Chapter 17: Shadow and Flame

The Fellowship looked up in horror. The Balrog was already waiting for them on the bridge.

Gandalf gathered sword and staff, prepared again for battle. But he was so tired. The battle with the orcs had nearly done them all in. They were all bleeding from various wounds. Frodo swayed slightly on his feet, still dazed and finding it hard to breathe from the ferocity of the cave troll’s attack. He would have fallen had not Sam kept a firm grip on his arm the entire time.

Gandalf faced the Balrog resolutely. It towered above him. He could sense its exhilaration as it sensed how weak he was. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, drawing deep within himself, his lips moving in silent plea to Eru. When he opened his eyes again, he saw the Balrog had raised its whip, ready to strike him down.

“NO!” Frodo screamed. He made to step forward, but Aragorn grabbed him by the arm. The hobbit twisted around to look at him, straining against the hold.

“Wait,” was all the king said. He, Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship watched the drama play out, a sick feeling in their hearts but hoping, hoping...

Gandalf spoke harsh words of Command and raised his sword to meet the whip. Sparks flew and the Balrog discovered his prey was not as vulnerable as it thought. It advanced, fire spewing from it.

“Go back to the one who made you, demon of the darkness!” Gandalf cried. “You will not devour the Light that is here.”

As they watched, Gandalf seemed to glow and grow. Sam glanced at his master and saw the same light, only dimmer, coming from Frodo who stared transfixed at his friend, totally unaware of anything else.

The Balrog lowered its whip once more. It wrapped around the wizard’s sword and nearly tore it from his hand. The hobbits gasped. Frodo tried to step forward once more, but Aragorn’s grip tightened around him. “You cannot help him, Frodo,” he said, not unkindly.

Frodo didn’t respond, but he did not struggle anymore to free himself either.

Gandalf plunged his staff into the bridge, between the Balrog and himself. The foul creature advanced but the expanse began to crack under its weight and slowly, so slowly, it began to fall.

The wizard did not make the same mistake he had last time. He waited until the Balrog had fallen completely down the vast shaft before turning away. He wouldn’t be caught again by its whip.

That caution nearly cost him his life.

“GANDALF!” Aragorn screamed and the wizard turned, barely in time to see a second Balrog jump over the broken section of the bridge. The wizard would have been immolated right there had he not shouted a harsh word of Protection and raised his staff. Flames spilled over it, but did not touch him. But how, how could he have missed its arrival?

He raised his staff again in answer to the Balrog raising its whip, but he was too late, too tired. The whip scored a stinging, burning welt on his shoulder and he cried out in pain, nearly dropping his staff, being driven to his knees.

“NO!” Frodo cried as he watched in helpless terror and horror as they all did as the Balrog advanced on the stricken wizard. “Gandalf!”

The hobbit started to rush forward, tearing himself from Aragorn’s grip, Sting in his hand, ready to do battle with the flaming creature. He had no thought to his own safety, only that he had to help his friend. He couldn’t lose him, not again. But Boromir caught him in a vise-tight grip and wouldn’t let go no matter how much Frodo kicked and screamed, nearly hitting the man several times with the wildly swinging Sting.

Gandalf stared a moment at Frodo, then up at their mutual enemy. He parried the first strike of the Balrog’s whip with his staff, the second he caught on the edge of his sword. But he was so weary. The Balrog was ready.

Aragorn placed a firm grip on Frodo’s sword arm. “This is not our battle,” he said, barely restraining his own desire to go help Gandalf. “You would only be killed and the Ring would return to its master, with one of us as its slave. You don’t want that, do you?”

“I want Gandalf alive and safe!” Frodo shot back.

“We all do, little one,” Boromir assured as gently as he could, not relaxing his grip on the still struggling hobbit in his arms. “But Aragorn is right. The Ring will devour us all, if you do not get it to Mordor. Come away, we must take this time Gandalf is giving us to escape. Don’t make his sacrifice a vain one.”

“NO! NO! I won’t lose him, not again!” Frodo cried, struggling all the harder as Boromir and the others started to move away from the pair.

Sam came to him now, tears streaming down his cheeks. He placed a hand on his master’s arm. “I don’t want to lose Mr. Gandalf, anymore than you do, me dear, but we cannot win this battle. We have to get away.”

Frodo looked down at his friend, shook his head, then looked once more at Gandalf. The wizard looked past the hideous flame-wreathed demon to his little friend’s stricken face. “Go, Frodo!” he cried. “Go while there is still breath and life in you to make it to Mordor. That is the fate you have been handed, I go now to mine. Perhaps we will meet once more as before.”

“NO!” Frodo screamed as he saw Gandalf raise his staff once more and the Balrog’s whip come down upon it. “NO!”

