The Black Tree
Chapter One: The Ashen Bloom
It was in the waning years of the Third Age, when the winds from the East bore with them not only dust and dry leaves but also whispers of dread and nameless fear. At that time the northern lands of Rhudaur, once a proud part of the kingdom of Arnor, lay wild and broken, filled with the ruins of men long gone and haunted by shadows older than their graves. Few now dared to dwell there, and fewer still walked its ways by night.
Yet one came nonetheless.
His name was Erenior, a Dúnedan of the North, of the line of Rangers who kept secret watch upon the lands of Eriador. Tall he was, his face stern beneath the cowl of his weathered cloak. His grey eyes saw keenly, and he had long walked in the wild with neither companion nor complaint. He was a man of few words and many winters.
By the word of his Chieftain he had been sent, though the errand was thankless and solitary: to seek out the truth of a troubling report brought by one of the northern scouts, who claimed to have seen smoke rising from a chimney in the ruined lands east of the Weather Hills. It was a strange tale, for Rhudaur had been abandoned many years, and no hearth-fire was known to burn there. Yet there were whispers that the shadow had stirred again in the East, and the Rangers had grown wary.
And so Erenior came, wrapped in a grey cloak and bearing sword and bow. For three days he passed through desolate lands where the wind moaned through empty halls and the stones of old watchtowers bore the scars of forgotten wars. He saw no living soul but felt eyes upon him, and the weight of the air grew heavy with each step eastward. No path marked his way, save for the ghost of a track winding down from the uplands like an old scar in the land.
At last, on the morning of the fourth day, he beheld the dale he sought. A hush lay upon the land, and no breeze stirred. The grass was brown and brittle, and the earth cracked beneath his boots.
As he passed into that lonesome valley where once many shepherds' villages had stood, before their inhabitants had fled, leaving behind their crofts and sheepfolds to fall into ruin, unease touched his heart like a cold finger.
The sun was westering behind the hills, and dusk crept down upon the world. There before him stood the village, half-swallowed by forest and bramble. Stone walls sagged, and thatch had rotted through; many roofs had fallen in, and doors hung broken on their hinges. No light shone in any window, nor was there sound, save for the slow sigh of wind through leafless trees.
It was here that he found the Tree.
Twisted and tall, it stood in the heart of the village, rising stark against the gloaming sky. There stood a great tree, black as pitch, with limbs gnarled and twisted as though wrought in pain. It grew from the centre of a barren circle, and the earth about its roots was ashen and dry. No grass stirred there, nor did birds nest in its branches. Even the wind seemed to pass around it in silence.
Erenior drew nearer, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade. The sight of the thing filled him with quiet dread, though he knew not why. There was no evil to be seen, yet something in its form was wrong, as though it belonged not to this world.
He turned from the tree and saw then a thin plume of smoke curling from the chimney of a cottage near the edge of the village, small and weather-stained, yet whole. The house was low and old, built of moss-covered stone and dark timber.
He approached, and after a time the door creaked open. A woman stood on the threshold. Her face was lined and drawn, her dark hair streaked with grey, though she was not old. Behind her loomed a gaunt man with sunken eyes, and peering from around his leg was a girl-child of perhaps ten summers, with long black hair, pale cheeks, and eyes far older than her years.
Erenior was received with wary courtesy. The house was low and dim, its hearth giving little warmth. They shared what they could: a thin stew of roots and grain, and coarse bread hard as stone. Still, he thanked them, for hospitality is not to be measured in weight but in heart.
Their names were Marchel, Hareth, and Lina. Their ancestors had come, they said, from Cardolan in the distant past, when famine and strife had driven many westward. With others they had sought a place to begin anew, and found this village empty and overgrown.
They spoke little at first, and what words they gave were wary. But after a time, Marchel sat with the Ranger before the hearth, its flames burning low.
“Why do you remain?” Erenior asked, for the air of the place was heavy, and all reason cried out to flee.
