auseating stink of smelling salts, it was all over. Once he opened his eyes, a robed man
took the vial away from his face and stepped away without a word. His back was against
something hard and uncomfortable; in a couple of seconds he realized that he had been
carried up to the house entrance and propped against the stairs. The robed men moved
quickly and noiselessly about; the ones in a large spot of moonlight right then were dragging
a man-sized sack with a pair of soft boots sticking out of it. Two people were talking
somewhere behind Tangorn, one with a drawl of a Peninsula man; Tangorn kept his head
motionless and strained to hear.
     "...nothing but corpses. We netted one, but he managed to poison himself."
     "Yeah... disappointing, to put it mildly. How did this happen?"
     "I've never met tougher guys.        We have two dead and two maimed, first time I can
remember such losses."
     "Who?"
     "Jango and Ritva."
     "Damn!.. Write a report. No traces here in five minutes."
     "Yes, sir."
     Approaching footsteps rustled across the grass, and a tall slender man appeared before
Tangorn. Unlike the others, he was dressed in civilian clothes, but he, too, was hooded.
     "How do you feel, Baron?"
     "I've been worse, thank you. To what do I owe the pleasure?.."
     "A special team of Aragorn's people tried to capture you, probably for a debrief and a
liquidation. We interfered, but we're not counting on your gratitude, as I'm sure you
understand."
     "Oh, so I was used as bait!" Having said `bait,' the baron laughed sarcastically, but cut it
short due to a stab of pain in the back of his head. "Are you DSD?"
     "I'm not familiar with this acronym, nor is this important. I have bad news for you, Baron:
tomorrow you'll be charged with murder."
     "Of Gondorian spies?"
     "I wish! No, of an Umbarian citizen Algali, whom you've poisoned tonight at the Green
Mackerel."
     "I see. Why wait until tomorrow?"
     "Because, for several reasons, my service is not interested in your revelations to the
investigators or the courts. You have until noon tomorrow to leave Umbar forever. Should
you delay and wind up in jail, please don't blame us for assuring your silence by other
means. Honorable Kantaridis's caravan is leaving tomorrow morning via Chevelgar
Highway with a couple of available bactrians. The border guards will receive your
description with an appropriate delay. Is everything clear, Baron?"
     "All but one thing. The easiest solution would be to liquidate me right now. Why not?"
     "Professional solidarity," smiled the hooded man. "Besides, I really like your takatos."
The garden was almost empty by now, the robed figures having vanished into the darkness
whence they came without a sound. The hooded stranger followed his men, but right before
disappearing forever into shadow between the oleanders he turned and said: "By the way,
Baron, another bit of free advice -- tread carefully until you've left Umbar. I've followed
you today all the way from the Long Dam, and I can't help but feel that you've used up your
entire store of luck. One can feel such things instantly; I'm not joking, believe me."
It did look like his store of luck was empty. Well, that depends: today he lost to everyone --
the Elves, Aragorn's men, the DSD -- but managed to stay alive. No, wait -- actually, he was
allowed to live, that's different. Or did he dream up the whole thing? The garden is empty,
no one to ask but the cicadas... He got up and knew right away that he did not dream up the
blow to the head, at least: pain and nausea sloshed around in his skull at about the ear level.
He put his hand inside his jacket to find the key and felt the warm metal of the mithril mail,
which he had put on back at the bank, for extra protection before meeting Elandar. Yeah, it
did help a lot today, right...
     The moment he managed to insert the key into the keyhole, the door opened and he faced
the sleepy butler, a huge phlegmatic Haradi named Unkva; Tina, scared, was peering from
behind his shoulder. He moved inside past the servants; Alviss, closing her robe as she ran
down the stairs, was already near.
     "Goodness, what happened? Are you wounded?"
     "No, just a little drunk." Dizziness hit him with such force that he had to lean against a wall.
     "Was just passing by, thought I'd call on you for old times' sake..."
     "Liar..." she sniffled, and her arms went around his neck, leaving the wide sleeves behind.
     "God, how I'm tired of you..."
     ...They lay side by side, barely touching, and his hand glided slowly from her neck down to
the curve of her thigh -- carefully, as if not to brush off the silvery moonlight.
He finally mustered the courage to say: "Aly!" and she, somehow understanding
immediately what he was about to say, sat up slowly, hugging her knees and putting her
head down on them. Words stuck in his throat; he touched her arm and felt her moving
away a tiny distance that he would now have to spend the rest of his life crossing, without
any guarantee that it would be enough time. That was how she was: constitutionally
incapable of making a scene, she could be silent in a manner that made him feel like a total
bastard for a week... and that's exactly what you are, Baron. Didn't she have some sort of a
matrimonial prospect on the horizon before you showed up? She's no little girl, she's
almost thirty... you're an asshole, Baron, an indifferent selfish asshole.
     "Your Secret Service courteously gave me until tomorrow noon to quit Umbar forever, or
they'll just kill me. I'm in their sights and can't escape. So it goes, Aly..." He thought: this
is probably how men tell their mistresses that they can't see them while their wives are
suspecting something; he almost cringed with self-disgust.
     "You seem to be justifying yourself, Tan. Why? I understand -- it's just Fate. And don't
worry about me," she raised her head and suddenly gave a quiet laugh, "I was more
farsighted this time around."
     "What're you talking about?"
     "Oh, nothing, just woman stuff..." She got up and put on her robe. There was something so
final in that movement that he asked involuntarily: "Where're you going?"
     "To pack your things, where else?" she looked at him with a bit of surprise. "See, I can
never be a high-society dame. Sorry, I'm just not refined enough. I should've made a
hysterical scene right now, just for formality's sake, right?"
He had lost too much today in one fell swoop: the goal he has been striving for all these
months, his belief in himself, the country that became his second home (even if against his
will), and now Alviss... Knowing it was all over, he plunged ahead desperately like a man
jumping off the pier to catch up with a departing ship.
     "Listen, Aly... I really can't stay in Umbar, but you... what would you say if I asked you to
go to Ithilien with me and become Baroness Tangorn there?"
     "I would say," there was nothing but infinite weariness in her voice, "that you've always
been too fond of the subjunctive, whereas women, by their nature, prefer the imperative
mood. Sorry."
     "What if I change the mood?" He was trying as hard as he could to smile. "In the
imperative it goes like this: marry me! Is that better?"
     "That?" She stood still, eyes closed and hands clenched on her chest, as if really listening to
something. "You know, it does sound a lot better! Say it again."
He said it again, first in front of her on one knee, then while slowly twirling her around the
room. Then she did have a bit of hysterics, laughing and crying at the same time... When
they got back to bed, she first put a finger to his lips and then took his hand in hers and
carefully pressed it to her belly, whispering: "Shh! Don't scare him!"
     "So you... I mean, we..." was all he could say.
     "Yes! Remember, I said that I was more farsighted this time than four years ago? Now, no
matter what else happens, I'll have him. You see," she clung to Tangorn with a quiet laugh
and tenderly rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, "somehow I know that it will be a boy,
just like you."
     He lay there in silence for some time, futilely trying to bring his thoughts into a semblance
of order -- too much at once. Tangorn the adventurer's old life is over, that much is clear,
but perhaps a quiet family idyll with Alviss is precisely the end that the Higher Powers
meant? Or, conversely, am I being paid off to abandon Haladdin? But I can't do anything
else for him, my mission in Umbar has failed... Really? What if you had an opportunity
right now to replay this and give your life in exchange for victory over Elandar? I don't
know... half an hour ago I would've given it without a doubt, but now -- I don't know.
Chances are, I would've found some decent way of weaseling out of it, to be honest. Some
trap this is... Oh, to hell with it all! he thought fatalistically, I have no strength left to figure
out those puzzles, trying to imagine what the Higher Powers want. Let it all be however it
will be.
     He finally gave up trying to gather his thoughts, since all kinds of trivialities kept coming up
anyway. "Listen, won't you be bored in Emyn Arnen? To be honest, it's quite the
backwater."
     "You know, I've had quite enough fun over my twenty-eight years here, in our capital of the
world, enough for three lives. Don't worry about it. Anyway, Baron," she stretched
alluringly, putting her hands behind her head, "isn't it time for you to perform your marital
duties?"
     "Absolutely, dear Baroness!"

