Note: So, what does everyone want to read when this story's done: Thorongil's time in Gondor, or Aragorn's first journey to Mordor? Asking for... a friend.

Chapter LXI: Water in the Wilderness

Aragorn slept poorly that night. His dreams were soaked in darkness and desolation, hostile flames and foul poisoned fumes that tread the heavens hobnailed. Sometimes he thought he was in the archives of the great library in Minas Tirith, smothered by the dust of lost years and the weight of knowledge about him. Sometimes he was lost in the broad white wastes, rags whipped in the winter wind, lost and snow-blind and exposed to the sight of all watchers. Sometimes it seemed he was in the war-tent of his imaginings, watching as Isildur penned the lines Gandalf had repeated with such precision. The High King, newly made upon the death of his sire, murmured the words as he wrote them, and he spoke in Aragorn’s own voice. 

And always there was Gollum: his shrill shrieking wails, or his constant resentful muttering, or the hiss of malice that was his noise of triumph. Most of all there were his eyes, those pale and terrible eyes with their gleaming hatred and that other ineluctable presence buried behind it. The eyes, always, always the eyes. 

At last there came a breathless wakening when Helegond no longer rose to urge him soothingly back to sleep. Morning had come. Aragorn had little difficulty this time in convincing the healer that he should bathe: the last expedition had after all gone without crisis. This time he was stronger and more experienced with his crutches. The journey to the baths was not terribly arduous, and soon he was sitting on a stool before one of the tubs, lathering his body as if he could scrub away the memories of the evil night. 

He could not, of course, but by the time Aragorn had settled into the bone-deep comfort of the hot rock pool his thoughts had turned from fabricated horrors to the all too real problems before him. 

He knew the tale of Isildur’s folly from a time when he had still been Estel, ardent but distant pupil of history. Learning that the prideful error was a part of his legacy had added to the turmoil of his earliest manhood and perhaps kept him from growing too great with pride in his newly-discovered lineage. Ever after it had followed him, the root cause of Sauron’s resurgence and inexorable rise to ever-greater power. All his life, so it seemed, Aragorn had been labouring in a war (sometimes overtly, more often covertly) that could never have begun without Isildur’s vainglorious choice. Yet somehow this latest discovery and the revelation of Isildur’s own enthralled marvel at the deadly thing he had captured from an overthrown foe seemed to make it all the more real, and all the more horrifying. 

Aragorn knew that the cause of his horror lay less in the long consequences of his forefather’s theft – for theft it was, from the Enemy or no – than in the execution of the choice itself. Five had mounted the slopes of Orodruin that day. Only three remained to witness Sauron’s fall. One had seized the Ring from the Dark Lord’s very finger, and the other two had counselled against it. Yet despite that counsel Isildur had kept the One, had kept it and had written of it and had ultimately lost it with his life and the lives of his loyal hosts. And that was what Aragorn could not understand, and so could not forgive. Isildur had been told by Elrond Peredhil himself that to keep the Ring would bring dire consequences, and still he had refused to cast it into the fire. 

From his earliest childhood, Aragorn had accepted Elrond’s wisdom and followed his counsel unequivocally.  At times he had questioned, as all children must, the wisdom of the one who stood as a father to him, but always, always he had come to see the error in his own judgment and the strength of Elrond’s. In his manhood he had followed Elrond’s advice in many crucial matters and never had it failed him. True, Elrond was not infallible: like all Children of Ilúvatar he stumbled at times. Perhaps his greatest miscalculation had been made upon those same fiery heights, when he and Círdan made no move to force Isildur to destroy the Ring. Certainly Aragorn knew this was the one decision his foster-father regretted most in all his long life. But to dismiss his words so wholly, in a matter of such weight, as Isildur had… that Aragorn himself could never have done. 

Yet the choices of the past were made, and could not be unmade. It was the next host of decisions that would fall upon the Wise and their cohorts, and perhaps shape the next three thousand years as Isildur’s choice had the last. Aragorn had been privy to all the debates and verdicts of Elrond and Gandalf since he had come to manhood, and many which concerned Galadriel and Celeborn as well. He did not doubt that in this new matter his opinion would be sought and given due consideration, and the weight of that was heavy in his heart. 

