The Last Ringbearer

“The entire Orodruin is at your service.”

“Are you kidding? Where’s Orodruin and where’s Lorien?” Sharya-Rana spread his hands: “This is precisely your riddle.”

Haladdin shook his head. “Yeah, no joke… So: one, sneak into the Elvish capital; two, charm their queen; three, steal a thousand-pound medallion; four, drag it to Orodruin… all right, I won’t count lugging it up to the crater as a separate task… and I have how long to do all that?”

“Three months,” the nazgul said drily. “A hundred days, to be precise. If you’re not done by the first of August, you can wind up the operation – it won’t help anyone any more.”

To appease his conscience, Haladdin had actually tried solving the riddle, wracking his mind for two or three minutes – no way, no how! – and finally asked in relief: “All right, Sharya- Rana, I give up. What’s your solution?”

“I don’t have one,” the other replied calmly, turned what used to be a face towards the stars and muttered with a strange sadness: “How time flies… less than an hour left…”

“What do you mean, you don’t have one?” Haladdin finally managed to get out. “Didn’t you say that there is a solution?”

“True, there is, but I don’t know what it is. Even if I knew, I would not have been able to divulge it to you, as that would immediately doom the entire enterprise. The rules of this game stipulate that you have to travel this road all by yourself. This doesn’t mean that you have to go it alone; you’re free to accept any technical help from other people at your discretion, but all the decisions have to be yours alone. As for myself, I stand ready to provide any information that can be useful in your mission, but no concrete hints; consider me a sort of an Encyclopedia of Arda, but bear in mind that you have less than an hour.”

“Any information?” Curiosity overcame all his other feelings.

“Any non-magical information,” the nazgul corrected. “Anything your heart desires: mithril technology, Elvish dynasties, the Ring of Power, Mordor’s sleeper agents in Minas Tirith and Umbar – ask away, Haladdin.”

“Wait a minute – you said ‘non-magical’ and just mentioned the Ring of Power! How so?”

“Listen,” Sharya-Rana remarked in some annoyance, looking at the sky again, “you only have about fifty minutes. Honestly, that stupid business involved no magic and has no bearing on your mission!”

“That’s a concrete hint!”

“Touche! All right, if you can spare the time – listen. It’s up to you now to decide what’s important and what isn’t.”

He regretted his curiosity, as he understood that those memories were rather unpleasant to Sharya-Rana. But the nazgul had already begun his tale, and once again it seemed to Haladdin that the darkness under the cowl hid a ghostly sarcastic grin. “This had been one of our many attempts to split the Western coalition, which, unfortunately, did no good. We made a luxurious ring – the goldsmiths had a lot of fun – spread a rumor that it’s supposed to confer power over the entire Middle Earth, and shipped it over Anduin. The hope was that the Gondorians and the Rohirrim would battle each other over this little gift. Well, those did indeed swallow the bait, hook, line, and sinker, but Gandalf figured out whose idea it was right away. To save the Western coalition from falling apart, he tricked them all: got to the Ring first, but rather than keep it, caused it to be thoroughly lost.

“He hid it really well; our intelligence service took more than two years to pick up the scent. It turned out that the Ring was in the Shire, a backwater in the far North-West: whitewashed shutters, rose gardens, a pig in the mud in the middle of the main street… So what to do? Neither the Gondorians nor the Rohirrim have ever stepped foot into this Shire. Steal the Ring and drop it off at Anduin again – our involvement would’ve been clear as day. So someone had a good idea: to pretend that we’re seeking the Ring, too, and thus dislodge its lazy owner. But in our conceit we Nazgul decided to do this ourselves, quick and easy, here today, gone tomorrow… this was way below our pay grade, to put it mildly, but a dilettante is always a dilettante, no matter how smart he is. Two real spies would’ve done a lot more good than our entire Order.

“Strictly speaking, the Nazgul can take any shape they want, but back then we used our real look, just like now. Take yourself – you’re an educated man, and still you paled a little, so can’t blame the local yokels. To make a long story short, we dressed to impress and paraded in a few local towns, just about shouting from the rooftops: ‘Where’s the keeper of the Ring of Power? Get him over here!’ It’s a good thing they don’t even have police over there, let alone a counter-intelligence service; the professionals would’ve realized immediately that this was not at all how you catch someone. Well, those village simpletons – the Ring-keeper and his friends – took it all for real, so we herded them East slowly, just scaring them once in a while so they wouldn’t hang around the taverns for too long. In the meantime, our people led Gondorian Prince Boromir to them. The whole operation was for his sake, really: that guy was ready to make soup from his father’s bones to get the Ring of Power. So when the prince joined the party, together with a bunch of other people, we thought it all set – no more need for us to shadow that gang and scare them. Now our ring will sail clear to Minas Tirith with no problems…We tasked a company of Orocuens to escort the Ring and forgot all about it – and paid for it. Some time later our people watching the Anduin spotted a funeral boat, checked it – surprise! Boromir! Apparently they had some sort of a brawl in the company, and someone bested him. No one has seen the Ring since then, nor has anyone looked; whatever for?

“So, to sum it up, we’ve screwed this one up royally, no question, I’m still ashamed to remember… So, doctor, have you been amused by this morality tale? Are you even listening?”

“My sincere apologies, Sharya-Rana!” Haladdin finally tore his fixed gaze from the orange embers and suddenly smiled. “This story gave me an idea somehow. I may have found a solution to this puzzle… or at least an approach to a solution. Tell me – by the rules of this game, may I share it with you, or would it be a hint?”

Chapter 18

“No,” Sharya-Rana said after some thought. “I mean – no, it won’t be a hint. Tell me your solution.”

“Please tell me about the palantiri first, all right?”

“As you please. Those, too, are magical crystals; with your magical limitations they can only interest you as means of communication. Anything surrounding one crystal can be transmitted to another – images, sounds, smells. Let me stress: it is the phenomenon itself that gets transmitted, rather than information about it. How this happens is rather difficult to understand, nor do you need to. Thoughts and feelings don’t get transmitted, that’s a fairy tale. A palantir can work in sending, receiving, or two-way mode; in principle, it is possible to set up contact between more than two crystals, but that is very complicated.”