Elves.  He was also often in the company of the Lord Mithrandir, who made one of his periodic visits to our court, coincidentally beginning at around the same time as Captain Thorongil arrived.”

My father picked up the pot of ink from his desk and began turning it around in his hands, gazing at it with such bitter loathing that I had no doubt of whose faces his mind’s eye was confronting instead.

“I frequently advised the Lord Steward,” my father continued, “that he should know more of this Man whom he had welcomed so unquestioningly to his service and his friendship.  I advised him that Gondor’s safety required we know whom it was that we had accepted into our bosom, but that advice the Lord Steward chose to ignore.  Thus I took it upon myself to uncover Captain Thorongil’s secret.”

With a sudden, angry sigh, my father slammed the inkpot down again.  It was fortunate, I thought, that its lid was on tightly, for I hated to think of my father’s reaction in this mood of his, if the ink had gone splattering over the desk.

“What I learned was that our great Captain was in fact Aragorn Son of Arathorn, last scion of the Chieftains of Arthedain; that he had been raised in the household of the Lord Elrond Half-Elven; and that the Elf Lord and his friend the Grey Pilgrim had trained up their protégé that he might someday make again the claim that Arvedui made to the kingship of Gondor, the claim already once rejected but never forgotten by Elrond and the Wizard, who hope now through their pet kingling to extend their power over all the kingdoms of Men!”

My father’s voice and his temper both had been rising as he proceeded through that speech.  Now he swept his arm across his desk in a furious gesture, sending parchments, inkpot, pens and all clattering to the floor.

I leapt from my chair and started over to clean up the mess, but my father snapped at me, “Leave it.  What do you think we have servants for?  They will deal with it when I give them leave to do so.  Now sit down.”

I sighed and once more took my seat.  The Lord Steward said, his voice quiet again but with his anger still resounding clearly in each word, “I confronted Captain Thorongil with my discoveries just before he departed on the Umbar campaign.  I demanded of him why he had hidden his identity from us, and whether he came to us with the intent of laying claim to the throne.  To this he made no clear answer, saying nothing but that his only desire was for Gondor’s welfare.  I accused him of cultivating my father’s friendship with his eyes fixed upon the crown, with the aim of inducing the Lord Steward to support his already-rejected claim.  And I demanded that he either make public his identity, or depart from Gondor’s service.  He chose the latter option.”

I waited, but my father seemed to have said all that he intended to say.  I risked speaking again, and asked, “Where did he go?”

“As to that, you will have to ask him.  After the defeat of the Corsairs’ fleet, he did not return to Minas Tirith.  Men said that he had set forth alone, heading east toward the Mountains of Shadow.  I have heard from time to time, over the years, of the doings of bands of Northmen whom I believed might be under his command.  There have been occasional reports of a Ranger travelling in the company of the Grey Wanderer, matching our erstwhile Captain’s description.  But I received no certain tidings of him these forty years, until you wrote to me from Cair Andros and mentioned a Ranger of the North named Aragorn Son of Arathorn, with whom you had journeyed from the court of Lord Elrond Half-Elven.”

“How old is he?” I marvelled then, my thoughts returning to the question that had so astounded me at the opening of my father’s narrative.  “My gods, he must be nearly as old as – ”

My father smiled without any humour.  “If the information that I received was accurate, the Lord Aragorn is approximately one half year younger than I am.  He has not visibly aged any significant amount since last I saw him.  His wandering life has clearly been beneficial to his preservation.”

“Yes, sir,” I said grimly, thinking of the obvious conclusion that I knew my father had made as well.  Any Man who appeared so well-preserved when he was approaching ninety years, must have a sizeable portion of the Blood of Númenor flowing in his veins.  Not that it had any impact on the validity or lack thereof of his claim.  The claim of Arvedui rested on whether inheritance through the Northern Kingdom and the female line entitled the claimant to the throne of Gondor, not on the purity of his Númenorean blood.  But his clear Númenorean bloodline, I thought, would be yet another sign that might enflame the feelings of the people in his favour, as popular a token of kingship as his remarkable skills in healing.

