Note: It wasn't easy, but I've made up my mind on the Gondor/Mordor question. I've decided to go chronologically, following Thorongil through his service to Ecthelion until the moment when he leaves his companions at Pelargir where "when he was last seen his face was towards the Mountains of Shadow". Then, naturally, we'll follow him thither as well!

Chapter LXV: Garbled Truths

'… didn't do it, Preciouss, no! No, no, gollum! Gave it to us, gave it to us he did. He should. Yes, he should. It was our birthday, Precious. Why else did he have it but to give it to us?' Gollum wailed, clawing at the dome of his skull. It had taken some time for him to come down from his panic into something resembling comprehensible speech.

'Who gave it to you?' Gandalf asked swiftly, eyes narrowing. 'He: your friend? Déagol? He had the ring?'

The prisoner had cringed violently at the sound of the wizard's voice. Now he pressed himself low against the pallet and whimpered. 'Had it, had it, he did!' he moaned. 'Give it to us, my love. We wants it. I wants it. It's my birthday, my love, and I wants it!'

Aragorn looked to the wizard to see if he had noted this change of pronoun. Gandalf was watching Gollum intently; eyes fixed and unreadable even to his friend. 'Did he give it to you?' he asked. 'Or did you take it?'

'Already gave you a present, he said!' snarled Gollum. 'Nice presssent, more than he could afford, gollum. But it's ours: it's ours. It came to us. Wassn't we the one who wanted to go fishing, Precious? Wasn't it us who thought we should go far from home, down to the big river to catch the big fishes? Pulled him in, it did, and when he came up he had our Precious! Lovely and golden, so bright in the sunlight, waiting for us! It was waiting for us!'

'Waiting for you, yes,' said Gandalf, lips scarcely moving. 'Yes, I do not doubt that. What happened then? What did Déagol do?'

'Found it, he found it, he said. Found it, Sméagol, and I'm going to keep it. Bright beautiful gold, so round, so perfect. But it's ours, my Precious, not his. It's mine, my love. Mine, mine, it's mine!'

For a moment the unexpected entrance of a third player in the story puzzled Aragorn. Then he realized with an uncomfortable clenching of the stomach that this Sméagol was not an interloper at all, but Gollum's own right name. At no point had it even occurred to him to ask it. Clearly Gandalf had not thought of it either. It had seemed so natural to think of him by the epithet Bilbo had bestowed so many years ago. Now he wondered if perhaps he had started his own dealings with the creature with that simple question, the course of his journey might have been very different.

Perhaps the wizard was thinking the same thing, for he said; 'Tell me, Sméagol; how did you come to see all this? You went fishing together, but you were not in the boat?'

'Let us out, he did. Walking 'round the bank. Always something interesting to find there, Preciouss. At the bank, in the bushes, under the roots… roots, deep roots and their secrets, gollum. It was in the river's roots, wasn't it? My Precious.' The terror in his voice had waned a little, and he sounded almost dreamy. His right hand clasped and unclasped, and he rounded his back up off the cot. Then suddenly the sight of his long fingers seemed to anger him. He clenched his hand into a fist and then released it, raising it up before him curled into a claw. The left hand rose to join it. 'Going to keep it, are you indeed? Are you indeed, my love?' he snarled.

His hands drove in towards each other as if around a circular shaft. The knuckles tensed and whitened, though there was nothing but empty air beneath them. Then the fingers rotated towards one another and the bony thumbs crossed, digging down into the centre of the firmly delineated circle.

Aragorn's hand rose to his throat even before his mind could analyse what he saw. It seemed he could feel them now, those emaciated fingers rounding to clamp down on either side of his spine while the thumbs (strong; impossibly strong in one so lean and withered) pressed in upon his jugular notch. With a creak and a snap, his windpipe collapsed…

Gollum was shaking his hands now in short, abortive bursts, the ring between them still perfectly maintained. His face was contorted in rage and avarice and agony, and the sounds coming from his throat were harsh and inhuman. Spittle flew from his mouth, and his eyes bulged wide. Then suddenly he was boneless, crumpling back down into the straw tick and sobbing wretchedly.

'Didn't do it, didn't DO it, Preciousss!' he howled. 'Went away fishing and he never came back, he did, he did. Never found his body, oh, no. Never found it, hidden so clever. Déagol went fishing and he never came back!'

Gandalf moved as if to take a long step away from the captive, but he restrained himself. His hold upon his staff tightened and he seemed to lean more heavily upon it. His face looked haggard as if with pain, and he turned slowly to look at Aragorn. Hastily the Man folded his hands into his lap, but he did not evade the sharp eyes. He shook his head faintly and saw in Gandalf's expression that they were thinking the same thing.

