After the War it was not only the bands of marauding orcs and Haradrim, leaderless and doubly dangerous for it, that exercised Gondor’s new king and his advisors. There were fragments of Sauron’s war machine scattered throughout Middle Earth, some of them pieces of an older order that could not be remade but whose power might yet prove a threat to the fledgling Fourth Age.
Elrond and Gandalf spent long hours with Elessar, on whose brow the unaccustomed pressure of the winged crown lay heavy. The metal had been cold and smooth, but in the reaches of the night, with his bride asleep at his side, eyes new closed in slumber, Elessar’s skin itched and burned as though a hot wire were bound about his head.
When the pain would not let him sleep he would rise and splash his face in cold water, but there was no mark to be seen if he looked in Arwen’s polished mirror. Once he had gone to dip his hands in the bowl, surface glittering in the moonlight and for a moment had imagined he saw Boromir’s eyes watching him and the water he scooped up washed away the salt tears that sprang unbidden, but did not ease the ache in his throat.
He had told Elrond and Gandalf that he thought he had seen something in the reflected water, and Elflord and Maiar had walked the ramparts of the citadel for many hours, deep in conversation, oblivious to the sounds of bustle and building work floating up from below them. In the days of desperate battle, doors had been locked on the wreckage of Gondor’s past but now the bolts needed to be drawn, the fever purged and a reckoning made of what remained to the King.
When they came to him at the dawning of the day, Aragorn did not ask whither they were bound, but rose to follow them. And when they trod the cold paths down to Rath Dinen, down to the Silent Street, he made no murmur but shrugged his warm cloak tighter about his body.
The shattered ruin of the House of the Stewards lay deserted. No guard had been set on it, for none would approach. The great dome had fallen in over Denethor’s pyre and the smoking pile of masonry held no attraction for scavengers. It was a damned place. The rubble had long since fallen cold.
Thinking of the building work going on throughout the city, Aragorn gazed with set jaw on the scene. The Stewards had served Gondor well and it would be rebuilt, but he would not dwell overlong on the departed this day. There were too many living, but barely, who needed his care. Their needs would come first. Time to return dignity to this place when all about had roofs that would keep out the rain, when the watercourses flowed clean again and when the walls and gates would hold against the wrath of an enemy.
At the foot of the steps, begrimed with soot and scattered with shards of coloured glass from the dome, Aragorn planted himself and when Elrond and Gandalf, who had started up the stair, paused and turned to him with questioning looks, he folded his arms over his chest and spoke plainly.
“Why this place? The King has seen this monument to despair and learnt its lesson in humility and fortitude. Isildur’s line knows well the burden we allowed our faithful servants to carry for us through generations almost without number, but the King has more pressing matters before him than to commune with the dead.”
Gandalf might have allowed himself a private smile at the pragmatic ruler emerging from the shadow of myth, but his old pupil, a seasoned warrior, must learn the reach of his arm anew. His reply was calm but firm for all that.
“Come with us, Elessar. There is something here that is yours by right and the King should claim his own.”
So saying he beckoned to Aragorn who felt himself warmed by the few weak rays of sunshine that were beginning to creep across the courtyard. It seemed to him that they were drawn to Gandalf’s outstretched hand, gathering them in only to send them forth again to wreathe about him. Sighing, he shook his head and climbed the steps to stand beside them.
One of the high bronze doors still stood proud, but the other had been shaken from its hinges, propped at an angle with a gap wide enough for a man to pass between them. Gandalf lit the top of his staff, but in truth, as they stepped into the dusty hallway, up ahead the roofless central chamber was bathed in sunlight and there lay the jumbled ruins of Denethor’s folly, in charred wood, crushed beneath broken marble.
Aragorn’s feet crunched on broken glass, as he strode towards the pyre. It was only as he came to the edge of the carpet of cold ashes that he felt a restraining hand on his arm. Elrond’s face was grave, directing Aragorn’s gaze towards where Gandalf circled the wreckage, his staff pointed into the base of the pyre. Gandalf was almost opposite them when he stopped and looked up to smile at Aragorn across the jumble of wood and stone.
“Here. It is here.”
