“Brother.”

Boromir started, looking up from the long table where he had been poring over old maps. His chair scraped on the stone floor as he stood. He stayed behind the heavy oak of his makeshift desk. Protection, perhaps.

He placed his hands, knuckles down, on its surface for support and bent over the litter of books and parchments through which he had been searching. He sighed once and then looked up at his brother. Faramir stood by the door, beyond the small pools of light cast by the two tall candles that sat on either end of the table. Straightening, Boromir put up one hand to rub his burning eyes. He still could not see his brother’s face clearly, nor read his expression, inscrutable at the best of times.

“Faramir, please,” he said, his voice tired, almost pleading, “it is I who must go on this journey. I do not doubt your strength or courage, but….”

His brother raised a hand to stop the speech that he had heard before, many times. Boromir was able to make out the ghost of a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “I know when I must admit defeat. You taught me often enough when we were children.”

His heart constricted. In spite of the smile, he knew that he had wounded Faramir deeply in their quarrels over which of them would go on the dangerous journey to seek counsel among the strangers of the north. Their situation was growing graver by the day as the power of the Black Land grew and enemies beat against their borders.

A dream had come to Faramir, a riddle that had seemed to offer them some hope of defeating the Nameless Enemy, if they could but find the key to its meaning. The dream had come to his brother many times and once to him. He could still hear the voice in his dream, crying, “Seek for the sword that was broken, in Imladris it dwells, there shall be counsel taken….” He was the elder and, he thought, the hardier of the two. He had a better chance of finding the Elven fastness, called Rivendell in the Common Tongue, and returning to the White City with some plan for defeating the evil that threatened Gondor. Before it was too late.

At least those were the reasons he gave his brother and his father the Steward, both reluctant to let him go. There were other reasons of which he had not spoken, among them his deep love for his brother and for Gondor. Since childhood, he had felt that both were his responsibility. But he knew Faramir did see this as a defeat, as the usurpation of a quest that should have been his.

“Please understand, it is I who must do this…”

Faramir’s hand fell to his side. “I did not come to discuss your decision yet again. I think I understand your reasons, whether or not I agree with them.” Boromir saw his hesitation.

He came from behind the table and, in four long strides, laid his hand lightly on his younger brother’s shoulder, squeezing it slightly through the soft, white material of his tunic. “What then?”

“It is Adrah. You must speak to her before you go.”

He held very still for a moment, then removed his hand carefully from Faramir’s shoulder. Turning slightly away from him, toward the window to the right of the door, he looked out into the black night, black with no stars shining. It had been long since they had seen stars here in Minas Tirith. He matched the night as he looked out on it, dressed simply in a black tunic and breeches with no ornaments. Feeling oddly vulnerable, divested of the mail that seemed to him now like a second skin, he wrapped his arms around himself. He was cold, despite the warmth of the summer night.

“It is late. The child is sleeping. You know I leave at first light.”

“All the more reason to speak to her now. She is your daughter.”

Still looking out at the starless gloom, Boromir straightened his shoulders slightly. “I have never troubled her with my comings and goings. I have been away half her small number of years. She is a soldier’s daughter.” A small muscle twitched along the line of his jaw, at odds with the light tone he tried to put into the words.

Faramir’s hand was on his arm, turning him away from the window. Clear, penetrating gray eyes probed into sea-green ones. The green eyes were changeable as water and as Boromir’s volatile moods. Tonight they were the clouded gray-green of the seas off Dol Amroth after a winter storm. The green eyes dropped first.

“She is well taken care of. She will be well taken care of. Faramir, you will see to that.”

“Of course I will… I would… if….” Faramir’s speech stumbled, his eyes shifting away to the right and downwards. He stopped himself, compressed his lips, and swore softly. His eyes flew back up. “Fiends take you, Boromir, you could ever distract me and put me off-balance.” He laughed, reluctantly.

Boromir’s answering laugh, almost carefree, seemed to dispel some of the shadows that surrounded them. From childhood, he had been one of the few who could disturb his brother’s carefully cultivated calm and divert his thoughts from their scrupulously laid paths. He had always made a game of baiting Faramir. “When we are old men together…” he thought, then stopped the thought.

