The Ancillarion: Of the Silmarkenstone Conspiracy and the Incidental Fellowship

[Morthoron]

The Ancillarion: Of the Silmarkenstone Conspiracy and the Incidental Fellowship -- Their Trials, Tribulations, Loves Lost and Found, and Their Salvation of Middle-earth (as utterly unlikely as that may seem)

Prologue: How the West Was Won

In the waning years of the Third Age of Middle-earth, things were not good; in fact, they were quite ungood, unwell, and just plain bad. The Dark Lord Sauron, a rather unpleasant divinity with a penchant for cruelty and a lust for domination, had arisen once again (the term ‘comeback’ was originally ascribed to Sauron ‘coming back’ to Mordor on multiple occasions to attempt to conquer Arda, that is, the world as we know it). The old alliances among the Free People of the West, the Elves, Dwarves and Men, had been in decline for some time, and it was considered with trepidation among the wise that Sauron would eventually engulf the West in its patchwork of petty kings, lords and stewards bit by bit as a ravening wolf might gorge on pieces of meat ripped off a prone carcass.

But as the old saying goes, perhaps Sauron’s ‘eye was bigger than his stomach’, for while the Dark Lord slathered over the slabs of fat and juicy meat ripe for the taking, there were nasty bits of indigestible gristle, tough and sinewy opponents with resistance bred in their marrow. These did not sit well on Sauron’s dainty palate, and caused him much indigestion and sleepless nights (although, I am not quite sure Sauron did much sleeping anyway, as his eye was lidless). But to say that Sauron's eye was fixed in one direction (that is, westward) regarding his precious missing Ring is an error of the gravest magnitude, and is a mistake on the part of the chroniclers (mewling sycophants, one and all), who relied on the word of simple Hobbits, halfling folk with the merest inkling of the wide world and the struggles that occurred outside of their ken (in fact, mention of the lands east of the Misty Mountains during the War of the Ring barely merits a paltry page in the annals of Minas Tirith).

Now, much of the existing lore of that time did indeed concern the stalwart Hobbits, their intrepid Fellowship and the eventual destruction of the One Ring. Yes, we know they did have a hand in Sauron’s destruction, but seriously, were they really all that? I mean, think about it, these were a few half-pint neophytes blundering about like naïve innocents, trusting in the goodwill of their betters and relying on blind luck to see them through. Obviously, Frodo did indeed fail in his mission, but that fact was blithely glossed over in a wave of sentiment and relief when Sauron, through his own stupidity, bungled the War of the Ring, and all that wonderfully wrought evil was lost forever in a wistful wisp of smoke.

No! There is, of course, more to the story. It was not just the Hobbits who saved the day, as legend would have it. Admittedly, from the point of casting a yarn or embellishing a fable, there is no better moral for the story than the meek rattling the thrones of the powerful, and the greatest being laid low by the least (it is so egalitarian and nauseatingly democratic); however, there is another tradition, one not so bound by storytelling convention. In fact, the great and wise, embarrassed and unwilling to soil the sanctified memory of an epic of such grandeur, have nervously attempted to keep the tale hushed up, as one would their drunken idiot brother making an arse of himself at Sunday dinner. But the truth, like a beacon in the fog, cuts through the murk and mist, and leaves the blemishes – the goiters, blackheads and moles – as clear as the nose on one’s face (or, more precisely, the pimple protruding from one’s nose).

This is the story of those very blemishes who, regarded as unsightly and needing to be completely done away with (or at least hidden for appearance sake), burst forth in a blaze of glory, their passions erupting, their blistering rage burgeoning forth, and in the end, their seemingly monumental mission accomplished, they receded back into the shadows where they began, and their unlikely (but grammatically impressive) tale was lost to the ages. What they gained and what they lost was a mystery up to this point, and there are folks who wisely claim that some mysteries should never be solved; perhaps this is one of those.

[Morthoron]

AND SO THE TALE BEGINS...

His mother had never named him; she died of grief at his birth. His grandfather, who was to die shortly afterward in one of the terrible sacks of Menegroth, had been either clever or cruel, for he named the newborn orphan Amarthanuin. Now, depending on one’s translation of Sindarin, the name could mean ‘under a doom’; however, Amarthanuin had considered his name over the dreary ages, and came to the unsettling conclusion that this epithet meant ‘doomed to be under’, or perhaps more aptly, ‘fated to be less’.

“And that I am,” Amarthanuin sighed aloud (to no one in particular), “that I am.”

Whether from melancholy or an attempt to recede further into the shadows, he slumped in his chair in the corner of the Prancing Pony – a tawdry establishment no self-respecting Elf would ever frequent – and sipped thoughtfully on his tankard of ale. He supposed it really did not matter that he hid from inquiring eyes, for it was unlikely anyone would mistake him for an Elf, save perhaps for his leaf-shaped ears, which he kept concealed beneath his travel-stained hood. No, he certainly had no other earmarks of his maternal lineage; rather, he bore much that was from his cursed father, unknown and unlamented, dead now these two ages of Arda.

Amarthanuin wondered if his father had been trampled under the powerful, plodding steps of the Onodrim on the bloody shores of the River Ascar, or perhaps it was Beren himself who slew him in righteous vengeance for the murder of innocent Elves in Doriath. Amarthanuin chuckled ruefully to himself. Not all the innocents were slain in the name of the Nauglamir; some lived on, and carried the shame with them, wearing it in their very countenances like a badge of dishonor for all to see. Amarthanuin was a living symbol of the ignominious fall of Doriath: Amarthanuin the Noegedhil, Amarthanuin who was neither wholly Elvish nor wholly Dwarvish, Amarthanuin whose two halves did not make a whole. He belched and became even more upset at himself. Elves do not belch, Dwarves do!

