Note: Isildur's epistle is taken from "The Council of Elrond", The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

Chapter LX: Words for Posterity

Aragorn awoke once in the night to find the fire banked and Lethril watching over him. She helped him up off of his back, first to sit and take some water and then to hobble as far as the corner. There was a showing of fresh blood in the pot, which displeased Aragorn far more than it did his Healer: she reassured him such a resurgence was not uncommon, and no sign at all that his kidney was any worse than before. He knew that, of course, but it still felt like a setback in a long and tiresome battle. He sat in the chair, arms crossed on his knees while she changed the dressing on his back. Those wounds were bleeding again, but modestly and with a bright scarlet blood from the shallower vessels. Then it was time to take his usual ration of milk, this time cut two parts to one with cream, and he returned to his bed. This time he was careful to lie on his side, as he should have done before. Soon enough he slept again.

When he came back to himself again, Gandalf was seated in the second chair by the fire, watching the flames dance. His face was far away and very grave, and he did not at once notice that the sleeper was roused. Aragorn moved the bedclothes with a quiet hand and watched him noiselessly awhile. His travelworn garments had been changed for robes of soft Elven cloth, still grey in colour, and his beard and hair were clean and combed. No longer did he look dogged by exhaustion and Aragorn was envious of the swiftness of his friend's recovery, but he was clearly troubled in his heart.

Aragorn considered his next motions with the careful mind of a captain executing a complex troupe maneuver. When he was sure of himself – or nearly – he slipped his left arm beneath the covers and swept them back off of his hip. The motion drew the wizard's eye, and he began to speak, but already Aragorn had his right elbow under him and was pushing up onto his hip. When he was halfway into a sitting position, he reached down to free his bandaged ankle from the sheets, and swung his leg gently floorward. This allowed him to rock the rest of the way up, and soon he was sitting on the edge of the bed with the soft robe bunched up near his knees but his back straight and his head high.

'You make a fair sight to greet the day, my friend,' he said, almost without any whisper of a pant. 'I see you have taken your rest, and I trust you have eaten.'

Gandalf had turned in the chair and nearly risen to help. Now he was sitting back again with a pleased tilt to his lips and earnest relief in his eyes. 'Aye, the hospitality of Thranduil is extravagant, if carefully guarded. He had much to tell me of your arrival that is troubling.'

'It was not an easy road,' Aragorn said, reaching for his carven crutches where Lethril had stood them by the headboard. He placed them securely to either side of his legs and rose up onto them with his twisted foot carefully held aloft. Gandalf stiffened in the chair again, ready to spring up at the least sign of trouble, but none was expected and none was experienced. Aragorn stumped the few steps to his chair and eased into it, arranging the ill-fitting robe as neatly as he could. Someone had wiped the mud from his footstool, and he rested his right leg upon it, curling his dully-aching hands over the balls of the armrests. 'Gollum is a sly wretch, and he did me evil one final time in the forest.'

Gandalf nodded, but did not pursue the matter: firm proof that Thranduil had told him all he knew of spiders and great cats. There was no need for Aragorn to say more. After a moment or two the wizard spoke.

'I intend to go to see him today. Is there aught that passed between you I might use to my advantage?'

Aragorn shook his head ruefully. 'In truth I do not know. He was put to some great torment in Mordor. It is impossible to think he would have been questioned about anything other than Bilbo's ring, but as to what he may have told his interrogator I do not know. Whatever it was, you can be sure it was all he knew or thought he did. The one who worked upon his hands… well, I have seen such marks before.'

He wished at once that he had brought the counterpane from the bed to lay across his lap, that it might now have hidden his feet. It was an absurd impulse, for the only notable scar was swathed in the bandages that bound his right ankle. Suddenly he was taken by a memory, clear as a divine vision, of that last day together in Harondor, when he had sat swathed in Gandalf's cloak, dispassionately studying his bare feet. How far each of them had come since that day in the waning of the year!

'And what you may endure, we have plainly learned, cannot easily be borne by others,' Gandalf agreed thoughtfully. At Aragorn's sharp look he smiled sadly. 'Do not fear for that secret, Dúnadan. The truth is I have suspected some such thing for many years. Had anything useful or dangerous come of it, I know you would not have held your silence as you have. Yet it is all the more to your credit that you dared venture back into those shadows. You are certain, then, that Gollum came to you out of Mordor?'

