The Last Ringbearer (47 page)

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 highest 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 don’t have the 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 Gho used to say: ‘An honest division of labor: clean hands for the mastermind, clean conscience for the executor.’”

“Who was this Su Vey Gho?”

“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, breaking into orange spots against its far wall; the spots looked live and warm and seemed to try 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 her real age is scary to even think about. 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, this 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 a simple silver ring covered with scuffed Elvish runes out of 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?”

CHAPTER 59

Y 
es, 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 if 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 represent 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 he had won – all that was left was the endgame, with an extra piece.

“Some preliminary explanations first. Eloar separated from his platoon 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 flesh might impress the Shire bumpkins, but not me. I’ve fought the Orcs for four years and know the score: those guys have always admired brave foes and treated prisoners humanely – 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 murder 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 Lórien’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 bring up princes or supervise 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 Lórien would never agree to such an exchange, since the prisoner is 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, though: should anyone in Lórien 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 Lórien. 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 prison camps upside down and …”

“You’ll get your guarantees, don’t worry. They wouldn’t have started this whole complicated business with setting up a secret meeting only to blow the prisoner exchange, would they? They’ve even offered …” Grager made a dramatic pause. “Would you like to see him?”

She sat up: “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
palantír
while you look into yours …”

Eornis shook her head. “We don’t have Seeing Stones in Lórien.”

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 that prisoner – what else could you do? But they, too, demand guarantees: there are ways to locate one
palantír
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
palantír
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
palantír
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 what things are like 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 Lórien. Therefore, on August first, when your
palantír
starts sending, they want to see in it something that can only be in Lórien … You know, at that point they’ve gotten really paranoid and we’ve spent almost half an hour figuring out some Lórien 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; ah, 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
palantír
out of the sack and switch it from ‘receive’ to ‘two-way’ mode, and over in Mordor they will see Galadriel’s Mirror; then another switch and 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
palantíri
. Any objections?”

“We can’t do this,” she said suddenly in a hollow voice; he immediately noted the ‘we’ – everything’s going smoothly.

“What’s the problem?”

“No magical objects may be brought into Lórien without the knowledge of the Star Council. The
palantíri
are charged with very powerful magic, so I simply 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 the Lord and the Lady. The border guard obeys the
clofoel
of Tranquility and no one else.”

“Well, if the border guard is the only hitch, then I’m glad to solve this small problem that you think insurmountable,” Grager said with calculated casualness. “The
palantír
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 serious 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 in advance … 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 sooner: 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 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 backstabbing 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 trust her with a penknife, much less a
palantír
. 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?”