Note: Thanks to everyone who's weighed in so far. My… uh… friend is having trouble making up her mind, and would welcome any further input on the Gondor/Mordor dilemma. Cheers!

Chapter LXII: Spiraling Rhetoric

The anteroom of the small clutch of cells looked much as Aragorn remembered it – in so far as he remembered anything of the night of his arrival. The table with its chairs stood centred in the middle as before, lately vacated by Losfaron and the other guard. Now the brazier was lighted and the sideboard laden with the accoutrements of a set watch: water, bread with a dish of golden butter, a bowl of winter fruits. And, because this was after all a haven of the merry Silvan folk, there was also a flagon of wine.

This Aragorn eyed with some apprehension. Losfaron saw it and laughed.

'Fear not!' he said cheerfully as the Ranger swung over the threshold with the wizard close behind. 'It is not for our refreshment, but for Mithrandir's relief. I would be lax indeed in my duty if I permitted guards to tipple at their posts!'

Swiftly Gandalf put a finger to his lips, brows knitted into a piercing glare. Then he pointed at Aragorn and cut his hand through the air in a patently negative gesture. He jerked his chin sharply towards the occupied room. Losfaron frowned in puzzlement at this pantomime, suddenly wary. He looked from Aragorn to the locked door and back again. Canny understanding broke over him, and he nodded tightly.

'You are alone,' he said to Gandalf, his voice carefully neutral. Then upon reflection he added; 'Again.'

'Quite,' said Gandalf. Too late Aragorn realized that they ought to be speaking in the Elven tongue: it seemed it was the captain's habit to use Westron with outsiders. He could say nothing now, for he did not doubt that Gollum would know his voice in any language.

Gandalf was looking about the room with a tactician's eye. 'Let us move the table into the corner. It suits me better;' he said, pointing to the place where the front wall of the prisoner's cell met the wall to the left of the entrance.

'Gladly,' Losfaron said. He motioned to his subordinate and they drew back the chairs so as to lift the table. Gandalf took two of the simple wooden seats, and Aragorn made to move for the other before recalling that with his hands occupied in perambulation he had no means to grasp it. When Losfaron came to claim it, Aragorn motioned to the space immediately left of Gollum's door. The Elf set the chair against the wall and looked questioningly at the Man, who nodded. He meant to be as near as possible without betraying his presence, and as the door opened in that direction he would be well shielded from the prisoner's sight.

During one of the sleepless spans that had comprised so much of his night, Aragorn had worried that perhaps Gollum would know him by scent. Upon deeper reflection he deemed this unlikely. It was not that he doubted the creature's command of this sense: all things driven to survive in the wild learned swiftly to make full use of all their faculties. Rather, Aragorn knew that he himself smelled nothing like he had on the trail: sweat and loam, blood and exhaustion, dirty hair and wet wool and sour body linen. Now he was clean, with the faint scent of Elven soap about him and the comfortable spicy hint of wood-smoke that came from being cloistered with a well-vented fire. A dog would recognize his native scent beneath all that and know him, but a feral hobbit-creature in the next room? He thought not.

So he settled in the chair, stretching his right foot before him and propping his crutches against the table that stood close by his right side. Gandalf looked questioningly at him, and Aragorn nodded: he was comfortable enough. Losfaron and the other guard were exchanging quiet words on the far side of the room, speaking in their own tongue at last. At a curt gesture from the Istar, the captain came forward and offered his ring of keys. Gandalf took them, and the two elves moved to the anteroom door.

'I will wait as before in the armoury, Mithrandir,' said Losfaron. 'I wish you good fortune in your labours.'

'I am certain I will have that today,' said Gandalf. Then, conscious that the prisoner could hear every word through the grate near the top of his door, he said with a certainty he could not possibly feel; 'He will see that it is in his best interests to speak to me: he is no fool.'

The other Elf bowed first to the wizard and then to Aragorn before retreating. Losfaron cast a last look at the Ranger, his soldier's eyes veiled from the questions he no doubt longed to ask. Then he too made a swift little bow and was gone. Gandalf closed the heavy door firmly and locked it. Aragorn's lip twitched in approval. His instructions were being followed with care, even by the wizard himself: while one door was open, the other must always be locked.

