Believe it or not, here is the next chapter – only three weeks after I posted the previous one!  I can’t guarantee this kind of miracle for the next one, but I’ll do my best.

To anyone who’s trying to figure out how much more of this tale there is, I will end the suspense: if things remain as I think they will, there are twenty-six chapters to this book, including a brief-ish epilogue.  So, six more chapters to go.  I don’t know if that’s good news or bad, but at least you’ll know it’s not ending quite yet!

Happy reading, I hope!

Chapter Twenty:  The Eye of the Enemy

            As I broke through the water into the night air, I saw Svip close by me, eyes fixed on me in unblinking concern.  He must have been swimming beside me all the while when I was below, though I had seen him not.

            I tried to form a reassuring smile.  Then I turned and swam for the quay.  In the heaviness of my heart, my limbs felt like lead.

            I sat on our usual steps, my legs still in the water, and I stared across the Great River.

            Somewhere there, in the darkness beyond Anduin, lay the butchered corpses of eighty Ithilien Rangers, scattered on the boulders of the Mountains of Shadow. 

I bit back a curse at the thought that we could not even make any attempt to retrieve their bodies.  Even if my father were willing to tell me exactly where he had sent them, and if his vision had told him with any precision where their corpses could be found, retrieving them was a hope that could not be.  We could not risk more Men in that attempt – even if enough Men could be spared from our works of defence.  There they must lie, playthings of the sun and the wind, a banquet for the wolves and the crows and the flies. 

Or worse, my mind added, and I nearly cried out in grief as I thought of it, a banquet for the Orcs themselves.

And their Lord who had created their doom cared nothing for it. 

I tried to tell myself that my father’s choice was no different from the other tactical decisions that any commander must make.  Too often all of us faced the decision to sacrifice some that we might save the greater number. 

Was my father right?  Had he indeed made the proper choice as Steward, and I, too swayed by my emotions, had closed my eyes against seeing that?

But, no.  It could not be, it could never be, the proper choice to send seven thousands to the Morannon, there to lay down their lives for the sake of a forlorn hope that the Steward himself sought to destroy.

The Men of Gondor and Rohan, of Dol Amroth and the Outlands, deserved better from their Steward.  They deserved to know what they were dying for.  And they deserved that their Steward be in common cause with them, not coldly spending their lives in a campaign that he alone had chosen, with no consent from the Council or the Captains or the thousands he sent to die.

Svip had scuttled out of the water and sat dripping on the step beside me.  Now he ventured, apprehensive yet determined, “Boromir?  Can you tell me what’s happened?”

I groaned and rubbed my hands over my face.  “I don’t know,” I said.  But, I thought, I had to talk this through or else I would run mad.  Perhaps in speaking of it I might make some sense of it in my thoughts.  The Valar knew I could see little enough sense in it now.

Briefly and bitterly I recounted to Svip the interview that had just passed, feeling that I betrayed my Lord and father with each word I spoke.  But, I told myself, if there were any betrayal to be found in these events, it was my father’s betrayal, not mine. 

“Valar,” I murmured, when I had finished the tale, “I still cannot believe it of him.  He has not done this before, I am certain he has not.  He would not cast aside our Men’s lives so cynically, he would not hurl from him the decisions of the Captains and the Council, to rule with no check upon the power of his whim – or maybe I am wrong.  Perhaps he has always been like this, and I have been too blind a fool ever to see it.”

“No,” Svip said, shaking his head vehemently.  “No, I don’t think that’s it at all.  These are worse times than Gondor’s ever faced before, aren’t they?  So they’ve driven your father farther than he’s been driven before.  He still believed he was working for Gondor’s safety.  Isn’t that what you always say is the most important thing, the only thing that matters?  If it drove him to do things he hasn’t done before – things maybe he shouldn’t have done – he was still fighting for his country, for his people, for all of us.”

            “It should not be the only thing that matters,” I whispered.  “There have to be – there must be – some things that we will not do.”  But as I said it the voice of my self-doubting sliced at me, insisting again in my father’s voice that even had I murdered the Ringbearer it would have been a small price to pay for bringing the Ring to Gondor, perhaps to secure our people’s salvation.

            Perhaps.  Only perhaps.  And perhaps instead to secure for us no salvation at all, to send us onward to our doom with none of our people saved and with innocent blood on my hands and my soul.

            Svip said, “What about the Ring?” 

I started guiltily, wondering for a moment if Svip had read my thoughts.

“What do you mean?” I asked him.  “What about it?”

“Maybe it made him do this.  Maybe it wasn’t his choice at all; maybe it was the Ring’s.”

I sighed.  “Svip.  I appreciate what you’re trying to do.  But that explanation won’t work.  The Ring isn’t here; you think it could reach out and control him all the way from Mordor?”

“Why not?  Didn’t the Dark Lord make the Ring so he could rule everything?  Why shouldn’t it be strong enough to find your father’s thoughts, even from so far away?  If he was thinking about it anyway, then maybe his visions were bringing him closer to it, so it could reach him.  What if it caught him in a vision and made him believe its thoughts were his?”

“It’s a ring,” I scoffed.  “It does not think.”

“How do you know it doesn’t?  It isn’t just any ring!  If it were just a ring, there wouldn’t be armies and Wizards and Nazgûl running all over the world because of it!  Wouldn’t the Dark Lord have made it to fight for him even if it wasn’t with him?  Maybe – maybe the Ring knows what Pippin and Merry’s friends are trying to do to it.  Maybe it knows it could be destroyed soon, and it’s fighting to save itself, and it caught your father’s thoughts in one of his visions and it’s holding on to him, trying to make him save it.”

Svip tilted his head to the side, studying my face.  My expression must have been clear for him to read, for he asked, “You don’t want to believe that, do you?  Why don’t you?”

I sighed again and looked away from him, watching how the torchlight off the Harlond Docks glimmered in the darkness of the River.

I said, “Magic is not the only explanation for why a Man might seek to take the Ring.”

I had never told Svip how I parted from the Ringbearer.  I had never told him, and I’d told myself that it didn’t matter.  It had nothing to do with him; it was nothing he needed to know.

Now I told myself that had been a lie.

Would he still think me a Man worthy of his friendship if he knew what I had done, if he knew how cruelly I had betrayed a friend whom I was sworn to protect?

“Svip – I have not told you what passed just before we met.  Just before I died.”

The questioning gaze from Svip’s big, trusting eyes almost unmanned my resolution to tell him of it.  Then I thought of the last look I had seen in Frodo’s eyes – shock and betrayal and horror.  I told myself I did not deserve to keep any friendship won by hiding the truth of what I had done.

In grim and hurried tones, staring down at the water, I went on.

“I was never certain, Svip, never sure of the truth of what the Wizard and the Elves were telling us.  Sometimes I thought it made sense; sometimes I thought it was madness, to let what everyone said was so strong a weapon pass from our grasp without trying to use it.  I thought it would be a safer wager to try our luck at wielding the Ring of Power ourselves, than to let it pass into the Dark Lord’s realm where it was most like simply to fall into his hands at last.

“I said as much, in Elrond Half-Elven’s council.  My words the Wise ones scorned and brushed aside.  But I could not put the thoughts aside so easily.  And when our paths were set to part – when Frodo would have led us to Mordor, and I meant to turn my steps to Gondor – I thought I could not let him go without trying once more to convince him that I was right.”

Were you not at the Council? Frodo’s voice asked me again in my memory.  We cannot use it, and what is done with it turns to evil.

Why not get rid of it?  Why not be rid of your doubt and fear?  You can lay the blame on me, if you will.  You can say that I was too strong and took it by force.  For I am too strong for you, Halfling.

I stared at my clenched fists, despising the words I had spoken then, despising my dread to tell Svip of them now.

I said, “He was not convinced.  And when he would not be convinced – I turned upon him.  I attacked him, sought to take the Ring from him.  If he had not escaped

using the Ring’s gift of invisibility, I do not know what I might have done to him.  I think if he had continued to fight me and had not given in to my will, I might have killed him.”

I tried to swallow back the sorrow that welled in me again, the grief and shame that had seized me there in the woods at Amon Hen.  Quietly I spoke, “I regretted my actions at once, when Frodo was gone.  I have regretted them ever since.  But regrets are not enough.  Even if the Ring could have saved Gondor – even that would not be enough to pay for Frodo’s blood, or for my broken word.”