Marchel cast his gaze to the shuttered window. “We are bound,” he said simply.
“My forebears built this village when the kings still ruled from Fornost. My blood has walked this land since before the Shadow from the north came. Hareth’s family, too. And now... now none but us remain.”
“It is the Tree,” Hareth whispered, barely audible.
“We call it the Ashen Bloom, for it has no leaves, nor does it ever flower. It came ten winters past. Sprouted in a single night, where the old well once lay. No birds sing in its boughs. No beast passes near. And those who spoke against it, who tried to cut it or burn it, they vanished. Or worse.”
Erenior’s brow furrowed. “Worse?”
Marchel stood, crossed to a wooden chest, and drew from it a tattered scrap of cloth, blackened at the edges and stiff with old blood.
“My brother,” he said. “Took an axe to its roots. His body was found three days hence, hung in the tree's branches, his face frozen in terror.”
A silence fell, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the low wind that moaned beyond the door.
“The dreams came after,” said Hareth.
Erenior's frowned deepened. “Dreams?”
Marchel nodded, his mouth a thin line. “Whispers. Murmurs in the dark. A voice in your sleep, speaking words you cannot recall by day. The others, some grew restless. Others… changed. One night, a man fled into the woods and never returned. The rest packed what they could and left. Only we remained.”
“Why?” Erenior asked.
Marchel looked to his wife, and she to the girl.
“Because we must,” she said. “Because Lina… listens. And sometimes… the tree listens back.”
Erenior felt the hair rise upon his neck. He turned to the girl. She sat unmoving by the fire, her small hands folded in her lap. Her eyes met his, and in them he saw no fear, only a patient sadness, as though she waited for something that could not be stopped.
“I hear it in the wind,” she said softly. “It remembers.”
That night, they gave him leave to sleep in the small barn beyond the cottage, for there was no room within. The straw was thin, and the boards creaked with every gust, but Erenior lay still and wakeful, listening.
The words spoken in the cottage lingered in his mind like a chill that no warmth could dispel. Some power, dark and nameless, held sway in this forgotten dale; a corruption wrought by a will that bent the natural order to its own design. There was in it a perversion of life itself, as though the land had been enslaved from within, made hollow and obedient to something unseen.
When their talk had ended, Marchel had risen without a word and walked over to the old chest. From within he had shown Erenior relics of a bygone age: faded banners bearing the seven stars and crown of Arnor, a shield cloven in battle, brittle parchments whose ink had long since fled. Yet among them lay a thing that drew Erenior’s gaze more keenly than all the rest.
Wrapped in a cloth of moth-eaten wool was a dagger, long and leaf-bladed, sheathed in a scabbard of cracked leather. Though the binding was worn and dry with age, the weapon it housed shone as if it had just left the forge. The blade was etched with the likeness of twining serpents wrought in crimson and gold, and its shape was graceful and sure, like the fang of some ancient and deadly beast. It was no common tool of war, but the work of a master, fit for a prince of old.
Erenior had held it with reverence, unwilling to speak, for the craftsmanship was of a kind now seldom seen in the world. But Marchel, watching the light of awe in his guest’s face, had offered it to him freely.
He had refused at first, as was proper, for such a gift was beyond reckoning. But Marchel had pressed it into his hands with quiet insistence, saying only, “It will do more good in the hands of one who still walks the wild than rusting here with ghosts.”
And so it was that Erenior now lay in the loft of the barn beneath a roof of creaking boards and watched the lamplight glint along the edges of that forgotten blade. His fingers traced the etching lightly, and the steel seemed to whisper faintly beneath his touch, as if it remembered wars long past and deeds half-buried by time. The wind sighed through the chinks in the wood, and far off, from the heart of the village, the branches of the black tree stirred.
Chapter Two: Whispers on the Wind
Erenior awoke with a start, his breath sharp and ragged in his throat. The dark pressed close all about him, thick and still as grave earth. He lay for a moment in confusion, his heart pounding within his breast, unsure what had roused him from slumber. The barn was silent save for the faint creak of old timber above and the whisper of wind outside. Yet something had broken his sleep.
