The Hobbit Hole III - Journey to the Cross-roads!

Come on! Come in! -if you would like to have some seedcakes and a pint and relax a while. (If it is a special occasion, we still have a few bottles of the old wineyards left!)

Our first thread ( New Zealander builds Hobbit hole ) reached 4,100 posts, and we thought that was big. Our second thread (The New Hobbit Hole ) held us for over 48,000 posts, and we loved it dearly. We talked about moving to a new thread for the last 38,000 posts, but we are really slow to muster! Finally, the time has come. Tomorrow (at 12:01 am, to be precise!) The Two Towers comes out, and we start a new chapter.

Here's my hobbit-sweetie:

This is the chapter where consistency starts to get out of control for me. Merry has always been a hard character to get straight in my mind, so if Merry fans think he is out of character, let me know in what way, and I will think of a way to correct that.

"It's all about Pippin!" - Billy Boyd - ICON Convention.

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The Falling of Small Stones
by Sharon Ferguson

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Left Dangling

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"Trumpets blared, and the walls of Isengard echoed…All Saruman’s people were marching away…endless lines of marching Orcs; and troops of them mounted on great wolves. And there were battalions of Men, too…they reminded me at once of that Southerner at Bree.” Merry - Flotsam and Jetsam

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When he and Aragorn entered the cool shadows of the Hall, the stone pillars and walls rang with the many voices of those who had rushed in, a collective of men and elves who were talking excitedly and with a great deal of anxiety in their faces. Gandalf swept up to both king and hobbit.

“I must have your attention,” he said, ignoring Pippin. Expression neutral, Aragorn gave a slight nod and instructed Pippin to close the front doors.

Adjusting his own features to resume Court demeanor, the hobbit dutifully marched to the huge oak doors and began shoving them closed.

As the doors swung to the locks, Merry sprang through them, slightly out of breath, and, oddly, out of uniform. Pippin’s expression must have reflected his bemusement, for his cousin and fellow wayfarer grinned and flung his arm around his shoulders with familiar camaraderie.

“I hear you’ve been skulking too much around the Courts,” he announced, a little too loudly for Pippin’s comfort. Some in the Gondorian guard turned with interest toward the two hobbits, as Merry led…no, dragged Pippin through the doorway and into the open yard. Gandalf and Aragorn watched them leave, and did not signal for Pippin to remain, despite the pleading look he gave them as they departed.

Someone else closed the door for him.

Inexplicably annoyed, Pippin yanked himself out from under Merry’s grasp and straightened his skewed tabard.

“Unlike some hobbits, I take my duties seriously,” Pippin charged, thumping the Brandybuck on the shoulder. Merry laughed. “Are you released from yours today? Or did you pull your old trick of disappearing when they looked for unwary victims to clean the stables?”

“No! I would never do that!” Merry protested. “I told them you were eager for it, since you know Shadowfax so well.” He grinned at his cousin, mischievously.

“Thanks!” Pippin grumbled, then smiled in spite of himself over the jab at his infamous ride. Merry had a way of making him feel better. “But Gandalf relieved me of that duty long ago.”

“What a pity. I think that beast rather liked you. Besides, I’ve missed my drinking partner!” Merry said, marching his cousin towards the tunnel that led into the next tier of the City.

“Oh? Where are we off to, then?”

“The tavern in the lower ring. Gimli and I were on our second pint, but then I thought, how could I quaff another brew and tease the tavern girls without my Pip nearby, eh?”

“And so you immediately fell out of your chair and staggered all the way up here, riddled with guilt, just for me?”

Merry nodded.

“Rather generous of me, isn’t it?”

Pippin smelled a ruse.

“Who put you up to this?”

Merry feigned shock, not a very convincing shock at that, by opening and closing his mouth a few times and then, with an air of offense, made for the pipe and tobacco pouch in his weskit.

“Aside from the fact that you were never handy with the tavern girls without my presence, you don’t need me around to drain Gondor of its finest beer!” Pippin added with a smile, unable to remain miffed.

Merry ignored him.

“Frodo will be there, and Sam,” he informed, as if Pippin had asked an altogether different question. “At least, I hope Sam is there. He’s quite taken with the city. I could swear he sees it as his own personal garden. Frodo may not be able to lure him away and have to hire Lotho to take his place!”

