CAPTAIN ALAIN YORLOV sniffed the freshening breeze as the single-masted galley shoved off from the stone wharf. The steady drumbeat of the row-master settled into its relentless rhythm as they wound their way out to the central current of great Anduin. He grumbled and spit over the side, trying not to look at the banks of row men, grunting and heaving at their oars like a herd of pack animals.
Yorlov was short, short enough to be oft mistaken for a dwarf, and stout as one of those deep-earth dwellers. But unlike any of that race, his skin shone fair and his eyes mirrored the blue ocean. His face bore a deep purple scar, angry and jagged, that plowed from the middle of his wide forehead down the center of his round nose, before darting away across his left cheek and disappearing into his shaggy yellow mane.
The captain despised these rowing galleys—they reminded him of his cursed youth as a slave on a Haradrim galley. He grew up rowing and rowing under the lash until he had led a revolt on his seventeenth birthday and had become the master of the ship. His new crew had pirated the southern coasts in tall three-masted frigates and had proved key in the War of the Ring’s naval battles. The tribes of men from the south, darkened by the evil influence of Sauron, had tried to make their way up the Anduin to reinforce the armies of Mordor. But Yorlov’s fleet had sent dozens of those hulking troop transports to the bottom of the sea. By far the best sailor among men, some made bold enough to say that Alain Yorlov rivaled even the Elf-mariners of the western seas.
The captain’s sea eyes habitually scanned the skies for weather sign. They scanned the rigging, the color of the water, extracting every bit of information from the winds and waters around him. He spat again, longing to be off this cursed rowboat and back aboard his own three-masted clipper, the Freedom Hawk. At least he had made it to the water again, Yorlov consoled himself. His rolling sailor’s stride and unnaturally broad shoulders made him clumsy on the land, always knocking something or someone over. But here on the water, he was home. He could move and breathe and behold the world aright. True, this was only a river, but his nose already detected a little salt in the air. His eyes twinkled like sapphires in anticipation.
“Captain Yorlov!” boomed the white wizard Gandalf, striding up to the quarterdeck. “I know I needn’t remind you that we must reach Larrola by eventide, my old friend. Haste remains the order of the day.”
“Aye, tell it to the man banging on that cursed drum. He’s the one in charge of these blighted row dogs.” The wizard turned to regard the men sluggishly pulling at their sweeps. Many of them rowed with half-lidded eyes that suggested most had crawled out of the pubs and taverns only early this morning, their brains still pickled with ale and wine.
“Yes, I see,” said Gandalf, looking over the stinking rabble. “But I’m sure we can add urgency to their efforts.” Yorlov cocked an eyebrow as the white wizard crouched by the gunwale. Gandalf cupped his hands in front of his face and began whispering something indistinct.
“It’ll take more than trickery to get these sorry men to row,” said the captain. “A good lashing’s all these muck-rats’ll ever understand.”
Gandalf rose and went astern, still whispering into his cupped hands. Something powdery sifted now from between the wizard’s fingers. He sprinkled it over the stern. And at once, the water below foamed and bubbled everywhere it landed in their wake. The foaming grew as the water boiled beneath the ship, bubbling and spreading from stern to bow. Captain Yorlov gazed down the side. Little winged creatures, no bigger than midges, came zipping out of the water and up to the deck. In less than a minute, thousands of them flittered in a growing cloud around the galley.
The captain caught one out of the air and held it close to his face. The creature sported a scarlet and gold body with thin black stripes and tiny iridescent wings like a dragonfly’s. But to his surprise, it had a head on both ends of its body. And each of these heads presented a pair of needle-like pincers. Another, larger of these little two-headed monsters, landed in his hand and devoured the first before flying off.
A shriek went up from the oars as the first man swatted at his neck. Another howled, and soon a chorus of curses and screams stormed to life. Gandalf came running from the stern. Gripping the rail of the quarterdeck, he bellowed to the men. “Storm wasps! Row, you fools! Row for your lives!”
