The Dark Lord did not regard the man. He simply sighed and said, “May you feel such fear that your balls turn as brittle as stones.”
In response, the company under their proud emblems pulled forth their swords, their sudden ringing like a cry of metallic harmonies. Shiiinnnggg! The swords reflected the reddening light of day’s end.
Just as suddenly those in the forward ranks shrieked. The troll had let slip the brudarks. The ambassador was torn into pieces in a moment. His sword and helm spit into the air like mere twigs and crumbs. The stunned company turned in panic, gave spur to their mounts in retreat, and then suddenly reined them in.
Ringing the path of their escape were five mounted Wraiths.
“Finish them, and bring me their banners that we may use them as rolls in our latrines and sop-rags in our banquet halls!”
With that, the dark knights and the orcs fell on the hapless few who quailed now between the Wraiths and the brudarks.
Here the scribe’s hand failed, as if interrupted. There were scribbles, scratch-throughs, question marks, and redos of various symbols. There was half of a note, something about a trap awaiting the Bearer, then an arrow leading to the words “The trap is set for the next full moon!” After further space, the writing again gathered momentum toward Ara’s fate:
There followed hoarse shouts and the screams of men and beasts, clashing and banging, the dull thuds of weapons on bodies, and a hideous brudark roar. As these subsided, the howls of Dire Wolves, now loosed to search out survivors, filled the glen.
One approached Ara’s spot, picking up a scent and eager to tear into a quailing prey. It pounced at a darker spot in the grass. Its jaws set upon the limp and empty chords of her bonds.
Ara was gone.
Maddening! Cadence looked at the clock and then leafed through the pages until she found once again the sign of a sliver moon. She read with a flash of energy as she saw whose paths had crossed:
Ara had been here. The Bearer felt it.
He stopped, smelled the freshening air that rushed down this glen, and knelt facing the pathway before him. The breeze sang gently of distant snows and the awakening of the Winter Giants far to the north as it rippled in wavelets across the expanse of green grass. Sunlight and shadow danced an ensemble as the nearby trees swayed back and forth.
The patterns of light caught a glint.
There! Gone. There again!
He stretched and pulled from the grass a necklace of gold. It was broken, and dark stains painted its delicate links. It was Ara’s. Its lineage traced back to the treasure hordes of the Last Dragon. He had given it to her as their first exchange of gifts. (He had received from her a green Shandy, the distinctive hat of travelers of the Great Road.)
She had been here. Perhaps only hours before!
He leapt forward holding his Shandy tightly in his hand, his feet compressing the shallower grass of the path, and left that place forever.
There was a note in the margin of the passage. The note-maker scribed these lines perhaps centuries after the original document, yet still of a time lost to antiquity:
Where this most famous Halfling thus passed— proudly wearing his Shandy as portrayed in the famous Tapestries of Ulmarest — he was intent on his search for the footprints of Ara. The grass grows there even today in similar long-bladed fashion. The wind still ripples across this expanse, just as it did then. The earnest aromas of spring still arrive there yearly. The rich, sad smells that herald the onset of fall are identical there today. The hares and marmots of the nearby rocky hillside reside there yet. And to those who say Middle-earth has passed on, let them stand here! For they are shown the lie by this moment.
That world exists still, for any that would kneel down and smell the simple earth, stoop and partake of the plain and honest work offered by a fine summer’s vegetable garden, or gaze to the snow-crested, blue mountains that beckon one to adventure.
If, of a moment, you next linger in such a place, perchance travelling a rude and simple country road, ask thyself who trod this path before? What errands did they seek? What stories did they live? Where did this path take them in their long journey?
Indeed, where does it take thee?
She read on, obsessed now, and came across a context for the evil toward which Ara’s feet carried her:
An Account and Prophecy.
By Gifol, Historian of the Third Age in the Court of Hrothulf. My Lord,
The tale of Ara and the single moon cycle which ordered so much of the end of that world and the beginning of our own, cannot be fully understood without the history of the Source and its Embodiment. Unfortunately this comes to us in tatters, rife with dispute and contradiction. Was this embodiment merely a ring? Or, as various sages maintain, a shield, or sword, or symbol? Was it a secret incantation, with the story of a ring attached merely as a myth? Ruse and distraction infect all history from these times.
A review of its popular names from antiquity tells us little. “Un-still” it was sometimes called in the south, but by far it was known, universally and simply, by one name: “Bind”.
I repent now that my long research in the few scattered archives that survived the wreckage of those times is complete. This is what we know: there was an Embodiment of a kind. It was called Bind. It was most likely a pendant or a ring. It was indeed destroyed. With it went much of the magic of the world, along with a pernicious concentration of evil.
Alas, the nature of evil is that it lurks and gathers. It is a seed in the hearts of men.
Magic is more fragile. Have hope, my lord, for I believe it too has survived. The makers at the Source made another Embodiment. Its fate is at present unknown. It may conceal itself as a ring, a book, or perhaps a secret gate.
But to your charge to me as historian of the Court, this I foresee: Evil will once again stir, as leaves gather in the eddy of a stream. Long hence, a holder of that other surviving token from the Source shall emerge. The ancient and esteemed tradition of ring-giving shall be revived. Magic shall be renewed and—”
It ended there. She leaned back and took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Maybe another round of espresso, she thought, just to rev things up. Yeah. She hid the valise under her table and went up to the counter, glancing warily back. She returned and sat down and took a few contended sips. Her hands leafed through page after page of runic lettering. Then, like a wizened goldpanner, her eye narrowed as the black sands of unintelligible inscription revealed another gleaming nugget. She teased with the meaning and it unraveled easily. It shared key threads with what she had read already.
From the Histories of the Ara Society:
Not surprisingly, as the Fourth Age spread across the world, much was made of the power of rings. They became baubles of fashion that marked idleness and sloth as much as fealty to policy, tribe and guild. The market displayed false relics in all forms. They became counterfeit, tawdry, and trifling.
Ara, it was said, did acquire in her travels a ring of some power. That ring was imagined during the next century by untold numbers of cheap imitations sold in stalls in every market. Even as this common vulgarity of fake “Rings of the Third Age” spread, a few true copies bearing her unique rune bore witness to a secretive “Society of Rings.” These groups were in time banned as the last histories of her life were hunted down and destroyed.