Pippin made a face at the mention of their old hobbit nemesis. Merry broke into laughter as a thought struck him.

“Can you imagine? Lotho Pimple shoveling manure!”

Pippin laughed again, thankful that Merry knew how to cheer him up.

“Let’s go, Master Sluggard,” he rallied. “But first to my quarters. I am not about to venture into an evening with my partner in crime without my own pipe!”

***************

Gandalf found all four hobbits wedged into a corner of the tavern, Frodo rosy-cheeked and placid with ale, Sam snoring as he rested propped against the wall and Merry and Pippin intent on a game with pebbles and sticks on the table among a forest of tankards. Gimli sat chatting and nodding with some elves who lounged nearby. Despite its reputation for raucous patrons, the tavern itself was half empty and possessed of the kind of buzz that settled after midnight. It was only after supper-time.

One of the elves rose to greet him, but Gandalf waved him down. No one looked as if they were of the condition to perform the usual greetings. Frodo grinned at him, then slumped against Sam and began to join in the snoring. Merry and Pippin did not even pause.

“Gandalf, we saved a place for you,” Gimli moved to show the wizard where he could sit. Gandalf nodded his thanks but deferred.

“I came to retrieve the Prince of Halflings to his post,” the wizard said. Pippin looked up, startled, and began to extricate himself from his seat.

“I had not expected to go to night duties until tomorrow night,” Pippin said, dropping half his bounty on the floor. Merry surreptitiously swept up the remainder into his pile and continued counting as Pippin bent to retrieve his spill.

“A number have been sent home or other post duties. The king does not feel a need to surround himself with a whole legion. Besides, I think Aragorn suspects talk of the Fellowship disbanding and he wants to make sure you don’t escape too soon,” the wizard smiled down at Pippin.

“That’s not likely, if the King’s people keep finding new things for us to do,” Merry rejoined, grinning at Pippin. “What do you think he will have you do this time?”

“He’ll show me how to skewer thieves like you, Meriadoc!” Pippin retorted, slapping Merry’s hand from the spoils of the game. The elves laughed at the comical surprise on the hobbit’s face. “I counted more than you, scoundrel. I was winning.”

“No thanks to Frodo here,” Merry, in classic form, turned the jest to the groggy hobbit nearby. “You used to be quite handy at distracting our Pip. You’re getting slack in your old age, Frodo. Why weren’t you keeping an eye out for me?”

“I recall someone saying we had yet to find brighter wits,” Gimli put in, causing Pippin to laugh heartily.

“That’s a contest still yet to be decided by these two,” Frodo interjected, now awake and stretching out a yawn. “Although wits of any kind in a tavern is something of a rarity.”

“You’re one to talk, Mr. Frodo,” Sam put in. Frodo looked at him. Merry and the others snickered.

“Dear Merry,” Frodo continued as Sam, Pippin, and Gandalf chortled. “You are a man of Rohan now. Who am I to tell a Knight of the Green how to win his drink?”

“If it involves jumping over the moon, Mr. Underhill, no thanks!”

After watching Frodo and the others stumble off into the night, Pippin followed Gandalf until they entered the darkened courtyard of the King’s House, now ghostly blue in the moonlight and silent as the tombs.

Gandalf paused before approaching the large oaken doors of the Hall, turning to gaze thoughtfully at Pippin, who lagged behind, growing ever sleepier in the dim light. Then, as if he thought better of entering, he swept over to the edge of the fountain and sat on its edge, beckoning the hobbit to do the same.

The barren White Tree in its fountain dripped constant tears, mourning the Ages that had been.

“I am sure it has occurred to you why you were dismissed this afternoon,” Gandalf began, hesitation in his voice. Pippin’s young face was planed by the moonlight into the ghost of the adult he was becoming, mouth set in a new firmness that told more of his growth than any year could explain. The green eyes widened in curiosity.

“No.”

“Do you not wonder then, what it was that greeted you when you entered?”

“I do wonder, but as an esquire, I am not in a position to ask questions. Indeed, I am often asked to consider myself deaf and dumb.”

“I think perhaps, you will feel differently when I tell you why you should know this,” Gandalf hedged, laying his staff across his lap, a staff he now carried out of a sense of duty and position than need.

Pippin’s puzzled expression deepened, the beer-induced haze in his eyes clearing somewhat.