The ship lurched forward under the sudden panic-driven efforts of the besieged crew. The oars churned up froth as they rowed as no crew had ever rowed. Yorlov spied a slow-moving junk dead ahead that they were bound to ram if they didn’t turn in time. He seized the rudder from old Culum, his sure-sighted but aged deckhand. “Get aloft!” he said. “Call out the traffic!” Culum climbed up into the rigging like a man half his age and called out, “Ship ahoy, ten points starboard!” Yorlov yanked the tiller over with all his might. The rowmen continued to howl at the relentless attack of the storm wasps. The crew of the junk flung curses at Yorlov and the galley as they scudded past, missing their ship by scant yards.
With an expert hand, Yorlov wound the speeding galley through the dense river traffic, out into the deep middle of the wide Anduin. The bug-bitten rowers howled and heaved with all their might while Gandalf stood at the rail, chuckling over his handiwork. “We’re losing them!” he added for good measure. “Keep rowing! We’re almost out of the swarm!”
They would speed along fast enough once the river’s central current took hold, thought Captain Yorlov. Fast enough for us, but not fast enough for his old acquaintance. He noted that none of these “storm wasps” had bitten him or Gandalf, but only the men at the oars. For that, he gave thanks.
Gandalf chuckled again as he retrieved a pipe from somewhere in his sleeve and began packing it with leaf. “I haven’t been to sea in some years, Captain Yorlov,” he said, lighting his pipe with the tip of his long bony finger. “I’m looking forward to the wind and the roll of the tide again. It quickens the blood as few things will in this world.”
“Aye, Master Wizard,” said Yorlov, easing the ship due south, “that it will. But we’re not on any pleasure cruise. Everything, all the signs in the sea and in the sky, bespeaks some hard fate lying ahead of this voyage.”
Gandalf regarded the stout captain as he puffed his pipe into glowing life. Something of Númenor slumbered there, he thought. Perhaps a bit of the second sight to go with the captain’s sharp instincts as a mariner. “Oh? And what do your keen senses tell you, Captain Yorlov? I see nothing but a fine day and a fresh breeze to fill our sails.”
“Culum!” Yorlov barked. “Stop swaying up there in the rigging and come take the helm back!” He returned the tiller to his helmsman and came near to Gandalf. “Aye, today will be fair, Master Gandalf—that any man can see. But there, away south beyond the port, beyond the southern horizon, there’s something dark. I’ve always felt it when I’ve sailed southwards. Most ships won’t go out that way, will they? Ships have gone that way and never returned, haven’t they?”
“Are you asking me or are you telling me, Captain?”
“I’m asking you to tell me what we’re bound for, old friend. That ‘special cargo’ we’re shipping promises to bring us more trouble than I’ve been commissioned for, I wot. As captain of this voyage, I’ve a right to know what I’m steering into.” By this time the storm wasps had retreated, but the men still rowed hard, as though the venom from the wasps had energized every man bitten.
“Captain Yorlov, to this point I have only commissioned you to bring us and our cargo, special or otherwise, to Larrola.” He drew closer and in scarcely more than a whisper said, “I fear many unfriendly ears have come aboard with us, Alain. It would profit us little for them to hear our course or our purpose beyond getting to Larrola. I will make all known to you once we are out at sea, my stout-hearted friend. Now steady on, Captain, steady on.” The wizard departed down the steps and made his way forward to the bow, puffing on his pipe and taking in the wide river view as though he were only a simple old man on a sightseeing tour. Yorlov tried to put away the dark cloud that hung yet over his heart as he scanned the skies anew for any clue to their fate.
Below decks, Lumpolas and Aragunk reeled back against the barrels while the girl with the bow threatened them from her perch. “Speak now if you wish ever to speak again!”
Lumpolas, quaking and gulping, gaped at her in the hold’s gloomy light. The maiden had no more than sixteen years behind her, but her voice ran icy with menace. “Good m-m-morning to you, m’lady,” Lumpolas stammered, shooting a glance at Aragunk. “How… how are you this fine—”
“Your names! Your reason for being here!” she said. “Quickly! My fingers grow tired and my bowstring may slip.”