'As certain as I have ever been of that I did not witness with my own eyes,' Aragorn assured him. The memory of cold grey eyes and the hissing imperious voice was all but gone now. 'I did not succeed in learning anything of what he told them, nor did I learn any particular of his escape. I believed when I took him and I believe now that he could not have done so without aid or at the very least a deliberate lack of interference.'

'You feel that he was let go intentionally,' Gandalf clarified. 'To what end?'

'Upon some evil errand, surely, but I cannot say what,' answered Aragorn. 'I tried to coax it, or surprise it, or wring it from him, but my manner of questioning lacks a certain persuasion found only among the darkest servants of Sauron.' He curled his lip to show he meant that half in jest and added; 'The truth is that after a time I ceased to question him at all. It was enough to endure his company and prevent his escape.'

There was silence between them for a moment. Then the Ranger spoke again. 'I was certain when I struck out from the Ephel Dûath that we were being pursued, either by those seeking to recapture Gollum or by they who wished to see where he might need them. It was that same certainty that bore me over Anduin, and led to the briefness of my sojourn on the marches of Lórien. Now… I do not know. Perhaps the haste and desperation were unnecessary.'

'Hardly that, I fear,' said Gandalf. 'Do not question too closely the choices of that road, Aragorn. Guarding the creature as you surely must, how did you find the opportunity for sleep?'

'I confess I seldom did,' Aragorn said, pleased to find that a note of rueful amusement came naturally to the words. 'I snatched an hour or two where I might, securing him as best I could, but I dared not sleep long or deep save in my two havens. The sons of Grimbeorn did hard duty my two nights in their lodge, I fear.'

'You were made welcome there, I trust?' Gandalf said with a fiery glint in his eyes and a rumble of warning in his voice. 'Despite your unpleasant companion and your no-doubt less than gentlemanly state?' His tone made it clear that there would be a reckoning if he had not.

'Extravagantly welcome,' Aragorn said with all his heart. 'I was greeted more as prince than vagabond, and every comfort was laid before me. They sent me forth with gifts of food and clothing. Even the youngest of the children were eager to attend to me.'

'That I do not doubt, storyteller that you are,' said Gandalf, stroking his beard. After some moments of silent thought he said; 'So there is nothing you can tell me of Gollum's thoughts or habits that would aid me in questioning him?'

Aragorn closed his eyes in thought. He heard the wizard rise and move to the table, and then the soft song of water falling into silver vessels. A moment later the base of a goblet grazed his hand. He took it and drank, glad of the clean fluid and still searching his mind. 'He has a great fondness for fish, and does not seem very particular about seeing them dead first,' he said. 'He mutters in circles, repeating his nonsense to himself many times in sequence. He fears the Sun and the Moon – seldom could I induce him to move if either proved too bright. He sleeps little, he listens less, and you must be careful of his teeth.'

Gandalf's eyes went to the bandage on the Man's wrist, but he said nothing of it. 'That is all? In fifty days' company you have learned no more than that?'

The tone was not one of judgment but the words pricked deep as any accusation, aided, no doubt, by Aragorn's own self-recriminations on the matter. 'No more than that,' he said, and the words were bitter.

Gandalf nodded and returned his gaze to the fire, and for a long time neither spoke. When at last he deemed the wizard had had sufficient time for his own thoughts, Aragorn at last voiced the first of his own questions.

'What of your own road?' he said. 'You told me you have found what you sought.'

'Yes,' said Gandalf. 'But that can wait a little while, Dúnadan. First I wish to question your prisoner, and I would as lief see you further recovered from your ills before we talk of such things. If you wish, I can tell you much of Denethor's discomfiture.'

'The novelty of that has faded,' Aragorn said dryly. Gandalf raised his bushy brows and let out a brief, breathy laugh that made the Ranger smile. So often on his wretched road he had wished for companionship. Now in spite of the dark and weighty matters at hand and the sting of his own failures with Gollum, his heart rejoiced. 'Tell me instead of the White City and her people.'

They sat for an hour, lost in talk of that distant land that lived so near to Aragorn's heart. Gandalf had news of old acquaintances other than Minardil, and Aragorn had questions concerning everything from the state of the poorer quarters of the city to the watch-practices of the Guards of the Citadel. Gandalf had carefully gathered word of Ecthelion's two surviving daughters and details of river defences and news from the coast which must have been very difficult to obtain without drawing Denethor's undue notice and disapproval. He had not forgotten Aragorn's hunger for tidings, and while those he brought did not slake it he still presented a feast to savour.

