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“Annúminas,” Halbarad whispered. He laid a reverent hand on the ancient stones in front of him, the foundation of some once-mighty tower.
“Yes,” said Aragorn behind him, and Halbarad could hear a hint of the same reverence in his kinsman’s voice. “We rest here tonight.”
Halbarad looked at his cousin – his Chieftain – in surprise; it was not even midday.
“Ruin though it may be now,” Aragorn continued, “this is the home of our ancestors, and the city we hope to rebuild. Though his errantries may bring him here but rarely, every Ranger ought to know this place.”
Halbarad was not yet twenty, and only now deemed ready to take up a Ranger’s duties; the journey from Fornost as far as Lake Evendim, where the ruins of Annúminas stood, was the longest he had yet made.
Aragorn shrugged off his pack and leaned it against a stone. Halbarad hesitated before doing the same, then waited for instruction. Each evening of their journey so far, Aragorn had set Halbarad different duties: now finding a place to make camp, now building the fire, now skinning and cooking the rabbit they caught for dinner. It was as though his cousin were testing him, though Halbarad had learned such things when still a child.
Today, Aragorn gave him a new task.
“Athelas grows here,” he said. “Come with me, and I will show you how to find it.”
Aragorn led Halbarad on a roundabout path through the ruins of the ancient city. Every few minutes, he crouched and looked closely at patches of greenery growing at the base of old stone walls; each time, he stood again, shaking his head.
“Athelas favors those places where our people lived of old,” Aragorn said, “and once grew plentifully here. But it is scarcer now than I have ever seen it.”
“Is it because the Shadow is growing?” Halbarad ventured hesitantly. It was something he often heard his grandmother and her friends say, when they complained that the weather was worse than it had been in their youth, and the harvests scantier: See how the Shadow is growing.
“Yes,” said Aragorn, and there was weariness in his voice. “Even in such a place as this, the Shadow grows.”
At the center of the ruined city was a high, rocky hill, encircled by the remnants of fortifications. It was to this hill that Aragorn turned their steps. As they reached the outermost of the crumbling stone walls, Aragorn beckoned Halbarad over to an unremarkable patch of shrubbery.
“Here,” he said, “in the shadow of this bush; athelas is always found in shade, never on the open hillside.”
Halbarad looked, and saw a plant with long, narrow leaves, growing close to the ground under a bramble bush.
Aragorn reached out and plucked a single leaf, then handed it to Halbarad.
“Learn it well,” he said. “What it looks like, feels like, smells like. Do the same for all the most useful herbs you know; someday, you should know them well enough to find them in the dark by scent alone.”
Aragorn took out his boot-knife and cut several sprigs of athelas, tucking them into a little pouch on his belt.
“Always leave enough for the plant to recover and thrive,” he said, “and then there will be more when next you pass the same way.”
As Aragorn put away his knife, Halbarad bruised the leaf between his fingers, then held it up to his nose. The scent was fresh and sweet, and eased his travel-wearied mind. He tucked the leaf into the wallet at his belt.
“Was this the center of the city?” Halbarad asked, gazing at the low, crumbling remnants of strong walls that ringed the hill.
Aragorn nodded.
“The center and the citadel,” he said. “At the start, all the inhabitants of the city dwelt within those fortifications, and the surrounding land was only for crops. As the city grew, the houses began to spill out across the plains – but in times of strife, the whole population would retreat inside these inner walls. The city’s granaries were here, and a well; it is said in all the years the city stood, this spring never once ran dry.”
Halbarad struggled to imagine what Annúminas would have been like in its heyday, when all these ruined buildings were inhabited. The little village of the Dúnedain near Fornost was nothing in comparison.
“We are so diminished,” Halbarad said at last. And left unspoken: If this great city fell to the Shadow, how can we hope to stand against it?
“Yes – but many evil things there are that strong walls and bright swords do not stay,” replied Aragorn, “and to stand against them is not a matter of might.” And Halbarad saw that his kinsman perceived his hidden fears, and perhaps had shared them once – or shared them still.