“Tell me, then.”

“I have endeavored to give you and the others what information I have gained over the last few weeks concerning the War. Battles at Erebor, Lorien’s defense, the utter chaos that people throughout Middle Earth experienced with the minions of Sauron. In all of this, I hope you do not think Aragorn ignored yours and Frodo’s concern with what was going on back in the Shire?”

Pippin huffed.

“On the contrary, I am aware that he thinks of it almost as much as we do. Indeed, probably more.”

“Then what those messengers you saw gathered in Aragorn’s court shared with us should relieve some of your concern,” Gandalf said. “Peregrin Took, long have the Dunadan watched the North Kingdom, patrolling it to ward off the evil that crept ever closer. You saw that at Bree and at Weathertop; and you, even you, foolishly ignorant of the finer points of our Quest, had some knowledge of this because of the watch your family keeps on the southern borders of the Shire. And you have been taught how much Aragorn and the others have so treasured the Shire, that the true nature of danger rarely made itself known, not even to the Thain.

“But as the future Thain of the Shire, you should be aware of this now. Those messengers were among a group of soldiers who encountered Sauron’s orcs approaching the Shire and Bree at rapid pace, orcs accompanied by half-breed men whose purpose was to establish a final blockade against the defense of Rivendell. Should the Ring have fallen into the Dark Lord’s hands, they would have been well ensconced in the country-side to prevent any aide from coming to Elrond as Sauron swept in from the East.”

Pippin rose to his feet, his face drained of all color now, even in the vague light of the moon. Then, his face hardened. “How can you say this will give me comfort?” he cried.

“Because Pippin,” Gandalf answered slowly, “those soldiers struck fatal blows to much of that company. There is a large mound now somewhere south of Bree, soaked with orc blood and burning with the fires that they set to their corpses. Some escaped, but not without injury and not without the leadership they needed to set themselves against the elves of Imladris. There is mischief yet to be discovered, but it is my satisfaction that whatever Sauron had planned was put to serious rout.”

“Then the Shire is, finally, out of danger.”

“Do not assume that to be the case, Pippin! You can be certain, there are more on the way, but only because Saruman has seen to that. As in all else, Saruman began by only following Sauron’s orders. When Saruman began to feel he would not need the Dark Lord, he sent his own contingent, before Treebeard and the Ents came upon Orthanc. Do not think that because he was trapped within the tower he could not access the movements of his troupes.”

Pippin’s face was paler than the moonlight.

“So it is Sauron’s deceitful work, anyway? We have to go back soon!”

Gandalf sighed, hoping all of this would make sense at one point or another.

“It is also likely,” he continued, ”that Wormtongue’s impulse and your handling of the palantir was part of the reason why Sauron forsook any further forays towards the Shire. For that, you should feel very fortunate, despite what Saruman may be doing now. Recall, if you will, Sauron’s almost immediate response. That, Aragorn and I think, drew his attention away from the Shire at last.”

“It doesn’t matter, now, does it? I mean…” Pippin began to argue, but Gandalf cut him off.

“He not only thought you had the Ring,” he pressed, “he must have concluded that the son of the Thain was its proper hobbit guardian,” Gandalf concluded, meeting Pippin’s eyes with a look of meaning.

“But how would he know…?”

Gandalf shook his head, giving the hobbit his kindest smile.

“Do you really wonder at that, having felt the power of the palantir…and how the Dark Lord corrupted it?”

Pippin sat hard once more on the rim of the fountain.

“I am a fool!” He moaned. “I should never have left the Shire!”

Gandalf thought for a few moments of the words the King had shared with him about Pippin. Of all the others, this hobbit had been the most risky of his projects, a fortuitous bet against the more hidden Shadows that the Dark Lord threatened. His tale had certainly not been without its own twists and turns.

Was it random, or was it destiny, Mr. Took? With your kind, one never knows.

But all it took was that one stone he threw into the company of thirteen dwarves, and it had been one tumultuous ride since.

Gandalf sighed, wondering how much he would miss the hobbits, tumbling as they had into the histories of Middle Earth. He wished he had the time to share all the tales he knew, to comfort Pippin with an assurance that he was a pebble that steadied the cornerstone. As it was, he had to leave it to chance that Pippin would figure it out for himself.

Pebbles, indeed.