For a few moments my father and I sat each wrapped in his own thoughts.  I was watching a trail of ink that had made its way through the heap of fallen parchments and was now rolling along the line of grout between the flooring slabs.

“Why did he do it?” I pondered aloud.

My father raised his eyebrows at me in interrogation.  I went on, “Why did he leave?  If he meant to claim the throne, why did he leave forty years ago without doing so?  And why has he returned to make his claim now?  What factors are in place now that were missing then?”

My father answered sneeringly, “I presume that the desperateness of our peril has drawn him out of his lair.  Now that we teeter on the brink of destruction, he has all the more opportunities to perform dramatic rescues and show himself as Gondor’s hero.  And added to that, the likelihood that this time he will find a Steward too old and enfeebled to lead any concerted resistance against him, and Steward’s sons who will be more malleable to his will.” 

“I beg your pardon, sir?” I demanded.

“Well?  Is it not so that your brother has from childhood been the Wizard’s special project, trained up to admire and believe all that Lord Mithrandir says, that when at last his puppet king emerges from the shadows, Faramir will be like to accept him without doubt or question?”

I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists.  But there were too many other questions surging through my mind, for me to follow then the well-worn path of arguing with my father about Faramir.  “I grant you the possibility of that being Mithrandir’s plan, sir,” I said.  “What then of me?  Do you say that I too will be malleable to Aragorn’s will?”

“They have taken great effort to make you so.  What was their aim in including you in their fools’ quest, if not to give the pretender the chance to woo your friendship and your loyalty – or else to lead you into peril that would cause your death, and remove from the Ranger’s path one of the few Men who might successfully block his play for power?”

I stared at him for a moment, feeling as if a blow to the gut had knocked all the breath from out of me.  Then I groaned, rubbing my hands over my face.  “Father, for the Valar’s sakes.  Will you claim now that they orchestrated my inclusion in the Fellowship in order to arrange my death?  They had plenty of favourable occasions for slaying me, without needing to wait until I blundered into the way of a dozen Orc archers.  I did sleep every now and then; it should not have been difficult for the Ranger to slit my throat as I slept.  There should not have been any significant challenge presented by shoving me into a bottomless pit in Moria.  If my death was indeed their intent, then they made a very poor job of it!”

The Steward gave another mirthless smile.  “Ah,” he answered, “but killing you outright is too straightforward for Lord Mithrandir’s taste.  Better far to sit back and let fate play its hand.  He is too noble, too much the Steward to all Middle Earth, to go so far as to strike at you himself, or to order his protégé to do so.  But if you should happen to be killed in the course of the journey, then so much the better.  They would then have only to deal with your brother, who will dance to whatever tune the Wizard plays, and your father, who they could realistically assume would perish from grief at your death!”

“Father!” I cried out.  “I beg of you to calm yourself!”

He snapped, “I will calm myself when I please, not at the behest of my Wizard’s-tool of a son!”

I was losing hold of my temper and I knew it; knew that I should keep my calm and not get myself into yet another shouting match with my father.  That knowledge did not prove particularly helpful. 

I challenged, “Will you tell me in what way I am his tool?”

“Are you not?”

“No, sir,” I grated, “I am not.  And I am waiting to hear the rest of your theory.  How if I did not happen to be killed, what do you claim was their plan for me then?”

“Why, the very plan that they are even now pursuing.  The Ranger had two months of journeying in which to win you to his side, to bind you to him with the sympathy engendered by enduring shared perils.  And if that alone were not enough to assure your allegiance, then they would play the card that they have played now.  Let situations be created in which the would-be king has the opportunity to save what you love most: let him sail to the rescue of your City in its time of need; let him pull your baby brother out from the maw of death.  What then more likely than that you will become his worshipping slave, and support his play for the throne out of sheer sentimental gratitude!”

