Chapter LXXV: Gentle Wisdom

Aragorn did not trouble to make a thorough inventory of his healing hurts, for Elrond would want to see to that himself. Instead he shucked his trail-stained raiment and climbed swiftly into the tub. He washed himself slowly, letting the deliciously hot water soak the first layer of ache from his sinews and soothe his sore joints. He lingered until the water grew cold enough to send the occasional shiver up his exposed arms. Then he emerged and stoked the fire so that he might towel himself dry before its merry glow. What a luxury it was, to be bathed and warm and secure in these familiar surroundings.

At last he dressed, donning fresh linens and a pair of half-hose followed by a long, gracefully cut tunic of a sedate slate grey with guards and collar of crimson. It had been well-chosen from his modest wardrobe of Elven garments, for it was of warm wool velvet and exceedingly comfortable to wear, while still giving Aragorn the comfortable feeling of being suitably clad for his environs. In place of a belt there was a soft red sash, which he tied loosely in hopes of disguising how the garment (which until now had always fitted beautifully) gathered into thick folds about his waist. He did not quite have the courage to go into his bedchamber in search of the glass, so he smoothed his damp hair by feel before sitting to knot the latchets of his shoes. Idly Aragorn reflected that he would have to seek out his bootmaker.

At last, clean and clad and cloaked in a confidence that had been beyond him last night, he emerged from his suite of rooms. He had intended to seek out Arwen, as they more or less had arranged that he should, but as he came to the stairs Aragorn found his sense of duty pricking at him. He owed Elrond the courtesy of morning greetings, and arrangements had to be made for the full accounting of what had been learned. So he made instead for his foster-father’s study.

The door was closed, which was unusual and a sure sign the room was occupied. There was no need to close it when its master was absent for none in the valley would be so impudent as to trespass. Aragorn composed himself and drew in a cautiously shallow breath before knocking respectfully.

‘Enter, my son,’ said Elrond from within.

Aragorn remembered how, as a small child, it had so long amazed him that his father could recognize him with the aid of neither sight nor word. It had taken him years to understand, and far longer to gain some measure of that skill himself: the observation of another’s patterns of motion, their customary scent, the sound of their breath. He did not possess the flawless senses of the Elves, but he did well with those he had. He too would have been able to identify a well-loved caller by his knock.

He opened the door and stepped into the room. It was no surprise, given the implicit command for privacy, that Gandalf was seated in one of the chairs by the fire. It was lit and roaring invitingly. The windows of this room faced southwest towards the broad curve of the ravine, and at this time of year the room remained cool well into the afternoon.

‘You look better for your long slumber,’ Gandalf said, his voice perfectly composed but his eyes softened by sudden solace.

‘Why, thank you, dear friend,’ Aragorn said with an impudent grin, making light of his own condition the night before rather than the wizard’s concern. ‘I know what stock you put in my appearance, and I am pleased to be able to meet with your approval.’

‘Sit with us, Aragorn,’ Elrond said, motioning to the empty chair beside his own. That was something that had never lost its mystique. There were several movable seats in the study, before the hearth nd near the desk and on the far side of the room in the alcove of bookshelves. Yet precisely the necessary number always seemed to be where they were wanted when they were wanted, however unplanned the gathering. Today the reasoning behind the placement was obvious, but such was not often the case.

Aragorn drew nearer and sat, having to shift about somewhat until he found a position that did not amplify his aches. His hips and lower back, it seemed, were still strained from the long ride.

‘I trust you have eaten?’ asked Elrond. Aragorn nodded: today this most routine of host’s questions was not in the least rhetorical. ‘I am glad. Gandalf has been telling me of his labours in Minas Tirith. I need scarcely say that what he has found is remarkable.’

‘Perhaps, though at the last it will prove little more than a tool of corroboration, I think,’ said Gandalf. ‘What we have learned from Gollum makes it almost certain that the Ring in question is indeed the One. I no longer have any doubt.’

‘Nor I,’ said Aragorn. ‘Yet each must judge for himself. It is a strange tale, and it came to us in fragments much diluted with incensed ravings – to say nothing of complaints about my conduct.’

Elrond looked questioningly to Gandalf at this. The wizard cast his eyes heavenward, long-suffering. ‘The creature known as Gollum – Sméagol was his name, long ago ere he lost himself to malice – is devoted to the craft of manipulation, though not especially skilled in it. He squandered much effort in trying to turn me against his captor, doubtless hoping to win and use my sympathy. It need not be said that he had no truth on which he might draw.’

Aragorn felt a sickening twist of unease amid his innards, but Gandalf went on and he was compelled to follow.

‘We shall tell you the tale as we have cobbled it together, I think,’ said the Istar. “For if we tried to reconstruct it as we heard it, we three would sit here for many days, and you, Elrond, would be driven half-mad with frustration despite your forbearing nature.’ Elrond motioned gently that the tale should begin, and Gandalf let out a puff of air before setting out with a storyteller’s cadence.

‘Many years ago, there dwelt a little, hole-dwelling folk amid the vales of Anduin. Among them there was a certain family of some wealth and unimpeachable repute. It was led by a stern old grandmother, and of that household was a crafty and curious-minded youth by the name of Sméagol…’

So begun the labourious retelling of Gollum’s strange history. At times Gandalf would lapse into considering silence, or look to the Ranger for substantiation. Then Aragorn would take up the tale a while. When his memory blurred or he came to something he had not heard from Gollum’s own lips, Gandalf would resume the narrative.

It was the first time Aragorn had troubled to think of Gollum’s story in sequence, and somehow that made it yet more terrible. Even worse was to see it all reflected in Elrond’s eyes, though his face maintained its serene smoothness. Dismay at the account of the murder and the taking of the Ring, dawning comprehension as Gandalf explained how they had deduced the location of Gollum’s old home, and ageless sorrow when Aragorn related what the creature had said of his grandmother’s treasures: all these and more played in Elrond’s eyes. He nodded sombrely when the tale intersected with Bilbo’s, and listened with calculating interest to the reconstruction of Gollum’s later travels. He knew much of the efforts to find the creature’s trail during these years. Doubtless he was doing as the hunters had done, and marking the places where the story intersected with their findings.