Aragorn was silent for a moment, then shook his head a little, as if to dispel dark thoughts. When he spoke again, his tone was light.
“Annúminas may be a ruin, but she is yet fair. Rarely do our duties bring us here, but when they do, we should stay at least a short span, for the city remains a place that refreshes the heart.”
~*~
Halbarad picked his way carefully through the field of broken stone that surrounded the high hill. Here and there, part of a building remained standing. On one half-fallen wall, the faintest traces of paint remained. Halbarad stood before it for several minutes, trying to discern what the ancient mural might have shown, but it was too weathered to make out.
Not far away, he could see Aragorn, lost in his own contemplations as he walked along ancient paths.
Continuing toward the center of the ancient city, Halbarad nearly stumbled over a piece of twisted metal, more rust than steel, lying beside a gap in the tumbledown remains of a wall. Looking closer, he saw it was the remnant of an ancient sword, dropped by one of the city’s fallen defenders – or, he supposed, by one of the horde of foes. He picked it up to look closer, but as he lifted it, the ancient blade began to crumble to pieces. Setting it down gently, he walked on.
A hundred or so feet ahead, he spotted tracks in the dusty soil: the prints of a hound, still fairly fresh. It seemed another Ranger had been there not long before – or perhaps some other wanderer, as it was unusual for a Ranger to keep a hound. Still, Annúminas did not go entirely desolate and unvisited but for them.
The hillside was a sheer cliff until halfway up on the side that faced Halbarad. But as he drew near, he saw that the rock face was broken by a high, arched doorway, half-concealed behind a pair of trees. Past the door, he could see only darkness.
He examined the carved arch of the doorway, and looked around the ground outside, but he found nothing to suggest what might be within: only more prints of the same hound.
Taking flint and steel from his belt, he picked up a branch that had fallen from one of the trees, and set one end alight as a makeshift torch; the wood was hard, and burned slowly. Holding the light before him, he stepped cautiously through the door.
In the flickering light, he saw that the tunnel he entered had begun as a natural cavern, worn by water; the surface of the walls was still irregular, but the floor had been leveled by men’s hands, though it was still far from smooth. The path sloped slightly upward, and the torchlight did not reach far enough for him to see where it led.
Walking forward, he had taken scarcely a dozen steps beyond the entrance when he heard something that chilled him to the bone: From the darkness came a low, rumbling growl.
Heart hammering, Halbarad backed slowly the way he had come, holding the torch out before him, hoping that whatever beast dwelt in the tunnel would not follow him.
But his hope was in vain, for as he drew near to the door, he saw the snarling face of a wolf enter the circle of torchlight, its eyes glittering strangely with the fire’s red glow.
His heel slipped on a pebble, and he stumbled, breath catching in his throat – if he fell, it would surely be over for him. But he righted himself, and continued, placing his feet as carefully as he could on the tunnel's uneven floor.
Wolf tracks, he thought, curiously calm, as he emerged at last from the cavern, half-dazzled by the bright sun, branches catching at his cloak like grasping, skeletal hands – no hound at all. And then, as the wolf, too, passed through the doorway: I am going to die.
The wolf paced before him, but did not come closer than a few steps away: it plainly knew fire, and had learned to fear it. Yet Halbarad’s makeshift torch was burning low, and when it burnt out, he doubted his meager skill with the sword would be enough to save him – if he would even have time to draw it before the beast was on him.
“Aragorn!” he cried, as loud as he could, and then again, the shout scraping his throat raw: “ARAGORN!”
The torch was guttering down to embers. The wolf, hungry gaze intent on Halbarad, was poised to spring.
Ai, Elbereth –
A rock the size of Halbarad’s fist whistled past his left ear and struck the wolf in the shoulder. The wolf whirled around to face this new threat; Halbarad turned too, just in time to see it leap at Aragorn, slavering jaws open wide.
The leap was too quick for Halbarad to see; it was as if it had already happened by the time it began. The wolf collided with Aragorn, knocking him to the ground. There was a sudden gush of blood, and a horrible gurgling noise, though whether man or beast had made it Halbarad could not tell.