They were interrupted when the steward, Galion, came bearing a large tray of comestibles. There was milk and coddled eggs and bare bread for Aragorn, and an assortment of dishes to tempt Gandalf. At first these smelled enticing to the Ranger, but after a few mouthfuls of his own simple meal his palate seemed jaded against them. His stomach was still laboring heavily enough to make good of the plain fare, though he ate more now than he had at any other sitting. He could not feel the strength in his blood yet, but reminded himself firmly of the need for patience. He had not deteriorated to this sorry pass over night, after all. It would take time to dig himself out again.

When they had eaten, Gandalf took his leave. That was the hardest moment Aragorn had endured in many days of gentle care. His heart cried out to the wizard not to leave him, not now when he had at last found true friendship and understanding again. But his lips smiled and his head nodded and his voice wished Gandalf grim good fortune with the captive. So down the wizard descended into the dungeons of Thranduil.

lar

'He is the vilest, most tiresome wretch it has ever been my displeasure to know!' roared Gandalf, pacing the length of the room from door to bed and back again, turning each time with a whirl of robes. 'The simplest of questions he refuses to answer straightforwardly, and the pitch of his voice when he raises it to a whine is enough to bend the bells of Tolfalas! At least you had the benefit of enduring that under the open sky. In a closed room it is well-nigh unendurable!'

Aragorn was sitting on the bed, his right knee bolstered up so that his foot hung in the air while he took it slowly and easily through a series of simple stretches that reached not halfway to his usual range of motion. It was the third day of questioning, and Gandalf had returned from the creature's cell with a storm in his eyes that would have shrivelled lesser constitutions – had shrivelled them, from the look of the attendant at the door. He had been listening patiently for some minutes as his friend unburdened his frustrations.

'I can argue none of that,' he said now, his voice quiet. It was easy to be the tolerant and reasonable one when he had not been shut up in a cell with the hateful creature for six long hours. 'I am grateful that you have spared me the need to visit him myself.'

'Your efforts would certainly be wasted!' Gandalf huffed. 'He spend most of his time in woeful imprecations, chiefly against you. Hateful manses, great lumbering long-leggy lout, bright eyes burns us, Precious, burns us, long legs sinking – what does he mean by that, by the way?'

'It is a wish he expressed for me at our crossing of Anduin,' said Aragorn with mild humour. He did not suppose it was right to be cheered by a friend's distress, but there was something so familiar, so right about Gandalf's blustering that he could not quite help himself. 'Do you know, I truly believe he lacked any real faith in my ability to swim the river.'

'Ah!' snorted Gandalf, as if this made some profound and retrospectively obvious sense. He launched into another lap of the room, boots clacking on the floor. 'I cajoled him with promises of food – fish and eggs, as you said – and he gave me nothing. I reasoned with him that if he did not tell me I would leave him to the Elves. He gave me nothing. I threatened him with your return, and he wailed and thrashed and cursed you to the heavens before collapsing into a heap in the corner and declaring that he would say nothing more, no, nothing more at all, Precious: not if wicked old Bright Eyes was somewhere about.'

Aragorn supposed that he ought to feel honoured to learn he had apparently warranted his own moniker, and along the same lines as those of the Sun and the Moon themselves, no less. But his lifting spirits had begun giving way again to melancholy and the dull belief that the whole adventure had been futile. 'So you learned nothing.'

'Not quite!' Gandalf declared, flinging up his hands in exasperation before dragging a chair one-handed up next to the bed and flopping down at it. He watched the slow, aching rotation of Aragorn's foot and grimaced. 'Are you certain you ought to be doing that? It's still as swollen and purple as an overripe plum.'

'Yes, but if I leave it idle the joint will lock and I may never restore it to its former state,' said Aragorn, setting his teeth for one last series of movements. The muscles of his calf were tight with the effort, and his foot and ankle throbbed. He caught himself holding his breath and exhaled slowly through the pain. Then he let his leg slip down off of the bolster, gently lowering his foot onto its cushion. He sat back against the headboard, now hardly feeling the shallow pangs in his back where once there had been agony. 'What did you learn, then?'