‘Then having lingered for a time in Harondor, amid a mucky swamp quite sufficient to befoul a man from head to toe,’ Gandalf said at last; ‘it seems that Sméagol turned his eyes upon the Mountains of Shadow.’

He sat back, for his part of the tale was ended. Aragorn swallowed his trepidation and picked it up with care. ‘From what I was able to gather, he dwelt amid a system of caves not unlike that where he had made his home for so long beneath the Hithaeglir,’ he said. ‘It opened on a maintained pass patrolled by the orcs of Sauron, and they were troubled by looting and an unseen spy. I came upon a small passage, impassable to one of my size, through which long toes had propelled a body on its belly, and I believe this passage led – as the door I took my self eventually did – to the pass above Cirith Ungol.’

At last Elrond’s expression changed beyond the shifting of feeling in his eyes. His lips tightened and his brows knit nearer one another. He drew his hand across his mouth and said quietly; ‘That is an evil place.’

‘It is,’ Aragorn agreed soberly. Then he took a firm hold of the right armrest of his chair and pushed himself up more straightly in it. The time had come at last to tell what he had witnessed there. ‘Well named it was, and the Lair adjacent to it. There dwells still a spider in those dread caves. So monstrous a beast I have never seen. More like unto Ungoliant herself it was, vast and terrible. One of the spiders of Mirkwood – accounted by us until this time to be the largest yet left living – fled Torech Ungol. This greater spider followed and trussed it up to be devoured.’

Elrond hissed in hushed revulsion, and Gandalf stiffened in his chair and fixed piercing eyes upon the Ranger. Aragorn strove to appear unaffected by the wizard’s stare and the questions within it. He went on, presenting his report as a soldier must. ‘Whether the pass itself is yet open, I do not know. It is quite possible that this spider permits no one to traverse her doorstep. I came upon it by an avenue unlooked-for, and I did not tarry. It was a choice between returning to that fetid darkness and descending into Imlad Morgul. I chose the latter.’

‘You came through this spider’s lair,’ Gandalf said, slow clarification upon his tongue but fire in his eyes. ‘From the system of caves in the Ephel Duath, you emerged within Torech Ungol, and you witnessed this… unholy ritual. Yet you have not seen fit to grace me with this information until now?’

‘There was no need,’ Aragorn said. His voice was rough, but he could not help it. ‘We had more pressing matters to hand, but now it must be added to the dark lore we have gathered about Mordor and its borders, lest there be need for others to travel where I have walked.’

‘And have you told us all?’ challenged Gandalf. ‘There is much about this journey that you are keeping to yourself, Aragorn, and that gives me more cause for fear and regret than any tale of terrors might.’

Aragorn doubted this, but did not dispute it. ‘I have told all that is relevant to our intelligences,’ he said as levelly as he was able. ‘The rest is best forgotten.’

Gandalf opened his mouth to speak again, wrath and worry flashing in his eyes, but Elrond raised a hand for peace. ‘Let the matter rest,’ he said soothingly. ‘Never has Aragorn’s judgment been proved unsound: ever he tells us what it is needful that we know. Those who walk hard roads are entitled to some measure of privacy, as you known from your own experiences, Gandalf.’ His eyes held the wizard’s sharply. ‘I recall a certain wanderer who would not disclose the details of his foray into the dungeons of Dol Guldur, however he was pressed. And he was under the joint questioning of Saruman and the Lady Galadriel.’

At this Gandalf scowled, but said nothing. Unsure of the wisdom of raising his voice again, Aragorn nonetheless pressed on with his tale. ‘In descending the stairs, I found one lately broken,’ he said. ‘Assuredly less than a year before, and I would guess less than eight months. The edges were little worn by the elements, and even in that hated land the rains must fall. I have no hard proof, but I believe that Gollum went down that way as well, rather than into Mordor itself. If that is so, it is not unlikely that he was taken by the Ularí or their servants.’

Elrond’s face drained of all colour, and of the last pretext of tranquility. ‘Taken?’ he cried. ‘Taken by the Enemy? Questioned?’

‘There can be no doubt of that,’ said Aragorn softly, knowing well the horrors now circling in his father’s mind. ‘From him there can be no doubt that Sauron’s servants wrung the whole tale in the end, much as we heard it in our turn. With that, the Enemy will have the name of Baggins and the knowledge that he dwells in a place called the Shire. Yet fortune has looked upon us, for neither Gollum nor Sauron know where such a land might lie.’

For a moment, the Elf-lord sat in wordless disbelief at this assurance. Then he closed his eyes and sighed, bowing his head to pinch the bridge of his nose. ‘Osgiliath has not fallen,’ he said. ‘Therefore the Nine have not been dispatched west of Anduin. Sauron’s spies will doubtless be searching, but they have not found it yet.’

‘Precisely,’ said Gandalf with earnest relief. ‘The world is wide, and Gollum’s understanding of where Bilbo came from is hazy at best. He seemed to think our friend an itinerant fortune-seeker moving from hoard to hoard based on advance intelligence. His assumption, I think, was that he dwelt somewhere between Celebrant and Gladden, where Gol—Sméagol’s folk lived long ago.’

‘Natural enough,’ said Elrond. His colour was returning, and it was plain that his heart was slowing to its ordinary rhythm. ‘Yet this is not good news: it is only fair to say it is not now disastrous. The watchers of the Enemy will discover it in time, if they must search the whole of Middle-earth to do it.’

‘And it very well may come to that,’ said Gandalf. ‘The Shire is well nigh as far from Mordor as one could hope, without bordering upon the Endless Ice.’

Aragorn nodded assent to this. ‘To Sauron, as to the folk of Gondor, no doubt what was Arthedain is now a deserted wilderness bereft of all but woodsmen and wanderers. Were I in his position, I would not look first that way.’

‘Which way would you look?’ Gandalf asked earnestly. He valued the Ranger’s opinion in such matters; perhaps more than ever now that his instincts with respect to the hunt for Gollum had proved out.

