Two Towers. BOOK IV
Chapter 7. Journey to the Cross-roads.
Frodo and Sam returned to their beds and lay there in silence resting
for a little, while men bestirred themselves and the business of the day
began. After a while water was brought to them, and then they were led to a
table where food was set for three. Faramir broke his fast with them. He had
not slept since the battle on the day before, yet he did not look weary.
When they had finished they stood up. "May no hunger trouble you on the
road," said Faramir. "You have little provision, but some small store of
food fit for travellers I have ordered to be stowed in your packs. You will
have no lack of water as you walk in Ithilien, but do not drink of any
stream that flows from Imlad Morgul, the Valley of Living Death. This also I
must tell you. My scouts and watchers have all returned, even some that have
crept within sight of the Morannon. They all find a strange thing. The land
is empty. Nothing is on the road, and no sound of foot, or horn, or
bowstring is anywhere to be heard. A waiting silence broods above the
Nameless Land. I do not know what this portends. But the time draws swiftly
to some great conclusion. Storm is coming. Hasten while you may! If you are
ready, let us go. The Sun will soon rise above the shadow."
The hobbits" packs were brought to them (a little heavier than they had
been), and also two stout staves of polished wood, shod with iron, and with
carven heads through which ran plaited leathern thongs.
"I have no fitting gifts to give you at our parting," said Faramir;
"but take these staves. They may be of service to those who walk or climb in
the wild. The men of the White Mountains use them; though these have been
cut down to your height and newly shod. They are made of the fair tree
lebethron, beloved of the woodwrights of Gondor, and a virtue has been set
upon them of finding and returning. May that virtue not wholly fail under
the Shadow into which you go!"
The hobbits bowed low. "Most gracious host," said Frodo, "it was said
to me by Elrond Halfelven that I should find friendship upon the way, secret
and unlooked for. Certainly I looked for no such friendship as you have
shown. To have found it turns evil to great good."
Now they made ready to depart. Gollum was brought out of some corner or
hiding-hole, and he seemed better pleased with himself than he had been,
though he kept close to Frodo and avoided the glance of Faramir.
"Your guide must be blindfolded," said Faramir, "but you and your
servant Samwise I release from this, if you wish."
Gollum squealed, and squirmed, and clutched at Frodo, when they came to
bind his eyes; and Frodo said: "Blindfold us all three, and cover up my eyes
first, and then perhaps he will see that no harm is meant." This was done,
and they were led from the cave of Henneth Annûn. After they had passed the
passages and stairs they felt the cool morning air, fresh and sweet, about
them. Still blind they went on for some little time, up and then gently
down. At last the voice of Faramir ordered them to be uncovered.
They stood under the boughs of the woods again. No noise of the falls
could be heard, for a long southward slope lay now between them and the
ravine in which the stream flowed. To the west they could see light through
the trees, as if the world came there to a sudden end, at a brink looking
out only on to sky.
"Here is the last parting of our ways," said Faramir. "If you take my
counsel, you will not turn eastward yet. Go straight on, for thus you will
have the cover of the woodland for many miles. On your west is an edge where
the land falls into the great vales, sometimes suddenly and sheer, sometimes
in long hillsides. Keep near to this edge and the skirts of the forest. In
the beginning of your journey you may walk under daylight, I think. The land
dreams in a false peace, and for a while all evil is withdrawn. Fare you
well, while you may!"
He embraced the hobbits then, after the manner of his people, stooping,
and placing his hands upon their shoulders, and kissing their foreheads. "Go
with the good will of all good men!" he said.
They bowed to the ground. Then he turned and without looking back he
left them and went to his two guards that stood at a little distance away.
They marvelled to see with what speed these green-clad men now moved,
vanishing almost in the twinkling of an eye. The forest where Faramir had
stood seemed empty and drear, as if a dream had passed.
Frodo sighed and turned back southward. As if to mark his disregard of
all such courtesy, Gollum was scrabbling in the mould at the foot of a tree.
"Hungry again already?" thought Sam. "Well, now for it again!"