Murder in the name of a Great Ring was certainly not beyond imagining; not if the dark tales of the spreading of the Nine were true. Yet there was something about this story that was more horrifying by far than legends of bloodthirsty Eastern warlords or brawny mountain monarchs dogging one another to death for the dubious honour of walking damnation. Aragorn had wandered many lands and seen many foul deeds done by Men for far less temptation than a Ring of Power. But the image that rose in his mind of the sunny riverbank, of the fat little boat with its plump little passenger, of a wooly-footed figure peering around the bole of a tree to watch him – stout about the middle, round and ruddy of face, with a crop of curly hair most likely of a middling brown…. that image filled him with a cold nausea that chilled him to his very core.

'You took the Ring,' Gandalf said huskily, once more watching Gollum; 'and brought it home with you. Such a little thing, and how perfectly it fit your hand! And when you put it on—'

'Couldn't see us, Precious! They couldn't see us, could they?' Gollum hissed. He looked up at the wizard and, horribly, he grinned. 'Go where we wish to, do as we please. Learned all their nassty little secrets then, we did! Yes, gollum! Hurts them if they hurts us, we does. Takes what we need, hateful folkses! Cruel, wicked. Calls us Gollum, drives us off. We taught them! Taught them, we did! See if we'll put up with it all, Precious. Cuff us, kick us, chase us off and then send Thief Baggins to rob us, gollum! We has friends now, my Precious. Big friends, strong friends. Stop them all, they will: thieving Bagginses and thick-booted Dwarves, bright-eyed Elveses, yes, stop them all! And manses, too, Preciouss: wicked cruel manses with their brooms and their long swords and their dogs and their high stone cities! Tear them down and put them in chains, they will. Greybeard and long-leggy lout, too, take them, they will, and hurt them, Preciouss! Our friends. Good friends. Good friends, oooh, yes!'

The sneering malice in his eyes was equaled only by the vitriol in his words. The threats might have stirred no more than bored irritation in the interrogators. Certainly they had each heard as much and worse in the course of their dealings with the wretch. But there was something in these turns of phrase that made Aragorn uneasy. Tear them down and put them in chains did not sound even remotely like Gollum's usual plans of small and ugly violence. And while he did not doubt that the creature had experience aplenty with both dogs and brooms, what did Gollum know of long swords and high stone cities? These notions had not come from his own imaginings: someone had put them there. Someone who wanted not simply to blind a thief or choke a kidnapper or two, but who dreamed of the day when all the Free Peoples might be enslaved.

Gandalf saw it, too. He leaned nearer, stopping short of actually taking a step. 'Who are these friends, Gollum?' he asked. Catching himself, he amended; 'Sméagol. Sméagol, tell me where I can find these friends. If I might talk with them, perhaps you could be left alone.'

That tread the line between coercion and deception, but they were well past the point of noble restraint. At least it was not an outright lie. For a wild, amused moment Aragorn imagined Gandalf standing face-to-face with Gollum's interrogator, trading insult for insult in cold, calculated tones.

But Gollum did not take the bait. His eyes narrowed and he let out a hissing sound so long and undulating that he sounded like one of the great southern serpents uncoiling to strike. 'Tricksy, tricksssy,' he spat. 'Knows it all, he does: never tell him. Never, never.'

Now the wizard did take a step forward after all, and instantly Gollum was cowering, shrinking away from the staff and sobbing in terror. 'No! No! Go away! Go to sleep! Leave us be, Precious! Look away, leave us be, go to sleep! Go to sleep!'

'I will not sleep until I have the answers I seek,' said Gandalf. 'Nor will you. Your folk disliked your thieving and scheming, and they shunned you. Your grandmother turned you out of her hole, and the others drove you off. What happened then?'

'Lonely!' Gollum wailed. 'Off we went, we did; lonely, cold, cold and so very hungry. Poor belly pinching! Never feeds us, gollum, never stops walking. Walking and walking, under Yellow Face, under White Face, through the snows and the hateful winds, gollum…'

'I have told you before that I am not interested in your account of that journey,' Gandalf said coldly. 'You will not convince me of any misfeasance on the part of my friend however you try. Where did you go after your people were rid of you? What did you do?'

'Lonesome, very lonesome, Precious…' Gollum lamented. Gandalf stirred as if to move nearer still, and he yelped. 'Walked!' he yipped. 'Walked and walked, so far, so very far, gollum. Empty lands and nothing to eat, no, nothing but rootses and berries and cold water to drink. Ah, but they doesn't see us, gollum. No, not even with their round bring eyes. Pretty fishes, swim so swiftly. Wait 'til they stop it and grab them, Preciouss! Grab them and eat them and spit out the bones.'

