Note: Chapter title from “The Mewlips”, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, J.R.R. Tolkien.

‘Aragorn sat with his head bowed to his knees; only Elrond knew fully what this hour meant to him.’ – from “The Ring Goes South”, The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

Chapter LXXVIII: Where the Trees are Grey

By the time Aragorn returned to the house, the high meadow was deep in the afternoon shadow of the mountains. The rest of the valley would sit in sunlight for some time yet, and the lofty windows admitted a golden warmth to the downstairs rooms. He came in through the main library, inhaling the half-forgotten scents of ink and carefully preserved parchment and ancient knowledge. He had half-hoped to meet Erestor, but his one-time teacher was not in his accustomed place among the pristinely tended shelves and welcoming nooks. There were a few bowed heads in the scriptorium, making use of the daylight to paint elaborate illuminations into the borders of beautifully penned pages. Aragorn lingered briefly on the threshold of the workroom, curious as to what project they were undertaking, but he did not interrupt their intent labours and moved on quietly.

He ascended the stairs so that he might leave the phial of medicine and the pot of ointment in his anteroom, and there he hesitated. He wondered briefly whether he ought to change his robe for something with less revealing sleeves, remembering Bilbo’s pained dismay at the revelation of his scars. In the end he decided against it. The effort required was substantial, and it seemed a shame to shuck a garment still so blissfully clean. He would just have to take care to keep his cuffs at his wrists, that was all.

With little to occupy his time until the evening meal, Aragorn decided that it was time to look in on Gandalf. He did not truly expect to find him in his chamber at this hour, but that was where he was, sitting in a cushioned armchair with his feet upon a tapestried tuffet. Having bade the Ranger enter, he lifted his head from its resting place upon a wing of the chair.

‘Well, now. I was just thinking of you,’ he said as the door swung quietly closed. ‘I passed by your rooms earlier. Where were you?’

‘Down by the water,’ Aragorn answered. There was another chair turned in towards the fire and he took it, folding his hands in his lap but keeping his back from touching the carven wood. ‘Before that, I spent an hour or two with Bilbo.’

‘Did you, indeed?’ said Gandalf. A fond smile touched his lips. ‘I suppose he had questions that only the Dúnadan could answer for him.’

‘It does seem as if the Dúnadan was the only one with the inclination to do so,’ Aragorn said with a gently jibing curl of his lip. ‘Have you told him all? He seemed to have quite a complete picture.’

‘All that I can be certain of, or nearly certain,’ said Gandalf. ‘I did not tell him of Isildur’s precise words, for that seemed likely to trouble him more than is necessary. Nor did I speak overlong about the way in which the Ring twisted and gnawed away at Gollum over time. He loves his nephew dearly, and I think he is quite unhappy enough that he left him with such a dangerous gift.’

‘We spoke of that,’ said Aragorn. ‘I did what I could to comfort him. I will be making arrangements for riders to be sent West on the morrow. Have you any specific instructions that should be relayed to my men?’

Gandalf shook his head wearily. ‘They must be vigilant, and they must be steadfast. The guard upon the Shire can be permitted to lapse for nothing. They will have to be on the alert not only for spies of the two-footed variety, but of the four-footed and the winged as well. But that is nothing, I think, that it has not already occurred to you to tell them. What will your kinsman make of these instructions?’

‘I do not know,’ Aragorn confessed. ‘There were few questions when first the watch was doubled, for times were growing ever darker and of the lands in our care the Shire has always been the most peaceable and the most vulnerable. Halbarad will obey my instructions; of that I have no doubt. But when we meet again there will be questions. I do not know how much it is mete for him to know.’

‘As little as possible, but enough that his compliance can be guaranteed,’ said Gandalf. ‘It is not for me to tell you how far into your confidence your second should be taken. I know his loyalty is unimpeachable, but…’ He gestured vaguely, but his eyes were not in the least unclear.

‘What Halbarad does not know cannot be drawn from him by coercion or torment,’ Aragorn murmured. A chill coursed up his spine, tingling out into the healing marks of the lynx-wounds. What danger was he bringing on his men by drawing them into this? That he had no choice but to do so would be no balm to his conscience if things went ill.

‘If it is plain he does not know, that may protect him from both,’ Gandalf said, offering what slim comfort he could. He sighed and chafed his hand over his mouth, sword-callouses rasping against his whiskers. ‘I know not what should be done, Aragorn,’ he said. ‘Neither with our knowledge nor with the Ring itself. It was for this purpose that we were sent, my fellows and I: to labour for the downfall of Sauron. Yet how to proceed from this juncture I dare not guess.’