Beside him, Aragorn felt Elrond stir and urge him forward. Aragorn took a few steps and then stopped abruptly, baulking like a wary horse, staring from one to the other. He had thought that he was done with mysteries. For all his life they had guided him, shaped him too and he could call to mind every moment through long years when they had gifted him another shard of his past to carve out something towards the future they urged on him. The light from above streamed down on them, sparking fire on Elrond’s circlet, masking Gandalf’s features amidst the blaze of white hair, and it seemed to Aragorn he had never felt so much a Man and these beloved figures at once so strange to him. Gandalf’s voice came clear and it took Aragorn a moment to realise that his lips were not moving.
“Denethor would have taken the palantir with him to his grave, but the seeing stones can not be destroyed by any fire of mortal man.”
Elrond’s voice, the accents of his youth, of gentle love, encouragement and counsel, sounded in Aragorn’s ear and it seemed to him he held his breath.
“These stones were for Gondor, for the use of its rulers across the vastness of its plains and valleys. You must take this one up again, Estel.”
Now Gandalf beckoned him onward and Aragorn forced limbs, gone cold and stiff to movement. Gandalf’s staff pointed towards a place where the ash lay thick below some charred timbers. He heard the sweep of Elrond’s robes on the dusty floor, following on behind him and before he could hesitate further, Aragorn fell to his knees and plunged both arms, deep into the pyre.
All at once a cloud of ash arose, clogging his nostrils, blanketing his eyes in a gritty haze and his hands – felt as though they sank through feathers in which sharp needles, charred splinters of wood, lay hidden to scratch at his skin – but it was there. The tips of his fingers ached, as they had that other time, and now they clutched at the smooth ball that, unseen in the choking dust, lay heavy in his hands.
As he began to draw it towards him, on either side Elrond and Gandalf lifted him to his feet. The ash swirled about their waists but above the cloud the three gazed solemnly on the sphere in Aragorn’s grasp. He would have smoothed the dirt from its surface, but Gandalf murmured low in his throat and taking the palantir gently from Aragorn he swathed it from the light in one hanging sleeve.
“Not here, Elessar. This stone should be set in its place again.”
Silently they had left the chamber, emerged into strong sunlight and as they trod the wide steps, Aragorn saw that Elrond’s stride barely faltered when from behind them came the groaning of masonry that had lost its last prop and then the crash as the bronze doors fell inwards. He thought that Gandalf half muttered something beneath his breath, but none spoke until they were returned to the citadel and gone up to the high place in the White Tower.
This small circular chamber, whose door had been guarded for generations, now stood wide, left forlorn, the stones whispering still of the bier that had borne Prince Faramir towards certain death and the Steward who had followed the procession, clutching to him the Anor-stone and the cloven halves of a great ox horn. There was a film of dust laying over the black marble plinth at its centre and Elrond, who had lingered on the staircase to instruct two of his own guard before closing the door, stepped forward and without ceremony wiped the top clean with his sleeve.
A few stubborn streaks of dust showed and Aragorn found his gaze drawn to them, as beside him Gandalf unwrapped the palantir and swept the dirt from its surface with a cloth taken from his pocket. Silently, he handed it to Aragorn who gently set the stone into the shallow depression carved into the top of the plinth and then all three stepped back for a moment in quietness.
“Will you try it, Estel?” Elrond’s voice sounded in the small room like an echo running about the stones, but Aragorn knew that this decision was his alone. Taking a deep breath he stepped forward and placed the fingertips of his left hand, never risking the sword-hand, onto the stone. Its cool surface seemed to draw his skin towards it and hold it there and now there was a prickle, a faint tickle of heat about his touch.
Watching him closely Elrond and Gandalf saw him draw himself up to his full height as though answering a challenge, but then with a cry he staggered back, snatching his hand from the stone. Elrond caught him else he would have fallen and Gandalf cast a cloth over the palantir that lay, seemingly quiet and dark on its black pillar.
As Aragorn struggled to regain the breath knocked from him, Elrond thought of the small boy who had fought to keep up with his playmates, climbing amongst the upper branches of the trees about Rivendell. How many times had he picked up the child from the grass beneath, who refused to cry, even when he broke an arm, but now there was such a haunted look on the man’s drawn features that Elrond dearly wished he could still cradle him and make all well again.