‘First up and down Anduin, as he no doubt is doing,’ Aragorn said. ‘Then westward into the sparsely populated swaths of Gondor between Pinnath Gelin and the Sea. From there, North, but making a thorough search from West to East or East to West at no more than hundred-mile intervals. Impossible for one spy, achievable for many – but not quickly. North of Isengard the land broadens immensely. Sauron must also explore the possibility that the Shire lies not West but East, if he accepts Gollum’s hypothesis of a wandering thief. That search will be swifter, for he can send forth the Nine without first vying with Gondor for the bridge.”

Gandalf wore a look of frank admiration, and Elrond nodded. ‘It seems most logical,’ he said; ‘provided it does not occur to Sauron that Bilbo may have been travelling through the High Pass to Erebor.’

‘If it does,’ said Aragorn grimly; ‘you will be the first to know it.’

Elrond gave him the faintest of smiles. ‘Fear not, Estel,’ he said. ‘The valley is secure even against the Nine. Let it be a comfort that I shall have warning if they pass this way.’ He let a silence drift over the room, giving each of them time to collect their thoughts. Then at last he asked; ‘How, then, did the creature escape Mordor? From you, Gandalf, I know that extricating oneself from the dungeons of Sauron is no light undertaking. Aragorn, you have made it plain before, and again today, that to leave the Black Land is well nigh as difficult.’

‘That is the question that has plagued me since I captured him,’ said Aragorn. ‘He was put to torment, and the marks of it were raw upon his hands when I found him. Doubtless he would never have betrayed his knowledge of his Precious otherwise. Yet to escape such an interrogator he must have had help, or at the least abetment. If they did not turn him loose as their agent with direct orders, he was certainly permitted to escape with ease.’

‘He remains adamant that he did so by his own wiles,’ said Gandalf; ‘but I cannot believe that any more than Aragorn does. What mischief he might have done had he not fallen so soon within the clutches of our great huntsman I dare not guess.’

‘I found him in the Marshes of Dagorlad,’ explained Aragorn. ‘He was crouching by the fell waters, paddling in them as if in a clear-running brook. We grappled hard in his taking, for he is strong almost beyond belief for his size and leanness. Yet I took him at last, and drove him North. The only useful information I was able to extract from him in fifty days and nine hundred miles has already been told.’

‘I see.’ Elrond looked from one traveller to the other, and sighed. ‘We must determine what is to be done, and who else to take into our confidence,’ he said. ‘Yet the hungry must also be fed, and if you will pardon my brief absence I shall go to make arrangements for food to be brought hither. I do not think any among us would be able to enjoy a pleasant meal among the folk in the dining hall just now.’

There was no disputing of this, and Elrond withdrew from the room. When they were alone, Aragorn steeled himself and turned back to face Gandalf.

‘I did not tell you of the spider before because it seemed too dreadful to ponder long,’ he confessed, before the question could be put to him again. ‘When first we spoke of the pass, I was not myself. Since then I have had weighty matters aplenty to prey upon my mind. I must ask that you understand my reticence, if you cannot forgive it.’

Gandalf sighed. ‘It is not a question of faults in need of forgiveness,’ he said wearily. ‘I am in a great part responsible for leaving you to face those perils alone, and I would rest easier in my mind if I knew precisely what they were. You would not have told me of the orcs had I not known to press you, and now there is this. What more are you keeping to yourself? What of your passing through Morgul Vale?’

Aragorn knew his eyes were pleading, but he could not school them. ‘Do not ask me to speak of it,’ he implored softly. ‘I do not wish to think on it.’

Now it seemed he could feel the cold tendrils of despair twining fast about his brain, slithering in through his nostrils and closing about his heart. He could feel the assault upon his mind’s defences: the casual cruelty with which the lone Nazgúl had violated and penetrated his thoughts. The struggle to fend it off had been dreadful enough, but the means of doing so had been its own humiliation. Not the use of Bilbo’s riddle-song, for that had allowed him to cling to his true self beneath the wretched prostration (and quite likely saved him from madness), but the other. It was the need to diminish himself, not merely to seem but to become base and worthless and unworthy of notice, that lingered like the shame of some enforced and unspeakable defilement. He had cowered in the mud of the Dead Marshes to escape the attentions of Denethor’s son. A thousand times that ignominy he had created in his mind to elude the Ringwraith.

Gandalf rose and drew near, standing at Aragorn’s left side and reaching to place a hand upon his shoulder. He could offer no consolation that would erase the evil memories, but he could provide a firm anchor in the safety and the dignity of the present. Clean body, clean clothes, hurts healing and horrors fading: Aragorn was here in this most cherished refuge, among those who loved him and saw his true worth, and beyond that had hope of still greater worth to come. The rest was behind him now. There was no need to remember.

The door opened and Elrond was back. He approached the tableau with searching eyes, doubtless divining the nature if not the particulars of the scene that had developed in his absence. He resumed his chair and fulfilled Aragorn’s most immediate need by saying pleasantly, as though nothing had transpired at all; ‘We shall be served in a quarter of an hour. I have requested cold meats and the like, for I think it wise that we do not dine too heavily before the coming counsels.’

Gandalf grunted his approval before giving the Ranger’s shoulder a last consoling squeeze and returning to his seat. Aragorn fought to counterfeit self-control as he said; ‘That sounds most pleasant. I confess my stomach cannot tolerate fare too rich, though I trust that will improve swiftly now that I may indulge it at will.’

‘Did they not feed you in Mirkwood?’ Elrond said lightly, covering his own hurt and dismay at the thoughts of what lay in the long days behind Thranduil’s tables.

‘Oh, aye, diligently,’ said Aragorn. ‘Yet it seems that organ has shrivelled within me. It was no unfortunate thing on the heights, for glutting oneself on travel fare is never as satisfying as it ought to be.’

‘As if you have ever glutted yourself in the Wild,’ Gandalf scoffed, half teasing.

‘We must discuss your building-up regimen,’ said Elrond; ‘though the particulars can wait. I would like to see you taking of wine at each meal, however, and you must not go to your bed without first feeding.’