Despite himself, Aragorn found a spark of amusement in this. He had tickled his share of trout over the years, and it was cold, wet work. It was trying, too; requiring a great deal of patience especially when one had not lately eaten. In such a pursuit he could not deny that an invisible hand would be an asset: simply dip it slowly into the water and reach as smoothly as you could, then close your fingers swiftly on your prey. Then he thought of Gollum's nails digging into the gills of the little fish he had snagged off of the ferry at Carrock, squeezing as they squirmed in anguish, and his mirth dimmed.

Gandalf sighed and turned his back, pacing to the door and then into the unoccupied right-hand corner. He slapped his splayed palm upon the wall, shoulders tensing with the effort of reigning in his frustration. He might have terrified Gollum into some semblance of cooperation, but it seemed that the creature was incapable even under threat of flame of producing a coherent narrative.

'Did you meet anyone on your journey?' Aragorn asked, leaning forward a little and picking up the cast-off line of questions. 'Did you travel to towns or villages? Did you—'

'Out in the lake, right out in the lake,' Gollum whinged, licking the back of his hand. 'Town on stilts, narrow little streets and tall wooden houses.'

'Esgaroth,' said Aragorn. That made little sense: what would have brought a lately ostracized Gollum over Anduin those long centuries ago, and how had he been lured back to the western bank to take up refuge beneath the High Pass? 'Why?'

'Rumours, voices,' Gollum muttered. He lapped at his hands again and squatted back onto his hams. One long finger slipped into his ear, scratching. He examined whatever he had scooped out of it and fell back to licking. 'Know him, they do. Hero of Lake-town. Pah! Thief, that's what he is. Miserable little cheat. Cheated us first, he did; always they cheat us! What has it got in its pocketses? Not a fair question, no; not a fair riddle. It broke the rules, it cheated us! Cheated by the pool, too, gollum. Come up behind and jumps on us, great long arms and bright knife, gollum. Gollum, gollum.'

There was a horrible squelching sound as he put forth a great effort to clear his phlegmy throat, but Aragorn was satisfied. He had not travelled to Esgaroth before delving beneath the mountains, but after leaving them. After, no doubt, the wood-elves had lost track of him in Mirkwood decades before. He had gone to Esgaroth, and heard news of Bilbo.

'What else did they say?' Gandalf asked sharply, pivoting away from the wall and fixing keen eyes on the prisoner. 'In the town on the Long Lake. What else did they say about Bilbo?'

There was a blissful instant when Aragorn was confused, unable to see what Gandalf could possibly care about the stories the folk of Lake-town told about their friend: after all, it was nothing they themselves did not know; nothing, in fact, that they had not been told on their own travels to the area. Then his mouth grew dry and his heart hammered unsteadily. Just what was known about Bilbo in Esgaroth, where he was a figure of local legend and no little interest? For what Gollum knew he could have been forced to repeat long ere this, and not to the Wise.

'Thief! Cheat! Stinking Baggins!' Gollum spat. 'Down into our cave he comes, talking of riddles. Ought to have squeezed him, yesss, Precious! Sun on the daisies, sun on the daisies! No sun down there, gollum; no Yellow Face to burn us. Burns our poor neck, hurts us, creeps up while we're fishing and bites at us! Down, down into the cool and the dark. Empty, empty dark and quiet, gollum. So empty, so empty. Nothing but goblins, my Precious, goblins and strange pale fishes; never taste right. Hates them. Hates them all!'

He wrung his hands and whimpered. 'Don't want to talk of it!' he growled, flinging his head up defiantly. 'Don't want to. Can't make us. Can't make us, Precio—'

Gandalf said naught in answer, but thrust forward his hand with his staff clenched in it. Gollum shrieked with such shrill volume that the back of Aragorn's throat stung with it, clear through his eardrums. He skittered into the corner, crushing his blanket-cave beneath his bony rump and clutching at his skull so that his emaciated forearms covered most of his face.

'Not fair, not fair!' he squealed. 'It hasn't asked a question! No question! How can we answer if it asks us no question?'

'This is my question,' said Gandalf, enunciating almost painfully through set teeth. 'What did you learn about Bilbo Baggins while eavesdropping in the alleys and side-streets of Lake-town?'

'Thief and burglar! Hateful hobbitses! Burglar Baggins! Stole from dragons, he did, stole from us! Songs and stories, yes, Precious: they sings about him, nassty thieving thing. From cot and Shire, to brave the fire! Smaug's funeral pyre… a thief and liar!' He had broken into a discordant, tuneless attempt at song, coming out of it suddenly with a snarl of derision that somehow, surreally, fit the metre.

Cold dismay drenched the room, quenching the capacity for questions and quelling the quest for knowledge. Before he knew what he was doing, Aragorn was halfway to his feet with his hand groping absently for a crutch he could not seem to find. Gandalf's grip upon his staff faltered, and his face had gone a chalk-grey hue that was paler even than his beard. Only the sharp pain when he tried unthinkingly to put down his right foot stopped Aragorn from swooping down to seize Gollum by the shoulders. Instead he fell back into his seat with a clatter, letting fall the crutch and curling over his lap to bury his head in his hands.

