Disclaimer: I don’t own them, and I’ll put them back when I’m done!

Author’s Note: I’m terribly sorry for how long this chapter took! They will be coming faster from now on, I promise!

Chapter Fourteen: The Librarian

Ignoring startled exclamations from the tower guards, Faramir and Eomer sprinted through the Citadel towards the King’s private dining room. They skidded to a halt upon entering the room; after long years of battle training they were only slightly out of breath. They both stared at the assembled group in speechless amazement and relief.

“Where were you?” Eomer burst out, crossing the room and seizing Eowyn in a fierce embrace. “We’ve been searching since dawn!”

Eowyn squirmed, laughing dryly. “I was off having an adventure, brother. Arwen and I decided to do some exploring and ended up trapped in an empty room last night. We managed to break out just a few minutes ago, and here we are.”

Eomer put her down, and Faramir took his turn at hugging Eowyn fiercely. From across the room, Eomer heard Pippin whisper to Merry, “D’you suppose she would let me hug her if I ran at her like that?” The young king suppressed a grin and adopted a stern expression.

“Don’t ever do that again. Someone could have found your bones a hundred years from now,” he said.

Eowyn glowered at him. “They would have done no such thing! The room looked down on the Houses of Healing.”

There was a pause as both men surveyed her. Eowyn frowned at them, fully aware that she had only had time to don a plain brown dress before she and Arwen had snuck off the night before. She was also aware that the three of them were being studiously ignored by the rest of their friends.

“What is it?” she asked, self-consciously tucking a strand of hair behind her ears. “Tell me!”

It was Faramir who answered at last, looking hesitant. “We saw, Eomer and I, a girl standing in one of the windows in the abandoned wing. She was wearing a red dress, and neither of us thought that she was you or Queen Arwen. Do you have any idea who it could have been?”

“It was a ghost,” Pippin said cheerfully, popping up by Eowyn’s elbow. “Must have been. And Queen Arwen was wearing blue when she left a few moments ago.” He turned to Eowyn, adopting a serious look that Eomer recognized with a start as a mockery of his own stern face. It was disturbingly accurate. “Now Eowyn, you’ve been out all night and are in no shape to be with people. Merry and I think that you should go bathe and take a nap, and Cousin Frodo will insist upon it if he comes in and sees you looking so sleepy. You have circles under your eyes! Off you go now!”

Eowyn found herself being bundled out of the room, pushed by hobbit hands. She glanced back at her brother and fiancé, calling, “I don’t know who it could have been. I’m sorry to disappoint you! Oh, and we owe Bergil some land in the Westfold.”

Then she was gone.

Aragorn, from where he was standing near the buffet table, raised his glass to the younger men. “It was a wise, if uneducated man who once said, ‘don’t mess around with women, boys, they’ll never let you be.’”

“What are you saying?” asked Eomer, very rightly confused.

“I’m telling you that they won’t tell you anything they don’t want to, so don’t press them,” Aragorn said, and downed his drink.

Perplexed, Eomer turned to Faramir. “What did Eowyn mean, we owe Bergil land in the Westfold?”

*****

“All right, lads, our mission for today is to comb the Great Library for maps of the abandoned wing. Queen Arwen asked us to find them so that we will know where we are going when we explore the place again,” Merry said.

He paused, hands on hips, to survey Pippin and Bergil. The younger lads gazed back at him expectantly, standing at attention in slightly mocking attitudes. Merry was glad that he and Pippin were not on duty that day, and so could move about unbothered by their obligations. The fact that Eowyn had informed them that she intended to sleep until dinner made it easy to keep Bergil with them. “Do you have the courage and fortitude to follow orders and stay true in the face of danger and almost certain death? Bergil! Answer me!”

Bergil stared at him for a moment, than began to giggle. “Aye, sir! For there is great peril to be found in the Great Library! There are pirates in the corners, you know.”

