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The Mariner's Son  by Cairistiona

Silence.

Then a soft groan from someone very close by. Aragorn pried open his eyes, or tried to. One eye refused to open and the other looked out blearily at a world that shimmered and blurred alarmingly. Someone groaned again.

As consciousness dribbled back, he realized the groans came from his own throat. He clamped his mouth shut, but annoyingly, the soft cries continued with each waterlogged breath. He coughed weakly, and after a long moment he realized two things: he had nearly drowned, and his head rang with the hammers of Moria. Somewhere between the hammer blows lurked memories. A storm. A bash to the forehead. A fall into churning water that tossed him and battered him like a discarded doll. His legs banging into land. Crawling from the water. Retching and coughing up what felt like gallons of seawater. But beyond that... nothing. The past was a blank wall.

He realized he wasn’t even sure of his name.

After a few moments he became aware of another pain, somewhere in his left arm. He shifted his hand and the pain flared, instant and excruciating. From the feel of it, his wrist must be broken. When the spasm of pain finally eased, he very carefully curled the fingers of his right hand. They dug into something gritty and soft.

Sand.

Yes, he had definitely washed ashore. Was sprawled face down on the sand. With a broken head and a broken wrist and who knows what other injuries but at least he was not drowning. He smiled, or tried to. It felt good, not to be drowning.

After a while, the simple joy of not drowning lost its charm and other worries crowded in. What of the rest of his body? Was he whole? He cautiously moved his right leg and then his left. To his everlasting relief, both moved, and neither hurt.

All right then. A broken wrist. Somehow, even though the knowledge of who he was seemed strangely missing, he knew he had survived worse injuries. So he took a deep breath, steeling himself. Knowing pain was coming, he could brace himself for it, tolerate it for as long as he needed to. One more breath, and then he pushed upward with his right arm, raising his head and chest off the wet sand.

But he had not steeled himself for the daggers that sank into his skull. He gasped, then collapsed back down and knew no more.

~~~~

"Here, lad, wake up! Are you alive?"

Someone grasped his shoulder, shaking it gently but still sending great arcs of pain up his neck and into his brain. The peaceful darkness where he had found retreat dissolved into a red mass of agony. He feebly pushed the hands away, trying to tell the man to stop, but only managing a weak, unintelligible croak.

"Thanks be! I figured you for a goner," the voice cried. "Well, let’s get you untangled from all this seaweed and get you inside, clothed and dried. The storm chewed you up and spit you back out right and proper, looks like."

An arm slid under his chest and he wanted to scream no, don’t touch me leave me alone... but the man lifted him and there was an instant of blinding, shattering pain and then nothing.

~~~~

Bright blue eyes peered at him from below grizzled brows as a hand ran a rough cloth gently across Aragorn’s face. "Bled like a slaughtered hog, that cut on your forehead," he chuckled. "You’ve got quite a bump. Two big bumps, actually, counting that one behind your ear."

Aragorn winced as the cloth scraped across the cut. The old man may chuckle; it wasn’t his forehead that felt like it had Durin’s Axe buried in it. "Where am I?" he whispered.

"My home," the man replied, as if that were sufficient. "Drink."

Aragorn sipped from the cup the old man held to his lips. It was some sort of broth. Watery and warm. He swallowed, grateful, but he couldn’t help the touch of asperity that crept in his voice. "And that is supposed to mean something to me?"

Again, a dry chuckle. "Tetchy, aren’t you, lad? What’s your name?"

Aragorn opened his mouth, then shut it again. Panic fluttered in his gut. Why could he not remember his name?

"Calm down, calm down. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to."

"No, it’s not that. I-I can’t remember."

The old man frowned. "Can’t remember? Well, I suppose a knot on the head will do that to a man. And you have two knots on your head," he added calmly, as if not remembering your name was the normal outcome of two knocks to the brain but cause for concern only if following one knock.

Aragorn did not feel so nonchalant about the entire situation. Not when it was his brain that evidently was so battered that it had decided to quit working. "Where am I?" he asked again.

"I told you, my home. But since you seem to be a man who wants specifics like names, you are in Fyrstrand, a very small village by the sea."

The name meant nothing to him. "By the sea?"

"Aye, lad. The sea. Surely you know the sea? Big body of water that nearly swallowed you whole? "

"Yes, I know what a sea is, but what sea?"

The old man sat back. "Your brain is addled, boy. You’re in Anfalas, also known as Langstrand. On the coast–the Bay of Belfalas, to be exact. Further south lies Harad. Not knowing Fyrstrand I can understand, but tell me that you know of Anfalas and Belfalas?"

He started to say he had never heard of either, but another name floated up through the murk and he made the connection. With some relief, he sighed, "Gondor. South Gondor."

"Aye, that’s more like it! You’re in the south of Gondor, the province of Anfalas. Village of Fyrstrand. Such as it is. Not much left of it after those scoundrels of Umbar attacked last spring."

"Thorongil," he whispered, more to himself than to the old man.

"That your name? You finally remembered it?"

"I think so," Aragorn said uncertainly. But something about that name did not sound quite right.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Master Thorongil."

Aragorn tried to smile but wasn’t sure he quite succeeded. He waved vaguely toward his head and his wrist, which he saw was tightly wrapped. "Thank you for taking care of all... this."

"Nothing any decent soul wouldn’t have done. Are you hungry? You have a sort of starved look about your eyes."

He had a sudden flash of going days without food or water. He frowned, trying to catch the memories but they eluded his grasp like smoke through his fingers. "I-I was ... trapped," he said, his eyes widening as the word leapt unbidden to his lips. Trapped? How? By what, or who?

"Trapped, you say?"