Aragunk sat bolt upright. “Peace, girl! Warriors don’t take orders from mere maidens, and we don’t answer to idle threats!” A whizz and a pair of thunks sounded in their ears, and Aragunk and Lumpolas found their collars pinned to the barrels. The dark-haired girl had two more arrows nocked and her bow drawn before they could speak. “Dwarf dung!” cried Aragunk. “You could have hit us!”
“My next shot will not be so kind, fool!” she said. “Speak your names, or die here unknown!”
“Brazen girl!” spat Aragunk. “If you knew who it was you’re threatening, you’d wish you had treated us more kindly!”
“Ha! Should I fear a pair of fools who nearly got themselves killed sneaking aboard?” the girl shot back. “I could have left you two to die in that stinking fish barrel, and I’m starting to wish I had! Now, last chance. Answer me!”
Aragunk turned purple with rage. “Insolent girl! I’ll have you know, my name is Ara—”
“Arag!” interrupted Lumpolas, still hoping to keep their identity secret. “His name is Arag!”
“It is?” Aragunk asked.
“I’m afraid my friend’s head is still foggy from being stuck in the barrel for so long. Right, friend Arag?”
A slow dim light rose behind Aragunk’s eyes and he nodded. “Yes. Yes, my name is Arag. No, wait—it’s Aragastus!”
“No, it’s just Arag,” sighed Lumpolas, already regretting this ploy.
“I don’t like Arag. I want a better name!”
“Your name is Arag and you’ll like it, buffoon!”
Aragunk grabbed his friend by his collar. “You dare insult me, elf? I still owe you for your slander back on the dock. Now take it back or I’ll stuff you back into that fish barrel and throw you overboard!”
“I’d like to see you try, human,” growled Lumpolas. Even pinned to the barrels, they would have started scuffling had not another arrow thunked right between their faces.
“Blast it! Stop that!” Aragunk barked at her.
“Then stop that bickering!” the maiden said. “I say you are spies. Now answer me, who sent you and why?”
“Spies?” asked Lumpolas. “We’re… we’re no spies. We got stuck in that barrel at the fishmonger’s—that’s where we work, you see—and before we knew it, they loaded us onto this ship. All just a misunderstanding. Right, Arag?”
“That’s right,” said Aragunk. “You see, my friend here is fat because he eats too much.”
Lumpolas’s eyes narrowed. “Watch it, Arag!”
“He climbed into this blighted fish barrel to get some breakfast because he’s hungry all the time. But he fell in like he always does. And when I tried to rescue him, I fell in too because, like I said, he’s so heavy. Then someone nailed the lid on and we found ourselves here with you shooting arrows at us, two innocents.”
The girl gazed at them; her bow arm unmoving. “Not one thing either of you two fools has said is true. Choose your next words with care, or they will be your last.”
Lumpolas glared at Aragunk. “She’s right, Arag. You’d better stop lying.”
“Me? You’re the one who started it, blubber-belly!”
“That’s it!” Lumpolas tore out the arrow pinning him to the barrel and leaped on Aragunk in a rage. “I warned you!” They went rolling across the deck between the crates and barrels, fighting and cursing while the raven-haired maiden tracked them with her bow.
“Be quiet, both of you!” The two rolled across the floor in a tangled fury of kicking and punching and spitting. “Stop! You’re going to get us all caught!”
Lumpolas, struggling to get out of a headlock now, tried to speak through his gasps and grunts. “Stop, Gunk! Did you hear that? She’s afraid of getting caught too!”
Aragunk, his face scarlet and sweaty with rage, squeezed his friend’s head all the harder. “So what? You still haven’t apologized, churl!”
With his friend all but wrenching his head off, Lumpolas managed to croak, “That means that she’s a… she’s a…”
Aragunk relaxed his chokehold on Lumpolas’s neck. “What… what does it mean, Lump?”
“She’s…” Lumpolas retched. “It means she’s a stowaway too!”
“She is?” said Aragunk and shot a puzzled gaze at the maiden. “You are?”