“But you didn’t kill him,” Svip said in a voice that startled me with its excitement and eagerness, “you didn’t kill him, and – and I’m right!  I told you so, I told you, I’m right!”

I stared in confusion at Svip’s grinning face.  “What are you talking about?  You’re right about what?”

“I’m right about the Ring!  It made you attack the Ringbearer, and it made your father send Faramir’s Men after it.”  My frown darkened, and Svip frowned in puzzlement in return.  “It makes sense, doesn’t it?” he persisted.  “Why don’t you want to believe it?”

Bitterly I snapped, “Because I am still Man enough to admit my own failings, rather than trying to shove responsibility for them onto a damned ring!”

“What about your father?  You said you can’t believe he’s done this; you don’t believe he’s done anything like this before.  Doesn’t it make sense that he wouldn’t have done it, except for the Ring?  And if he wouldn’t have done it, if it was the Ring guiding his thoughts, then maybe the Ring was guiding your thoughts, too.  If it can reach your father across Mordor and the mountains and the River, couldn’t it reach you from a few feet away?”

“Svip, there’s no proof of any of this.”

“What kind of proof do you want?  Do you want so much to believe the Ring couldn’t control you, you’d rather believe you’d murder Frodo and your father would murder eighty of Gondor’s Men?”

“He didn’t murder them,” I said lamely.  But Svip’s arguments had struck me more than I wanted to admit.  My thoughts were swirling about each other like Nazgûl circling in my brain. 

I did not know which possibility was harder for me to accept. 

That he who had sent those Men to their deaths was the same father I had always thought I knew? 

Or that the Lord Denethor could be controlled by anything, let alone by a magic ring that was hundreds of leagues away?

And why not? my thoughts argued.  You may not want to believe it, but Svip could very well be right.

The Dark Lord did not forge just any trinket for himself.  It would not be called the Ring of Power for nothing. 

If you do not believe that it could control Men’s thoughts, why should you believe it would have any power at all – power to save Gondor, or to cast Gondor down?

            Svip was watching me expectantly.  I sighed.  “Svip,” I said, “if you are right about this – and I do say ‘if’ – I would not have any idea what to do about it.  My father is not like to take kindly to the suggestion that he could be controlled by the Enemy’s Ring, or by anything else.”

            My friend gave a helpless shrug. 

“Damn it to hell,” I murmured.  “I should not have left him.”  Though I did not know what I thought I could have accomplished if I had not left.  Whether the Steward had committed to the course he’d followed in soundness of mind, or under some manner of evil influence – or, I added grimly, if he had wandered onto dark pathways with his mind clouded by the dreadful pressures weighing upon him – in no case was he likely to listen to any arguments from me. 

I decided, “I’ll go back and try to speak with him again.  Although I am damned if I know what I am going to say to him.” 

I thought, I can hear it now.  By the way, My Lord, my friend Svip wants me to ask if you are under the Dark Lord’s control.

As it transpired, I had no need to decide what I would say to him.  Though I was none the happier for that reprieve.

When we came again to the King’s House, we were informed by the guards that my father had left shortly after I did.  He had headed, they believed, for the White Tower.  A check with the Tower guards at the level of my father’s office confirmed that the Steward had again climbed the Tower, to seclude himself in his chamber where custom and prudence both decreed that few would dare to disturb him.

I wondered if for this time I should throw custom and prudence aside.  Perhaps this was a time to go after him, pounding on the door and yelling at the top of my lungs, if need be, until he gave in and admitted me.

But again I ran against the question of what I could possibly say, or do. 

What was there to say that I had not said in our last encounter?  In his present mood, I shuddered to think of how he might react did I mention anything resembling Svip’s theory. 

And what else was there to do?  Even at the best of times it would infuriate him for me to be trailing after him, watching for any sign of instability or weakness.

Now, when already his nerves seemed frayed past the point of safety, what would he make of it did I reveal to him that I feared for his health and his sanity?

As Svip and I once again turned our steps down the Tower stairs, I said, “Let us seek out Master Cosimo.  He has more regular contact with my father than does any other Man.  He may have some insight on my father’s state of mind.  He may even have some usable advice.”

We found Cosimo in his chambers in the King’s House, near to my father’s quarters: a suite of fairly good size, but furnished with little more luxury than a prison cell.  About the only nod toward comfort or entertainment that he permitted himself was a fine chess set carved of mûmakil tusks, which in better times I knew he sometimes brought to the Steward’s chambers at my father’s request.  Cosimo even, on occasion, had won these chess matches with the Lord Steward, an achievement that very few others could boast.  The old seneschal had served my father long enough to know that even more than he detested losing, the Steward loathed the insulting dishonesty of anyone deliberately allowing him to win.

The chess set was in play as Svip and I arrived.  On this occasion the opposing generals were Master Cosimo and Pippin.

It was Pippin who opened the door, breaking into a startled grin at the sight of us.  Cosimo started to rise in order to bow, but I waved him back down, ordering, “Do not rise on my account, Master Cosimo.  You should torment your joints as little as possible.”

“Aye, My Lord,” Cosimo answered dourly, looking profoundly uncomfortable at staying seated while I was standing.  “Peregrin, fetch the chairs in the other room for Lord Boromir and Lord Svip.”

This gesture of respect also perhaps did not go quite as Master Cosimo wished, for in the end Svip and I both helped Pippin to bring out the chairs, rather than leaving the Hobbit to struggle with them on his own.  I could easily have carried both, but I left one for Pippin and Svip to lug out between them, looking a bizarrely mismatched pair of sedan chair-carriers.  

When we were seated and I had respectfully declined the seneschal’s offer of tea, we came at last to the purpose of my visit.  I spoke not of Rings of Power nor of enemy control, but asked only if there were anything Cosimo could tell me of my Lord father’s health or state of mind in these recent days.

The old Man gave a frown like a thundercloud.  “He has ascended the Tower again, My Lord,” was his bitter reply, “not even four hours from when he last descended from it!  And in that time he did not allow any of his attendants near him, to urge upon him any of the food that was prepared for him.  I believe while he was in his chambers he may have taken a little water, but that is all.  I do not know that he has any food or drink with him in his Tower chamber, although I pray that he does.  In these last days since the army departed, he has not touched any of the meals that we send up to him, nor will he open the door for those who bring them to him.  A curse is the only answer they receive, and often not even that, but only silence.”

I asked the seneschal, “This is different from his usual behaviour when he retreats to the Tower?”

“It is different, My Lord.  Before, he would usually open to those who requested admittance of him – though they could expect a bitter tongue-lashing for disturbing his seclusion.  We do not make a practice of interrupting him often.  Yet always before we knew that if there was sufficient need for him to be reached, he could be.  And before, in even the worst of times, he always took at least a little food and drink.  Even when he mourned for you, My Lord, the dishes returned to the kitchen with a fragment of their contents picked from them.  Now he will not even bestir himself to do that!”

  The seneschal went on, concern and anger vying in his face.  “I have spoken already of these things with Master Pelendur.  He attempted to see the Lord Steward when he descended this evening.  But when Pelendur first arrived at the Steward’s chambers, you were there in conference with him.  And when you had left and Master Pelendur sought admittance, the Steward himself stormed out of his chamber, snarled I know not what invective, and ordered the guards to detain Master Pelendur by force if he dared to follow the Lord Steward or attempt to stop him.  Our Lord then climbed again to the Tower, and we are back where we started.”

“Hell and damnation,” I murmured.  My Lord father’s impatience was legendary, but it was rare for him not to extend at least a little consideration to Master Pelendur.  The two of them grew up together, and Pelendur had been Chief Healer of the Army during Lord Denethor’s days as Steward’s Heir and Captain-General of Gondor.  Pelendur’s work was now devoted mainly to research.  There was little call for Pelendur to exercise his skills as Personal Healer to a Steward as impatient of physical weakness as my father.   

Yet always, I thought, my father had compelled himself to grant Pelendur admittance when the Healer sought it of him.  Even my father understood that if he were to rule Gondor as he should, he could not entirely ignore the health of his body.

Or at least, he had understood it before.

