by Стив Хиллард
“No, stupid, a spy, a secret agent. As in Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Because of his linguistic skills, he was recruited as a code-breaker at the beginning of World War II. You know, deciphering the Nazi Enigma Code, all that movie stuff. Anyway, he only did it for a short period. It’s a blurb in the news today. Declassified by M16.”
“How in the hell is that going to help me?”
“I don’t know. Who knows all the twists and turns in this? To answer your question, it probably doesn’t help. Only you can do that, with support from me.”
Cadence sat back and stared at her rapidly cooling scrambled eggs, wondering if things were about to get a lot curioser. “You know, Mel, I’m not sure what all this is about either. What I really care about though, more than anything, is finding out who my grandfather was and what happened to him.”
Cadence heard a voice in the background on Mel’s phone, “Mr. Chricter, Mr. Jackson’s office on 2.”
“Hey, uh … Cadence, hold on. I’ll be right back.”
She heard him put the phone down, get up, and talk on a speakerphone somewhere else in his office. It was dim but clear.
“Yeah, its Mel. Look, tell Peter I’m onto something here. I’ve been approached with something interesting. Yeah, I know they had to rewrite Tolkien again. Gotta have those ingénues. So this should also be interesting. Heck, maybe there are already clues somewhere. Where? The Narcross scene? I know you only want stuff that puts legs on the franchise. OK, OK, so talk to his people. Talk to Guillermo. I’m on a call.”
He picked up the phone again. “Cadence? Fine, just keep the faith. And don’t get into any strange cabs. This is big-time stuff and who knows who, or what, may be watching you.”
She hesitated for a moment. “OK, I’ll be careful.”
“One more thing.”
“Yes.”
“Since you’re having breakfast at the Algonquin,” and I’m covering your bill, she heard in his tone, “you’re in the Round Table Room. Back in the Twenties, that was the meeting place of the American counterpart to Tolkien’s Inklings group. All the New Yorker magazine hotshots and Broadway luminaries traded jibes there. So it may be a sign, right?”
“Right. Maybe some good will come out of that. If I can’t find the tracks of good ‘ole spymaster Tolkien, I’ll just switch to Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker.”
“Chin up. You’re on the right track.”
“Yeah, I guess I need to decide on my next move.”
Mel’s voice hushed. “Remember one word.”
In his pause she thought he was actually going to say “Plastics.”
“Provenance, Cadence, provenance. Is this stuff authentic? Prove that and we can get a deal.”
She wasn’t sure any more that she even wanted one of Mel’s deals. She said good-bye and hung up. What was her next move? She amused herself with the wry image of being marooned in a pathless forest, with discarded road signs leaning askew all about. “Secret Gate This Way.” “Moon Clock Running.” “Provenance and Proofs. Information Booth Up Ahead.” She especially liked the one that read “Homeless Man Advice. Next Exit.”
What she didn’t like was this feeling, like a pair of eyes peering at her from deep in that same imaginary forest.
Barren was studying his prey carefully now. He knew where she grazed. He would let her get comfortable and slack in her vigilance. He walked the streets to lower Manhattan and in time he came to a great excavation.
Instinct told him a great tumult had happened here, a fall of towers and a killing of innocents. From his own experience, he could sense the embers of panic and fear.
Now, however, he had a mission to conclude. The only question was where are the scribbles, the documents his master desired? He felt an easy confidence, having donned their garments and mastered much of their speech.
He walked north up the canyons of steel and glass, and came to stairs leading down into a tunnel entrance. It was just as an oracle’s entryway might be, he mused. This, he knew, was the roadway for their strange, noisy machines. He went to the ticket kiosk and bought a fare card with money he had pilfered from one of the bright-faced people. They never felt the gentle slip of his hand.
As he waited on the platform for the E train to arrive, he assessed his advantage. In his walking about, he had seen things he innately recognized from his past life, vestigial relics, like broken shell bits betokening a once great ocean. Now they were powerless fragments of magic and illusion. The power in the token in the small pouch slung about his neck far outstripped all the remnants here. It had, after all, served its purpose. It enabled him to learn, swift as an arrow.