“I happen to disagree with you, Peregrin,” he said, finally, gently. “It made my heart glad when you volunteered to come along. It is something a true Thain of the Shire would have done.”

Pippin did not answer. His head was bowed into his hands, mind reeling with what could have been. Gandalf understood his silence to mean he had said enough.

“Well, well,” the wizard murmured, conscious that Aragorn was waiting. He stood up and patted the hobbit’s tousled ginger hair with familiar affection. “Go now. You must speak with the King about this. After all,” Gandalf added, before fading into the darkness of the City. Pippin did not look up, although the shifting of his shoulders showed that he was listening. “He looked into the palantir as well.”

Hi Pippin! Yes, t'is me!

The Falling of Small Stones
by Sharon Ferguson

"The Dark Lord already knew too much, and his servants also…the Red Eye will be looking towards Isengard.” Aragorn - Flotsam and Jetsam.

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The long approach, the beckoning well…rock and pipeweed…barrels…pressure…foundering, steam… the sound of trees marching...and water, everywhere...

Pippin’s mind never ceased its debate over the images of his dreams, try as he might to shove them aside while in the tavern. Even as the heat of the crowd and the lull of music and the cheerful faces of friends distracted him, the thoughts replayed as background noise, almost to the point of frustration.

Still, it felt good to see Merry up to his old antics, and hear the elves sing. He had been right: there had been a plan to roust him from the fit. Frodo confessed as much when he and Merry walked in and Pippin hugged him for it. Frodo, to the last.

But now, as he made his way through the darkness of the Hall towards the post he was to keep for the night, the echoes murmured the noisiness of his thoughts . He almost missed sighting the lanky form of Aragorn sprawled on the dais, puffing at his pipe. Pippin found his way to the rear quarters blocked, not by the new King of Gondor, but by Strider, of Bree, who sat hunched and wrapped in the darkness, watching for the slightest misapprehension.

Pippin stopped in a beam of moonlight pouring in from an open transom to stare at the man expectantly.

He could talk to Strider.

“Gandalf has not lost all his familiar ways, I see,” said the former Ranger, smiling at the hobbit. “You look as if the Wraith King himself had arisen.”

Pippin did not trust himself to answer. He instead chose to sit on the steps next to Aragorn, pulling his cloak around his feet to keep them warm. His sidelong glance told the king everything he should know.

“I shall not keep you in a night watch, Peregrin,” Aragorn said. “There is still much to prepare for your journey homeward. I would not want your last days in Minas Tirith to be that of toil.”

Pippin could not stop the look of disappointment from reaching his face.

“If it is your wish, my lord,” Pippin said, with a deferential nod of his head.

Aragorn leaned forward, pipe in hand.

“Do you fear the dreams?”

Pippin opened his mouth to protest, but in the vague light of the room, he saw Strider, the same as he had been in their room in Bree, unmoving in his purpose. Strider had something to say and Strider would not be denied.

“I don’t...” he began, but Aragorn shook his head as if to say Pippin’s attempt to brush away the subject would not work. “Yes.”

“Is that why you requested night watch?”

“In part. Also, to fill in where Beregond left off. You did send him off to Ithilien, taking a generous companion away from a very grateful hobbit,” Pippin could not resist the jest about Beregond’s new station. “I felt it only right to do so when the men brought me so kindly under their wing.”

Aragorn only handed Pippin a reserve pipe and pouch that sat beside him and puffed on own for a few minutes in silence.

Might as well have this out, Pippin thought.

“Gandalf told me you had looked….” His voice trailed off, a certain horror of that thought choking him off.

“Yes.” Aragorn did not need for him to finish.

“Strider, were you...frightened?”

Aragorn let out a breath, sensible of joy at the use of his Bree name. Used by any other person, the name would have been a slur. From the hobbits, however, it was an indication of their absolute trust.

“Terribly. It was almost more than I could bear. Had it not been for the knowledge that others were at stake, I do not think I would have succeeded in confronting his will.”

Pippin flinched, the memory of that will bringing a metallic taste to his mouth.

“I cannot forget it. I try, but my dreams…there is no escape.”

“Even now, when Sauron is defeated?”

“It is only what I remember, what I saw…that night. He laid me bare.”

Aragorn nodded, not wishing to recall those images himself. Pippin, however, needed reassurance.

