Sauron Defeated (44 page)

'Zigur!' said Jeremy in a strange voice.(59) We stared at him: he was sitting with his eyes closed, and he looked very pale; beads of sweat were on his face.

'I say, what's the matter, Jerry?' cried Frankley. 'Open the other window, Ramer, and let's have some more air! I think there's a storm brewing.'

'Zigur!' cried Jeremy again, in a remote strained voice. 'You spoke of him yourself not long ago, cursing the name. Can you have forgotten him, Nimruzir?'(60)

'I had forgotten,' Lowdham answered. 'But now I begin to remember! ' He stood still and clenched his fists. His brow lowered, and his eyes glittered. There was a glimmer of lightning far away through the darkening window. Away in the west over the roofs the sky was going dead black. There came a distant rumour of thunder.

Jeremy groaned and laid his head back.

Frankley and Ramer went to him, and bent over him; but he did not seem to notice them. 'It's the thunder, perhaps,' said Frankley in a low voice. 'He seemed all right a few minutes ago; but he looks pretty ghastly now.'

'Leave him alone,' growled Dolbear. 'You'll do no good hovering over him.'

'Would you like to lie down on my bed?' said Ramer. 'Or shall I get the car out and run you home?'

'Are you feeling ill, old man?' said Frankley.

'Yes,' groaned Jeremy without moving. 'Deathly. But don't trouble me! Don't touch me! Ba kitabdahe!(61) Sit down. I shall speak in a moment.'

There was a silence that seemed long and heavy. It was then nearly ten o'clock, and the pale sky of summer twilight was pricked by a few faint stars; but the blackness crawled slowly onwards from the West. Great wings of shadow stretched out ominously over the town. The curtains stirred as with a presage of wind, and then hung still. There was a long mutter of thunder ending in a crack.

Lowdham was standing erect in the middle of the floor, looking out of the window with staring eyes. Suddenly:

'Narika 'nBari 'nAdun yanakhim,'(62) he shouted, lifting up both his arms. 'The Eagles of the Lords of the West are at hand! '

Then all at once Jeremy began to speak. 'Now I see!' he said.

'I see it all. The ships have set sail at last. Woe to the time!

Behold, the mountain smokes and the earth trembles!'

He paused, and we sat staring, oppressed as by the oncoming of doom. The voices of the storm drew nearer. Then Jeremy began again.

'Woe to this time and the fell counsels of Zigur! The King hath set forth his might against the Lords of the West. The fleets of the Numenoreans are like a land of many islands; their masts are like the stems of a forest; their sails are golden and black.

Night is coming. They have gone against Avalloni with naked swords. All the world waiteth. Why do the Lords of the West make no sign?'(63)

There was a dazzle of lightning and a deafening crash.

'Behold! Now the black wrath is come upon us out of the West. The Eagles of the Powers of the World have arisen in anger. The Lords have spoken to Eru, and the fate of the World is changed!'(64)

'Do you not hear the wind coming and the roaring of the sea?'

said Lowdham.

'Do you not see the wings of the Eagles, and their eyes like thunderbolts and their claws like forks of fire?' said Jeremy.

'See! The abyss openeth. The sea falls. The mountains lean over.

Urid yakalubim!' He got up unsteadily, and Lowdham took his hand, and drew him towards him, as if to protect him. Together they went to the window and stood there peering out, talking to one another in a strange tongue. Irresistibly I was reminded of two people hanging over the side of a ship. But suddenly with a cry they turned away, and knelt down covering their eyes.

'The glory hath fallen into the deep waters,' said Jeremy weeping.

'Still the eagles pursue us,' said Lowdham. 'The wind is like the end of the world, and the waves are like mountains moving.

We go into darkness.'(65)

There was a roar of thunder and a blaze of lightning: flashes north, south, and west. Ramer's room flared into a blistering light and rocked back into darkness. The electric light had failed. At a distance there was a murmur as of a great wind coming.