‘Thankfully, none of us need decide that alone.’ Aragorn turned his eyes to the fire and watched its wild dance for a few beats of his heart. When he spoke again, it was with hushed concern and a measure of caution. ‘Have you found any rest since we have come here?’ he asked.

Gandalf gave a hollow laugh. ‘In body, yes. In spirit, less than I had hoped. These are early days yet, and it is a consolation to see you already less careworn. Perhaps I too should seek out the pleasant company of the Lady of the valley.’

Aragorn felt a boyish flush of heat creep up towards his ears, though he doubted it showed in his face. ‘It is not she alone who has eased my mind,’ he said. ‘Elrond has said much, and Master Baggins possesses a spirit to soothe the sorest heart.’

‘He does, rather, doesn’t he?’ Gandalf said fondly. ‘The healing powers of hobbits have been much underappreciated and left too long uncatalogued. Perhaps you should see to that during your stay, if you begin to want for occupation.’

‘Perhaps I should,’ said Aragorn, mostly in jest. He doubted he would have either the peace of mind or the inclination to write of hobbits or anything else. There was too much to think on, too much to forget, and too many little moments of priceless peace to savour.

‘Elrond made mention, and I promised to speak to you, of a desire within the household.’ Now it was Gandalf who sounded mildly wary, uncertain how his words would be received. ‘There are those who desire a night of feasting and revelry in honour of our return. I told Elrond that such exertions may be beyond your inclination at this time, and he naturally understands that perfectly. I do not think this is any notion of his, but he does appear to be under some pressure from others.’

‘Glorfindel, no doubt,’ said Aragorn with mingled amusement and chagrin. ‘The joy of Valinor is too bright in his heart: he forgets at times that the rest of us may lack the fortitude for high days and merriment.’

‘The return of a beloved son of the house is as just a cause for joy as any I can think of,’ said Gandalf. ‘Nor would it do either of us any harm to be rewarded in some measure for our labours. You have had the greater part of the toil, it is true, but I nonetheless would like to feel as if these deeds had not gone wholly unsung.’

‘Of that Bilbo made mention,’ Aragorn muttered. He scrubbed at his brow with the side of his forefinger. ‘You know my feelings on the matter.’

‘I do,’ the wizard agreed. ‘But I also know that you are as fond of fine food and fair music as the rest of us, and that you were not able to fully partake of those pleasures in the Elven-king’s hall. You are weary yet, and the hurts of your heart have only begun to heal. The preparations for such a feast will take at least three days. By then you may feel differently. Such diversions always seem more onerous beforehand than they prove to be in the end. Would it do you so much harm to sit at the high table for an evening, dining in honour as befits your birth? If at the last you did not feel able to enjoy the music and the fellowship afterwards, no one would fault you.’

Aragorn sighed softly, wary of disturbing his lungs. Such a homecoming had been given to him often enough in the past, where in all the world he was best known and beloved. And the triumph, if triumph it could be called, was not his alone. Gandalf had his own share in the long, hard hunt and the bitter interrogation.

‘Let your father have the delight of placing you before his household victorious,’ said Gandalf softly. ‘It may be long ere he has that chance again, with your toils bearing you so often far afield and leaving so seldom the time for mirth.’

Moving only his eyes, Aragorn held his friend’s gaze. What could be said to that?

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That night again he dined in quietude in his rooms. Aragorn knew now that his presence from the common board was sorely missed, but neither his strength nor his spirit were equal to such diverse company. He eased his reproach for this selfishness with the knowledge that those who cared for him would understand, and Elrond most of all. The healing of a heart required rigours no less exhausting and painful than the healing of a twisted limb, and this day’s efforts had left him spent. He retired with tired bliss to the haven of his bed, and fell swiftly into slumber.

There it seemed he walked in a wild wood, overgrown with lichen and heavy hanging moss that weighed down gnarled and ancient branches. The air was heavy with the musk of long years’ undisturbed decay, and his boots squelched with each laden step. They were his old boots, cracked and leaking after their cruel soaking in Gladden’s depths, and the cold bog-water seeped in to chill his toes. Somewhere a gore-crow cawed, a bleak and croaking sound that seemed only to deepen the gloom. Aragorn walked on, heart hammering in his chest. He could sense danger about him like icy fingers caressing the back of his neck in a travesty of tenderness. He could feel eyes upon him, keen and cold and glittering with hatred. Yet he could not turn, could not run, could not reach for his sword. He could only walk on, picking his way among the claws of risen roots and the pools of vile-smelling slime that lay between the veins of oozing peat.