Grimly I requested that I be informed the moment my father next descended from the Tower.  But this time I went farther than that.  I told Master Cosimo, “I leave it to your judgement and to that of Master Pelendur.  If you feel that the time has come when he has been up there too long, when he can no longer in any safety go without sustenance, then summon me at once.  I will give my authority to break into his sanctum if need be.  It is not, of a certainty, the course that any of us would wish to follow.  But it may be that he will leave us no other choice.”

Two days passed before that summons came.

I spent the rest of that evening in conference with Húrin of the Keys, the Master of the Armoury, the Captain of the Guard, and Marshal Elfhelm.  It was for us to perform the difficult juggling trick of scraping together another two companies for the Osgiliath garrison, and equipping a squadron of the City Guard to provide some slight reinforcement for the Rohirrim’s patrols.

That precaution, at least, seemed unnecessary in the days that followed.  The Orcs were apparently none too eager now to bring the fight to us.  Traces of their continued presence were seen by the patrols and the Men of Emyn Arnen’s watchtower.  But for the moment they kept to their holes in the Mountains of Shadow.

At Osgiliath we laboured on, re-building the east wall.  The wall swiftly reached a height and strength that perhaps it had not known since the days of Steward Boromir, half a millennium in the past. 

I should have taken joy and pride in this accomplishment.  It had long been a dream of mine to rebuild Osgiliath, but never had the need to defend our frontiers permitted of enough Men to make so large a project worthwhile.  Now at least the east wall held again something of its eminence of old. 

In better times it might have seemed a beacon, a token of greater achievements ahead.  But for me the work seemed little beyond an ineffective attempt to distract myself, from my dread for my father and for our Men advancing on the Black Gate.

The day after my encounter with my father was spent again in training by Svip and the Lady Éowyn.  The number of horses under Éowyn’s instruction we had halved from eight to four, the other four being among the mounts for our increased patrols. 

The training, it seemed, was still going well, to judge by Svip’s report.  It was with effort that I forced myself to listen to him and to comment in the appropriate places.  My mind was filled with speculations on the cause of my father’s actions.  And it was filled as well with both hope and fear.

I hoped to receive word that the Steward had descended from the Tower on his own.  I feared that first would come the request from Cosimo and Pelendur, seeking authorisation to break into the Lord Steward’s eyrie.

It was needless to say that my father would be furious with us for taking such a liberty – if he were hale enough in body and mind to be furious.

I told myself that I looked forward to his fury.  It would be better, far better, than the alternatives.

In the afternoon of the second day, when Lady Éowyn was again on patrol and Svip was working with me upon the east wall, a Messenger from the Citadel rode to Osgiliath with a letter for me from Master Cosimo.

 The seneschal wrote that as the Lord Steward had not yet descended nor emerged to take any of the food brought to him by his attendants, Cosimo had again taken counsel with the Healer Pelendur.  The two of them judged that they could hold back no longer from demanding the Steward’s attention. 

Their attempts to bring him to his chamber door, or to illicit from him any reply whatever, had met with nothing but silence.

Cosimo entreated that I come at once to the White Tower, and that I give my authority for entering the Lord Steward’s chamber.

Svip and I rode at once for Minas Tirith.  Our route along the River felt to me that day long enough to drive me to madness.

My father’s silence, I told myself, need be no cause for fear.  Had not Cosimo told me that more often than not since our army’s departure, the Steward had not deigned to answer those who brought his meals to his door?  And he had still descended from the Tower, that silence notwithstanding.

But it is another two days, I thought.  Another two days, when he has perhaps had nothing to eat or to drink.  And if they have heard nothing from him, not one word …

In the darkest corners of my mind lurked the fear that they had heard no word from him because he no longer lived to answer.

It seemed that rumour had spread throughout the Citadel of the unprecedented action I was about to authorise.  The nervous whispers of the guards broke off guiltily as the Men at each guard post caught sight of us. 

In the uppermost guardroom they were not whispering.  The two posted here sat in grim silence.  They leapt up to salute as I climbed into view with Svip scurrying behind me.

“My Lord,” said the younger of the two guards, “we are all praying, Lord, that there is nothing amiss.”

I nodded, and told him after a moment’s thought, “You had best come up with us.  We may require your assistance.”

Assistance for what, none of us wanted to say or to think.

The trap door was standing open, and those above were already apprised of our arrival.  We emerged to find the guardsman on duty on the Tower roof, Master Pelendur, Pippin, and Master Cosimo.  Pippin and Pelendur hastened forward to greet me, and I noted a large, hard-sided leathern case hanging from Pelendur’s shoulder.  The guard held back respectfully, and Master Cosimo, leaning on a staff, did not move from where he stood by the door to my father’s chamber. 

I thought, indeed, that it was likely he could not move, not at least without a great deal of pain.  I was astounded and shocked to see him up here at all, for the thousand steps and the ladder at the end of them must have been torture to him.

“Cosimo,” I said, “you should not have come up here; it was foolish.  You will injure yourself, and you know my father does not wish that.”

“I have to be here, My Lord,” the old Man replied.  His tone and expression both seemed a mixture of fierce pride and barely-controlled grief.

“Very well,” I told him quietly.  “I thank you.”  Cosimo, I knew, would think there no need for such thanks.  He had been my father’s seneschal nigh on seventy-five years.  He would think it a personal failure if he were not here – now that, as must have occurred to him as well as to me, the end might be come at last.

The end is not come, I insisted to myself.  It is not.  There is some other explanation to it; it is not what we are dreading.

My father is still alive.

I asked, though I knew the answer, “You have already attempted to attract his attention?”

“We have, My Lord,” Master Pelendur said grimly.  “A good many times.”  The Healer looked little better than the seneschal, though he was vastly more fit to make the climb.  As the Personal Healer to the Steward, he would think it his own failure if what we feared proved to be true.

Pelendur continued, “We have only awaited your approval to go in; the Corporal here is confident that he can deal with the lock.”

“Well, that is, I guess that I can, My Lord,” the guard said in some confusion, blushing at any possible suggestion that he was in the habit of picking the Citadel’s locks.

Svip and Pippin both drew close to me.  All were watching me, and I knew there was no longer any excuse for delay.

Turning from their dread-filled faces, I pounded my fist upon the door.

“My Lord!” I shouted.  “Sir, it is Boromir.  Please, I must speak with you, My Lord.”

We waited.  Not a sound or a stir of movement answered.

I pounded on the door again, yelling, “Sir, I entreat you.  Give me some answer.  Give some sign that you are there and you can hear us; that is all we ask of you.”

Again nothing.  Pippin gave a tiny whimper, the only sound beneath the calling of the wind and the steady snapping of the Banner of the Stewards.

“Sir, I am sorry.  If you do not answer, we must enter without your leave.  We wish only to speak with you, Father.  Please, My Lord, answer me!”

No answer came.  I looked at the blazing-eyed Cosimo, trembling now as he leaned more heavily upon his staff, and at grey-faced Master Pelendur, his expression as grim as though he gazed on a battlefield strewn with the dead and dying.  Looking past them to the guards, I nodded.

“Do it,” I commanded.  “I take full responsibility.”

The rest of us stepped aside while the guards moved reluctantly forward.  The Corporal had drawn his dagger and used it now to pry into the mechanism of the lock. 

I glanced down at my small friends, both of them staring in fascinated fear as the guard turned his dagger in the lock.  Briefly I patted Pippin’s head, receiving a desperately faint smile from him in return, then I put my hand on Svip’s shoulder.  I could feel him shivering beneath my hand.

With a portentous thwack that I think made all of us jump, the latch drew back.  Looking to me, the Corporal got swiftly to his feet.  He and his comrade stepped away from the door as though it were the entrance to the Dark Tower itself.

I walked to the door and pulled it open, fighting not to think of any of the possibilities that might await us.

The only light in the room came in slivers between the boards of the shuttered windows, and through the now-open door.  Dust motes danced in the column of light.  As I walked within, the room appeared to me unchanged from the few times I had seen it.  There was the big table and the dark carven chair, unsoftened by any cushion that might pander to human weakness.  There was the canvas cot, folded now and leaned against the wall, there the two glass-fronted bookcases with their meticulous stacks of rolled maps and the massive, red leather-bound volumes of the Chronicles of Gondor.  On the walls hung the same ancient tapestries, their faded threads forming scenes of Númenor and Arnor that seemed to move in ghostly life as air sweeping through the door set the tapestries stirring gently.