'All hath passed away. The light hath gone out!' said Jeremy.

With a vast rush and slash rain came down suddenly like waterfalls out of the sky, and a wind swept the city with wild wings of fury; its shriek rose to a deafening tumult. Near at hand I heard, or I thought I heard, a great weight like a tower falling heavily, clattering to ruin. Before we could close the windows with the strength of all hands present and heave the shutters after them, the curtains were blown across the room and the floor was flooded.

In the midst of all the confusion, while Ramer was trying to find and light a candle, Lowdham went up to Jeremy, who was cowering against the wall, and he took his hands.

'Come, Abrazan!'(66) he said. 'There is work to do. Let us look to our folk and see to our courses, before it is too late!'

'It is too late, Nimruzir,' said Jeremy. 'The Valar hate us.

Only darkness awaits us.'

'A little light may yet lie beyond it, Come!' said Lowdham, and he drew Jeremy to his feet. In the light of the flickering candle that Ramer now held in a shaking hand, we saw him drag Jeremy to the door, and push him out of the room. We heard their feet stumbling and clattering down the stairs.

'They'll be drowned!' said Frankley, taking a few steps, as if to follow them. 'What on earth has come over them?'

'The fear of the Lords of the West,' said Ramer, and his voice shook. 'It is no good trying to follow them. But I think it was their part in this story to escape from the very edge of Doom.

Let them escape!'

And there this meeting would have ended, but for the fact that the rest of us could not face the night and dared not go.

For three hours we sat huddled up in dim candle-light, while the greatest storm in the memory of any living man roared over us: the terrible storm of June 12th 1987,(67) that slew more men, felled more trees, and cast down more towers, bridges and other works of Man than a hundred years of wild weather.*

(* The centre of its greatest fury seems to have been out in the Atlantic, but its whole course and progress has been something of a puzzle to meteorologists - as far as can be discovered from accounts it seems to have proceeded more like blasts of an explosion, rushing eastward and slowly diminishing in force as it went. N.G.) When at last it had abated in the small hours, and through the rags of its wild retreat the sky was already growing pale again in the East, the company parted and crept away, tired and shaken, to wade the flooded streets and discover if their homes and colleges were still standing. Cameron made no remark. I am afraid he had not found the evening entertaining.

I was the last to go. As I stood by the door, I saw Ramer pick up a sheet of paper, closely covered with writing. He put it into a drawer.(68)

'Good night - or good morning!' I said. 'We should be thankful at any rate that we were not struck by lightning, or caught in the ruin of the college.'

'We should indeed!' said Ramer. 'I wonder.'

'What do you wonder? ' I said.

'Well, I have an odd feeling, Nick, or suspicion, that we may all have been helping to stir something up. If not out of history, at any rate out of a very powerful world of imagination and memory. Jeremy would say "perhaps out of both". I wonder if we may not find ourselves in other and worse dangers.'

'I don't understand you,' I said. 'But at any rate, I suppose you mean that you wonder whether they ought to go on.

Oughtn't we to stop them?'

'Stop Lowdham and Jeremy?' said Ramer. 'We can't do that now.'

MGR. RD. PF. RS. JM. NG. Added later AAL. WTJ.

Night 68. June 26th, 1987.

Frankley's rooms. A small attendance: Frankley, Dolbear, Stainer, Guildford.

There is not much to record. Most of the Club, present or absent, were in one way or another involved in examinations, and tired, and more bothered than is usual at this season.*

(* The extraordinary system of holding the principal examinations of the year in the summer, which must have been responsible for an incalculable amount of misery, was still in force. During the period of

'reforms' in the forties there was talk of altering this arrangement, but it was never carried out, though it was one of the few thoroughly desirable minor reforms proposed at the time. It was the events of the summer of 1987 that finally brought things to a head, as most of the examinations had that year to be transferred to the winter, or held again after the autumn term. N.G.)