He rose quietly and crept to the wall. Through a narrow gap in the old planks, he peered out into the darkness. A full moon rode the sky, veiled by mist, casting a cold, pale light over the village. Fog coiled thick among the stones and thorn-choked paths, and the world beyond the barn lay blurred and shifting like a half-remembered dream.
Then it came again, a sound carried faint upon the wind. A voice, or perhaps many voices, sibilant and cold as death. He strained to hear, but the words were not his own tongue nor any that he knew. It was a language like the hiss of withered leaves and the rustle of dry old bones. A tremor passed through him, running up his spine. At the edge of the fog, he glimpsed movement, shadow upon shadow. Shapes drifted in the moonlight, indistinct, as if the mist itself had taken form and walked the earth.
Fear stirred in his heart, but he was quick to master it. He reached for his sword, finding comfort in the weight of it in his hand, and stepped from the barn.
The ground was chill beneath his feet, and the silence deepened as he passed into the open. The thick mist parted before him in slow tendrils, curling about his boots and legs. The air was heavy, and he heard again whispering, faint and far off, like something calling from a great distance or from within the earth.
He walked slowly with careful steps toward the Tree.
There he paused. For a time he neither moved nor breathed. The towering black limbs of the Ashen Bloom rose before him, gnarled and grasping. Its shadow stretched long and thin across the clearing, and the cold in the air grew sharper, biting at his skin. The earth around the roots were bare and ashen, and the grass beyond bowed toward it, as if drawn by unseen hands.
Unbidden, memories stirred within him, fragments of a life lived in pain and blood. The cries of the dying echoed in his ears. He saw again the face of his father, stricken and still on the northern moors. He heard the cruel laughter of orcs and the clashing of steel. Then darker things followed, nameless and formless, as if drawn from the abyss between stars.
Still on he walked.
When he reached the tree, all was still. The voices faded as if they were never there, and the fog receded to the edge of the village. He stood alone beneath the boughs. No sound stirred. He felt foolish, as if the fevered fears of the villagers had taken root in his own mind. He let out a held breath. It was, after all, only a tree and nothing more. And yet, looking at it something within him recoiled, and his stomach turned.
The bark, grey as old bone and streaked with black veins, glistened in the moonlight. He reached out slowly and touched it. His fingers came away wet. Black sap oozed from a split in the trunk, thick and foul. It bore a scent both sweet and bitter, like honey spoilt by rot. The smell of it made him gag. A sudden nausea overcame him, and he turned away.
He returned to the barn without a word.
That night his dreams were dark. A forest stretched before him, vast and dying. The gnarled trees bent low, twisted in anguish and subservience, their limbs reaching toward a figure seated upon a great throne of thorns. It wore a robe as black as soot, ragged and weather-stained. Thorns crowned its bowed head. It spoke words of power, and the world screamed. Erenior could not flee. Roots bound his feet, dragging him beneath the earth. Foul smelling soil filled his mouth, his eyes, his lungs. The dreadful voice called again. He tried to scream but made no sound.
He awoke with a cry, soaked in sweat, the breath torn from his lungs. The sky outside was grey with the approach of dawn. A faint, pale light filtered into the barn.
Wiping the sweat from his brow with a trembling hand he rose and went once more to the Tree.
In the quiet of the early morning, he stood beneath its twisted branches, now still as stone. The mist had retreated, but the air felt no warmer for it. On the trunk he saw something his eyes had missed before. Symbols marked the bark, sharp and angular, unnatural and obscene in their form. They had not been carved by blade nor chisel, but grown into the wood, as though the tree itself had shaped them.
He reached out a hand slowly and traced one with his fingertips.
A shock coursed through his hand. Visions leapt unbidden into his mind: a throne of brambles, a figure robed in black and crowned in iron, an army glinting silver beneath a red sun. Fire swept the fields, and a cry rose above it all, the cry of a world in torment.