If indeed Bilbo’s little ring proved to be the One, what then? Aragorn knew little of Ring-lore when measured against Gandalf, but he did know enough to be certain that destroying a Ring of Power was no small thing. Perhaps it could be carried West, across the Sundering Seas to be laid before Súlimo in that other Ring of Doom. Then he, most ancient and most wise, might decide the matter for them all. Yet as tempting as such a thought was, it seemed grievously wrong. The One Ring was an evil of Middle Earth, wrought out of the folly of the Firstborn and enduring out of the folly of the Secondborn. Seeking intervention from beyond the Seas, or even the counsel of the Valar struck Aragorn as somehow profane. It was mete that the folk of these fallen lands should put right what they and their kindred had allowed to turn so wrong, just as it was mete for Isildur’s Heir to answer in his small way for Isildur’s fault. 

Aragorn was grateful when Helegond came back and suggested that it was time to return to his room and break his fast. The awkward efforts of rising from the pool, of towelling and dressing and limping one-legged back through the tunnels made a welcome distraction. Better still, there was someone waiting when they reached the little chamber. A merry-eyed elf clad in extravagantly dagged and slashed garments had come to take Aragorn’s measure for a suit of clothes. 

‘My lord would look most striking in blue,’ he suggested, as he worked with his knotted cord and a wax tablet already filled with notations. Aragorn shifted his weight to the right crutch as the tailor began to work on his left arm. ‘Or perhaps a deep carmine. I have a length of satin that would suit you.’ 

‘That would be most impractical in the wilderness,’ said Aragorn. ‘A good, dense wool is what I need, in dull woodland hues.’ 

‘Ai, yes, the travel garb!’ said the Elf. ‘But I am speaking of your courtly robes. You cannot enjoy our revels properly dressed for tramping the roads. His Highness has instructed me to clothe you as befits your station. ’ 

Unhappily Aragorn realized that Thranduil’s interpretation of new clothing was very different from his own, and that he had given his orders accordingly. Drawing on his now seldom-used well of courtly etiquette, he considered the best means of extricating himself from this embarrassing situation. 

‘It may be some time before I am able to join in your revels,’ he said carefully. ‘And when I do it shall be nearly time for me to depart from these fair halls. I have need now only of simple garments, and if they are made warm and durable I may use them for travel as well.’ 

The tailor gnawed his lip thoughtfully, staring at Aragorn’s face but not meeting his eyes. Then a glint of decision lighted his countenance and for a moment the Ranger thought he had made himself perfectly clear. Then the cord was suddenly flung about his throat, and the Elf was taking a measurement for the collar. It was an uncomfortable moment, recalling as it did the noose of orc-rope with which Aragorn had bound his captive. 

‘I shall certainly provide you with something warm, and all my garments are durable,’ he said. ‘But they need not be dull and unbecoming as well. Bright colours never made a pair of hose more fragile, nor is a broidered sleeve any less sheltering than a plain one. Rather the opposite, in most cases.’ He made another mark with his stylus and then laid his cord along Aragorn’s shoulder, from the top of the socket to the base of his neck. 

‘Bright colours are folly in the Wild,’ said Aragorn. ‘They make a traveller visible from afar, and draw eyes that would think nothing of a shape in the hues of the land. If I wish to go unnoticed, I must suit my surroundings.’ 

‘Unnoticed.’ The Elf looked positively flummoxed by this. Responsible for Thranduil’s royal wardrobe, he had likely never even considered that one might dress in order to escape attention rather than to garner it. Then he grinned triumphantly. ‘But if you must suit your surroundings, you must dress as befits His Majesty’s honoured guest.’ 

‘Nay,’ said Aragorn; ‘for no harm will come to me in the halls of the Elven-King. In the Wild I have no such surety. I need only a cote and hose, and a change of linens: they must be simple and they must be drab.’ 

The tailor frowned and shook his head. ‘I am to fit you for an assortment of garments,’ he said. ‘It is His Majesty’s wish.’ 

‘I fear His Majesty mistook me,’ said Aragorn; ‘and perhaps made too much of my station. I am a traveller and a hunter, not a prince. I should be dressed much as your own guards and woodsmen. Anything more would be unnecessary and presumptuous.’ 