"Yes," he said slowly, thinking. He shut his eyes and immediately was bombarded with images of stone walls, of a locked door, rising waters and a feeling of utter panic. "I was trapped, in a building somewhere by the sea. Water came rushing in and I had to break through the roof." His eyes flew open and he struggled to sit up.

"Here now, lay back down before you hurt yourself."

"No, I’m fine." He wasn’t, not with the way the room pitched and spun about, but no matter. "I can remember some of it. I had a ring ... and someone hit my head and took it, and locked me in that place." Then, frustratingly, memory seemed to exhaust itself and the blank white curtain crashed across his thoughts again. He pressed his hand against his eyes. "No," he groaned. "It’s gone."

"Now, now, don’t take on so. Just give yourself time. You will heal and your memories return."

He sagged back against the pillow. "But who am I?" he whispered miserably. A name held little meaning if he no longer knew the essence of himself.

"You said you had a ring? That means you must be somebody fairly rich."

"No, I don’t have much money," he immediately said. How he knew, he wasn’t sure. But he knew he did not have much in the way of possessions. Just a ring–his eyes widened. "And a sword. I have a sword, and... and the hilt of another sword. A broken sword," he finished uncertainly. Why would he have a broken–

Renewed shall be the blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.

He frowned. How did he know that? And where were those things now? He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to calm the fear that he might never remember, and that not remembering would have very tragic consequences. He felt almost swamped by a growing sense of urgency. He had to remember!

The old man’s voice cut across the storm of his thoughts. "A ring, a sword... and it looks like a strong arm. A bandit might think you rich, if not easy pickings."

"I am not rich, but I apparently was easy pickings." The thought did not please him. He had a hazy impression that he was not normally a man easily waylaid.

"Well, the solution will come in time. You sit tight while I get you some soup."

The man got up, moving with surprising grace and speed for such an elderly man. "Wait!" Aragorn called. "Your name. What do I call you?"

The man paused, staring deeply into some vista far beyond the room. "Call me The Mariner. Any other names I had don’t really matter anymore."

With that odd statement, the man turned away. Aragorn’s eyes drifted shut. When he opened them again, many hours had obviously gone by. Moonlight shone through a window, and the old man sat snoring in a chair, the bowl of stew on a small table beside him, forgotten.

Aragorn touched a bandage that circled his head. His forehead ached dully, but the hammering had mercifully quit. He drifted back to sleep and when he opened his eyes again the sun was streaming through a window. He squinted, disoriented. He thought he had only shut his eyes for a moment. Losing so much time at a blink was disconcerting.

The old man stood in front of a fireplace, ladling soup from a black iron pot hung from a hook over a small blaze. He brought the bowl over. "How do you fare this morning?"

Aragorn cautiously lifted his head; the room remained blessedly still. "Better, I think."

"You look better. Think you can feed yourself or do you want me to help you?"

He struggled to sit up, and when nothing happened more dire than a brief throbbing near his forehead, said, "I can do it myself."

"I’ll hold the bowl. That wrist of yours won’t let you hold anything for a while yet."

That was true enough. But the broken wrist wasn’t hampering his appetite at all. His stomach growled loudly as the aroma of the stew wafted across his nose.

The old man chuckled. "Yes, from the longing in those grey eyes of yours, you are most definitely starving."

He blinked. "Grey eyes?"

"Silvery blue. Grey. Like the sea before it storms. I don’t know what to call ‘em but they’re keen enough this morning. But surely you know that, even if you can’t remember your name. A man usually knows the color of his eyes."

"Right now I couldn’t tell you if I was a man or an elf."

"You’re no elf, I’ll tell you that right now. Not with that thicket growing on your jaw."

Aragorn smiled, but somewhere in the back of his mind he suddenly felt a wistful longing. He frowned for a moment. Why would he want to be an elf? It made no sense. Just another mystery to solve. He shrugged off the worrisome thought in favor of getting some of that soup. He took a big bite. "Good," he mumbled, and took three more big bites.

"Slow down, son! You’ll sicken yourself, eating too fast on a starving stomach."

Aragorn shoveled in one more spoonful, then he sat back, chewing slowly. Thinking. "What do you know of a stone building, square on bottom, round at the top?"

"I know it well. It’s what’s left of a lighthouse that used to be out on the point, ages past. Legend has that the Númenóreans built it. The top part has been gone for centuries. Some years back, I put a roof on it and turned it into a little store house sort of thing, but a big storm changed the coastline. Made it to where you had to wade through the surf to get to it, and then come high tide the water gets in. Useless for storage. I’ve heard that in storms like this one we just had, it fills to the rafters."

"It does," Aragorn said quietly.

The Mariner eyed him askance. "You don’t mean to say that’s where you were trapped?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Well... how? I put a lock on the door, but it’s on the outside, high up, just to keep children from getting trapped. You have to deliberately drop a peg in to stop the door opening." Horror rose in his eyes. "You mean to say someone put you in there and locked you in, with that typhoon brewing?"

Aragorn nodded.

"Why... why, that’s murder, lad! Somebody deliberately set out to kill you!"

"It appears that way," Aragorn sighed. He carefully pulled his left wrist into his lap and rubbed the bare spot where the ring of Barahir... his eyes widened as the name popped into his head. But what did the name signify? He started to ask, but some inner voice cautioned him not to mention it to the old man. Another memory beckoned. "Do you know of a man," he said slowly, letting the thought unveil itself at its own pace, "Young, probably not yet twenty. Wild black hair, strong, carries a cudgel? Not entirely in his right mind?"

The old man paled. "Oh my," he whispered. "Oh dear. I never thought–"

"What?"

The man seemed to be in almost physical pain. He placed the bowl on the table. "I never thought he would hurt anyone," he whispered.

"Who? Who is he?"

"He’s my son."





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