Upon the wind he heard a cry, piercing and fell and not nearly far enough away for comfort. But close at hand there was another sound, like the warbling moan of a fat toad on a wet autumn night. Yet it was unlike, also, for it froze the Ranger in his steps with inarticulate dread. He could not move, but his eyes searched their full range, up and down and broadly to either side. It was in his right periphery that he saw them: two great glowing orbs of malice fixed resolutely upon him. Aragorn tried again to turn his head, but the sinews of his neck were locked and though his heart beat a manic staccato he was utterly unable to make them obey him.

There was a rustling noise as the eyes bobbed, and again he heard the wet, resounding gulp as the crow cried still more desolately. Only then did Aragorn recognize the phlegmy swallowing burble for what it was. The woods were filled with watchers, and foremost among them was Gollum. Aragorn could smell him, could veritably taste the rotten reek upon his tongue. And the sly wretch had not come alone.

At first Aragorn thought it was the spider – not the one he had slain with his slender knife in Mirkwood, but the other. The mass of blackness and rot that had towered over his huddled body, that had shed its vast skin deep in the noxious darkness, would surge forth from the gloom of the woods and strike upon Gollum’s shrill command. But when he heard the brush behind him part, mossy tentacles whispering, it was not the clatter of eight legs upon smooth-worn stone that he heard. It was the dusty thud of hard-soled boots upon barren soil, and the low crack of a tent-flap flung wide.

Gollum screamed, a wordless ululation of terror and rage, and all at once he was before Aragorn, squatting in the muck. He looked up with that reptilian cant to his emaciated neck, and he held out his hands. They were red with blood from many fine, exquisitely painful cuts, and the black burns stood out fresh from ashen skin. The fingers were bent into hideous claws, but this time not to strangle. Instead Gollum raised them, palms heavenward, in a gesture of supplication and accusation as though Aragorn himself were the cause of these hateful hurts.

‘No,’ he whispered, shocked to find that he could speak when he could not move. ‘No, not I. Not I.’

But Gollum only leered at him, pale eyes vast and shining with horror and denigration. The charge within those eyes did not abate, and Aragorn felt his stomach turn in slow, dreadful nausea. A dim voice inside of him insisted with calm authority that he had not been the cause of those hurts, but the rest of his mind was in a turmoil of uncertainty. His disdain for his charge loomed large above him, casting its own damnation down upon him.

And then, cool and deft and smooth as that of a scholar or a highborn lady, a hand touched the back of his neck, slithering slowly around. The thumb lay straight and tall behind his right ear, and the four long fingers curled about his throat. They did not clutch, nor did they claw. They did not even exert more than the slightest pressure. Yet Aragorn felt his breath arrest high in his throat and the pounding of his heart climbed towards a fierce crescendo.

Breath, hot and coiling like the flames of a grass-fire licking at a dooryard fence, touched Aragorn’s skin. Another smell came to him: not putrescence this time, but the dusky green scent of bruised parsley. Then in his other ear, while the tip of the thumb brushed behind the shell of his right, a voice of smooth and treacherous ice whispered; ‘They are coming.’

The high cry sounded again, sending a sharp shock through the grim wood and shattering Aragorn’s fragile self-control. ‘No!’ he shouted, and his own voice was drowned in that screeching discord that harmonized with the first and most ancient song of darkness: the dissenting melody sung by Morgoth in the dawn of time.

‘They are coming!’ the voice in his ear proclaimed, triumphant. And they came.

Beyond sight or touch, they swarmed: distinct swirls of malice in the stagnant air. He could feel them burrowing within him: oozing, penetrating, tearing wide the secrets of his heart and baring them to the sky, to Gollum and to the sinuous slave who held him fast, throat and elbow. Aragorn’s lips parted with a rattling gasp, but this time no cry came forth. They had come on him at last, all Nine united, in this empty place far from any help. They had found him. They had found him, and with a hissing menace their Captain called his name.

‘Estel!’ it shrieked in a mockery of the word: its meaning and its owner both. ‘Estel! Estel!’