So, if there was little magic to use here, he would still manage. He first had some distractions to take care of.
As Cadence left the entrance to the Algonquin, passing under the distinctive A’s, she looked for a Starbucks. She found three of them, all visible from the same spot. She chose instead an independent, Grousin’ Grounds, with an angry caffeine addict logo on the door. She ordered a triple macchiatto and handed over her credit card. It felt ever thinner. This time, inevitably, it would be the dissolving prop from Mission: Impossible. She bit her lip, praying it wouldn’t be declined.
The clerk slid it through the reader, and then said, “Hey!” Cadence quivered. “Is it … OK? I can pay cash.” She began to fumble in her purse, jockeying it with the valise that hung from her other shoulder.
The guy held the card out to read it. “No, your name. Grande. You’re named after a size of Starbucks coffee?”
She exhaled with relief and took the card. “Actually, it’s the other way around.”
“Then you should sue them for trademark violation.”
“Yeah, that sort of thing seems to be goin’ around. Thanks.”
Toward the back she found a booth with a big table. She opened the valise and spread out some of the documents at a safe distance from her macchiatto. She wanted to find more about Ara. Was she really the “Her” so detested by the wizard in the earlier fragment? Was she the one who was being erased by ink smears right out of the elderly halfling’s book? And most important, why?
She sipped her drink slowly, thumbing through the documents until, at last, she found a cluster of readable pages bound by some rough sinew. There was a small mark, perhaps archival in intent, in the lower right corner of each page. The annotation at the top of the first page said only, “Found at Delvrose, Year 64 of the Fourth Age.” It read:
Ara’s Rune
The one known as Ara, it was said, was learned of letters and utilized a grand and distinctive rune in the likeness of an A with eyes that watched over all. She was of average height for a lady halfling, but possessed both beauty (as her kind measures it: simply) and wit in full measure. Her eyes are described as large and expressive of thoughts beyond the ken of many a simple country halfling. She had feet more elegant than most halflings, and often wore her long, dark hair tied up in a manner unusual for those times.
She came, it is recounted, from an obscure hamlet known as Frighten. Residents thereabouts were regarded by other halflings as “a tad off” in the way an eccentric but loved relative might be. Even their names were odd. They called themselves by words favoring the fall: Spookymore, Pumpkinbelly, Gourdnose, Fallglint, Catspaw, Heatherlook, Yellowoak, Flameleaf, Firstfrost, Harvestcart, Orangemoon, Mapleflow.
This much is known: Frighten was a village of proper halfling dwellings and husbandry settled among gently rolling hills creased with sudden clefts filled with dark, tangled woods. In the fall the oak and hickory trees turned brilliantly hued, and the land transformed into expanses of hayfields, dotted with ricks guarded by the most notable product thereabouts: the Giant Pumpkins.
These Great Gourds stood man high or more and weighed on average a hundred stone. They were transported by sturdy wains and stood sentinel in every field and on the doorsteps of most halfling homes. As the final gibbous moon of the harvest waxed to fullness, the pumpkins were carved into
fantastic, leering faces illuminated from within by beeswax candles. And so, of a crisp autumn night, the land was dotted with these laughing, leering, grinning, Frighten sentinels.
A note is in order here. Along with the few remembered “inventions” of the halflings, such as the cultivation of the enchantment plant, hoernes, and the fine points of their various dwellings, there was another, quite curious matter: the practice, or as they called it, the fine craft, of brewing pumpkin beer. Restricted largely to the region of Frighten, it was originated by the great-grandfathers of Ara (agreed by all to be of an offshoot of the inimitable Flameleafs — or Flameleaves if you want to get picky) and often described by the “outsider” halflings to be a cult of the pumpkin. This practice was not utilized in what we might today call worship, but, as with all their crafts, a happy and complete appreciation and use of the great gourds.