He staggered backwards. His breath came hard and fast. Something was terribly wrong.
This was no trick of the mind, nor the fruits of superstition and fear. There was purpose here, and power, and malice. He did not yet know its name, nor how it had come to this place. But he felt now with dreadful certainty that Lina, the child, was the key. How or why, he could not say.
He walked the outskirts of the village beneath the pale morning sun. The air was still, but he felt eyes upon him. The cottages stood quiet, their windows dark and lifeless. He passed old hearths, long cold. In a stone circle where once families had gathered to hear news, he found a sparrow laid upon the central stone. Its wings were folded neatly, its eyes open, unclouded, and lifeless. There was no mark of wound or predator.
By midday the family were set to their labours. Life in that place was hard-won, and each hour brought toil enough to wear the day thin. The land was cold, and the soil poor, and only by quiet perseverance did they endure. The girl moved among them with silent purpose, her hands quick and sure, her presence scarcely noticed, like a shadow cast by the sun.
Erenior sat upon a stool before the door of the cottage, his pipe unlit in his hand. The bread they offered him was dry and cracked, and the water stale, but he accepted it with thanks.
Lina moved among the thorn and thistle like a wraith. Her feet made no sound. She did not speak. Her dark eyes turned often toward the Tree, not in dread but in the quiet of one listening.
As evening deepened and the stars kindled in the sky, she came to him. Her hair was tousled by the wind.
“The Tree is hurt,” she said in a cold voice. “It calls out. But there are no others to answer.”
He turned to her swiftly and knelt. “Who told you this, child?”
“No one,” she said, her gaze distant. “I just know. It dreams, but its dreams are of hunger.”
Erenior’s heart grew heavy with dread. Among his kindred, he had heard tales of spirits enslaved by sorcery, corrupted, and bound to serve those who had enthralled them. Such things had not walked under the sun for many long years, not since the fall of Angmar.
He looked again to the Ashen Bloom. The moon had risen, and its pale light fell upon the Tree. For a moment he thought that it moved, not with the breeze, but with breath.
He turned back to the girl. “What does it want?”
Her voice was a whisper. “Someone calls to it, just as it calls to me.”
The chill that took him then pierced deeper than the cold night air. The wind rose suddenly and swept through the clearing, rustling the dead branches. The flames in Marchel’s hearth flared and then fell low, casting the cottage into half-shadow. Far away, an owl called, but no answer came.
The stillness broke. Marchel and Hareth appeared in the doorway. Their faces were pale with fear.
“Take the girl inside,” Erenior said. “Bar the door.”
He strode into the dark, his heart racing.
The voices rose again, louder now, a chorus of whispers rising into a great wailing cry. At the foot of the Tree he dropped to his knees and began to dig, tearing at root and stone with his hands. A fetid stench rose from the earth, foul and ancient.
Then his hand struck stone.
There beneath the roots lay a cairn, moss-covered and ancient. The runes carved upon it bore dates from two millennia past. But these had been marred by fresh markings. The same angular symbols found on the tree’s bark had been added here, their edges sharp and unweathered. Worse still, a black talisman of jagged iron had been hammered into the stone, etched with the dreadful, burning depiction of a crimson eye.
The image seared itself into his mind like a blow from a hammer.
Erenior recoiled. This was no accident. Some unknown hand had called this evil forth.
He rose to his feet, fire burning in his blood. He ran toward the barn, past the cottage where Marchel called after him in desperation.
“No, you cannot! He must awaken!”
Erenior did not heed his words. He threw open the barn doors and seized his gear from within. The bow, the sword, and last of all the ancient dagger, now bound to his belt. He lit a torch with trembling hands. Flame bloomed in the darkness, its warmth and light melting some of the ice that sat within his gut.
Then came a scream.
The scream of a little girl...
Without hesitation he ran out into the darkness toward the sound, his torch blazing.