“And bats in the belfry!” Pippin added gleefully. “Come on, let’s go before Strider catches us and puts us to work doing something boring.”

Laughing, the hobbits and Bergil left the Citadel and hurried down into the sixth circle, back to the vicinity of the Great Library. The day was warm and sunny, and a gust of warm air blew their hair back as Merry pushed the heavy wooden door open. Hushed by the stately darkness inside, their laughter faded.

The library was the same as it had been on Pippin’s last visit there, only a few days before. This time, however, they did not have to call the librarian out, for he was sitting in an armchair reading from a huge tome, as stately in his throne as any king. When he saw them standing there, the little man set aside the heavy book and rose to his feet.

“Ah, it’s the young perian who was interested in Belecthor the Second,” he said, his voice as dry as rustling parchment. “How may I assist you today?”

Pippin stepped forward and bowed to the man, seeing as he was the one who had been addressed. “We are looking for maps of the abandoned wing of the Citadel for my lady queen today, sir. Would you happen to have any?”

The librarian gazed down at Pippin, his eyebrows drawn together in a way that strongly reminded the hobbit of Gandalf. He wondered if the two of them could possibly be related.

“I have the maps you are looking for,” the librarian said at last. “And some other things that I think you lads might be interested in. May I enquire as to why you need them?”

Pippin hesitated, glancing back at Merry for help. Receiving none, he said, “We are interested in learning about the history of Gondor, and so are Queen Arwen and Lady Eowyn. That’s all.”

“Ah,” said the librarian, obviously unconvinced. “I see. Good. For a few moments I was worried that you would be looking into the affair of young Alatarial.” And he turned and swept away.

Pippin stared after him for a moment, then hurried to catch up, running a little. The man may have been small, but he took great strides. Pippin could hear Merry and Bergil struggling to keep up.

The librarian did not speak again, but led them through the tall shelves to the same table that Pippin and Eowyn had sat at days before. Passing that, they walked through a small arched doorway that led to a narrow passage, that in turn led to a tightly curling staircase and on up to the first level of the library. There, only a slender iron railing kept them from tumbling down to the large room below. Pippin glanced at it uneasily. It looked far too flimsy to be trusted, even if it was be too high for a hobbit to hold onto.

“What did you mean, you were worried that we were looking into ‘the affair of young Alatarial’?” Pippin panted, gratefully coming to a stop as the librarian turned to scan a shelf of books.

“I meant what I said. You and the Lady Eowyn had me in mind of another young lady who looked into that story and came to grief over it. Some things are best left asleep, young sir,” the librarian replied, and pulled a thick book off the shelf. It was nearly as large as Pippin, and the librarian did not bother handing it to the hobbit, instead setting it on a funny sort of lift. Then he turned back to the shelves.

“You’re not going to be like everyone else here and tell us to stay out of trouble, are you?” Pippin demanded. “Because I’m fairly certain we will ignore you. We’re too far into this adventure to back out now.”

The librarian gave Pippin a funny little smile. “I did not ask you to, Master Perian. I worried about you, yes, but I did not doubt that two such persons as yourselves would investigate, and perhaps bring your friends into it. I knew when you came in here asking for information on Belecthor the Second. I believe I have some information that might be useful to you.”

He pulled several more books off the shelf, set them on the lift, and strode away. The hobbits and Bergil shared a confused glance and followed him.

“What sort of information?” Merry asked guardedly. He wondered what this strange little man could possibly know that no one else did.

“I work with books, sir. For the past fifty years, I have guarded and preserved the past for they who will come in the future. I was never strong enough to be a soldier, and so I spent my time safely in here, reading, while great men performed valiant deeds. I have learned a few things in my time,” the librarian said calmly. “But I am a humble man, and I have learned when to keep my nose out of other people’s business.”

Merry glowered at the man’s retreating back, fists clenched. “Everyone talks in riddles! What was so bad about Alatarial that we cannot possibly reveal who was responsible for her death? If Belecthor didn’t kill her, who did?”