Gandalf went to the sideboard and poured himself a goblet of water. He drained it in one long draught before picking up the silver tray that held the flagon and cups. He brought it to the table, then returned for the bread and the fruit. He gave Aragorn a chiding look that was also an invitation. He should eat or drink as he wished, and he was not to overtax himself by thumping around the room after a measure of water. The next arching of the bushy eyebrows was clearly a question, and after so many years' acquaintance Aragorn did not need to be asked aloud. Did he have all that he needed? He nodded: he did.

Gandalf stood thoughtfully for a moment, eyes still avoiding the door to the cell. Then he went to the sideboard again and opened one of the lower drawers. He took out a prettily inlaid writing box and a few sheets of soft vellum. He brought these and the flagon of wine to the table, and laid the scribal materials at the edge of the table nearest Aragorn. He spread his fingers wide and tipped his hand as if to say perhaps, shrugging the shoulder of the arm that held his staff. He did not mean for Aragorn to make a verbatim record: this was only in case he should hear anything valuable.

Firmly Aragorn nodded his understanding, but he did not trouble to open the box. He had conducted his share of interrogations, and only in Gondor had written records been kept. He would listen, and he would remember. The paper and ink were only a safeguard.

Gandalf turned to go, and Aragorn reached up to catch hold of his forearm. When the wizard looked down again in surprise, Aragorn gave him a small, bracing smile and squeezed his arm companionably. 'You and I,' he mouthed wordlessly, not daring even to breathe as his lips moved, lest some sound should escape.

Gandalf's brows knit together resolutely, and he slipped his arm free so that Aragorn's hand brushed down its length and over his wrist. For a moment their hands met and grasped in a gesture of mutual solidarity. It might be only one who was venturing over the threshold, but they were both equally invested in the enterprise. They had hunted together so long for this very moment, and battle was once more to be joined.

The wizard moved to the door at last and found the key among its fellows. He turned it in the lock, and then looped the ring over the back of his hand so that he could seize the door-handle. His grip upon his staff tightened and he lowered his head, collecting himself. With one final sidelong look at his friend he straightened, squaring his shoulders and setting his face into a mask of stern expectation. Then with a strong, smooth jerk of his shoulder he pulled open the door.

At once the rotted reek that had grown as familiar to Aragorn as his own unwashed stink wafted out to fill the anteroom. The door swinging towards him shielded him but for a moment, and then the stench was everywhere. Evidently Gollum had refused to avail himself of the opportunity to be clean. Perhaps he was so far gone in misery and hatred that he cared nothing for such comforts, but Aragorn could not help but wonder if the gesture was purely mulish malice. If Gollum suspected how his foulness repelled his jailors, it would certainly not be beyond him to keep himself in that state deliberately.

For his own part, Aragorn was fighting a tide of hateful memories and unwanted frustration brought to the forefront of his mind by that sickening stench. He did not understand how the vile vapours of Dagorlad could seem to cling still to Gollum, not after hundreds of miles and three wet river-crossings, marching through snow and damp winter woods, and all the rest. Yet still it seemed to; or perhaps it was only that the smell of Gollum was linked in his mind to the Marshes with their deadly candles and their haunting air of death.

Gandalf's nose wrinkled distastefully, but he took a deep breath nonetheless and strode across the threshold, dragging the door to behind him. It closed with a thud that vibrated even into the stone wall, and from within came a familiar whinging yelp. There was a rattle of iron as the wizard locked himself in with his startled prisoner. Aragorn could not suppress a shudder at the thought, but there was no one left to see it.

'Yes, it is I,' Gandalf drawled dispassionately. 'You will not be rid of me so easily as that.' Aragorn could hear him moving across the small space, and there was a rustle of straw as he sat down upon the cot. Gollum would surely be cowering on the floor, glaring up at the wizard with those terrible eyes. 'Now. You were going to tell me where you found the golden Ring.'

