The Last Ringbearer (2011)

by Kirill Yeskov

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Oh, nothing, just woman stuff…” She got up and put on her robe. There was something so final in that movement that he asked involuntarily: “Where’re you going?”

  “To pack your things, where else?” she looked at him with a bit of surprise. “See, I can never be a high-society dame. Sorry, I’m just not refined enough. I should’ve made a hysterical scene right now, just for formality’s sake, right?”

  He had lost too much today in one fell swoop: the goal he has been striving for all these months, his belief in himself, the country that became his second home (even if against his will), and now Alviss… Knowing it was all over, he plunged ahead desperately like a man jumping off the pier to catch up with a departing ship.

  “Listen, Aly… I really can’t stay in Umbar, but you… what would you say if I asked you to go to Ithilien with me and become Baroness Tangorn there?”

  “I would say,” there was nothing but infinite weariness in her voice, “that you’ve always been too fond of the subjunctive, whereas women, by their nature, prefer the imperative mood. Sorry.”

  “What if I change the mood?” He was trying as hard as he could to smile. “In the imperative it goes like this: marry me! Is that better?”

  “That?” She stood still, eyes closed and hands clenched on her chest, as if really listening to something. “You know, it does sound a lot better! Say it again.”

  He said it again, first in front of her on one knee, then while slowly twirling her around the room. Then she did have a bit of hysterics, laughing and crying at the same time… When they got back to bed, she first put a finger to his lips and then took his hand in hers and carefully pressed it to her belly, whispering: “Shh! Don’t scare him!”

  “So you… I mean, we…” was all he could say.

  “Yes! Remember, I said that I was more farsighted this time than four years ago? Now, no matter what else happens, I’ll have him. You see,” she clung to Tangorn with a quiet laugh and tenderly rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, “somehow I know that it will be a boy, just like you.”

  He lay there in silence for some time, futilely trying to bring his thoughts into a semblance of order – too much at once. Tangorn the adventurer’s old life is over, that much is clear, but perhaps a quiet family idyll with Alviss is precisely the end that the Higher Powers meant? Or, conversely, am I being paid off to abandon Haladdin? But I can’t do anything else for him, my mission in Umbar has failed… Really? What if you had an opportunity right now to replay this and give your life in exchange for victory over Elandar? I don’t know… half an hour ago I would’ve given it without a doubt, but now – I don’t know.

  Chances are, I would’ve found some decent way of weaseling out of it, to be honest. Some trap this is… Oh, to hell with it all! he thought fatalistically, I have no strength left to figure out those puzzles, trying to imagine what the Higher Powers want. Let it all be however it will be.

  He finally gave up trying to gather his thoughts, since all kinds of trivialities kept coming up anyway. “Listen, won’t you be bored in Emyn Arnen? To be honest, it’s quite the backwater.”

  “You know, I’ve had quite enough fun over my twenty-eight years here, in our capital of the world, enough for three lives. Don’t worry about it. Anyway, Baron,” she stretched alluringly, putting her hands behind her head, “isn’t it time for you to perform your marital duties?”

  “Absolutely, dear Baroness!”

  CHAPTER 54

  At dawn a vivino was singing in the garden. The bird perched on a chestnut branch right outside their open bedroom window; at first, his sad melodic trills seemed to Tangorn to be threads plucked out of the fabric of his dreams. He slipped out of bed (carefully so as not to disturb Alviss) and stole up to the window. The tiny singer put up his head so high that the yellow throat feathers formed a frothy collar around his neck, and finished with an excellent resounding note; then he turned his head in mock modesty and expectantly glanced at the baron: did you like it? Thank you, little friend! I know that vivinos are forest dwellers that hate the city. Did you fly here to say good bye?

  Right! the bird winked mockingly and flitted into the garden; the vivino was a true Umbarian, stranger to Nordic sentimentality.

  Bare feet pattered almost noiselessly, and warm Alviss clung to him from behind, brushing her lips across his shoulder blades.

  “What did you see out there?”

  “A vivino was singing – a real vivino in the city, can you imagine?”