The girl’s pale eyes radiated the heat of her anger. “Yes! I’m a stowaway like you two! But that doesn’t let you off my hook!”
Aragunk’s face lit up with a mocking grin as he dropped Lumpolas, half-conscious and coughing, to the deck. “Ho ho! Who’s the criminal now? And what, pray, are you doing down in this hold, villain-girl? Stealing? Spying?”
She pulled the bow taut. “I’m no thief and I don’t answer the questions here! Don’t forget, I still hold your lives in my hands.”
Smirking now, Aragunk rose to his feet with all the cocky swagger at his command. “Yes, you’ve been blathering on about your arrows and how you’re going to kill us. ‘Talk or I’ll shoot!’ ‘Tell me your names or I’ll shoot!’” he mocked her in a high-pitched voice. “Well, I say get on with it then, girl! Shoot!”
Lumpolas, still red-faced and panting, sat up, waving his hands. “No! No, let’s not have any of this shooting or killing business!” He rose to his knees with hands outstretched. “We’re all stowing away together; surely we can come to an arrangement. Maybe we can even help each other.”
The girl laughed. “What help could you two fools be to me? My quest wants secrecy and cunning, not bumbling and bickering!”
“Quest?” Aragunk perked up at her words. “You’re on a quest? That’s why we’re here! We’re on a quest too, with Gandalf!”
“Shhh!” Lumpolas sprang up and slapped a hand over Aragunk’s mouth. “Don’t go telling a perfect stranger why we’re here!”
The girl cocked an eyebrow at this. “You two? On a quest with the white wizard? Ha! Then why did you have to sneak aboard in a stinking fish barrel, fishmonger’s apprentices?”
Aragunk slapped Lumpolas’s hand away. “We snuck aboard because Gandalf might not exactly know that he needs us yet. But he will. And my name’s not really Arag, by the way.”
“Yes, I figured that out on my own, thank you,” she said with a sneer.
“Then know that I am Aragunk, brother of Aragorn the King, and my round friend here is Lumpolas of Mirkwood.”
“I told you to stop with the cracks about my girth, Gunk!”
“You’re of the wooded realms?” the girl asked the red-faced elf.
“Yes, what of it?”
“Hmm, had I known, I might have left you to rot in your barrel, elf. My people have fallen on hard times because of your kind!”
“And just who are your people?” asked Lumpolas. But she answered him nothing. “Psst! This is the part where you tell us your name.”
She considered the pitiful sight these two presented for a long breath. “Oh, this quest is cursed! All the signs said it would be.” She lowered her bow and plopped down on the crate with a sigh. “We’re all going to be thrown overboard because I had the rotten luck to run into you two oafs.” She shook her head. “I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. I am Beonna. I hail from the Northlands above Mirkwood, elf.”
Aragunk pointed at his friend. “That’s where Lump is from! From Mirkwood!”
Lumpolas stared at the girl with shock and utter indignation mixed on his face. “What do you mean your people have fallen into misfortune because of us? We have never made war on the northern men.”
“Neither did you come to our aid when we defended your roads from the bands of orcs streaming down from the Misty Mountains, heeding the call of their dark master! No, many of my people suffered, and you benefitted from their suffering. And your cursed king, Thranduil, offered neither arms nor aid to his neighbors and allies!”
Lumpolas’s face darkened. “That’s my father you’re cursing, northern girl!”
“Well, when we’re caught, I’ll at least have the pleasure of watching his silly son receive his long-overdue punishment in his place!”
“Now wait just a moment, Beonna of the northlands! My father kept your borders safe from the hordes of Uruks pushing from the south across the borders of Rohan! We were the only—”
But before he could finish, Beonna leaped down to the deck. “Shh!”
“What is it?” asked Lumpolas.
The maiden pressed an ear to the door of the hold. “Someone’s coming! Quick, hide! And for the love of all that’s good, be quiet!”
A large key fumbled around in the door’s heavy iron lock, clanking and groaning with rust. Lumpolas, all but dragging Aragunk, scurried behind a stack of crates at the back of the hold. He searched for Beonna but she had vanished.