“What did you see?” the hobbit asked, finally.

Aragorn sat back, wondering if he could verbalize the actual struggle. He had explained indirectly to Gimli and Legolas the intensity and the dismay. Not even Gandalf had an idea just what presenting oneself to the Eye was like. Words did not suffice.

Pippin knew, though.

“I saw the Dark Lord,” he began, the images still something of a trial for him, “an unbearable presence, a malice that pulled like a great tide. I, too, was laid bare, but that alone did not threaten me. I revealed to him my true self, my true purpose for using the palantir, and thus struck weakness within him.” Aragorn let out a breath he had been holding. “But it was a drain, a disheartening drain. The Eye never relented.”

“My poor cousin…” Pippin whispered, lost in thought. How much more bare was he while he carried the Ring?

Aragorn turned to him with a sudden thought.

“Did you not tell Gandalf everything?” the king queried. Pippin reacted as if stung.

“Yes! It was as I said…he looked and I understood.”

“Understood what?”

“Everything. All his will, all his desire. And he …pulled something out of me…how… I despaired of ever returning. He gloated over that, along with the fact that he thought he would have the Ring at last. Aragorn, I should never have left the Shire!”

“Should you not have? Could you have forseen what was going that way and defended against it if you had done as Elrond desired?”

“No…perhaps I…I don’t know,” Pippin fumbled.

“Yet here you are, after all that you have done, wondering if you were any part of my kingship! Do you know, Gandalf reminded Elrond of your future as the Thain of the Shire, and how that may assist the return of the king. That alone should indicate how important you are to the destiny of the Fellowship.”

“I didn’t know that," Pippin said. "But…how could I have anything at all to do with your becoming king? My family has no bearing upon royalty! If anyone fulfilled a destiny, it was Frodo. As I said before, all I am is the random pebble.”

“There you are wrong, but even random pebbles have a way of falling into the right chink. And your heritage was closer to helping the kingship than you think. I must confess, I did not see it myself until you looked into the palantir."

Pippin's expression must have been incredulous because Strider nodded his assurance.

“I am the rightful heir to the palantir,” the Ranger from Bree continued. “By the Kings of old, and their Stewards, the line of Numenor gives strength to use the palantir for what they were wrought: to share knowledge from afar, to converse in the mind that which needed to be conveyed. But it was not for kings alone. Very often, they would appoint one to use it in their place, when the mundane vagaries of life and circumstance prevented more direct communication.”

Pippin stared at him in confusion. What was Aragorn trying to tell him?

Strider opened his mouth to continue, then changed his mind, choosing instead to tamp the contents of his pipe into a nearby crockery, grinding the smouldering ashes into dust. He stood up and indicated Pippin to follow. Not so eager to relinquish the fragrance of the pipeweed, Pippin tucked the pipe’s mouth into the corner of his mouth and followed Aragorn out of the Hall and back into the courtyard. A cold wind breathed past them as the king strode toward the outlet that led to the embrasure they had visited four days before.

But they were not heading for the bench at the wall. That had been nestled far beneath the shining spire that had greeted him on his arrival to Minas Tirith, the column of brilliant white glowing in the break of cloud and sunburst, the tower whose hope had sung to him in that first glint of morning. Instead, Strider led him to the tower itself, now strangely forlorn in the ebbing night, its beautiful stone subdued in the moonlight.

They climbed, with Aragorn holding a small lantern to light their way. Halfway up, the pipeweed died and went out. Pippin felt he could climb no more, and would have made a joking reference to their trip through Moria, when they turned the last curve, and came upon the landing at the top.

Well, less of a landing, the hobbit thought. A wall rose up to meet the bell-shape of the roof, and there was a door hitched upon the uppermost step. A great iron latch barred their way.

The jest faded from his thoughts, and he placed the cooling pipe on the step before him.

Aragorn turned to him, the lamplight throwing the hardened planes of his face into a contortion of light and shadow.

“Will you trust me?”

“What’s behind that door?” Pippin asked warily.

“Nothing more than old mysteries. Nothing to hurt you,” the king reassured, kindly.

Pippin nodded and his friend pulled the latch. The great door creaked as it opened, as if to protest their invasion, and they stepped inside.