Those visiting the region in the late fall, particularly during the Great Celebration, would oft imbibe the pumpkin beer and declare loudly and with hearty belches, “Best south of the North Downs!” This was invariably met by the exclamation “Puts to shame the dregs they pass off at the Golden Sheaf!”
Those who recall these boasts also recall whispers — of a pumpkin bigger than anyone had seen since warm summers before the Long Winter, of a girth not surpassed by the largest hay wagons of men: a giant, renowned pumpkin known as Johnny Squanto. Its seeds each year produced equal giants, fat, deeply fissured, of a deepest orange, growing by a hand’s width each day in the long, lolling days of summer. To this day the saying survives among serious farmers and the crowds at county fairs, “Now there’s a genuine squanto, that is!
But we wander from the path.
Some records attest to an Aragranessa being crowned Queen of Frighten in 1109. Of her family it is known they were also of the line of Swallowhawks that gave rise in later years — beyond the span of this tale and even after the end of the Last Age — to the heroic stand of halflings at Wrandy before the onslaught of the Orc-Men. That, of course, led to the Final Scattering of the Halflings.
But of this tale, it must be surmised that Ara first met him …
Here Cadence stopped. Yes, the tale finally gets to the him, whoever he was.
… Ara first met him after a series of the Great Parties (for births and holidays tend to be clumped in spring and fall in this land). He was quite lonely. He was no doubt looking for someone, yet perhaps afraid to venture too far in search.
It is known that the one in times hence known as the Bearer had taken to long walks, even days of wanderings, about the far reaches of the little corner of the world then known. It was in this period, perhaps, that he met Ara. For one element of Ara’s character is — if “consistently told” is a reliable witness — well known: she loved the wilds and often visited the less trodden frontiers of the Far Forest. She was spoken of for her lore and wisdom even onto the far edges of their domain. She doubtless had, at times, passed well beyond those unguarded borders.
From this account, little can I glean of her in later times, save this: a promontory often described as “Ara’s Watch” or “View Rock” was marked on maps for years, even into our times. It lay at the far western guard post of the Old Land, and from its vantage the dark blue sea could first be spied. Less reliably, it was said that in local lore it was regarded as a place for lovers to share their vows, earnestly ignorant of the namesake for the place they had chosen.
As sadly, are we.
Your humble scribe
The legible text ended here. Cadence put the bound pages aside and searched until she found another bundle with the same archival mark. It was a thin crescent, as of a new moon.
She was looking for what happened to Ara after the village gate. She found the trail. The documents gave up their story and Cadence sat, engrossed:
When Ara awakened in the waning light, she jumped in fear at the memory of the burning gatehouse and the Wraith. Then she settled and looked about. She recognized the place as Signal Hill. She found herself bound with thick, rough cords around her wrists. They were crudely tied, fair game for the cleverness of a halfling skilled in the logic of knots. But first she had to see more. She sat up, prepared to relive the fear of the night before, but realized that she was a spectator.
She was on a small, grassy rise, below which there was an assemblage of black-armored men plumed and regaled in finest battle gear. They stood quietly in a line, their postures suggesting a serious and dignified purpose.
Across from them crowded a swaggering, jostling band of orcs. A small drum was entertaining them as some danced with crude, off-rhythm jerks. Some of them were immense, taller even than the men.
A Power Troll with huge muscles and gnarled canines stood to one side. A creature of some apparent distinction, his tattooed arms were festooned with gold and bejewelled crowns of murdered kings and princes, worn now as bracelets. He held in each taloned hand an array of leather straps used as leads. Those in his left hand restrained a snarling pack of great Dire Wolves. With their overdeveloped shoulders, long red tongues dripping wet pools of slather at their feet, they were shivering in fear and deep loathing. The Troll gave their leads a sharp jerk to curb their whining, his crown-bracelets clinking as the muscles rippled down his arm.
There was ample reason for their fear. Held by the thicker leads in the Troll’s right hand was a witch’s count of heavy-breathing brudarks.
