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“You need to be in bed.”
“I need,” said Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain, hero of the Battle of Five Armies and betrayer. “To find Bilbo.”
Dáin's face twisted. “The thief? What for?”
“He is not thief,” Thorin stared down his cousin. Dáin looked away first.
“You've become strange since you woke from your sickbed,” Dáin said. “You should go back, sleep some more. This madness will pass.”
“Why will you not listen ,” Thorin pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to breathe through the frustration that wanted to choke him. “Bilbo –,” Dáin scoffed. That was just the limit.
The resulting brawl was broken up by Dwalin and Nori and two of Dáin's personal guards. Which was another wrong thing. Dáin, while Thorin's cousin and nominally in charge until Thorin could stand without help, should not have been walking about the royal wing with guards .
Something very strange was going on.
“Sit down, your royal idiot, and let me look at those stitches,” Óin pointed at the bed after Dáin was dragged out, unconscious.
“You need to check Dáin. Something is wrong with him.”
“Sit, laddie,” Óin's finger did not waver. “Right now. I'll see to him in a minute. We'll look you over first.”
“But I –”
“Thorin,” Dwalin put a hand on his shoulder and Thorin felt the fight go out of him.
After being put back to bed with half his stitches redone – Dáin was a brutal brawler, even addled as he must be – Thorin could not sleep. Dwalin stayed in his rooms, as was fitting for a Consort, but the rest of his Company came and went in twos and threes, none of them alone for long.
In the mid-watch they had all gathered, Balin and Glóin sitting in plush chairs by a roaring fire, Ori dozing against Nori, who was watching Thorin with dark, glittering eyes. Dori stood at the window, his arms folded across his chest. Óin was at the table, quill scratching across paper in his journal. Bofur and Bifur were curled up on the rug in front of the fire, seemingly asleep if Thorin hadn't seen the way Bofur's hands were clenched tight in his jerkin. Bombur had just returned from the kitchen with a late night snack for them all. Fíli and Kíli were in the adjoining rooms, still too wounded to be awake for more than minutes at a time.
Thorin drew in a shaky breath and raised his head, looking Nori in the eyes for the first time since they had all woken from what felt like a terrible dream. “Tell me,” he rasped.
Nori's smile was razor thin and as cold as the look in his eyes. “Where would my king wish me to start?”
“Nori. Please.”
“Shall I tell you how you ordered us to thrown him from the ramparts?”
Thorin closed his eyes for a moment and did not tell him to stop.
Nori's smile grew teeth. “Shall I tell you how we fell over ourselves to obey your word? Shall I tell you how by some miracle B-Bilbo managed to free himself? Shall I tell you how I almost slid a knife between his ribs? Shall I tell you how Dwalin took him by the throat? Shall I tell you how it took a wizard's spell to free him from us?” Nori leaned forward. Thorin met that shining gaze. “Shall I tell you how, after he saved us all, how Dwalin turned him from our camps, declared him Outcast, Betrayer, and Enemy of Erebor? Shall I tell you how three dwarves came to me after and I rewarded them for the blood of the hobbit on their fists? Is that what you wanted to hear me say, oh King Under the Mountain?”
“Nori,” Ori's soft voice said. He put a hand on Nori's arm. “It's not your fault.”
“The only people here who did not hurt our Burglar, dear brother, are you and Bofur. Tell me just how, exactly, it is not our fault.”
“The gold sickness,” Dwalin said. He sat at the side of Thorin's bed, head bowed and back bent. “We were all taken by it.”
Nori let out a hiss but eased back when Ori pulled at his shirt.
“Óin?” Thorin looked to their healer.
Óin rubbed a hand over his face and put down his quill. “Near as I can make of it, Dwalin is right. All of our recollections are...dimmed from the moment we went mad in the treasury. It seems to have struck you the worst. The boys,” Óin's mouth twisted. “It doesn't seem to have hit them as hard. They just wished to make you...proud.”