But this time, his brother was not to be diverted. Stepping back, he broke the contact between them. “It is different this time, and well you know it.”

“Nay, I do not. As soldiers, in times such as these, we face death almost daily. Each time I ride from here, I know I may not return. Adrah is but six summers old, too young to be burdened with that possibility. I say again, she is well provided for. Should anything happen to me, I know you will see to her care.”

His brother said nothing, refusing to lower his eyes or look away. After a long moment, Boromir shifted uncomfortably. Faramir saw too much.

Boromir turned again to the window, to look at nothing in particular. He shrugged slightly. “She is a strange child. Like as not, she will not notice I am gone.”

“Nor care? Is that your thinking?”

He did not reply, but continued looking into the darkness.

“You wrong her and yourself. She is not like her mother.”

Another silence. Then, hesitantly, “Perhaps you are right. When first I saw her, I hoped she was more like to you. She was the very image of you when you were a babe. And as she grows, she is very like you were as a child. Dark and beautiful and, oh so very serious.”

Faramir snorted, that was the only word for it. Boromir turned around to look at his brother, his heart lifting. Getting a snort out of Faramir was an accomplishment. Although he was near forty on this dark night, goading his grave and dignified sibling never palled. Then his thoughts turned serious again. “I pray indeed that she is like you and not like Mariset. Time will tell. I know she is reserved, like you, but not yet whether she is as cold and uncaring as her mother.”

“Boromir…”

“Let us not debate it now,” he cut across Faramir’s indignant protest. “I know you are the small lady’s champion, and I am glad of it. I have been much away, and I am grateful that you have come to care for Adrah. She is fortunate in her defender and teacher. But does she care for you or anyone? I wonder.”

“Again, you wrong her. I know you fear the mother’s taint, but the blood of Numenor runs true in her. You say she is like me. So she is. So is she the very image of our father. She has not your ready warmth, it is true. In that she is also like her grandfather.”

“So I fear, and in more than that.”

“You know that is not how I meant it,” Faramir replied, his voice growing heated. “Our father is a good man, from a noble line…”

“A shame, then, that Denethor refuses to recognize my by-blow, as he called her, or, better, ‘the bitch’s spawn’.” He saw his brother wince at the words, or perhaps at the note of despair in his tired voice. Taking a breath, he continued more strongly, “All the more reason that I depend upon your care of her.”

A long silence fell between them. Boromir walked closer to the window and leaned against the smooth, white stones of the window-ledge, turned gray by the surrounding dark. He opened the casement and took a deep breath of the warm, still air. Then, quietly, almost as if the words were dragged from him, “Do you know that I have never seen her cry since the day I brought her back from … from that whore’s house? That she has never called me ‘father’? A poor father I have been, indeed, to my shame. I should never, never have left her there.”

“’Twas not your fault. I know that Denethor refused to have her here. And you had provided Mariset with a house, with servants, with money. Did she not promise you to… to…”

Boromir looked back over his shoulder at his brother. “To quite whoring? Indeed, brother, so she did. Why I believed her, I know not.” He turned back to look out into the night, a night in which, of late, no night bird sang its sweet song nor even cricket chirped.

His apartments were on the ground floor of the King’s House, looking out onto a small patch of trees and flowering vines between the House and the White Tower. He had moved his apartments to the ground floor years ago, saying that he needed to be able to reach the guardroom in the Tower quickly. Truth to tell, it was as much because he loved to smell the grass and trees, to listen to the small movements of birds and the hedgepig that lived under the roots of the nearest oak, to hear the crickets and the rain. Since the darkness from Mordor had increased, it seemed that even that life was being squeezed from the city he loved. The night beyond the window was deathly still.

“I loved her once,” came the words, seemingly from somewhere far away.

Faramir hesitated. “She was beautiful, cultured, from a noble house….”

“That she was. Of course, they disowned her. She could never live within the bounds a respectable family set for her. I thought she was simply passionate, willful. She was so very beautiful. I thought she…. I thought I could save her.”

He heard an inarticulate sound of pity or protest from behind him. Without looking back, he continued with a bitter laugh, “What man who loved her did not? I thought I could make her love me, make her leave that life. She loved nothing and no-one, besides sensual pleasure and wealth. And wine. Ah, yes, and wine.”