Aragorn bowed his head to acknowledge the sense of this, and they passed the minutes until the food was brought in inconsequential talk that not one of the three would afterwards remember.

lar

Elrond closed the door gently behind the attendant bearing away the tray of empty dishes and what food remained uneaten. He stood before it with his fingers on the handle and his back to the rest of the study for a long moment, as if deep in private thought. Then he drew in a steady breath and turned, perfectly composed.

‘Forgive me, Gandalf,’ he said, returning to the hearth. ‘I cannot hope to consider all this in so brief a time. There is much to be taken into account, and I must have time to weigh my thoughts on the matter. You have each had many days to gather your questions and points of debate. I must do the same, though I promise I will take no longer than absolutely necessary.’

‘That is undoubtedly fair,’ said Gandalf soberly. ‘Furthermore, it is wise. We came in haste because we have need of your counsel. It would serve us poorly if we pressed you to hasty advice.’ He rose and took up his staff. ‘I believe I shall take advantage of this reprieve to walk in your gardens. There is no better remedy for dark thoughts than the clear air of Imladris.’

Elrond smiled. ‘There is greater wisdom in that than in any judgment I can hope to make in these great matters. Go, and do not let your heart be troubled today. The labours to come may wait a while, at least.’

Gandalf cast an encouraging look at Aragorn and strode for the door, but the Ranger made no move to rise. His instinct was proved sound when Elrond’s eyes came to rest upon him.

‘Will you stay, Aragorn?’ he asked. ‘I fain would speak with you awhile.’

Gandalf paused only momentarily on the threshold of the study, but the knowing jerk of his head was unmistakable. He might not have anticipated the request, but he understood it perfectly. As he left he drew closed the door.

Elrond waited a tactful span of seconds – neither too brief for Aragorn’s comfort nor long enough to suggest that Gandalf might linger without. Then he turned to the Man with patient eyes.

‘If you wish, Estel, we can remove to the dispensary,’ he said. ‘But I thought perhaps you would prefer a more discreet setting.’

‘You thought aright,’ Aragorn sighed, with the air of one accepting the inevitable. They both knew that was merely the smallest part of his feelings on the matter. However he might wish to bear his hurts with quiet fortitude, this ritual was both a grave necessity and a comfort. ‘How much has Gandalf told you of my road?’

‘No more than he has said in your presence,’ Elrond assured him with a small quirk of the lips. ‘Nor did I ask. Though he may fuss and bluster, Gandalf has too much regard for you to take it upon himself to account for your deeds.’

‘I know that well,’ said Aragorn heavily; ‘but on this journey I have been such a cause of worry for him that I had to wonder.’

‘That much is certainly plain,’ said Elrond. He went to an alcove near the casement, where stood a pedestal holding a basin and the other necessary accoutrements. With his back turned to the hearth, Elrond commenced to wash his hands.

Aragorn reached to loosen his shoes and untie his garters before rising. Swiftly and with neat precision he undressed, folding his tunic with care and laying it and the hose upon the chair. He removed his shirt also, baring his torn back and the too-prominent ribs. When he was clad in nothing but his braies, he turned from the fire with his arms crossed over his chest and said; ‘I am ready.’

Only then did Elrond turn, though he had dried his hands long before. It was an Elven custom, this ablution before ministering to a patient, and it was one of the many things Aragorn had taken for granted until he began to live among Men. Still he appreciated Elrond’s consideration more than his cleanliness at the moment. It was a hard thing to bare his much-abused body, and being permitted to retain a little dignity while he did it was a dear boon.

Still his stomach clenched when Elrond halted after taking his first step away from the washbasin. The fair and timeless face was perfectly serene and the grey eyes carefully guarded, but only dismay would have stayed him so abruptly in his tracks. Aragorn held his head imperceptibly higher and fought with all his will the urge to look away. Only a moment did he have to endure the terrible stillness, for Elrond strode smoothly forward then as if he had never paused at all. He reached to touch Aragorn’s shoulder where the spider’s pincer had lanced him. Expert fingers probed the purplish scar and the tissue beneath it.

‘This is no more than a month old,’ he observed levelly. ‘It was not the work of the beast you saw in Torech Ungol, then.’

‘It was not,’ said Aragorn. The probing had awakened a deep, dull pain in the wound, and he was able to fix his mind upon that instead of on the raw terror he had felt when the monstrous creature had passed him in that sightless passage far away. ‘Had that one set out to smite me, I doubt I would have risen again.’

Elrond glanced searchingly at his face, but his focus was still on the scar. ‘Did you lose consciousness?’

‘No. My arm was useless for the better part of two days, and for the first several hours after the bite I had to fight off sleep like one drugged. That was all. It was well I did not lose all awareness,’ he added, very quietly. ‘It was my captive who lead me into the spider’s clutches, and he would surely have taken the opportunity to finish his work and slay me. It was the third time he tried it.’

‘The third?’ Elrond echoed, unable to keep the dismay wholly from his voice. ‘Once when you caught him, I presume?’

Aragorn shook his head. ‘I cannot count that malicious. He was set upon by a far larger assailant in debatable country, having but lately slipped from the clutches of a dark foe. He believed he was fighting for his life. But once he tried to strangle me as I slept, and in the crossing of Gladden he did all he could to drown or freeze me. He is strong: far stronger than could reasonably be thought. The first time I could not overcome him, taken as I was so unawares. Only the fear of Elven steel drove him from my neck, and that not before he managed to collapse my windpipe.’

Elrond’s nimble fingers abandoned the shoulder and went at once to the Ranger’s throat. Aragorn tilted back his head to make the access easier, and his father felt his neck from the sternal notch to the root of his jaw. He palpated the ribs of cartilage gently, but even that brought a sense of incipient strangulation that sent Aragorn’s heart hammering. He closed his eyes and tried to calm it, knowing that his pulse could be just as readily felt as the prominence of his throat.

‘Your voice appears unaffected today, though you were very hoarse upon your arrival’ Elrond murmured. ‘Has that occurred often since that night?’

