Falin walked into the opening, the others close behind. A room, forty feet long, twenty feet wide, and twenty feet high with a vaulted roof, stood before him.
Its floor was paved with what looked like fine black opal, its ceiling painted sky blue and seemed to be studded with sapphires. Its walls were decorated with crests of many noble houses which he did not recognize...save one.
Sitting at the very back of the hall, was a crest of a White Tree, with seven stars in flower about it, and a great crown set with many gems above it: The sign of the house of Andúnië.
The room was lit with chandeliers set in the shape of stars, forged by arts long forgotten by the skilled of the elves of Valinor in the First Age of the Sun, and had once been given as gifts to the people of Numenor, before the Elven-folk ended their journeys to the shores of that isle.
Below the crest was a pyramid ten feet high, built from bars of what looked like silver. But in their hearts, all of those present knew what it was. Finally, Nori broke the silence. "Mithril", he whispered.
None of them ever knew how it came to be that a metal lost to the world was found in such a strange place in such great supply. Nowhere in any book of lore is the tale of how it came to be told, but here it shall at last be known:
In the dying days of the reign of Tar-Palantir, last good King of Numenor, he was burdened with terrible grief. For Tar-Palantir was a true Seer, and received in those days a vison of things to come: The great fleets of Numenor sailing from its harbors into the west in war, and Numenor foundered and sunk under a great wave.
Tar-Palantir did not know, however, that some of his folk would escape from that grievous demise, and so he saw it necessary to leave a memory of the civilization of Numenor, that in the dark times ahead, the glory of Numenor would shine wherever light and hope remained.
He sent a ship laden with mithril and fine stone-smiths into the East, to build a treasure-store before that metal was lost forever. He sent it under the command of Amandil, then the scion of the hous of Andúnië.
As Amandil grew from youth to age, and saw hope shrink away in the darkness growing over Numenor, he forgot the place where the treasure-store had been laid, and while his sons searched for it after the fall of Numenor, they never found it.
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