     <h3>Chapter 54</h3>

     At dawn a vivino was singing in the garden. The bird perched on a chestnut branch right
outside their open bedroom window; at first, his sad melodic trills seemed to Tangorn to be
threads plucked out of the fabric of his dreams. He slipped out of bed (carefully so as not to
disturb Alviss) and stole up to the window. The tiny singer put up his head so high that the
yellow throat feathers formed a frothy collar around his neck, and finished with an excellent
resounding note; then he turned his head in mock modesty and expectantly glanced at the
baron: did you like it? Thank you, little friend! I know that vivinos are forest dwellers that
hate the city. Did you fly here to say good bye?
     Right! the bird winked mockingly and flitted into the garden; the vivino was a true
Umbarian, stranger to Nordic sentimentality.
     Bare feet pattered almost noiselessly, and warm Alviss clung to him from behind, brushing
her lips across his shoulder blades.
     "What did you see out there?"
     "A vivino was singing -- a real vivino in the city, can you imagine?"
     "Oh, that's my vivino. He's been here for almost a month."
     "I see..." Tangorn drawled, feeling, funnily enough, something like a pang of jealousy.
     "And here I thought that he came here for me..."
     "Listen, maybe he really is yours? He showed up in my garden the same time you did...
Yes, right around the first of the month!"
     "In any event, it's the best goodbye one can wish from Umbar... Hey, Aly, look -- there's
another goodbye!" he laughed, pointing at a gloomy sleepy policeman stationed across the
street beside Chakti-Vari's jewelry shop. "The Secret Service politely reminds me to tread
carefully until I leave... All right. Have you changed your mind about going today?
Maybe you want to settle your affairs here first?"
     "No way!" she responded curtly. "I'm coming with you. That caravan has two available
bactrians -- isn't that a sign? My lawyer will have to settle my affairs anyway, it's a job for
weeks. I suppose everything should be converted to gold, can't be much of a market for
securities up North."
     "Nobody there would know what they are," he nodded, watching Alviss dress with a smile.
     "Aren't we quite a sight, girl? A bankrupt aristocrat with nothing but a sword and a moth-
eaten title is marrying the money of a successful widow of the merchant class..."
     "...said widow having made her start by selling her body left and right," Alviss concluded in
the same vein. "A total misalliance no matter how you look at it, a gold mine for gossips
from both classes."
     "That's for sure..." He had a sudden thought and started figuring something. "Listen, I just
thought... there's plenty of time until noon. Want to get married right away? Choose any
rite."
     "Yes, darling, certainly... I don't care which rite, either. Let's go Aritanian -- their temple
is nearby."
     "Aly, what's the problem? You seem unhappy."
     "No, of course not! I just had a real bad premonition when you started talking marriage."
     "Nonsense," he said firmly. "Let's get dressed and go. Aritanian is fine. By the way, your
stone is sapphire, right?"
     "Yes, why?"
     "While you pretty up, I'll have enough time to visit the honorable Chakti-Vari across the
street and buy a wedding present. It's early, but for this kind of money," he picked up the
bag with the remainder of Sharya-Rana's gold, "the old man will fly out of bed like a
startled pheasant and..."
     He cut himself short at the sight of Alviss' face: she paled and her eyes turned from blue to
black with widened pupils.
     "No!! Tan, dearest, don't go, I pray you!"
     "Baby, what's the matter? Another premonition?" She nodded vigorously, unable to speak.
     "There's no danger -- I'm out of the game, nobody wants me."
She had already gotten hold of herself. "All right, but let's go together, all right? I'll be
ready in five minutes. Promise you won't leave the house without me!"
     "Yes, mommy!"
     "Good boy!"
Alviss pecked him on the cheek and slipped into the corridor; Tangorn could hear her give
orders to grumbling Tina. Congratulations, Baron, he thought gruffly, your beloved will
walk you over by the hand to provide security, since you're incapable of even that much.
You've quit the game beaten -- not exactly conducive to self-esteem -- but if you really do
obediently wait for Alviss now, you'll simply lose the right to call yourself a man. And if
her premonitions are true, then so much the worse for them. Maybe I'm not worth a copper
as a spy, but I'm still the third sword of Gondor. I have the Slumber-maker and the mithril
coat, should you guys want to risk it. Let your heads be my consolation prize, I'm quite in
the mood for that... Damn! He almost laughed. Looks like I'm beginning to treat female
premonitions seriously...
     He scanned the empty garden, which was in full view from the second floor, then the empty
Jasper street with the DSD man in police uniform. Guard cobras in Chakti-Vari's store -- so
what? Feet over the windowsill, he thought fleetingly that he'd better spring clear of the
flower bed, lest Alviss chew his head off over her favorite nasturtiums.
Alviss was almost ready to go when she caught a movement in the garden in the corner of
her eye. Her heart lurched; she sprang to the window and beheld Tangorn on the garden
path. Blowing her a kiss, he went towards the door. Whispering a few choice expressions
better fitting her port youth than current status, Alviss observed, with some relief, that the
baron was armed and that his stance showed caution rather than undue attention to the
beauty of the summer morning. He went through the door watchfully, crossed the street,
exchanged a few words with the policeman and stretched his hand towards the brass knocker
on the jewelry shop door...
     "Ta-a-a-a-n!!!" Her desperate scream shattered the silence.
Too late.
     The policeman raised a hand to his mouth, and the next moment the baron sagged to the
ground, clutching his throat convulsively.
     When she ran into the street the `policeman' was long gone, and Tangorn was living the last
seconds of his life. The poisoned thorn spat from an ulshitan -- a small tube used by Far
Harad pygmies -- struck him in the neck, a finger's width above the mithril mail; the third
sword of Gondor had no time to even draw the Slumber-maker. Alviss tried to lift him; the
baron clutched her arms in a death grip and breathed hoarsely: "Tell... Faramir... un...
done..."; he tried to say something else, but lacked the air to do it: the alkaloids of the
anchar tree on which the pygmies' poison is based paralyze the respiratory muscles. The
baron failed both to complete his mission and to let his friends know about it; he died with
that thought.
     A man nicknamed Ferryman, a `clean-up man' from Elandar's organization, observed the
scene from a nearby attic through a cobwebbed hole in the roof. He put his crossbow down,
at a loss to figure out who beat him to it so neatly. DSD? Too tidy for 12 Shore Street...
What if this is another of the baron's tricks? Maybe he should plink him with a bolt, just to
be sure?
     By that time Mongoose had already shed his police uniform, becoming once again a duly
accredited ambassador of His Majesty the Sultan Sagul the Fifth the Pious, the mighty ruler
of non-existent Florissant Islands. He was moving briskly but without undue haste towards
the port, where a previously chartered felucca named Trepang was waiting for him. The
battle of the two lieutenants had ended the way it had to end, because a professional differs
from an amateur in that he plays not until he has scored a beautiful goal or until he has a
psychological crisis, but rather until the sixtieth second of the last minute of the game. By
the way, that sixtieth second occurred at the port, where Mongoose had another chance to
demonstrate his high degree of professionalism. He himself probably would have been
unable to say exactly what it was about the Trepang's crew that alerted him, but he turned to
the skipper as the man stepped on the ramp after him, as if to ask a question, hit him in the
throat with the edge of his palm and jumped into the rusty, oily water between the pier and
the ship. The two seconds he gained thereby were enough to get a little green pill from
behind his collar and swallow it, so Jacuzzi's operatives only captured another unidentified
corpse (the fourth that day). The game that the special command from Task Force F ?anor
played with the Umbarian Secret Service ended in a draw, nil-nil.
     ... Petrified with grief, Alviss held dying Tangorn in her arms. He would never find out the
most important part: it was his death at the hands of the Secret Guard that settled Elandar's
last doubts, so that same evening his package started north, to L  rien, via routes unknown to
any man. Nor was he to know that Alviss heard his last choking whisper as "tell Faramir:
done!" and would do everything properly... And the certain Someone tirelessly knitting a
gorgeous tapestry we call History out of invisible coincidences and rather visible human
weaknesses immediately put the entire episode out of His mind: a gambit is a gambit,
sacrifice a piece to win the game, and that's all there is to it...

     <h2>PART IV -- Ransom for a Shadow</h2>

     Over and over the story, ending as he began:
     "Make ye no truce with Adam-zad -- the Bear that walks like a Man!"
     Rudyard Kipling

     <h3>Chapter 55</h3>
     Mirkwood, near Dol-Guldur
     June 5, 3019

     "That's a fresh print, very fresh..." Runcorn mumbled under his breath. He dropped to one
knee and, without looking back, signaled Haladdin who was walking some fifteen yards
behind to get off the path. Tzerlag, who brought up the rear, overtook the obediently
yielding doctor, and now both sergeants were engaged in an elaborate scout ritual by a small
spot of wet clay, trading quiet phrases in Common. Haladdin's opinion did not interest the
rangers at all, of course; not even the Orocuen's thoughts counted for much in that
discussion: the scouts have already worked out a pecking order. The erstwhile enemies --
the Ithilien ranger and the platoon leader of the Cirith Ungol Rangers -- treated each other
with exaggerated respect (like, for example, a master goldsmith and a master swordsmith
might), but the desert is the desert, and the forest is the forest. Both professionals knew the
limits of their expertise very well. The Ithilien ranger had spent his entire life in these
forests.
     ...Back then he still walked upright and with shoulders squared (the right one was not yet
higher than the left one), while his face was yet free of a badly healed purple scar; he was
handsome, brave, and lucky, with his bottle-green Royal Forester uniform fitting him like a
glove -- in other words, a serious threat to womankind. The local peasants disliked him,
which he considered normal: villeins only like accommodating foresters, whereas Runcorn
took his service with all the seriousness of youth. Being a King's man, he could disregard
the local landlords; he quickly put their courts, which used to visit the royal forests like their
own larder under his predecessor, in their place. Everybody knew the story of Eggy the
Chicken Hawk's band that had wandered into their country once -- Runcorn did away with
those guys all by himself, not deigning to wait for the sheriff's men to pry their behinds off
the benches of the Three Pint Tavern. To sum it up, the neighbors treated the young forester
with cautious respect but not much sympathy, which he did not care much for anyway. He
was used to being by himself since he was a child, and socialized with the Forest way more
than with his peers. The Forest was everything to him: playmate, interlocutor, mentor,
eventually becoming his Home. Some people even claimed that he had in him the blood of
the woodwoses -- forest demons from the ominous Druadan Dell. Well, people in remote
forest villages say all sorts of things during chilly fall evenings, when only the feeble light of
a splinter keeps the ancient evils from getting out of the dark corners...
To top it all off, at one point Runcorn stopped showing up at village festivities (to acute
disappointment of all eligible maidens in the vicinity) and instead hung out at a tumbledown
shack at the edge of Druadan, where an old medicine woman from the far north (maybe as
far as Angmar) had settled some time before with her granddaughter Lianica. Manwe only
knows what such an eligible bachelor saw in that puny freckled girl; many supposed that
witchcraft was involved -- the old woman certainly knew some spells and could heal with
herbs and laying of hands, which was her livelihood. Lianica was known to talk to birds and
beasts in their language and could have a ferret and a mouse sit together in the palm of her
hand. This rumor may have owed to the fact that she avoided people (as opposed to forest
animals) so much that she was originally thought to be dumb. The local beauties, when
someone would mention the forester's strange choice, only snorted: "Whatever. Maybe
they'll make a good couple."
     It did look like they would have, but it was not to be. One day the girl ran into the young
landlord, out with his company to hunt and `improve the serfs' blood line a bit;' those
exploits of his have even caused some of his neighboring landlords to grumble: "Really,
young sir, this propensity of yours to screw everything that moves..." It was a routine
matter, nothing to get excited about, really. Who'd've thought that the fool girl would
drown herself, as if something precious had been taken away from her? No, guys, it really is
true that all northerners are nuts.
     Runcorn buried Lianica alone -- the old woman could not bear the loss of her granddaughter
and passed away two days later without regaining consciousness. The neighbors came to the
cemetery mostly to check whether the forester would put a black-feathered arrow on the
grave, signifying an oath of vengeance. But no, he did not risk that. Nor was that a surprise;
sure, he's the King's man, but the King is far, while the landlord's company (eighteen thugs,
gallows material all) is right here. Still, the guy turned out to be weaker than we first
thought... So did those villagers who bet on Runcorn's vengeance (two- or even three-to-
one) grumble in the Three Pint Tavern, sourly counting out the coins they have lost onto the
sticky tables.
     However, the young lord was of a different opinion -- he was exceedingly prudent in all
matters that did not involve his passion for `pink meat.' The forester did not strike him as a
man who would either let such a thing pass or go to court and write petitions (which
amounted to the same thing). That sprightly peasant girl upon whom he bestowed his favor
in the forest despite her objections (damn, the bitten finger still hurts)... To be honest, had
he known that a man such as Runcorn was courting her, he would've simply passed by,
especially seeing as the girl turned out to be nothing much. But what's done is done.
Comparing his impressions with those of the company leader, the landlord knew that the
absence of a black arrow meant only that Runcorn was not one for theatrical gestures and
cared little for the gawkers' opinions. A serious man who needed to be dealt with
seriously... That same night the forester's house was set afire from all four sides. The
arsonists propped the door shut with a large beam; when a man's shadow appeared in the
fire-lit attic window, arrows flew from the darkness below; after that, no one tried to escape
the burning hut.
     A King's forester burned alive was no stinking serf that managed to get run over by a
landlord's horse; no cover-up was possible. Although...
     "Everybody here thinks it was the poachers, sir. The late forester, gods rest his soul, was
real hard on them, so they struck back. A really sad story... More wine?" The young
landlord addressed those words to the court's magister from Harlond, who had stopped at his
hospitable manor.
     "Yes, please! A wonderful claret, haven't had its like for a while," the magister, a dumpy
sleepy old man with a nimbus of silver hair around a pink bald spot, nodded courtly. For a
long time he admired the flames in the fireplace through the wine in a thin Umbarian glass,
and then raised his faded blue eyes -- piercing icicles, not sleepy at all -- at his host.
     "By the way, that drowned girl -- one of your serfs?"
     "What drowned girl?"
     "Why, do they drown themselves every other day here?"
     "Oh, that one... No, she was from the north somewhere. Is it important?"
     "Maybe, maybe not." The magister again raised the glass to eye level and said thoughtfully:
     "Your estate, young sir, is very well-kept -- an example for all landlords in this area. I figure
at least two and a half hundred marks in annual rents, right?"
     "A hundred fifty," the landlord lied smoothly and caught his breath: praise Eru, the
conversation is turning to real business. "About a half goes to taxes, plus there're the
mortgages..."
     Poachers, you say? All right, poachers it is. A suitable candidate was soon found; after
some time on a rack above a censer the man made the appropriate confession and was duly
impaled on a stake, as a lesson to the other serfs. The court magister departed to town,
tenderly hugging to his side a money bag with a hundred eighty silver marks... All set?
Right!..
     From the very beginning the landlord was troubled by the absence of any bones in the rubble
of Runcorn's house. The company leader, who had personally commanded that operation,
tried to calm his boss down: the house was large, with a wooden rather than earthen floor,
the fire had burned for more than an hour, so the corpse must have burned to cinders, this
does happen often. However, the young lord, being (as already mentioned) prudent beyond
his years in nearly all matters, ordered his men to examine the location once again. His
worst suspicions came true: the forester, who had had his share of surprises, was prudent,
too, with a thirty-yard tunnel leading from the basement outside. There were a few fresh
blood spots on the tunnel floor -- one of the arrows had found its mark that night.
     "Find him!" the young lord ordered -- quietly, but in a tone of voice that made his hastily
assembled henchmen break out in goose bumps. "It's us or him, no going back. So far,
Orom   be praised, he's licking his wounds somewhere in the forest. If he escapes, I'm a
dead man, but you will all die before me, I promise."
     The landlord took personal charge of the hunt, declaring that he would not rest until he sees
Runcorn's corpse with his own eyes. The fugitive's tracks led inside the forest and were
clearly readable throughout the day; the man had not bothered to conceal them, apparently
assuming that he was believed dead. Closer to evening the company leader found a cocked
crossbow hidden in the bushes by the path; more precisely, the crossbow was found later,
after its bolt had already buried itself in the leader's gut. While the henchmen bickered
around the wounded man, another arrow whistled in from somewhere, taking a man in the
neck. Runcorn gave himself away thereby -- his silhouette showed briefly between the trees
some thirty yards away down the dale, and they all chased him down a narrow clearing
between the bushes. That was the idea: to get them all to run without looking down. As a
result, three men wound up in the pit, more than he expected. Eggy the Chicken Hawk's
bandits have crafted it with skill and care: eight feet deep with sharp stakes at the bottom,
smeared with rotten meat to guarantee a blood poisoning at the very least.
Twilight fell, and the gloom deepened. The landlord's men were very cautious now, moving
along in pairs; when they finally spotted Runcorn in the bushes, they showered him with
arrows from twenty yards away. Alas, when they approached (right in the path of a five-
hundred-pound log that dropped from a nearby tree), they found only a roll of bark dressed
in some rags. Only then did the landlord realize that even just getting away from Eggy's
forest stronghold where this damned wos had so expertly lured them would be very difficult:
the night forest around them was chock-full of deadly traps, and their four wounded (not to
mention two dead) have robbed their company of mobility. Another thing he understood
now was that their overwhelming numerical superiority was of no consequence in this
situation and the role of prey was theirs at least until dawn.