“Aragorn!” Halbarad dropped the torch and sprinted toward his kinsman, his own danger forgotten.
Aragorn was sitting up by the time Halbarad reached him. His face and clothing were drenched in blood. The wolf lay beside him, its throat cut open deep enough to show the bone.
Narsil, covered in blood as well, rested on the ground beside Aragorn; broken the blade of Isildur’s heir might be, but its edge was no less keen.
Aragorn was alive, certainly – but Halbarad saw, when he looked closer, that he had not escaped unscathed. He kept his right hand pressed to his left shoulder, where his sleeve was torn open, and a trickle of fresh blood ran down his arm.
Aragorn saw where Halbarad was looking, and smiled reassuringly.
“It is nothing too serious, though it will need to be stitched.” Aragorn was breathing hard, his weathered face pinched with pain. “There are needle, thread, and bandages in my pack, if you will go and fetch it.”
Halbarad retraced his steps to where he and Aragorn had left their packs, not far away, hurrying as fast as he dared over the rough ground.
~*~
Halbarad knew how to sew a seam, or mend a rent in fabric. But at the thought of sewing up the ragged gash in Aragorn’s shoulder, he could feel his hands begin to shake. Facing the warg, though terrified, his mind had nonetheless been curiously focused; now, when the danger was gone, his thoughts were scattered like leaves in a strong wind.
“We should wash the wound first,” Aragorn said calmly. “Make a fire, and boil a little water – use the tin cup in my pack.”
When the water was hot, Aragorn took a couple of leaves of athelas and dropped them in. The steam took on the fresh green scent of the plant itself, and Halbarad felt his fear fade and his thoughts grow calmer.
“One of the many virtues of athelas is to prevent infection,” Aragorn explained. “There are other herbs that do so as well – thyme is one of the most common – but athelas is the strongest, when it can be spared.”
Aragorn had taken off his tunic, jerkin, and cloak, all covered in the warg’s blood, to allow Halbarad to tend the wound. His lean body was cris-crossed by scars: sword cuts, burns, the marks of claw and tooth. The wound he took in Halbarad’s defense was only one of dozens he had borne, and far from the worst.
Aragorn clenched his jaw at the first touch of water to the wound, but made no sound.
"Now, you must stitch it," said Aragorn. "First, clean the needle and thread in the hot water."
Halbarad did so, though his hands had begun to tremble again, and he dropped the needle in the cup and had to fish it out.
"You have not done this before," Aragorn said. It was not a question.
Halbarad shook his head.
Aragorn made a gesture in front of him, miming pinching something together.
"You must hold the sides of the wound together with one hand," he said, "and stitch with the other. Make the stitches tight."
Halbarad swallowed sharply as he leaned over to reach the injury. Steeling himself, he reached out and pinched the edges of the gash together.
Aragorn winced and let out his breath in a sharp hiss. Halbarad let go immediately, an apology ready on his lips, but Aragorn held up his other hand to stop him.
"No," he said, "that was right. There is no way to keep it from hurting."
Halbarad took hold of the torn flesh once more, fingers slippery with blood.
“Simply in one side and out the other,” said Aragorn, “and then cross over outside the wound and in once again, a little beside the first.”
Aragorn made no sound as Halbarad pushed the needle through his flesh. He watched Halbarad’s hands as he stitched his way down the wound, then calmly explained to him how to tie the stitches off. For all the reaction he showed, Halbarad might have been helping him remove a splinter.
As he cut the end of the thread, Halbarad found his composure had returned, and his hands were steady as he wrapped the wound snugly in clean linen. Aragorn rolled his shoulder and moved his arm back and forth, testing the range of movement, then nodded in approval.
“Good work.” He held out his other hand, and Halbarad pulled him to his feet.
Aragorn reached down and picked up Narsil, then took up his cloak and carefully wiped the blade clean. The garment was already so soaked with gore, Halbarad supposed one more stain would not matter.