'We won't, we won't, gollum. None of its business, is it, Precious? None of its business, no it's not!' the wretch muttered blackly. Aragorn could imagine too well the sly scowl upon his desiccated face, and he had to close his mind to thoughts of his quiet chamber. He had come to aid his friend in the only way he could, and he refused to regret that choice.

'I think you will find I have made it my business,' said Gandalf. 'You say it was your Birthday Present: you told Bilbo the same—'

'Baggins, Baggins, thief Baggins,' spat Gollum. 'Long we lived there, nice cool waters: far from Yellow Face, safe and quiet. Couldn't find us there, gollum, with their nassty pinching fingers and their kicking feet, no they couldn't! Kicked us, they did. Kicked us and hurt us, gollum. Poor hurting legses, poor hurting head. Bite and scratch, Precious. Squeeze them! Sleeping so quiet, bright eyes hiding: squeeze him, too, and choke him. Choke him and kill him and dig out his eyes. Serves him right, yes, for kicking. Hateful cruel manses!'

Somehow he had gone from his encounter with Bilbo by the subterranean lake to the night in Eastemnet when he had tried to strangle his captor in one swift sweep through some nonsense about others who had kicked him and now could not find him. Aragorn tried to fix those fragments of information in his mind, hoping to piece together something of use.

'My friend did not kick you,' Gandalf declared flatly. The certainty in his voice was heartening to one so often doubted by those he met. Aragorn had used the toe of his boot to lever Gollum up onto his feet more than once, but never had he kicked him. 'Tell me where you got your Birthday Present.'

'It was a Birthday Present!' Gollum said defiantly. 'We got it, we did. It was given us, gollum. Given on our birthday. It's ours and we want it! Give it back to us, and then we'll tell you! Yes, yess, then we'll tell you anything you want to hear, gollum. It's a promise, a promise. Give it to us now!'

'I do not have it, and would not give it to you even if I did,' said Gandalf. His tone was still firm and very calm, showing no sign of the dread Aragorn knew he had felt of this morning's interrogation. 'You have given me no cause to trust you: you have answered none of my questions forthrightly, and what answers you give are peppered with lies.'

'Not a lie!' shrieked Gollum. 'Not a lie, no it isn't! Gave it to us, she did! Our Birthday Present, my Precious! It's ours, yes it is, and we wants it! It's our birthday, my love, and we wants it!'

A chill coursed along Aragorn's spine. He had heard those words before: he knew that he had. Before he could think where, Gollum was repeating them.

'It's our birthday and we wants it, gollum. Give us that, my love, we wants it! It's our birthday, it is. It is!'

Now Aragorn remembered. Those words had drawn him up short one frosty morning, when he had been walking in fresh hope brought on by nothing more than the breaking of the dawn after a weary night's walking through lands haunted with the memory of massacre. He had wondered wildly how Gollum had known the significance of the day, before it had come to him that the creature was not speaking of Aragorn's birthday but of his own.

He needed to tell Gandalf of this, but he could not do so now. It had seemed nothing more than a strange occurrence on a strange road: Gollum declaring that it was his birthday and whining for food obliquely, so that he did not yield to his captor the victory of addressing him directly. If he had not been speaking of food at all, but of the thing he called his Birthday Present, then he must have been walking in memory on that day south of Gladden.

Several sharp thoughts lanced through Aragorn's mind at once, leaving little room to listen to Gollum's continued whining and Gandalf's flat response. Certainly there was no doubt that Bilbo's Ring was constantly on Gollum's mind: his ceaseless use of his pet-name for it was proof of that. All the long leagues from Dagorlad to Gladden he had muttered bleakly about his Precious, but he had only spoken of it as his Birthday Present on that one occasion. At the time Aragorn had made two incorrect conjectures: first that Gollum was demanding victuals, and second that Gollum somehow knew the date of the Ranger's own birth eighty-six years before. What if his last assumption was also faulty?

But he was meant to be listening: a second pair of ears to help decipher the creature's ravings. He could not puzzle this out and follow the rambling narrative on the other side of the door at the same time.