‘Afternoon,’ Aragorn said thinly, too conscious of the way the sinews of his neck strained to produce sound at such an angle. ‘I learned swiftly that only under greatest duress would Gollum move beneath the light of sun or moon. We went most often by night. As for my voice, it has often been hoarse these last months, but most often because of ill weather or weariness. It was the latter yesterevening.’

‘Hmm. We shall have to put it to the test when you have recovered your strength a little,’ said Elrond. His voice brightened markedly as he smiled. ‘A song or two should suffice, and will surely please your many friends. Too long has it been since you have graced us with your gentler gifts.’

Aragorn felt a flush rising, and it was not entirely one of embarrassment. For a mortal he had a good voice, if not an extraordinary one. More importantly, he had been well taught from early childhood. It had served him well in Rohan, and it was always an asset when it came time to brighten a winter night in a Ranger-camp, but amid the fair Elven voices of Imladris it was nothing to boast of. He was about to make some modest demurral when Elrond’s fingers stopped in their downward journey from beneath his jaw.

‘Here,’ he said, brushing the tip of his finger across the ridges of Aragorn’s windpipe. ‘Here is where it yielded.’

‘Yes,’ Aragorn breathed, and now his voice was hoarse after all. The memory of that dreadful awakening was suddenly fresh in his mind: the nightmarish feeling of grappling with a foe so obviously inferior in size, who ought to be vastly inferior as strength as well but somehow was not. At no time in the entire bitter journey had his own strength been so utterly inadequate.

‘There is lingering inflammation,’ Elrond said. ‘Not much, and I believe it will resolve in time, but it is there like the long-lasting deformity of the sinews in an ankle healing from an old sprain.’

This was as good a time as any to address that hurt. ‘It was my own ankle that left me on my back so that the spider might strike,’ said Aragorn, trying to keep his voice cool and detached as if he were a healer only, and not the invalid. ‘My toe caught upon something – a root or a stone, I am no longer certain which – and the stitching of my boot gave out. Sole ripped from vamp and my ankle was badly wrenched. It might not have been so grievous a hurt, save that I could do nothing but hobble on as best I could. Then when the she-lynx and her mate attacked…’

He stopped speaking because Elrond was shaking his head in soundless sorrow. He cupped Aragorn’s elbow and moved to guide him to the desk. ‘Sit, Estel, and let me see what has been done,’ he said softly.

Aragorn obeyed, seating himself on the corner of the desk and shifting well onto it so that his toes touched the floor but the rest of each foot did not. He felt absurd, sitting like a child upon a stone wall with nothing to cover him but his nether linen. His discomfort was only heightened when Elrond son of Ëarendil, Master of Rivendell and the greatest of the Noldorin princes yet left in Middle-earth, knelt upon the floor before him and took his right foot into his lap. But the hand that cupped his heel was the hand that had dried the tears of his childhood, and the voice that spoke as fingers searched the joint was one of the most beloved he had ever known. He closed his eyes again, and fixed upon those truths instead.

‘I could not guard it,’ he explained in a low voice that was not quite apologetic. ‘I was fighting for the life of my captive, and quickly enough for my own. But I did the limb far more evil then than was done with the original hurt. The joint was weakened to begin with. I took a tumble on the stairs of Cirith Ungol and twisted it then – not so badly by half, but enough to leave me limping for some days.’

‘It is late to be certain, but I do not think anything was broken,’ Elrond said. He was gradually rotating the joint with one hand while the other danced over the upper foot and the lower shin, feeling the movement of the bones. ‘Here the swelling is not so slight. No doubt the crossing of the mountains did more ill than good: the bruise is fresh.’

There was no chastisement in his tone. Aragorn did not know if he would have been able to bear it if there had. Still he found himself unable to keep from suing in his own defence. ‘I had to return,’ he said quietly, managing somehow to keep any note of pleading from his voice. ‘It was the only road.’

‘I know, Estel,’ Elrond murmured, and the gentleness in his voice was like a caressing hand upon a fevered brow. ‘What is an ankle when weighed against the heart?’

No more could Aragorn sit in eyeless dark, for his mind was too full of tumult. He opened his eyes and fixed his gaze upon the handsomely carved lintel of the study door. He busied himself in trying to name each blossom rendered in the dark, glossy wood.

‘It will heal,’ the Elf-lord said at length, releasing his hold and letting Aragorn’s limp foot slip from his lap. He took hold of the other one and drew it nearer so that he could check the sole and the toes. ‘With tending, and provided you delay any further extraordinary exertions until the ligaments have knitted fully, I do not think your use of it will be noticeably diminished.’

It was what Aragorn had hoped and half-believed, but to hear it from the lips of this mightiest of healers was an inexpressible relief. ‘Thank you,’ he sighed. ‘I know I ought to have taken greater care, but—’

‘But what?’ Elrond asked, rising smoothly to his feet and fixing stormy eyes upon his long-grown fosterling. ‘What else should you have done? Let this lynx of which you speak maul you? Linger in loneliness and heartache in a strange realm, until your hope was vanquished by memories? Or perhaps you ought to have sprouted wings, that you might have flown over the mountains. But no!’ he said with eyebrows raised in a mockery of startled dismay. ‘For your lungs are too weak to sustain such heights, and you surely would have perished!’

Aragorn was surprised into a laugh; not a very robust one, it was true, but an earnest laugh nonetheless. The sound was not beautiful to the ears, but it brought a fond smile to Elrond’s face and, more importantly, to his eyes. ‘There, you see?’ Elrond said. ‘We may find cause for mirth even in this. Now what of these great cats? Of old such creatures ran rampant in the Greenwood, though their numbers are diminished. You fought for the life of your captive, you said. They took a fancy to him, then?’

‘So it seems,’ Aragorn said dryly. ‘Why, I cannot guess. The male I slew, but not before he set his claws into me.’ He reached back over his shoulder so his fingers grazed the first ridge of scar tissue.

Elrond rounded the corner of the desk, and Aragorn shifted his position to allow clearer access. Warm and capable, the slender hands followed these wounds, too.