‘I was told you are a great lord of Men, and a fosterling of Elrond of Rivendell,’ the Elf said uneasily. 

‘I am the Chief of a dwindling people and the Captain of a rag-tag band of itinerant swordsmen,’ said Aragorn. ‘I was indeed fostered in Rivendell, but chiefly out of the grace and generosity of Master Elrond rather than my own merits. Please. Do not make a fool of me by parading me in silks and rich colours.’ 

The tailor studied him again, this time with a furrow of concern between his brows. He was weighing the wishes of his client, no doubt, against the instructions of his King. At last he sighed and took up the stylus. ‘Wool, then, in such greens and browns as our sentries wear in the forest.’ He frowned resignedly. ‘That we certainly have in abundance. Cote and hose… no jerkin? Or surcote? A mantel at least…’ 

‘I have a cloak that will serve me well,’ Aragorn said, nodding towards Sigbeorn’s garment where it hung. ‘Most of all I long for the dress of a man instead of an invalid. Furnish me with that, and I shall be ever grateful.’ 

‘You must take the worsted twill at least,’ said the tailor. ‘If I clothe you in cheap woolen offcuts the King will be most displeased.’ 

Aragorn, who had his cheap woolen offcuts made carefully and precisely to look thus by the weavers of Imladris, smiled in quiet amusement. This was a compromise, but one both sides could comfortably tolerate. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But there must be no rich dyes.’ 

‘No bright colours, my lord, I promise you!’ said the tailor. ‘Can you free the other arm a moment? I must have your wingspan, and then we are done for today.’ 

Aragorn was unsure of his ability to balance on his one good foot without the aid of some support, but after all he had lived a life of testing his limitations of body and spirit. He let the tailor take the crutches and spread his arms slowly. He wobbled a little, his battered body struggling to find its ordinarily thoughtless equilibrium. But he held the strange pose long enough for the Elf to get what he wanted, and he did not fall. His props were restored to him at once, and the tailor asked a few more questions about hem length and sleeve shape before bowing and taking his leave. Only once he was gone did Aragorn hobble to his chair and sink into it gratefully, cold with perspiration and as weary as if he had run some mighty race. Healing he might be; healed he was not. 

lar

That evening Gandalf came from Gollum’s cell in a state of grim resignation that was far more worrisome than yesterday’s anger. 

‘I got nothing from him,’ he declared, laying aside his staff and sinking into the empty chair. ‘He keeps jabbering about his hands and his “birthday present” and all the charming things he would like to do to you, but I did not get one bit of worthwhile information. Oh. He did complain about his grandmother when I tried to bargain with the eggs. That was certainly a pleasant change.’ 

‘Strange to think of that creature with a family,’ Aragorn muttered, knowing the words were uncharitable but scarcely caring. Gollum’s foul malice was fresh in his mind after his uneasy night. 

‘If it makes it easier to comprehend, it seems they did not get along,’ Gandalf said. ‘Wicked old woman, he called her; mean, spiteful Grandmother. It seems she turned him out of the family hole.’ 

‘Hole?’ said Aragorn, curious despite himself. ‘Then it seems he was of a hobbit-like folk after all.’ 

Gandalf’s eyes widened a little, like those of one who has just noticed some small change in a familiar room. Then he nodded. ‘So it seems,’ he said tiredly. ‘Well, perhaps I am not learning anything new from our captive, but at least I’m successfully confirming much of what we already suspect.’ 

He drummed on the arm of the chair for a while, watching the pop and flicker of the fire. ‘It seems he was her special pet, or fancied himself as such,’ he went on at length; ‘but she turned him out and the bitterness of that is still very much alive after these many years. There is no telling why she might have done it: all of that seems to be muddled in his mind with goblins and Bilbo and my Precious.’ He sighed wearily. ‘I could tolerate him no longer tonight,’ he said. ‘At least when you will not answer my questions you do not offer wailing nonsensical soliloquys instead.’ 

A small smile came to Aragorn’s lips of its own accord. ‘Gollum does seem to possess boundless energy for such performances,’ he agreed. ‘I would have preferred sullen silence every mile of our journey to even one of his tantrums.’ 