“When she found out she was with child, she was furious. She wanted to rid herself of… it, as she so charmingly put it. I begged her to marry me, did you know that Faramir? No, of course you did not.”

What must his upright and serious brother think of him? Had Faramir been hurt or relieved that he had until now withheld this painful part of his life, when growing up they shared so much, both joy and pain? He had been too ashamed, ashamed of his love for so unworthy an object, unwilling to share the worst of himself with the brother he loved so much. The brother who seemed not to have uncontrolled passions that led him down such twisted paths.

“She laughed. She asked me how I knew the child was mine.” His hands clenched into fists on the smooth stone of the window’s ledge.

“Boromir…” What did he hear in Faramir’s voice? Tears? He despised himself, that he had gone from one who inspired confidence to one who inspired pity. He straightened his shoulders, and turned around to face his brother.

“I told her that it mattered not to me whose child it was. I would marry her and raise it as my own. She told me then that she was well aware Denethor would disown me if I married her. She was right, of course. Mariset was an intelligent woman, and she collected ample gossip from her servants and her lovers. I was of no use to her as a common soldier of Gondor. She made that quite clear to me. Quite … clear.” Feeling his hands clench into fists again, Boromir paused. He straightened them out with some small effort, and wrapped his arms around himself again. Around the pain that still lurked at the core of him even after all this time. Seeing the stricken look in Faramir’s eyes, the pause lengthened.

He lifted his hands, ran his fingers through the light brown hair that fell to his shoulders and tried for a neutral tone. “In fact, she made it entirely plain that she had never had the smallest affection for me, and that the life of a courtesan suited her very well. The child and I were nothing to her. More fool I.” By the end it had become bitter self-mockery.

With that, he turned abruptly back to the window, staring blindly into the dark, remembering. “I fought for the child, persuaded her to carry it to term….” “Persuaded!” He stopped himself with a harsh laugh. “I paid her well. Bought her the house, hired servants I thought I could trust, the finest doctor, a midwife… When I came back from a campaign, the child was but a month old.”

He pushed back from the window, then turned and leaned back on the ledge, framed by the darkness behind him. His eyed locked with Faramir’s. “I saw at once that she was mine. Mine. My daughter.”

He looked up and away past his brother, recalled the fierce love that had been born in him with his first sight of that tiny, strangely silent child. His voice softened as he thought of it.

“My child, Faramir, although I knew it because she looked just like you and our father. So beautiful she was, with so much black hair even then. And so still, like you at that age. A daughter.” He felt again his wonder at the perfection of her; the joy that he, who had never hoped for children before he died in the skirmishes that increased daily on their borders, had a daughter.

“Then I saw her eyes.” His smile faded. He crossed the room and slumped back into the chair behind the table. Faramir followed him, dragged out the chair from the opposite side of the table and sat down. He leaned forward toward his brother, confusion on his face.

“Her eyes? She has beautiful eyes.”

“Oh, yes, beautiful eyes. Mariset’s eyes.” When he had first looked down at his sleeping child, he had felt such peace for a moment, even in that whore’s house. Then Adrah opened her eyes. He was both fascinated and chilled. They were striking, neither the clear dark gray of Denethor’s family nor the sea-green eyes that Boromir shared with his mother. Pale silvery-gray, like moonlight on still water, like the eyes of a northern wolf, Mariset’s eyes looked up at him from his daughter’s face. Cold and beautiful like the blade of the sword he most loved. Like that sword, they were two-edged. Salvation or pain, life or death. He shivered, remembering.

But he had loved her already, with a love that he had never felt for another living thing, not even for Faramir, whom he had loved since childhood. Not even for the gay and smiling Finduilas, the mother who was so much like him, that he had lost when he was but a few years older than Adrah was now.

“Boromir, the child is not the mother.”

“I know not what she is, as yet, only that I love her. I tried to arrange things for the best. I knew Denethor despised her.” Even after all these years, he still bore the scars from his father’s scorn, his bitter disappointment in his much-loved elder son. He could still hear that cold voice. Bastard, by-blow, whore, dishonour, ingratitude… words all the more wounding for the controlled tone in which he delivered them.