Fury surged through me, with a rush of nausea so strong that for a moment I felt I must either be violently ill, or I must launch myself at my father and beat him until he could no longer fling his taunts at my brother and at me.

Desperately I fought back that first upwelling of madness. 

I should not be this angry, I told myself, I should not be.  It is only my father.  It is only the way he is. 

I jumped to my feet and paced over to the window that looked to the east, that I might have some other motion into which I could channel my anger.  Holding my position by the window, I turned back to face him, still feeling sick with rage.  

“What have we done, sir, to merit your disdain?  What have Faramir or I ever done that you should think us brainless tools, that you should believe we would put gratitude, friendship or anything else before our duty to our country?” 

As he glared at me, I went on, a feeling of terrible sadness seeping in amidst my anger.  “Do you think so little of your own skill in bringing us up, My Lord, that you unquestioningly assume that we will fail to be the sons you wish us to be?” 

“All Men fail, Boromir,” he answered me, in a voice cold and hopeless enough to freeze my marrow.  “All.”

“We will not fail in this, sir.  We will not.  I say to you that you taught us well.  We live for the sake of Gondor; there is nothing that we will put before that.  No other loyalty will be more important to us, none.”

My father gazed on me for a moment that seemed extended into years.  Then at last he gave a wintry smile.  “I hope that you are right, my son,” he said.  “Tell me, then.  What will be your actions when the Lord Aragorn states his claim before the Council?”

I took refuge once more in the thought that I usually turned to when I asked that question of myself. 

“I hardly think it will come to that, sir.  We have still the Lord of Mordor to face upon the field of battle.”

My evasion would have no success this time.  My father stood up beside his chair, crossing his arms across his chest and eyeing me with a strange, somehow predatory smile.  “And if we survive that contest, Boromir; if we survive, what then?  What then will the Lord Boromir say, what stand will he take, when Aragorn Son of Arathorn states the claim of the Northern Line before the Council of Gondor?”

“That must depend upon the decision of the Council,” I said.

“Must it?  How if the decision of the Council and the best decision to preserve the welfare of Gondor are not the same?”

He wanted, I knew, to lure me into the admission that I might possibly, under some conceivable set of circumstances, support Aragorn’s claim.  And when I’d admitted that, it would give him free rein to tear apart my character limb from limb, to hurl at me every accusation that his fury could dream up. 

Wearily I told myself that if we came to that pass, I must do nothing but endure it.  Already I’d allowed myself to be baited into fighting with him twice this night, in Faramir’s room and again here.  That would have to do.  I had used up the quota of anger for one day that I was willing to allow myself.

“I will do as you taught me to do, sir,” I said.  “I will put Gondor before all else.  And I will act as I believe is best to defend her people, to protect their lives, their homes and their land.  That is all that I can say.”

It astonished me to see it.  But somehow, for that moment, my father decided that my answer was enough.  The dangerous glimmer departed from his gaze, leaving weary sorrow in its place.

“Yes,” he said quietly, “you will put Gondor before all else.  As must we all.” 

Of a sudden he seemed to sag, resting one hand on his desk and leaning there as though bowed down with exhaustion and age.

I took a step toward him, murmuring, “Father?”  But he waved me away and stood up straight once again.

He asked, “Have I answered all of your questions that need answering this night?  If so, then I would say that both of us are in need of our rest before facing tomorrow’s council.”

“Yes, Father,” I said.  “May I walk you back to your chambers, sir?”

“No.  Thank you.  I have a little work yet to do before I retire.”

I had the unhappy feeling that I knew exactly what he intended.  Like as not, he would not be sitting back down to work here.  He would repair instead to his chamber at the top of the tower, to the sleepless brooding and dark thoughts that I was sure he engaged in there.

I thought, I would like to tear down that room.  I would like to wipe it from the face of Middle Earth, to stop my father from ever going there again.