‘This befell you before you reached Thranduil’s gate?’ he asked.

‘The selfsame night,’ said Aragorn. ‘The horns of the Elves drove off the female ere she could avenge her mate.’

‘Then these are slow to heal,’ Elrond observed, the clinical calm in his voice just imperfect enough that Aragorn was relieved to have his back to his foster-father. ‘Another consequence of undernourishment, as surely you know.’

‘Yes.’ Aragorn took a laboured breath that made his lungs crackle. ‘Thranduil’s healers were quite mystified by that process. They have seen their share of wounds in the Secondborn, no doubt, but starvation is little known among the Bardings.’

The left hand slipped from the longest claw-mark and flew to grip Aragorn’s shoulder as if to keep him from fading suddenly to nothingness. Yet when Elrond spoke his tone was even and calming.

‘Tell me of that,’ he said. ‘What privations did you suffer? Do not think you can dissemble, either, Estel. Not with me.’

‘First it was water,’ Aragorn confessed. ‘This was in the Ephel Duath, before ever I found my prisoner. I was some days without, making do at first with the juice of wild apples gathered in Harondor and then walking on dry. I was spared…’ The faintest of smiles touched his lips as he remembered. ‘I was spared by the mists: water borne to me upon the air, and gathered from a rock. The Valar possess a peculiar sense of humour.’

Elrond did not question him on this remark. He had moved from the lynx-wounds to Aragorn’s spine, and he was feeling each protuberant knob and its neighbouring ribs with care. Aragorn went on.

‘I suffered little from want in Ithilien, though much from boredom with my fare. From Dagorlad into the Emyn Muil I went with some small supply of waybread and dried meat – how I came by those is a strange and wondrous tale, but it bears little on my hurts and Gandalf has his own portion to tell of it. I found roots enough to sustain me to Anduin, though even when hunger tamed him enough that I removed his gag, Gollum disdained them.’ Again Aragorn was touched by a spark of amusement, welcome among these grim recollections. ‘For one so wasted with famine, he proved an extraordinarily particular eater.’

Fond reminiscence was in Elrond’s voice as he said; ‘Elrohir went through such a phase when he was about thirteen. His mother and I half feared he would starve himself or stunt his growth, but somehow he never did.’

‘Strange that Elladan has never seen fit to mention that,’ said Aragorn, welcoming this respite from his tale. ‘I suppose there are some secrets that remain between brothers.’

‘Between twins, certainly: even from their other siblings,’ Elrond corrected. ‘Or so I understand. Elros and I had only each other.’

Now the tenderness and melancholy in his voice were not disguised, and his hands curled around Aragorn’s shoulders. Aragorn reached across his chest to lay his right hand upon Elrond’s left, in acknowledgment of the ancient kinship between them that predated even a father’s love. ‘I was able to hunt once we crossed over Anduin,’ he said. ‘For a time I ate well enough for one travelling the Wild in the winter months. In the days before I reached Lórien I believe I ate little, but in sooth I remember only snatches of that time. I was long without sleep after Gollum’s attempt to throttle me From it into oblivion.’

‘Little food and less sleep,’ Elrond mused softly. His hands slipped away and followed the curvature of the Man’s lowest ribs. ‘Your right flank was bruised, to the bedevilment of your kidney?’ he asked.

‘Aye, in the selfsame fall beneath the spider,’ said Aragorn. He felt the firm navigation of the healer’s fingers, and then stiffened and bit back a gasp as Elrond found the place where soreness yet lingered deep into his viscera. An apologetic palm was pressed where the questing digits had been.

‘Peace, Estel: I did not mean to pain you,’ Elrond said, more mournful now than he had yet permitted himself to sound. ‘Plainly there is some hurt yet lingering, no doubt as slow to heal as the others without the means to feed swift mending. It is as I thought last evening: good food and plentiful rest are what you require most of all. Now what of these marks?’

He had rounded the corner of the table again, and stood at Aragorn’s right. His fingertips touched small elliptical scars now faded to a faint blush against pale skin. It took Aragorn a dim, muddled moment to recall how he had come by such blemishes. He might not have recalled it at all, so full of other more important matters that day and those to follow had been, save that the pattern of the scars was unmistakable. It was the pattern of grasping claws: four fingers in the front and a thumb just above the crevice of the arm behind.

‘An orc,’ he confessed. ‘A black Uruk of Minas Morgul. I was waylaid. They came upon me unawares before the Black Gate, for there I saw—’ A shudder of dread tore through him and his resolve to remain stoic broke. 'Such hateful foulness! The slag hills and the drivers, the wretched slaves straining beneath the whips. Mordor is readying for war; such war as the world has not seen in an Age. I know not what can be done to withstand it! I know not what I can do to withstand it.’

Elrond reached to cup the back of his head, guiding it to his own so that they were pressed brow to brow with the tips of their nose grazing one another. ‘Hush, Estel,’ he whispered. ‘That is not today’s labour. When the time comes you will find a way to withstand what you must, even as you have done upon this road. You will face your toils with courage, as you always have. And if those who love you hold any sway in the matter, you shall never be left to withstand the might of Sauron alone.’

‘This road!’ Aragorn scoffed, though his moment of unguarded dismay was passing and he was feeling the shame of his outburst. ‘What is hunger, or weariness, or cold to the warmongering of the Enemy? There is nothing in this quest that prepares me for the next.’

‘You are too wise to believe that, though it makes for pretty rhetoric,’ said Elrond, both fond and sorrowing. ‘Straighten your shoulders, Estel: not to bear your burdens with any greater grace, but so that I may feel your ribs. The first is not possible, my son, so lay by your shame. Bend your unswerving will upon that, instead of upon the battles of tomorrow.’

Sometimes it was still astonishing how clearly Elrond could read his heart. Aragorn squared his shoulders and drew up his spine, recovering not only his composure but his shaken sense of self as he endured the probing of fingers up and down the washboard of his chest. Where the broad sinews of his shoulders were anchored and down the central column of his torso, the lean but dense muscle disguised his thinness. To either side, however, the slow wasting was plain. Had it not been for his two respites on the hard road and the care of Thranduil’s kitchens afterward, his reserves would have been utterly spent and his body left to gnaw upon its essential strength.