Stung, despairing of ever persuading his father to accept the child, he was reluctant to expose her to such hatred. He had at first tried to make other arrangements for her care, even though he had wanted her with him. But in one thing he defied Denethor. He named the child Adrah after her great-grandfather, Adrahil, Finduilas’ adored father. It was Boromir’s way of conferring a legitimacy of love on her, if not of birth. The imputed connection to his dead wife’s family had infuriated the Steward and earned Boromir weeks of cold silence from him.

“Under other circumstances, our father might not have been so harsh,” said his brother. “He fears for our people and for the future of our house. We have provided him no heir to the Steward’s rod. With this darkness hanging over us, it is likely that neither of us will marry or have sons for Gondor.”

Leaning forward, Boromir put his hand over his brother’s. “Do not say that. After….” He paused. “I will never marry. I will not give the Steward’s house an heir. But you can and will.” He hesitated. “If you must have it, that is part of the reason I insisted on undertaking this journey myself. And part of the reason our father agreed.”

Faramir jerked his hand away, and opened his mouth to speak, an expression of outrage on his face. Boromir reached toward him, grabbed his arm, and said, “No, not now. I cannot bear it. It is decided.”

His brother subsided, but with his lips thin and an unaccustomed mulish look in his eyes. Would he ever understand or forgive him? How could Faramir truly understand the weight of responsibility he felt as eldest son, older brother, heir to the Stewardship and all that implied. And now his duty to his child. He tried to act for the best, to protect his land and the people he loved most in this world. It pained him to think that sometimes, in trying to live up to those responsibilities, he must seem anything but loving.

“I thought of fostering her on some respectable family. But I knew I would be away on the borders for months at a time. The threat from Mordor grew day by day. I did not know how often I could be in Minas Tirith. Or if … or whether…”

He was uncomfortably aware of Faramir’s eyes fixed on him. He shifted in his chair. “I thought perhaps she deserved to grow up knowing one of her parents.” He looked down at the clutter on the table without seeing it.

For a while Mariset seemed fond of Adrah in her own way. At least she seemed to see herself reflected in the child. He had kept his own servants in the house so that they could look out for his daughter’s welfare and report to him. For a while, all seemed well.

Boromir picked up a cunningly carved letter-opener, a rare ivory piece from Near Harad, and started turning it over and over in his elegant, long-fingered hands. The silence lengthened. Then he clutched his hands around the little ivory knife and went on.

“I had been away for several months, to Rohan and then back up to North Ithilien, patrolling, just before Adrah turned three. It was her birthday on the day I returned. I went straight to Mariset’s house. She had not … expected me.”

She had sent the servants away. He had gone through the house, looking for Adrah. He found her in the whore’s bedroom. Mariset was drunk. She was in bed with … she was…. There was a small sound within the silence, as the ivory knife snapped in two. Faramir started slightly.

Boromir sat unmoving, his hands still tight around the broken ivory. Adrah had been in the corner of that room, crying softly. Her dark head was buried in the skirts of her crumpled, rose-colored dress. The dress was dirty. So was her hair. He had knelt down beside her and put his hand under her chin, lifting her face. Her beautiful, silvery eyes were red and swollen. He saw a bruise on her neck. There was a small cut under her right eye. It had likely been made by one of Mariset’s rings. One of the rings he had given her.

Boromir still looked down at his hands and at a tiny trickle of blood that was now seeping into one of the maps beneath them. He said quietly, “I took Adrah out of that foul place and brought her here.”

He had simply scooped her up and fled, knowing he would kill the whore and her lover if he hesitated. When he had strode into the King’s House that day, Denethor had taken one look at the child and at his face and turned away, saying nothing. His father had said nothing of her or to her since.

“Boromir,” said his brother, “you love the child. You know as well as I that you may never return to the White City. You must tell her both these things.”

He sat unmoving, his eyes down. Adrah had never cried again after that day. When Mariset had died of drink the next year, he had told the child of her mother's death. She had looked at him gravely, but said nothing. She was always…polite to him. But she did not seem to care when he moved in and out of her life, as he was forced to do. He did not know if she cared for anything or anyone. She seemed at once fragile and self-contained.