Things had been rather shaken up by the storm. It had come in the seventh week, right in the middle of the final examinations; and amongst a lot of other damage, the Examination Schools had been struck and the East School wrecked.

'What a time we've been having, ever since old Ramer started to attend again!' said Frankley. 'Notion Club! More like the Commotion Club! Is there any news of the Commoters?'

'D'you mean Lowdham and Jeremy?' said Stainer. 'Pro-moters, I should say! I've never seen anything better staged -

and with Michael Ramer, as a kind of conniving chorus. It was wonderfully well done!'

'Wonderfully!' said Dolbear. 'I am lost in admiration. Think of their meteorological information! Superb! Foreseeing like that a storm not foretold, apparently, by any station in the world. And timing it so beautifully, too, to fit in neatly with their prepared parts. It makes you think, doesn't it? - as those say, who have never experienced the process. And Ramer says flatly that he was bowled over, altogether taken by surprise.

Whatever you may think of his views, it would be very rash to assume that he was lying. He takes this affair rather seriously.

"Those two are probably dangerous," he said to me; and he wasn't thinking merely of spoofing the Club, Stainer.'

'Hm. I spoke too hastily, evidently,' said Stainer, stroking his chin. 'Hm. But what then? If not arranged, it was a very remarkable coincidence.'

'Truly remarkable!' said Dolbear. 'But we'll leave that question open for a bit, I think; coincidence or connexion. They're both pretty difficult to accept; but they're the only choices.

Pre-arrangement is impossible - or rather it's a damned sight more improbable, and even more alarming. What about these two fellows, though? Has anything been heard of them?'

'Yes,' said Guildford. 'They're alive, and neither drowned nor blasted. They've written me a joint letter to lay before the Club.

This is what they say:

Dear Nick,

We hope every one is safe and sound. We are. We were cast up far away when the wind fell, but we're dry again at last; so now we're off, more or less in the words of the old song, 'on some jolly little jaunts to the happy, happy haunts where the beer flows wild and free'. In due course (if ever) we'll let our colleges have our addresses. A.A.L.

That is the end of Arry's great big fist. Jeremy adds: We are researching. More stuff may come through, I think.

What about a vacation meeting? Just before the racket of term. What about Sept. 25th? You can have my rooms. Yrs.

W.T.J.'

'What about the racket of the vacation! ' said Frankley.

They re damned lucky not to be in the schools (69) this year, or they'ld have to come back, wherever the wind may have blown them. Any idea where that was, Nick?'

'No,' said Guildford. 'The postmark is illegible,(70) and there's no address inside. But what about the proposed meeting? I suppose most of us will be about again by then.'

September 25th was agreed to. At that moment Michael Ramer came in. 'We've heard from them!' Frankley cried.

'Nicholas has had a letter. They're all right, and they're off on a holiday somewhere: no address.'

'Good!' said Ramer. 'Or I hope so. I hope they won't wreck the British Isles before they've finished.'

'My dear Ramer! ' Steiner protested. 'What do you mean?

What can you mean? Dolbear has been preaching the open mind to my incredulity. He had better talk to you. The other extreme is just as bad.'

'But I haven't any fixed opinions,' said Ramer. 'I was merely expressing a doubt, or a wild guess. But actually I am not really very much afraid of any more explosions now. I fancy that that force has been spent, for the present, for a long time to come perhaps.

'But I am a little anxious about Arry and Wilfrid themselves.

They may quite well get into some danger. Still we can only wait and see. Even if we could find them we could do no more. You can't stop a strong horse with the bit between its teeth. You certainly could not rein Arry in now, and Wilfrid is evidently nearly as deeply in it as Arry is.

'In the meantime I have got something to show you. Arry dropped a leaf of paper in my room that night. I think it is the leaf of his father's manuscript that he told us about. Well - I've deciphered it.'

'Good work! ' said Guildford. 'I didn't know you were a cryptographer.'

'I'm not,' Ramer laughed, 'but I have my methods. No, no -