‘You took a blow here,’ Elrond said, spreading a palm across a place where a hobnailed boot had blasted with domineering wrath. He found another. ‘And here. No fractures of the bones, but they have been bruised and some fluid still lingers.’

Aragorn said nothing. There was nothing to say. Those pains were long forgotten, and the fluid too would disperse in time.

‘Gandalf told me you resupplied in Lothlórien,’ Elrond said, continuing his examination by checking sternum and collarbones before testing the tone of the upper abdomen. ‘There is only so much that a man afoot can bear, but I would have expected even that to be sufficient stave off starvation.’

‘I lost my pack in the Gladden River,’ Aragorn said shortly. He did not know whether he had it in him to tell this tale: not to Elrond, who had stood in the springtime of Imladris – likely in this very room – to hear from another starveling wanderer the tale of how his brother’s long grandson had drowned at the mouth of that selfsame tributary.

‘In March?’ asked Elrond quietly. Why he used the hobbit-name the Man could not guess.

‘The second of March,’ he confirmed simply. That at least was safe enough, or so he thought.

Then Elrond said; ‘Gladden is frozen in the first week of March.’ He was silent for the span of half a dozen heartbeats, as if waiting for a denial. When none came, he bowed his head. ‘Ai, my son!’ he sighed. ‘Through the ice?’

‘My captive’s second attempt to engineer my death,’ Aragorn said tightly. ‘I cannot measure how near he came to that, but he was certainly but a hair’s breadth from escape. He is a swift and crafty swimmer, but he forgot that he was dragging a line.’

‘How did you—’ Elrond began, eyes tempestuous with dismay and the very pain Aragorn had hoped to spare him. Then he lowered his lids and veiled the storm, breathing slowly and deeply while his hand, unfailing, found and curled about the nape of Aragorn’s neck. ‘I praise Elbereth that you have returned to us.’

They were the words of the previous evening, but the fervour in them ran far deeper, in currents far darker and more desperate. Aragorn knew nothing to say, but he took Elrond’s other hand and held it, feeling the warmth of the palm and the abrupt chill in the fingertips that came, he knew, from the heart. He had no words of comfort, but after all it was this – his own living presence – that was the only true consolation. For a time they remained thus, unmoving. At last Elrond opened his eyes, and they were tender.

‘So that is the cause of what I see now,’ he said, again the calm and consummate healer. ‘Months of short commons broken briefly by plenty on the borders of Lórien, and then famine betwixt Gladden and the Carrock.’

It seemed Gandalf had said something more of his journey after all, even if it had only been the news that he had bided briefly amid the Beornings. This Aragorn could scarcely grudge, for the tale of his return was Gandalf’s tale also, and made little sense without that piece of exposition.

‘Not quite famine,’ he said. ‘I had a little luck as a hunter, even with my troublesome prey to hinder me. And Kementári herself smiled upon me in my hour of grave need.’

While Elrond checked the range of his shoulders, Aragorn related the tale of his desperate prayer and his impatient stubbornness and its unlooked-for reward. The knowing smile of one who had felt like blessings in his own long life touched Elrond’s lips, and if the fare for which his fosterling had been so thankful pained him he did not show it.

‘The Valar possess a peculiar sense of humour,’ he said with some small mirth when Aragorn finished. He had stopped short of the storm and the wargs. Elrond’s hands moved now to Aragorn’s right forearm, one bracing it from below and the other curling to cover the snarl of twisted scars and lately-healed cuts. ‘Tell me of this,’ Elrond sighed, sombre again.

‘Beset by an unknown and far larger adversary,’ Aragorn said, choosing his words with great care; ‘Gollum fought with every means at his disposal. Of these his teeth proved most effective, though he has only six.’

‘Six teeth…’ Now Elrond looked at the marks with more judicious eyes and some measure of abstract wonder: a healer with many thousand years’ experience beholding something he had never before seen or imagined. ‘The punctures at the wrist I would expect, but the rest is… it defies belief.’

‘Much about Gollum defies belief,’ said Aragorn tiredly. ‘We were grappling all the while, and there was tearing. It took an infection, and I carried out a series of imperfect debridements that doubtless compounded the scarring but at least saved the limb. An abscess was formed despite my efforts, and I drained it repeatedly. The last time was in Thranduil’s palace: the healer had the proper equipment and two hands to work with, and she lanced and cleaned it. Since then it has troubled me little.’

Yet even as he spoke Elrond was feeling the knotted mass of scars with his thumbs, and a sharp, crackling pain broke deep beneath the skin. Aragorn bit down upon the inside of his mouth to keep from flinching away, and he watched his teacher work, half-expecting to see a gout of pus and blood break through the surface. No such eruption came, however, and when another movement of the deft hands brought a second pain almost identical to the first, Aragorn understood. Elrond was breaking adhesions deep within the muscle, where scar tissue had formed at inappropriate angles.

‘We will do this every day until the proper motion of the tissues is restored,’ Elrond explained as he worked. ‘Perhaps the infection was not an unmitigated curse, for if the scars had been left to harden these two months and more there might be little I could do. If we do not keep these webs from settling, then with time there will be contractures of the scars and the strength and motion of the muscle will be impaired. Your feet and your sword arm: are there any members of your body of which you have greater need, save perhaps your eyes?’

‘None,’ Aragorn said, and despite this grim talk his lip curled with an pitiable little joy. So long he had yearned for his father’s healing touch, and at last he was beneath it. The woeful burden of being not only the hurt but the healer had weighed upon him like a millstone, though he had scarcely realized it until this moment when the load was lifted. ‘If you can contrive to put that right, we will have thwarted Gollum’s last design upon me.’