The lock yielded. The door creaked open. A man’s thick boots clomped into the hold and the door closed fast. Lumpolas didn’t dare breathe while peeking between the crates at the intruder. But alas, a stack of rolled canvas blocked his view so that he could only see to the man’s knees.
The newcomer rushed to the center of the hold. He set a small iron disk on the floor, only a handbreadth in width, with three short silver legs. Reaching his fingers into a leather pouch at his belt, the man set a pinch of blue powder on the disk. Then, he muttered a hurried incantation over it in a language Lumpolas didn’t recognize. When nothing happened, the man cursed and flitted back to the door and listened. Then he rushed back to the disk to repeat the incantation.
“Who is it? I can’t see,” Aragunk whispered, forcing Lumpolas to slap a hand over his friend’s mouth.
Back and forth, the anxious man paced from the door to the disk for several moments, repeating the dark spell over and over. Then, at last, the blue powder on the disk burst into a ribbon of blue flame. It leaped up from the floor of the hold, stretching to the ceiling.
“It’s about time!” the nervous man said. “I been a-waitin’ here for you long enough to be missed!”
A distorted voice that sounded like two granite boulders grinding together rumbled out from the ribbon of flame. “Speak thus to me again, slave, and you will spend the rest of your miserable life chained to a dog-sled in the northern snowlands. You will wait as long as I need you to wait.”
“I didn’t mean nothing by it, sir!” the man said with fear rising in his throat. “Just nervous about getting caught, I was. That’s all.”
“Be more nervous about your wagging tongue and the ruin it will bring you.”
“Forgive me, m’lord! Just got ahead of meself. What are your orders, m’lord?”
“They are not my orders, Ratskin,” said the voice from the dancing flame. “They are the orders of him whose ancient name will rule this world again. And his orders stand: Kill his enemies. Kill everyone who opposes his invincible will. Are those orders straightforward enough for your rum-muddled head?”
“Aye, sir, I understand perfectly, m’lord. What I meant to ask was, who would the Dark One wish me to kill?”
“Isn’t it obvious? The white wizard is aboard with you.”
Lumpolas’s elven blood froze. Aragunk’s eyes shot wide with surprise. But neither were as shocked or terrified as Ratskin, whose knees wobbled at the command. “Excuse me, s-s-s-sir. You want me to kill the wizard?”
“The Dark One himself commands it: kill the old man. He has opposed the master from before the ages. Can it be made any clearer to you?”
“Well, sir, I don’t mean to be a bother, but how, I mean, how does one k-kill a wizard? It can’t be done as far as I fathom. They ain’t like us,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “They’re… unnatural.”
“Tell me, slave,” the voice from the flame asked, “do you fear an old, old man more than you fear the Dark Lord of this world?”
“N-no, sir. Right now I ain’t got nothing but fear, and plenty of that to go around! But it’s just never been done, you see. They say he fought a demon down in the dwarf’s hall and lived—a Balrog even—not more than two years ago! How am I supposed to… what chance does a man have against that?”
“A far better chance than he would against the Dark One. He is returning to this world, Ratskin. The appointed day has come. Do this and live forever in the graces of your master. Carry out his will by whatever means your wit can conjure. Fail, and you will forever spend your miserable existence wishing for death.”
The blue flame disappeared with a flash and a thin pop. After more rounds of worried pacing and mumbling, Ratskin snatched the disk from the floor. His heavy boots clomped back out the door. The key ground into the lock, driving the bolt home with a clanking thunk. Silence descended on the hold.
Lumpolas popped up, stunned by what they had overheard. “Did you hear that? He’s going to kill Gandalf!”
Aragunk shot up next to him, eyes wide with rage. “We’ve got to warn him before that villain, Wormskin, can get to him!”
“Ratskin, Gunk, not Wormskin.”
“No matter—he won’t have any kind of skin after I’m through with him,” said Aragunk, snatching his sword from the toppled herring barrel. “Let’s go!”
“Wait, you’re forgetting something!” said Lumpolas as his friend leaped to the door and seized the latch.