“Proud,” Thorin wanted to be sick. He swallowed down a rush of saliva. “What pride is there in this? We almost let our kinsmen die on the field of battle. I,” he held up a hand. “I almost let our kinsmen die on the field of battle while I would have had us hide behind our gates like cowards or worse. Bilbo saved us.” He saw how the words struck all of them. “Bilbo saved us countless times. He brought the armies to our rescue. He saved me from the White Orc's blade, saved Dwalin, saved my boys. And I could not see it. I could not anything but this bloody be-cursed gold ,” Thorin had to stop and cough, bent over and hacking. By the time he was able to sit back a bloody rag was dropped into the bin by the side of the bed and Dwalin was fussing with Thorin's blankets. Óin had gone back to his journals. “Where is Gandalf?”
“Gone,” Balin said. “He left when Dáin declared Erebor retaken for our people. He would not allow the wizard, Bard or the elf king into so much as the front hall.”
“We need to find him, to get him here,” Thorin took the cup of water Dwalin pressed into his hands. “He will know where Bilbo went.”
“And if he does? Do you think Gandalf will tell us where he went? Do you think our Burglar would even want to see us?” Nori was the one to voice those bitter words.
“I think,” Thorin said, exhaustion creeping in at the corners of his vision. “That we must at least try. We owe Bilbo that much and more.”
Sleep took him sooner than he wanted. Thorin closed his eyes to his Company in the room. He woke to a dwarf he did not know standing over his bed with a dagger held high.
The resulting fight brought the guards, brought Dwalin, brought his Company, brought his Councilors, brought many things to his rooms and to light. Thorin was injured yet again, stuck in his damnable bed, waiting out a pierced lung and several other wounds that were slow to heal.
Into that mess came the wizard at last.
“You, Thorin Oakenshield, are the very last being on Arda that I had thought would summon me here.”
“I am sorry,” Thorin kept his chin up by sheer will alone. He saw the wizard blink and rock back on his heels. The pursed, angry expression on Tharkûn's face eased. “We – I – was struck by the gold sickness. I did not see it, not until it was too late. It is already spreading through many here. Is there a way to cleanse our Mountain of it, so that our people might be free of that sickness forever?”
Gandalf sighed, the high set to his shoulders dropping. He took a seat next to Thorin's bed and put his staff to one side. “I see,” he murmured. “I accept your apology, King Thorin, and I am glad for it.”
“Can you help my people?” Thorin curled his hands into fists in the covers.
Gandalf looked at him for a long, long moment. Then, “Perhaps, but the price, King Thorin, may be too high for you to pay.”
“I will pay it,” Thorin grit out. “I will pay anything to keep my people safe, to keep them sane, to keep them healthy and whole and well. Name your price. I shall pay it.”
“And should my price be your crown?”
Thorin closed his eyes for a long moment. “Fíli will be a good King. Better than me. Better than Dáin. He is the hope of our people. I would gladly pass the crown to him.”
In the silence the fire crackled. Óin had ordered the servants to open the windows for a while, to clear the air of its stuffiness. There was blue sky on the horizon. All of his life he had dreamed of retaking Erebor, to leading his people back to their rightful home. He had done it. He had accomplished that dream. And in doing so had turned it into a nightmare that haunted his every waking hour. How could he call himself King Under the Mountain? What kind of king would he make with such stains on his history, on his honor, on his soul?
“I see,” Gandalf's sigh seemed to fill the whole room. “It is a price, Thorin, I will not make you pay.”
Thorin jerked his gaze to the wizard, some strange emotion tangled in his throat.
“You have passed your test, Thorin Oakenshield. The gold will no longer hold sway over you now. As for your people...it is the remains of the dragon that has caused the curse to spread to such a degree. It will take time and effort, but I am willing to cleanse your Mountain for you. But on one condition.”
“Name it.”
“Where,” Gandalf leaned forward and Thorin felt his bones freeze in fear. There was something other in the wizard's eyes, something Thorin had never seen before. “Is Bilbo Baggins?”
Thorin blinked and blinked again, the question making no sense in his head. “That's what I wished to ask of you.”
It was Gandalf's turn to blink. That otherness disappeared. Gandalf opened his mouth. Closed it. Bushy brows came together, drawing low. Then, “What do you mean?”