All at once Aragorn was reaching for the writing box after all. He turned on the seat of the chair, unable to move the furniture itself because the noise would make his presence obvious. He was careful to maneuver his sprained foot around the leg of the table without striking it, and in a moment he was sitting head on and removing the stopper from the small pot of ink. He plucked up one of the three neatly trimmed quills waiting in the box and dipped it. Then he was taken by a reflexive pang of guilt at this extravagance: new vellum was too costly to use for hastily penned notes. He shook himself to his senses with a shuddering little jolt. He was not in the Wild now, nor making do in a Ranger camp, nor counting the copper pennies of a footsoldier's wage. He was in a realm of plenty: here, as in Rivendell, writing materials were abundant and could be used with impunity. He touched the pen lightly to the lip of the inkwell, and lowered it to the page.

'Ours, Precious, ours, gollum!' the prisoner was still protesting. 'Don't you say we lie, don't you dare it! It's the truth, it is; the true, true truth! It's our Birthday Present and she gave it us, gollum.'

'She gave it you,' Gandalf repeated. Aragorn was listening with one ear as he wrote: South of Gladden, first of March. Spoke of Birthday Present: give it to us, my love, we wants it. He remembered how strange it had been to hear Gollum speak of love at all, even in that wheedling and manipulative tone. 'Who gave it? Tell me.'

'Grandmother! Grandmother, yes she did. She did, oh, she did,' Gollum said, gabbling very fast now.

'And where did she get it?' asked Gandalf. There was an edge in his voice: he knew as well as Aragorn did that this had to be a lie. Better, indeed: for it had been he who had witnessed Bilbo's struggle to leave the thing behind when he departed from Hobbiton, and Aragorn had merely heard the tale from each party.

'It felt so strange, Dúnadan,' the hobbit had confessed to him as they sat together in the homey little parlour Elrond had provided for his honoured lodger, Bilbo in his small chair and Aragorn cross-legged on the rug. 'It was as if… well, as if Gandalf had asked me to cut off my own hand and leave it there by the clock instead. It was so foolish. Year to year I scarcely thought about my ring – that ring – and yet when the time came to pass it onto Frodo you'd have thought it was a piece of my heart. I still don't know how I managed to do it in the end. If Gandalf hadn't been there to see I went through with it, I might be standing there still at the fireplace, dithering!'

A Ring of Power, even a lesser one, was not something lightly to be given. It had taken all of Bilbo's indomitable hobbity will to do it, and that with Gandalf standing over him to urge him on. From the wizard Aragorn knew of the way Bilbo's hand had faltered when he went to set the packet containing the thing down at last, and of the rage in his eyes when Gandalf caught it up for him. It was difficult indeed to imagine Gollum's grandmother giving him that same ring as a birthday gift, especially if he was not high in her favour – and surely he had not been, if his prior claim that she had turned him out of her hole was true. Grandmother, he wrote. Gift. Lies.

Gollum's protestations had faded to broken, unintelligible whimpering, and beyond the heavy door Gandalf sighed.

'You have not answered my question,' he said very clearly. 'Where did she get it?'

'She had it,' snapped Gollum. 'She had lots of things. Lots of rings and lots of treasures. Mistress of the family she was, great family. No one spat on us in those days, Precious, oh, no! No one kicked us then, tied our pretty handses up in stinking man-rags, made us walk 'til our poor feet froze blue! Drove us under Yellow Face, under White Face, wicked nassty manses. He's a thief himself, that's what he is. He knows about Baggins, he does, he does. Time, time, Precious. Yes, the answer's time and he knew it. He knew it!'

This rose into a warbling shriek that even in the next room was piercing enough to drive a spike of sharp pain into Aragorn's eardrum. Within it must have been unbearable.

'I do not need to know what Aragorn did with you,' Gandalf said sternly. 'I have had that story from him, and much more straightforwardly. Tell me about your birthday.'