“After what she has been through, I .… Better that I should just leave. It will make little difference to her if I return or not. She hardly knows me.”

Faramir reached over and gently disentangled his brother’s hands. He removed the pieces of the letter-opener and laid them aside. His fingertips were stained with blood. He looked at them for a long moment, then said evenly, “By the One, brother, I never took you for a coward.” Boromir looked up at that.

“I will say this once. Heed my words. The child is not her mother. You saved her. You love her. She is old beyond her years and sees much. She sees who you are, what you are, and she loves you for it.” Then he shook his head slightly and sat back in his chair, a very small smile returned to his face. “Unaccountable as that regard may seem to you.”

“I am afraid to disturb whatever peace she seems to have made with … with….” Bormir hesitated, then fell silent again.

“Yes, it is about fear, isn’t it?” Faramir said gently. “Yours and hers. You say you are afraid that she feels little, like Mariset. Are you afraid rather that she feels too much? Or is it your own feelings that you fear?”

Boromir’s right thumb probed the cut on his other hand. His lips tightened.

Faramir sighed and continued, somewhat doggedly. “We live in a dark time, beset by fears both small and great. There is no shame in that. Adrah has been afraid to lose you. She has lived with that fear since the day she came here. Just because she has tried to protect herself does not mean that she is cold or uncaring. She cares perhaps too much to let you see it. And you have held yourself apart from her as well.”

“You are right. I have been a coward.” Boromir’s eyes were bleak, expecting to see the disappointment he felt in himself reflected in his brother’s face.

Instead, he saw understanding. Faramir smiled. “Well, the Valar know that women are more fearsome than orc or troll, and certainly less predictable. There is some excuse for you.”

He tried to answer that smile, but did not succeed. Faramir’s own smile faded. “She knows that you are leaving.”

“How?”

“She knows. And she is afraid of the darkness into which you go.” Faramir pushed back his chair and stood up. “I will see you off in the morning. Good night.” He turned and walked quickly out of the room.

Boromir slowly climbed the stairs of the turret leading up to Adrah’s rooms. He hesitated at the open door of the outer chamber, straightened his shoulders, and looked inside. Firelight flickered on the stone walls, softened by hangings in shades of blue and green. He smiled when he saw old Glenneth, sounds asleep in a low chair by the fire. She had been his and Faramir’s nurse and had stayed on as a seamstress and general tyrant after they were grown.

The day he had brought his daughter back to the King’s House, Glenneth had walked past Denethor into the entrance hall, a stern expression on her soft, round face. Ignoring the Steward, she had come straight up to Boromir where he stood holding the child, uncertain what to do next. Saying not a word, she had held out her arms. With an immense feeling of relief, Boromir had loosed the child’s grip on the front of his cloak, and whispered to her, “You are safe now, love, nothing will harm you. This is Glenneth.” The old woman had settled her on an ample hip and carried her away, created a haven for her here in the turret out of Denethor’s way. She had been like a dragon in defense of her small charge.

Now the dragon was asleep, her cap askew, her gray hair in disarray, an abandoned cup of tea and some of her endless embroidery on a small table by her side.

Boromir walked carefully past her lair. He had not the heart for more farewells, or for protests against his going, either. The door to Adrah’s bedroom was half shut. He opened it slowly, still of two minds about whether to wake the child. There were small, white candles burning on tables on either side of her bed. To his surprise, she was sitting up against the head of the bed, with her eyes wide open and her hands clasped in front of her.

“What, child, not asleep yet?”

“You are going away,” she said, her moonlight eyes fixed on him.

“Did Glenneth tell you that?”

“I dreamt it,” she replied.

Varda save us, thought Boromir, when would his family be rid of these inconvenient dreams?

“Yes, I am going away … for a time. I leave in the morning. I am a soldier, Adrah, you know that well.”

Her dark lashes dropped, veiling her eyes. After a long moment, while he tried to think of what to say next, she lifted them. Her eyes seemed darker somehow, filled with shadows.

“It is different this time… in my dream….” She stopped.

“How different, love?” He sat down carefully on the bed beside her and reached for her small hand. She did not draw it away. She had never flinched from his touch, but had never seemed to welcome it either. This time the little hand pressed his.

