Chapter 4: Khazad-Dum

“What nonsense these Big Folk don’t spin!” Folco thought in the evening, settling down to sleep. “What horror were they babbling about?! Land like land, rocks, hills, a little river… wonderful gardens… just need to put your hands to work…”

He sighed, remembering the gardens and fields of the Shire. His palms had managed to become unaccustomed to the spade, and now he had a vague desire to just go and prune or hill up those apple trees by the river.

However, the night spent at the threshold of the Black Abyss made him forget everything. Having somehow immediately fallen into a deep, heavy sleep, the hobbit suddenly woke in the middle of the night in a sticky, cold sweat; he didn’t remember what he had dreamed, knowing only that it was disgusting and revolting to the point of nausea. Lying on his back, he opened his eyes and nearly choked – the air in the wagon seemed to him extremely stale and heavy, it pressed on his chest like bags of sand, and moreover the curtain of darkness seemed to have gathered into tens and hundreds of bluish-black clusters, and from each someone’s cold, lifeless gaze looked at Folco. The hobbit froze and trembled like a butterfly on a pin; there was no strength to move, to reach for a weapon, to cry out. From somewhere in the depths of consciousness began to rise a vague hum felt by his whole body, not only his ears; the wagon barely perceptibly shuddered. Where this hum came from, he couldn’t say; he simply understood that another moment – and his breathing would cease forever. There was no fear; on the hobbit pressed non-being, formless, all-consuming, inexorable…

Nearby came a heavy moan, and this sound unexpectedly gave the hobbit strength. Tossing in an evil dream, with wide open but unseeing murky eyes, beside Folco moaned hollowly Thorin; the dwarf’s hand slowly, with uncertain jerks, but still crept toward the axe-handle he had just made from the staff gifted by Olmer.

The hobbit jerked – everything inside seemed to break – and with a desperate movement pushed the weapon closer to the dwarf’s open trembling palm. Thorin’s fingers gripped the handle; leaning on the axe, he began to slowly straighten up.

The hair stirred on the back of the hobbit’s neck – never before had he seen such eyes in Thorin. They rolled from their sockets, and even in the pitch darkness under the canopy Folco saw in them a faint reflection of a moonbeam that had broken through a chance gap; these wide-open eyes were just as unseeing as several moments before, when Thorin still lay and seemed to be sleeping. With an uncertain jerk the dwarf moved toward the fastened canvas covering the entrance to the wagon for the night, and, falling with his heavy body on the plaintively creaking canopy, tumbled outside. A dull thud was heard, and this brought the hobbit out of his stupor. His fingers firmly held in his sweat-damp palm the dagger, Olmer’s gift; the suffocation gradually receded. Gathering all his strength, he rushed to Thorin.

The dwarf lay on the ground, awkwardly sprawled with strangely twisted arms; nearby lay the axe. The hobbit looked around hunted – through yellow clouds peered the pale face of a deadened moon; darkness was everywhere, the ghostly coating of the night luminary only emphasized its impenetrability. Folco still distinguished the side of the wagon beside him, but further everything drowned in bottomless and soundless darkness. The cold, indifferent gaze of countless invisible eyes still roved over the hobbit’s body, but now he had a weapon, and he could defend himself. If he had time, he surely would have tried to remember Annuminas and the ghost of the Barrow-downs, but here everything was different, completely different.

From the darkness came a choked hoarse moan. The hobbit jerked – and immediately understood that it wasn’t Thorin moaning, but someone else. Fear so paralyzed Folco that he had no strength even to bend down and see what was wrong with his friend. The moan came from the wagon; something had happened to someone else among the dwarves. In Folco fear grew into an irresistible desire to run, not making out the road, away, away from this wild place. Before his eyes whirled a crimson vortex; his knees buckled, he collapsed beside the motionless Thorin and saw nothing more.

He came to from the cold and, having barely opened his eyes, immediately with all his remaining strength squeezed them shut – from above icy water poured on him. Someone’s hands carefully lifted the hobbit, someone wiped his face with a handkerchief, around him voices called out, the familiar voices of his friends and traveling companions. The hobbit slowly rose to the surface from the dark pit of unconsciousness. He tried to speak – a moan burst from his throat;

then he tried to sit up – this succeeded, they supported him. Only now could Folco finally look around and understand what was happening to him.