Firm hands seized his shoulders, warm and bracing, and at once the cold ones were gone. The bars of chill where those feeling fingers had fettered him lingered, but the hand itself – and its mate, searing icily through the sleeve of his night garment – was gone. ‘Estel!’ the voice said again, and this time it was not the vile North wind out of Angmar but a breathless, plaintive command that rang with the music of the Elder Days. ‘Estel, awake!’

Again Aragorn gasped and, as if the flood of air had forced them, his eyes flew open. His hands shot up, seizing the wrists of those that held him as much to anchor himself as out of a half-hatched soldierly instinct. Wildly he searched the room with its familiar starlit shadows, eyes lolling in their sockets. As they moved to the left, his head followed them. That was when he truly knew that he was awake.

He bowed forward over his lap, where one knee was raised where his bad foot had driven deep in the mattress to propel him away from the threat. There was a shoulder there, warm beneath fine linen, and one arm curled around to skim his scapula in its journey to lie parallel up his neck. The hand cupped the crown of his head beneath its covering of sweat-slicked hair.

‘It was a dream,’ Elrond murmured, holding him close as Aragorn tried to master himself. His first effort to draw a deep breath was met with a spasming cough, and so he let the frenetic panting continue and focused upon his crashing heart instead. Aragorn’s brow leaned heavily upon the solid, exquisitely present, shoulder as his chest heaved. ‘There, my son. My son. It was naught but a devilry of the mind. It was a dream.’

Aragorn could not speak. The horror still clenched his heart: not horror of the dream alone, but of the fell memories that lay behind. Gollum, with his writhing hands and cruel, burning eyes. A low, trilling voice fraught with gleeful malevolence. And worst by far, the awful violation of the incursions of the Nazgûl as they clawed at sanity and devoured all hope. He screwed his eyes closed and fixed every tendril of his mind upon the pace of his heart and the gentle hands that held him.

‘I am here. You are awake. It is over now,’ whispered Elrond, soothing and in perfect control. It was this last that was the greatest comfort: the serene capability in the well-beloved voice, promising that Aragorn did not need to wage this battle alone; that there was another here to stand at his shoulder, another who could bear the burden of command awhile.

Slowly his desperate panting slowed to laboured breaths that wheezed a little on the intake, and his heart’s panicked rhythm died away to a steady drumbeat. The hand upon his head was still and constant. The other, wrapping him into a crooked embrace, moved in a slow, consoling spiral on his back.

When he felt able to hold the weight of his own head, Aragorn sat back. The hand that had held it slid down to caress his forearm, while the other moved to his shoulder so that the backs of slender fingers could rest against his cheek. Soft grey eyes, eternally patient and forever loving, met his shamed and desperate ones.

‘I woke you,’ he huffed, his face a burning brand. ‘Did I rouse the entire household?’

‘No,’ Elrond said, lulling honesty in his voice. ‘You gave a small cry, but I doubt it could have been heard at any greater distance, or by ears not alert to such sounds. Do you wish to speak of the terrors your mind has wrought? Sometimes it is best to share such a yoke.’

Aragorn shook his head unsteadily. Elrond was sitting on the edge of the bed, dark hair like a cloud about a face that seemed paler than either heritage or starlight might readily explain. Perhaps the cry and certainly the reluctance of the dreamer to awaken when called had shaken him badly. Even now he did not relinquish his hold upon the Man, as if he feared he might slip back into dark dreams.

‘Gollum,’ said Aragorn, his voice hoarse and husky. ‘Gollum, and the Nine…’

He stiffened at that word, as though it had been spoken by another. Elrond responded to this sudden tension by inching nearer and moving his hand further up Aragorn’s arm.

‘Dark things indeed,’ he sighed. ‘Would that I could soothe you as I did in your childhood, with promises that such things were false or long-past. I can say naught in comfort now save that neither can touch you here. As for Gollum, he is secured in the fastness of Thranduil’s halls. It may be that he shall never walk free again, much less come to plague you.’

‘He will always plague me, I think,’ Aragorn murmured. ‘Though I live a hundred years more, I shall never forget his eyes.’

‘No,’ said Elrond, very softly. ‘No, there are those things we cannot forget, however we wish to and no matter how much time may pass.’

Aragorn met his pained gaze, and wondered what unhappy recollection was rising now in his father’s mind. But his back was slick with sweat and his garment clung to him: he shivered convulsively, bony body far too sensitive to the slightest chill.