Curse the ancient tradition of commemorating great deeds and their doers in song! Curse the good folk of Esgaroth for their well-intentioned honouring of one of their heroes! Curse the Common Tongue itself, for making such simple and plentiful rhymes for Shire. With the name of an individual and his race and the name of his country, Strider could have found an unsuspecting someone in a matter of weeks; no more than four months even far into Harad. How much more could Sauron, with his swift spies and his vast resources, accomplish? Even now the agents of Mordor might be swarming down upon the Shire, searching for Baggins and his Ring.

There was a heavy stump of the staff as Gandalf brushed up beside him. One lean, strong old hand closed on the Ranger's shoulder. The gesture was meant to be one of comfort and hope, but the hand was shaking. 'And you told them this?' Gandalf asked, his voice an abyss of emptiness. 'You told your questioners about that song?'

'Told them nothing!' Gollum spat. 'We doesn't tell a thing, no, not a thing. Not to you, not to them, not to Him, not to nobody!' He whined wretchedly and curled in over his arms again. 'Poor handses! Poor hurting handses… make it stop,Precious, make it stop! Anything! Anything! Only make it STO-O-O-OP!'

The dreadful noise atop the disastrous news was nearly enough to send Aragorn lashing out in a maddened tirade, but as Gollum let out a long hiss of hitching air something plucked at the depths of the Man's mind. It was the hiss that did it, stirring a memory of poisoned blossoms in a land of eerie unlight and soul-drowning despair. The Nazgúl. If Sauron knew the location of the Shire, surely he would send forth his fleetest servants to ride for it with all haste. Gandalf had crossed Anduin at Osgiliath some days, perhaps as many as ten, after Aragorn had passed through Lórien: long weeks after Gollum had been taken at Dagorlad. At Osgiliath stood the Great River's only bridge.

'He doesn't know,' he whispered, coming out of his curl of despair and looking up at the wizard with startled certainty. 'He does not know where it is.'

'What?' Gandalf said sharply, fixing interrogative eyes on Aragorn as if he were the one under questioning.

'If he knew, would Gondor still hold the bridge?' asked Aragorn. 'I found him on the first of February. How many weeks would Sauron wait to muster his Riders if he knew where to dispatch them?'

'Weeks? He would not wait hours!' said Gandalf. Then he understood, and some faint flush of colour returned to his cheeks. 'He does not know where it is.'

Aragorn shook his head unnecessarily. The maps in Minas Tirith did not carry the location of the Shire: in Thorongil's time they had still been marked with great empty swaths of land bearing the old names of the fiefs of Arnor. In the Steward's council chamber, the great map which bore the latest borders for Rohan, for Gondor and her tributaries, for Mordor and Ithilien and Rhovanion and even northern Harad, the place where the hobbits lived their gentle, quiet lives, was drawn as part of a broad wilderness labelled Fallen Arthedain. Why should the Enemy's maps be more clear?

With a person's name and their country, Strider could find them in a matter of weeks – but only if he knew the country and where it lay. Otherwise one might as well begin sifting all the sands of the Sea in search of a single poppy seed.

There was time yet, if this was the worst of what Gollum had told. But they had to make sure of that. If they did not know what Sauron's torturers had wrung out of Gollum, they could never guard against it.

'When did they take you?' Aragorn asked. 'How were you captured?'

Gandalf cast him one last look of grim gratitude, and turned back on Gollum. The interrogation went on.

lar

They left the guards with orders that Gollum was to be fed tonight and given the opportunity to wash. The mattress, too, had to be replaced though doubtless he would only befoul the new one as well. When Gandalf drew the door closed, Gollum was lying huddled in a ball over his lap, hands shielded by hunched shoulders, sobbing uncontrollably. He had yielded up a few more details over the course of the long, respiteless day, but only about his history and his emergence from the Hithaeglir in search of Bilbo. About his capture and his sojourn in Mordor he would say nothing at all, save to writhe and weep and make much of his hands. Gandalf had pressed on without a rest, halting only once to fetch water for the three of them. He had plainly wanted to make capital upon the morning's harsh beginning, and to an extent he had succeeded. Certainly they knew far more than they had the day before, and most of it useful. But the price for every cogent piece of information was eight or nine strands of rambling woes, imprecations, exaggerations and outright lies.

