Chapter Six- Revealed

The three pursuers had stopped where the road crossed a gurgling stream. It was mid afternoon on a hazy, but warm day.

As they waited, Eowyn stared at her son. Her eyes took in the firm set of his jaw, and his long blonde hair gently blowing in the breeze. Although she sometimes could detect certain of his father’s expressions in him, watching Elboron on his horse and prepared as for battle, Eowyn was minded of her brother, Eomer, King of Rohan.

The memory of the day of Elboron’s birth, almost 15 years ago, flashed into her mind unbidden. How proud and contented she had been to present Faramir a beautiful son, but how fragile and helpless the baby was. The vision was so clear in her mind that it seemed like only yesterday, and yet now he sat beside her, almost a man. Where had the time gone? Her heart was suddenly clutched by a rush of fear for her son. She could see where this journey was leading and she suddenly wanted to keep her first born child from it. She made a decision; she would not expose him to more danger than was absolutely necessary.

They sat on their horses and watched as Beregond moved around the muddy edge of the highway, his eyes looking for evidence of movement. Never a Ranger, he had picked up some tracking skills from his time around Anborn and his men. In truth, however, the signs that he saw now were easily read.

Finally he looked up at his companions and squinted. “This is where he left the path. He’s going east; not to Isengard at all,” he pronounced.

The road swirled westwards before them in a large arc that took it to the distant horizon, where the rolling hills of Rohan could just be made out through the haze.

“East,” Eowyn repeated. She pulled her gaze away from the direction of the land of her birth.

Beregond nodded. “Towards Mordor.”

Eowyn could not quash the cold shiver the name brought her even now.

“But why?” Elboron asked. “There is nothing there.”

“We don’t know that,” Beregond said. “Gondor only patrols rarely past where the Black Gate once stood. It is an evil land and the King has had other more pressing affairs to the south. Who knows what may dwell there now.”

Eowyn nodded. “Saruman - it makes sense. If he is not in Isengard, where else could he find minions and tools to suit his purpose but in the lair of the Dark Lord?” She gulped. “And Faramir is going there alone, save for that worm that accompanies him.”

An awful thought grew in her mind as she spoke. She glanced at Beregond and saw from the glint in his eye that he was thinking it, too. She made a quick, silencing motion with her head and looked at Elboron. Beregond nodded that he understood.

“Bron,” Eowyn said. “I need you to go back down the road and find the King. He should be told what is happening.”

“But...” Elboron began.

“That’s an order, soldier,” Beregond snapped. “’Tis a dangerous mission, out here in the wilds on your own. Do not make us have to re-think our plan because of dereliction of your duty.”

Elboron’s face flushed. After a brief but heartfelt farewell, the young man was galloping back down the road. Eowyn sat and watched till he was out of sight.

“It is so hard to let them go,” she muttered.

“Aye,” agreed Beregond. “But he’s a good lad, with a stout heart. He won’t fail us.”

They turned their horses off the road. The tracks of the others were clearly visible on the damp ground heading off eastward. They disappeared as the earth became dustier away from the stream. Eowyn wondered whether Beregond would need to use his rudimentary tracking skills again since it was now obvious which way her husband was going.

She shuddered again as that thought took her back to an earlier one. “What if Faramir isn’t going of his own free will?” she asked, voicing her earlier fear now Elboron was gone. “What if Saruman has called him, using whatever power he has over him, and Faramir cannot resist?”

Eowyn remembered how Faramir had behaved the last time Sauron’s shadow had darkened their lives. She remembered his confusion, his headaches and his inability to rationalise the situation. This time there had been no such obvious indication that something was wrong, as far as she could recall. He had been lucid and logical, all too aware of his problems but able to plan a way to cope with them.

Still, the fact that he had resorted to violence with Wormtongue and had so readily admitted he enjoyed the release was not like him. And his dreams had not abated. He had woken her regularly with his screams. She had not told him but sometimes when she moved to comfort she was unable to touch him. It was as if his whole person was contagious in some way. Just a supportive hand laid on his shoulder had caused her to suffer frightening flashbacks of her own. She had seen the Witch King before her and felt the cold pain in her arm where the fell being had struck her. The only way to stop the memory was to let go of her husband. On a number of occasions, she had resorted to simply lying beside Faramir and listening to him scream, so scared was she to touch him.

She knew there was some nameless terror still lurking deep within him, something that seemed to come nearer the surface when his conscious mind slept. She wished she had found the strength to disclose to him what happened when he slept for it was important knowledge that may help his search. She tried, but she had not wanted to alarm him, not wanted to focus on something for fear that it would set in course events as catastrophic as the last time.

Now she cursed herself that she had not found the words to tell him. She could see clearly that Faramir should have known, and now it was too late.