There was no sign of the Lord my father.

The others had cautiously followed me.  Pippin gasped out, “Where is he?”

“He was here, My Lord!” one of the guards exclaimed.  “All of us will swear to it!  He has not descended in these two days; he could not have descended without our seeing!”

“There is an attic room,” I said.  “I should remember how to reach it.”

I strode across the room to the tapestry showing Tar-Minastir’s army setting forth to the aid of Gil-galad.  Pulling the tapestry aside, I saw indeed the knot in the wood that concealed the latch of the hidden door. 

It was thirty years since I had last tried that door, since Faramir had shown to me the secret hiding place he’d discovered in which to read his books undisturbed.  Faramir’s discovery had been made while the Steward and I were on a tour of the border fortresses.  Father caught us in his attic chamber shortly after he and I returned, and the punishments he decreed upon us – Faramir forbidden to enter the library for a month, and I banned from taking part in the School of Arms’ fencing competition – had fulfilled their purpose of ensuring that we would never venture into the hidden chamber again.

Inflict whatever punishment you like on me now, Father, I thought, as I took hold of the latch and pulled the door open to its soft creak of protest.  I will miss as many fencing competitions as you please.  Only I beg you, be alive to inflict the punishment.

As I’d remembered, a rough, ladder-like staircase led to a square opening cut in the floorboards above.  Pale, dusty light filtered down through the opening, from the un-shuttered windows in the Tower’s peak.

I called, “Father, can you hear me?  It is Boromir.  If you are there, please answer me, My Lord.”

Again no answer came.  I turned to the others, holding back in hesitation near the chamber’s outer door.

“I will go up first alone,” I said, “but stand ready to follow at once, should I call.”

As I started up the steps, my thoughts grimly reminded me that there was no way Father could have failed to hear us, if he were up there and conscious to hear.  Sound travelled easily from the main chamber to the one above.  When Father caught Faramir and me, we had heard him from the moment he walked into the room below.

I reached the opening and climbed up through it, pausing on the step below the upper floor.

When Faramir showed me the attic room, it had been empty of furniture and of everything else.  Now it held a small, simple square table and an unadorned chair.  In that chair sat my father, facing toward me but with no sign of seeing me at all.  He was staring instead at something on the table before him: a smooth, black globe of glass or some type of stone, just larger than he could span with his two hands.  His hands were pressed to either side of the globe.  He sat so still that I feared indeed he had died, and rigor had frozen him in his place in a mockery of life.

I stepped into the room, ducking to keep from knocking my head on the sloping roof.

“Father?” I asked softly as I walked toward him.  

He still made no move or sound, but as I reached his side I saw that he was breathing, with a slight rise and fall of the robes over his chest.  As I watched, I saw him blink, then his eyes returned to their glassy stare.

“Father,” I whispered again.  “Please, speak to me, My Lord.”

Slowly I reached toward his hand.

I touched the back of his hand, and suddenly he moved.

Springing from his chair, he yanked the black globe out of my reach, holding it up by his shoulder as though he meant to hurl it at me.

“Stay back!” he hissed.  “Do not touch it, do not look at it!  You do not wish to see.”

“My Lord,” I protested, struggling to achieve a calming tone in my voice, “I will not touch it.  I only wish to talk with you, sir.”

“Talk!” he laughed wildly, “talk!  We have had talk enough and more!  There was talk enough in the Council of the Wise, when they sent their poor fool of a Ringbearer to deliver the Enemy’s weapon to his waiting hands!  Talk will not save your beloved Ringbearer!  Talk will not save your brother, when he rides into battle before the Black Gate!”

In the corner of my eye I saw someone appear through the opening from the stairs; Master Pelendur, I thought, though I could not be sure.  Even if it were Pelendur, I could not think of anything he might be able to do.  I very much doubted that the Healer would have any better luck at calming the Lord Steward than I was having.

“Will you not share the daymeal with me, sir?” I said.  “You must be in need of food and drink; you have been up here two days.  We will dine together and then if it pleases you, we will discuss our next moves – ”   

“Our next moves will be to die!  That, I think, we can achieve without much discussion!”

“Please, Father, if you will only be calm – ”

“Calm!  Aye, Master Boromir, aye, I will be calm when I am dead!  All of Middle Earth will soon be calm!”

“Sir, while we live there is yet hope.”

“Is there, My Lord?” he fired back mockingly, “is there, indeed?  Tell that to your brother and your uncle and your damned fool of a Grey Wanderer!  Tell that to your Ringbearer and his lackey, as they lie in the torture chambers of Barad-dûr!”  

I heard a grief-stricken cry from Pippin, over by the stairs.  Hoping somehow that if we kept talking, the conversation would turn until my father was in a calmer frame of mind, I asked, “My Lord, will you tell me what it is you have seen?”

“Dwarf-coat, Elf-cloak, blade of the downfallen West, and a spy from the little rat-land of the Shire!  Sauron does not love spies.  Now he will endure the slow torment of years, as long and slow as the arts of the Great Tower can contrive.  The drums are rolling.  The Gate is opening, Boromir.  They are trapped, all of them, they are surrounded, the White Tree and the White Horse and the Silver Swan.  They have drawn back to the mounds; seas of enemies around them, circling them, ten times their number, closing in.”

“Sir,” I argued, “you have told me often that visions do not always show the truth of what is, or will be.  This doom you have seen may not be certain, it may yet be turned aside – ”

Pippin cried out suddenly from the direction of the stairwell, “Boromir, it’s a seeing-stone!  A palantír!  Like Saruman had and the Dark Lord used to talk to him!”

With jaw dropped, I stared at the night-black globe my father clutched in his hands.

Pippin was still yelling desperately, “It’s a palantír, the Dark Lord can use it, he could be using it to see us, he could be here now!”

His eyes wild as those of a cornered animal, my father followed my gaze to the palantír, then looked again at me.

Striving to put aside my amazement and dread, I tried again.  “Sir, let us dine together.  Even you must have meat and drink, My Lord.  Let us eat, and perhaps you will take a little rest; then we will be better able to meet the challenges that face us – ”

“You will take it,” he said, in a strange voice, of accusation but also of dread.  “You will send Men to take it while I sleep.  You will take it, but you must not.  You do not know what you will see.”

“Father, no one will take it.  It is safe here; no Man will take it from you.  Only come and eat with me, My Lord.  We need not descend from the Tower; we can take our daymeal in your room below, if you will.  Then you need not be far from it, you can check that it is safe, you can see for yourself that no one goes near to it – ”

My father whispered, “I cannot risk it.  You do not know, you cannot know, what it might show, what we might miss if I am not here to see.  If there is a chance, any chance – would you condemn your brother, all our people; would you have me condemn us all to death by turning my gaze aside now?”

“Then keep it with you, sir,” I said.  “Keep it by you while we eat; then you will see, if it shows anything that we must learn.  Please, sir, you must keep up your strength.  Only take a little food and drink, you will be revived, you will have the strength you need to take up the fight again.”

A flicker of uncertainty in his eyes, my father glanced toward the palantír.

The moment his eyes left me, I lunged to grab it from him.

Pippin screamed out, “Boromir, no, don’t touch it!”

For the briefest instant one of my hands brushed against its smooth and cold surface.  Then my father lurched away from me, ducking back into the shelter of the down-sloping roof and drawing the sword that he wore.  I managed to jump back, scarce an inch from getting my father’s sword-point in my gut.

“You will not take it,” he declared, his ringing voice such as would befit the field of battle.  “You will not take it while I live.”

A Man who had been standing by the stairs was now starting slowly and cautiously toward him.  It was one of the guards, I thought, though I did not want to draw my father’s gaze to him by looking at him directly. 

The Man’s caution had not been enough.  The Lord Steward suddenly wheeled toward him, swinging his sword in a great arc and causing the guard to leap back and smack his head on the roof.

Fearing that my father would follow up his advantage and skewer his own guardsman, I drew my sword and yelled at him, “Turn, My Lord, and face me!”

