Chapter Nine: Battle

In the morning, Sam and Merry woke first. Frodo and Pippin slept on, both peacefully, the tween having his arm still laying protectively over his cousin’s chest. Satisfied that the brother of their heart was still well guarded, the two rose and went into the kitchen to help with breakfast.

A short while later, Pippin woke, wrapped Frodo’s hand around Arwen’s gem and brushed his brow with a light kiss, thus arming his cousin for a short absence while the tween visited the privy. The Ring-bearer shifted in his sleep and his hand fell from the gem, giving the darkness the opening it needed.

Pippin was back in just a few minutes, but already Frodo was murmuring in his sleep, tossing his head back and forth. Rather alarmed due to the warnings they had all received the previous day, the tween rushed into the kitchen. Everyone was already there and looked at him.

"He’s talking again," he said.

Sam rushed out of the room, leaving an omelette still baking. Rose removed it from the heat, then joined her husband.

"I thought you were guarding him, Pippin!" Merry rebuked, his fear causing him to speak harsher than he should have as he was out the door nearly as fast.

"I only left a few minutes to use the privy," the younger hobbit protested.

"He’s not supposed to be left alone, ever!"

Pippin’s lower lip trembled and he looked to be on the brink of tears.

"It’s not your fault, Pippin," Aragorn said gently as they hurried to Frodo. "It’s going to be all right. Don’t lose hope."

The young hobbit looked up at his king and tried to be brave.

Sam was holding his master’s hand, wrapping it around the gem again, when they entered, but Frodo was fighting against him, lost in his dark dream. Those who understood the Black Speech winced and mourned to hear such foul words come from such fair lips.

"You’ve got to do something, Strider, sir...I mean...." Sam cried and then trailed off and reddened.

Aragorn smiled gently and put his hand on the flustered gardener’s shoulder. "Sam, I shall always be Strider to you, and you have no need to call me anything else. Now I need you to try to calm yourself for the darkness will feed on your anxiety and use it to grow stronger."

He looked at Merry and Pippin as well, and briefly to Rose. "I need all of you to try to calm yourselves. Frodo needs your love right now, just as he always has. The Shadow cannot use that, but we can."

The four hobbits nodded and valiantly worked to dispel their fears from harming their cousin. Having that as motivation worked wonders and that they joined hands to comfort themselves and each other. Gandalf, Arwen, Faramir and Aragorn smiled and worked to contain their own anxieties as well.

The king left the room for a moment and returned with a steaming kettle in which he crushed some athelas and said the invocation over it. The aroma that filled the room relaxed them all and prepared them for the coming battle.

Frodo continued to murmur and toss at first more restlessly as the darkness encountered a stench it hated.

"What can we do?" Pippin squeaked.

Arwen leaned down and gently brushed Frodo’s lips with a kiss, to cleanse them from the horrible words he was speaking. Sam kissed his heart and Merry and Pippin his ears and Faramir his brow, all places that were infected with the Speech. Rose kissed his maimed hand and Gandalf and Aragorn his feet, in recognition for the sacrifices made to rid the world of the Shadow that they still struggled against even now.

Frodo felt all the touches, but did not know their source. In the complete darkness, he was walking slowly through, he felt them as cobwebs brushing against him.

"Sam, do you still have the Lady Galadriel’s phial?" Aragorn asked, when Frodo showed no signs of waking.

The gardener burst from the room and ran to his master’s. He hurried back almost faster than his legs could carry him. The phial was already shining in his stout hand when he re-entered the room.

"Hold it up where he can see it," Aragorn instructed.

Sam did so, and as he did so, he begged his master to find it and look at it.

Merry and Pippin tried to hold their cousin’s hands, but Frodo brushed them away, feeling in his darkness that he was being confined. He saw in the distance a bright light shining, but he did not want to go near, fearing it would again be the sword he had seen in his other dream, tempting him to use it to end his pain. Was there no way out of this foul hole that he had dropped into? He looked around and thought at any moment he would see those terrible clusters of eyes, hear that horrible breathing, smell that overwhelming stench, sense that malice bearing down into him. A voice came to him from a vast distance, so faint it could hardly be heard, but he thought it sounded like Sam’s, or was it a trick of the Enemy? It was coming from near the light, but still he held back from approaching it.

"Why doesn’t he want to be held?" Pippin asked. "Why isn’t the athelas helping him?"

"He may not be aware of what is happening to him, but only what the Enemy wants him to feel and think and see."

"I told you to leave him alone!" Sam rebuked their adversary and there was a sound, not heard with their ears, but heard by all of them nonetheless, of terrible, mocking laughter. Pippin winced. He had heard that sound before.

"It’s not real, me dear, me dear," Sam said, brushing his hand through his master’s curls with his free hand. "Can’t you feel us? Can’t you hear us? Come back or let me go to you. Where are you? Let your Sam in, won’t you?"

Gandalf spoke words that only Arwen vaguely understood, and that at first increased Frodo’s restlessness. They all felt an oppressive hatred nearly take their breath, but the wizard continue to speak, undeterred and Frodo slowly calmed. Aragorn nodded at his wife and she came to Sam’s side and spoke to him gently. She took her grandmother’s phial and held it in her hand and it shined even brighter.

Frodo saw the increased light and with it heard distant voices that he didn’t recognize, but he felt the darkness around him did. He felt more of the cobwebs brush against his brow and he wished to be free of them, free for ever, free from all fear and pain. He began to move toward the light half-unwillingly.

"Come near, my brother," he heard another voice call.

The light grew stronger and Frodo began to become aware of a sweet smell that was completely alien to the darkness. He breathed in deeply.

"Come on, dearest," Merry and Pippin called together. "We’re waiting for you."

All the voices seemed to be coming from the light and he thought he recognized them, but he still held back far enough that he thought he wouldn’t be seen. He didn’t want to get too close until he could see whether it was the sword shining. He did not want to end that way. The darkness was still close around him and for once, it felt a comfort to him, a safe place, away from the dangerous light.

It was Rose’s voice that finally drove him a little further on. "Come back, Mr. Frodo. It’s time to come home."

That sweet, innocent voice felt distinctly out of place in the black and it gave him pause to wonder about the place he was in. How could such a voice be here? Was he not in the spider’s lair? But hadn’t Sam heard Elven voices there?

"Rose?" he croaked and it was the first word in Westron that they had heard all morning from him and the rejoicing that filled the room reached out to fill where the oppressive malice had been before.

Moved by some inspiration, Sam dared to wrap his hand around Arwen’s and the phial lit up even brighter. Frodo squinted for now he was close enough that the brightness hurt his eyes. But he kept walking and slowly he entered into the light and the darkness was left behind. He opened his eyes.

"Sam?"

"We’re here, me dear," Sam said, ready to collapse from relief. "We’re all here."

He took Frodo into his arms and pressed his heart against his master’s, tucking it around Frodo’s as he always had. Softly his tears fell against Frodo’s neck where he had been stung. "Don’t leave me again, me dear," Sam begged. "Don’t leave any of us again."

The Ring-bearer held onto his beloved guardian tightly. "I can’t, dearest Sam, for you are always with me, wherever I go."