Tomorrow morning, Holly? Oh, but none can say where any of us will be by then! For it's tonight after the sun has set when the company will approach the Castle and face Maladil. Yet the ghosts' movements will still be bound within the limits set by the farthest shadows that fall during daylight hours. Yes, I'll be glad to lift you as near the top of the wall as I may. In centuries past a rope would have proved useful. Now the wall crumbles so that it cannot be trusted to hold a rope fast. But the crumbling has provided handholds and footholds, as though waiting for light and nimble Hobbit-folk.
* So saying, Gandalf smiled encouragement and effortlessly boosted Holly slightly more than six feet. *
* From there, the Hobbit shinnied atop the 10-foot wall. Before her gaze lay an orchard. Carefully tended trees were beleaguered by bleak beige straw. Dead grass skewed here, towered there, mangled and bent where burdens had been dragged to three freshly dug graves. Two sets of footsteps inlaid the brownsward, veering off towards a pear tree, towards a gate. Set into the back castle wall were two entrances, each near a corner of the castle, yet not at the very corner. Between these entrances directly next to the back castle wall stood a vegetable garden long gone to seed. Holly was not able to see around to the side grounds of the castle from this particular vantage point. *
* Then her eyes widened. Hovering just above the weather-beaten stone bench in the center of the withered garden, gleaming in the falling sun, hung a silver-hued harp suspended in mid air. The strings moved as if by themselves. *
* A melancholy tune scattered thin to mingle with a murmur of nearby birch trees. Holly could only hear intermittent bits and pieces. * … "lurks a treasure beyond halls … , to come out never, … O Valinor take us! … By night we were slain … The Castle inside, … Trapped and wailing, …"
* Gandalf, unable to see over the wall but hearing the song in its entirety, lit the end of his staff and held it aloft, so that its circular glow could just be seen over the top of the wall. Lighting next a bowl of Southern Star, the wizard inhaled deeply and sent up within the frame of light a smoke ring shaped like The White Tree, Telperion, as it used to shine in Valinor. He then did likewise to create a likeness of its companion tree, The Song of Gold, Laurelin, and send this second image along with the first as a message to the harpist. *
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