[Orual]

Jem had to control himself from fairly skipping to the room where he had been told the children were being kept. He could barely believe his luck. "What a fine day it is!" he cried, and was met with a few glares and one shout of "shut your trap." He ignored them, but forced himself to calm down.

The only door to the tower was through the palace, and the palace was difficult enough in and of itself to navigate. Jem had never been in a place so big. He had to ask several people before he finally found the door to the tower, at the west end of the palace.

A door worthy of the palace it was, a huge impressive thing easily half again as tall as Jem, made of good, solid oak, and with two huge iron handles. Jem wondered for a moment if he could even open it, but in the end, though he had to put all of his weight into it, he pulled it open and slipped through it, afraid the whole time that it would shut while he was halfway through and crush him.

The tower itself was fairly well-lit at the bottom level, but it was empty as far as Jem could tell. His boots made huge noises that echoed through the tower when he walked, and he winced every time his foot hit the ground. He climbed the winding staircase for a long while, counting the floors, until he hit the desired story--the fifth.

"One, two, three...four, five," Jem counted under his breath, ticking off the cells. "Six, seven, eight...nine!" He stopped in front of the ninth cell. His eyes were finally adjusted to the dark--the tower had gotten steadily darker as he had gotten higher up--and he saw the two children. His heart sank and he bit his lip. How much they reminded him of himself, and of his friends when he was growing up on the streets of Gondor. He made up his mind that, even if it didn't entirely please Yr Saldan, he would be kind to them. He leaned up to the bars, and saw the children look up at him. He did his best to smile comfortingly. "It's all right, I'm here to take care of you. My name's Jemennan, but you can call me Jem. We're probably going to be stuck together for a while, so why don't you tell me your names?"