'That either the story Bilbo gave me in the end was the truth, or our dear friend is in league with the wretch in some strange and pointless conspiracy,' said Gandalf sourly. 'In between the wailing, and making a welcome change from his maledictions upon you, he had some very unkind words to say about a certain Baggins who took his "birthday present" from him and apparently destroyed what had been a very idyllic life quite above reproach up until then.'

Aragorn was astounded. 'He told you that?' he asked. 'Of his own accord?'

'Oh, no,' Gandalf said, a mockery of blithe dismissal. Grimly he added; 'I had to press him for it almost constantly. I must have gone through those accursed riddles half a dozen times, getting little more than a scrap of the tale each time. But in the end I managed to piece together a very good copy of the tale as we have both had it from Bilbo.'

'I never doubted its veracity,' Aragorn said truthfully. 'Though I confess I am amazed you managed to get it out of Gollum.'

'Hmm.' Gandalf gave him a queer, quizzical look before saying darkly; 'You were not fed a fairy tale the first few times you asked. I don't blame Bilbo,' he added with a sigh. 'If it is the Ring we suspect it to be, no doubt it was exerting its own influence to keep him from telling the truth. Certainly it has not helped Gollum's honesty. My Precious. I wonder…'

'What is it you wonder?' Aragorn prompted gently, when no more seemed forthcoming.

Gandalf seemed to come out of his thoughts with a start, as if roused from a daydream or a spell of battle fatigue. His eyes widened for a moment and then focused on the Ranger's face with pensive calculation. 'Well.' He exhaled and shifted in his chair, now looking up and down the length of the tall thin body wrapped in soft cloth. His eyes came back to the sharp angles and hollows that slow re-feeding had not yet filled out to any noticeable degree. 'I suppose there is nothing wrong with your mind, after all, and you no longer look as if you would nod off to sleep at the least invitation. But I want you to remember that you are the heir of ancient kings, and not one of them yourself. You are not answerable for the errors of your forefathers, any more than you are inclined to take credit for their greatness. This road has put a shadow on your heart, and it is not the purpose of this tale to add to it. Do you understand me, Aragorn son of Arathorn?'

'I do,' Aragorn said softly, though his chest had grown tight. He remembered all too well what Gandalf had sought, and it seemed that he had found it. Now he found himself taken with a sudden doubt: perhaps he did not wish to know this after all.

But when had his wishes had any bearing upon his duties? He bowed his head forward slightly, bidding the wizard go on.

'I was in Minas Tirith many weeks, as I have said before this,' Gandalf began. 'The archives of the Steward – at least beyond that point where a pair of meddling hands once roamed a-cataloguing to his Captain-General's dismay – are a warren of crumbling scrolls, faded tomes and ledgers both illuminating and useless. The outer rooms are well-kept by the lore-masters, as they were in Thorongil's time, and those on the floor below with which you are no doubt intimately familiar have not fallen too far back into chaos in the intervening years. But all these records stretch back only a few centuries.'

'Five, if I recall aright,' Aragorn agreed. Below the second level, the rooms were bolted and the cabinets locked, and one had but to step over any threshold to feel that the lamp in one's hand posed a grave risk to the entire building among all those gathered heaps of brittle paper and long-dried parchment.

'You would know better than I,' said Gandalf. 'My interest was not in the deeds of Hurin the Second, whatever his administrative prowess. I started in the very depths of the library, among the oldest volumes, and I worked my way through them one at a time. I did not hope to find a travelogue or any volume of military stratagem or anything of that sort: Elrond will be the first to tell you that Isildur's uses for the pen were primarily stately, and he had no interest in the preservation of personal accounts for posterity. Yet if a man is troubled in his heart, and may speak of it to no one…' He gestured pointedly to Aragorn, inviting him to finish.

'Then the page may prove a welcome confidante,' he finished, understanding all too well. He did not add that on the occasions when Thorongil had so relieved his mind, he had had the good sense to burn the resulting compositions. If Isildur had done likewise, they would not still be speaking of this.

'Precisely,' said Gandalf. 'So I thought I was looking for a loose page or two, like as not pressed into some weightier volume or forgotten curled in a corner beneath a duty old shelf. I searched for longer than I care to think on… do you know what the study of all that old parchment does to the hands? I have never known fingers so dry and smooth-sanded. There were times I could hardly catch the edge of a page to turn it.'

Aragorn smiled with a sudden boyhood memory. 'Erestor complained of the same thing,' he said.

