|
Malris met Tasa's eyes with instant comprehension, remembering the occasion to which she referred-when the door out of Giledhel's quarters had closed against them, forcing them, by the counsel of the Singer, no less, to make trial of the Dwarven Corridors. Leading to where they were now...another barred escape; another choice removed; only a single path.
And you'll come to me in the morn. As Endamir spoke bitterly against the Singer, calling him a sorceror, a master of thralls, Malris found with sorrow that all the evidence seemed to point to the twin being right. The Voice was heard all over the isle of Himring; where else, then, could it come from if not from the isle's central point, the Keep? The Singer seemed to be forcibly gathering them to him now, like a larger, more terrible vision of the Smith gathering his pupils.
Set against this was only Malris' certainty that the beauty, the might of the Song was Maglor's...and his memories of that Ages-lost friend and lord. How could he have been twisted into a thing of manipulation, a chess-player who moved his former companions like chess-pieces? But what other answer could there be?
"Smith! In all your long years here, you must have found a number of ways out of this dreary tomb and into the Keep. Step up and show us the way."
The command was, remarkably, Endamir's. Certainly the old Noldo's valour and foresight was back within him if he now put grief and grievance aside to hail the only being, false as he had proved, who could guide them further.
Silence, like an arrow-shaft quivering in ash-wood, hung for moments that seemed days. Then the Smith's voice replied.
"Endamir, lad, I shall serve you truly. I have maimed your existence, and so I am bound to ye. Aye, I know the way..."
The Smith's tall, broad, now somewhat hunched figure hulked ahead in one of the storerooms.
"If you can trust a benighted spirit who has done you wrong, then follow me."
"We have little enough choice about that," Malris answered bitterly, taking up his long knife and striding in the footsteps of the Master-Smith's strangely solid phantom.
|