Again and again Gollum returned to the theme of his Birthday Present, and how it had been given to him by the family's wealthy matriarch. Not once, though Gandalf tried, would Gollum repeat his admissions regarding Déagol and the Ring. He seemed to shy away from the idea as it were torment, and if there was anything of the hobbit left in him it surely was. However he sang it, the song was the same: Déagol had gone fishing and he hadn't come home, the Ring was his because it was his birthday, it was his by right and it had been stolen, and he would take his revenge on the thief and his cohorts with time. Who his friends were he would not say, but there was less doubt about that than about almost anything else still left unconfirmed.

Gandalf strode ahead up the corridor, still burning with restless agitation from the questioning. Before long Gollum had stopped responding to Aragorn at all, and would answer the wizard only when the threat of the staff and its fiery outpouring was put in the forefront of his mind. No further display of might had been necessary, nor indeed any words of reminder: a twitch of the arm which held it sufficed. No matter how afraid he became, the truth was still eternally tangled with the senseless, hate-filled nattering.

Aragorn leaned heavily on his crutches even with his good foot firmly on the floor. He was weary, and not from the physical discomforts alone. It exhausted the mind, following Gollum's snarled logic and jumping from time to time and place to place without even a breath of warning. He was tired of listening to self-pitying blather, and if he heard the word thief once more today he did not think he would be able to restrain himself from conduct most unbecoming a civilized person. His throat was raw and parched, his head throbbed far worse than it had at any time the day before, and his neck and shoulders were crimped into burning knots of tension.

'Go in,' said Gandalf, flinging wide the door to the Ranger's chamber. 'I shall do off with these weeds and join you presently. I do not know if I can bear to eat, but we certainly ought to try. It has been a full half-day since we broke our fast.'

'So long?' Aragorn asked, when what he meant was but half a day? He had caught up at last, and he shuffled his crutches to the side as he approached the entryway.

Gandalf snorted, trying to toss his head appreciatively but succeeding in only a tense little jerk of his chin. He gripped Aragorn's shoulder briefly. 'Go in. I'll be back in a moment to help you out of that robe. Thranduil's laundry must resent us immensely.'

'I bore his stink for fifty days,' said Aragorn. 'I can bear it for one night more.' His left hand left the crutch briefly to pluck at the front of his robe. The reek of rottenness and filth mingled with the smell of his own perspiration and the smoky bitterness of charcoal heat. It was not a perfume that would encourage a peaceful night if left to fester on the back of his door.

'You can, but why should you?' asked Gandalf. 'If they resent us they can take it up with their Lord, who can quite easily be brought to experience the stink firsthand.'

It had not seemed to trouble him overmuch on the night he had borne up a filthy Ranger sooner than let him fall to the stone floor, but Aragorn did not say this. He was taken with a sudden wave of hot, weary dizziness, and he thought it would be best to sit down as quickly as he might. He set his crutches over the threshold and pushed off with his foot. The landing was unsteady and his tired left leg wobbled, but he did not fall. He turned his head to offer a preemptive reassurance, and found Gandalf staring at him with grim intensity.

'Your back,' he said tightly. 'It bleeds.'

Aragorn restrained the urge to drop a crutch and twist his arm up that his hand might grope between his shoulders. It was not necessary. He had no doubt where he was bleeding. He had spent the day on that hard chair – a full day this time, not a morning – and as he grew wearier he had leaned more and more often upon it. The curved top of its prettily carved back put a line of pressure across his upper back, below where his shoulder blades rested against the cool stone wall. That pressure, that bruising edge, had doubtless cracked open the black scabs healing slowly over the claw-marks.

'It cannot be very grave—' he began, but Gandalf was already in the room and herding him to the bed.

'I should never bend to your compromises!' he scolded. 'Did I not say that you are yet unwell? Stay here. Sit down. Give me that.'

'Choose one,' Aragorn said crossly. 'I cannot manage three commands at once.' But Gandalf was already unbuckling his belt. Before the Man could protest, the robe had been plucked open and its skirts bundled off to one hip. The sleeves slid down his arms so the collar was spread elbow to elbow.

'Turn and sit,' said Gandalf, maneuvering out of the way without relinquishing his hold on the garment. His other hand guided Aragorn's arm until he was aligned with the edge of the bed. Then it whipped down to pluck up the tail of his shirt before he could sit. The crutches were snatched away and rattled against the wall as they were dropped to lean upon it. Swiftly Gandalf was slipping the robe off his arms.

'It was folly to go down there when you have not yet recovered your strength,' the wizard muttered. 'It was folly of me to let you. It has been taking all my strength to manage these toils, and I am not but lately risen from my sickbed.'

'I have not been ill,' Aragorn protested, but the words rasped in his throat and undercut his authority.

'Mauled and malnourished, then,' snapped Gandalf. For a moment the Ranger feared that he might launch into another oration like last night's. Instead he felt his shirt being rolled up his back. He moved to cross his arms, intending to hoist it over his head. 'No, you don't!' Gandalf barked, swatting his hands down into his lap. 'Stretch those shoulders and you'll only make it worse. Be still and tuck your head: you're entirely too tall for this.'