“Orc spit! It’s locked!” shouted Aragunk.
“Yes, that’d be it,” said Lumpolas, rolling his eyes.
Aragunk yanked the latch and slammed his shoulder against the heavy door again, but its thick pine boards refused to yield. “We’re trapped!”
Lumpolas glanced around the gloomy hold. “Wait, where’s Beonna?”
Aragunk squinted. “You can come out now, girl of the North,” he said, “if you’re not too scared.” No reply returned but the creaking of the galley’s hull. “Where in Balrog’s blazes did she go?” They searched behind every crate, barrel, and cask, but found her nowhere.
“She’s gone,” said Lumpolas. “That no-good northern girl snuck out and left us locked in here!”
Aragunk smacked a fist against a crate. “I knew it! I knew we couldn’t trust her, Lump! Never trust a girl—north, south, east, or west! How are we going to get out and save Gandalf from Frogskin now?”
Lumpolas patted him on the shoulder. “Ratskin, Gunk—it’s Ratskin! And don’t worry, we’ll figure something out.”
Aragunk glared at his friend. “We’ll figure something out? Like you figured out how to get us stuffed into a barrel? And now, because of that, we’re locked in this dank galley hold! The last thing we need is more of your figuring! If we would have gone with my plan, we wouldn’t be—”
“Your plan?” Lumpolas laughed. “And what, pray, was your plan? Go on a quest? Done! Sneak on board? Done and done! I don’t know what you’re complaining about. In fact, that’s all you’ve done so far on this great and glorious quest. I can’t wait to hear the maidens sing about Aragunk’s mighty whimpering at the bottom of a barrel of pickled herring!”
Aragunk seized his friend. “Right, I’ll box your pointed ears for that!” But then a key clanked into the latch again and started to turn. “He’s coming back!”
“Quick, the barrel! Hide!” But alas, they dove for the toppled barrel at the same instant and smacked their skulls together with a CRACK! Both crashed to the deck in a howling daze of pain.
The door creaked opened and Beonna slipped back in. She found them rolling and moaning in agony at her feet. “You two fools look even worse than the last time I saw you,” she laughed.
Aragunk, whose head was much harder than Lumpolas’s, sat up first. “Beonna! You came back for us! I knew you would! Lump said we couldn’t trust a no-good northern girl like you. But I fought for your honor!”
“I said no such thing,” said Lumpolas. “That was you!” His eyes still hadn’t come uncrossed from the smack. “Oh, my poor head!”
“Will you two stop bickering for once and be quiet? I found something down the corridor and I need your help.”
Lumpolas finally sat up. “Wait, where did you get those keys?”
She smiled. “From a poor hungover sailor’s belt loop when I climbed aboard. Unlike yours, my plan didn’t involve me getting trapped in this hold. Now get up and come with me, unless you want to keep quarreling like a couple of old hens in here!”
“Finally, someone’s speaking sense around here,” said Aragunk. He popped up and brandished his sword. “Let’s go kill that villain before they kill Gandalf!”
Lumpolas, holding his head to stop it from spinning, sneered at his eager friend. “We don’t even know what he looks like, Gunk. What are you going to do? Go topside and start swinging your blade at whoever strikes your fancy?”
“Oh, I’ll know,” he said. “As a ranger, I have a keen sense of good and evil.” He stepped close to Beonna and gazed into her pale eyes. “You can see it, deep in the eyes. Rat-tongue will give himself away, believe it.”
“Rat-tongue?” she snorted at him and shook her head. “Don’t you mean Ratskin?”
“I wish everyone would stop correcting me every time I speak!”
Lumpolas shot Beonna a puzzled look from the floor. “Wait, you overheard what those two villains said, too?”
A nervous twitch flashed across her face. “Well, yes, of course,” she said. “I heard everything, like you.”
“But if you were in here listening, how did you get by Ratskin? How did you go out the door without him seeing you?”
She looked away with an anxious shrug. “I suppose that I’m just a lot less clumsy than you two.”