As he turned away from Halbarad to clean the sword, Halbarad saw yet more scars on his back; with a lurch in his stomach, he recognized them as the marks of a lash. Thoughtless, Halbarad opened his mouth to ask – what? What could he say? He closed it again.
"The tracks, then," said Aragorn, evidently having cleaned Narsil to his satisfaction; he slipped the broken blade back into its long sheath. "Show me where you saw them."
He did not put his tunic back on. Plainly anticipating Halbarad's question, he said, "It needs washing, badly – and so do I!” He laughed. “Lake Evendim will do for that, but first we must make sure the beast was alone; for where there is one warg, only rarely are there not more.”
“Wargs?” asked Halbarad in surprise. “I thought it was a wolf – though I have seen neither before. Yet I thought wargs were larger.”
“It was young, not yet full-grown,” said Aragorn. “I will show you on the carcass the differences between the two.”
Halbarad led him to the tracks near the doorway. Aragorn crouched to examine them for a long moment, then stood, nodding.
"There are tracks of only one beast," he said. “I had not thought the wargs had come this far. And they are most often found in the service of Orcs, who do not favor this place. It seems they have not yet made it here in force, at least."
He knelt, motioning for Halbarad to join him.
"In truth," Aragorn continued, "it is difficult for even an experienced man to tell the difference between a large hound and a wolf, given the mark of only one paw. With a track, it is easier; wolves and wargs travel in a straight line, while a hound darts here and there as it pleases. But a warg may be identified from just one print." He pointed to one of the prints. "Tell me what you make of these claw-marks."
Halbarad looked closely, and indeed the marks of the claws were longer than they would be in a hound’s print.
"A warg’s claws are harder and sharper than those of a wolf or hound," Aragorn continued. "Somewhat like a bear's, though the warg does not swipe with its paws in the same way. Still," he added, a wry note to his voice, "one should be wary of the claws as well as the teeth – as we have seen today!"
He turned to Halbarad again, and Halbarad felt his face flush with humiliation.
Halbarad had come on this journey confident in the skills he had learned, eager to show his chieftain he was worthy of a Ranger's duties – and he had made a very poor showing, in every respect. Oh, perhaps not everything, he thought with dark humor: he could skin a rabbit, and make a fire. But in all else, it seemed he had failed.
He had blundered into danger through his own folly, and needed to be rescued – and worst of all, Aragorn had been hurt in rescuing him.
Aragorn's expression turned gentle; clearly his perceptive kinsman saw his turmoil.
"Halbarad," he said, "you have not done badly today. Truly."
Halbarad shook his head, incredulous. "Not done badly? When I misread the signs like a foolish child, and stumbled into a warg's lair? When I could not so much as draw my sword in my own defense, and needed you to save me?”
"Do not compare yourself to me!” Aragorn replied. “I am more than three times your age, and for much of that I have been wandering in the Wild. If I misread the signs, I might have cause to think it folly. But though you are come to manhood, you are young yet, and still learning."
"And yet I am to call myself a Ranger? I am still so ignorant!"
Aragorn chuckled. "Think you I will send you into the Wild alone? No, you will walk with me a while, and with others of our folk, and learn from doing, as you have learned so far by listening."
Halbarad was abashed. It had been arrogant, he saw at once, to think the skills he learned in Fornost made him the peer of a man such as Aragorn, who had wandered as far south as Harad and as far east as Rhûn in his time.
Aragorn stood, and returned to the body of the warg. Its ribs stood out starkly under patchy fur.
“This troubles me,” he said grimly. “It is rare for wargs to be seen west of the Misty Mountains, and I have never seen one in Annúminas. Though this one, at least, was not in the company of Orcs.”
He crouched and examined the bloody carcass. “It was starving,” he said at last. “Separated somehow from its pack – forced out, I would guess, to come this far afield, though we cannot be certain. In any case, either one of us might have made a hearty meal.” He laughed softly, the same wry tone returning to his voice. “Though I wager it would find me tough and stringy! But I promised you a lesson, and you shall have it. Here,” he said, pointing, “see the breadth of the shoulders, and of the neck? This is much greater than in a wolf – already it is so in this one, and it is not yet full-grown.