Gandalf came to him and looking deep into Aragorn’s face saying grimly, “What did you see?” and when he did not immediately reply, continued urgently, “Was it the Ithil-stone? Did it survive?”
Aragorn seemed to rouse himself then, returned Gandalf’s gaze and shook his head.
“I saw hands. Denethor’s hands burning and he would not let go. The silver bands about the Great Horn melted and ran over his skin, burned in to the bone but still he held them, the horn and the stone.”
Aragorn would not try the stone again, although he knew that as King he had the right and Gandalf and Elrond urged it on him. Instead he stood before the palantir and let his fingers circle it, wiping away the last of the dust before covering it over. He wondered why they had never let him see the Elendil-stone, safe with the elves of Lindon? It only looked to the West. Perhaps they dared not risk his falling in love with the sea? Perhaps he must train to wield them? These were tools his forefathers had used to see about their vast lands. They were tools he could employ in the re-forging of the joint kingdoms.
Perhaps it was too soon? Middle-Earth, he thought, was spinning on its axis, for with the destruction of the One Ring, the power of the great Rings had been swept away as well. They were so much fine decoration on the hands of those whose lives had been wedded to their service, who must find new ways to measure out their waning strength. The Fourth Age was fragile still, groping uncertainly towards a stable order and who knew how that would be shaped? So they left the room, left the stone to its dominion behind the re-locked and guarded door, and Elflord and Maiar returned to their walks on the battlements, heads bowed together.
Aragorn had not intended to return to the tower room so soon, but he had woken in the night and when he went to scoop up water from the basin, despite the risen moon, its surface was black, no gleam of starlight anywhere. So he had wrapped himself in a furred robe and slipped quietly out into the corridor, nodding briefly at the sentry who came smartly to salute. Torches flickered low, the flames shaking as his passing stirred the air.
No palace truly sleeps and he was aware of movement and low voices along corridors and behind doors as those who toiled, worked on unaware that their King was almost within touch. Once he stepped into an embrasure, turned his face away from the dim light and the Ranger became as another stone figure whilst a servant lass hurried past, her arms full of linen.
Drifting between the shadows in the Great Hall he gained the stairway and began to climb. The guards posted at each landing acknowledged his passing without comment and at the door of the chamber, the man lifted down the torch from its sconce to better light the key he had brought with him.
Within the small chamber he had lit the first of the wall lamps from the brand before the guard closed the door on him and he was alone with the stone, beneath its cover. He could not have said, that first time, quite what it was that he saught, except that Gandalf had told him that the stones were said to hold something of the past within them, as though old, lost images were imprinted within their depths, waiting to be drawn to the surface by those able to will it so.
He lifted the cloth away and once again placed his hand upon the cold sphere…and, hardy soul, this time he endured the agonising sight as Denethor’s flesh melted from his bones until he could almost swear he smelt the blasted skin and blackening nails. At last he turned away sickened, but not before a tear had fallen onto the cold stone. He would no more this night, covered the palantir, extinguished the lamps, one-by-one, and left, padding quietly down the winding stair.
If his queen knew of his absences, she said nothing, perhaps fearing to discover his true mind, but as the weeks passed he felt that he might yet control the horror, force the stone to give up its secrets, to give him what he now saw he craved above all things, sight of his lost love – and yet, he knew it for a sickness, railed against the weakness that would not let him accept the loss, when so many about him grieved and had none other to comfort them.
He loved her dearly, his elf-born queen and he would be true to her. Perhaps, giving up this vain quest would be, in the end, fair recompense for her sacrifice in coming to him? And yet he toiled on, struggling to acknowledge before the stone what it was he truly desired, for he knew that if Denethor had stored up for him glimpses of the man they had both loved and lost, it would only be by stripping away all pretence from his heart, looking into the palantir without artifice, all his energies focused on that one image, that he would break through its fiery end.
As he felt he grew closer to his goal, he no longer hid his sojourns with the stone, so that counsellors grew accustomed to being told that the King was in the White Tower and they must await his pleasure. About him the citadel and city moved on, but he felt as though he were treading water, not quite able to set his foot on a solid path forward.
On a morning when Minas Tirith was shrouded in softly falling rain, Aragorn stood before the palantir, determined this day to lay both hands upon the stone and to ask it to give him one moment to see his lover again as he had been in life, to take away the last image behind his eyes of the boat and the river and the keening elf, whose lament made the trees at the water’s edge dip their branches, drown their leaves at the boat’s passing.