Lumpolas squinted at her. “I don’t see how that’s possible. He stood right—”
“Enough!” she said. “If you don’t want to help, then stay in here! I’ll be happy to lock up again on my way out.” She waved the keys at them and disappeared out the door.
Aragunk shrugged at Lumpolas. “I didn’t want to stay in this stinky hold with the likes of you anyway,” he announced and followed her out.
Lumpolas sat there for a second, considering whether to go with them. He could just stay in here and let them get caught and hung up on the yardarm by themselves—whatever a yardarm was. There was plenty to eat. He could happily fill his belly all by himself down here while they suffered.
Thoughts of all the lovely food in his rucksack were floating through his head when Aragunk came rushing back in, excited and out of breath. “Lump, hurry! Come see this! You have to come see this—right now!” Aragunk heaved him to his feet and all but dragged him out of the hold. He barely snagged his rucksack as they went out the door.
He pulled Lumpolas to the right down a short, dimly lit corridor, and swung him into a room beyond a heavy door. “Stop dragging me! I can walk fine on my own!” Lumpolas yanked his arm away. And then he saw it.
The low-ceilinged room shimmered with an unearthly silver glow that struck Lumpolas’s elven eyes like no light they had seen before. At the center of the room stood a rectangular wooden table with a body lying motionless on its surface. Lumpolas took a step closer, his eyes wide with wonder as he gazed into the luminous face of a sleeping young elf lord. He looked like he could open his eyelids at any second, even though he lacked even the slightest stirring of breath. “Who is he?”
Beonna raised her eyes to him. “We hoped you could tell us, elf. He’s one of your kind. This table is carved in runes from your tongue.”
Lumpolas couldn’t tear his eyes away from the youth. His skin waxed pale and unblemished. His arms lay crossed over his robes, very ancient, boasting the noblest materials: dark green silk with silver trim, the robes of a young elven lord of high birth from a distant age. But it was a jewel affixed on his forehead, no more than a teardrop in size, that held Lumpolas’s gaze. The jewel shined and glimmered, radiating the silvery light filling the cabin. “This can’t be possible,” said Lumpolas.
“What, Lump?” asked Aragunk in a whisper. “What can’t be possible?”
“This jewel,” began Lumpolas, but then he stopped, overcome with wonder. “That light coming from the stone. Your mortal eyes could not see it as mine do, but…” His voice trailed off as amazement overcame him again.
“What?” Beonna asked him. “What do your elven eyes see?”
Lumpolas shook his head. “This light can only be from—I cannot understand how this could be true—but I behold a drop of light from great Telperion. There, on this hallowed brow, shines a light that could only come from lost Telperion.”
Beonna stepped closer and gazed in awe at the silvery glow of the jewel on the youth’s forehead. “Telperion? In truth?”
Aragunk, too, drew near, regarding it with them. “Who’s Telperion?”
Lumpolas gaped at him. “Not who, Gunk. What. How can you, a distant son of Númenor, not know fair Telperion? Are you that lacking in the lore of your own people?”
“Of course I know the lore of my people!” Aragunk grumbled. Then he gazed down at his shuffling feet. “I just need a little reminder, that’s all. You know I’m not much for reading and the like!”
“You mean you truly don’t remember the two trees that Yavanna brought forth to light the world after Morgoth destroyed the great lamps? Mighty Telperion and Laurelin?”
“Oh, that Telperion. The tree, that’s right! I thought you might have meant a different Telperion. You don’t have to be so rude about it, you know. Telperion the tree! And this, clearly, is a piece of one of the big trees. Perfectly obvious. Just needed a little hint—trees not being a thing that warriors are usually concerned with, you know. Well, I guess we’ve solved that! So, can we go save Gandalf now?”
Lumpolas and Beonna stared at him in disbelief.
“You really don’t understand, do you?” Beonna asked.
Aragunk’s eyes twitched around the room. “What? So, it’s a part of a tree called—uh, what was it?—Telpurnium! And now we can get back to the quest. Right?” He smiled hopefully at them. “I mean, it’s a nice piece of a tree,” he added after they continued to stare at him. “And I’m sure the tree itself was nice too, as far as trees go. But it’s only a tree.”
