The Peoples of Middle-earth (73 page)

'Why!' said Saelon. 'We have hardly begun. It was not of your orchard, nor your apples, nor of me, that you were thinking when you spoke of the re-arising of the dark tree. What you were thinking of, Master Borlas, I can guess nonetheless. I have eyes and ears, and other senses, Master.' His voice sank low and could scarcely be heard above the murmur of a sudden chill wind in the leaves, as the sun sank behind Mindolluin. 'You have heard then the name?' With hardly more than breath he formed it. 'Of Herumor?'(11)

Borlas looked at him with amazement and fear. His mouth made tremulous motions of speech, but no sound came from it.

'I see that you have,' said Saelon. 'And you seem astonished to learn that I have heard it also. But you are not more astonished than I was to see that this name has reached you. For, as I say, I have keen eyes and ears, but yours are now dim even for daily use, and the matter has been kept as secret as cunning could contrive.'

'Whose cunning?' said Borlas, suddenly and fiercely. The sight of his eyes might be dim, but they blazed now with anger.

'Why, those who have heard the call of the name, of course,'

answered Saelon unperturbed. 'They are not many yet, to set against all the people of Gondor, but the number is growing.

Not all are content since the Great King died, and fewer now are afraid.'

'So I have guessed,' said Borlas, 'and it is that thought that chills the warmth of summer in my heart. For a man may have a garden with strong walls, Saelon, and yet find no peace or content there. There are some enemies that such walls will not keep out; for his garden is only part of a guarded realm after all. It is to the walls of the realm that he must look for his real defence.

But what is the call? What would they do?' he cried, laying his hand on the young man's knee.

'I will ask you a question first before I answer yours,' said Saelon; and now he looked searchingly at the old man. 'How have you, who sit here in the Emyn Arnen and seldom go now even to the City - how have you heard the whispers of this name?'

Borlas looked down on the ground and clasped his hands between his knees. For some time he did not answer. At last he looked up again; his face had hardened and his eyes were more wary. 'I will not answer that, Saelon,' he said. 'Not until I have asked you yet another question. First tell me,' he said slowly,

'are you one of those who have listened to the,call?'

A strange smile flickered about the young man's mouth.

'Attack is the best defence,' he answered, 'or so the Captains tell us; but when both sides use this counsel there is a clash of battle.

So I will counter you. I will not answer you, Master Borlas, until you tell me: are you one of those who have listened, or no?'

'How can you think it?' cried Borlas.

'And how can you think it?' asked Saelon.

'As for me,' said Borlas, 'do not all my words give you the answer?'

'But as for me, you would say,' said Saelon, 'my words might make me doubtful? Because I defended a small boy who threw unripe apples at his playmates from the name of Orc? Or because I spoke of the suffering of trees at the hands of men?

Master Borlas, it is unwise to judge a man's heart from words spoken in an argument without respect for your opinions. They may be meant to disturb you. Pert maybe, but possibly better than a mere echo.(12) I do not doubt that many of those we spoke of would use words as solemn as yours, and speak reverently of the Great Theme and such things - in your presence. Well, who shall answer first?'

'The younger it would have been in the courtesy of old,' said Borlas; 'or between men counted as equals, the one who was first asked. You are both.'

Saelon smiled. 'Very well,' he said. 'Let me see: the first question that you asked unanswered was: what is the call, what would they do? Can you find no answer in the past for all your age and lore? I am young and less learned. Still, if you really wish to know, I could perhaps make the whispers clearer to you.'

He stood up. The sun had set behind the mountains; shadows were deepening. The western wall of Borlas's house on the hillside was yellow in the afterglow, but the river below was dark.

He looked up at the sky, and then away down the Anduin. 'It is a fair evening still,' he said, 'but the wind has shifted eastward.

There will be clouds over the moon tonight.'

'Well, what of it?' said Borlas, shivering a little as the air chilled. 'Unless you mean only to warn an old man to hasten indoors and keep his bones from aching.' He rose and turned to the path towards his house, thinking that the young man meant to say no more; but Saelon stepped up beside him and laid a hand on his arm.

'I warn you rather to clothe yourself warmly after nightfall,'

he said. 'That is, if you wish to learn more; for if you do, you will come with me on a journey tonight. I will meet you at your eastern gate behind your house; or at least I shall pass that way as soon as it is full dark, and you shall come or not as you will.

I shall be clad in black, and anyone who goes with me must be clad alike. Farewell now, Master Borlas! Take counsel with yourself while the light lasts.'

With that Saelon bowed and turned away, going along another path that ran near the edge of the steep shore, away northward to the house of his father.(13) He disappeared round a bend while his last words were still echoing in Borlas's ears.

For some while after Saelon had gone Borlas stood still, covering his eyes and resting his brow against the cool bark of a tree beside the path. As he stood he searched back in his mind to discover how this strange and alarming conversation had begun. What he would do after nightfall he did not yet consider.

He had not been in good spirits since the spring, though well enough in body for his age, which burdened him less than his loneliness.(14) Since his son, Berelach,(15) had gone away again in April - he was in the Ships, and now lived mostly near Pelargir where his duty was - Saelon had been most attentive, whenever he was at home. He went much about the lands of late. Borlas was not sure of his business, though he understood that, among other interests, he dealt in timber. He brought news from all over the kingdom to his old friend. Or to his friend's old father; for Berelach had been his constant companion at one time, though they seemed seldom to meet nowadays.

'Yes, that was it,' Borlas said to himself. 'I spoke to Saelon of Pelargir, quoting Berelach. There has been some small disquiet down at the Ethir: a few shipmen have disappeared, and also a small vessel of the Fleet. Nothing much, according to Berelach.