Gandalf was watching his eyes with uncomfortable intensity. ‘What befell you in Morgul Vale?’ he asked softly. 

‘In truth?’ Aragorn said, fixing his own clear gaze upon the wizard. Gandalf nodded curtly. ‘Nothing worth later consideration. What do you hope to accomplish by drawing from me an account of every step of the long and tiresome road?’ 

‘In truth?’ Gandalf aped dryly. Aragorn gave him an appreciative twitch of the lips. He did not need to know that the phrase was an irritating answer to one’s question, but he also felt that his friend could do with deflecting his irritation away from his unpleasant duty for a while. 

‘I know it can accomplish nothing,’ said Gandalf, shaking his head and plucking absently at his beard. ‘Yet I spent many a broken night in a well-appointed chamber in Minas Tirith speculating on your path, and every step of my own northward journey contemplating all that could have befallen you between Harondor and Dagorlad. Few indeed are the clement paths that wend thither, and I have experience enough with the hunt to know our quarry would not have chosen a pleasant way.’ 

‘Be satisfied, then, that the worst of all my journey befell me in the Marshes,’ Aragorn said. ‘In my folly I took it for a stroke of luck to find him at last. That starveling wretch proved more perilous than any orc, and more trying to my spirit than the Ringwraith.’ 

Gandalf’s eyes flashed and Aragorn pressed his lips tightly over his careless tongue. He kept his gaze level and his expression unchanged, however, and the wizard made no comment. He understood after all the Ranger’s reasons for evading such tales. 

For a time there was silence, as each of them walked grimly in memory. Then Gandalf sighed and got to his feet. ‘I will sup here again if you’ve no objection,’ he said. ‘The merriment of Thranduil’s hall ill-suits my mood tonight.’ 

‘In truth?’ Aragorn lilted, earning a suspicious and amused glance from the wizard. ‘I would be glad of the company.’ 

At last Gandalf smiled. 

lar

On the following morning, Aragorn made his first attempt at a more substantial meal. Roast venison was brought to him along with his coddled eggs and his cup of rich milk, and in place of bread there was a hazelnut pastry with a sugared glaze. Plainly Galion had been waiting eagerly for a chance to display his talents for the unusual guest, for it was a delicate masterpiece shaped like a curled oak leaf so finely detailed that there were veins sculpted into it. It looked far too beautiful to be eaten, but eat it Aragorn did. It tasted heavenly, even as the honey-cakes of the Beornings would have if only he had possessed the appetite to enjoy it. He took more sparely of the venison, for he had eaten no meat since the meagre half-squirrel west of Anduin. He was right to be cautious, for soon his stomach was burbling uneasily and though he did not sicken he spent much of the morning with an uncomfortable tightness in his lower ribs that had nothing to do with the lingering fluid in his lungs. 

It was mid-afternoon when Gandalf knocked at his door: fully three hours earlier than expected. Aragorn was half-naked with his shirt in his lap and the robe bunched about his waist, for Lethril had been working on his back. When the wizard came in, the Ranger was bowed over his lap so that the healer might examine the darkly crusted wounds. She glanced up at the intruder only briefly before continuing with her gentle ministrations. 

‘You shall have a fine set of scars to boast over,’ Gandalf said with a jollity so fierce that it was almost bilious. ‘To think that a common wildcat did that, when the Uruks of Mordor could not!’ 

‘The dangers of the Wild spare me no more than any other Man,’ Aragorn said. The greater part of his focus was bent upon the sensations on his back: the feel of the flesh as the healer palpated the borders of the wounds. He felt most of all a deep, cleansing ache broken now and again by shivers of more stinging pain. On the whole it was the sensation of a wound still raw, but mending well. There was a hot trickle of blood as one of the scabs cracked beneath Lethril’s fingertip, but that too was natural and no cause at all for concern. 

‘Well, Lady? Will he live?’ Gandalf asked, still in that falsely cheerful voice. Profound unease began to creep over Aragorn. 

‘Yes, Mithrandir: for many years yet!’ Lethril promised earnestly. 

‘Provided he stops driving himself so mercilessly,’ Gandalf muttered. Then he deposited himself in his usual place. 