Pippin stumbled backward as a rush of cold air hit his face. The familiar shadows of his dreams rose up in his chest as a sudden fear, and his sight focused on a carven pedestal in the center of the room. Nothing sat there, although a deep depression was scooped in the center of its flat top.

Red lights, searching...despair and desperation...will...terrible will...

“Pippin!”

The hobbit shuddered out of the reverie, taken as he was by the ghosts of his dreams. Aragorn steadied him with a strong hand on his shoulder.

He stared up at his friend, anger welling in the pit of his stomach.

“What are we doing here?”

“This is where your nightmares will end,” Aragorn stated, voice firm and deep in the dark. Turning, he pointed to the pedestal.

“There rested the palantir of Denethor’s watch, one that Gandalf suspected was in use, but had no confirmation, until that night in the Silent Streets. This tower is where Denethor wrestled with Sauron, and became infected with a gloom too great even for him to defeat. What must he have struggled with, what coldness of purpose led him to despair! Yet, we cannot fault him, breaking as he did the tradition of old: to not use the stones without knowing what lay on the other side. With Mordor gathering its shrouds of death to fling upon Gondor, what must Denethor have seen as a choice of lesser hazard, to expend every muscle of resistence against unassailable powers? Or wrestle wits with an evil that gave no quarter? And there is no doubt in my mind that he guessed at Saruman’s work and sought to counteract both.”

Aragorn’s hand traced the edge of the depression where the palantir had rested, face drawn in a deep sadness. Pippin edged closer, feeling the fear subside, remembering keenly the old Steward’s face and voice.

“Without a directive to act, and without outside hope of assistance, Denethor did what he must," Aragorn concluded.

“But my dreams are about Sauron, not Denethor,” Pippin broke in. “I touched the Orthanc Stone, not the one here.”

“You are correct, but I believe this has more to do with what the palantir took into itself. You see, it has the power to retain the thoughts of those who touch it. Even though the Stone of Minas Tirith is forever scalded and ruined, it retains that which Denethor put into it…and because of its connection to Sauron, Saruman as well. You, my dear hobbit, were caught in the middle.”

“That’s an understatement,” Pippin remarked, with a sigh. “But I still don’t understand. What has my looking into the palantir got to do with becoming Thain?”

In reply, Aragorn withdrew an item from another pouch belted to his side, a small bag that revealed its contents as dried leaves of athelas, and pinched several portions into his palm. Reaching over to a small table in the shadows, he then brought forth a small pitcher of water, and poured it over the crushed herb. Despite the chill of the water and air, a fragrance wafted up into the room, making Pippin blink as if he had just been awakened. Aragorn rubbed the moistened athelas between his palms, intensifying the aroma, until his hands were dry.

“I have plans to apprise you of that tomorrow, my dear hobbit,” the king said, pulling at a necklace that lay hidden underneath the elegant folds of his robes. It was the Elf-stone, the Elessar, for which he had been named, artfully mounted within the outspread wings of a silver eagle. The beryl shimmered like a green star in the dark, propitious in the heavy shadows.

“The hands that have healed shall remove all that the palantiri have impressed upon you, my friend,” Aragorn continued, leaning to bring his face more level with the hobbit’s. “But it will require one more thing of you, something that even Gandalf was hesitant to agree upon, because of what my next action will pose for you. I ask you once more: do you trust me, Peregrin Took?”

Pippin stared back at his friend, the king, the ranger, the captain, wondering how he could have ever mistrusted him, in Bree or in the wild. There had been so much at stake, and so many choices that could have been made without ever factoring the ‘excess baggage’ that Merry had sardonically named themselves. Could he trust Aragorn, now king that was returned?

“With all my heart,” the hobbit answered, without faltering. He held out his hand to clasp the Ranger’s. “By the Shire, with all my heart.”

Smiling, Aragorn disengaged and turned to reach into the darkest corner of the room, hiding his movements until he rose up and turned.

His hands cradled a cloth-covered item, a cloth which fell with familiar dread.

Now inert, the palantir he had taken from Gandalf’s very grasp came to rest in the pedestal, its dark depths forsaken of its infamous charm. Still, Pippin found himself torn between bolting for the door, and reaching out to clasp it to him once again.

Aragorn’s hands interrupted his vision as he motioned for Pippin to bring his hands to the orb. The king took his hands and placed them firmly against the curve.

“Now,” Strider said, “the stone must let you go.”

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