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Lithor
It was nighttime now. They had been traversing the streets for around thirty minutes. The rain had stopped five minutes after they had left the healer’s house so they were not wet, but they were tired and Balvir was getting irritable. Not really irritable—grumpy, I guess, but he was almost always like that, or so it seemed.
Rohan in the winter: the air is always a little darker. A darkness comes with winter that these southern people don’t know. Lithor looked at Balvir. Snow falls so much earlier and in the winter you can walk a snow field among bushes and visitors don’t know that the bushes are the tops of tall pines standing in ten feet of snow. Lithor wasn’t speaking about Edoras, or even Scarburg. His mind was back at his childhood home, farther north near the mountains.
Visitors, once long ago in the dead of winter, prophesying destruction for Rohan, scared the fool out of me. I resented it (even if it did almost come true) and pa said I was right. Pa… When Lithor thought of his old man he could see him suddenly in the middle of a field in the spring trying to move a grey boulder. Pa always knew instinctively the ones you could move, even though the greater part was buried in the earth and he expected you to move the rock and not discuss it. A hard and silent man—an honest man—a noble man. He had little humor, but sometimes the door would open and you could see the warmth within a long way off, a certain sadness. One of those slow, remote, unfathomable quality as if the man wanted to be closer to the world but did not know how. Once, Lithor had a speech memorized from a manuscript about a Eorlingas and gave it proudly, the old man listening but not looking. Lithor remembered it still: “What a piece of work is he! In action how like an angel.” Then his pa would grin and say stiffly: “Well boy, if he’s an angel he’s sure a murdering angel.” And there Lithor was, ironically: a member of Eorlingas. Those words of his pa stuck with Lithor; it was mainly why he tried to be so cheerful all the time. He’d never be one of those “killer angels” his pa described. Nevertheless, the old man was proud of his son serving Lord Eodwine.
Thornden picked me, me, out of all the household, including Thornden to bring Eodwine to the capital and present the case to the king. Why me? What did Thornden see? Is it even me at all? Is it my rank, is that why he picked me?
He turned his mind away from that. Think on it when the time comes. You think too much beforehand and you get too self-conscious and tight and you don’t function well. He knew that he was an instinctive man not a planner and he did best when he fell back on instinct. Think of music now and singing. Past the time with a bit of harmony and try and find that darned Athanar’s home.
Home. One place is just like another really. Maybe not. But the truth is it’s all just rock and dirt and people are roughly the same. I was born up there but I’m no stranger here. Have always felt at home everywhere, even in Gondor. Everywhere you go there is nothing but the same rock and dirt and houses and people and deer and birds. They give it all names, but I’m at home everywhere. Odd thing: unpatriotic I guess. I was at home in Scarburg. I would be at home in a desert. In Laketown or even that far off town that those little folks came from… Hobbiton! All mine, it is all my home.
“Finally!”
Balvir’s exasperated exclamation awakened Lithor from his daydreaming. There was the house that the healer had described to them: double floored and looking very lordly amongst the other houses. Lithor walked up to the door. He didn’t know whether to knock or shout to get Athanar’s attention, he sounded like he was an important man—Lithor rapped loudly. An irritated elderly man with a crooked nose poked his face out of the window.
“What you want? The house is asleep and the master is gone!”
After Lithor had explained their plight the old man’s features softened a little.
“Sure, I’ll let you stay for the night, my master would wish it,” the old man began to close the window, but then shot his head out again. “But! if there’s any funny business, I’ll slit both your throats in your sleep!”
“Pleasant man isn’t he,” Lithor mused after the old man shut the window.
“What’s to be done about Lord Eodwine?”
“Nothing can be done for him on our part as of tonight. We will see how he is fairing tomorrow and then ask for an audience with the King. Remember, our primary role was to bring Eodwine here. We cannot stay until he gets well.”
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