"Have they gone at last? " said Gollum. "Nassty wicked Men! Sméagol"s
neck still hurts him, yes it does. Let's go! "
"Yes, let us go," said Frodo. "But if you can only speak ill of those
who showed you mercy, keep silent! "
"Nice Master! " said Gollum. "Sméagol was only joking. Always forgives,
he does, yes, yes, even nice Master's little trickses. Oh yes, nice Master,
nice Sméagol! "
Frodo and Sam did not answer. Hoisting their packs and taking their
staves in hand, they passed on into the woods of Ithilien.
Twice that day they rested and took a little of the food provided by
Faramir: dried fruits and salted meat, enough for many days; and bread
enough to last while it was still fresh. Gollum ate nothing.
The sun rose and passed overhead unseen, and began to sink, and the
light through the trees to the west grew golden; and always they walked in
cool green shadow, and all about them was silence. The birds seemed all to
have flown away or to have fallen dumb.
Darkness came early to the silent woods, and before the fall of night
they halted, weary, for they had walked seven leagues or more from Henneth
Annûn. Frodo lay and slept away the night on the deep mould beneath an
ancient tree. Sam beside him was more uneasy: he woke many times, but there
was never a sign of Gollum, who had slipped off as soon as the others had
settled to rest. Whether he had slept by himself in some hole nearby, or had
wandered restlessly prowling through the night, he did not say; but he
returned with the first glimmer of light, and roused his companions.
"Must get up, yes they must!" he said. "Long ways to go still, south
and east. Hobbits must make haste!"
That day passed much as the day before had gone, except that the
silence seemed deeper; the air grew heavy, and it began to be stifling under
the trees. It felt as if thunder was brewing. Gollum often paused, sniffing
the air, and then he would mutter to himself and urge them to greater speed.
As the third stage of their day's march drew on and afternoon waned,
the forest opened out, and the trees became larger and more scattered. Great
ilexes of huge girth stood dark and solemn in wide glades with here and
there among them hoary ash-trees. and giant oaks just putting out their
brown-green buds. About them lay long launds of green grass dappled with
celandine and anemones, white and blue, now folded for sleep; and there were
acres populous with the leaves of woodland hyacinths: already their sleek
bell-stems were thrusting through the mould. No living creature, beast or
bird, was to be seen, but in these open places Gollum grew afraid, and they
walked now with caution, flitting from one long shadow to another.
Light was fading fast when they came to the forest-end. There they sat
under an old gnarled oak that sent its roots twisting like snakes down a
steep crumbling bank. A deep dim valley lay before them. On its further side
the woods gathered again, blue and grey under the sullen evening, and
marched on southwards. To the right the Mountains of Gondor glowed, remote
in the West, under a fire-flecked sky. To the left lay darkness: the
towering walls of Mordor; and out of that darkness the long valley came,
falling steeply in an ever-widening trough towards the Anduin. At its bottom
ran a hurrying stream: Frodo could hear its stony voice coming up through
the silence; and beside it on the hither side a road went winding down like
a pale ribbon, down into chill grey mists that no gleam of sunset touched.
There it seemed to Frodo that he descried far off, floating as it were on a
shadowy sea, the high dim tops and broken pinnacles of old towers forlorn
and dark.
He turned to Gollum. "Do you know where we are? " he said.
"Yes, Master. Dangerous places. This is the road from the Tower of the
Moon, Master, down to the ruined city by the shores of the River. The ruined
city, yes, very nasty place, full of enemies. We shouldn"t have taken Men"s
advice. Hobbits have come a long way out of the path. Must go east now, away
up there." He waved his skinny arm towards the darkling mountains. "And we
can"t use this road. Oh no! Cruel peoples come this way, down from the
Tower."
Frodo looked down on to the road. At any rate nothing was moving on it
now. It appeared lonely and forsaken, running down to empty ruins in the
mist. But there was an evil feeling in the air, as if things might indeed be
passing up and down that eyes could not see. Frodo shuddered as he looked
again at the distant pinnacles now dwindling into night, and the sound of
the water seemed cold and cruel: the voice of Morgulduin, the polluted
stream that flowed from the Valley of the Wraiths.