     <h3>Chapter 56</h3>

     They set up a defense perimeter in a worst possible location -- an overgrown dale with zero
visibility -- because moving elsewhere was even more dangerous. There was not even a
suggestion to light a fire, they were afraid to even talk, much less expose themselves to light.
Even the wounded had to be tended to in pitch-black darkness. Gripping their bows and
swords, the lord's men stared and listened to the moonless night, firing at every rustle and
every suggestion of movement in the fog rising from rotting leaves. It ended with someone
losing his cool at about two in the morning: the idiot yelled "Woses!" and sank an arrow into
his neighbor, who had just gotten up to stretch his numb legs; then he ran inside the
perimeter, crashing through the bushes. The worst thing that can happen in a nightly battle
happened then: the perimeter fell apart and everyone ran around in the dark shooting at
everybody else, every man for himself.
     This was no accident, though: the `someone' who caused the free-for-all with a shot at his
comrade was none other than Runcorn. The forester had appropriated the cloak of one of
the dead (who were left unguarded), blended in with the lord's men as they were setting up
their defense, and waited. He certainly had a hundred opportunities to put an arrow into the
landlord and vanish into darkness in the ensuing chaos -- but in his judgment the man did not
deserve such an easy death, so he had other plans.
     Only at dawn did the outcome of the fight become clear to the hapless hunters -- they lost
two more men and the landlord himself vanished without a trace. Supposing that he got lost
in the night scuffle and secreted himself in the dark (which is the correct solution: only a
total idiot would run headlong through the night forest; a thinking person would hide quietly
under a bush until someone trips over him), the fighters started combing the forest, calling
on their lord. They found him a couple of miles away, guided by the cackling of crows.
The young lord was tied to a tree, his genitals sticking out of his mouth -- "choked on his
balls," as the serfs later said in relish.
     The entire local population joined in the hunt for the evildoer with gusto, but they might as
well have been trying to capture an echo. The former royal forester's career had only one
possible direction now -- a life of robbery and death at the hands of the law. Wounded in a
fight with the sheriff of Harlond's men, broken on the rack, Runcorn was about to grace the
local gallows when Baron Grager rode into town looking to recruit reinforcements for the
decimated Ithilien regiment. "I'll take this one," said the baron in approximately the tone of
a housewife picking out a cut of ham at the butcher's ("...and slice it thin!"); the sheriff
could only grit his teeth.
     The war beyond Osgiliath was going so-so; the Ithilien regiment fought noticeably better
than any other unit and, as is customary, was the last one to be replenished. In general
reinforcements were hard to come by (the folks at Minas Tirith who screamed the loudest
about the `need to free Middle Earth from the eastern darkness once and for all' have all
suddenly developed pressing business on this side of the Anduin, whereas the plain folk
never cared for the War of the Ring to begin with), so the special dispensation that Faramir
had bargained for -- `even right off the gallows' -- had to be used quite frequently. Grager
himself was walking in the gallows' shadow, but the reach of the courts of Gondor was too
short to grab a front-line officer in wartime.
     The regiment's physician had to expend a mountain of effort to turn the bag of bones Grager
had extracted from the Harlond jail into a semblance of a man, but the famous robber was
worth it. Runcorn could not shoot a bow like he used to (his mangled shoulder joint had
forever lost flexibility), but he remained an excellent scout, and his experience with traps
and other forest warfare tricks was truly priceless. He finished the war with the rank of
sergeant, then participated under his lieutenant's command in freeing and elevating Faramir
to the throne of Ithilien, and was just about to start building himself a home -- somewhere far
from people, in the Otter Creek dell, say -- when His Highness the Prince of Ithilien invited
him over. Would he kindly agree to accompany two of his guests north, to Mirkwood?
     "I'm no longer in service, my Captain, and charity is not my business." "That's exactly
what I need -- a man not in my service. Nor is this charity, they're prepared to pay well.
Name your price, Sergeant." "Forty silver marks," Runcorn said out of the blue, just to get
them off his back. But the wiry hook-nosed Orc (who seemed to be the leader) only nodded:
     "Done," and undid the money bag with Elvish embroidery. When a handful of assorted gold
coins appeared on the table (Haladdin had long wondered where Eloar might have gotten the
Vendotenian nyanmas or the square chengas from the Noon Islands), the ranger could no
longer back out gracefully.
     Runcorn took responsibility for all preparations for the trip to Dol Guldur, so Haladdin and
Tzerlag enjoyed a total lack thereof. The scout tried the leather ichigas bought for them
with obvious anxiety (the Orocuen did not trust any footwear without a hard sole), but he
really liked the ponyagas the locals used instead of rucksacks. These rigid frames of two
bird-cherry arcs conjoined at a straight angle (the wood is bent right after cutting and
becomes bone-hard when it dries) allow one to carry a lumpy hundred-pound load without
worrying about fitting it to one's back.
     To the doctor's mild surprise the Orocuen decided to move from Emyn Arnen's guest
quarters where the prince had put them to the barrack of Faramir's personal guard for the
duration. "I'm a simple man, sir, I'm like a fly in honey amidst all this luxury. It's bad for
the fly and bad for the honey." He showed up at breakfast the next day sporting a large
shiner but quite pleased with himself. It turned out that the Ithilienians, who had heard tell
of the sergeant's exploits on the night of the prince's escape, prodded him into challenging
the two best hand-to-hand fighters they had. Tzerlag won one fight and lost (or, perhaps,
had the smarts to lose) the other to complete satisfaction of all involved. Now even the
Orocuen's dislike for beer, uncovered during long evening jaw sessions, met with the
rangers' understanding: a competent man within his rights. What's the drink you got over
there -- kumiss? Sorry, man, no deliveries this year... One day Haladdin visited the barrack
to talk to his companion and noted how a lively conversation in Common died down the
moment he showed up and an awkward silence reigned -- the learned doctor was nothing but
a hindrance to farmers' sons finally free of the necessity to shoot each other, a boss.
Since they did not know who was in charge in the Brown Lands on the left bank of the
Anduin, they chose a water route. They sailed all the way to the Falls of Rauros (about two-
thirds of the trip), helped by the strong even south wind that blows throughout the valley of
the Great River at that time of year. From there they had to use light dugouts. Haladdin and
Tzerlag spent that part of the journey as cargo: "You don't know the River, so the best you
can do for the company is keep your asses glued to the bottom of the boat and make no
sudden movements." On June 2nd the expedition reached the North Undeep, a twist in the
river right before the mouth of Limlight river originating from Fangorn. The Enchanted
Forests began here -- L  rien on the right bank, Mirkwood on the left; that left less than sixty
miles to Dol Guldur as the crow flies. Faramir's men remained behind to guard the boats
(on the Rohan bank, just in case), while the three of them reached the jagged black-green
wall of Mirkwood firs the next day.
     This forest was completely unlike the sun- and life-filled groves of Ithilien: complete
absence of undergrowth and bush made it resemble a colonnade of some mammoth temple.
Silence reigned under its ceiling, as a thick carpet of acrid-green moss, dotted here and there
by little whitish flowers that resembled potato sprouts, swallowed all sound. This stillness
and the greenish twilight made for a perfect illusion of being under water, further enhanced
by `seaweed' -- unappetizing hoary beards of lichen hanging off fir branches. Not a ray of
sunlight, not a breath of a breeze -- Haladdin physically felt the pressure of a thick sheet of
water. The trees were enormous, their true size given away only by the fallen trunks; these
were impossible to climb over, so they had to go around them anywhere from a hundred to
hundred fifty feet in either direction. Larger patches of storm-felled trees were completely
impassable and had to be circumvented. The insides of those trunks were carved out by
huge palm-sized ants that fiercely attacked anyone who dared touch their abode. Twice they
came across relatively fresh human skeletons; graceful coal-black butterflies swarmed
noiselessly over the bones, and this was scary enough for even the jaded Orocuen to make
the sign of an Eye.
     Packs of werewolves and wheel-sized spiders turned out to be fairy tales: the forest did not
deign to actively oppose Man, being absolutely alien to him, like the ocean expanse or the
cold fire of Ephel D  ath glaciers; the forest's power expressed itself in alienation and
rejection, rather than confrontation, which is why forester Runcorn felt it most acutely. It
was this power that Dol Guldur had been gathering inside its charmed stones over the ages,
century after century, drop by drop. The three magic fastnesses -- Dol Guldur in Mirkwood,
Minas Morgul by the Cirith Ungol pass, and Ag-Jakend amidst the lifeless high mountain
plateau called Shurab in northern Khand -- enclosed Mordor in a protective triangle fed by
the ancient power of the forest, the light of mountain snow, and the silence of the desert.
The Nazg  l that had erected these magical `resonators' made them look like fortresses in
order to conceal their true purpose; one supposes that they must have had a good laugh
watching yet another Western general wander the cracked stones of Dol Guldur's
courtyards, trying to locate any sign of a garrison that had just engaged his soldiers. (This
trick was last used two months ago: the `shadow garrison' had distracted the Elves and the
Esgaroth militia for almost two weeks, allowing the real North Army to retreat to Morannon
almost without casualties.) Only the castle's dungeons were off limits to everyone,
protected by clear warnings in Common chiseled into the walls.
...The discussion on the path was becoming more protracted. Haladdin took down his
ponyaga (as usual, the first sensation was an illusion of blissfully floating on air, quickly
replaced by the accumulated weariness of the march) and approached the rangers. Both
sergeants looked worried: they have been walking paths through deep forest, avoiding the
road joining Dol Guldur to Morannon, and yet the scouts constantly felt human presence
even in these enchanted thickets. And now this: fresh bootprints of a Mordorian
infantryman... yet Sharya-Rana had mentioned no Mordorian forces near the fortress.
     "Perhaps deserters from the North Army back then?"
     "Unlikely..." Tzerlag scratched his head. "Any deserter would've fled these parts
immediately, anywhere's better than here. This one is stationed somewhere nearby: judging
by the depth of the print, he's carrying no load."
     "Strange tracks," Runcorn confirmed, "the soldiers of your North Army have to have worn-
out boots, but these look like they're fresh from the warehouse. Look how sharp the edge
is."
     "How do you know that these are Mordorians?"
The scouts traded slightly offended looks. "Well, the height of the heel, the shape of the
toe..."
     "That's not what I mean. Tzerlag and I here are wearing ichigas -- so what?"
There was a brief silence. "Damn. Yeah, that's true, but why?"
There was, indeed, no sense to it, and the decision Haladdin made suddenly was totally
irrational -- a stab in the dark. Strictly speaking, it was not even his decision; rather, some
unseen power ordered him to go ahead. When this happens, you either obey or quit the
game.
     "All right, here's what we'll do. As I understand it, it's less than a dozen miles to Dol
Guldur. We will go to the road now, where you will camp and I'll continue to the fortress
alone. If I'm not back in three days, I'm dead and you're to go back. Do not approach the
fortress under any circumstances. Any circumstances, understand?"
     "Are you crazy, sir?" the Orocuen piped up.
     "Sergeant Tzerlag," he had never even suspected himself to be capable of such a tone, "do
you understand your orders?"
     "Yeah..." the man hesitated, but only for a second. "Yes, Field Medic Second Class, sir!"
     "Wonderful. I need to have some sleep and a good think about what I'm going to tell these
guys in brand-new boots, should they be in charge at the fortress. Who I am, where have I
been all these months, how did I get here, and all that... why I'm shod in ichigas -- no detail
is too small."