Boromir tightened his grip on the hobbit then turned and moved away. Frodo squirmed around so he could watch his friend until the last. The wizard cried out either in challenge or farewell. It did not sound like he was in pain, that even in what seemed sure defeat, he was somehow triumphant, but whatever it was, there was a brilliant flash of light, then Gandalf was heard and seen no more. Frodo wasn’t sure what happened, even as he watched it. He was momentarily blinded by the light. When he recovered his sight again, there was no sight of the wizard or the Balrog. He felt horribly alone. A jagged cut re-opened in his heart in the same place that losing Gandalf the first time had been. A terrible cold poured from there, filling him. Tears streamed down his face unheeded and a loud cry rose from his soul to echo endlessly in his mind.

Boromir was the last one to stumble out of the mines into the light. Sam, Merry and Pippin were already sitting on the ground, Pippin crying in Merry’s arms, Sam absently patting the tweenager. Aragorn stood, stunned. Legolas stood near Gimli who sat on a rock. They were all silent, but for Pippin’s open sobbing. Boromir laid Frodo gently down on the ground where the hobbit curled in on himself away from the others. His body shook as his tears fell silently. Sam came to him and took him into his arms. Frodo held on tightly.

“He’s dead,” he said in a pained, nearly lifeless voice. “He’s dead again because of me.”

Sam rocked his master gently. “No, dear. Not because of you.”

“But it was I who chose to go into the Mines. Even though I already knew what could happen.”

“There was no other way we could go. We could have all died on the Mountain.”

Frodo didn’t respond, but Sam could almost hear the pain screaming out of him. He closed his eyes against his own tears, not wanting Frodo to see them.

Aragorn came up and knelt down at friend’s side. He touched his shoulder and waited until the grieving Ring-bearer looked up at him. “You heard Gandalf saying that the Balrog would not devour the Light?”

Frodo nodded numbly.

“It is your Light, gwador nin, that he was protecting.”

Frodo stared into his king’s kind eyes for a long time. Aragorn smiled, then squeezed his friend’s shoulder and got up. Frodo moved out of Sam’s arms and stood up. He gave one last, long look back into the mines, then began to walk resolutely forward. Sam was at his side. Merry murmured comforts to Pippin as they stumbled away from that place of renewed grief and loss. The others followed silently, lost in their own pain, the wind drying their tears.

Frodo didn’t speak. Sam looked at him often, wanting to comfort him, but what could heal such vast pain? The Ring-bearer’s tears dried and no more were forthcoming as they came far enough away that Aragorn thought they would be safe. Frodo threw himself down on the ground, his back to the others and closed his eyes. Sam sat by him, stroking his back, needing to do something. “Thank you, Sam,” Frodo murmured, then dropped off into an uneasy sleep. Merry and Pippin collapsed next to him, the elder wrapping his arm around the tween.

Boromir watched Frodo as well, seeing the hobbit’s tortured features did not relax much even in sleep. “It’s not fair,” he said to himself.

Sam looked up at him. “What’s that, Mr. Boromir?”

The man looked up surprised, not realizing until then that he had spoken aloud. “It’s not fair that he should have to suffer so much, especially that he should a second time.”

Sam looked at Frodo. “You only saw the beginning. I was there to see it all and you’re right, it’s not fair. None of this should be happening, but it is and we have to deal with it as best we might. There’s nothing for it. It may not be all working out as Mr. Frodo would wish, but this is the path he chose to walk because he could not bear to let anyone else do it. I would walk it myself in an instant to save him, we all would, but all I can do is be with him, stay by his side no matter what happens, help him in any way I can, except in the way I wish most to do. He won’t let me do that.”

“Carry the Ring for him, you mean?” Boromir asked.

Sam continued to look tenderly down at his troubled master. “Yes. I know how much it’s hurting him. I’ve seen it for months. And he hadn’t even recovered from the first time, when Gandalf told him he had to do it again. And now I have to watch it tear him apart all over again.”

“I wish I could carry it for him, too.”

Sam looked at the warrior, surprised and suspicious. He moved a little closer to Frodo to protect him. Had they all been wrong about Boromir changing?

The man saw his fears. “Don’t worry, Sam. I don’t mean it that way, not the way I did last time.” He looked at Frodo who murmured Gandalf’s name in his sleep. “I wish it for the same reason you do. To ease his suffering.”

Sam relaxed slightly and looked back at his uneasily slumbering master. “It wouldn’t ease it,” Sam said. “That’s the problem. He knows what it can do to someone. That’s why he won’t let anyone else touch it. He’s carrying it himself out of love for all of us. And if it means he’ll be destroyed by it, as he nearly was the first time, then that’s the price he is willing to pay if everyone he loves remain safe.” His voice turned soft. “You will not find a more giving, loving heart than his, even if you traveled this whole earth.”

He reached down to touch Frodo’s forehead. It seemed to calm him enough to settle him into deeper sleep. Sam lay down next to him then, placing an arm protectively over Frodo’s chest, and closed his eyes. Boromir watched them a few minutes more, then closed his own eyes. Aragorn remained awake as did Legolas. Gimli had already nodded off and begun to snore.

The king thought he saw a glimmer of eyes in the night and nodded to Legolas. They moved soundlessly, but then the eyes disappeared and all was quiet again.

But they well knew that was an illusion.