“What did you dream?” He asked it somewhat reluctantly, through a sudden tightness in his throat.

“I saw you in a boat. You were lieing down in it, quite still. There was no-one else there.”

“That is not so fearsome, surely?” He put a finger under the small, rounded chin that had ducked down and lifted her face towards him gently.

Her eyes had grown even darker. A trick of the shifting candle-flames, Boromir thought. She looked at him for a long moment. The little hand squeezed his again. Then, with a sigh, she leaned her head against his chest.

“Tell me a story,” came the voice from below his chin. Taken aback, both by the leaning and the request, Boromir cast wildly about in his mind. A story? He had not been much around children, and most of the stories he knew were soldier’s tales. Faramir had always been the one for stories of elves and princesses and such.

He settled back against the head of the bed and tentatively drew her closer to him. He took a deep breath, then spoke. “Long years past, when the world was newer than now it is…” Her hand folded itself in the cloth of his tunic. “… there was a beautiful maiden named… um… Arris…”

She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing. “Yes, Arris,” he insisted, “that was assuredly her name. Do you doubt me? I thought not.” Adrah cast a tiny smile up at him, then laid her head back on his chest.

He cleared his throat, perhaps to gain time. “She was beautiful, very beautiful.” Were they not always, he thought to himself. “She had eyes of a most unusual light-gray color and hair as black as a raven’s wing.” Adrah sighed and snuggled a bit closer to him. Boromir leaned his head against the high back of his daughter’s bed and looked out her window into the night. His voice rose and fell, piecing together a story for his child.

***

It was during the reign of Telemnar, an ill time for Gondor. Arris lived with her older brother Herion and her parents in the White City, Minas Arnor as it was then called. Arris’s father was a leathersmith and they lived in a small house on the third level, near the southeastern gate. They had little, but they were happy. Then a plague came to the cities of the Southern kingdom, blown on a dark wind from the East. Many died, Arris’s mother among them.

But the plague was not the worst of it. The people of Minas Arnor had hoped that when summer came, the heat would burn away the plague and they would have the chance to harvest their crops, regain their strength. But that year, summer never came. Word spread through the all the levels of the city that a great and powerful wizard who lived beyond the Mountains of Shadow had cursed the land.

The wizard, Narisor by name, had come to Minas Arnor across the River Anduin one evening as the sun was setting. There was a tavern on the fifth level of the city. It was called the Five Armies and was the place where many of the men of the guard gathered. The captain of guard was there that night with seven of his companions, drinking deeply and telling stories of their victories.

Narisor, weary from his journey, had procured a mug of ale and gone to sit in a quiet corner. But the captain had seen the stranger enter. He was a proud man from a noble family. He was also suspicious of strangers in the White City, especially wizards. At least he suspected this stranger was a wizard, from his pointed hat and long staff. This one looked particularly shabby, an old man with a long, grizzled beard striped like a badger’s coat and dirty black robes that looked much the worse for wear.

He got to his feet, a trifle unsteadily since he had been drinking the tavern’s excellent wine for some time, and made his way to the corner where the wizard sat. On his table were the mug of ale, a pipe, and a plain ebony box, smaller than the palm of a hand. It was worn and covered with faint scratches, writing perhaps. There was dirt in the grooves.

Uninvited, the captain pulled out a chair and sat down. He leaned toward Narisor.

“Who are you, wizard,” he demanded, “and what is your business in the White City?”

“My business is my own,” he replied, taking a sip of ale.

“Not so, old man,” said the captain, not troubling to keep the contempt from his voice. “The responsibility for guarding the city is mine. What is your business here?”

Unexpectedly, the wizard smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. “You might say that I have come to test the Men of the West.” He set his mug back down on the table and folded his hands.

“To test us?” The captain mocked. “Take yourself off, old tramp. Perhaps you can find a room at an inn on the first level. There are some that cater to such as you.”

The wizard drew back, suddenly looking less shabby. He made no move to leave. The captain was a proud man, and more than half-drunk. Besides, he had never cared for wizards.

Suddenly his hand lashed out, sweeping everything from the table as he reached to grasp the front of the old man’s robes, thinking to pull him to his feet. Ale, pipe and box went flying.