     <h3>Chapter 57</h3>

     Kumai turned the rudder, and the glider hung motionlessly in the sky, resting its widespread
wings on empty air with ease and confidence. You could see all of Dol Guldur plainly from
here, with all its decorative bastions and battlements, the central donjon (all workshops
now), and the thread of the road winding between heather-covered hillocks. He scanned the
environs and grinned contentedly: hiding their `Weapon Monastery' here in the boonies,
right under the L  rien Elves' noses, was a brilliantly impudent undertaking. Many of the
colleagues gathered under the roof of the magic fortress were unsettled (some had constant
nightmares, others developed strange ailments), but Trolls are thick-skinned, phlegmatic,
and believe neither dreams nor signs, so the engineer felt great here and worked day and
night.
     Formally their chief was Jageddin -- the famed master of chemistry, optics, and electrical
mechanics from the Barad-Dur University -- but the real master here was Commandant
Grizzly, who really did resemble a huge gray bear from the wooded foothills of the
Northeast; none of them knew his real name or his rank in the Secret Service. Kumai could
not even figure out his race; maybe one of the northern Trolls that used to live in the Misty
Mountains before melting into Dungarians and Angmarians?
     Kumai met the commandant immediately upon his arrival at the fortress (the
Superintendant's people got him there in stages along the Dol Guldur highway -- they turned
out to have a regular route there, moving convoys almost every other day). Grizzly
interrogated him for several hours, going through Kumai's entire life history; about the only
thing he did not ask him about were his first girlfriend's sexual tastes. Childhood, school,
military service; names, dates, specifications of flying machines, the habits of his university
friends, descriptions of supervisors in his father's mines, and the sequence of traditional
toasts at Trollish feasts... "You say that on the day of your first flight, May 3rd 3014, the
sky was overcast. Are you sure?.. What's the name of the bartender at Achigidel Bar,
across from the University? Oh yes, right, that bar is a block away down the boulevard...
Engineer First Class Shagrat from your regiment -- is he tall, hunched over, with a limp?
Oh, stocky and no limp..." Any fool could see that this was a verification procedure, but
why so thorough? When Kumai mentioned a detail of his escape from Mindolluin, Grizzly
made a face: "Didn't they tell you that this is a forbidden topic?"
     "But..." the engineer was surprised, "I didn't think that this ban applies to you, too..."
     "Were you told of any exceptions?"
     "No... Sorry."
     "Get used to it. Very well, you've passed this test. Have some tea." With those words the
commandant moved a large round teapot with a chipped spout and a Khandian tea bowl of
finest beige porcelain and unimaginable provenance towards Kumai and got busy studying
the list of necessary supplies the mechanic had put together (bamboo, balsa wood, Umbarian
sailcloth -- a panoply of stuff, no doubt to be augmented later). "By the way, your former
colleagues, like Master Mhamsuren... would it appreciably help your work to have them
here?"
     "Of course!.. But is such a thing possible?"
     "There's nothing impossible for our Service, but you need to remember everything you can
about these people -- their looks, distinctive features, friends, relatives, habits. Every little
thing helps, so please work your memory."
     Another half an hour later the commandant lightly slapped a stack of fresh handwritten
sheets and summarized: "If they're alive, we'll find them," and Kumai felt with certainty --
these guys will.
     "Please change, Engineer Second Class." Grizzly glanced towards a brand-new Mordorian
uniform without any insignia (everyone here was dressed that way -- Jageddin's scientists,
service staff, and the silent Secret Service guards). "I'll show you our physical plant."
The `physical plant' turned out to be large and diverse. For example, Kumai saw an
excellent glider of a type he had never seen before: the ten-yard wings, straight and narrow
like an Elvish blade, seemed to stretch over almost nothing -- some improbable material,
lighter than balsa and stronger than stone chestnut. The `soft' catapult used to launch the
glider was a proper match -- say what you want, guys, but there are no such materials in
nature! Only then did the mechanic realize that this was the famed Dragon of the Nazg  l,
whose range was limited only by how long the pilot could stay aloft without a break. Kumai
mastered the art of flying the Dragon easily -- the better a machine is, the easier it is to
control.
     Four Isengard `blasting fire' experts arrived at Dol Guldur at about the same time; that was
the powder-like incendiary mix resembling that long used in Mordor for festive fireworks.
A short wiry man with slightly bowed legs, named Wolverine and resembling a Dungar
mountain man, was the Isengardians' escort; he became Grizzly's stand-in when the
commandant had to leave the fortress on his secret business. The Mordorian engineers were
skeptical at first: the drop-shaped stubby-winged ceramic jars loaded with `blasting fire'
(soon known as simply powder) did have a range of almost two miles, but their accuracy
stank -- plus or minus two hundred yards. Also, one time a `flying drop' exploded right in
the firing channel, killing a worker who happened to be nearby. After learning from the
Isengardians that such things happened -- "not all the time, mind you, but yeah, it happens" --
the Mordorians traded meaningful looks: to hell with this `blasting fire,' guys, it's more
dangerous to friend than foe.
     Yet not three days after the accident the catapult drivers asked Grizzly to attend a test firing
of a new kind of shell. The first shot from the usual three hundred yards blew eight targets
to shreds; the new shell was just a hollow ceramic ball filled with powder and cut-up nails,
set off with a fire cord used for naphtha bombs. The next step was obvious: put the jar of
powder inside a larger one filled with fire jelly, which you get by dissolving soap in the
lighter fraction of naphtha, so that the explosion flings sticky incendiary fluff in all
directions. Grizzly examined the thirty-yard circle of earth scorched down to the mineral
layer and turned to Jageddin in amazement: "All that done by a single jar? Congratulations,
guys: finally you've come up with something worthwhile!"
     That was when Kumai had the thought that one could not only sling such shells -- whether
incendiary or shrapnel ones -- from catapults, but also drop them from gliders. "This makes
no sense," was the objection, "how many sorties can you fly during a battle? Two? Three?
It's not worth it." "Yes, sure, if all you do is simply drop shells anywhere on the enemy's
army. But if you hit milord Aragorn together with milord Mithrandir, it's quite
worthwhile." "You think you can hit them?" "Sure, why not? Rather than hit a man, I'd
have to hit within fifteen yards of a man." "Isn't that kinda... you know... ignoble?"
     "Wha-a-a-at?!" "No, nothing... The old knightly wars -- `are you ready, fair sir?' -- are
anyway all done with. As the One is my witness, we didn't start this."
It did look like the `noble war' was to be no more. For example, the Mordorian engineers
have made serious strides in improving the crossbow -- the weapon that had always been
under an unspoken ban in Middle Earth. ("Why do you think the noble knights hate the
crossbow so much? It looks personal, doesn't it?" "Sure, we've all heard it: a distance
weapon is a coward's weapon." "No, man, this is more complicated. Note that no one
objects to bows much. The thing is that the best bow develops at most a hundred force-
pounds at the bowstring, while a crossbow does a thousand." "So what?" "So an archer can
only bring down an armored knight if he hits him in the visor or an armor joint, which is a
high art -- you gotta start learning at three and maybe you'll be some good by the age of
twenty. Whereas a crossbowman just shoots at the target and the bolt goes right through
wherever it hits. Which means that after a month's training a fifteen-year-old journeyman
who's never held a weapon before can wipe his nose on his sleeve, take aim from a hundred
yards, and goodbye to the famed Baron N, winner of forty-two tournaments, and so forth...
You know how they say in Umbar: the One created weak and strong people, and the
inventor of the crossbow made them equal? So now these strong people are mad at the
demise of the high art of combat!" "Yep. What's more, the taxed estates are beginning to
scratch their heads: what do we need all those fancy boys for, with all their coats of arms,
plumages, and all the rest? If it's to protect the Motherland, perhaps crossbowmen will be
cheaper?" "You're so down-to-earth practical, brother!" "I guess I am. Plus I'm too dumb
to figure out why it's noble to knock someone's brains out with a sword but dishonorable to
do it with a crossbow bolt.")
     But the steel crossbows with `distance glasses,' the `flying drops,' even incendiary shells
dropped from the sky paled next to their unseen commanders' recent demand via Grizzly:
there are several well-known gorges in the Misty Mountains where cracks in the rocks emit
a fog that quickly dissipates into still air. The few who managed to escape these gorges told
that the moment you breathe this fog you taste a revolting sweetness, and then drowsiness
hits you like an avalanche. The myriad animal skeletons littering the slopes testify to how
this drowsiness ends. You're supposed to find a way to direct such fog at the enemy.
Kumai was a man of discipline, but this idea made him nauseous: to poison the very air --
some weapon of vengeance! Thank the One that he's a mechanic rather than a chemist and
will not have to be involved in this particular project.
     ...He dropped two large stones from a hundred feet (same weight as the explosive shells;
they hit right next to the targets) and set the glider down right on the highway about a mile
and a half from Dol Guldur, near where the road emptied into the gloomy canyon it had
washed through Mirkwood after cutting through the sickly ruddiness of the heather expanses
like a white scar. He got out of the cockpit and sat on the side of the road, glancing
impatiently in the direction of the fortress. Soon someone will be here with the horses, and
he'll attempt to launch the Dragon right from the ground, towed by a brace of horses, like
they used to do with the old gliders. Where're those guys already?..
Since Kumai was mostly looking towards Dol Guldur, he only saw the man walking the
road from the direction of Mirkwood when he was about thirty yards away. Looking at the
newcomer, the Troll first shook his head: no way! Then he sprinted towards the man head
over heels and had him in a bear hug a moment later.
     "Easy, big guy, you'll break my ribs!"
     "I have to know if you're a ghost!.. When did they find you?"
     "A while ago. Listen, first things first: Sonya is alive and well, she's with the Resistance in
the Ash Mountains..."
     Haladdin listened to Kumai's tale, staring at the busy milling of the earth bees over the
heather flowers. Yeah, abandoned ruins with real hiding places, far from human habitation,
where a normal person would never go... leave it to the Nazg  l to hide a palant  r in such a
hornet's nest. I'm really lucky to have been intercepted before I had the chance to foist my
clumsy story on a couple of intelligence professionals. I can't tell Grizzly and Wolverine
the truth, either. Just imagine this picture. Some field medic, second class, shows up at
their super-extra-secret Weapon Monastery: hi, guys, I'm only here to pick up a palant  r and
go right back to Prince Faramir in Ithilien. I'm working for the Order of the Nazg  l, but the
one who empowered me died on the spot, so no one can corroborate this fact. I can show
you a Nazg  l ring as proof, but it's magic-free... Yeah, a real pretty picture. They'll
probably peg me as a psycho, not even a spy. They'll probably let me into the castle (poison
experts aren't common) but they won't let me out -- I myself wouldn't have... Hey, wait a
minute!..
     "Halik, wake up! You all right?"
     "Yes, I'm all right, sorry. I just had an idea. You see, I'm here on a special mission that has
nothing to do with your Weapon Monastery... Have you ever heard of these rings?"
Kumai weighed the ring on his palm and whistled respectfully. "Inoceramium?"
     "The same."
     "Do you mean to say..."
     "I do. Engineer Second Class Kumai!"
     "Sir!"
     "In the name of the Order of the Nazg  l, will you follow my orders?"
     "Yes, sir."
     "Mind that your superiors in Dol Guldur must not know anything about this."
     "Do you realize what you're saying?!"
     "Kumai, my friend... I have no right to tell you what this is about, but I swear by everything
that's dear, I swear by Sonya's life: this is the only thing that can still save our Middle Earth.
It's your choice. If I come to Grizzly, he'll surely want to verify my credentials. It'll be
weeks if not months while his superiors contact mine, and in the meantime it will be all
over. You think the Nazg  l are all-powerful? Like hell! They didn't even tell me about
these Secret Service games at Dol Guldur, most likely because they themselves didn't
know."
     "Yeah, that's no wonder," Kumai grumbled. "When you add secrecy to our usual chaos,
there's no verifying anything."
     "So will you do it?"
     "I will."
     "Then listen and remember. There's a fireplace in the Great Hall which has a six-sided
stone in its rear wall..."