The list of his faults was multiplying absurdly, but Aragorn obeyed and bowed his chin to his chest. Gandalf pulled the bunched linen over his head, and then slid the sleeves down to his wrists before finally allowing Aragorn to lift his hands free. Before the Man could speak, Gandalf was bending around behind him and touching the bandages with light, nimble fingers.

'It cannot be grave, he says,' he muttered, chafing two scarlet fingertips against his thumb and staining it. He came around to the front and looked the long body over. 'I will go to fetch the healer. Should we lie you down first?'

That sounded very tempting. He was sore and cramped after a second long day, and the thought of stretching out and taking the weight off of his hips and back was very alluring. But he had bled through his clothing: the wounds would be examined and then dressings would have to be replaced. For the latter task, he would have to sit up again, and that would require an effort far greater than staying as he was for a few minutes more. Aragorn shook his head.

'A useless exertion for us both,' he said quietly. 'One or the other of my caregivers should be in the common room with the attendants. I believe it is just up the hall?'

'It is,' Gandalf said briskly, already moving for the door. His own stiffness and lassitude seemed quite forgotten. At the threshold he turned and raised a stern warning finger. 'Do not rise. Do not move. Do not tamper with the bandage. If you disobey me in this…'

He did not finish the threat, but he did not need to. If Aragorn disobeyed him in this, he would find his freedoms curtailed to nothing in the days to come, and his hope of even being consulted in the ongoing interrogation would be lost. As it was he was unlikely to convince Gandalf that he would be well enough to resume in the morning.

Alone in the bar of torchlight coming in from the corridor, Aragorn reached around to pluck the linen shirt up off the bedclothes. He drew it into his lap, trying not to twist his torso or further aggravate his wounds. He unrolled the back panel and saw with some dismay that the stain upon it was large and dark. Glossy redness glistened in the centre, but out to the edges it was already dried to maroon and rusty brown. He had been bleeding for more than a few minutes; quite likely for much of the evening and perhaps back into the late afternoon. He touched the patch where it was wettest, and felt the consistency of the fluid. He lifted his hand almost to his mouth and sniffed at the blood on his fingers. It smelled only of cold metal and clean cloth, with the faintest scent of Gollum that was likely coming from his hand rather than what he had touched with it. There was no sweet reek of infection, and that was well.

He wanted to explore the bandages and the hurts beneath, but he knew better. Gandalf was right: warping his shoulders to reach behind would only aggravate the wound further and perhaps start up new freshets of blood. Aragorn wiped his hand on the already ruined shirt and bowed his head patiently to wait. He felt giddy, as if the world were a ball on which he stood balanced with his one useable foot, rocking from side to side with his arms thrust out to steady him but knowing all the while that a single misjudged shifting of his weight would send the whole apparatus crashing down. Surely he could not have lost enough blood to affect his head!

Swift bootfalls in the corridor were followed by the soft whisper of Elven feet in soft shoes. There was the sputtering of a candle taking a light. A moment later Helegond's capable hands were upon him. Aragorn tried to speak, but his mouth was dry.

'You have certainly reopened the largest wound,' the healer said matter-of-factly, with no hint of accusation in his voice. 'The bleeding is extensive, but slow.' He found the knot on Aragorn's breast and undid it deftly. Four passes unwrapped the bandage from chest and shoulder, and Helegond reached to catch the thick pad beneath before it could fall. Without having to be asked, he handed it to his patient. A cursory inspection with bleary eyes told him what the stain on the shirt had: there was no infection.

'A fortnight and it is still not healed,' Helegond murmured near Aragorn's ear. His hands were exploring the wound. 'The shallower scratches are beginning to mend. You are bare to the new scar here—' He grazed Aragorn's lower back with a fingertip before moving a little to the left. '—and here. It is not right that the centre is still so fragile.'

'Mortals heal more slowly,' Aragorn murmured, trying to swallow and finding nothing in his mouth with which to do it. He could feel the protest coming, and he cut it off; 'And I am not at my full vigour.'

Helegond nodded in sudden recollection. 'The ravages of hunger on the mortal body,' he sighed. Earnestly he asked; 'When do you expect that to improve?'

'Soon,' Aragorn said. It was comforting to fall into a teacher's cadence, even though the gentle blotting at his back and the sting of clean water in his wound reminded him all too well that he was also the patient. 'I have been introducing new foods and eating faithfully at regular intervals—'

'Until the last few days,' Gandalf interrupted acerbically from the hearth, where he had been lighting the fire. 'He has eaten nothing since his bread and milk at daybreak. Is this in keeping with your instructions, healer?'