[Nerwen]

In another shadowy corner, a second cloaked figure shuddered at the sound of that belch.

Alatariel Moonflower relied on her delicate hearing nearly as much as on the special ability– a gift from the Valar, her grandmother had told her– which enabled her to feel the world around her even though her emerald eyes were sightless.

With the blare of coarse music and coarser voices assaulting her second-most important sense, she felt sick and disoriented. She was unused to mortals– her father would not let her associate even with the Dúnedain– and had never realised they were so uncouth.

"What am I doing here?" she whispered. Her long, slender hands clasped a mug of the sour-smelling drink the innkeeper had called "ale", but she had not yet summoned up the courage to take a sip. "I don't belong here... but then... where do I belong?"

Running away from home had seemed like such a good idea at the time, a way to prove to her father once and for all that she could take care of herself; a way to escape the barely-concealed contempt of other Elves; a way to forget... Glorfindel.

She had loved the Elf-lord ever since she could remember, loved him for his noble spirit and the sweet music of his voice– but she knew she was nothing to him. He might not despise her, as others did, for her handicap and her mongrel heritage, but to him she was merely Master Elrond's blind daughter– to be cared for and pitied, but never, never to be desired.

A choking sob escaped Moonflower's perfectly-sculpted lips, and from her beautiful, sightless eyes slid a single, shining tear.

It was just like a drop of quicksilver, only not poisonous.

[Kitanna]

The noble hound sat at Astalder's feet. The innkeeper hadn't objected to the dog's present. Scout was probably cleaner than most of the patrons anyway. Besides, he was needed for protection, especially with so much evil abroad. The dog stirred. The half-elf reached under the table to scratch his ears. “We are fine in here. Butterbur is a friend to Mithandir.” Saying 'father' in reference to Gandalf had never seemed right to here. Scout whimpered, but made no other response.

Astalder kept her hood up to she could hide her elvish traits from this rabble. The last thing she needed was to draw attention to herself. There was absolutely no need for this stinky, boorish men of Bree to be competing for an audience. Afterall, it was not like they were the valiant, dashing men of Gondor or Rohan. These fools did not even know what the brave men in the south did to protect the lands.

She sighed, she had left the south without even a word of good-bye. She hadn't even bothered to stop in Rivendell to inform Elrond of her plans. No, he would have too much to think about in the days to come. What Astalder was doing needn't be known yet. Still, for her own safety Scout had pushed her to send some message to the lord of Rivendell. As a quasi foster father he had a right to know. Elrond would understand when her journey was complete.

[Morthoron]

Amarthanuin drained his ale down to the bitter dregs, and wallowed in extravagant melancholia like a kraken lurking in a dark pool. He grimly gazed about in vain for a busty barmaid to fill his empty tankard (a little know fact about Hobbit maids was they not only had big feet, but they were also well-endowed elsewhere), and with his hyperacuity he immediately noticed something odd: in every corner of the inn lurked darkly hooded figures like him. Wherever there was darkness, wherever the light of hearth or candle did not touch, there were cowled characters cowering in conspicuous but incondign inconspicuousity, the chiaroscuro of light and shadow playing in parallel to the bright bustle and clammer in the center of the inn as opposed to the inordinate coolness and covert counterpoints, pregnant with portent, around its dim edges. Stranger still, the dark hooded figures all had savage glints, gleaming glances peering perilously from the unfathomable unlight of their covered miens.

Amarth chuckled knowingly to himself. It always amused him to think in ridiculously ornate verbosity, a garrulous internal monlogue that never impeded his everyday conversations. After all, these folks were all simple; he needn't flaunt his superiority among the guttural farmers and stuttering ploughboys dripping rank ale down their filthy jerkins. They wouldn't understand him anyway. He moved from thinking about his thoughts back to the mysterious figures ensconced in the gloomy recesses of the Prancing Pony. He wondered if the other inn patrons thought it odd that so many sinister shadowmen (there were at least twenty of them) in clandestine camoflage (all wearing some variation of a weatherbeaten hood or cowl in somber tones of scarlet, black, gray or dark green) were surreptitiously quaffing their stouts or ales as if they were stealing sips. Then Amarth noticed they were all glaring at him, as if he were casting unwanted attention on their furtive subterfuges. Catching the scent of unease in the air, he nervously fidgeted with his mug and cast down his eyes in embarrasment. He had got caught spying on spies!

Shifting uneasily in his chair, he sunk deeper into the darkness of his corner, and looked elsewhere in the inn, hoping that the other hooded figures would forget about him and allow him to once again eavesdrop and reconnoiter unhindered. It was then he notice a passel of hammered hobbits failing miserably at their half-hearted attempt at remaining incognito. He gave a sideways glance around the inn at the shadowmen. They had indeed forgotten about him and were all eyeing the hobbits intently. Amarth shrugged and decided the hobbits might prove entertaining to watch for a while, or perhaps he would shift his attention to and fro between hobbits and shadowmen as a means of passing time, for he was now dreadfully bored.

[Morthoron]

Amarthanuin's boredom grew downright fatiguing. Between the tediously covert but clumsily conspicuous shadowmen in the corners, and the jovially sloshed Hobbits (one of whom was singing an off-key rendition of a Shire lullaby -- something about spoons forking dishes over the moon, or some such nonsense), Amarth eventually slumped against his tankard and began fitfully dozing. He was startled awake when one of the drunken hobbits (the one with the horrible tenor and childish lyrics), tripped over Amarth's outstretched boot and was sent sprawling to the floor.

Amarth wearily gazed with glazed eyes down at the prone Hobbit, when *POOF* the hapless Hobbit vanished. Amarth wondered at the alcoholic properties present in Butterbur's obviously potent ale. "Damnation! Th' stuff is better'n I thought," Amarth belched and fell back asleep.