  “Oh, that’s my vivino. He’s been here for almost a month.”

  “I see…” Tangorn drawled, feeling, funnily enough, something like a pang of jealousy.

  “And here I thought that he came here for me…”

  “Listen, maybe he really is yours? He showed up in my garden the same time you did…

  Yes, right around the first of the month!”

  “In any event, it’s the best goodbye one can wish from Umbar… Hey, Aly, look – there’s another goodbye!” he laughed, pointing at a gloomy sleepy policeman stationed across the street beside Chakti-Vari’s jewelry shop. “The Secret Service politely reminds me to tread carefully until I leave… All right. Have you changed your mind about going today?

  Maybe you want to settle your affairs here first?”

  “No way!” she responded curtly. “I’m coming with you. That caravan has two available bactrians – isn’t that a sign? My lawyer will have to settle my affairs anyway, it’s a job for weeks. I suppose everything should be converted to gold, can’t be much of a market for securities up North.”

  “Nobody there would know what they are,” he nodded, watching Alviss dress with a smile.

  “Aren’t we quite a sight, girl? A bankrupt aristocrat with nothing but a sword and a moth-eaten title is marrying the money of a successful widow of the merchant class…”

  “…said widow having made her start by selling her body left and right,” Alviss concluded in the same vein. “A total misalliance no matter how you look at it, a gold mine for gossips from both classes.”

  “That’s for sure…” He had a sudden thought and started figuring something. “Listen, I just thought… there’s plenty of time until noon. Want to get married right away? Choose any rite.”

  “Yes, darling, certainly… I don’t care which rite, either. Let’s go Aritanian – their temple is nearby.”

  “Aly, what’s the problem? You seem unhappy.”

  “No, of course not! I just had a real bad premonition when you started talking marriage.”

  “Nonsense,” he said firmly. “Let’s get dressed and go. Aritanian is fine. By the way, your stone is sapphire, right?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “While you pretty up, I’ll have enough time to visit the honorable Chakti-Vari across the street and buy a wedding present. It’s early, but for this kind of money,” he picked up the bag with the remainder of Sharya-Rana’s gold, “the old man will fly out of bed like a startled pheasant and…”

  He cut himself short at the sight of Alviss’ face: she paled and her eyes turned from blue to black with widened pupils.

  “No!! Tan, dearest, don’t go, I pray you!”

  “Baby, what’s the matter? Another premonition?” She nodded vigorously, unable to speak.

  “There’s no danger – I’m out of the game, nobody wants me.”

  She had already gotten hold of herself. “All right, but let’s go together, all right? I’ll be ready in five minutes. Promise you won’t leave the house without me!”

  “Yes, mommy!”

  “Good boy!”

  Alviss pecked him on the cheek and slipped into the corridor; Tangorn could hear her give orders to grumbling Tina. Congratulations, Baron, he thought gruffly, your beloved will walk you over by the hand to provide security, since you’re incapable of even that much.

  You’ve quit the game beaten – not exactly conducive to self-esteem – but if you really do
obediently wait for Alviss now, you’ll simply lose the right to call yourself a man. And if her premonitions are true, then so much the worse for them. Maybe I’m not worth a copper as a spy, but I’m still the third sword of Gondor. I have the Slumber-maker and the mithril coat, should you guys want to risk it. Let your heads be my consolation prize, I’m quite in the mood for that… Damn! He almost laughed. Looks like I’m beginning to treat female premonitions seriously…

  He scanned the empty garden, which was in full view from the second floor, then the empty Jasper street with the DSD man in police uniform. Guard cobras in Chakti-Vari’s store – so what? Feet over the windowsill, he thought fleetingly that he’d better spring clear of the flower bed, lest Alviss chew his head off over her favorite nasturtiums.