     <h3>Chapter 58</h3>
     Ithilien, Emyn Arnen
     July 12, 3019

     There's no harder work than waiting -- this saying might as well be cast in bronze for its
resistance to wear. It is even harder when waiting is your only work after everything else
possible had been done and you only have to wait for the curtain signal -- and wait and wait,
day in and day out, for a signal that may never come at all, for this is already outside your
control, with other Powers in charge.
     Involuntarily idle at Emyn Arnen after his Dol Guldur trip, Haladdin caught himself
sincerely envying Tangorn at his deadly game in Umbar: even risking your life every day is
better than such waiting. How did he curse himself for these thoughts when a week ago
haggard Faramir handed him the mithril coat: "...his last words were: `done.'"
Their return from Dol Guldur also came to his mind frequently. This time they failed to
sneak through: the fighters from Mordorian intelligence that were guarding the paths
through Mirkwood against the Elves had picked up their scent and followed them
inexorably, like wolves follow a wounded deer. Now he knows the exact price of his life:
forty silver marks that he paid Runcorn; if not for the ranger's skill, they would have most
certainly stayed in Mirkwood to feed the black butterflies. They ran into a trap on the shore
of Anduin; when arrows flew, it was too late to yell: "Guys, we're friendlies from a different
service!" Back there he had shot poisoned Elvish arrows at his own people, and there's no
cleansing from that...
     Do you know what the saddest thing is, dear Dr. Haladdin? You're now bound with blood
and have lost the right to choose, the One's biggest gift. You'll now be forever haunted by
the young men in Mordorian uniforms without insignia who fell in the reeds by the Anduin,
and by Tangorn, sent to certain death. Now, the moment you drop the quest you'll be
nothing but a murderer and a traitor. You have to win to make these sacrifices worthwhile,
but in order to win you have to walk over corpses and wade through unthinkable muck,
again and again -- a vicious circle. And the most horrid job is still ahead of you; that you'll
be doing it with another's hands -- those of Baron Grager -- makes no difference. What was
it Tangorn had said back then? "An honest division of labor: clean hands for the
mastermind, clean conscience for the executor." Like hell...
(Tangorn ran a grand rehearsal of the key scene before he left for Umbar and concluded
dispassionately: "This won't work. You give yourself away by every look and the very tone
of your voice. One can tell that you're lying from a mile away without being an Elf, who
are a lot more perceptive than we are. Forgive me -- I should've realized right away that
you're incapable of doing this. Even if they swallow my bait in Umbar you won't be able to
angle the fish here."
     "I will -- I have to."
     "No. Please don't argue, I won't be able to do it, either. It's not enough to have nerves of
steel to play this part convincingly knowing the full background; one has to be not even a
bastard, but completely inhuman."
     "Thank you, sir."
     "Not at all, sir. Maybe you can become inhuman in time, but we have no time. The only
solution is to use a cutout."
     "Use a what?"
     "It's our jargon. We need to involve an agent in the dark... sorry. In other words, the agent --
an intermediary -- has to believe that he's telling the truth. Given who we're dealing with,
he has to be a top-notch professional."
     "You mean Baron Grager?"
     "Hmm... As your sergeant would say: you get it, doc."
     "Under what pretext can we involve him?"
     "The pretext is that we're afraid that during negotiations the Elves will break into your
brains with their magic or whatnot and turn the exchange into a robbery. Which is totally
true, by the way. Plus it will be a little easier for you if you share this crock of shit with the
baron. As the famous Su Vey Go used to say: `An honest division of labor: clean hands for
the mastermind, clean conscience for the executor.'"
     "Who was this Su Vey Go?"
     "A spy, who else?")
     ...The fish bit by the end of the eighty-third day of the hundred he had been allotted. The
last rays of the setting sun pierced the echoing space of the Knights Hall, empty at this hour,
casting orange spots on its far wall; the spots looked live and warm, seemingly trying to
jump off the wall onto the face and hands of a slender girl in dusty man's clothes, who chose
to sit in Faramir's armchair. She does look like a girl, Grager thought, although by human
standards she looks about thirty, whereas it's scary to even think about her real age. To say
that she's beautiful is to say nothing; one can describe great Alvendi's Portrait of a Lovely
Stranger in police search order terms, but should one? Interestingly, Doctor Haladdin
predicted the identity and rank of the respondent like a lunar eclipse -- truly excellent work --
but didn't seem at all happy about it; I wonder why?..
     "Milady Eornis, on behalf of the Prince of Ithilien I welcome you to Emyn Arnen. I'm
Baron Grager; perhaps you've heard of me?"
     "Oh yes."
     "Did Elandar send you Baron Tangorn's message?" Eornis nodded, took out a simple silver
ring covered with scuffed Elvish runes from some secret pocket and put it on the table
before Grager.
     "This was one of the rings in the seals of your package. It belonged to my son Eloar, who's
missing in action. You know something about his fate... did I understand your message
correctly, Baron?"

