When Delioron woke up it was nearly noon. Despite his instructions to the innkeeper at the Thirsty Seer not to be disturbed under any circumstances he had been stirred awake twice by a maid who had wanted to clean his room. He had sent her away both times, but then he had slept much too restlessly for his fevered thoughts and exhausted body.
There was no way to avoid it. He had to leave the inn and begin his work. For the last hour he had been dreaming of Elwil.
Before falling into his bed Delioron had examined the contents of the parcel Parthadan had given him. It was not much; it never was. The information in the dossier had revealed him some basic information about Radawen, the scholar who had approached Romenstar while he was in the custody of the Rangers; and about Maegon, the healer Parthadan speculated the Rangers would give the custody of the old man next.
He had studied the dossier briefly before falling into his bed. At first he had dreamed about other times – one dream following another in an increasing pace – and then the dreams had died when deep darkness had covered the visions of his dreams. He had served Gondor in this wretched way for sixteen years, ever since Parthadan’s predecessor as the Warden of the Green had recruited him from the Houses of Lore where he had been a lore-master and an expert of Rhûn at the time. Back then he had been full of a kind of vague patriotism and a belief that problems could be solved by tackling them head on.
His price for his youthful idealism was the heavy burden of nightmares he dragged from town to town, room to room in nameless inns across the Middle-Earth. He had lost count of the people he had killed or murdered over those years, each murder committed without hatred and without remorse. The killings had been necessary to carry out his assignments.
But it was also necessary for him to see all the faces of the people he had killed and who had otherwise met their premature ends while he was fulfilling his duties; to see in his dreams the faces of those he had considered enemies as well as the faces of the innocent, always the innocent, who had fallen victims to the game, never realizing they were playing it, with no chance to escape.
As time passed Delioron's love for Gondor had not helped him much. Only his persistent survival instinct had allowed him to endure, for it was the only thing he had never questioned.
Delioron woke up late in the day, lying beneath his tangled sheets, listening to the noises of Minas Tirith behind the window. Every time he woke up in one of these clean and barren rooms which were all alike he always had to remind himself where he was and which stage of the game he was playing at the time.
He shifted his feet off the bed and sat on it for a while, staring gloomily at the floor and his own toes and the outlook of the gloomy day he had to confront again. Then he went downstairs and asked for a bath.
Two hours later he was in the Houses of Lore. There was a morbidly obese old man sitting behind a big desk in front of a huge fireplace.
”I want to see Radawen”, Delioron said.
”And who are you?”
”No matter.”
”Radawen’s not here.”
”When is she going to be back?”
”She’s traveling. I don’t know when to expect her back. Maybe in a week or two.”
”Alright. I’ll be back later.”
”Do you want to leave a message…?”
”No”, said Delioron and left the Houses of Lore.
It was late in the afternoon and there were not many people around, so Delioron burgled into the scholars’s apartments and Radawen’s room. The room was empty and still messed up after the Rangers. The floor was littered with books thrown about the floor. The books had not been put back into their proper places, as if the owner of the books was still expecting some kind of compensation for the wrongs done to her.
On a small table in front of a fireplace there stood a single jar of honey. Next to the table there were wooden casks and barrels containing ale, pickled goods, bread, vegetables and seeds. In contrast to most burglars Delioron always checked the places where people stored and cooked their food first. It was not where people usually kept their valuables, but it was a good place to find personal information about them.
He found what he was looking for in the bottom of a crate full of carrots. He pulled out a wooden box under the carrots, opened it and took out a small book with black covers.
It was a diary. Delioron sat on a chair and flipped through it’s pages. The diary was fairly new and contained little personal information about Radawen. It began from the day Radawen had heard the rumor about the Rangers of Ithilien hiding a blue-clad wizard in the Haven. Most entries had been written while Radawen was sitting in the Haven for two days, patiently waiting until she would see a glimpse of a man in a blue robe. Radawen had meticulously catalogued every piece of information she had found on Morinehtar and Romenstar in the Houses of Lore. It was not much, and the boredom she had felt was tangible through all the pieces of poetry and other stuff she had written trying to entertain herself with while sitting and waiting in the Haven. Finally the diary chronicled the eventual meeting with Romenstar and the Rangers, all the things that had happened and everything Romenstar had said to her, word for word.
Had they found the diary, the Rangers? Of course they had not. They would not have left it behind. Delioron smiled to himself. And now Radawen was ’traveling’, according to the fat man in the Houses of Lore. Traveling in Imloth Melui, no doubt. He put the diary back in it’s box and returned the box in it’s rightful place beneath the carrots.
In a dresser near the bed Delioron found a cheap pearl necklace and a few dresses. Delioron went through her things, trying to imagine Radawen’s personality in his mind. He was sure Radawen was the key to the complicated mystery of Romenstar.
His eyes scanned around the room and stopped at a portrait hanging on the wall. It was a family portrait depicting an elderly couple in their dark, boring fineries, and their two children, a young man and a young woman. The young man was dressed in a Citadel Guard uniform. Radawen’s brother? Seemed plausible.
Radawen was probably around fifteen or sixteen in the picture. According to Parthadan’s dossier Radawen was now in her thirties, which meant the portrait was about fifteen years old. Delioron fixed his eyes on the girl. She was not smiling in the picture. Her hair was brown and very long. She was slender and probably too tall for her age. There was something striking about her face. Her eyes were open and fearless, her nose long and sharp. It was an attractive face, but at the same time a little intimidating too. The girl in the picture had an aura of intelligence and independence about her. While Radawen was now older, Delioron was sure he would recognize that face anywhere.
He spent two hours in the apartment without learning anything else useful or interesting. He left everything as it had been before he left the room – he was conducting a discreet search, not a ransack. When he finally left the apartment, the sky had turned into a dull dusky color, shaded by gray and black.
The time had come, he thought. The time to go to Imloth Melui to find the old man who called himself Romenstar.
The time to use up the scholar who had found the old man in Minas Tirith. The woman who looked so intelligent and fascinating in the portrait.
Sometimes Delioron really hated what he had become.