'Birthday,' Gollum echoed, singsong. 'Birthday, birthday. Bright, bright birthday: sun on the water. Sun on the daisies, yes. Yes it was: sun on the daisies on our birthday, Precious. Eye in a green face: not a burning eye, but it smells, gollum. Smells like… smells like…'

Silently Aragorn urged Gandalf to press Gollum on this. Bright birthday, sun on the daisies: that sounded like no first of March that Aragorn had known in any land. Daisies were a summer flower. Even far South in Anfalas they did not bloom until the last weeks of spring. But of course Gandalf knew nothing of Gollum's words that day, and Aragorn cursed himself for failing to mention it. He could not have known, surely, that the encounter might be significant, but perhaps if he had not been so stubbornly keeping to the barest facts of his tale he might have mentioned it, strange as it had been. He tried to remember if he had even consciously recalled that morning before now, overcome as he had been with greater cares, but he could not.

'Yes,' Gandalf said, his voice low and almost coaxing. 'Yes, the Sun on the daisies, and they smelled. It was your birthday.'

'Yes, Precious, yess,' Gollum hissed. 'Sun on the daisies, and the purple beards, and the reeds all flowering. Smells all 'round us, yess. And we wants to go fishing, Precious. Catch us some fish, Déagol, my love: it's our birthday and we loves nice, juicy fish.'

This was new: a name at last. But it did not sound like a name of any folk or language known to Aragorn. It was certainly too unlovely, too strangely guttural, to belong to the charming lexicon of hobbit-names. Yet as he tried to write it he found his hand moving smoothly through Elven phonemes even though the combination of sounds would have rung sour in Elven ears.

'Who is Déagol?' Gandalf breathed, his voice as soft as the breath of a child who does not wish to disturb the butterfly that has lighted on her finger. He feared to spook Gollum out of this reverie, and Aragorn found that his own lungs were clenched in apprehension as he prayed a clear answer would come.

'We loves him, my Precious,' Gollum whined. 'Our friend, our good friend, Precious. He's our friend, he is. Never pinching, never biting. Never kicks us, no, not Déagol! If he could see our handses now, poor hurting handses! Whips and red iron and fire! OH! Hurts us, Precious!'

Aragorn let out his breath in a hot stream of frustration, scarcely restraining himself from letting his head slap down across the back of his hands where they held pen and vellum. Gollum was back on the subject of his hands, and he could rail about that for hours. All the while he would refuse to say who had hurt them, or why, or what they had asked him while they did it. Then sooner or later it would come back his poor handses being bound up in rags so he could not move them, or stinging in the snow while he was driven north into the wailing wind. Finally they would be right where they had started, muttering about thief and Baggins and Yellow Face.

If this was what the last five days had been, it was small wonder that Gandalf was near his wit's end. Aragorn set down the pen and returned noiselessly to his original position, resting his shoulder blades on the back of the chair and his head on the cool stone wall behind. He closed his eyes and concentrated on burying the frustration that wanted to break from his cold-roughened lips in a roar. He tried to filter Gollum's voice of its shrill hideous quality and to focus only on the words, but that was little help. They were so garbled, so repetitive and useless that he could not help his mounting vexation. He could hear that same tension growing in Gandalf's voice, though he was struggling to school it. While he could, so would Aragorn.

On the other side of the wall, he knew that Gandalf was playing the same game. While the man without could hold his silence, he would keep on with his dogged questioning. Each of them would try to outlast the other, in the hope that by doing so both of them might outlast the prisoner. With a grim attempt at his old wry humour, Aragorn told himself that he would have to be the victor. Otherwise he would be obliged to yield up his reputation as the most patient of the two.

But Gollum was trying the patience of the living rock itself.

lar

Nearly three hours more did Gandalf sit in the fetid little room, plying the prisoner with question after question and trying without success to get him to say anything new about the ring. Again and again, Gollum twisted every question until it brought him back to how ill-used he was and how the treachery, dishonesty and spitefulness of others made it necessary for him to look after himself. He did not try to bargain information for his Precious again, however, and Aragorn wondered what had passed through Gandalf's eyes when he had refused the first offer. Certainly his voice had betrayed little.