     <h3>Chapter 59</h3>

     "Yes, milady, you did understand correctly. Let me dot the `i's first: like my dead friend,
I'm only an intermediary. There may be ways to search my brains with Elvish magic, but
you won't find anything there beyond what I'm about to tell you."
     "You all exaggerate Elvish powers..."
     "So much the better. Anyway, your son is alive and in captivity. He will be returned to you
once we agree on the price."
     "Oh, anything, anything at all -- precious gems, Gondolin weapons, magic scrolls..."
     "Alas, milady, his captors are not hostage-trading southern mashtangs -- they seem to be of
Mordor's intelligence service."
     Her expression did not change, but her thin fingers went white in their grip on the armchair:
     "I will not betray my people for my son's life!"
     "Don't you even want to know how little you'd have to do?"
After an eternity that lasted a couple of seconds she answered "I do," and Grager, the
veteran of a hundred recruitments, knew that the game was his -- all that was left was the
endgame, with an extra piece.
     "Some preliminary explanations first. Eloar separated from his squad and got lost in the
desert. He was dying of thirst when he was discovered, so the Mordorian insurgents saved
his life first..."
     "Saved his life? Those monsters?"
     "Please, milady -- all these stories about smoked human meat might impress the Shire
yokels, but not me. I've fought the Orcs for four years and know the score: these guys have
always admired brave foes and treated prisoners well -- that's a fact. The problem is that
they've found out that your Eloar had participated in so-called mop-ups -- that's a
euphemism for mass murders of civilians."
     "But that's a lie!"
     "Unfortunately, it's an honest truth," Grager sighed tiredly. "It so happened that my late
friend Baron Tangorn observed the work of Eloar's Easterlings. I will spare your maternal
feelings by not describing what he witnessed."
     "It's some horrible mistake, I swear! My boy... Wait, did you just say `Easterlings?'
Perhaps he simply couldn't restrain those savages..."
     "Milady Eornis, a commander is as responsible for the actions of his subordinates as for his
own. That's how it is with Men, don't know about Elves. Anyway, I'm only telling you
this so that you understand that should we fail to agree on the price of his release, your son
can't place his hopes in the Convention on prisoners of war. He'll be simply turned over to
those whose relatives got `mopped up.'"
     "What..." she swallowed convulsively, "what do I have to do?"
     "First I'd like to clarify your position in L  rien's hierarchy."
     "Don't they know it?"
     "They do, but only from Eloar, who may have been simply trying to impress them with his
hostage value. They need to know how powerful you are: clofoel is a rank rather than a
position, right? If you do unimportant things like bringing up princes or supervising
ceremonies, they see no reason to deal with you."
     "I am the clofoel of the World."
     "Aha... meaning that in the Lady's cabinet you're in charge of diplomacy, intelligence, and,
more broadly, Elvish expansion in Middle Earth?"
     "Yes, you can put it that way. Are you satisfied with the extent of my power?"
     "Yes, quite. To business, then. There's a certain Mordorian prisoner of war in one of the
Gondorian labor camps controlled by the Elves. You set up his escape and get your son
back in exchange, that's all. I do believe that you can put your conscience at ease as far as
`betraying your people' is concerned."
     "That's because L  rien would never agree to such an exchange, since the prisoner is one of
the royal dynasty of Mordor?"
     "I will not comment on your guess, milady Eornis, since I don't know myself. You're right
about one thing: should anyone in L  rien find out about our contact, it will cost both you
and your son your heads."
     "Very well, I agree... But first I need to make sure that Eloar is, indeed, alive; the ring
could've come from a corpse."
     "Fair enough; please examine this note." (This was a key moment, although Grager did not
know that. But Haladdin, had he the chance to see the stony-faced Elf-woman reading the
jagged, as if scratched by a drunk, runes: dear mother I'm alive they treat me well -- would
have known right away that Maestro Haddami's lengthy `getting into character' process had
not let them down.)
     "What had these beasts done to him?!"
Grager opened his hands. "They say that he's being kept in an underground prison, which
isn't exactly the groves of L  rien. So he's not in the best shape."
     "What had they done to him?" she repeated quietly. "I won't lift a finger until I have
guarantees, you hear? I'll turn all the labor camps upside down and..."
     "You'll get your guarantees, don't worry. They haven't started the whole thing with setting
up a secret meeting to blow the prisoner exchange, right? They've even offered..." Grager
made a dramatic pause. "Would you like to see him?"
     "Is he here?!"
     "No, that'd be asking too much. You can talk to him through Seeing Stones. At the time
and day we agree upon -- say, noon of August first, all right? -- Eloar will look into the
Mordorian palant  r while you look into yours."
     Eornis shook her head. "We don't have Seeing Stones in L  rien."
Grager nodded. "They're aware of that. To speed things up they've offered to lend you one
of theirs. You'll return it with the prisoner -- what else could you do? But they, too, demand
guarantees: there are ways to locate one palant  r via another -- you Elves should know them
better than me -- and they're not about to reveal their location to the enemy. Therefore, there
are two non-negotiable conditions. First, the palant  r you get will be blinded by an
impenetrable sack and put into `receive' mode... forgive me, milady, I don't understand any
of this, I'm just parroting their instructions. So, you will take the palant  r out of the sack and
set it to `two-way' mode only precisely at noon on August first. Should you dare do it
earlier -- to see how things are in Mordorian hideouts -- then one of the things you'll see will
be Eloar's execution. Do you understand?"
     "Yes."
     "Second, they demand that during this communication you must be far from Mordor, in
L  rien. Therefore, on August first, when your palant  r starts sending, they want to see in it
something that can only be in L  rien... You know, at that point they've gotten really
paranoid and we've spent almost half an hour figuring out some L  rien landmark that can't
be faked or mistaken for something else. Then someone remembered that your Lady has a
huge magic crystal that shows the future; that's just what we need, they said."
     "Galadriel's Mirror?!"
     "They called it something else, but I'm sure you know what they're talking about."
     "They have to be crazy! It's unbelievably difficult to get access to the Lady's Mirror."
     "Why crazy? That's exactly what they've said: this will be her chance to prove her position
in the hierarchy... So: on August first, at noon, you will take the palant  r out of the sack
and switch it from `receive' to `two-way' mode, and over in Mordor they will see
Galadriel's Mirror; then you'll see your son, alive and well... relatively well, anyway. Then
they'll tell you who has to be rescued from which camp. All further communication will be
conducted via the palant  ri. Any objections?"
     "This won't work for us," she said suddenly in a hollow voice; he immediately noted this
`us' -- everything's going smoothly.
     "What's the problem?"
     "No magical objects may be brought into L  rien without the knowledge of the Star Council.
The palant  ri are charged with very powerful magic, so I won't be able to smuggle one past
the border guard."
     "They've heard of this ban, but does it apply even to a clofoel of the World?"
She smiled crookedly. "You don't fully know Elvish customs. The ban applies to everyone,
including both Sovereigns. The border guard obeys the clofoel of Tranquility and no one
else."
     "Well, if the border guard are the only hitch, I'm glad to solve this small problem that you
think insurmountable," Grager said with calculated casualness. "The palant  r will be
smuggled to you directly in your capital, Caras Galadhon."
     "In Caras Galadhon?" she froze in amazement and Grager felt with his very gut that
something was off.
     You're afraid, he realized, for the first time during this conversation you're actually afraid.
Why now, all of a sudden? Of course, learning that right in your own capital enemy spies
can do things that you, an all-powerful royal minister, can't do, has to be a shock. But the
main thing is that this turn was a surprise to you, meaning that you have more or less
anticipated the rest of our conversation after receiving Eloar's ring... anticipated and set up
a counter-game, which means that everything you've fed me so far was what you wanted me
to believe, rather than your real feelings. I should've figured it out before: you broke and
agreed to be recruited way too easily, and you had to know that this is a recruitment and
you'll be on the hook for the rest of your life -- after all, we're colleagues, in a manner of
speaking... Sure, her son is in enemy's hands and at risk of a grisly death, but still, she's a
courtier, which means she had to go through a helluva lot of intrigue and betrayal on her
way to the clofoel's chair, or whatever they sit on at that Star Council of theirs. It's
Haladdin's decision, of course, but in his place I wouldn't have trusted her with a penknife,
much less a palant  r. Betcha she'll cheat the learned doctor like a little kid during the
exchange. Then again, maybe she won't... meaning she won't be able to. The guy has his
own aces up his sleeve: I've no idea how he's going to get that crystal over to her in the
Enchanted Forest, secretly, but I'm certain he's not bluffing.
     "You've heard correctly, milady, in Caras Galadhon. You're in charge of the Festival of the
Dancing Fireflies this year, correct?"