It seemed to him that the rain shadows running on the stone walls let the whole city weep for its brave Captain. He had sent the guards down to the level of the Great Hall and the door stood wide to let in the noise of water running down the gutters.
As he stood before the plinth, Aragorn gazed on the palantir, quiet and cold, and whispered, so softly that the sound of the rain ran through his words like a drumbeat,
“Come back to me, love. It is so long a night, so weary a day without your smile.”
His hands clasped the palantir and it was as though the globe burst into flame. More brightly than ever before, the stone lit up the room: once again the old man’s tortured hands suffered and the fire licked across Aragorn’s skin too in waves of cold light, but he would not look away, would make the stone obey him…and the fire in the stone was blazing, no thing remained to be seen but flame, golden and sparks of green.
Through eyes misted with unshed tears Aragorn saw the fire burn out to a tiny spark that flickered – and was gone. Now the stone clasped within his hands showed dark, but not dark as in the blackness of Moria’s depths. This was a shadowed dark as though a fog had only to be blown aside, or something or someone had only to move towards him, to come out of the mist into the light, his light, to be seen.
He did not hear the man’s footfalls on the stair, for all it was a ranger’s soft step, so rapt was he by the stone for some ‘thing’ was there, a presence surely, and now it seemed as though he could see a shape emerging – broad shoulders, the strong outline of a beloved face, it was a pale shadow – if only, it would come clear – he would be there again – for one moment - to banish the river from his dreams.
As Aragorn held his breath, willing Boromir from the deepest of shadows, the outline began to harden, a curve about the brow, the strong nose and now the tears threatened to spill and as he blinked them away, the image shivered and came clearer – not his love and yet –
The gentle touch at his elbow took the breath from him as he spun about, rocked on his heels, so that Faramir clasped him at the shoulder to steady him. He wrenched himself away and turned again to the palantir and now what he saw was Faramir’s reflection in the glassy surface, alike and yet – it was gone, he was gone and Aragorn would never see him again!
Enraged, he would have struck out at Faramir, but came to himself with a jolt. Before him stood a man who had lost father and brother, dearly loved, and the father had been lost to him in this room, drowned in the despair wrought by the visions in the stone. What kind of king was he to place his private sorrows above those of others? Aragorn sagged, fighting for breath to steady his thundering heart and Faramir came to him, wrapped gentle arms about him and said nothing.
After some moments they turned away from the palantir and Faramir led him to one of the narrow windows. The catches were stiff, but at last he wrenched them open and pushed the shutter wide. Light streamed in to the chamber. The rain had stopped and from far below it was just possible to hear the sounds of city bells, a low murmur of bustle and from the courtyards of the citadel, the clop of horses’ feet as a string were led out.
Aragorn drew in great lung-fulls of the fresh air, sweet and rain-soaked, and wondered at the enduring nature of Men, that they could suffer so much and still retain hope, find beauty in the world and strength in those about them. There was a shadow of his lost love in the good and gentle man beside him and he was blessed to know Faramir for himself and for the memories of Boromir too.
As they descended the spiral stairway down to the Great Hall, Aragorn thought of the other one, the Orthanc-stone. He would send it home, to lie surrounded by Treebeard’s new forest. If he had need to look about his lands it would be good to walk to the trial through avenues of young trees. Perhaps he might live long enough to walk in their shade, draw strength from their roots gone deep into earth that healed all things set in it and on it.
In the little tower room the palantir lay, the cloth that usually covered it, unused beside it. The sunlight streamed, rainbow-hued, in to fall on the face of the stone and in it, the golden-haired man turned away smiling and the babe, strapped to his back in a sling, slept on.
Summary: Cold Pressing AU Prologue "not all those who wander are lost."
Rated: G
Categories: LOTR FPS Pairing: Aragorn/Boromir
Warnings: NoneChallenges:
Series: NoneChapters: 1 Completed: Yes
Word count: 3718 Read: 945
Published: 29 Jul 2009 Updated: 29 Jul 2009
Story Notes:
DISCLAIMER: "These characters originate with their copyright holders. I borrow them for entertainment, not profit."