At last the key rattled in the lock and the door swung open, loosing another wave of befouled air. By this time Aragorn was stiff from sitting so long on the bare wooden chair, and his head ached mercilessly from Gollum's whining and spiraling rhetoric. Still he sat up as straight as he could and tried to fix a hopeful expression on his face as Gandalf rounded the door and slammed it shut with all the force in his sword-arm. He thrust the key into the lock so swiftly that the iron creaked in protest, and the tumbler fell to with a low gong. He whirled upon the Ranger with blazing eyes.

Aragorn held out the silver cup he had filled when he heard the interrogation winding suddenly to a close. Gandalf snatched it, looked at it, and then quaffed deeply of the fragrant wine. It brought a flush of colour to cheeks made almost as grey as his beard with the strain.

'By all the stars in the Firmament—' he began, muttering wrathfully.

Aragorn shook his head in haste. After the careful subterfuge, it would serve them not at all if Gollum learned he had been overheard all this time. Quietly Aragorn took his crutches in his right hand and braced his left on the seat of the chair. Without an armrest it was more difficult to keep himself steady as he eased his weight onto his good foot, but although Gandalf hurriedly set down the goblet to reach for him the Ranger was able to rise unaided. He placed the crutches as silently as he could and loped towards the anteroom door. His feet in their soft felted shoes scarcely whispered across the stone floor, and beneath the clatter of Gandalf's boots and the jangle of the keys he could surely not be heard.

At the door, however, he hesitated. Had this been the arrangement all along: for Gandalf to lock Gollum in and then go to fetch the guards? How far away was the armoury, and for how long was the prisoner unattended? Long years ago when the arrangements had been agreed upon, a perpetual watch had been promised. While Aragorn could not deny the wisdom of keeping the questioning secret even from Thranduil's faithful captain, he did not like this notion of leaving Gollum alone; not even for a minute.

He leaned his right arm against the wall and let it take most of his weight so that his left hand could loose its hold on the crutch. When Gandalf opened the door, Aragorn reached out for the ring of keys. The keen eyes flashed, half in anger and half in query. Aragorn tipped his head towards the corridor, indicating that Gandalf should go, and then pointed straight down at his own feet: he would stay.

'What good can that possibly serve?' Gandalf hissed, leaning in so near that the barest breath of a sound was enough to reach Aragorn's ears. Aragorn fixed him with a hard look, silent but immovable, and instead of waiting for the keys to be offered he reached out and took them without once breaking eye contact. There was a moment's resistance from Gandalf's hand, and then the wizard snorted in acquiescing annoyance and marched from the room.

Aragorn locked the door, rattling the keys only lightly so that it would sound as though the sound came from the other side. Then he eased his arm down to his side again and hooked his thumb around the carven grip of his prop. There was no reason to push himself off the wall: he would have to let Losfaron and his subordinate in again presently.

From beyond the cell door he could hear Gollum snuffling and whimpering to himself. There was the rasp of rough skin on stone, and the slap-slap of bare feet as the creature began to pace.

'Asks us, asks us, it does,' he said. 'Just asking, asking, asking. But when it stops asking, what then, Precious? Then the hurting and the cutting and the scalding, gollum! Binds us and beats us and what next? We didn't do it, Precious. We didn't hurt him. He should have handed it over, yes he should. What was he thinking, keeping it from us? Found it, he did, found it for us. Catch us something nice, my love. It's our birthday. Our birthday.'

Then there was a cry of anguish the likes of which Aragorn had never heard from lips he had believed incapable of discovering any new bone-grating ululation. It made his back and shoulders tense, and his head tuck instinctively as if cringing from a whip, and all the fine hairs on his arms stood up, prickling. The noise continued unabated for so long that it should have come for a creature with lungs many times the size of Gollum himself. And then it broke off suddenly to the clatter of bony limbs on the floor and a fit of bitter, tormented weeping.

Aragorn eased out of his startled posture, his stomach churning uneasily beneath his ribs. The words were strange enough, and the howl had been terrible, but the sobs that now came from the cell were some of the most piteous and most hideous he had ever heard. There was guilt and pain and fury in that sound, and it was terrible.