     <h3>Chapter 60</h3>
     Lrien, Caras Galadhon
     Night of July 22, 3019

     The Elves consider the Festival of the Dancing Fireflies on the night of the July's full moon
to be one of their foremost holidays; thus an informed L  rienite can make important
conclusions regarding the true situation among L  rien's ruling elite, `never as united as
now,' from the identity of the person in charge and how that person goes about it. The
tiniest details carry deep meaning, being a reflection of the nuances of the merciless struggle
for power that is the only meaning of life for the immortal Elvish hierarchs. At the same
time, a totally innocent detail (such as whether the Lord of Rivendell is represented at the
Festival by a cousin or a nephew) can be much more important than, for example, the
shocking re-appearance of milord Estebar, the former clofoel of Might who had disappeared
without a trace some ten years ago together with the other participants in the Celebrant
conspiracy, at the same occasion two years ago. The ex-clofoel stood for a couple of hours
on a talan right next to the L  rien's Sovereigns and then disappeared into oblivion once
again; it was rumored (always with a careful look-around and in a whisper) that he was
escorted back to the dungeons under the Mound of Somber Mourning by the clofoel of
Stars' maiden dancers, rather than the guards of the clofoel of Tranquility. Why? Whatever
for? A great mystery.
     This is the right policy: real Power, in order to remain such, has to be both unfathomable and
unpredictable -- otherwise, it is merely an authority. One could recall here the story (from
one of the neighboring Worlds) of the experts who had tried, year after year, to divine the
internal politics of a certain powerful and enigmatic state: they noted the order in which the
local hierarchs took their places on the Tomb of the Founder during state holidays, what
deviations from the alphabetical order occurred during the enumeration of their names, and
the like. The experts were competent and wise, their conclusions deep and unfailingly
logical; is it any wonder that they have never once made a correct prediction? Should
someone have engaged the aforementioned experts to analyze the situation around the
Festival of the Dancing Fireflies in L  rien, year 3019 of the Third Age, they would certainly
have produced something like this: "Since this year the responsibility for the Festival has
been assigned to the clofoel of the World for the first time ever, it follows that the
expansionists have decisively triumphed over the isolationists in the Elvish administration;
we should expect a rapid growth of Elvish presence in the key regions of Middle Earth.
Some analysts believe that the key underlying factor is a shuffle of roles in the court of the
Lady, who is concerned with the inordinate strengthening of the clofoel of Tranquility." The
funniest thing is that those logical exercises would have been quite correct in and of
themselves, as is usual with this brand of analysis...
     As for the Festival itself, it is uncommonly beautiful. Of course, only an Elf can fully
appreciate its beauty; on the other hand, man is really so primitive and puny a creature that
even the visible paltry scraps of the Festival's true splendor are quite enough for him. On
this night the inhabitants of L  rien gather on the telain close to Nimrodel; the mallorns
provide a magnificent view on the river valley where constellations of bright phial lamps are
strewn across the dewy fields surrounding melancholy backwaters (blackened silver, like
Gondolin chest ornaments). The night sky itself appears but a dim reflection of this glorious
display in an old bronze mirror. Strictly speaking, that is how it really is: on that night the
movements of celestial bodies over Middle Earth merely reflect faithfully the happenings on
the banks of Nimrodel. As already mentioned, a mortal can perceive only a tiny fraction of
what happens there: he can enjoy the starscape, created by the lamps in the grass and
unchanged since time immemorial, but human eyes have no business seeing the magical
patterns woven by the phials of the dancers -- it is this dance that forms the basis for the
magic of the Firstborn. Very rarely do the echoes of this magic rhythm reach the world of
Men through revelations to the greatest scalds and musicians, forever poisoning their souls
with longing for unreachable perfection.
     ...As befits the clofoel of the Festival, Eornis was in the middle of the `sky' this midnight,
right where seven phials (six bright ones and one most bright) formed the Sickle of the Valar
on the fields of Nimrodel, the constellation whose handle points at the Pole of the World.
The clofoel of Stars and her dancers -- the only ones allowed on the `sky' -- having left for
the shade of the mallorns a while ago, she was completely alone, still futilely trying to figure
out how baron Grager was going to accomplish what he promised: "By morning light you
will find the sack with the Seeing Stone in the grass near to the phial that represents the
Polar Star in the Sickle of the Valar." Access to the `sky' is forbidden to all other Elves,
including even other clofoels, under penalty of death, so there's no concern with anyone
finding the palant  r before her; but how will the Mordorian spies sneak here? Therefore...
is it, therefore, one of the dancers? But that's absolutely impossible -- a dancer connected to
the Enemy! Oh yeah? What about clofoel of the World connected to the Enemy -- is that
possible?
     She objected to her own thoughts: I'm not connected to the Enemy, I'm merely playing my
own game. Sure, I will do everything to save my boy, but I'm not even considering sticking
to the conditions of their bargain. In the morning I'll have the palant  r, on noon of August
first I'll learn the name of the crown prince of Mordor -- who else could it be? -- and when
it's time to exchange the hostages I'll make sure that they all remain in my hands, no
worries. Apparently, these Men aren't familiar with the Elves' power; well, they'll learn.
It's not the Men that I have to fear -- what can those dung worms do? -- but my own kind.
When I win this game I will lay a palant  r and the head of a Mordorian prince at the feet of
the Sovereigns, and no one will dare open their mouth -- the winner is always right.
Whereas if I fail or they simply won't let me finish the game, the whole affair will be cast as
a pact with the Enemy, as treason. The clofoel of Tranquility would give his right hand for a
chance to charge me with that and send me to his dungeons under the Mound of Somber
Mourning... Should he have even a shadow of doubt regarding my talks with the
Ithilienians, his Guards will start digging like only they can, and then I'm finished. I did
explain my visit to Emyn Arnen to Lady Galadriel by the need to check on news from
Umbar: "someone in L  rien, possibly the clofoel of Tranquility, has apparently begun his
own game with Aragorn." Once he finds out about that conversation -- which he will -- he'll
have no choice but to thoroughly besmirch me in the eyes of the Sovereigns, and he'll work
hard at it.
     She gave a start as it occurred to her: what if this whole business, including the happenings
in Umbar, is nothing but a long-term play by the clofoel of Tranquility, and a Guard's hand
will be on my shoulder the moment I pick up a sack with a stone imitating a palant  r?
Elandar and those Ithilienian barons working against me for the clofoel of Tranquility?!
Nonsense... I'm being afraid of my own shadow. How come the Ithilienian spies are
teaming with Mordorians, obviously with Faramir's knowledge? That's clear, actually: they
hope to gain, as their commission in the bargain, an Elvish clofoel compromised by working
with the Enemy, and therefore forever pliant. Which is how it would've come out had I any
intention of playing along.
     In any event there's no going back now: the only thing that will save me is a victory in this
`prisoner exchange.' Not only will it save me, it will elevate me to the next level!
Afterwards I'll find those who will put the sack with the Seeing Stone by the Polar Star
tonight; I will do it myself, with my Service, ahead of the Guards, and expose those traitors
to the Council: "Our incomparable preserver of Tranquility had been so busy looking for
conspiracies -- we all know what that's worth -- that he managed to overlook a real Enemy
spy network in Caras Galadhon. Or, perhaps, he did not overlook it at all? Perhaps this
network is connected higher than I dare suggest?" He won't survive such a blow, no matter
how Lord Cereborn covers for him; it will be a clear victory for the Lady and me.
...In the meantime, Kumai's Dragon glided invisibly through L  rien's night sky along the
dimly reflecting meanders of Nimrodel. Once he saw a large spread of bright bluish lights
forming a pretty good star map in the middle of a valley, the engineer relaxed and guided the
glider down; so far everything was going according to plan. He located the Dipper, for
some reason called the Sickle of the Valar in those parts, among these `constellations' --
good, just where it belongs in the real sky, with the Polar Star in the right place. Wonder
what those lamps are made from? The light is obviously cold -- perhaps the same stuff that
luminesces in rotting mushrooms? The Dipper was growing fast; Kumai felt on the bottom
of the cockpit for the sack he had extracted last night from its hiding place in the back of the
Dol Guldur fireplace, and suddenly cursed through clenched teeth: "Damn, he never told me
the actual size of that thing -- how am I to figure my altitude in this dark?"
Haladdin had originally asked him to just retrieve the sack from the hiding place and drop it
somewhere far away from the fortress during the next flight, so he could pick it up and get
away. Then the doctor cut himself off in mid-sentence and asked, amazed: "Listen, maybe
you can fly all the way to L  rien from here?"
     "Sure, no sweat. Well, not exactly no sweat, but I can."
     "What about at night?"
     "Well, I haven't flown such distances at night before -- it's hard to navigate."
     "What if it's the night of the full moon, and the target site has guiding lights?"
     "In that case it will be easier. Do you need aerial reconnaissance?"
     "No. You see, I remembered how good you've gotten at dropping shells on ground targets.
That's exactly what you need to do in L  rien."
     Kumai had justified a night flight to his Dol Guldur superiors with a suggestion to practice
night bombing. "Whatever the hell for?" "To drop incendiary shells onto enemy camps. If
you have to put out burning tents on the night before a battle rather than getting some sleep,
you won't be in good shape to fight in the morning." "Hmm... sounds reasonable. Very
well; try it, engineer." He took off at sunset ("I'll fly around a bit until it gets dark"), made a
wide turn so as not to be seen from the fortress, and only then headed west-north-west. He
found the place where Nimrodel emptied into Anduin while it was still light, the rest was
fairly routine...
     Kumai let go and the sack disappeared into the `star'-studded darkness below. Two seconds
later the glider's nose covered the Polar Star: all set. If he wasn't off by much figuring his
altitude, the target has been hit. "Is it some sort of poison?" "No, magic." "Magic?! You
got nothing better to do?" "Trust me: the L  rien dudes won't like this sack at all." "Well,
well. When things are really bad, people always swap magicians for physicians..."
Whatever -- he did his part, it's the commanders' job to know what all this is for. The less
you know the better you sleep. Time to turn around and go home; it's a long way, plus the
wind is getting stronger.
     When Kumai took a habitually daring turn over the sleepy waters of Nimrodel, he failed to
take one thing into account: the height of the mallorns. Or, rather, he had no idea that such
tall trees even exist.
     There was a crash when one of the branches touched a wingtip, seemingly lightly, turning
the glider into a spinning winged seed like those that the mallorns drop by the hundreds onto
the wilted elanors in the fall.
     There was another crash when the helpless Dragon spun right and slammed into the
neighboring tree, tearing its skin, breaking its spine and bones.
Finally, there was a third crash when all that debris fell down along the trunk and onto a
talan full of stunned Elves, almost right at the feet of the clofoel of Tranquility.
Strictly speaking, Kumai had done his job by then and could have been written off as an
acceptable loss, with an appropriate mention of the omelet whose preparation requires
breaking a few eggs. There was, however, one complicating circumstance: the Troll got
quite banged up in the fall, but survived it -- which was, understandably, a complete disaster.

     <h3>Chapter 61</h3>
     Star Council of L  rien
     July 23, 3019 of the Third Age

     Clofoel of Tranquility: Haste is advisable when hunting fleas or dealing with a sudden bout
of diarrhea, esteemed clofoel of Might. So please don't urge me along: Trolls are tough
guys and I'll need a significant amount of time to get reliable information out of him.
Lady Galadriel: How much time do you need, clofoel of Tranquility?
Clofoel of Tranquility: I believe no less than three days, o radiant Lady.
Clofoel of Might: He just wants to give his bums under the Mound of Somber Mourning
something to do, o radiant Sovereigns! This is so simple -- let him use his truth potion and
that spawn of Morgoth will spill his guts in a quarter-hour!
Lord Cereborn: Indeed, clofoel of Tranquility, why don't you use the truth potion?
Clofoel of Tranquility: Is that an order, o radiant Lord?
Lord Cereborn: No, no, please don't...
     Clofoel of Tranquility: Thank you, o radiant Lord! It's a strange thing: were I to start
teaching the clofoel of Might how to arrange bowmen or cavalry for battle, he would have
taken it as an insult, and he would have been right. Whereas when it comes to detecting
criminals, somehow everyone here knows my job better than I do!
Lord Cereborn: No, please don't take it this way...
     Clofoel of Tranquility: As for the truth potion, esteemed clofoel of Might, it has no problem
cracking open a Man's mind -- as you've correctly noted, it'd take less than a quarter-hour.
The problem is sorting all the garbage that will spill from that cracked mind: trust me, it will
take more than a few weeks to sift the kernels from the chaff. The potion is great for
obtaining confessions, but what we need here is information! And what if something will be
unclear at the first pass and explanations will be necessary? We won't be able to ask a
second time, since he'll have turned into a drooling cretin. Therefore, please allow me to
use more traditional methods.
     Lady Galadriel: That was an excellent explanation, clofoel of Tranquility, thank you. I can
see that the investigation is in good hands, please proceed as you see fit. But I've just
thought of something. Since the mechanical dragon flew here from outside, this
investigation may uncover really interesting nuances that have more to do with Middle Earth
than with the Enchanted Forests. Dear Lord Cereborn, do you think that it may be beneficial
to involve the clofoel of the World in the investigation, since she's better acquainted with
those specifics?
     Lord Cereborn: Yes, yes, that's very reasonable! Isn't it, clofoel of Tranquility?
Clofoel of Tranquility: I dare not discuss the directives of the radiant Lady, o radiant Lord.
But perhaps it will be easier to remove me from this task altogether, since I am not trusted?
Lord Cereborn: No, don't even think about it! I'd be lost without you!
Lady Galadriel: We ought to consider the good of L  rien ahead of personal ambitions,
clofoel of Tranquility. This is an extraordinary incident; two experts are always better than
one. Do you disagree?
     Clofoel of Tranquility: How can I, o radiant Lady!
Clofoel of the World: I have always dreamed of working with you, esteemed clofoel of
Tranquility. My stores of knowledge and skills are entirely at your disposal, and I hope that
they will prove useful.
     Clofoel of Tranquility: I have no doubt they will, esteemed clofoel of the World.
Lady Galadriel: This is settled, then; keep us informed, clofoel of Tranquility. What did
the clofoel of Stars wish to tell the Council?
     Clofoel of Stars: I have no desire to needlessly disturb you, o radiant Sovereigns and
esteemed clofoels of the Council, but it appears that this morning the pattern of the stars in
the sky has changed slightly. This indicates a change of the entire arrangement of magic in
the Enchanted Forests; some new, quite strong magical power has appeared here. The only
time something similar had happened in my memory was when the Lady's Mirror was
delivered to Caras Galadhon.
     Lady Galadriel: Could your dancers be mistaken, clofoel of Stars?
Clofoel of Stars: I would like to believe that, o radiant Lady. We will dance again tonight...