The ebony box fell to the wooden floor and onto its side. The lid opened just a crack. From it spilled darkness, at first just an inky spot on the floor. The captain watched in horror as it spread, creeping along the floorboards and rising up the walls. It hovered in the air, then blotted out the light from the tavern’s fireplace and the candles on the tables. Still it spread, out the windows and into the city, blotting out sight of the White Tower and the setting sun itself.

The wizard laughed, a terrible sound. “You have done my work for me, you fool. I had come to test the men of the West. Their courtesy is certainly lacking, but perhaps their valor and prowess are not.” He got up, bent to pick up the little box, and secreted it in his robes.

“Tell your King this: until a champion can find me beyond the Mountains of Shadow, steal the box from me, and force the darkness back inside it, winter will lie over the whole land of Gondor and day will never dawn.” Before the captain could react, the wizard had faded into the blackness he had created.

With a heavy heart, the captain went to tell the King of the misfortune he had brought on Minas Arnor. He begged leave to pursue the wizard, to mend the evil chance that he had brought upon the White City. He left the next morning. He was neither seen nor heard of again in Middle Earth. After him, many champions departed the Southern Kingdom to pursue the quest. Warriors, nobles, the best of the city departed, never to return.

The Anduin froze over. Wolves and other fell beasts roamed the streets. The night was unnatural. No nightingale sang in it, and even the crickets had fallen silent. Crops failed and starvation slunk through the city along with the wolves.

It was an evil time, and the people of the city were losing hope. Arris had been a young woman full of laughter and songs, the light of their small household. But gradually she began to fade. Hunger, like a butcher, carved the flesh from her bones. She no longer laughed, nor did she cry, but sat by the window in her room looking at the darkness that lay over the city.

One day Herion came to her room and knelt beside her chair. She did not even look at him, but simply gazed into the blackness outside her window. He put one hand on her arm. “Arris, I am leaving. I go to seek the sun.”

Slowly her eyes turned on him. “No,” she said, her voice raspy from disuse, “it is too dangerous. You will die. Do not leave me.”

“We will all die, else,” he replied.

Arris and their father tried to stop him. “Boy, you have no horse, no weapon. Leave this to your betters,” his father pleaded.

“Much good have their horses and weapons done them,” he replied, “or us, for that matter.” Herion set off at what would have been daybreak, if day had yet dawned on the city. He took a leather satchel his father had made, filled with bread and cheese, a length of rope and a small knife.

His father refused to see him off, still muttering about keeping his place. Arris stood by him at the door, her eyes wide with fear, clutching his arm. “What can you do against this darkness? How will I know if you are safe? How will I know that you even think of me?”

Herion embraced his sister and said, “Stand by your window each morning. When you can see the sun rise clear over the Mountains of Shadow, you will know that I have succeeded in my quest. Whether I am near to you or far away, if I live or if my body lies far from our mother’s in the Silent Street, you will know that each dawn my thoughts will turn to you at your window. Speak to me then and I will know it, no matter where my wanderings take me."

And so she did. Days turned into weeks. Sometimes, looking at the darkness in what should have been morning, it was hard to feel his presence. But she trusted what he had said to her, and each morning she stood there. Herion never returned to the White City, and there is no man who can tell his fate. But one morning as she gazed into the gloom outside the casement, Arris saw a faint hint of pearly gray on the horizon. She kept very still, thinking that her eyes were playing tricks. But gray turned into violet, then gold, then a glorious blue. With a trembling hand she opened the casement. The cool morning breeze touched her face. She knew that her brother was with her in that moment. From that morning, she could sense that he was with her in the dawn of each new day. And she knew that he always loved her.

***

Boromir fell silent, still looking out the widow of Adrah’s room. It was in the deepest part of the night. All was still. The child must be asleep, he thought. He slowly lowered his head and kissed her dark hair, smelling the fragrance of sandalwood and soap.

Adrah suddenly turned her face up to him. The light in her eyes turned liquid, turned into two tears, each running in a silvery track down her rounded, ivory cheeks. “Papa,” she said, lifting her hand and placing it gently on his cheek. Boromir’s heart turned over. Her eyes were no longer Mariset’s eyes. They were wholly, completely her own. His daughter’s. How could he have ever mistaken them for anyone else’s, Adrah’s eyes?