Aragorn could only listen uncomprehendingly, wishing bleakly that he were long gone from this place. But he could not move now, not even to slip from the room. Instead he closed his ears to the clamour as best he could, and focused on fixing Gollum's words in his mind. It was plain that their prisoner was certain they meant to put him to torment, and it was doubtful that he would reveal much while that fear loomed still in his mind. The morning after the disastrous crossing of the frozen river loomed like a great shadow in Aragorn's mind. As much as he wished to believe that Gollum's fear of torture was rooted only in his sufferings in Mordor, he could not.

But the other wretched protestations were more significant, perhaps. Who was it that Gollum was so eager to convince himself he had not hurt? Certainly the reference to catching something nice harkened back to his earlier words about a birthday fishing trip. His friend, then?

With his head pounding miserably and his convalescing body wracked with weariness, Aragorn could not muster the name from his mind. It was on the paper, however, tucked into the front of his borrowed Elven robe. He had girded himself for the occasion, fastening his belt to the very last of his crudely cut notches so that it would not slide too far down his bony hips. He had wanted the comfort of a blade, even if it was only a slender knife. He was glad of it now, though neither arm was free to reach for it. There was surcease in knowing he was not defenceless with an enemy – even an imprisoned enemy – so near at hand.

There were so many questions he wanted to ask Gollum, and yet he could not speak. But ask he would, as soon as he could convince Gandalf to allow it. Clearly one inquisitor could not keep Gollum from sliding into one of his mad whirlwinds of vitriol and self-pity. Perhaps two would fare better. Yet if Aragorn seemed to have intelligence of things he should not have known, so much the better.

Footfalls rang in the corridor, and Gollum choked off his sobbing into sullen hiccoughing pants as he heard them. Lest one of the oncomers forget himself and knock, Aragorn reached at once for the door. He held the keys as carefully as he could, trying to keep them from rattling, and when Gandalf reached the door he found it ajar. He pushed it open and came back in, a striding blur of grey. Losfaron was on his heels, this time followed by a different guard. She bowed her head to Aragorn as she passed, but she had plainly been advised not to speak.

'I must take some refreshment,' Gandalf announced, with a look at the Ranger that said he was speaking for both of them. 'Then I shall return. You may give him water, but he is to have nothing to eat unless he is ready to repay favour with favour. Understood?'

'Yes, my lord,' said the lady.

'Aye, Mithrandir: as you say,' Losfaron agreed in the same breath.

But Aragorn shook his head. It was awkward work with the crutch under his arm, but he held his hand flat, palm upward, and moved it as if ushering a tray through the door. He pointed from Gandalf to the table and made a no doubt foolish-looking pantomime of eating. Then he tilted his hand back over a bent wrist invitingly, wafting it between the Elves and the wizard as he inclined his head with a smile. That last was a habitual gesture of Elrond Halfelven, used as a gracious invitation to assembled company that they should talk amongst themselves and well known to any who had spent much time at all in the Last Homely House. It was a complex series of gesticulations with the accompanying facial acrobatics, but he hoped the meaning was clear. Food would be brought, Gandalf should remain here, and he should make pleasant conversation with the guards.

Gandalf gave him a look of such incredulous puzzlement that despite the grave situation Aragorn felt the urge to laugh. He was rallying himself for another attempt when Gandalf rolled his eyes.

'I think I shall take my meal with the two of you,' he announced, moving to the table and sitting down as noisily as he could without actually overturning it. 'Come and sit, and let us talk of cheerful things a while.'

Aragorn gave his friend a taut smile of approval and a small nod. He held out the keys to Losfaron, who took them. Then he swung quietly from the room, unaware that by now he was almost as deft on his crutches as on his feet. With any luck, Gollum would not only never know that he had been there, but also realize that Gandalf's absence had been scarcely five minutes: not long enough to find a co-conspirator in these vast caverns, much less brief him. He would worry later about facing the wizard's displeasure at this unilateral change of plan.