“Wizards once came and went hereabouts, but they have forsaken this land. Or perhaps it was their parting curses that left us to this.”
“Tell me, Thygol why don’t you submit? Join the forces of the Dark One? That has to be better than resisting and being slaughtered.”
“That counsel we have debated many times. Even their company may not be too great a price to pay for life. Or so some say. But I cannot. I know not the right of it. The plain fact is … they are, simply and completely, the enemy of my blood. We have fought them since the times of our grandfathers, when we came into these lands as nomads herding the auroch. And even since the times of our ancestors, a race with armor and bright helms that came to live with us in the smoky world of the Before Time. Now much runs as great storms across the steppes. One approaches even now, and will herald our attack. An omen to our liking.”
A plate of simple food was brought to Ara. As she ate, he continued. “At first we doubted you, just for your orc-like size. And even appearances must be twice studied. There are no doubt spells about….”
Thygol’s sentence was cut short by a bolt of lightning that cracked open the sky, momentarily revealing huge breakers of clouds rolling forth in purple waves. The thunder that followed, hard and swift, pressed them down with its pounding force. The moment is now!” he ordered, “Gather with us the beasts of vengeance so they may feed on our spoils.”
At the stern direction of his hand signals, Ara followed Thygol. They were headed toward the Goblin Camp. The rain swept down on them as thunder rolled overhead in hellish beats. Flashes of light revealed jagged images of men jostling, intent on havoc and destruction.
Ara remembered the final approach only as imagery torn by relentless, windswept rain. She recalled the angled rents of flame and sparks that had been the fires of the camp. The roar of the storm and the peals of thunder masked the clank of metal, creak of leather, and boot-treads of a thousand armed men. They lined the wide stone road that ran alongside the camp, waiting for Thygol’s signal.
“Young halfling?”
She came close to his side. He bent and said “Hogal, my aide, shall take you now by this western road. Three leagues from here opens the last free lands of this corner of the world. With the token of my word, you may take respite there. But beware. Prince Thorn and his advisors in that realm survive by audacity and irreverence. They parlay for neutrality with the minions of the Source even as they make jest of him. Dangerous business, this toying. Like dancing in the set jaws of a cave bear trap. Go now, and may luck accompany you on your journey. You may need it more than most.”
She thanked him and turned as Hogal beckoned for her to make haste in moving down the line and unto the road. They had just cleared the flank of the Cerian warriors when, from a nearby jumble of boulders, there sprang a great torch. Its light revealed the unforgettable, leering pumpkin face of a fully grown Goblin. Two feet wide at the head, twice a man’s height at the shoulders, he roared past them. Another six followed as the wishwash of torch sounds mixed with the storm. A great war cry rose up from the Cerians as they moved on the camp. Ara and Hogal ran into the night.
She never learned which force, each to the other embittered enemies of the blood, prevailed that night.
Dawn two days hence found the storm clearing as they approached the great gates of the castle that rested on the shoulder of the Black Lands and protected young Prince Thorn. The man-size door within one of the gates opened, and Hogal spoke to a guard. The guard gazed past his shoulder, his eyes settling on Ara.
Her escort returned to her, “You may enter and take refuge as the guest of the Prince. I leave you now, lest my entry violate the neutrality of this place. I return to what may survive of my band. Goodspeed!”
“Goodspeed to you and your people.” replied Ara, as she thought of the unprotected, silly borders of her own people. No contrivance of politic or force of arms was likely to hold back the enemy that surely approached her village by now.
But my fate and my errand are, for now, here, she thought as she entered the door to Thornland, where intrigue and plots within plots swirled in a cauldron of double meanings.
Cadence reread the last passage. Plots within plots. Sounds familiar, she thought. I’m with you, girl. With you to the end.
After a moment she looked around the room, the piles of scribbled pages, the strange Elvish documents, the exdrug king biting his lip as he turned a page with the circular key held upside down. She shook her head ever so slightly and blew out a breath. She spoke out loud to the air, “Professor Tolkien, did you have any idea how this would turn out?”
Chapter 28
INKLINGS VII
“So Tollers, you’re off to America?”
“Sshh, few know of this, save those who plot around me!”
Laughter.
“In fact, no one but my Edith and my travel agent, one of whom apparently is your general informant — and now anyone within earshot.”
“Well, it’s always a small world, and this business with the inscription on the rock has to be the puzzler — or has the Mail got it wrong again?”
“On the condition of privacy, I’ll be in New York City for a few days to examine an interesting document that has turned up. An Old English text stuffed, quite out of place, in the Thornberry Collection at King’s College or, as they persist in calling it in rude defiance of dear George II, Columbia University. They’ve offered to help pay my way and insist on the importance of my personal review. So what the …”
“Yes, but what about the rock?”
“Well, I suppose ‘Elvish runes’ on a two-ton rock native only to the island of Britain, found buried in an undisturbed barrow, or ‘mound’ as they say there in Connecticut, and carbon-dated to one thousand A.D. is a bit of a strange affair. If they wish to catch up with me in the city, I shall oblige them.”
“Aye, and we’ll give you ale as wages for your report.”
“I’m afraid, on that topic, I don’t wish to over-commit. I carry another errand to America, one founded on a deep urge to tidy things up. Unbear some burdens. This journey is part of that, I suppose, especially the unbearing part.”
“Now what burden could you have?”
Long pause.
“I would rather not speak of that quite yet, or perhaps ever. I am thinking of leaving some papers in America where they may be better off than here.”
“Rubbish! Papers? They should be here, at Merton!”
“These papers are, I’ve decided, best left at a distance. They will not be still.”
“What is that? They move around?”
“Worse, Charles, you missed one of our prior discussions about these. As I said then, they are a trove of Elvish texts. Unfortunately they have a kind of voice — almost as if some … demonic energy was reaching through them.”
“I would make light of it Tollers, but you seem genuinely troubled.”
“This little I will say. Like my dwarves, I delved too deep. Something stirred. Documents unbidden, and more mysterious than I first imagined, came to me some years ago.”
Here there is a longer pause.
“But enough! Wish me well. I hope to return to sit at this very oak table that we have so profoundly educated these many years.”
“Tollers, I won’t let this go just yet. You are on edge about this.”
“More than I can say. But then, we are all haunted as old men. Swirlings of unease hover about our elder years, when there is more in the past than in the future.”