Lord Denethor wheeled again with a bitter laugh, the palantír held high in his left hand and his sword brandished in his right.  “Ha!” he cried.  “You show yourself in your true colours now.  All your sweet words, your kind protestations, the lovingkindness of the dutiful son.  All now shown for what they are: the blandishments of a traitor, the noxious lies of one who is the slave of the Enemy!”

I couldn’t get a very good look at them, but I was fairly certain that my comrades clustered by the stairs were making gestures at me to signify that I should keep him busy and they would grab him.  At any event, that was the sort of plan I would try if I were in their place.  So I yelled in challenge, “Fight me, My Lord!  Let he who loses be the Enemy’s slave, and he who wins, take both the palantír and the White Rod of the Steward.”

“We shall all be his slaves soon enough,” my father snarled.  “His slaves, or dead; and I think the dead will have the better of the bargain.”

My father made several thrusts at me, which I parried with relative ease.  He had been drawn out from his defensive position under the slope of the roof; now I wondered if I might drive him back there, to possibly hit his head on that same ceiling.  But where the roof was lower, it would be more difficult for the others to reach him. 

As I was contemplating this, he made a feint, followed by a thrust that caught me by surprise.  I managed to parry just short of finding his sword in my sternum.

I was probably stronger than my Lord father, simply by dint of our respective ages.  But I was deluded if I thought myself the more cunning fighter.  My odds were not improved by the fact that I was trying not to kill him, whilst he at that moment seemed perfectly happy to kill me.

Distract him, I thought.  If my companions felt they had not yet seen an opportune moment to strike, it was up to me to provide one for them.

I started to fall back, retreating a step for each thrust that I parried.  The lure worked, and he followed me, attacking with ever-greater ferocity – and turning his back more fully on the guards, the Healer, and the halflings.

Some noise of their movement alerted him, and the Steward turned, swinging again at one of the guardsmen.  But this time the Man had drawn his own sword, and he parried the blow.  Before my father was able to set himself on guard once more, the others hurled themselves upon him: the other guard seizing his sword-arm and Master Pelendur grabbing his left arm, yet holding the palantír aloft.  In a blur of motion at our feet, Svip and Pippin launched themselves at him, each seizing hold of one of his legs.

He gave a yell of fury as he struggled in their grasp.  I leapt into the fight, striking his sword with my own with all the force I could summon.  I thought I could feel his grip on the sword weaken.  I caught his blade near the hilt with my swordguard, twisted, and the sword was wrenched from his hand.

My father was yelling in rage, “Traitors!  Renegades!  Minions of Barad-dûr!  What has he promised you for this treachery?  Whatever he promised, you will not live to collect it!  He will slay you himself.  He knows that servants who betray their old master may next betray their new one.  He will peel your lives from you through long decades of torment!  As you die, think of Denethor Son of Ecthelion, the Lord whom you betrayed!”

A change was coming over the palantír.  It was ink-black no longer.  Deep within it grew a red glow, as though a fire burned in the heart of it and was spreading now to swallow the entire globe.

“I’m sorry, Father,” I said.  I sheathed my sword and took hold of the globe with both hands.  With all my strength, I pulled at it, and I felt my father’s grasp slipping from off the black, fiery orb.

It slid free of his hand, and I staggered back with it in both of mine.  My father gave a roaring scream of fury and madness.

In a surge of strength he tore loose of the guard and Master Pelendur.  Though Pippin and Svip still clung to his legs, he launched himself at me, closing his hands about my neck.

Only for an instant we grappled thus.  I hurled the palantír aside, and heard a crack as though all the floor would shatter beneath us.  I brought up my hands and dragged my father’s hands from my neck.  Before he could leap at me again, I closed my right fist and struck him in the jaw, praying in my thoughts not to hurt him badly, and that he would forgive me.

He staggered backward, still dragging Svip and Pippin with him.  Master Pelendur caught him by the shoulders. 

My father blinked at me.  His eyes seemed cloudy and only half-conscious.  Still supporting him with one arm, Pelendur brought a goblet to the Steward’s lips, urging him to drink.

He obeyed.  As Master Pelendur brought the goblet down again, the Lord Steward put a hand to his forehead, then gazed about him in confusion. 

The Healer looked down at Pippin and Svip, still clinging to the Steward’s legs.  Gently he said, “I think it will be all right for you to let go of him now.”

The two halflings did so with alacrity, both scrambling to their feet and running to my side.

My father glanced down at them, then again at me.  I saw him stagger a little.  He looked sharply at Pelendur, with accusation in his gaze.  But before he could speak, his head was already drooping.  He clutched to Pelendur’s shoulder in a bid to hold himself upright.

“Guards,” Pelendur ordered quietly, “take him to the room below.  I saw a cot against the wall …?”

“Aye,” confirmed the one of our comrades who had not taken part in the struggle: Master Cosimo, standing in the stairwell and staring at the Lord Steward in undisguised horror.  He said, “I’ll set it up.”  The old Man made haste to hobble down the stairs, his staff thudding hollowly against each step.

“The sleeping draught I gave him should last at least three hours,” Pelendur informed me, as the guards gingerly took the Steward from his arms.  My father seemed fully unconscious now, slumping against one of the guards.  There was some relief on their faces as they made shift to pick him up and carry him to the stairs.

Pelendur followed the guards and their burden.  Meantime my two small friends were warily investigating a perfect round hole that had been torn through the floor beside me, showing clear into the room below.

“The palantír,” Pippin said in a shaking voice.  “It broke through the floor.”  He looked up at me in alarm.  “We mustn’t let anyone touch it.”

I nodded.  The guards, from the sound of things, had made it to the lower room, and the top of Pelendur’s head was just moving out of sight in the stairwell.  I hastened to follow, Pippin and Svip scurrying at my heels.

In my father’s chamber, Pelendur and Cosimo both knelt by the cot where the Steward lay.  Cosimo held one of my father’s hands, ignoring again the pain that must be punishing him for kneeling thus.  Master Pelendur lifted each eyelid to check on the Steward’s eyes.  He sighed and spoke in a low voice to Cosimo, then he attempted to smooth Lord Denethor’s disordered black hair back from his gaunt, pallid face.

The two guards stood by uncertainly.  One of them, the Corporal, was staring at the table – or rather, at something that sat upon it.

The palantír, after rending through the floorboards above, had apparently come to a gentle rest at the table’s edge.  I looked up at the hole in the ceiling, then at the shining dark orb, which seemed to have landed without causing any damage to the table beneath it.

The globe seemed almost entirely black again now, but there was still something, a glow of red smouldering at the centre of it.

Pippin gave a little hiss of “No!  Don’t!” as the guard took a step toward it.

“Do not touch it,” I ordered.  “Do not touch it, and stay back from it.”

“Aye, My Lord, gladly,” said the Corporal, hurriedly stepping back to stand beside his comrade.

I looked down to the pale and haunted-eyed Hobbit.

“Pippin,” I asked, “what do you know of this thing?”

He hesitated fearfully.  When he spoke, it was in a rush, his words tumbling one over the other. 

“It’s like the one Saruman had, at Orthanc.  You remember, Gandalf and Aragorn spoke of it, at the council.  The one at Orthanc – the Dark Lord was using it to give his orders to Saruman.  That Gríma Wormtongue threw it at us from a tower window, and it fell ever so far and it landed on stone, but it didn’t break.  I picked it up and gave it to Gandalf, but I was – I was curious about it, and when Gandalf was asleep I snuck it from him and I – and I looked at it.”

“What happened?” Svip whispered.

A great shudder suddenly shook the young Hobbit.  He covered his face with his hands.

Awkwardly I put my hand on his shoulder.  Pippin’s voice was muffled but still plain to hear, as he went on, “He spoke to me!  He spoke to me, in my head.  It was like being stabbed with knives.”  Pippin gulped in a breath and lowered his hands from his face.  “Gandalf said there wasn’t much harm done, that I hadn’t told him anything.  But – it’s got to be put away somewhere, where nobody will touch it.  We mustn’t let anyone look in it, ever.”

I looked over at my father, quiet and still upon the cot.

His bone-white face, the anguished concern in Cosimo’s gaze, the grim set of Master Pelendur’s jaw, all blurred before my eyes as I thought of what this discovery of ours must mean.

I thought, Svip’s theory was right.