Whatever peace he sought there, I was certain that he was not finding it.  More often than not he returned from the tower’s peak in a mood more vile than when had repaired to it.

I sighed.  “Yes, sir.  You will promise me that you will go to bed soon, My Lord?”

His smile seemed infinitely weary, but at least it held none of his bitter rage.  He answered me, “I can promise you, my son, that I will take that request under careful consideration.”

I bade my father good night, and made my way down the stairs, through the dimly lit Tower Hall and the Corridor of the Kings, and into the Court of the Fountain.

The Fountain still held no sleeping Svip.  I considered, as I headed through the Citadel gate and into the first of the tunnels, whether I should seek out Svip in the Houses of Healing and urge him to get to bed.  But I told myself once again, it was not my role to spend the night racing about the Hill of Guard making sure that everyone I cared about was getting their sleep.

My mind swam dizzily with the things that I had just learned. 

No longer, I thought, did I feel any wonder at the depths of my father’s hatred for Aragorn.  I had felt more than enough hostility, resentment and suspicion for the Man of the North myself, and I had not my father’s reasons for those feelings.

I had not been forced to watch him win seemingly instant trust and friendship, from the one Man whom I had sought to impress and please for my entire life.  I had not had to watch him leap to a position of power, and to wonder what his reasons for seeking that power might be.  I had not had to wonder if the City and the father that I loved were safe in his care. 

And I had not had the knowledge of his existence lurking in the corners of my mind for forty years.  I had not spent those decades wondering when he might again make his appearance, wondering even when my life and the future and safety of our country seemed solidly under my control, if he might reappear and seek to seize Gondor’s fate out of my hands.

I shook my head as I thought of it.  Let him take Gondor’s fate, if he wishes it.  Let him shoulder that burden; let it devour him as it is devouring my father.

At the Sixth Level’s gate I inquired of the guards if Mithrandir and two Elven lords had been passed in to the Houses of Healing.  The guards replied that they had, near three hours past.  They told me also that several deliveries of kingsfoil had been carried out already by members of the search parties.

I told myself that all was as well here as I could make it, and I continued my way once more to my townhouse. 

It was troubled sleep at best that I achieved that night, and a very few hours of it.

My mind jumped maddeningly through the scenes of the day.  Again and again I sought to drag some memories out of my bizarre blackout in the midst of the battle, to no avail.  Again the dying cry of the Captain of the Nazgûl wailed endlessly through my soul.  Again I saw the rage and hatred on my father’s face as he spoke of Aragorn Son of Arathorn, and I heard my brother whisper, “My Lord, you called me.  I am here.  What does the King command?”

Dear Valar, I thought, what are we going to do?

Before these last days, I would have stated without the slightest doubt: if a candidate for the throne appeared and made his claim before the Council, and if the Council upheld that claim, then my father would gladly welcome the King, handing over his authority as ruling Steward as he had always said that it was the duty of our house to do.

It had always been I who grumbled at my father’s insistence that we must still be Stewards instead of Kings, who carped at what I saw as exaggerated loyalty to the dead and ancient past, and who, in my daydreams, laid my plans for the day when I would take the throne as the first King of the House of Mardil.

And now?

I could not now comfort myself that my father would abide by the will of the Council.

The will of the Council, more often than not, was my father’s will.  But what if, in this case, that did not prevail?

What if the Council – or the people – or a significant proportion of both – supported Aragorn’s claim, and my father did not? 

There was no chance, I knew now, that my father would ever agree to step aside for Aragorn.  What if a portion of our forces took up arms for Aragorn, and another stood willing to fight for my father?

And what of Faramir?

He had always most loved the legends of wise Númenorean kings, who wandered the woods spouting poetry with Elves in the youth of our world.  Now that such a king seemed appeared in truth – a king who had pulled Faramir back from Valar knew what nightmares, and whose claim he had acknowledged even as he awoke from the sleep that was nearly his death – every belief that Faramir had ever held would tell him to support Aragorn’s cause.  Every belief, including our father’s own words that ten thousand years would not suffice to make a Steward a King.

