The last vestiges of the evening’s fire were swept beneath a thin layer of earth and the first fallen leaves of autumn. A thin coating of amber, brown and green spread by the travellers boot and all was as it had been before Araglir had arrived the night before.
No one would be following the man this high in the fells and no one would be tracking his progress but a habit often repeated is one never forgotten.
Spending a last few moments to test fastenings, the man strode north-east into the dawn.
A bow bag slung across his shoulder, arrows secured alongside in a case of pitch-coated linen the ranger felt no pressing threat. Yet, as he always did of late, he found his hand drifting to the long hilt of the blade at his side as if trouble were around the corner.
“You will take this in time my son…” Aeglos spoke softly as he turned the long blade, still sheathed in its scabbard of dark, cross-hatched leather.
“It came to our forebear at Fornost all those years ago, and has been taken up by each one of us, I’m sure you can wait a short while longer, no?”
Araglir frowned up a storm, a boy of fourteen summers who’s curiosity and hunger for stories had seen many in the small Dúnedain settlement weary of constant questioning. Until recently his interest had been tales of the elder days, begging any book or scrap of knowledge from any within earshot. But his latest obsession had been the curious sword worn by his father.
“Just let me see it again!” The lad pleaded, dark hair tousled about his face as he huffed, as if the argument was exhausting to the point of exertion.
“Oh, fine then.” Aeglos spoke with mirth as he once more slowly drew the blade, laying it across his lap.
The blade was over three feet in length, made seemingly of an alloy of unnatural brightness. The ghost of a curve already gave it an appearance different to straight blades of the Dúnedain. The blade thickened toward the top half of the sword, a protrusion from the true edge rising and falling away again as it tapered toward a wicked tip. Everything in the boy’s young mind that he already knew of blade craft had screamed that this should make the weapon clumsy, top heavy and unwieldy but somehow this was not the case. The times he had held it, it’s balance was unnaturally comfortable. Even more curious to his mind were the gems set in the weapon. The hilt, a fine thing of red leather and gold wire bore gems of green and gold, a red gem not unlike a ruby set within the pommel that somehow shone as if aflame.
The real wonder though was the gems set into the blade itself. Spirals of gold etched up the base of the blade as if from the golden wire that was bound in the hilt and they terminated in six studded gems, three on each side of the blade, gems of a kind none in the village could name. They were of the palest blue and seemed to emit an almost ghostly light.
Again, Araglir could see no reason for the embedding of gems not to weaken a blade but it almost seemed as if these had not been worked in but grown from the metal. A day spent wearying the ears of Beleg, the village smith had revealed that it was a mystery to his seniors too.
“Why would anyone give this away?” Araglir hovered a finger over the gems upon the blade, but stopped short of touching them.
“You should know as well as I do by now boy.” Aeglos chuckled, well used to the same set of questions from his son when he fixated on a matter.
“At the battle of Fornost, Bergil who was your ancestor and one of the last remaining captains of Arthedain turned aside the spear thrust of a great Orc, slaying the foe and saving the life of one of the Elf Lords who marched with Círdan the Elf.”
At this he patted the blade and gently set it aside, although the man’s eyes lingered on the ancient weapon.
“In gratitude and friendship eternal, he offered Bergil his sword, for what is even the finest blade’s worth against the immeasurable years of knowledge and wisdom that our ancestor saved that day.”
There was a long silence, Araglir visibly twitching as he thought of more questions but he was cut short by his father’s voice.
“Now you’ll have my gratitude son if you would leave me be and help Daeron with the firewood, for if you are shivering from cold you’ll have no breath to ask more questions later.”
Gratitude and friendship eternal. They may have been the words passed down with the blade through the long centuries but the thing at his hip certainly did not feel as if it bore either. It had started some months back as a feeling of disquiet, an itch that could not be scratched or a tension that chorded his muscles with no means of release. A knot in his stomach. Heartsick he had felt but for whom or what he had not known. Araglir had no idea where the feeling came from. Certainly, in his years spent as a warden of the sunken city he’d been content but now something uncomfortable stirred within him. He found himself quicker to anger than usual. A watchful gaze upon the horizon became a yearning for he knew not what beyond it. It wasn’t until he was unexpectedly parted from the blade for a few days he realised that it was the sword causing this. Away from the ancient weapon the feeling subsided, only to return when he once more strapped it to his side.
And so he had tried to weather this strange curse, too cautious to speak to his fellow wardens of it as he searched the scant lore of ages past that remained in the halls of Tinnudir. When it became too much he would leave his blade aside, taking another, but he found the old curiosity that pricked his youthful imagination when it came to the blade had been rekindled. He was, he had decided, meant to follow the path he was being taken on. He was meant to seek whatever doom was laid upon him by this blade. For this was no small trinket but an heirloom of his house. He would not forsake the blade, but follow the path before him.
And so Araglir took leave of his companions and the ruins in his care and sought an answer to the south, where he felt the strongest pull when he wore the blade. He passed through the field of battle where it was gifted, desolate now and offering neither answers nor comfort. Southwards he went still into the lands surrounding Bree, but none of his kin there had answers for him, save one. His father’s friend Saeradan. He told him of the hidden valley and the details of it’s finding. The name Tham Angol and the Ñóletúri that kept it.
Putting one foot in front of the other, Araglir knew that beyond the next rise he would find the winding path the old ranger had spoken of that led to Imladris, and the House of Lore.