Gandalf grunted in acknowledgement of this. 'But I found it at last. It was not among the detritus of the reign of Meneldil, where one would think to look. I found it in an old leathern case, curled inside a scroll recording spice inventories from the kitchens of Ostoher, who ruled four hundred years after his twice-great grandsire was crowned by his uncle.'

'What matter is that?' asked Aragorn. 'With the disorder you describe, it is hardly surprising to see the mixing of generations in the chaos.'

'That is so,' said Gandalf. 'But ask yourself this: had anyone else laid eyes upon that page, would it still be buried in the deeps of the archives? The only known document written in Isildur's own hand ever to be found in the city that still reveres him?'

'No,' Aragorn confessed. 'No, not even in the time of Ostoher. It would have been preserved in the King's own vault and passed down through the generations with honour.' There was a letter from Elendil to his sons in that vault, carefully preserved through the generations not for the minutiae of familial tidings but for the mighty hand that had penned them. It was a secret now known only to the Steward's closest confidantes and the Master of the Archives. Ecthelion had trusted him with the knowledge, and the wonder of that sight still lived with him.

'Precisely,' Gandalf said with a curt nod. 'If it was in a volume of such a late provenance, then it was placed there deliberately to keep it from being found. If you had discovered such a document and wished to protect it from, for instance, the Lord of Gondor's insatiable curiosity, where could you put it without removing it from the library but in the case of another, most unlikely scroll?'

'Confirming your belief that Saruman had found it before you,' Aragorn said. 'I can scarcely fault him for that act of prudence.'

'Nor can I,' said Gandalf. 'Having read it, I am glad to know that Denethor has not. His own reverence for ancient kings is great, but it would not have kept him from making capital of this. It was a single page after all, narrow but long and so brittle that I feared it would disintegrate in my hands. I do not know Isildur's hand, but there was no mistaking the author of the words. The page began thus:

'The Great Ring shall go now to be an heirloom of the North Kingdom; but records of it shall be left in Gondor, where also dwell the heirs of Elendil, lest a time come when the memory of these great matters shall grow dim.

'So you see that your forefather had something of the same extraordinary foresight you enjoy,' said Gandalf. 'Or at least a clear understanding of the minds of Men and the fragility of history.'

Aragorn could not speak. His heart was high in his throat and his mind a tumult of muddled thoughts. He had heard from Elrond of the deeds and words in those last terrible moments on the slopes of Orodruin, and the folly of his ancestor had followed him all his days in the Wild. But to hear of it now in Isildur's own words was another thing entirely.

'There follow some cursory words of how he had obtained it in victory,' said Gandalf. 'That I need not tell you, and would not in any case, I confess. I must ask you to understand, Aragorn: that last grim struggle is a matter too near to the heart of one we both love well. It is he who should hear his ally's words first from me.'

Aragorn nodded, but still he had no voice. Gandalf seemed to comprehend this, and he went on.

'He writes of the Ring itself then, in all the detail a distant student might hope.

It was hot when I first took it, hot as a glede, and my hand was scorched, so that I doubt if ever again I shall be free of the pain of it. Yet even as I write it is cooled, and it seemeth to shrink, though it loseth neither its beauty nor its shape. Already the writing upon it, which at first was as clear as red flame, fadeth and is now only barely visible to be read.

'No doubt that is why he sought to lay down this account when he did,' Gandalf remarked gravely. 'For it seems he wrote within scant hours of victory, while the armies of Men and Elves still camped in Gorgoroth.'

'No doubt,' Aragorn whispered in inadequate echo. His limbs were very cold and his being seemed somehow at one remove from his body with its lingering pains and its unsteady weakness. He felt as if he might draw back the veil of time and step out into a ragged siege-pavilion in which his longsire sat curled over a piece of precious parchment, scarce in wartime. He could imagine the soot-smeared face, its noble features drawn with exhaustion and pain, the shaft of a stripped quill held by the unscathed sword-hand while its seared fellow lay curled beneath a loose poultice no doubt prepared by the same master of herb-lore and healing who had treated Aragorn's own first burn and many to come after. He could see the camp-bed, ropes sagging from long use, the maps and battle-plans piled on a light travel-chest, the tarnished helm cast aside, the shards of Narsil, newly broken beneath his fallen father, on the trestle table before him, and nearer still than that the Ring, a band of gold writ with fiery letters. Breathless Aragorn waited, and Gandalf went on.