"What shall we do? " he said. "We have walked long and far. Shall we
look for some place in the woods behind where we can lie hidden? "
"No good hiding in the dark," said Gollum. "It's in day that hobbits
must hide now, yes in day."
"Oh come! " said Sam. "We must rest for a bit, even if we get up again
in the middle of the night. There"ll still be hours of dark then time enough
for you to take us a long march, if you know the way."
Gollum reluctantly agreed to this, and he turned back towards the
trees, working eastward for a while along the straggling edges of the wood.
He would not rest on the ground so near the evil road, and after some debate
they all climbed up into the crotch of a large holm-oak, whose thick
branches springing together from the trunk made a good hiding-place and a
fairly comfortable refuge. Night fell and it grew altogether dark under the
canopy of the tree. Frodo and Sam drank a little water and ate some bread
and dried fruit, but Gollum at once curled up and went to sleep. The hobbits
did not shut their eyes.
It must have been a little after midnight when Gollum woke up: suddenly
they were aware of his pale eyes unlidded gleaming at them. He listened and
sniffed, which seemed, as they had noticed before, his usual method of
discovering the time of night.
"Are we rested? Have we had beautiful sleep?" he said. "Let's go!"
"We aren"t, and we haven"t," growled Sam. "But we"ll go if we must."
Gollum dropped at once from the branches of the tree on to all fours,
and the hobbits followed more slowly.
As soon as they were down they went on again with Gollum leading,
eastwards, up the dark sloping land. They could see little, for the night
was now so deep that they were hardly aware of the stems of trees before
they stumbled against them. The ground became more broken and walking was
more difficult, but Gollum seemed in no way troubled. He led them through
thickets and wastes of brambles; sometimes round the lip of a deep cleft or
dark pit, sometimes down into black bush-shrouded hollows and out again; but
if ever they went a little downward, always the further slope was longer and
steeper. They were climbing steadily. At their first halt they looked back,
and they could dimly perceive the roofs of the forest they had left behind
lying like a vast dense shadow, a darker night under the dark blank sky.
There seemed to be a great blackness looming slowly out of the East, eating
up the faint blurred stars. Later the sinking moon escaped from the pursuing
cloud, but it was ringed all about with a sickly yellow glare.
At last Gollum turned to the hobbits. "Day soon," he said. "Hobbits
must hurry. Not safe to stay in the open in these places. Make haste! "
He quickened his pace, and they followed him wearily. Soon they began
to climb up on to a great hog-back of land. For the most part it was covered
with a thick growth of gorse and whortleberry, and low tough thorns, though
here and there clearings opened, the scars of recent fires. The gorse-bushes
became more frequent as they got nearer the top; very old and tall they
were, gaunt and leggy below but thick above, and already putting out yellow
flowers that glimmered in the gloom and gave a faint sweet scent. So tall
were the spiny thickets that the hobbits could walk upright under them,
passing through long dry aisles carpeted with a deep prickly mould.
On the further edge of this broad hill-back they stayed their march and
crawled for hiding underneath a tangled knot of thorns. Their twisted
boughs, stooping to the ground, were overridden by a clambering maze of old
briars. Deep inside there was a hollow hall, raftered with dead branch and
bramble, and roofed with the first leaves and shoots of spring. There they
lay for a while, too tired yet to eat; and peering out through the holes in
the covert they watched for the slow growth of day.
But no day came, only a dead brown twilight. In the East there was a
dull red glare under the lowering cloud: it was not the red of dawn. Across
the tumbled lands between, the mountains of the Ephel Dúath frowned at them,
black and shapeless below where night lay thick and did not pass away, above
with jagged tops and edges outlined hard and menacing against the fiery
glow. Away to their right a great shoulder of the mountains stood out, dark
and black amid the shadows, thrusting westward.