Beregond reached across and laid a supportive hand on hers. “Then he will need you to free him, my Lady,” he said grimly, bringing her back to their conversation. “For I do believe there is nothing in this whole world that has more power over him than his love for you.”

She smiled but there were tears in her eyes. She sniffed them back. “Wind’s getting cold,” she muttered as she wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

“Come on, we haven’t time to lose,” Beregond replied.

********************************************************

Faramir slowed his horse. The other horse, which he held on a leading rein, hesitated beside him. Wormtongue, tied securely to its saddle, began to grumble.

He remembered his own shudder of apprehension when Wormtongue had told him where he believed Saruman to have fled.

“How do you know he is there?” he had asked.

Wormtongue had snorted. “Gandalf, the old fool, broke Saruman’s staff and took his power. He has been searching for it since. He knew he was not welcome in Isengard not with those bloody trees there. We came to Mordor first many years ago and I saw the longing in his eye. There is something there he needs, some power still that he seeks to use. His plan was always to return. If he is no where else, that is where he will be.”

Faramir mused over their conversation again. His mind was pulled back to the present by his companion’s voice.

“We can’t go any further,” Wormtongue groaned. “This is madness! He is near. Can’t you sense him? He is reaching out to you. Pulling you in.”

“I sense nothing,” Faramir said resolutely, but it was a lie.

He was deeply unsettled by Wormtongue’s words but forced himself to ignore them. Instead he gazed at the sight before him. Where once the massive Black Gate had stood, there was now only a sea of rubble. Huge misshapen boulders pointed at the sky with grey indifference. Faramir marvelled at the sheer power that had tossed them about as if they had been mere pebbles on a beach. Although much of his adult life had been spent fighting the forces of Mordor, he had seen the Black Gate only rarely. Still the scale of destruction dwarfed his imagination.

A cold wind blew over the rocks, but it was not what made Faramir shiver. His perceptive mind could sense the evil as if it were engrained into the very rock. Even after all the time the malignancy was palpable.

Faramir knew his horse could feel it too. “Easy, Daisy,” he soothed as he stroked the horse’s neck. Gently he urged both the horses on, but it was slow work as they picked their way through the rubble.

“You shouldn’t go on,” Wormtongue groaned. “He will kill us both. Can’t you see this is just what he wants? You fool!”

“We are going on,” Faramir responded. “And I will gag you again, unless you give my ears a rest.”

Wormtongue continued to whine but under his breath, and his words were lost on the growing breeze.

Eventually they made their way through the rubble and on to the deserted plain beyond. After some time, Faramir stopped again and stared. Over in the distance he could see the fiery magnificence of Mount Doom, still smouldering but thankfully not erupting. One side of the once symmetrical cone had been blown away, and it now stood angrily regarding the sky, its angularity making is even more imposing than before. As if to emphasise its power and potential, the fires from below glowed eerily reflecting on the dark clouds above it.

Faramir had to squint to see the details of the mountain as the wind continued to increase. Taking hold of the dirt and debris, it was forming a large cloud of dust, which swept down the valley towards them.

“We have to get out of the wind!” Wormtongue shouted to be heard above its howl and the flapping of their cloaks.

Faramir nodded but still remained motionless, for his eyes had perceived another edifice standing between them and the simmering mountain.

All his life Faramir had envisioned what Mordor would be like. Many nights had he awoken, sweating and screaming as the vision had haunted his nightmares. It had driven him on to fight all the more desperately during the War of the Ring. But since the war’s end, he had mercifully been released from such foul images; recollections of the horrific battles he had seen took their place in his nightmares.

For Mordor had fallen, the Dark Lord had perished, his armies scattered and everything he sought to build had been raised to the ground. He was not at the Black Gate with the Captains of the West on the day that the Ring bearer had completed his quest, but Faramir knew well what had happened. The songs were still sung in the inns of Gondor and beyond. They told him, and he believed, that Mordor was just a barren and empty land that no man yet had the courage to enter and reclaim. In the moment that the One Ring was claimed by Mount Doom and unmade, all its evil was ended. He thought no one remained in Mordor, and he knew that King Elessar planned that Gondor would reclaim the land someday, but only in the future, when time had diminished all their hurt and fear.

Now Faramir stood in the gathering storm, wind buffeting him and dust tearing at his skin and clothes, oblivious to it all. He was unable to move, unable to tear his now streaming eyes away from what he saw. For, rising from the plain between him and Mount Doom, was the embodiment of his nightmares from long ago. His heart was lurching in his chest sending freezing, fear-filled blood around his paralysed body.

“It cannot be,” he muttered but even though the dust cloud enveloped him and blanked all into a world of grey, biting dirt, he knew it was true. He had seen it with his own eyes, and it caused his soul to shiver.

Barad-dur was risen once more.