“The face, as well, is different: The warg’s fangs are longer, and the snout shorter – though those are not differences you wish to be close enough to see, while the beast yet lives! And the ears are smaller in proportion to the head.”
He stood again and ran a hand over his face, grimacing.
“Now I need a wash,” he said, “so let us head for the lakeshore – though I would return to this door, for I, too, am curious as to what lies beyond. And though I would have done so somewhat more cautiously than you, I myself would have dared to pass it, even had I been alone."
~*~
Returning from the lake, cleaned of the warg’s blood and dressed in fresh clothing, Aragorn strode towards the entrance to the cavern. As Halbarad had, he picked up a branch from the ground. He handed it to Halbarad, then drew Narsil.
"Light this," he said. "I will go first, with blade drawn. You come behind me, and carry the fire – but draw your sword, too, in your other hand. If I were not wounded, I would take the torch, for it is well to have the fire at the front. But as things are, I fear it would prove too much strain for this arm." He rolled his shoulder, grimacing a little.
Halbarad lit the makeshift torch, and followed Aragorn nervously through the doorway. They walked through the tunnel slowly, blades drawn. Halbarad’s heart hammered in his chest as he listened for the sound of another beast in the dark.
Before long, they passed beyond the point Halbarad had encountered the warg, and all was still silent.
The tunnel began to slope more steeply upward, and glimmers of pale light were visible ahead. As they drew closer to the light, another sound joined their breathing and footsteps – but this was no animal. Instead, it was the faint sound of running water. Halbarad felt the hint of a breeze on his face, bringing with it a familiar scent.
“Aragorn,” he asked hesitantly, “do you smell that? Is it – surely it cannot be athelas?”
A few steps ahead, the tunnel opened up into a vast, light-filled cavern. Halbarad squinted, half-dazzled.
“A Elbereth! A Ilúvatar!” cried Aragorn beside him, his voice filled with wonder. “Truly is every ill chance turned to a greater good.”
Daylight streamed in from a hole in the cavern's domed roof. Where it struck the walls, they gleamed with brilliant colors as if made of gems, a vast expanse of deep, rich blue dotted with silvery stars. The air was cool and fresh, and filled with the sound of running water.
And as far as the eye could see, the ground was covered in a lush green carpet of athelas.
Halbarad put out the half-burned torch on the tunnel floor, and left it there for them to use when they returned. Stepping forward into the light, he peered curiously at the wall beside the entryway, and saw that what he had taken for gemstones were tiny pieces of pottery, glazed with vibrant colors the likes of which Halbarad had never seen. Some ancient craftsman had fixed them to the stone in intricate patterns: Green vines climbed around the doorway to the tunnel, twining around each other in overlapping curves, adorned here and there with golden flowers.
Around the whole cavern, the walls were adorned with the image of a city. Graceful towers of tawny stone reached up into a starry sky beside wide plazas lined with trees. A high wall encircled everything, but its many gates stood open – this was a city at peace.
“What is this place?” Halbarad asked in a hushed voice. “Is it an image of Númenor?”
Aragorn shook his head. “Not Númenor, but her successor, I believe. This place is the heart of Annúminas. What should surround this spring but an image of the city it once fed?”
Halbarad looked at the cityscape with fresh eyes, trying to match the images of glory to the ruins that lay outside. Beside him, Aragorn stood silent for a long moment.
“A Elbereth!” he said again at last. “My heart turned to despair for what was lost, and you showed me what remains, and what may be reborn.” And he began to sing:
“A Elbereth Gilthoniel
o menel palan-díriel,
le nallon sí di’nguruthos!
A tiro nin, Fanuilos!”
In his voice great joy was mingled with ancient grief. Halbarad’s vision blurred; without knowing it, he had begun to weep.
In the center of the cavern, where light shone most brightly, a spring bubbled up in a wide basin. Through the clear water, Halbarad could see the design on the bottom: Picked out in silver was a great rayed star, a mirror of the one that clasped his own cloak – the star of the Dúnedain.