‘Here.’ Elrond rose and drew back the bedclothes, offering both hands to help the Ranger rise. ‘Exchange that robe for a fresh one, and I will put right the bed.’

Aragorn nodded numbly and took the few short steps to the clothespress. His ankle pained him with each one, dull ache lancing to agony through his heel. It was only the lingering rawness in his jangled nerves, for he could not have reinjured the joint against a feather mattress, however frantic his movements. Yet his legs were quaking and as soon as he had the clean night shift in his hand he stumbled for the seat under which he kept his bootjack. Elrond’s back was turned, but his hands paused in their practiced smoothing of the bedclothes as the joints of the chair creaked with the suddenness of Aragorn’s descent upon them.

It was a full minute, perhaps longer, before Aragorn felt capable of lifting himself onto one braced elbow so that he could draw the perspiration-soaked garment up over his haunches. He waited several seconds more before rolling it up and over his head. Hastily he let it fall and donned the other, taken by a savage memory of crouching naked over a pitiful campfire while his hair froze to his shoulders. When his foster-father turned from the bed, Aragorn had the clean shift down around his hips and his head in his hands.

It had felt so real, so appallingly real. He might have known that these days of reliving his journey would awaken every dark thing that he had carried buried within him on his desperate road. Although he could only dispel such shadows with the light of love and acceptance, he was nonetheless laying bare raw wounds that had been left long to fester beneath makeshift bandages. They had to be scoured and debrided, and at last neatly closed. It was not a process to be executed without pain.

When Elrond’s hand came to rest upon his bowed back, Aragorn was still shaking. Meek as a child he let himself be guided to rise, the hem of his garment falling down about his ankles as he did so. His head was bowed already, so it was with ease that Elrond kissed his brow.

‘Do you wish to go back to bed?’ he asked. ‘If you prefer we can retire to the anteroom and light the fire. Your skin is cold to the touch.’

Aragorn parted his lips to voice his wish, for he wanted nothing less than to hazard a return to the bleak slumberland he had so lately escaped, but no sound issued forth. In his dream he had been articulate but motionless. Now he was mute, and yet could move. He tilted his head towards the open door and haltingly led the way. Elrond fell behind just before the threshold, and then drew up upon Aragorn and draped something heavy and comforting over his shoulders. Reflexively Aragorn crossed his arms to grasp it, fingers sinking deep into the rich velvet pile of his evening robe. He wore it but rarely, for it was not his habit to take visitors while in dishabille, nor was it common for his weather-seasoned body to find any cold in the well-appointed house. Terror and the ravages of famine had left him enfeebled and susceptible to such discomforts.

He slipped his arms into the splendidly cut sleeves while Elrond bent to light the fire. The tinder flared and crackled, and the first stem of wood caught ablaze with comforting swiftness. Another thing that was easy to forget in the Wild was how cleanly and easily cured firewood burned. Aragorn moved slowly to his chair by the hearth, less unsteady upon his feet now but wary of further weakness.

Elrond watched him sit, wordless and carefully expressionless. Then he drew up another chair and settled himself near enough that he could reach across the gap between armrests and put his hand over Aragorn’s. This unspoken pledge of constancy did more to quiet the stirrings of the Ranger’s heart than a hundred calming words could have done. It was a reminder, firm and tangible, that he was no longer alone.

They sat there for some minutes, and gradually Aragorn realized that the door opening on the corridor was ajar. Elrond must have come with the greatest of haste when he heard the cry. Now the ruddy pool of firelight sent out a broad strip of illumination into the corridor. Anyone passing would surely see it and wonder what cause the Lord of the Dúnedain had to be sitting up with his fire lit and his door open at such an hour. The first would raise no questions, but the second was contrary to his nature. With so much of his life spent in uncertainty, beneath the open sky or in insecure shelter, it was a consolation of home to be able to shut himself in with a stout door and a knock between him and any chance meetings.

He tried to muster the effort required to rise and close it, but somehow he could not. It was not a weakness of the body, or at least not one that he could quantify. Nevertheless his limbs felt weighted with weariness and the thought of breaking his simple contact with Elrond wrung at his courage. So instead he remained where he was, watching that column of light warily and hoping that no one happened near.