My imaginings trembled at the edge of a vision of horror: of a day when Gondor would be rent by civil war, and when my brother took up arms against our father.

And I?  What would I do upon that day?

It will not happen, I told myself.  None of us would let Gondor plunge into such an abyss.  We will not take up arms against each other, and we will not deliver our country into that darkness.

Another fear crept into my mind; less dramatic by far, but also, I thought, perhaps more genuinely worthy of dread.

I heard again my father’s threat to Mithrandir, that if Aragorn tended Faramir and Faramir died, the Northman would not live to pursue his claim to the throne.

Was there the chance, I asked myself, that the Steward might take that threat further?

Were there other situations apart from Faramir’s death, in which my father might decide that the best and wisest solution to our problems would be if Aragorn vanished forever from the face of Middle Earth?

Before the day we had just passed, nothing would have induced me to believe that my father might stoop to so unworthy an act as assassination.

But now?

Now, I did not know.

I wondered suddenly if these same thoughts had come to Aragorn.

Was this what lay behind his courteous but unyielding insistence that he and his Men would not accept the hospitality of Minas Tirith?  Did he suspect that he risked assassination, every minute he spent within our walls?

The curtains of my bed and of the window both hung open, where I had flung them that I might see the stars that flickered in the night sky, and be assured that the sky was not still that hideous nothing that had prevailed in the days and nights of the Enemy’s darkness.  Now I lay sleepless, watching the stars and praying that in due course they would fade into the dawn.

I knew that the morning would come.  But I also knew that a part of my mind would never truly believe it, until I saw the sun rise with my own eyes.

An hour or two perhaps of sleep I snatched from out of that night of maddening thoughts.  But when at last I saw the first, faintest hint of approaching dawn, I leapt from my bed with the determination that I would lie there wrestling my tormented imaginings no more.

As I washed again from the barrel of Anduin’s water and swiftly dressed, I made my plans for at least one way that I could seize an advantage on the day.

I would ride to the River before sunrise, and have a damned good swim.  Perhaps if I set myself a reasonable schedule and stuck to it, if I went back to the River at least once each day, I could save myself from any more such failures as my unbelievable blackout in the very thick of combat.

I would not ride Svip to the River this time, I decided.  Who knew at what time he might finally have retired to the Fountain.  I would give him another hour or so of sleep, ride one of the regular horses to the Harlond, and be back from my swim in time to fetch Svip and ride him to the council of war at Aragorn’s tents.

I was striding across the courtyard and had nearly reached my stables, when the sound of voices beyond the courtyard wall made me stop in my tracks.  I listened, and as I did so I smiled, for there was no mistaking to whom those voices belonged. 

“There is some good stone-work here,” came the voice of Gimli Son of Gloin, “but also some that is less good, and the streets could be better contrived.  When Aragorn comes into his own, I shall offer him the service of the stonewrights of the Mountain, and we will make this a town to be proud of.”

“They need more gardens,” Legolas of Mirkwood replied.  “The houses are dead, and there is too little here that grows and is glad.  If Aragorn comes into his own, the people of the Wood shall bring him birds that sing and trees that do not die.”

I could have done without the mentions of Aragorn coming into his own, striking as they did entirely too close to the still-open wounds of the thoughts I had fought with through the night.  And the gibes at our stonemasonry and our dead White Tree were comments to which on other occasions I might well have taken exception. 

But their comments notwithstanding, Legolas and Gimli were two beings whose voices I was very glad to hear.

A horse whinnied beyond the wall, waking two of my own horses in their stalls and summoning from them sleepy whinnies in reply.  I heard Gimli mutter something, presumably some Dwarven epithet against their horse, and at the same moment Legolas remarked, “This must be his house here.”