‘I will prepare an unguent to be applied thrice daily,’ said Elrond. ‘It will soften the scar from without and perhaps make these ministrations less painful. Certainly with time it will reduce the deformity. For your lungs I have already begun the making of a tincture: it is distilling even as we speak. As for the rest…’ He released Aragorn’s arm and motioned all-encompassing. ‘Time and proper nourishment are all I can offer you, but all, I think, that is need—what is this?’

Aragorn had been flexing his fingers to work out an imminent cramp in his forearm. Now he froze with his hand in midair and followed the Peredhil’s gaze to his lap, where the curling edge of an angry red scar emerged from the hem of his braies. After so long he had almost forgotten it, save in moments like this when he was all but unclad. Aragorn swallowed painfully.

‘The spider in Torech Ungol did me one hurt,’ he said, fearing that his earlier denial of a bite would be taken as a falsehood. ‘The claw of one leg gored me as she passed. I… I quailed at her approach and dropped to the ground, shielding my head and my belly with the instincts of a small animal.’ A quiver of shame coursed up his back. ‘I could not stand fast. I had been lost in the foul blackness of her lair for hours uncounted – days, I think, perhaps as many as three. The stench and the closeness of the air there are intoxicating, bound about with a devilry of darkness that blinds the very mind. In that blindness, in that terror, I could not stand fast.’ He cast his gaze away and turned his head from his beloved guardian, unable to face his disappointment.

‘Estel, you are forgetting all you know of small animals,’ Elrond said quietly. He was folding up the leg of the linen undergarment to bare the scar all the way to its end high up on the lean thigh. ‘A rabbit does not quail out of cowardice, but out of a desire for self-preservation. A hedgehog hides its head to fend off the fox and guard its little life that it might return to its young. Instinct, you say, and what is instinct? That which dwells within us to safeguard us from our follies. What could you have done against such a beast, addled as you were by the liquor of her darkness and armed only with your knife?’

Aragorn raised his eyes, scarcely daring to hope that these words might break the spell of disgrace his mind had wrought about this dark corner of his quest. But of course Elrond spoke aright. There was nothing he could have done, and in a moment of greater clarity he should have taken swift and shrewd steps to conceal himself or evade her. Flinging himself to the ground so that she might pass over had been nothing more than his body’s attempt to do what his mind was in that moment incapable of managing: to preserve his life where it was not needful to sacrifice it.

He had gone from the black pit of spider-stink and forgetfulness to the meadows of rot and despair in Imlad Morgul below by way of a trial of pain and orc-cordial. He had not been given the chance to consider his actions with a critical eye, much less a merciful one. Had there been anyone to defend, or any purpose to be served in defying the beast there would be no forgiveness for such an act. In the absence of that, with only his life and that of the two beasts of darkness in the balance, the greater shame would have been in vainglorious challenge and senseless death. He had labours too great to be laid aside for arrogance, and duties more important than pride.

‘Yes,’ Elrond said quietly, his hands still investigating the broad but neatly healed scar where once the Ranger had bled to giddiness. There was a knowing look upon the fair and wise face, as if all that had passed through Aragorn’s mind in those moments he had spoken aloud. ‘Your life was never meant to end in the gullet of Ungoliant’s foul offspring. However that twist of destiny had to manifest itself, it was inevitable.’

Aragorn hung his head and shook it, this time not in shame but in quiet awe. ‘Atarinya,’ he murmured, falling back at last upon the old childhood epithet; ‘if not for your wisdom behind me, how could I go on?’

‘How can any of us go on, without one another to lean against?’ asked Elrond. He cupped Aragorn’s cheek with his hand and drew near to kiss his brow. ‘It cannot be this alone that has weighed so grievously upon you. What more is there, clawing at your heart?’

Aragorn met his eyes, and knew that his own were weary and beseeching. ‘Not now,’ he whispered. ‘I have not the strength to dwell on that now.’

Elrond nodded his understanding, so much deeper than words could limn. ‘Let us finish this, then, and you may go to your rest. You have done weary labour this day, though perhaps you will not believe it. As always, Aragorn, your fortitude fills my heart with pride.’

He gave the Ranger’s elbow a swift, tender squeeze, and then removed to the hearth. He leaned his shoulder on the mantelpiece and looked down into the lazily lapping flames and the brilliant embers as if admiring some piece of exquisitely intricate art.

Aragorn slipped off the edge of the desk and set his fingers to untwining the knot that held the waist-string of his braies. Again he was glad of the privacy afforded him, though he did not try to hide either his nakedness or the sharp angles of his hipbones that would be only further proof of his privations. ‘I am ready,’ he said again as he laid aside his last garment.

This final stage of the homecoming examination was always brief and respectful. It was no cause for shame nor any ordeal of outraged modesty, for there was no one in all the world Aragorn trusted as he trusted Master Elrond. Yet there was an inherent imbalance of power between one clothed and one naked, and this the Peredhil took care never to misuse. It was not a time for questions, for lessons or for loving chiding. Elrond sounded the lower abdomen swiftly, checking the integrity of the musculature and organs within. He checked the orientation of Aragorn’s hips. Then wordlessly with a touch to the waist he prompted his patient to turn. He was meant to appraise the curvature of the lower spine, where misalignment or deformity might go long unnoticed until it became suddenly crippling. Instead his breath caught in his throat. Uncomprehending, Aragorn pivoted his neck and shoulder to look back at his caregiver.

‘It is nothing,’ Elrond said, drawing his hand across his mouth and fighting to regain his composure. His eyes were very bright. ‘Beside all we have discussed, it is nothing. Certainly nothing that will not heal long before your ankle is perfectly sound. It was merely a surprise, Estel. I did not stop to think…’

Bewildered, Aragorn twisted further. He could see nothing unusual, nor could he feel anything save the dull ache in his legs. Elrond shook his head. ‘You are bruised,’ he said. He was calm again, and seemed now to be combating irritation rather than dismay. ‘The back of your thighs, the base of your hips. I should have considered it: so many days in the saddle, thin as you are. Mashed between bone and leather, small wonder the skin will bruise.’ For a moment Elrond’s lips faltered, and then he managed a tiny encouraging smile. ‘Dress yourself, child, and let us both rest awhile.’