     ***

     Kumai came to sooner than the Elves expected. Lifting his head painfully, he saw brilliant
white walls with no windows; the sickly bluish light of the phial over a bar door seemed to
drip off them onto the floor. He had no clothes on and his right hand was chained to the
narrow bed, which was attached to the floor; when he touched his head he jerked his hand
back in surprise: it was clean-shaven, with a long recent scar on its top smeared in
something stinky and oily to the touch. He leaned back slowly, closed his eyes, and
swallowed convulsively: understanding everything, he was scared as never before in his life.
He would have given anything for a chance to die right then, before they got started, but --
alas! -- he had nothing left to give.
     "Get up, Troll! No rest for the spawn of Morgoth! You have a long road to hell before you,
so let's get underway."
     There were three Elves -- a man and a woman in identical silver-black cloaks and a
deferential muscleman in a leather jacket. They appeared in the cell without a sound,
moving with unnatural lightness, like huge moths, but somehow it was clear that they had
strength to match a Troll's. The Elf-woman looked the prisoner over unceremoniously and
whispered something -- apparently obscene -- to her companion; the man grimaced chidingly.
     "Maybe you'd like to tell us something yourself, Troll?"
     "Maybe I would." Kumai sat up, carefully lowering his legs off the bed, and was now
waiting for nausea to subside. He had made a decision and fear receded, having no room
left. "What do I get in return?"
     "In return?!" The impudence struck the Elf speechless for a couple of seconds. "An easy
death. Is that not enough?"
     "No, it's not. Easy death is already there for me; I've had a weak heart since childhood, so
torturing me is useless; it'll end when it begins."
     The Elf gave a silvery laugh. "You lie beautifully and engagingly."
Kumai shrugged. "Give it a try. The higher-ups will give you hell if a spy dies under
questioning, no?"
     "We are the higher-ups, Troll." The Elf sat down on a chair just brought into the cell by the
man in leather jacket. "But please continue lying, we're listening with interest."
What's there to lie about? He's no child and understands his position. But he's no dumb
fanatic and has no wish to die for Motherland, his oath, or other such phantoms. Whatever
for? The bosses keep sending them to certain death while sitting it out in the rear, cowardly
dogs that they are... He'll tell all he knows, and he knows quite a lot, having been on a lot
of special missions for a long time -- but not for free. Do you promise to keep him alive?
It's such a small thing for you. In an underground prison forever, in a lead mine, blinded
and castrated, but alive?
     "Say your piece, then, Troll. If you tell the truth and we find it interesting, we'll find you a
job in our mines. What do you think, milady Eornis?"
     "Sure! Why not let him keep his life?"
Very well, his name is Cloud (shouldn't get tripped up, he did have such a nickname as a
child -- that brat Sonya came up with it and it stuck to him until the University), Engineer
Second Class, his last military unit was a guerilla band led by... Indun (that was an old
professor who taught them optics during sophomore year). The band is based in Tzagan-
Tzab Gorge in the Ash Mountains (that's where Dad's mine is, the place is nature-made for
guerilla warfare, there has to be Resistance there... anyway, can't come up with anything
else that'd be consistent on the spot). Yesterday... wait, what day is it today? Ah yes, of
course, you ask the questions here, sorry... Anyway, on the morning of the twenty-second
he received orders to fly to L  rien so as to reach it on that night and spy out the positioning
of the lights in the valley of Nimrodel. Personally he thinks that the whole affair is bogus,
driven by desperation among the commanders who seem to be monkeying with some kind
of magic. No, this time the order was not given by Indun, but by some other guy, never seen
him before, apparently from Army Intelligence, nicknamed Jackal... What he looks like?
An Orocuen, short, slanty-eyed, a small scar over the left brow... yes, he's certain, the left
one...
     "This is very na  ve, Troll. I'm not calling you Cloud, because that name is as false as
everything else you've told us. There are two golden rules for responding to an
interrogation: avoid direct lies and too many details. You broke both. Tell me, driver of the
mechanical dragon, what was the strength and direction of the wind on that day?"
That's it, then -- who would've thought that the Elf knew anything about flying? In any
event, while spinning all that nonsense Kumai was readying a certain surprise for his
interrogators. The dejected pose he had assumed allowed him to gather his legs under him,
and now, seeing that the game was up, he lunged forward like an uncoiling spring, trying to
reach the Elf in the silver-black cloak with his free left hand. He would have probably
succeeded if not for another mistake: he met the Elf's eye in the process.
The clofoel of Tranquility stopped the leather-jacket guy from dashing at the suddenly
frozen Troll with an annoyed flick of the wrist -- why bother now? -- and turned to his
companion with a mocking smile: "So how about spending some time alone with this
specimen, milady Eornis? Changed your mind?"
     "On the contrary -- he's magnificent, a real beast!"
     "You sport! Very well, since you like his manhood so much, you can keep him. But not
until we work him a little, lest he die in your embrace -- it could happen, you know -- and
take everything he knows with him... You'd be really upset with such an outcome,
wouldn't you?"

     <h3>Chapter 62</h3>

     "Wake up!" The leather-jacket standing behind Kumai's chair kicked him habitually in the
Achilles' tendon, the pain immediately jerking the Troll out of a second-long blissful
unconsciousness.
     "Where did you fly from? What was your mission?" That was the man at the table. They
worked together: one asking questions (the same ones over and over, hour after hour), the
other kicking the prisoner's heel from behind whenever he tried either to stand up or to put
down his head, leaden with insomnia. The kicks were not even that strong, but always in the
same spot, so after a dozen hits the pain turned unbearable, making all his thoughts about the
next inevitable kick... Kumai had no illusions: this was not even a warm-up. They simply
had not started on him in earnest yet, only depriving him of water and sleep so far.
The engineer forbade himself to consider what might follow once they saw that he was not
going to cooperate. He simply decided to hold out for as long as possible to buy some time
for Grizzly and Wolverine -- maybe those smart guys would figure out the danger and save
the Weapon Monastery. He had absent-mindedly left a map with the flight route to the
Nimrodel on top of his work table, and his only hope now was that someone would find it
and connect it to his disappearance. But how are they to guess that I'm alive and in the
Elves' hands, rather than dead? What can they do even if they guess -- evacuate Dol
Guldur? Don't know; revelations and miracles are the One's job, mine is to hold out and
hope...
     "Wake up!" This time the guy behind him overdid his blow, knocking Kumai out. When the
engineer came to, the leather-jacket at the table had been replaced by the Elf in the silver-
black cloak.
     "Have you ever been told that you're an incredibly lucky man, Troll?"
He had lost track of time some unbelievably long time ago; the harsh light bounced off the
walls and ate at his watering eyes, and a handful of hot sand had accumulated under each
eyelid. He squeezed his eyes shut and once again slid into the abyss of sleep... This time
he was brought back almost politely, with a shake of the shoulder instead of the usual kick --
something must've changed in their setup...
     "Anyway, to continue: I don't know who advised you to fly your mission in uniform, but
our lawyers -- may they burn in the Eternal Fire! -- have suddenly decided that this makes
you a prisoner of war, rather than a spy. According to your Middle Earth laws a prisoner of
war is protected by the Convention: he can't be forced to break his oath and all that..." The
Elf dug through papers on his desk, found the needed spot and put his finger on it with
visible disapproval. "As I understand it, they want to trade you for someone, so sign here
and go get some sleep."
     Kumai opened his parched lips: "I'm illiterate."
     "An illiterate driver of a mechanical dragon? Not bad... Print your finger, then."
     "Like hell."
     "Whatever, man: I'll just note that you refused to sign and be done with it. Nobody but your
commanders needs these papers anyway, if indeed it does get to an exchange. That's it, you
can go... I mean: take the detainee away! Actually, my apologies, sir -- you're a prisoner of
war now, rather than a detainee..."
     When the leather-jackets led the engineer into the corridor, the clofoel of Tranquility bit out
in his back: "You're real lucky, Troll. In a couple of hours I was going to deal with you
personally... Why did you fly to L  rien, eh?"
     He only believed in his victory when he saw lembas on a small table in his cell, and -- most
importantly -- a pitcher of ice-cold water, its clay sides covered with a silvery web that
turned into large drops under his fingers. The water had a slightly sweet tang to it, but he
did not notice it -- a man who had gone without water for several days is simply incapable of
doing so.
     Sleep came, sweet and light, as it always is after a victory. He smelled home -- old wood,
couch leather, Dad's pipe and something else without a name; Mama was quietly puttering
in the kitchen, cooking his favorite black beans and surreptitiously wiping away tears; Sonya
and Halik -- their carefree pre-war selves -- were eagerly asking him about his adventures;
well, guys, that was really something, you'd never believe...
Smiling happily, he talked in his sleep.
     He did not just talk -- he answered direct questions posed by someone's comforting even
voice.
     ...His superiors at Dol Guldur decided that he was dead: "Apparently he has miscalculated
his altitude during the most recent flight, which was at night, and hit a tree. Attempts to
locate the body and the remains of the glider near the castle have not proved fruitful yet."
The next day, following his instructions, Grizzly sealed the engineer's papers, including the
flight maps, and sent it all to F ?anor headquarters in Minas Tirith without reading.
L  rien, Star Council
     July 25, 3019 of the Third Age
Clofoel of Tranquility: As you can see, it is quite possible to do without torture and the
brain-busting truth potion.
     Lady Galadriel: You're a real master of your craft, clofoel of Tranquility. What did you
find out?
     Clofoel of Tranquility: The dragon driver's name is Kumai, he is an Engineer Second
Class. As we suspected, he flew here from Dol Guldur. Judging by his tales, it had been
turned into a real snake nest where escaped Mordorian scientists are creating unheard-of
weapons under tutelage of their intelligence service. His real mission here was from the
Order of the Nazg  l -- to drop a sack with some magical item, whose nature is unknown to
him, onto the `sky' next to Nimrodel. I believe it is the presence of that item that the
esteemed clofoel of Stars and her dancers have felt. My Guards have conducted a thorough
search of the valley of the Nimrodel, but found nothing: someone had removed the sack.
Therefore, o radiant Sovereigns -- please understand me correctly -- therefore, I insist that the
esteemed clofoel of the World be removed from th