Helegond raised his head swiftly, a far too telling gesture. 'It is not,' he said in soft dismay. 'It is not in keeping with the instructions you yourself gave to me, my lord,' he added, tilting to look at the Man without removing the cloth from his back.

'It was an oversight,' Aragorn muttered. They were in league against him in this, it seemed. In truth he was irate with himself. At one point during the day's questioning it had occurred to him briefly to ask Gandalf to fetch some bread and fruit from the anteroom, though to halt for a proper meal had been out of the question. But it had seemed so much like Gollum had been on the brink of offering some new piece of information about his wanderings after catching news of Bilbo in Lake-town, and he had declined to interrupt.

Gandalf snorted disdainfully. 'It was folly,' he said. 'And I am a fool for allowing it. How grave is the damage?'

'Not grave at all,' said Helegond. He was applying a new pad of linen with a firm hand, sopping up the freshly welling blood. 'The muscle sheath has all but knit together again, and the bleeding did not come from any major vessel. I would call it superficial in any other instance.'

'And in his?' Gandalf challenged. Aragorn's ears were hot, but he said nothing in his own defence. He could only sit there, it seemed, like an errant child, and stare into his half-clad lap as they scolded.

'In his case I am concerned because the wound ought to be healed by now, and because he has not been partaking of sufficient quantities of blood-replenishing foods. I am told by the kitchens that he has not yet requested meat, nor anything heartier than an almond pastry.'

'He tasted a little of mine some days ago,' said Gandalf, fair at least in this. 'Venison, I think? But no more than a few mouthfuls. It seems to me that he is being over-cautious with his stomach.'

Again Aragorn wanted to protest, for he knew better than Gandalf both the protocol for a malnourished patient and the limitations of his own innards, but he managed only a brief blazing glance from behind the tendrils of hair that had come loose of their thong. Even this motion made him dizzier still, and he clutched twin fistfuls of the shirt in his lap as he tried to ground himself.

'I do not know,' Helegond confessed. 'I have no experience with such maladies. Among the Elves it is almost unheard of, save in the gravest of cases passed down from days of old. Weakening from want and even perishing of it, yes, but failing to rebound at once when returned to a state of plenty? It is passing strange.'

'Strange it may be, but it is certainly true,' said Gandalf. 'He has had too little water for his good today, as well.'

'You need not speak of me as though I were dead already,' Aragorn muttered, mustering the energy for that at least. He knew that Gandalf was right about the water, but he had been swept up in the day's breathless revelations and the desperate need to untangle the truth from the matted snarl of Gollum's mind. As in the heat of battle, simple human needs had seemed remarkably unimportant.

'And your water?' asked Helegond. 'Is there any fresh showing of blood.'

Aragorn's hangdog glance was answer enough. He had not passed anything at all, much less blood, since the early morning.

Unexpectedly a silver cup was thrust before him, its rim lapped with water cool enough to raise beads of condensation on the side. He took it, determined his hand should not shake, and he wet his lips. His tongue sucked greedily at the fluid, and he allowed himself a more substantial sip. Gandalf's hand withdrew when it became plain he could manage the dish unaided. The third swallow of water seemed to clear his head markedly, and Aragorn sat up a little straighter. He lifted his arm away from his body as Helegond's hands laced a fresh rolled bandage beneath it.

'It was an oversight,' Aragorn repeated, looking up at the wizard. 'My mind was much occupied with more important matters.'

'Hmph.' Gandalf seemed unimpressed. 'From this minute forward, there are no more important matters for you than recovering your health. I will continue with the questioning alone, and I will consult with you immediately upon leaving our prisoner. In exchange for those consultations, you will remain here, where you will eat at regular intervals, partake amply of water and whatever nostrums your leeches see fit to provide you, and you will rest.'

'That sounds like a very promising regimen,' Helegond put in, a chiding note coming into his voice at last.

'Are his wounds bound? Is there anything more you can do for him tonight?' Gandalf asked, looking sharply at the healer.

'Yes, they are bound. I do not thing there is anything more that I could—'

'Then leave us,' Gandalf said with almost regal dismissal. 'I will fetch you if there is further need. And would you kindly bear those away?' He motioned at the dirtied clothing. 'You have my thanks.'

Helegond's lips parted in an astonished prelude to protest, but perhaps he remembered the fearsome reputation of Gandalf the Grey, for he closed his mouth and nodded. Then he gathered up the cast-off robe and took the shirt and soiled bandage from Aragorn. 'Goodnight, my lord. Lethril will come to attend you in the morning.'

'Thank you,' Aragorn said softly. The same childlike impulse that had left him silent before made him want to find some excuse, any excuse at all, for the Elf to stay and spare him the lecture that was surely coming. 'I wish you goodnight.'

Helegond bowed and retreated swiftly, closing the door behind him. The noise of the latch echoed in the quiet. For a long time, so it seemed, Gandalf said nothing.