I ran through the courtyard, startling the two guards at their posts just inside the gate as I called out to them, “Open the gate!  Those without are friends; pass them in.”

The two Men blinked in surprise, but obeyed.  Even as they pushed the gate open I was hastening through it, to the equal startlement of their two fellow guards outside.  These two snapped to attention and saluted me.

“Good morning,” I greeted the guards, feeling for that moment as cheerful as I had felt weighted with doom in the hours that had just passed.  Of a sudden I grinned, and I asked of the two, “Have you ever seen an Elf and a Dwarf sharing one horse?”

The guards did their best not to look as though they feared I’d taken leave of my senses.

“I’ve never seen an Elf, My Lord,” one answered, “or a Dwarf.”

“Is it a joke, My Lord?” the other Man asked.

“If it is,” I said, “we would do best not to tell it in the presence of these gentlemen.”

Up the Citadel Road, rounding the curve of my courtyard’s wall, walked Legolas, Gimli and their horse.  The horse followed close at Legolas’ heels, for all the world as though he were the Elf’s pet dog.  Gimli kept as much distance as possible between himself and the horse, ostentatiously walking on the opposite side of the road, and taking twice as many steps as Legolas in the effort to keep pace.

“Good morrow, My Lords,” I called to them.  “I hope you have met no misfortune with your horse?”

“We made a bargain,” answered Legolas, laughter in his tones.  “I persuaded the Dwarf to endure the passage to the City on horseback, in return for my promise that I would allow him to walk up the hill.”

“Aye,” Gimli growled, “and what possesses you Men to build your homes on the mountain-tops?  Are you descended from the eagles, that you must have your eyries on the highest peaks, with no good solid rock between you and the sky?”

One of my fears in that night came back to me with sudden force, and I hurried down the road to meet my old companions.  In a low voice I asked of Legolas, “I trust that Aragorn has safely returned to camp?”

“Yes,” replied the Elf.  “He, Mithrandir and the Sons of Elrond returned about an hour past.”

Gimli grudgingly made his way across the street that he might be part of the conversation, though not without an obligatory hostile glare at the horse.  The Dwarf put in, gesturing with his thumb at Legolas, “The both of us spent most of the night awake, watching for Aragorn’s return.  When he did come back, it was near enough to the dawn that we decided we might as well give up on getting any sleep.”

“I thought you might be already abroad,” Legolas went on, “since you have this council to attend.  So we thought we would see if you have any time to spare for the tale-telling we have promised each other.  And when you leave for the council, perhaps you can direct us to where we may find Merry and Pippin.”

“Why,” I asked in puzzlement, “are you not then attending the council?”

Legolas shook his head, frowning slightly.  “No; we are not among the Captains.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said.  “If this council is to determine our next courses of action against the Dark, then every one of the Fellowship of Nine should be there who can be.  Your experience and your opinions should command as much respect as those of any Captain.”  Pausing for a moment to look at the now uncomfortably frowning two, I asked of them, “Will you come to the council if I ask it of you?  As my comrades?  As such, you must be welcome, even if others do not have the sense to seek your counsel.”

The Elf and the Dwarf cast an uneasy glance at each other.  I supposed they must fear that attending the council at my request might somehow obligate them to support me, if I ended up taking some stand against a course that was argued by Aragorn.

I told them, “I would not have this council determine our fates without your voices as part of it.”

They studied me a moment longer, then Legolas said seriously, “Thank you, Boromir.  We will be there, then, if you wish it.”

My trip to the River, I decided, could very well wait; the chance to catch up with these two friends was one that I should not allow to slip past me.

“Will you come in?” I invited them.  “If we’re to be trading tales, we can find a more comfortable spot for it than standing in the street.  We should be able to scare up some breakfast as well.  Your horse may visit with mine, in the stables – that is, if Gimli can be persuaded to part with him.”

Gimli muttered, “I will force myself to endure the separation.”