Aragorn fell to his knees and, cupping water in his hands, drank deeply. Halbarad did so after him. The water was sweet and cold, and bore an echo of the freshness of the athelas that surrounded it.
“It still has never failed,” Halbarad said. “The city is in ruins, and the Shadow grows, but the spring is still here.” Aragorn nodded.
“So are her people, and we have not forgotten. Even now we wear the symbol of our ancestors, though in the wild rather than in city walls. And though some may think it folly, I hope yet for Annúminas to be restored.”
~*~
They made camp that night beside the spring. Supper was salted fish and hard waybread, the latter soaked in water until it was edible – and Halbarad found that such were the virtues of that spring, the plain waybread renewed him as if it were a much heartier meal.
The sun set, and the cavern fell into darkness. Halbarad lay back, head pillowed on his cloak. Through the gap in the roof, the Evening Star shone brightly, and its light kindled the tiled stars upon the walls until he might almost have thought he lay beneath the open sky.
Aragorn spread his damp cloak out to dry, then stretched out on the ground beside Halbarad with a sigh.
“Many fair things have I seen in my years of wandering,” he said softly, “but few so fair as this.”
“Have you ever seen anything like these images?” Halbarad asked.
“In Gondor, this art is still practiced,” Aragorn answered. “But only once have I seen anything that might rival this, and that was in the Court of the Fountain in Minas Tirith, where the White Tree once grew. There the walls bear the likeness of lost Númenor, of the gardens of Ar-Pharazôn, from which Isildur took the fruit that was that fair tree’s forebear.”
“What is Minas Tirith like?” Halbarad ventured.
Aragorn was silent for a long moment, long enough that Halbarad began to fear he had overstepped. An apology was on the tip of his tongue when Aragorn spoke again:
“Here in the North, we Dúnedain are wanderers in the wild. We dream of rebuilding the cities of our ancestors, and keep their memory alive in story and song; but we dream of things none of us has ever seen.
“The Shadow looms near and cold over the Tower of Guard, and that great city too has diminished from her past glory. But her streets are the streets Anárion walked, and the guards of the Citadel wear yet the emblem of the White Tree upon their raiment. I nearly wept when first I saw that sign borne upon a living breast, for ere then I had seen it only in books that told the names and deeds of men long dead.”
“Will you ever go back?” Halbarad asked.
“It may be that I shall return to Minas Tirith,” his kinsman replied. “And should that day come, I hope you will be by my side. Yet for now, though I grieved to leave that fair city behind, my place is here.”
Halbarad asked nothing more, and soon Aragorn’s breathing slowed and evened out in sleep. But Halbarad lay awake. In his mind’s eye he saw again the warg as it leapt at Aragorn.
~*~
The Rangers woke at dawn, golden light streaming down from the ceiling of the cavern and falling across their faces. The leaves about them were moistened with dew, and the sunlight glittered on the dewdrops as brightly as it shimmered on the tiled walls.
They broke their fast with more waybread, still sitting beside the spring. Before leaving, Aragorn unbound the bandage from his shoulder. He checked the wound, finding nothing of concern, and beckoned Halbarad to wrap it again.
Midday found the Rangers miles from Lake Evendim, heading southward toward the Shire. They stopped to take the noon meal beneath the spreading branches of a great oak, and drank sparingly of the springwater that filled their leather flasks and still tasted faintly of sweet athelas.
“A long and lonely road is appointed for a man of our people,” said Aragorn, when they were done. “I will not hide it from you. It is a Ranger’s lot to face danger and privation in the Wild, and in a town he is met with scorn on every side. For a time yet you shall walk it with me, and with other Rangers – but before many years have passed you shall walk it alone, with only your own memories and hopes to strengthen your resolve.”
“I have hope,” said Halbarad, “though I think it unlikely I shall live to see that hope fulfilled. Hope for our people, that we will endure the Shadow and someday rebuild our ancient home. But whatever may come, to have walked in Annúminas will evermore gladden my heart.”
~*~
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.