The Last Ringbearer

would be of much interest to the local authorities and counter-intelligence services, but had no bearing on their mission. To sum it up: one more dead end.

Haladdin suffered thusly through the day, spent half a night nursing a cup of hideously strong tea, and finally woke up Tzerlag and went to sleep without a single idea. It should be mentioned that the day before, having observed his comrades preparing for the march, calmly and substantially, he resolved firmly to break his head if it was necessary to come up with at least an intermediate solution. Even he knew that an army without a mission quickly goes to pot.

He slept badly that night, waking intermittently and only truly sleeping close to sunrise. He dreamed of a wonderful circus and himself – a large-eared second-grader skipping school, fingers sticky with cotton candy. Heart almost still, he is watching an unimaginably beautiful girl in a golden cape, slowly walking across the dark abyss on a thinnest of golden rays; he had never seen a tightrope walker to also juggle three large balls as she walks – how is this possible? Wait – this is Sonya! NO! Stop her – this is not her job, she doesn’t know how!.. Yes, I understand – she can’t turn back, going back is even scarier… Yes, if she doesn’t become afraid, nothing will happen to her, it’s ancient magic. Of course it’s magic: those balls she’s juggling are palantiri! All the three Seeing Stones that are in reach in this part of Middle Earth; we’ve collected them ourselves and turned them over to her… I wonder: if I and Sonya each had a palantir, would we be able to transmit a touch?

He woke up with that thought; it turned out to be late morning. The pot was bubbling soothingly over a fire (Tzerlag had trapped a few partridges), while Tangorn was busy polishing his beloved Slumber-maker. It was sunlight reflecting off the sword that woke up Haladdin: his comrades obviously did not intend to wake up the doctor, but to let him get enough sleep. He followed the reflection arcing swiftly over the boulders on the shadowed side of the dale with his gaze and thought sadly: that’s what would have no problems reaching the palace of Lady Galadriel – a light ray!..

…A brilliant flash lit up all the nooks of his tired brain when by a wonderful coincidence the last dream thought and the first waking thought brushed wingtips before flying apart forever. There’s your solution – send a light ray through a palantir… He had such flashes of insight before (for example, when he guessed and later proved that the signals traveling over nerve fibers were electrical, rather than chemical, in nature), and yet each and every time there was some magic novelty in the experience, like in a lovers’ meeting. All creative work has two components: the first insight and then painstaking work, sometimes for years, whose goal is to make your insight available to other people. The nature of insight is always the same, whether in poetry or criminal detection, nobody knows where it comes from (one thing is certain, though – it is not from logic); and the moment of insight, when for however brief an instant you’re equal to the One Himself, is the only thing truly worth living for.

“Gentlemen!” he announced, coming up to the fire. “It looks like I’ve managed to put together this puzzle after all, or at least a substantial part of it. The idea is simple: rather than taking the Mirror to Orodruin, we will take Orodruin to the Mirror.”

Tzerlag froze with a full spoon halfway to his mouth and shot a wary look to the baron: has our commander gone nuts from all that thinking? Tangorn politely raised a brow and suggested that the doctor have some partridges first, while they’re hot, and only then broach his extravagant hypothesis.

“To hell with the partridges! Just listen! There are other magical crystals beside the Mirror – the palantiri. We have one of them, or at least we can get it whenever we want…”

He related everything he knew about the Seeing Stones, marveling at his comrades’ ability, given their lack of any education in magic or science, to precisely pluck the bits they considered important from that torrent of information. Everyone was absolutely serious now – the real work had begun.

“…So, suppose we have two palantiri – one set to receive, the other set to send. If we drop the ‘sender’ into Orodruin, it will be destroyed, but not before managing to transmit a bit of the Eternal Fire to the immediate environs of the ‘receiver.’ Therefore, our task is to place one such receiver next to the Mirror.”

“Well, fair sir,” the baron said thoughtfully, “your idea certainly doesn’t lack what they call ‘noble madness’…”

Tzerlag scratched his neck. “Better tell me how we’re gonna get a palantir into Lorien and find the Mirror there?”

“I don’t know yet. All I can say is what I said yesterday: I hope to come up with something.”

“You’re right, Haladdin,” Tangorn agreed. “At least we have a concrete task for now: to find another palantir. I think that we should start in Ithilien, since Faramir is bound to know what happened to the crystal that used to belong to his father. Besides, I’m certain that you will quite incomparably enjoy conversing with the prince…”

Part II – The King and the Steward

“And besides, when folk talk of a country covered with troops, it’s but a kind of a byword at the best. A soldier covers nae mair of it than his bootsoles.”

Robert L. Stevenson

Chapter 20

Ithilien, Emyn Arnen

May 3, 3019

“What time is it?” Eowyn asked sleepily.

“Sleep on, sweetheart.” Faramir rose on his elbow a little and gently kissed the top of her head. Apparently it was a sharp movement in his sleep that woke up the girl; his wounded arm kept going numb, but he never let on, knowing that she preferred to sleep stretched along his body, her head pillowed on his shoulder. As usual, they have only fallen asleep close to sunrise, so by now the sun’s rays were already bathing the wooden buildings of Fort