He would have been glad to stay in the seat by the fire, his hand beneath his father’s, until dawn came to banish the mind’s dark musings, but of course the time came when he could no longer justify keeping Elrond from his rest. The fire was by then only a bed of bright embers, and Aragorn did not speak. He merely clenching his fingers and rose to his feet, still using a stout grip upon the armrests to help him up onto his mending ankle. That small consideration and others like it would speed the healing without weakening the limb.

Elrond’s hand withdrew as Aragorn rose, but he followed the Ranger into the bedchamber. Aragorn’s steps were heavy, with weariness and with trepidation. Sometimes he awoke from dark dreams to the sure knowledge they had flown from him. Sometimes he was left with the dread feeling that they waited for him in the depths of his mind like great black beasts crouched to pounce. Most often when that feeling took him, his prediction proved correct. Tonight would surely be such a night.

Elrond skirted around him and turned back the bedclothes. The bed looked fresh and so very alluring, and it was not only consideration for the needs of the Elf-lord that drew Aragorn to it. The pillows had been plumped invitingly, and the sheets were smoothed out of their tangle. The Ranger let the sumptuous robe slip from his shoulders and laid it atop the clothes press before going to the bed. As he lay down he felt that same release of strain that always greeted him when he stretched his back and his long legs along the soft support of a good feather tick. His dread still sat like a peach-pit in his throat, but his body was already reaching greedily towards sleep.

Elrond drew up the blankets and tucked them as he had done on so many nights long ago, taking his turn in seeing his small ward to bed. The memory was most clearly associated with times like this: when, ill or hurting or frightened, Aragorn had needed a solace more profound than any his mother could offer him. It made him feel very young again and, despite the horrors lurking as much in memory as in imagination, profoundly safe. So seldom was he able to sleep in safety. It seemed unjust for terror and hatred to hunt him even here.

There was a soft scrape as Elrond picked up the chair from the corner. He bore it back across the room and set it down, parallel to the bed and facing the headboard. As he sat, Aragorn turned to him and shook his head.

‘You should return to your rest,’ he said. ‘I know there are weighty matters upon your heart, and you do not need to sit a vigil by the bedside of one who can scarcely be considered even a convalescent anymore.’

‘I was deprived by distance of the right to sit such a vigil when you were brought low in body,’ Elrond said quietly, settling his hand upon Aragorn’s forearm where it broke the line of the coverlet. ‘Let me at least do so now, when you are brought low in spirit. Who can say?’ he added with a tiny, tender smile. ‘Perhaps I can keep the dreams at bay.’

‘You always could,’ murmured Aragorn. He closed his eyes, concentrating upon the gentle weight of Elrond’s touch and feeling his body slip deeper and deeper into the paralysis of exhaustion. His mind, however, refused to let him give in to sleep.

‘Speak, child,’ Elrond said presently. ‘What more troubles you?’

Aragorn opened his eyes. In the dimness of the starlight coming through the curtains, Elrond’s face looked still more smooth and fair than it did beneath the Sun. His eyes were darker, too, and shadowed now with worry as well as with compassion.

‘Failure,’ Aragorn confessed, the word coming out on the whisper of a breath before he could even search his heart for an answer to the question. It knew better than he, it seemed, what burdens it needed most to share.

‘You did not fail,’ said Elrond. ‘Scarcely even did you falter, save at Dagorlad. And then you sprang at once into action again at the smallest sign of hope.’

‘It is not the failures of the roads behind that trouble me,’ sighed Aragorn, no longer safe in the illusion of boyhood. He felt every long year of his life now, dragging upon him like warp-weights on a crossbar. ‘It is the failures that lie ahead. Elendil saved his people from the cataclysm of Ulmo, built a realm out of wilderness, and waged a long and victorious war against the fastness of Mordor. Yet in the end he failed to overthrow the Enemy and was himself cast down. Isildur carved out a great city and helped to lay the foundations of a realm that has endured throughout the Age. He led his men to battle and to glory. Yet when the true test came, he fell. His people paid dearly for his folly, and the seeds of it bring bitter harvests yet. Even the great ones stumble. How can I not?’

‘Aye, even the great ones may stumble,’ said Elrond. ‘And until the end of your road that shall ever be a risk. Yet you have been facing great risk and improbable odds from babyhood, my son. Never has that deterred you from trying.’

‘Nor will it now,’ said Aragorn, the conviction in his heart wavering only a little. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, but the mass of dread remained in his throat. ‘Yet the fear of the fall shall haunt me on every step of the road.’ Aragorn fell silent, but Elrond did not speak. He knew that there was more to come, and so he waited.

