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The golden afternoon sunshine was pouring down the flanks of Mindolluin like silk, and Folloshae's shadow bounced ahead of him as he crossed the courtyard on the fifth circle to the rooms of his old teacher, and knocked.
"Enter!" came a voice both familiar and not. He opened the polished wooden door, musing sadly that what had always been a carrying and commanding tone had become a little thinner and more fragile over the winter gone. Senior Historian Carantis was aging fast, and the figure that had captivated Folloshae and his fellows for decades with tales of the past Ages might not see the next harvest.
But he still looked spry, Folloshae thought, as he saw Carantis standing against the open window casement, looking out to the east. The elder turned, short grey hair at odds with the current styles, a worn hand groping for a walking cane as he smiled. That smile took Folloshae back to being a nervous fifteen year old, applying to the House of Memory for an apprenticeship.
"Foll my dear boy! Come to do this yourself?"
"Yes sir. I felt it fitting. I've been hearing your stories for..."
"Yes, it's been a while, hasn't it? And now Second Historian! Congratulations again. You deserve it."
Folloshae turned his head in embarrassment, his high-worn ponytail swaying against his Historians robes. Praise from Carantis still carried wieght in his heart as well as without these walls. He took a deep breath, and gathered the formality of his position and current duty around him as a cloak against sentiment.
"Senior Historian Carantis..." he began. And then stuttered for half a breath at the twinkle in Carantis' eyes. His elder made a questioning gesture with one hand, smiling. "I am here today to gather and record from you a memory of your life, as part of your bequest to Gondor."
"Historian Folloshae", came the response in measured tones "Gladly will I give such on this day, but..." Carantis smiled sadly, dark clouds of memory swelling behind his eyes, "you'll forgive me if I speak for a moment first."
"Contextual reference sir?"
"You know me too well, Foll. Indeed. This is going to be another one about Elessar." (There was a small sigh as the younger man flexed his fingers and readied some notepaper) "Don't worry, I think this a different view. Not the Khand campaign, or the Umbar compliance, or even his march on the Black Gate. We've plenty of those on record. Heh, I could tell you about when I first met him, in 2962, shortly after I started my apprenticeship here!"
"You did? Sir?"
"Oh yes. He came to us seeking old records of Umbar and points south, Thorongil he was named at the time. Quite intimidating for the young city boy I was then..." Carantis sat down in a chair by the unlit fireplace, a gentle smile on his face as he beheld in memory a meeting of two young men, with many trails before them. "Oh the look on his face when I reminded him of that, when he came to visit us after his coronation..."
Folloshae waited, pen poised. Years of experience had taught him what was an incidental digression and what was to be recorded. Carantis' smile faded, and he focussed elsewhere in memory, a breath heavy with remembered sorrow.
"No, what I have to tell you, what I would have recalled, is his second visit to the Tower of Guard. In the War of the Ring."
There was a pause. A bird flicked past the window, drawing Folloshae's gaze to the wide fields at the base of Minas Anor, the farms and little villages that stretched across the Pelennor fields to the river and Osgiliath, shining in new stone against the Anduin. And above and beyond them, a gentle purple haze catching the sun, the Mountains of Shadow.
"Yes..." resumed Carantis, noting his old pupils' long view, "it was a very different view then. What is perhaps forgotten, and should not be, is that it wieghed on us. Like a chain, like a heavy shirt of maille, like a sorrowful memory. Those last three score years of the Third Age.... each of them seemed a little darker. Minas Morghul. Smoke over the mountains. A rising tide of orcs from the east, the Corsairs raiding from the south, the Rangers in Ithilin stepping back a little more each year... Despair, Folloshae. It hung over us like a shadow. Thorongil..." (he smiled again) "drive it back for a time, and then he left. As did Boromir, for a time. But it felt..." The old man paused, and tilted his head back, eyes closed and looking into dark places. "It felt as if our best days were far behind us, as if loneliness and weakness were all we had to look forwards to before our end..." He opened his eyes and smiled. "Looking back, I can see we felt old and abandoned, by our friends and by the Valar."
"And then came the War." prompted Folloshae.