'I ought to be furious,' he said at last. The words fell harsh upon the small room. Aragorn did not speak: it was best to bear up and get it over with. 'I ought to be furious,' repeated Gandalf. 'With myself as much as with you. We should each have taken better care of these matters, and for both our sakes. For what is coming we will each need every ounce of strength and vigour.'

He moved as if to reach for a chair and then sank down upon the edge of the bed instead, hip to hip with his friend. At once his back curled forward wearily. 'Yet who could pause to think of food or drink in the face of such things?' he murmured. 'The One Ring found – almost certainly found after an Age in oblivion – and in the possession of the most unlikely of keepers, the Enemy, alas, aware it has been found though thankfully not where it bides, and we unsure what more he may have been told by the poor sniveling thing we hold in our custody. What is to be done with this knowledge? What is to be done?'

It was the same question that had been plaguing Aragorn since that dreadful moment when it had seemed all their secrets were laid bare to the Eye of Sauron. To hear it from Gandalf himself was at once reassuring of Aragorn's own sanity and terrifying in its repercussions. For if not even the Istar knew what should happen now, they were in grave straits indeed.

Yet the question had been asked in earnest, and Aragorn had been raised to never let a question pass without exploration.

'First we must… first you must make certain that we have discovered all that Gollum might know,' he said slowly, trying to work through the necessary progression with logic instead of fear. 'If you learn anything new, we must consider it: perhaps it might change the situation or make plain a sure course. If it does not, then you must return at once to Rivendell and tell Elrond what we have learned. Elladan and Elrohir can be sent West to learn from my people whether there have been unusual watchers or trespassers in or around the Shire. They can get word to Halbarad to double the watch.'

This last very nearly made him flinch. Already the old watch upon the Shire had been doubled once, when Bilbo's hard parting from his Ring had first raised Gandalf's suspicions in earnest. To double it again would leave the rest of Eriador under a bare patrol indeed. Yet it would have to be done: there was nothing more important than this.

'I must go to Rivendell? I must tell Elrond? And the Peredhil brethren shall bring word to Halbarad and your men?' Gandalf recited. 'Where, pray, will you be going?'

'Nowhere,' Aragorn sighed wearily, mortified but determined to be truthful. 'Not for weeks, perhaps months. I am weak and as you have said I am unwell. My foot is not fit to be walked on: who can say how long it will be before it can bear the road through the mountains? I cannot even endure a day of sitting if the chair is not cushioned and I have no one to wait on me. How shall I fare in the Wild?'

There was silence. The fire crackled cheerily, making the shadows dance. Aragorn stared down at his naked knees where the dirt of his long road had ground in to stain the flesh. The hooked tail of the spider-scar showed scarlet below the hem of his braies, and he slid his hand surreptitiously to cover it. Then warm fingers were sliding over his clenched left fist, coaxing it open so that Gandalf could grip it bracingly.

'Give yourself a week,' he said. 'Eat diligently, as diligently as a hobbit. Try your weight upon your foot, and keep on with your strange stretches and exercises. Sleep, bathe, stay warm and rested. Then let us see what you make of your prospects. When I am ready to depart, perhaps you will be also. I have the Lórien steed yet, stabled here. I will speak to Thranduil about finding a horse for you as well. Perhaps you are not fit to walk the mountain passes, but surely you can make yourself fit to ride.'

Aragorn raised his head in some surprise. So accustomed had he grown over the years to propelling himself under his own power that it had not even occurred to him that he might ask the loan of a horse. Certainly such things were done: in happier times they had been often done as folk travelled between the Elven realms. Messengers could be sent from Imladris to return the horse, much as they would be sent to Lothlórien if Gandalf had made such a promise. Aragorn looked to see if the wizard had any wryness or uncertainty in his eyes, but they held only earnest conviction. He dared to smile.

'No doubt Thranduil will be delighted to furnish me with a mount, if only to be sure he can rid himself of my presence,' he said. 'I have brought little peace to his household.'

Gandalf gave a weary chuckle that wiped some of the fog of unsettled worry from his eyes. He squeezed Aragorn's hand and then got to his feet. 'In the meantime the steward will be coming with some supper,' he said. 'We ought to make sure you are fit to be seen before he does. It will surely dishearten him if he sees how little his fine cooking has done for those ribs.'

Aragorn flushed, but let the gentle jibe pass. They both had hard work before them, but he was forced to admit that his would be the more pleasant. Barred from the cells he might be, but that was more a boon than a penance. As desperate as he was to know the rest of the truth, whatever it might be, he was not arrogant enough to think that he had to be the one to unearth it. Gandalf was right in something else as well: whatever was coming, he would need his full might of body, mind, will and hope to face it. It was his duty now to replenish all four.