‘I spoke to Gandalf of sending word to Halbarad, and of what he might be told when he comes to me for an accounting of my orders,’ Aragorn said at last. He could not look at his foster-father. His eyes were fixed instead on the shadowy brocade of the tester above. Only long familiarity enabled him to pick out the pattern of vines and blossoms. ‘Always before I have dispatched my Rangers against the unknown dangers of the Wild: now orcs, now wolves, now hill-brigands and cutpurses. This time there can be no doubt what will come. Perhaps not for many months or even years, but they are coming.’

‘Yes.’ Elrond’s breath carried the affirmation Aragorn had so dreaded, and it seemed as if the room grew cold. ‘Sooner or later, they will come.’

He had tried not to flinch, but still his heart quailed and he could not conceal it. Aragorn forced himself to go on. ‘And when they do, who will stand to meet them save the Dúnedain? In setting my men to guard the Shire, I am setting them in the end against the Nine. I am knowingly laying them in the path of butchery. It is a Captain’s burden, but that it is necessary makes the choice no easier to bear.’

‘No. It is not easy,’ Elrond said quietly. ‘Yet neither does it mean you will fail them. A life lost in defence of the innocent is not wasted. You ask of them nothing you have not done yourself, and without aid.’

This was true, but still more chilling. Having faced the Nazgûl singly and in greater numbers – though blessedly never at their full complement – Aragorn knew precisely what he was pitting his loyal Rangers against. The chill in his chest spread again, more unnerving than before.

‘Always those who dwell in times of darkness and great deeds wish the cup had passed them by,’ Aragorn said, trying to drive the bleak dread of the many grim tomorrows to come. ‘Yet some must take their turn and stand. If the Ring has indeed been found – and I see not how it can be otherwise, even without the final proof – then my hour draws nigh. I fear not the test itself, but my own fallibility. I am imperfect. If in the end I cannot hold fast, what is left for me and for all those I love?’

Elrond did not speak, but his grip upon Aragorn’s arm tightened and he refused to look away from the Man’s careworn face. This was not how Aragorn would have chosen to voice these misgivings, but there was a cleansing relief in speaking them aloud at last.

‘All my life, so now it seems, I have waited and prepared for this,’ he said, lips scarcely moving with the words. ‘When it comes I will put forth all I have to offer. Surely it is better to be felled before the mighty storm than to cower and be spared while it lays waste all the world. Yet that knowledge cannot ease the burden, nor can it banish the fear that in the deciding moment one may turn and blow with the wind instead of resisting.’

‘There is naught that I can say to ease that fear, for it is the dread that comes with greatness,’ Elrond sighed. ‘None may bear it for you, much though they might wish it. Yet in my heart I am certain you will always resist, in triumph or in failure, in glory or in humiliation, with hope or without it.’

‘Resist, perhaps,’ said Aragorn. ‘Press on? I do not know. I have tasted the temptation to lay aside my labours ere this, but never with the clarity that I have upon this road. That will be my failing, if it comes.’

‘That too I know,’ Elrond said with a sad and tender smile. ‘Ever have I endeavored to aid you in your guard against it, however I may.’

‘Verily,’ Aragorn whispered. ‘For that I have not the words to express my thanks.’

Elrond’s palm moved to rest against the Ranger’s too-hollow cheek. His thumb brushed the side of Aragorn’s nose. ‘No thanks is owed, my son. Now let me help you find slumber beyond the reach of evil dreams.’

Aragorn’s hand slipped from under the bedclothes to lay hold upon the slender wrist that rested on his clavicle. He shook his head very slightly, knowing that it would be felt with no difficulty whatsoever. ‘I beg you, Atarinya: do not sit out the night here. See me off into my rest if you will, but then seek your own. I am not the only one who faces the darkness, nor the evil that bides within. Nor is my trial to be the greatest.’

‘Yet it shall be greater than mine, I think,’ murmured Elrond. He bowed low and kissed Aragorn’s brow again, very lightly. Then he drew his hand up to shield the eyes of his fosterling, and put forth thoughts of peace and sleep untroubled. After a time he sat back, palm lying again upon Aragorn’s arm. Softly he hummed an ancient melody of Valinor unsullied while the starlight glittered in his eyes. The room about them grew dim as a weary body found its rest and an overburdened mind drank deep of the well of forgetfulness.