'"Peace makes things slack," he said, I remember, in the voice of an under-officer. "Well, they went off on some ploy of their own, I suppose - friends in one of the western havens, perhaps

- without leave and without a pilot, and they were drowned. It serves them right. We get too few real sailors these days. Fish are more profitable. But at least all know that the west coasts are not safe for the unskilled."

'That was all. But I spoke of it to Saelon, and asked if he had heard anything of it away south. "Yes," he said, "I did. Few were satisfied with the official view. The men were not unskilled; they were sons of fishermen. And there have been no storms off the coasts for a long time.>

As he heard Saelon say this, suddenly Borlas had remembered the other rumours, the rumours that Othrondir (16) had spoken of. It was he who had used the word 'canker'. And then half to himself Borlas had spoken aloud about the Dark Tree.

He uncovered his eyes and fondled the shapely trunk of the tree that he had leaned on, looking up at its shadowy leaves against the clear fading sky. A star glinted through the branches. Softly he spoke again, as if to the tree.

'Well, what is to be done now? Clearly Saelon is in it. But is it clear? There was the sound of mockery in his words, and scorn of the ordered life of Men. He would not answer a straight question. The black clothes! And yet - why invite me to go with him? Not to convert old Borlas! Useless. Useless to try: no one would hope to win over a man who remembered the Evil of old, however far off. Useless if one succeeded: old Borlas is of no use any longer as a tool for any hand. Saelon might be trying to play the spy, seeking to find out what lies behind the whispers. Black might be a disguise, or an aid to stealth by night. But again, what could I do to help on any secret or dangerous errand? I should be better out of the way.'

With that a cold thought touched Borlas's heart. Put out of the way - was that it? He was to be lured to some place where he could disappear, like the Shipmen? The invitation to go with Saelon had been given only after he had been startled into revealing that he knew of the whispers - had even heard the name. And he had declared his hostility.

This thought decided Borlas, and he knew that he was resolved now to stand robed in black at the gate in the first dark of night. He was challenged, and he would accept. He smote his palm against the tree. 'I am not a dotard yet, Neldor,' he said;

'but death is not so far off that I shall lose many good years, if I lose the throw.'

He straightened his back and lifted his head, and walked away up the path, slowly but steadily. The thought crossed his mind even as he stepped over the threshold: 'Perhaps I have been preserved so long for this purpose: that one should still live, hale in mind, who remembers what went before the Great Peace. Scent has a long memory. I think I could still smell the old Evil, and know it for what it is.'

The door under the porch was open; but the house behind was darkling. There seemed none of the accustomed sounds of evening, only a soft silence, a dead silence. He entered, wonder-ing a little. He called, but there was no answer. He halted in the narrow passage that ran through the house, and it seemed that he was wrapped in a blackness: not a glimmer of twilight of the world outside remained there. Suddenly he smelt it, or so it seemed, though it came as it were from within outwards to the sense: he smelt the old Evil and knew it for what it was.

Here, both in A and B, The New Shadow ends, and it will never be known what Borlas found in his dark and silent house, nor what part Saelon was playing and what his intentions were. There would be no tales worth the telling in the days of the King's Peace, my father said; and he disparaged the story that he had begun: 'I could have written a

"thriller" about the plot and its discovery and overthrow - but it would be just that. Not worth doing.' It would nonetheless have been a very remarkable 'thriller', and one may well view its early abandonment with regret. But it may be that his reason for abandoning it was not only this - or perhaps rather that in saying this he was expressing a deeper conviction: that the vast structure of story, in many forms, that he had raised came to its true end in the Downfall of Sauron. As he wrote (Morgoth's Ring p. 404): 'Sauron was a problem that Men had to deal with finally: the first of the many concentrations of Evil into definite power-points that they would have to combat, as it was also the last of those in "mythological" personalized (but non-human) form.'

NOTES.

1. It has also been read publicly, by myself (Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, 18 August 1992). At that time, not having studied the papers with sufficient care, I was under the impression that text B was the latest, and it was this that I read - the young man's name being therefore Arthael.

2. In the original draft of the opening of the story (preceding A) the name was first written Almoth, but changed immediately to Egalmoth. The original Egalmoth was the lord of the people of the Heavenly Arch in Gondolin; it was also the name of the eighteenth Ruling Steward of Gondor.

3. Borlas was the name of the eldest son of Bor the Easterling, later changed to Borlad (XI.240); he was slain in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, faithful to the Eldar.

4. The first page of this was typed on the machine that my father first used about the end of 1958 (X.300), and the remainder on the previous one (that used for text B).

5. The name Saelon is found in drafting for the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth as a name of the wise-woman Andreth of the Edain, who debated with Finrod; in the final text this became Saelind, translated 'Wise-heart' (X.305, 351-2).

6. This is the machine on which the very late 'historical-etymological' essays were typed, and which I use to this day.

7. A puzzling question is raised by this dating, concerning the historical period in which the story is set. In the opening paragraph the original draft (preceding A) has:

It was in the days of Eldarion, son of that Elessar of whom ancient histories have much to tell, that this strange thing occurred. It was indeed less than one hundred and twenty years since the fall of the Dark Tower ...

The first complete text, the manuscript A, has: 'Nearly one hundred and ten years had passed since the fall of the Dark Tower', and this is repeated in B. My father typed the opening page of the late text C in two closely similar forms, and in the first of these he retained the reading of A and B, but in the second (printed here) he wrote 'One hundred and five years'. In the letter of 1964