“Shall I explain it to him,” asked Beonna, “or do you want to do it?”
“Aragunk of Gondor,” Lumpolas said, “this ‘nice piece of a tree’ IS THE QUEST! It has to be the reason Gandalf came on this boat. This drop of Telperion’s light, if anyone knew about it, would be the most precious, the most sought-after object in all of Middle-earth! It is older than the elves! Only the lost Silmarils themselves could be as precious as this tiny little jewel! Does that make anything clearer to you, you big stone-for-brains?”
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere! If you would have just said this bright little splinter had something to do with the quest, you could have saved us a lot of time!” Aragunk tried to sound annoyed to hide his embarrassment. “Don’t have to go calling me names like that.”
Beonna walked around the table. “Enough! You two would bicker over a puddle in the road. We need to figure out who this elf is, what he’s doing with a shard of Telperion’s light affixed to his forehead, and why he’s on this boat. What can your elven eyes tell us about these runes?”
Lumpolas regarded the carvings in the light-colored wood of the sleeper’s table. Ancient runes and elaborate figures covered every surface. “Right. These will tell us everything,” he said and began circling the table, carefully studying them. He circled it once, eyebrows bunched, scratching his chin all the way around. He circled again, his pointed ears wiggling with the effort. His brows squeezed together even tighter this time. He opened his lips and made to speak. Aragunk and Beonna pricked up in anticipation. But Lumpolas shook his head, scratched his nose with his puckered lips, and made a third round of the carved table. A bead of sweat slid between his brows, which by this time had knitted tighter than a pair of dwarven socks. Lumpolas finished his third essay of the table’s carvings and stood deep in concentration.
At last, Aragunk could stand it no longer. “Well?”
“Well, what?” asked Lumpolas through his puckered lips.
“What does it say, Lump?”
He shook his head with a shrug. “I have no idea.”
“What?” Aragunk roared.
“I’m sorry. I can’t read it. It’s in a dialect of Old Eldarin I don’t know. I can only make out a few words here and there.”
Aragunk was about to tear his own hair out. “You made us watch you dance around that table like a drunken chicken three times, and now you tell us you don’t know what it says?”
“Well, I gave it a good try, didn’t I? You could at least show a little gratitude for that.”
Aragunk threatened to explode until Beonna stepped between them. “You said you could understand a few words?”
Lumpolas turned and pointed at a group of runes along the nearest leg of the table. “Well, this word can either mean a beautiful blessing or an evil curse, depending on what this rune above means, but I don’t know what it means. This one here means ‘the great tree,’ and this one means death. But it could mean the death of Telperion or the death of this lordly youth. It spoke about revenge and something about a shadow returning. But that’s all I could make out, except for this. It spells out In-ol-duay. I think it may be his name.”
“Inolduay?” asked Beonna. “Have you ever heard of an Inolduay in the lore of your people?”
“No, but must have been someone important. Hard to understand how he could have passed completely out of the lore of the elves, especially with this jewel of light fastened to his forehead.” They each regarded the serene face of the mysterious youth. The jewel’s light shone silver on his pallid brow with a cool and calming glow.
“If you can’t read it, Lump, who could?” asked Aragunk.
“Someone ancient, I suppose.”
“Someone like Gandalf the White?” asked Beonna.
Lumpolas shot his gaze at her. “Yes! Of course, he could read this script! But we can’t just walk up on deck and ask him, can we?”
“Aye, but that’s exactly what you’re a’going to do, isn’t it?” a rough voice announced from the doorway behind them. Their hearts froze as they spun around to find a short, powerfully built man with shaggy blonde hair. He had an angry purple scar running down the center of his face, across his ruddy cheek, before disappearing behind his left ear. The steel blade of his cutlass shone in the jewel’s silver light. “And you had better ask him real nice, because Gandalf ain’t going t’be too happy to find out that three sorry stowaways got caught snooping around his precious cargo, now will he?”
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