The pale steed of Rohan was soon installed with his lesser brethren.  Young Balamir came rushing into the courtyard to see if I required anything, just as we finished in the stables.  The boy had to struggle valiantly to pay heed to my order for an extra large pot of tea and whatever breakfast things he could liberate for us without getting in Dame Weltrude’s way.  All the while he was staring, with eyes like saucers, at my two oddly-assorted companions.

I led my comrades to the balcony of my chambers.  Here we were soon ensconsed upon the marble benches, swigging copious quantities of tea, munching the rolls, sausages and cheese that Balamir had conjured up for us, and watching as the morn crept over Ephel Dúath and at last spread its first tendrils of light across the roofs of the City.

I could not help thinking of the last time these two and I had broken our fast together.  I pictured the lawn of Parth Galen, spreading green and lush at the feet of Amon Hen, and I pictured the eight of us sitting leaned against our Elven boats and the roots of the great trees that marched westward along the curving shore.  Few of us had spoken as we made our breakfast of lembas.  I remembered looking around me at the faces of the others, and wondering from which of those comrades I would be parted that day, when the Company made their choice to turn west with me, or east toward Mordor. 

“The people of Minas Tirith brew good tea,” remarked Gimli, his voice a welcome interruption to my remembering, “but we came here not for tea and sausages, but for a story.  You promised us, Lord Boromir, the tale of how you contrived to return to life only after we had hauled you to the River at the risk of our backs.”  

“I can see, Master Gimli, that you will never allow me to live that down.  When you are the most ancient of all the Dwarves, with rheumatism in every joint, you will still be blaming me for your every ache and pain.”  I sighed and took a swig of my tea.  “Has Mithrandir spoken nothing regarding my return?”

Legolas said, “He and Aragorn spoke of it, on their way to or from the City.  Aragorn made mention of that when they returned to camp; but he would say only that it is well, and there is no cause for fear at your return.”

That was nice of him, I thought.  No cause for others to fear, perhaps.  But there is plenty for me to fear.  If I were still dead, I would not now need to seek the means of holding my father, my brother and our country back from civil war.

I sighed again and poured myself another cup of tea.  “You remember my friend Svip, whom you met last night?  He lives in the River Anduin, in a house below the Falls of Rauros.  And he knows certain remedies and spells, that together can bring the dead back to life.”

I told the tale, as light painted the sky over the Mountains of Shadow.  And as the sun at last climbed above the mountains, and the dregs of our tea grew cold, I listened in my turn to the tale of Legolas and Gimli.

Snatches of it I had heard in different form, in Pippin’s story as he had related it to me.  But there was much that I had not heard before.  They spoke of their quest across the plains of Rohan for the Hobbits and their Orc captors.  They spoke of webs of intrigue that had near strangled the Rohirrim royal house, of the mighty battle fought at the stronghold of Helm’s Deep, and Gimli spoke of wondrous caves beneath that fortress, the Dwarf’s voice ringing with love and awe as he painted the portrait of those caverns in his words. 

Gimli would not speak of the next portion of their journey.  So it was Legolas who told in his quiet voice the story of how Aragorn’s company departed the Rohirrim hill fort of Dunharrow, of their voyage beneath Dwimorberg the Haunted Mountain, and of their strange ride through Morthond, Lamedon and Lebennin, with a ghostly army of the long-accursed dead in their train.

There was much in that tale that I could scarce believe.  But I told myself that I would do well to temper my disbelief.  The shadow host of the Oathbreakers of Dunharrow made a story not much more strange than a Wizard who fought a Balrog to their deaths and was sent back to Middle Earth to complete his tasks, or a Steward’s son rescued from his watery grave by a small green shape-shifter.

I glanced at the rosy orb of the sun, and I said, “There is much more that I wish to hear of your battles, my friends, and of your progress from Pelargir to Minas Tirith.  But our council is set for one hour past the sunrise.  I promised Svip that I would ride him to the council.  He should be either at the Citadel or else at the Houses of Healing, with the Hobbits.  If we make haste we may bid good morning to Pippin and Merry – and extend to them the invitation to attend the council with us if they choose, though I will not blame them if they choose some more pleasant way of spending their morning.”