Lethril was obliged to go about cleaning and dressing the hurts under his silent, glowering watch. When Aragorn was clothed and comfortable again, she departed with a few uneasy words, clearly as troubled by the wizard’s brooding as Aragorn had been by his attempt to disguise it. 

‘You fared poorly today,’ Aragorn said mildly when it became obvious that Gandalf would not break the silence left in the healer’s wake. 

‘Your mastery of understatement is truly remarkable, even for one skilled in so many crafts,’ Gandalf growled. He continued to scowl at the hearthstones, and Aragorn was beginning to fear he would not speak again when he looked up. Angry and discouraged eyes searched the Ranger’s face. 

‘This is an exercise in futility,’ said Gandalf. ‘I cannot coax the creature to trust me, and when I question him he answers in gibberish. Today it was all poor handses and complaints about the snow. I saw marks of a hard winter on my northward ride, but his exaggerations are beyond all belief!’ 

Aragorn was not so certain of that, even knowing Gollum’s predilection for dramatics, but he saw no point in elucidating. 

‘Kinder tactics availed me not at all,’ he said. ‘Likely I tried them too late, after a hard fight in his capture and harsh measures to drive him into the Ephel Dûath. By then he saw me only as a foe. When I pressed him, I got either scowling silence or murderous rebellion for my pains. At least you need not fear the latter here.’ 

‘I lack your patience, Dúnadan,’ Gandalf muttered. ‘You endured him for fifty days. After five I am ready to fling him into the river.’ 

It was unwise given his comrade’s mood, but still Aragorn could not help but chuckle. It was such an immense relief to be able to find any amusement at all in the situation. ‘That would prove a poorer punishment than you might think,’ he said. ‘Gollum is a wily waterman and as strong a swimmer as I have known. He would be off in the blink of an eye, gleeful and looking for prey.’ Then he told Gandalf of the crossing of Limlight and the fish Gollum had caught with his toes. 

By the time he was finished, Gandalf’s glare had softened and the fog of despair seemed to hang less thickly in the room. He shook his head wonderingly. 

‘Ever stranger, it seems,’ he said. 

‘And perhaps not so hobbit-like after all,’ said Aragorn lightly. 

‘Oh, the hobbit aversion to waterways is a matter of ancestral bias and practiced distaste,’ said Gandalf. ‘There are river-faring folk among the Brandybucks of Buckland, and some of them can swim. Certainly hobbits must float superbly.’ 

‘It is a wonder Gollum can float at all,’ Aragorn snorted. 

‘The same could well be said of you,’ groused Gandalf, looking him over critically. ‘Are you certain this regimen of milk and bread is helpful? You certainly don’t seem to be filling out.’ 

‘Not yet,’ Aragorn allowed. ‘But I am eating faithfully throughout the day, and I feel stronger. I had some venison this morning, and Lethril has offered me more spacious accommodations. You see that my caretakers now believe I am well enough to be moved.’ 

Gandalf looked around the small room. ‘I wondered about that,’ he mused. ‘I thought perhaps Thranduil had neglected to render you your due.’ 

‘Nay, he has been most gracious,’ said Aragorn. ‘But these quarters are near the dungeon, and it was most expedient to house me here on the night of my arrival. For that same reason I have declined the kind offer of relocation.’ 

He half expected Gandalf to argue, or to say outright what he had not, but the wizard only shrugged. ‘Expedient, aye,’ he said. ‘I am housed just up the corridor. But for the want of a window, there is no more a traveller needs.’ 

They made inconsequential conversation after that, and presently Galion brought their supper. Gandalf moved the chairs to the table, and Aragorn followed on his crutches. They were almost a part of him now, moving naturally and in response to his least whim. He sat, and was able to display his new trick of partaking of the game dish before tucking steadily in to his simpler fare again. He did so with the same diligent determination that he put into stretching his hobbled ankle, though he had little desire for food. The gloom was still a brooding presence in the room, and watching Gandalf pick indifferently at the roasted woodcock and other elegant dishes did nothing to improve it. 

The wizard spoke little, save to comment on Aragorn’s meal, and the Ranger let him have his quiet. There was no need for talk between two such old friends; they knew one another so well that the quiet was no burden. Despite the scent of a coming storm, that hour was one of peace for Aragorn. He was able to forget for a time the travails of the journey behind him and the worries of the road ahead. It was the very thing he had so sorely missed in his first days in the Elven-King’s halls: the serenity he always felt in Rivendell. 