"Which way do we go from here?" asked Frodo. "Is that the opening of-of
the Morgul Valley, away over there beyond that black mass?"
"Need we think about it yet?" said Sam, "Surely we"re not going to move
any more today, if day it is?"
"Perhaps not, perhaps not," said Gollum. "But we must go soon, to the
Cross-roads. Yes, to the Cross-roads. That's the way over there yes,
Master."
The red glare over Mordor died away. The twilight deepened as great
vapours rose in the East and crawled above them. Frodo and Sam took a little
food and then lay down, but Gollum was restless. He would not eat any of
their food, but he drank a little water and then crawled about under the
bushes, sniffing and muttering. Then. suddenly he disappeared.
"Off hunting, I suppose," said Sam and yawned. It was his turn to sleep
first, and he was soon deep in a dream. He thought he was back in the Bag
End garden looking for something; but he had a heavy pack on his back, which
made him stoop. It all seemed very weedy and rank somehow, and thorns and
bracken were invading the beds down near the bottom hedge.
"A job of work for me, I can see; but I"m so tired," he kept on saying.
Presently he remembered what he was looking for. "My pipe!" he said, and
with that he woke up.
"Silly!" he said to himself, as he opened his eyes and wondered why he
was lying down under the hedge. "It's in your pack all the time!" Then he
realized, first that the pipe might be in his pack but he had no leaf, and
next that he was hundreds of miles from Bag End. He sat up. It seemed to be
almost dark. Why had his master let him sleep on out of turn, right on till
evening?
"Haven"t you had no sleep, Mr. Frodo?" he said. "What's the time? Seems
to be getting late!"
"No it isn"t," said Frodo. "But the day is getting darker instead of
lighter: darker and darker. As far as I can tell, it isn"t midday yet, and
you"ve only slept for about three hours."
"I wonder what's up," said Sam. "Is there a storm coming? If so it"s
going to be the worst there ever was. We shall wish we were down a deep
hole, not just stuck under a hedge." He listened. "What's that? Thunder, or
drums, or what is it? "
"I don"t know," said Frodo. "It's been going on for a good while now.
Sometimes the ground seems to tremble, sometimes it seems to be the heavy
air throbbing in your ears."
Sam looked round. "Where's Gollum? " he said. "Hasn"t he come back
yet?"
"No," said Frodo. "There's not been a sign or sound of him."
"Well, I can"t abide him," said Sam. "In fact, I"ve never taken
anything on a journey that I"d have been less sorry to lose on the way. But
it would be just like him, after coming all these miles, to go and get lost
now, just when we shall need him most -- that is, if he's ever going to be
any use, which I doubt."
"You forget the Marshes," said Frodo. "I hope nothing has happened to
him."
"And I hope he's up to no tricks. And anyway I hope he doesn"t fall
into other hands, as you might say. Because if he does, we shall soon be in
for trouble."
At that moment a rolling and rumbling noise was heard again, louder now
and deeper. The ground seemed to quiver under their feet. "I think we are in
for trouble anyhow," said Frodo. "I"m afraid our journey is drawing to an
end."
"Maybe," said Sam; "but where there's life there's hope, as my Gaffer
used to say; and need of vittles, as he mostways used to add. You have a
bite, Mr. Frodo, and then a bit of sleep."
The afternoon, as Sam supposed it must be called, wore on. Looking out
from the covert he could see only a dun, shadowless world, fading slowly
into a featureless, colourless gloom. It felt stifling but not warm. Frodo
slept unquietly, turning and tossing, and sometimes murmuring. Twice Sam
thought he heard him speaking Gandalf's name. The time seemed to drag
interminably. Suddenly Sam heard a hiss behind him, and there was Gollum on
all fours, peering at them with gleaming eyes.
"Wake up, wake up! Wake up, sleepies!" he whispered. "Wake up! No time
to lose. We must go, yes, we must go at once. No time to lose!"
Sam stared at him suspiciously: he seemed frightened or excited. "Go
now? What's your little game? It isn"t time yet. It can"t be tea-time even,
leastways not in decent places where there is tea-time."