The librarian returned with an armful of books, herding them in front of him as he walked back towards the lift. He settled the last of them atop the others already in the pile, making the lift squeak in protest. He pulled a rope and sent the whole thing gliding down to the long table below. Merry made a mental note to install such a useful invention in Brandyhall’s library when he got home.

The librarian, now finished with his task, turned back to face them, brushing the dust from his hands. “Oh, Belecthor killed Alatarial, make no mistake about that. But there are other things you must learn for yourselves. To your books, lads! I’ll be in the front if you need me.”

And he swept majestically down the staircase and back across the library to his throne.

Pippin turned to Merry and Bergil, at a loss as to what to say or do. After a few moments of staring helplessly at one another, Bergil decided to take charge.

“Well, I suppose we may as well look at those books,” he said, and led the way down the twisting staircase.

*****

There was something strangely enticing about digging through the books that the librarian had given them. As a rule, Pippin did not enjoy sitting indoors book-learning when the day was beautiful, but this research was far more interesting than learning how to calculate the amount of barley each field at home would yield. The books they were looking at were very old, and ranged from written histories of the stewards to the maps they had requested, to gossip pages bound together in fat little books. These the lads found vastly amusing, and they wasted an hour reading aloud to each other tales of fine balls and the nobles who attended them. Gossip pages, Bergil informed them, were something he was unfamiliar with, and must have dwindled during the past several decades. They yielded great amounts of perfectly useless information.

As it was, they found their first scraps of information in one of these fat little books. Merry read aloud to them about a man who angered Belecthor and was ordered to pay extra taxes for that year. Pippin grabbed a sheet of dusty paper and blew a huge cloud of dust into the air. Then he grabbed a pen and ink and copied down the account. It never hurt to take notes, after all, and he was certain that Arwen and Eowyn would want to hear everything they learned that day.

“I think that Belecthor was a bit mad,” Merry announced a while later, as he set down the last of the gossip books. “How many reports are there of his being angry at people for little things, Pip?”

Pippin surveyed his note-covered paper. “Thirty eight. And they’re all for stupid things, too.”

“My favorite one is about the youths who rode their horses in the great hall for entertainment,” Bergil stated, grinning a little. “I can understand him being angry about that.”

The hobbits had to concede that point. “It’s the other things, like forgetting to bow to him at a meeting and having to pay a fine for it that I don’t understand,” Merry said. “That strikes me as being wrong, somehow.”

Pippin pushed the little books away and heaved a larger book off their pile. “Let’s see what else there is in here.”

This next book contained a detailed map of the Citadel. The unused wing was well detailed, its floor plan sketched out and all of the rooms identified. They found the old ballroom, the servants’ passage, and Alatarial’s room straight away. The staircase that should have led from the main floor up to Alatarial’s room was also easily located in a corridor that none of them had ever been down. Tracing a line with his finger from the portrait gallery door to Alatarial’s room, Pippin found the route that Eowyn had first taken in that part of the house. It was so obvious that he was slightly confused as to why he had taken the roundabout way through the ballroom.

“This place is even more complicated that I’d thought,” Merry said in amazement as he studied the map. “I’m going to copy it down.”

Spreading a sheet of paper over the floor plan, Merry traced a copy with the stub of a pencil he found further down the table. Bergil and Pippin watched as he did so, silently awed by Merry’s precision. When he was done, Merry paused, frowning at the map.

“Lads,” he said. “I know we have lots more research to do, but look at this.”

He pointed at a large room several corridors away from Alatarial’s room. It had no door, no windows. And yet, it was clearly marked.

“ ‘Alchemy Room’,” Bergil read aloud. “That’s strange. Something like that should have been down at the Houses, I should think.”

Merry nodded, grimly rolling his copy of the map up. “We’ll ask the librarian to hold onto these books for us a while. I have a sneaking feeling that this is important. We’re going to go find that room.”

TBC