Thorin stared back at him. “We do not know where our Bilbo has gone. We were still gold-mad when he left. Nori said some dwarrow came to him, saying they had beaten Bilbo quite badly. We thought...” Thorin faltered, watching Gandalf's expression twist. “We thought he was with you .”
“He was not. He has not been. He is not with Thranduil, nor with Bard. He did not even go with Beorn. Your Mountain was the last place I had to check.”
“Could he – could he have gone back to his home?”
“To the Shire? He is not there. They have declared him dead, his possessions have been sold and his home given away to relatives. I have sent many letters, no one has seen him at all.”
“Impossible,” Thorin choked out. It felt as though all the air in the room had left. “Where could he be? Is he...do you think he is...” Thorin could not even say the word.
“No,” Gandalf turned his strange stare toward the fire, a deep frown still etched into the lines of his face. “Bilbo Baggins lives yet, but where he has gone I cannot say. And I must find him. I must.”
“Why?”
Gandalf did not speak for some time. Long enough for the wizard to take out his pipe and fire it, long enough for the thin curl of blue smoke to drift out the window in lazy spirals. Finally the wizard let out the longest sigh Thorin had ever heard and took the pipe from his mouth. “Bilbo found something in the mountains, when the rest of you were fighting the goblin king. A trinket, he told me at first. A mathom. It was...strange, that he would not let me see it. Would not even speak of it. I put it aside, thinking to question him later on it. But three nights ago I woke from a terrible dream.”
“That is when our gold sickness ended as well.”
Sharp eyes pinned Thorin in place. “I do not believe that is a coincidence. Our Bilbo has found something, something quite terrible, something powerful, something that was lost thousands of years ago. Something that might yet change the entire world if certain powers found it once more.”
“What could Bilbo have found in the mountains?”
“Tell me, Thorin. What do you know of the One Ring of Sauron?”
Thorin heard a faint ringing in his ears. “The One Ring is lost.”
“And so, it has been found.”
Thorin felt as thought he might be sick. “He cannot – he must not – he is – he is alone ! He must get rid of it! He must –”
“I fear,” Gandalf took a long pull on his pipe and let it out with a sigh. The figure of their Bilbo twisted into shape in the blue cloud, there and gone in a blink of the eye. “That Bilbo is far beyond our reach at the moment. And, if my dreams are correct, he knows what danger he has trapped in his pocket.”
“Where...where is he? Where do you think he has gone?”
“You are a dwarf, good sir. You know very well where Bilbo must go to rid our world of that object.”
“No,” Thorin whispered, closing his eyes against the thought. Such tales had been told of the Ring in their line. Of how it was made. Of the metals it was created from.
Of where it was made. And where it might only be destroyed.
“I have sent messengers to Radagast. He can help find our Bilbo if he has gone to where we think. There are others of my order, gone far beyond Mordor, South and East where even the stars are strange. I have sent messengers to them as well, but they have long been lost to my order. I do not hold hope to hear from them again. I will know shortly from Radagast what news he can acquire. In the meantime I will break this curse upon your people and cleanse your Mountain of the dragon's shadow. Then I shall have to leave.”
“And I will go with you,” Thorin opened his eyes. Gandalf raised an eyebrow. “Many debts do I owe Bilbo Baggins. There are many things I – we – need to say to him. We will help him on his Quest, as he helped us.”
“You are King Under the Mountain, Thorin Oakenshield. A King must stay in his kingdom.”
“Tell that to my sister,” Thorin said, mind already planning ahead. He did not see Gandalf's smirk, nor the way the faint lines of tension eased from around his eyes and mouth.
By the time the rest of the Company knew of Gandalf's news, Thorin already had a Plan. Dáin would hate it, Thorin's councilors would hate it, and worse yet his sister would more than likely try to take his beard when she learned of his transgressions, but he could live with that. Dis was a terrifying dwarrow-dam and Thorin had no doubt she would rule the Mountain with such an iron fist that no one would dare question her. The question would be whether or not he would be allowed to pack anything before she kicked him out of his own kingdom to go right the wrongs he had committed.
Thorin didn't care. He would have left that evening, his wounds and his counselors and everything else be damned. Bilbo was in grave danger and he and his Company all swore that they would help Bilbo on his Quest, no matter what.
They just had to find him first.