When the attendant had cleared the table and Aragorn was finished with his simple preparations for bed, Gandalf muttered his leave-taking. He got as far as the doorway and stood there, silent, his back turned to the room and his hand upon the post. 

Aragorn had been swinging his bad leg up onto the mattress and its cushion. Now he sat, turned awkwardly to watch the figure on the threshold. Even two days ago, such a twisting of the waist and hips would have sent deep, tearing agony into his battered kidney. Now all he felt was a tired ache along the hypotenuse of pelvis and spine. 

‘What is it, Gandalf?’ he asked quietly, knowing the question might well drive him off but unable to be silent. 

Instead, the door was closed almost before the wizard had time to pivot back into the room. He crossed it in five swift strides and sat down upon the edge of the bed as he had on the night of his arrival. The glowing embers of the banked fire were the room’s only light now, and his face was deeply sunken in shadow. Still his eyes glittered keenly, fixed on Aragorn’s face with a needful intensity that made the Ranger’s heart flutter. 

‘You must lend me a measure of your unquenchable courage, my friend,’ said Gandalf, hushed and in terrible earnest. ‘I have marched into battle against terrible foes, and faced dark things in empty places without aid, and escaped the very dungeons of the Enemy. Yet before Elbereth I confess that I know not how to find the will to return to that cell on the morrow.’ 

There it was: the hopeless dread that had haunted the evening. For a moment Aragorn could not speak. How could he give Gandalf, Gandalf the Grey, timeless and wise beyond the ken of Men, the courage to do what he himself could not? The thought of cloistering himself in that small room with the vengeful, whinging, lying, foul-smelling Gollum made his innards churn with revulsion. 

But in the next shallow breath Aragorn knew that such feelings would not stop him. If the need pressed him and he had to do it, he could master his loathing and limp back to the cell behind two heavy locked doors. If he had to, though it might undo him, he could question the prisoner he had led so far. For if they did not learn what Gollum knew then the whole miserable journey, the nine hundred miles of dissipation and ignominious toil, the long and weary way he had walked with the vile wretch in tow, would be for naught. Apart from the greater strategic concerns and the doom of Middle Earth, that way lay madness. 

Aragorn felt the light of determination igniting in his eyes. It was the shining will that had inspired men to desperate ventures and most improbable triumphs. It had lent strength to the weary, hope to the despairing, and will to the sick and the wounded. Now he turned it on his friend. 

‘We can do it, you and I,’ He said. His voice, though modulated to the size of the room and the intimate proximity to his audience, resounded with a confidence and authority it had not known in many months – not even on the ferry at the Carrock. ‘We shall compel him if we must, with fear if nothing else will serve. Come for me on the morrow, and we will go together.’ 

There was a moment when Gandalf sat unmoving. It was just long enough for Aragorn to begin to feel foolish, sitting up in the narrow bed with his legs straight before him and one hand still clutching the edge of the bedclothes. Then Gandalf  hooded his eyes and lowered his head with an almost noiseless sigh. 

‘Like water in a wasteland,’ he murmured. When he raised his head he did so with resolve, and the slump of defeat was gone from his shoulders. He smiled, rueful but no longer grim. 

‘If you will come, you must come no further than the guardroom,’ he said. ‘His hatred of you is well-nigh as black as his hatred of Bilbo, and he fears you more. The sight of you would doubtless drive him still deeper into obstinacy and hysterics. Still I should be grateful of your presence, even for a short time. I would not have you suffer him lightly, but I am utterly at a loss amid his rantings.’ 

‘Perhaps four ears can hear what two may not,’ Aragorn said, trying not to feel the craven relief that came from knowing he would not be in the cell itself. He turned his lips up in a wan smile. ‘We have faced greater labours than this, have we not?’ 

‘I wonder,’ Gandalf muttered sourly. Then his eyes grew grave and earnest. ‘Yet certainly we both have greater labours to come, if the creature’s testimony and my other discovery prove out as we suspect.’ 

Again Aragorn passed a peaceless night.