  Alviss was almost ready to go when she caught a movement in the garden in the corner of her eye. Her heart lurched; she sprang to the window and beheld Tangorn on the garden path. Blowing her a kiss, he went towards the door. Whispering a few choice expressions better fitting her port youth than current status, Alviss observed, with some relief, that the baron was armed and that his stance showed caution rather than undue attention to the beauty of the summer morning. He went through the door watchfully, crossed the street, exchanged a few words with the policeman and stretched his hand towards the brass knocker on the jewelry shop door…

  “Ta-a-a-a-n!!!” Her desperate scream shattered the silence.

  Too late.

  The policeman raised a hand to his mouth, and the next moment the baron sagged to the ground, clutching his throat convulsively.

  When she ran into the street the ‘policeman’ was long gone, and Tangorn was living the last seconds of his life. The poisoned thorn spat from an ulshitan – a small tube used by Far Harad pygmies – struck him in the neck, a finger’s width above the mithril mail; the third sword of Gondor had no time to even draw the Slumber-maker. Alviss tried to lift him; the baron clutched her arms in a death grip and breathed hoarsely: “Tell… Faramir… un…done…”; he tried to say something else, but lacked the air to do it: the alkaloids of the anchar tree on which the pygmies’ poison is based paralyze the respiratory muscles. The baron failed both to complete his mission and to let his friends know about it; he died with that thought.

  A man nicknamed Ferryman, a ‘clean-up man’ from Elandar’s organization, observed the scene from a nearby attic through a cobwebbed hole in the roof. He put his crossbow down, at a loss to figure out who beat him to it so neatly. DSD? Too tidy for 12 Shore Street…

  What if this is another of the baron’s tricks? Maybe he should plink him with a bolt, just to be sure?

  By that time Mongoose had already shed his police uniform, becoming once again a duly accredited ambassador of His Majesty the Sultan Sagul the Fifth the Pious, the mighty ruler of non-existent Florissant Islands. He was moving briskly but without undue haste towards the port, where a previously chartered felucca named Trepang was waiting for him. The battle of the two lieutenants had ended the way it had to end, because a professional differs from an amateur in that he plays not until he has scored a beautiful goal or until he has a psychological crisis, but rather until the sixtieth second of the last minute of the game. By the way, that sixtieth second occurred at the port, where Mongoose had another chance to demonstrate his high degree of professionalism. He himself probably would have been unable to say exactly what it was about the Trepang’s crew that alerted him, but he turned to the skipper as the man stepped on the ramp after him, as if to ask a question, hit him in the throat with the edge of his palm and jumped into the rusty, oily water between the pier and the ship. The two seconds he gained thereby were enough to get a little green pill from behind his collar and swallow it, so Jacuzzi’s operatives only captured another unidentified corpse (the fourth that day). The game that the special command from Task Force Féanor played with the Umbarian Secret Service ended in a draw, nil-nil.

  … Petrified with grief, Alviss held dying Tangorn in her arms. He would never find out the most important part: it was his death at the hands of the Secret Guard that settled Elandar’s last doubts, so that same evening his package started north, to Lórien, via routes unknown to any man. Nor was he to know that Alviss heard his last choking whisper as “tell Faramir: done!” and would do everything properly… And the certain Someone tirelessly knitting a gorgeous tapestry we call History out of invisible coincidences and rather visible human weaknesses immediately put the entire episode out of His mind: a gambit is a gambit, sacrifice a piece to win the game, and that’s all there is to it…

  Part IV – Ransom for a Shadow

  Over and over the story, ending as he began:

  “Make ye no truce with Adam-zad – the Bear that walks like a Man!”

  Rudyard Kipling

  CHAPTER 55

  Mirkwood, near Dol-Guldur

  June 5, 3019

  “That’s a fresh print, very fresh…” Runcorn mumbled under his breath. He dropped to one knee and, without looking back, signaled Haladdin who was walking some fifteen yards behind to get off the path. Tzerlag, who brought up the rear, overtook the obediently yielding doctor, and now both sergeants were engaged in an elaborate scout ritual by a small spot of wet clay, trading quiet phrases in Common. Haladdin’s opinion did not interest the rangers at all, of course; not even the Orocuen’s thoughts counted for much in that discussion: the scouts have already worked out a pecking order. The erstwhile enemies –the Ithilien ranger and the platoon leader of the Cirith Ungol Rangers – treated each other with exaggerated respect (like, for example, a master goldsmith and a master swordsmith might), but the desert is the desert, and the forest is the forest. Both professionals knew the limits of their expertise very well. The Ithilien ranger had spent his entire life in these forests.