"Silly! " hissed Gollum. "We"re not in decent places. Time's running
short, yes, running fast. No time to lose. We must go. Wake up. Master, wake
u He clawed at Frodo; and Frodo, startled out of sleep, sat up suddenly and
seized him by the arm. Gollum tore himself loose and backed away.
"They mustn"t be silly," he hissed. "We must go. No time to lose!" And
nothing more could they get out of him. Where he had been, and what he
thought was brewing to make him in such a hurry, he would not say. Sam was
filled with deep suspicion, and showed it; but Frodo gave no sign of what
was passing in his mind. He sighed, hoisted his pack, and prepared to go out
into the ever-gathering darkness.
Very stealthily Gollum led them down the hillside, keeping under cover
wherever it was possible, and running, almost bent to the ground, across any
open space; but the light was now so dim that even a keen-eyed beast of the
wild could scarcely have seen the hobbits, hooded, in their grey cloaks, nor
heard them, walking as warily as the little people can. Without the crack of
a twig or the rustle of a leaf they passed and vanished.
For about an hour they went on, silently, in single file, oppressed by
the gloom and by the absolute stillness of the land, broken only now and
again by the faint rumbling as of thunder far away or drum-beats in some
hollow of the hills. Down from their hiding-place they went, and then
turning south they steered as straight a course as Gollum could find across
a long broken slope that leaned up towards the mountains. Presently, not far
ahead, looming up like a black wall, they saw a belt of trees. As they drew
nearer they became aware that these were of vast size, very ancient it
seemed, and still towering high, though their tops were gaunt and broken, as
if tempest and lightning-blast had swept across them, but had failed to kill
them or to shake their fathomless roots.
"The Cross-roads, yes," whispered Gollum, the first words that had been
spoken since they left their hiding-place. "We must go that way." Turning
eastward now, he led them up the slope; and then suddenly there it was
before them: the Southward Road, winding its way about the outer feet of the
mountains, until presently it plunged into the great ring of trees.
"This is the only way," whispered Gollum. "No paths beyond the road. No
paths. We must go to the Cross-roads. But make haste! Be silent! "
As furtively as scouts within the campment of their enemies, they crept
down on to the road, and stole along its westward edge under the stony bank,
grey as the stones themselves, and soft-footed as hunting cats. At length
they reached the trees, and found that they stood in a great roofless ring,
open in the middle to the sombre sky; and the spaces between their immense
boles were like the great dark arches of some ruined hall. In the very
centre four ways met. Behind them lay the road to the Morannon; before them
it ran out again upon its long journey south; to their right the road from
old Osgiliath came climbing up, and crossing, passed out eastward into
darkness: the fourth way, the road they were to take.
Standing there for a moment filled with dread Frodo became aware that a
light was shining; he saw it glowing on Sam's face beside him. Turning
towards it, he saw, beyond an arch of boughs, the road to Osgiliath running
almost as straight as a stretched ribbon down, down, into the West. There,
far away, beyond sad Gondor now overwhelmed in shade, the Sun was sinking,
finding at last the hem of the great slow-rolling pall of cloud, and falling
in an ominous fire towards the yet unsullied Sea. The brief glow fell upon a
huge sitting figure, still and solemn as the great stone kings of Argonath.
The years had gnawed it, and violent hands had maimed it. Its head was gone,
and in its place was set in mockery a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted
by savage hands in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in
the midst of its forehead. Upon its knees and mighty chair, and all about
the pedestal, were idle scrawls mixed with the foul symbols that the
maggot-folk of Mordor used.
Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king's head: it
was lying rolled away by the roadside. "Look, Sam!" he cried, startled into
speech. "Look! The king has got a crown again!"
The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the
high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant
with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if
in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony hair
yellow stonecrop gleamed.
"They cannot conquer for ever!" said Frodo. And then suddenly the brief
glimpse was gone. The Sun dipped and vanished, and as if at the shuttering
of a lamp, black night fell.
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