He reached out and gently touched the small scar under one of those eyes, then brushed his thumb through the tear track beneath it. Suddenly he crushed her to his chest and, still holding her tightly, stood up. A sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob came from his mouth, muffled in her hair.

“Papa, are you all right?” said her small, dignified voice, calm as always.

“Yes, dear heart, just happy you are my daughter.”

“Well, I knew that. Uncle Faramir said that you were.” The same inarticulate sound came again. Then, slowly, still holding his daughter in his arms, he began the steps of the pavan, a dance currently popular at court. Faramir would have been astonished to see that he knew it. He hummed along to the steps. A soldier’s song, it was true. Best that she didn’t hear the words, but it would serve.

“Now you’re just being silly… Uncle said you often were when he was my age…” Another sound from Boromir, this time much closer to a laugh. A small hand patted the side of his neck to get his attention. “I know the pavan perfectly well. Put me down and do it properly,” she commanded.

“Yes, my queen,” he replied, all thoughts of his journey on the morrow forgotten. He set her on her feet, stepped back, and bowed most properly. She curtsied, sweeping her nightgown back in the accepted manner. Boromir held out his hand to his side, palm down, and she moved beside him to rest her hand, palm down, upon it. Then he took two, gliding steps to the right, and she followed. They made a graceful pair as they moved around the room in the slow, formal figures of the dance, if one allowed for the difference in heights. At least that is what Faramir, watching from the shadows of the outer room, thought. And remembered.

Epilogue

Faramir walked down the long hall and went through the open door of the outer chamber of Adrah’s rooms. He approached the door to her bedchamber. As he lifted his hand to knock, a sudden memory washed over him. He had been standing almost in this same spot. He smiled and put his fingertips on the smooth oak of the door for a long moment, almost in a caress. Then he lifted his hand and knocked softly.

“Come,” he heard from within.

Adrah stood looking out her east window. Her rooms were on the topmost level of the northeastern tower of the King’s House. Faramir crossed the flagstone floor to stand beside her. Through the open casement, he could see the sun just rising over the Mountains of Shadow far away. He could just make out the glints of gold and silver reflected on the waters of the Anduin below. The White Tower, just ahead and slightly to the right, had taken on a faint, coral glow. Its banners waved gently in a freshening morning breeze.

He put a hand on his niece’s arm and turned her to him. She was not really beautiful, he supposed, but her tall, graceful form and strong-jawed face tugged at his heart. And her coloring was striking. Her hair was long and as black as his own was, years ago. Her eyes were usually a light, clear gray, but they changed with her moods just as his brother’s eyes always had.

“You will make a lovely bride this day,” he said. “I thought you would be up to watch the dawn.”

Then he saw that her eyes were bright with unshed tears. He pulled her swiftly into his arms. “Oh, my sweet child, I miss him too.”

“You have been as a father to me…” she began.

“And you are a daughter to me,” said Faramir, “but that does not mean we miss him any less or do not long for him, especially today.”

They held each other close for a moment. Then he put her gently away from him, his hands on her shoulders. “Do not mar those eyes with weeping. He would be so very proud of you.”

They stood unmoving as the sun rose higher over the White City, and their eyes spoke of many things, of love and loss and remembering. There had never been much need for words between them.

“Uncle,” she said, finally, “will you dance the pavan with me, later in the Hall of Feasts?”

“’Tis out of fashion,” he replied, lightly he hoped. He had thought her too young to remember.

“Even so,” said Adrah, her eyes smiling, “even so. We will all dance it together.”

*******

Authors Notes: Tolkien refers to the plague during the reign of Telemnar in Appendix A of Return of the King. He also refers to a “Long Winter” that took place during a later period. In my story-within-a-story in chapter 2, Boromir is remembering both these historical events from Gondor’s history and using them, on the fly as it were, for his own purposes. Thanks to starlight, tavia and Avon for suggestions and encouragement for this tale.

Disclaimer: The wonderful world of Middle Earth and its characters belong to Professor Tolkien, his estate, and (to a certain extent) New Line Cinema. I’m just visiting and take nothing from the visit but joy.