Ara was stunned. She had seen drawings of them before, but no halfling had ever seen the horror of a brudark and lived to tell the tale. She blinked at them, not believing her eyes. They were leashed and hobbled, in one of their six pair of legs, before her …
Suddenly, like a wind, a presence approached to her left. The men bowed, removing their helmets. The orcs fumbled, stepping on each other’s feet in their confusion. The troll simply stared intently as what first seemed like a cloud quickly became a solitary person walking up between him and the terrified orcs. The person was clad in the hue-shifting robes favored by wizards when appearing in public. But the hues in this cloak were subtle in their range, like the variations of darkness in approaching storm clouds — deep, troubled grey shifting to the wisp of a misty white mare’s tale, then folding to a weather waif’s tattered dark skirt of approaching rain-squalls, and finally they darkened to the angry blackness of a cyclone’s heart. He bore no crown and no staff. A simple, rustic chair was brought out and on this he sat.
It was clear that they were assembled there to have an audience with others not yet present. The entire group was arrayed roughly along two sides, with this un-wizardly wizard sitting in his chair at one end.
Encumbered by her bonds, Ara rose quietly to her feet, unnoticed. She looked around and saw, on the far crest of Signal Hill, the black horses that with their riders had come upon her at the village’s east gate. She stared at the waiting Wraiths and thought better of trying to escape.
Horses neighed in the distance and the growing hoof beats announced the arrival of a mounted vanguard of men. Within moments they appeared, their mounts hard-ridden and sleek with sweat. They were arrayed in once-bright battle-tarnished armour and cloaks bearing the signs of great realms of Middle-earth. The yellow outline of the Tree of Council and the Elvish rune for M swept across their banners. Ara looked for the Woodsman, but he was not amongst them. A group of them, well armed and fearless, dismounted. Sturdy men, swaggering and cavalier in their manner, they walked halfway to where the wizard stood and stopped, whilst their leader approached the wizard directly.
Only the slatted breathing of the brudarks marked the silence. The leader spoke, his voice edged with disdain as he knowingly committed the slight of not introducing himself by name and lineage. He said bluntly, “I come as ambassador from the race of men as liege under the Great Houses and the offended One City. I bear this message to thee, Dark One, as well as thy errand-boys and minions gathered hereabout.”
The Dark Lord! Ara sank to her knees in shock.
The speaker paused to
let the insult sink in. The line of black-armoured men stood fast and did not acknowledge it. The orcs remained oblivious. They were struggling just to follow the words.
The man continued. “We come to deliver this message, lest you misperceive our resolve and by the stroke of error deliver your lands into ruin. We are prepared to resolve this matter, and to allow you by the labour of war upon other lands, to forget our just reprisals for the grievous offenses you have committed against us. Our offer is thus: you must retreat from the lands west of the Long River, forego all rents and tithes from peoples under our dominion, and accept the contents of this letter as our last, final and permanent tribute.”
With that, he stepped forward and dropped a yellowed parchment unto the lap of the still-seated wizard. He then stepped back and stood, his feet apart in a wide stance, his hand posed firmly on his sword hilt.
The wizard looked at the package in his hands, and then began to open it up with calm deliberation. The sides folded back, then the top, then the bottom. He looked at the opened parchment. It was empty. He let it fall gently from his hands, its tiny, awesome, crackling sound as it landed on the dirt filling the assembly with foreboding.
Seconds ticked by like hours. Finally the wizard stirred and rose, almost wearily. “My gracious Ambassador,” he began in a quiet voice, “Wizards, and those that still honour them, and indeed even the misguided elves, have posed this conflict as one of great causes. Of momentous times, the ‘Passing of the Age of Middle-earth’ it is said grandly by some.”
His arm swept about in a mildly mocking gesture.
“Unfortunately, but inevitably,” he continued, “men such as you view it from a mortal’s perspective, as something to be won or lost in terms of territory and dominion and perhaps a few score years of kingly power. You see it only as power to be clutched at,” he clenched now his outstretched fist and then relaxed it to openness, “even as it evaporates into the transitory airs of your lives. I regret your perspective, but I can respect it. I ignore your arrogant and foolish jest with this letter, and I forgive it.”