"And then came the War of the Ring. And you have enough tales of that for a lifetime of reading, so let us pass to my memory. I was one circle down from here during the Battle of Pelennor Fields. I had watched that strife for hours, sleeping when I could. I felt that I should bear witness, you see? There was nothing else I could do. And on that second day I had seen the Rohirrim arrive, and I had seen them encircled by the sea of far-brought enemies, and I watched from the walls though the smoke of the first circle, as our friends died before us and our enemies massed once more...."
Carantis caught Folloshae with his gaze, as steely and sharp as any sword wielded in that long-ago war.
"And then the ships came. The Black ships of Umbar, sailing up the Anduin on the morning wind. And we wept. And we screamed, Foll, to see them, for what they meant..."
There was a moment of silence, as Carantis groped for an analogy. "This was not the screaming of charging orcs. Or even the screaming of someone fallen from their horse with a shattered leg. This was the screaming of a mother watching her child fall from a wall. The screaming of one who finds what's left of their friend on the bloodied field. Despair had finally caught us, and we howled for the loss of all that we loved."
He paused again, lost in the moment. Behind him in space, the sunlit fields stood in stark contrast to the bloodied deathground fields in behind him in time.
"If the Corsairs of Umbar had reached us, then the coastal fiefs had fallen. The southern levies, crushed. Dol Amroth bypassed. None left but us. In a burning, dying, surrounded city... the last of Gondor, the end of Numenors long story, measured in hours...."
Carantis paused, holding a breath for dramatic effect. Folloshae was far too familiar with this habit, but it got him every time.
"And then a banner unfurled from the lead ship. I was watching that ship, we were all watching those ships, we couldn't have looked away if we'd tried. And so I saw that banner, shining so bright..." Folloshae was stunned to hear tears in the older mans voice. "Seven Stars, and the White Tree and the Crown... by the Valar, the Crown!"
Carantis steaded himself against the chair, and sucked in a breath. "You've seen that banner... all your life. But at that time? Of those of us on the wall watching, not one in a thousand had seen that banner. But I was a Historian of the House of Memory. I knew that banner. That was Elendil's banner. And I could see not the field for the tears in my eyes, I sank to my knees as that banner burned into my mind. Because I knew who could fly that banner, and what it meant. One had come to claim the throne."
He pulled in a shuddering breath, against the sudden reversal of emotions that swept back from memory. "Of course, it meant more. It meant that there were valiant friends aboard the ships from the south, that our southern forces had rallied to our aid, and that the battle had suddenly turned, faster than a tide, with the force of a storm."
He flashed a quick smile at the young Historian opposite, whose pen danced like a leaf on the wind. "But for me, it meant the turning of an Age. It meant a King in the future, one of valour and leadership. It meant a new unity amongst our people, and a return to the glories of old. It meant the Valar were smiling upon us. It meant hope."
Carantis leaned back and relaxed a little. He cocked an eyebrow. "Would you like me to re-iterate my old lecture about the first duty of a leader being to give hope to those who follow?"
"No sir", murmured Folloshae with a smile, "I believe I've heard it a few times..."
"Yes. That moment was where I learnt it myself." He sighed. "I did not see Elessar lead his men from the ships, the Star upon his brow. I did not see Imrahil lead his desperate sortie to relieve the Rohirrim shield-wall. I spent the next hour or so weeping in relief, against the wall of the fourth circle, as despair fell away from me like a sodden cloak, and the heat of hope left me burning as much as the lower city."
"I spent the next couple of days on a wave of elation, Foll. I completely missed Elessar visiting the Houses of Healing. But when they marched off for the Black Gate I was recording for posterity. I was there at the return of the armies with those halflings, and the coronation, and the wedding, and so on. I stood with young Faramir when he tried turning down the Stewardship! And since then I've talked to Elessar a few times, when he's been trying to find details of his position. And now are the Telcontari well established, with three heirs and Queen Arwen watching over them all.
But it was that one moment that really fixed Elessar as my king. That moment, when he stepped forth beneath a banner. When he took a field of despair and ignited it into a blaze of hope."
Carantis sighed and sat back happily. "Let that be the defining memory. That blazing moment of sudden hope like a beacon. A banner unrolled out of history, and a watcher who knew exactly what it meant, and wept to look upon it."
The room fell into silence, as Folloshae caught up with his notes. The sun shone down outside across what had once been Minas Tirith. And there was no fear in the shadows.
Minas Anor, City of Kings.
77, 4th Age.