The notion that the Dark Lord’s Ring could reach out to us from Mordor and somehow take hold of my Lord father’s thoughts, had stretched my credulity to the breaking point.  But this, that the agent of his control should be not the Ring but one of the seven seeing-stones, was only too easy for me to believe.

 The palantíri were created that their masters might communicate one with the other.  If one were in my father’s grasp and another were in Sauron’s, it took no great leap of understanding to see how the insinuations of the Dark Lord might work their way into my father’s mind.

 Rage was welling in me, though I told myself it was naïvety and foolishness to waste my time on that emotion.

What did you expect?  I demanded of myself.  The Lord Sauron has never shown himself an honourable opponent.  He wishes only to win.  The rules of combat invented by mere Men are nothing to him.  You cannot be feeling betrayed that the Dark Lord would use all the tools at his command, that he would fight on the field and in the homes of his enemies alike.

But the thought of how my father must have been trapped set fury burning within me. 

The Enemy had used, as the lure to ensnare him, his need to learn all he could to help his country.  That which had guided him through his life, his love and concern for our people, was become the trap that had brought him down.

“Boromir,” Svip whispered urgently, tugging on my sleeve and seeing, no doubt, the rage that must have shown clear on my face.  “Boromir, be careful, you don’t want to do anything rash – ”

They were sensible words, but I cared nothing for them. 

“Bastard,” I muttered, staring toward the seeing-stone.  “Filthy, bloody bastard.”

I shook free from Svip’s hand and strode to the table where sat the palantír.  I gazed in hatred at its smooth black surface and the red glow spreading from its core.

Pippin shouted, “No, Boromir, don’t!” as I drew my sword, raised it high and sliced it down upon the dark, gleaming orb.

Our tragedy was transformed for a moment into comedy of the most farcical kind. 

The palantír, far from shattering beneath the blow, instead slipped from under my sword, and the blade was embedded in the table.  Meantime the seeing-stone shot free like the missile from a catapult.  It slammed into the wall near the door and ricocheted back again to fly the breadth of the room, causing all of us to scatter, duck or throw ourselves to the floor as the palantír shot past.

The stone hit the far wall and dropped to the floor.  There it rolled across the room again, until, like a well-trained dog, it came to a halt at my feet.

Pippin was yelling, “Boromir, I told you, it won’t break, you can’t break it – ”

I listened to him no more than to Svip.

Feeling I would choke on my fury and outrage, knowing my actions were those of a fool and a child but not bringing myself to care, I picked up the stone of seeing and shouted at it as I clutched it in my hand.

“Do not touch my father!”  I yelled.  “Do not touch my father!  If you hurt him again, I will kill you!  I will kill you!”

The crimson fire within it was spreading, burning away the last of the blackness.  If some answer might have come to me from the master of the stone, I do not know, for I did not wait to hear it.  With a wordless shout of rage, I brought back my hand and hurled the palantír from me, through the open door.  It soared across the Tower battlement and vanished over the parapet’s edge.

Svip and Pippin both ran to me.  The Hobbit pummelled my arm with his fists, crying wildly, “I told you, I told you, it won’t break, it’s down there, someone will find it, someone will pick it up!”

I stared down at my young friend, feeling my anger ebb into a feeling of weary emptiness.  I groaned, “Bloody hell.”

I wrenched my sword free of the table, sheathed it and hastened onto the battlement.  I leaned over the parapet, seeking some sight of the palantír.  Pippin and Svip had hurried out with me, but were too short by far to add their eyes to the search.

“Can you see it?” Pippin asked.

“No – wait,” I said.  “Yes.  There it is.”  Cold dread rushed through me at the sight of the black globe far below, looking as harmless as a child’s ball.  “Up against the Citadel wall, near the Court of the Fountain.”  I looked for the Men on guard duty and found them in their places, two by the Citadel Gate and two at the entrance to the Tower.

“No one’s near it at the moment,” I went on, “the guards must not have seen it fall.  Damn,” I thought aloud, “We need a place of safety for it, where none is like to find it – ”  I shook my head and added in a whisper, “And whence my father will not be able to retrieve it.” 

A nightmare image leapt into my thoughts of the Steward recovering consciousness, talking or fighting his way free of whatever attendants were with him, and going unerringly to wherever I might have concealed the palantír, in treasury strong-box, storeroom vault or dungeon cell. 

I murmured, “Valar help me, I do not want it anywhere near him.”

Svip spoke up suddenly, “What about in the River?  Like the – like the Enemy’s weapon?  In Mithrandir’s story it was in a river for years on years, before that Gollum found it.  I can go get it and take it and bury in the mud, in the River – if Pippin will come with me,” he added.  “I won’t be able to carry it, if I go to the River as a horse.”

Pippin nodded.  “I’ll go with you,” he said emphatically.

I hesitated as I looked at my two friends, wanting to leap at their offer but dreading to put them in the palantír’s way.   

“You will be cautious?” I asked them.  “You will not touch it directly, nor look into it?”  That advice was pretty rich, coming from me, but my comrades loyally did not point that out to me.

“I promise,” said Pippin.  “I can wrap it in my cloak.  I never want to look into one of those things again.  I wouldn’t look at it – not for all the mushrooms in Middle Earth!”

“And you, Svip?  You promise it as well?”

“I promise,” the water creature answered solemnly.  “I won’t look in it or touch it.  I swear it by – by my loyalty to your father.”

It might have seemed a strange oath to take, coming from one who had met my father scarce ten days past.  But I did not doubt for a moment that Svip meant it in faith and truth.

“All right,” I said.  “Go, but be careful!”

I watched as they scrambled down the ladder into the guardroom below.  As Svip and Pippin ran for the Tower stairs and vanished from my sight, I called through the trapdoor to the guard, “The Lord Steward has been taken ill; we will soon be bringing him through here.  Stand ready to give any assistance necessary.”

As the guard gave his startled but fervent agreement, I turned with heavy heart back to my father’s chamber.

Those within had recovered themselves from any disorder caused by my foolish assault on the palantír.  Cosimo and Pelendur still crouched by my father, watching over him in concern and helplessness.  The two guards stood against one of the tapestries, looking more worried and helpless still.

I went to the cot and knelt by my father’s side, taking his hand that was not held by Cosimo.  I looked at him for a moment, cursing in my thoughts at how aged and fragile he appeared.  Then I glanced up to meet the old seneschal’s grief-stricken gaze.

“Cosimo,” I said, “you should not be kneeling thus.  Your knees and hips will never forgive you.  Get up, for the Valar’s sake.  My father will take me to task for allowing you to bring this pain on yourself.”

“It does not matter, My Lord,” he said.  “The pain is not much.  I will stay by him.”

“You may stay by him, old friend,” I told him, “but if you love my father, you will stay by him standing.”

Cosimo gave a sound that might equally have been a laugh or a sob.  Gently he put down my father’s hand, then with effort that was agonizing to see, he took up his staff and slowly climbed to his feet.  One of the guards started toward him, but the seneschal waved away the young Man’s offered help.

“Is there anything you can tell us, Pelendur?” I asked the Healer.  “Can you tell anything from examining him?”

“Very little, My Lord,” Master Pelendur said bitterly, looking angered with himself for having to make that answer.  “We may know better when he awakens – though I would recommend that he be given a second quaff of the sleeping draught the moment he begins to awake.  The Valar know that he can use the sleep, and this may be the only way he will allow himself to have it.”

I set my father’s hand down upon his chest, then I stared in bewilderment at something gleaming at his wrist, where the long, wide sleeve of his velvet robe was pulled aside.

I reached down to touch it, and still could not believe the evidence of my hand or my eyes.  Swiftly then I unfastened and opened his collar.  Beneath his robes at his neck was the same tell-tale silver gleam – the gleam of a shirt of mail.

“Why is he armoured?” I demanded.  “He has not ridden from the City in days.” 

I began to wonder if some delusion brought about by the palantír had led him to so arm himself, but Cosimo answered in weary tones, “He has worn mail day in and day out, My Lord – for near to five years, now.”

I looked, amazed, from my father’s seneschal to his Healer and back again.  “What?” I asked helplessly.  “In the gods’ names, why?”

Master Pelendur said, “He was concerned that his body might grow weak with age.  He sought to combat that fate by compelling himself to bear the weight of his armour, in his every waking hour and in his hours of sleep.”