Gimli suggested, “Let us bring them our leftovers.  I’m sure the Hobbits will not turn up their noses at a bit of extra breakfast.”

I stood and wrapped up the remaining sausages and bread rolls in a napkin, handing them to Gimli who stashed them in his pack.  I took a step toward the door of my chambers, then for a moment I paused, turning back to face my comrades.

“Legolas, Gimli,” I began, “there is something that I would ask you.  Do not dread to answer with the truth.  I vow it will do no harm to you or any of your friends, for me to know your truthful answer.”

They looked at me in question, and I forced my way past my hesitation and asked, “Do you support Aragorn’s claim to the kingship of Gondor?”

The two of them gazed at me taken-aback.  Gimli opened his mouth, but before he could answer, Legolas cast a silencing glance at him and then spoke in his usual quiet tones, “We are not Men of Gondor.  It is not our place to choose if we will have him as King or no.  This I know, that if Gondor seeks a king, it could wish for none better.”

Gimli put in, “The Army of the Dead fought for him.  They heeded his call, that he made as Isildur’s Heir.  On the Paths of the Dead I was put to shame: Gimli Gloin’s Son, who had deemed himself more tough than Men, and hardier under earth than any Elf.  But neither did I prove; and I was held to the road only by the will of Aragorn.”

“And by the love of him also,” said Legolas.  “He is a king indeed, Boromir – if it is a king that you seek.”

“Aye,” I murmured, gazing on their faces and praying that the day would never come when we would face each other in war.  “That is where the question lies.  Some will seek a king, and some will not.  And I do not know what will become of Gondor, with her future hanging in the balance.”

I shook my head and managed a smile.  “But I do know what will become of me, if I am late for this council.  Let us be gone, for I would not start the day with another round of my father’s scolding.”

The three of us set out on foot for the Sixth Level and the Houses of Healing.  As we approached the Sixth Level’s gate, Legolas stopped and gazed into the morning sky, where two white sea-birds wheeled and cried.

“Look,” exclaimed Legolas, “gulls!  They are flying far inland.  A wonder they are to me and a trouble to my heart.  Never in all my life had I met them, until we came to Pelargir, and there I heard them crying in the air as we rode to the battle of the ships.  Then I stood still, forgetting war in Middle Earth, for their wailing voices spoke to me of the Sea.  The Sea!  Alas, I have not yet beheld it.  But deep in the hearts of all my kindred lies the sea-longing, which it is perilous to stir.”

“Come,” Gimli said gruffly, clasping the Elf’s arm.  “There are countless things still to see in Middle Earth, and great works to do.  But if all the fair folk take to the havens, it will be a duller world for those who are doomed to stay.”

We walked on together upon the path that had grown all too familiar to me, through the entrance to the Houses of Healing, up the stairs and down the corridors toward Merry’s room, and my brother’s.

The Houses themselves seemed altered, though if it were only the light of the morning that wrought the seeming change, or something else, I could not in truth have told.  Deep below the level of my hearing there seemed some added murmur of life; a stirring as though last night the Houses had been dead, and now life and hope breathed within them once more.

We were nearly to Merry’s door.  And then, just as had occurred the evening before when Imrahil, Éomer, Svip and I arrived from the field of battle, the Chief Healer came running up the staircase from his office, out of breath and with panicked desperation in his gaze.

The Warden of the Houses skidded to a halt at my side.  “My Lord!” he gasped out.  “I am glad to see you!  The Lord your father is here, and he – ”

From beyond the closed door to Faramir’s room, down the corridor, came a sudden crash, as of some piece of crockery shattering on the floor.  I heard a woman’s startled scream, and then the voices of two Men, raised in furious anger: the voice of Faramir, and of our father.