  …Back then he still walked upright and with shoulders squared (the right one was not yet higher than the left one), while his face was yet free of a badly healed purple scar; he was handsome, brave, and lucky, with his bottle-green Royal Forester uniform fitting him like a glove – in other words, a serious threat to womankind. The local peasants disliked him, which he considered normal: villeins only like accommodating foresters, whereas Runcorn took his service with all the seriousness of youth. Being a King’s man, he could disregard the local landlords; he quickly put their courts, which used to visit the royal forests like their own larder under his predecessor, in their place. Everybody knew the story of Eggy the Chicken Hawk’s band that had wandered into their country once – Runcorn did away with those guys all by himself, not deigning to wait for the sheriff’s men to pry their behinds off the benches of the Three Pint Tavern. To sum it up, the neighbors treated the young forester with cautious respect but not much sympathy, which he did not care much for anyway. He was used to being by himself since he was a child, and socialized with the Forest way more than with his peers. The Forest was everything to him: playmate, interlocutor, mentor, eventually becoming his Home. Some people even claimed that he had in him the blood of the woodwoses – forest demons from the ominous Druadan Dell. Well, people in remote forest villages say all sorts of things during chilly fall evenings, when only the feeble light of a splinter keeps the ancient evils from getting out of the dark corners…

  To top it all off, at one point Runcorn stopped showing up at village festivities (to acute disappointment of all eligible maidens in the vicinity) and instead hung out at a tumbledown shack at the edge of Druadan, where an old medicine woman from the far north (maybe as far as Angmar) had settled some time before with her granddaughter Lianica. Manwe only knows what such an eligible bachelor saw in that puny freckled girl; many supposed that witchcraft was involved – the old woman certainly knew some spells and could heal with herbs and laying of hands, which was her livelihood. Lianica was known to talk to birds and beasts in their language and could have a ferret and a mouse sit together in the palm of her hand. This rumor may have owed to the fact that she avoided people (as opposed to forest anima
ls) so much that she was originally thought to be dumb. The local beauties, when someone would mention the forester’s strange choice, only snorted: “Whatever. Maybe they’ll make a good couple.”

  It did look like they would have, but it was not to be. One day the girl ran into the young landlord, out with his company to hunt and ‘improve the serfs’ blood line a bit;’ those exploits of his have even caused some of his neighboring landlords to grumble: “Really, young sir, this propensity of yours to screw everything that moves…” It was a routine matter, nothing to get excited about, really. Who’d’ve thought that the fool girl would drown herself, as if something precious had been taken away from her? No, guys, it really is true that all northerners are nuts.

  Runcorn buried Lianica alone – the old woman could not bear the loss of her granddaughter and passed away two days later without regaining consciousness. The neighbors came to the cemetery mostly to check whether the forester would put a black-feathered arrow on the grave, signifying an oath of vengeance. But no, he did not risk that. Nor was that a surprise; sure, he’s the King’s man, but the King is far, while the landlord’s company (eighteen thugs, gallows material all) is right here. Still, the guy turned out to be weaker than we first thought… So did those villagers who bet on Runcorn’s vengeance (two- or even three-to-one) grumble in the Three Pint Tavern, sourly counting out the coins they have lost onto the sticky tables.

  However, the young lord was of a different opinion – he was exceedingly prudent in all matters that did not involve his passion for ‘pink meat.’ The forester did not strike him as a man who would either let such a thing pass or go to court and write petitions (which amounted to the same thing). That sprightly peasant girl upon whom he bestowed his favor in the forest despite her objections (damn, the bitten finger still hurts)… To be honest, had he known that a man such as Runcorn was courting her, he would’ve simply passed by, especially seeing as the girl turned out to be nothing much. But what’s done is done.