“When he sleeps, as well?” I protested.  “You knew of this, Master Pelendur, and you did not dissuade him from it?”

With acerbity the Healer asked, “May I make bold to inquire, My Lord, if you have ever attempted to dissuade your father from anything?”

“Aye,” I admitted, with a faint and rueful smile.  “I have attempted it, on occasion, and I have got precisely nowhere.”  Frowning then, I asked, “Would there be more harm than good in removing the armour from him now?”

“I think it would do nothing to help him,” Pelendur replied.  “He has grown used to it now, in his sleeping mind as well as waking.  To remove it now might well distress him in his slumber, and it would of a certainty agitate him more than I would wish, to find himself stripped of his armour when he awakes.”

My father’s Healer got to his feet, and stood picking distractedly at the splintered gash where my sword had been lodged in the table.  “In all honesty, My Lord, I think it has done him little harm.  And it may have been a greater help to him than any number of medicines, that he believed he was taking some action to slow his body’s decline.”

I sighed and looked down to the Lord Steward once more.  I re-fastened his collar and straightened his sleeve.

“Father, Father,” I murmured, shaking my head.  “You will kill yourself if you go on like this; you know that, don’t you?”

Reluctantly I stood and stepped back from the cot.  I said, “Let us take him to his chamber in the King’s House.  I have already warned the guard below to expect our coming.  The cot should do as well for moving him as a stretcher.”

The two guards came forward, looking relieved to again have something useful to do.

Our procession down the Tower stairs was slow and dismal, all too evocative of marching in a funeral cortège.

But it is not a funeral procession, I fiercely reminded myself.  It is not. 

Do not forget, yourself, the words you spoke to your father: that while we live, there is yet hope.

I looked, as we passed through the Place of the Fountain on our way to the King’s House, for the palantír, Pippin and Svip, but I saw no sign of them.  I could only hope they had followed Pippin’s warnings that I had ignored, and that they were now on their way to the River with the seeing-stone safely wrapped away.

There was a haste and nervous urgency about the people of the King’s House as the word of our arrival spread, but they gave way to no noisy lamentations.  Even with the Lord Steward unconscious they respected his distaste for untidy scenes, and they conducted themselves accordingly.

We had my father soon tucked in his bed.  I smiled bitterly as I wished that were all we might need to do. 

If only getting him safely tucked in, and sitting by him to keep the monsters of nightmare away, could be enough to drive all darkness from his mind.

But nightmares, I thought, are not so easily fought.

Pelendur, Cosimo and I sat silently about his bedside.  His quiet, somewhat hoarse breathing seemed the only sound in all of Middle Earth. 

For once, I found myself wishing that Mithrandir were here.  Mithrandir, or even Aragorn.

Even with their skills, I thought, there was likely little that those two could do for him if they were here.  But I wished they were here that I might ask them. 

I hated that I must sit there wondering what they might have achieved to aid him, if fate and my father’s hatred had not driven them from hence.

Just over an hour into our vigil, we were joined by Pippin and Svip.

The two halflings sat down on the floor by my chair.  In whispers they reported to me that their mission was accomplished.  Svip had the palantír buried in the Anduin, near the Harlond, in a spot that he believed should be safe from any chance disturbance.

There was no nervousness or evasion in their faces as they spoke.  That alone was enough to assure me that they spoke the truth.

I had to smile a little as I pictured the Dark Lord’s baffled rage, as he found that the Palantír of Minas Anor now showed him only the darkness of the River’s mud. 

A little above three hours had passed since our confrontation in the Tower, when my father began to stir.  His brow furrowed, and he spoke in his sleep – faint, murmured words that for the most part I could not hear.  Several times I heard him say “Gondor”, several times “Mordor”, and once, I thought I heard “Boromir.”

“My Lord,” said Master Pelendur.  “Have I your permission to give him another draught?”

“Yes,” I said.  “But I think, only this one.  You said that until he awakens we cannot learn any more of his condition, or of what we might do to aid him.  I would not have us wait for that knowledge longer than we must.”

 I held him up from the pillow while the Healer urged him to drink.  The task was easily accomplished – far more easily than it would have been were my father truly awake – and his sleep again grew quiet and still.

I told myself only to sit there and watch him, not to speculate on what might follow when he awoke.  But the thoughts kept creeping through my defences.

I was sorely tempted to hope we might already have done all that we would need to do for him.

Perhaps removing the palantír from about him was all that would be needed.  Perhaps he would awaken fully himself, with only rest needed to complete his full recovery.

It is too high an expectation, I told myself.  You must not hope for it.  The Valar know that you will be disappointed.

I thought of Svip’s theory that he had expounded to me so eagerly: the theory that my father’s actions here, and my own at Amon Hen, had one and the same cause.

Svip was right, when he said that the Dark Lord’s influence was guiding my father’s acts.  Had he been right as well, to compare it with Amon Hen?

The agent might not be the same, if the palantír moved in the one case and the Ring moved in the other.  But could not the underlying cause, the source, have been the same?

I still told myself it was the coward’s road, to assign my actions at Amon Hen to any cause beyond myself.

But again I heard Svip’s question: Do you want so much to believe the Ring couldn’t control you, you’d rather believe you’d murder Frodo and your father would murder eighty of Gondor’s Men?

My heart lurched with hope as I thought, If it is the same, then there is a chance – a chance that Father will awaken restored to himself, and whole.

It is not the same, I thought fiercely.

But if it is?

As I thought of it, I felt the grass and leaves of Amon Hen beneath my hands.  I felt my tears flowing bitter and hot upon my face.

I felt the horror, the shame, the agonizing grief that had come upon me then.  I felt as well my amazement and disbelief, as I asked myself how we had come to this. 

How did my love for my country lead me to attempt so base a deed?

My anguished cries sounded again in my mind.

What have I said?  What have I done?  Frodo!  Come back!  A madness took me, but it has passed.  Come back!

A madness took me, but it has passed.

I stared at my father’s face, and I pleaded, So let it pass from him. 

I care not whether it was true for me, or if it was not.  Let it be true for him.

There was a quiet rustling as Pippin shifted restlessly upon the floor.  I looked down and smiled at him, then at Svip sitting at my other side.  Both of them smiled back at me.

Holding my father’s hand, I watched him and prayed that his sleep might hold no dreams.

The day dwindled into night.  The candlelight about the room gave a warmth of life to my father’s face that it did not possess on its own.

An urgent knocking at the chamber’s outer door startled all of us.  Pippin, still fulfilling his duties as esquire, leapt to his feet and ran to answer the door.

He reappeared a moment later, face solemn and eyes very wide.

“Boromir,” he whispered, “Marshal Elfhelm and one of his Riders are here to see you.  The Rider brought a message from the patrol.”

All the gods, I wondered, what now?

I rose and told Pelendur and Cosimo that I would return as soon as possible.  Then I walked into the outer room, with Svip hurrying at my side.

The Rohirrim stood near the door, with expressions as grim as all of those we seemed fated to see that night.  The young Rider was dusty, windblown and spattered with mud.  He and Marshal Elfhelm bowed to me, the Marshal saying quietly, “We are sorry to intrude upon you, Lord Boromir.  Is it true what Men are saying about the Citadel, that the Lord Steward has been taken ill?”

“It is true,” I said.  “He is sleeping now, and we cannot learn more of his condition until he awakes.  But I believe it is safe to say that I must command in his stead for some little while to come.”  I glanced to the table and chairs along the wall.  “Let us sit, gentlemen; and you will tell me, Marshal, what has dragged you from your bed.”  

As the Rohirrim followed me to the table, with Svip and Pippin timidly trailing behind, Marshal Elfhelm said, “All the Men of Rohan will pray for the Steward’s speedy recovery.”

“I thank you.”  I sat and the others followed suit, with the two halflings again sitting on the floor by my chair. “Now, what is it that has brought you?”

“My Lord,” the Marshal answered, “Brego here has ridden from Emyn Arnen.  The watchtower is attacked by a force of Orcs out of the mountains.  We are not certain as to their numbers; six hundred is the estimate by the tower’s garrison, but they acknowledge there could well be more that they have not seen.  Our patrol in the area, of two hundred and twenty Men, rode to the watchtower’s defence.  A few of our Men, the best archers among them, have joined the garrison in the tower, but the majority have formed their line of battle around the tower’s foot.  My Lord, all of our day shift patrols are here in the barracks; I ask that you authorise the forming of a larger force, that we may make speed to Emyn Arnen and put the attackers to rout.”