'It is fashioned in an Elven-script of Eregion, for they have no letters in Mordor for such subtle work; but the language is unknown to me. I deem it to be a tongue of the Black Land, since it is foul and uncouth. What evil it saith I do not know; but I trace here a copy of it, lest it fade beyond recall. The Ring misseth, maybe, the heat of Sauron's hand, which was black and yet burned like fire, and so Gil-galad was destroyed; and maybe were the gold made hot again, the writing would be refreshed. But for my part I will risk no harm to this thing: of all the works of Sauron the only fair. It is precious to me, though I buy it with great pain.

'And below that, written indeed in the script of the folk of Celebrimbor, were lines in a tongue that Isildur could not read,' said Gandalf. 'Though it is my guess that you would have little difficulty, being regrettably learned in such matters. The writing is indeed in the Black Tongue, and it is naught but a translation of the dourest couplet of great smith's song of betrayal:

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them.
One Ring to bring them all, and in the Darkness bind them.

'That is all he wrote: the rest of the scroll was blank.'

Gandalf exhaled slowly and sat back in the chair again. His face was drawn with strain, as if the effort of recounting this had drained him of his strength. Wordlessly they sat, Aragorn's awareness coming slowly back into his body again to find his heart hammering and his hands as cold as they had been on the night he came to Grimbeorn's hall. His mind was filled with all that he had heard, with many grave questions and many anxious suppositions. What came to his mouth first, however, was something that could only have been expected from one with a proclivity for languages.

'It is precious to me,' he said, changing Isildur's words from the tongue in which Gandalf had spoken them – in which they had surely been written, and into the common speech. 'That is the only fitting translation. Any other word would not preserve the deeper meaning.'

'That is what I thought,' said Gandalf. 'And what I first wanted your opinion on. It is a strange coincidence, if these two rings are not one. The Rings of Power have their own inclinations of language; I can say that with no uncertainty.'

It came to Aragorn's lips to ask what curiosities of speech Narya had bestowed upon its bearer, but he did not do it. That would be to acknowledge what he knew of the disposition of this last of the Elven Rings, and even here that was unwise. It was a question he might perhaps ask at another time, or of another person. There were far more important matters to resolve in any case.

'What do you intend to do?' he asked. 'Will you ride for the Shire and attempt this test Isildur suggests?'

'Not at once,' said Gandalf after a moment's silence. 'For one, the matter is not desperately pressing. If it is the One Ring, it has lain in secret for almost eight decades in the Shire, and far longer than that beyond the Enemy's sphere of knowledge. A matter of a few weeks will make no difference now. For another, and far more importantly, we must learn all that Gollum knows. If the Ring is indeed in the keeping of Bilbo's nephew, then Gollum is our only link between it and the circumstances of its rediscovery. How could such a thing come from the depths of Anduin's bed to a lightless lake between the High Pass, and what other bearers lie between Isildur and our riddling wretch?'

'You mean to stay then, and continue with your questioning,' Aragorn said, needing to have it spoken aloud. He had been privately, and certainly selfishly, dreading the time when Gandalf would tire of this loathsome game and depart for the westward roads. His own convalescence was likely to stretch through the spring, if he wanted to be well enough to walk the high places of the Hithaeglir, and without Gandalf it promised to be a dreary season. He tried to suppress such thoughts, but he could not quite help thinking them regardless.

'Yes,' growled Gandalf, and his grim solemnity morphed into disgruntled irritation. 'I will go back tomorrow and see if I can tempt him with some eggs after all, provided he has them to look at.'

'Take them raw,' Aragorn suggested. 'He ate little of the coddled eggs in Grimbeorn's house, but he was eager enough to steal one fresh from a henhouse in Eastemnet.'

Gandalf looked at him curiously. 'Escaping singlehandedly from orcs, swimming Anduin with that nasty bit of baggage, falling through the ice at Gladden, battling a pair of lynx, and now burgling henhouses? I do not know whether to laugh or to weep!'

'Oh, there was no burgling,' said Aragorn. 'Only intent.' His hand travelled to his throat, where the bruises of nimble fingers had long since failed. 'I was punished for my moral objection.'

Gandalf snorted and shook his head. Then despite both their efforts the silence came back, and with it the awesome dread of deeds to come and the doom that was gathering before them.