“Aye,” I said, “so I will.” 

I cursed in my thoughts that this attack should come now, when my love and duty as a son should have kept me by my father’s side.  But such a choice would seem to my father neither love nor duty, but the foolery of a milksop.  He would tell me in no uncertain terms that I was Captain-General of Gondor, not a nursemaid.

I looked down to my halfling friends, and said, “Pippin, listen carefully to all that we say here, that you may give my father a full report of it when he awakes.” 

Pippin nodded in determined eagerness.

The chance, I feared, was all too slim that my father would be in any state to demand such a report at his awaking. 

But perhaps, if we hoped for that chance and prepared for it, we could cause it to become true.

Swiftly we formed our plan.  A force of eight hundreds of those who had been off-duty would set forth from Minas Tirith as soon as Men and horses could be made ready.  They would advance with all practicable speed to the relief of Emyn Arnen, by way of the Harlond where the Merchant Adventurers’ new flagship would serve as a most luxurious of ferry boats. 

Those eight hundreds would leave just over seven hundreds yet should we come under attack in some other quarter.  The seven hundreds could ride in defence of the City or any other point within the Pelennor, or between Emyn Arnen and Morgulduin across the Great River.

We planned as well, when the other night patrols came in from their rounds, to reorganize the patrols into a smaller number, each formed of greater numbers of Men.  It would mean that each stretch of territory must be seen less frequently during each day.  But we thought it worth giving up on some frequency, to create forces that should have a better chance of holding their own against any enemy troops they might encounter.

This night’s force of eight hundreds would ride under Marshal Elfhelm’s command.  Grudgingly I accepted that I could not join the battle with them.

The nearest edge of Emyn Arnen is nigh on ten miles from the River, and the watch tower itself is closer to fifteen.  For once I had the sense to admit that this was farther from Anduin’s shores than I could go – an admission that brought an unnecessarily loud sigh of relief from Svip.

We left the Lord Steward under the watchful care of Pelendur, Cosimo and Pippin.  The two Rohirrim hastened ahead to the barracks on the Third Level, to set about making ready their force’s departure.  I spent a few moments longer in consulation with Master Pelendur and the guards on duty at the door to my father’s chambers. 

I instructed the guards that during my absence, Master Pelendur’s word was to count as my own, and it was to outweigh any command they might receive from the Lord Steward.  The Steward, I told them, could well be delirious when he awoke.  Their loyalty to him and to our House required that they abide by Pelendur’s commands, not by those of our Lord.

I felt like a traitor to be speaking such words.  But the guards showed no sign of any distrust or fears, only concern for my Lord father’s health. 

Sternly I told myself to silence my qualms.  It was no treachery to admit that my father might not yet be fit again for command, hours only since the palantír had been pried from his hand.

When Svip and I reached the Third Level, the flurry of preparation was already afoot in the barracks and adjacent stables.  We met Marshal Elfhelm in the stables’ courtyard, where he stood in consultation with Húrin Keeper of the Keys.  We were discussing the terrain about Emyn Arnen and Ephel Dúath, and the most likely places where Orc troops might choose to conceal themselves, when of a sudden the Rohirrim’s expression grew dour and near to panic.  He glanced about him for an instant as though seeking some place to hide.

“My Lord Boromir,” he said, “I must beg of you your authority and support, as my shield in this next encounter.”

I followed the direction of his gaze, and saw the Lady Éowyn, armoured as usual, striding toward us from the courtyard gate.  Merry hastened at her heels.

“You have both, Marshal,” I answered him.  “Courage.”

The shieldmaiden halted before us, raking Elfhelm with her angered and defiant glare.  “My Lord Marshal,” she said, “I must protest that no one was sent to summon me when these preparations began.”

“I apologise that you were not notified, My Lady,” Elfhelm grimly replied.  “It is my fault for not remembering that you would wish to be kept informed.  But you must know that you will not ride with our troops this night.”

“I do not know it,” she declared.  “When the Men of my patrol are riding forth, why should not I ride with the rest?”

“You are injured, Éowyn Daughter of Éomund,” the unhappy Marshal stated flatly.

“My injury does not inconvenience me,” she said.  “My place is with my patrol.”

“With respect, Lady Éowyn,” I cut in, “your place is here.  If you wish to be treated as any other soldier, then you must accept the rules by which all other soldiers must live.  It is your duty to obey orders, and not to risk yourself and your comrades by going into battle with a wound that must impede your efficiency.  You will remain in the City.  That is an order.  Have I made myself clear?”

She gazed at me proudly, eyes flashing fire as she answered me, “You have, My Lord.  I ask your pardon for wasting your time.” 

“My Lord,” Marshal Elfhelm said, “there is a command for which Lady Éowyn will be well-suited, and that she can undertake here.  Let the Daughter of Éomund take charge of the re-division of our patrols into larger forces, and determining with the commanders our revised patrol-routes.  Does this meet with your approval?”

“It does,” I said.  “I can think of none better suited to the command.”

Lady Éowyn cast me an angry frown, as though she suspected me of indulging in insincere flattery.  But she turned to the task at hand with no accusation or complaint.  The Marshal, the lady and Húrin of the Keys conferred for the next few minutes upon the troops’ divisions.  Meantime I caught a glance from Merry, standing respectfully behind the Lady of Rohan.  With a nervous but heartfelt smile he looked up at me.  In the torchlight of the courtyard I was fairly certain that I saw him mouth the words, “Thank you.”

Svip and I rode with Marshal Elfhelm’s force to the Harlond, and accompanied them on the Merchant Adventurers’ corsair ferry boat.  When all of the troops were across, we rode for two miles more by the Marshal’s side, continuing our discussion on the topography and its potential uses by the enemy.

As we rode on, my horse-shaped friend took to glancing over his shoulder with increasing frequency, trying to cast me warning and disapproving looks.  At last he could restrain himself no longer, and he hissed to me, “You know you can’t go with them.”

“I know,” I conceded.  “We’ll turn around soon.”

He muttered, “We’d better.”

So as the Men of Rohan rode through the inky shadows of the woods, the darkness barely pierced by the stars and the sliver of the new moon, I at last bowed to the inevitable and to Svip’s advice.  I clasped hands with the Marshal, wished him speed and fine hunting, and the shapeshifter and I turned our path again toward the Great River.

The hushed sounds of the Rohirrim’s passage dwindled behind us, and my thoughts turned again to the Lord my father.

It was three hours now, and past, since Master Pelendur had given him the second sleeping draught. 

When we returned to the City, would we find my father awake? 

And if he woke, what would be his state of mind?

So I asked myself, again and again, as we rode.  But I feared to think of the possible answers.

We came to Anduin’s shore, where I dismounted from Svip and he changed back into his own form.  As Svip crouched to run his hands through the River water, I wished we could take the time for even a short swim.  Angrily, however, I pushed that wish aside. 

You are only seeking delay, I sneered in my thoughts.  You are only hunting some means of avoiding whatever waits in your father’s chambers.

There was no need to call upon the former pirate ship to ferry only Svip and me.  Wiglaf Son of Herdred, the usual ferryman of Waterfront, set out from the quay on sight of us.  His boat was restored to him and repaired from its service as an improvised cart in the day that led to the siege of the City.

As he pulled near the shore, the boatman called out to me, “Hail, My Lord.  Your Lord father has joined the Rohirrim in safety, then?”

I thought, I must have misheard him.  I called back to him, “What?”

“Your Lord father.  He said that he meant to catch up with the Rohirrim, to join in their expedition.  He questioned me on the route they had followed.  Did you not meet with him, My Lord?”

Wiglaf reached the bank and jumped ashore, staring in startled dismay at the expression on my face.

“You are mistaken,” I insisted.  “My father is in the City.”

The ferryman swallowed unhappily and shook his head.

“I’m sorry, My Lord.  I ferried the Lord Steward across here myself, with his horse and the halfling his esquire.  They rode into the woods, there,” he went on, pointing behind me, “not fifteen minutes past.”