It was early morning, he lay on a cloak thoughtfully thrown on the dew-wet grass;

nearby, gripping his head in his palms, sat Thorin; between his fingers oozed water and showed wet strands of hair. Around crowded people and dwarves; the latter, as one, had an extremely frightened and exhausted appearance – all in one night had sunken cheeks, inflamed eyes, and some had noticeably more gray in their beards. The people seemed more cheerful – they were rather alarmed, though their faces also testified to a restless night.

Beside the hobbit knelt Kid, supporting Folco by the shoulders; beside him wrung out a wet rag Rogvold; they were tightly surrounded by the rest. Rogvold kept insistently asking Folco something, but several minutes passed before the hobbit grasped the meaning of his questions.

“What happened here? What happened at night? What happened to you?!”

Folco nodded, wanting to show he understood what he was being asked, but having begun to speak with difficulty, suddenly felt how hard it was to break into such recent memory. He could only squeeze out that he woke in the middle of the night, that it was bad, so bad, as never before, very frightening, nothing could be done, and then Thorin moaned and said something, and then he reached the axe and climbed outside, and then fell somewhere, and he, Folco, climbed after him, and outside it became quite nasty, he also fell, and then everything was dark.

Those listening exchanged glances, and then Rogvold asked the same questions of Thorin. He answered with difficulty, barely pushing out words from himself – forcing himself to speak with all his might, as if the dwarf’s will was taking revenge on the unknown enemy for the confusion that had gripped him:

“It came out of the Gates of Moria. And then It approached my heart, and my heart became cold, like snow on a mountain peak, and I would have plunged into eternal sleep in the Hall of Waiting on the edge between sleep and death, but it became painful, and I came to, and then It covered the one who was near me – the hobbit, but breaking him proved even harder, he managed to master himself and even pushed the axe to me. I saw It so clearly that it seemed now I could split It in two – a bluish formless cloud, a piece of gelatinous fog – and I tried to reach It, tried to wake my friends, but inside everything became murky, and I could hardly understand what needed to be done, except that I needed to try to drive It away, but when I jumped out of the wagon, and this wasn’t easy, my legs wouldn’t obey me. It pushed me into darkness, though it couldn’t freeze and deprive me of life – I no longer yielded so easily. I was already lying, neither arms nor legs obeyed me, but I saw the hobbit rushing to my aid and saw how It melted, touching poor Folco in passing.”

A deathly silence fell; Folco himself was also stunned, he had never heard Thorin speak this way; an icy worm of fear stirred again somewhere at the bottom of his consciousness. Meanwhile Thorin rose with effort, leaned on the axe and continued, surveying those gathered with a heavy gaze:

“You’ll ask me – what did It look like, what did It want to do, how did It attack, how can one defend against it?! I’ll answer thus – It looked like nothing. It had neither arms, nor legs, nor head, nor body – there was some sort of clot of fog, as I already said, which with my eyes I didn’t really see, but perceived with something else. As far as I managed to understand, It wasn’t hunting specifically for us or for me. It has no will, no reason, much less a goal. It broke out of Moria and melted in the sky, melted like smoke from a fire. You’ll ask: why then did only Folco and I lose consciousness?! I think, only because we didn’t sleep as soundly as the rest, and when we jumped up, we as it were inhaled Its poison with our chests, like poisoned air… Only it wasn’t air, of course… Our thoughts tried to find a counter to Its force – and This unknown thing crashed into us, whereas over the consciousness of the others, who were poorly but sleeping and not resisting, This swept like a hurricane sweeps over one lying in the sand, but knocks down one trying to stand. I suspect that because of something like this the tangars left Moria. We must learn to fight, and mainly – try to understand Its nature. After all, It affects us dwarves much more strongly than humans!”

“You’re mistaken,” Rogvold said slowly. “I too won’t forget this night to the end of my days, and may the spirit of the Great King preserve me from such! Now it’s clear why the inhabitants left here… So, what shall we do?”

Like a long-restrained flood had finally found a breach in the body of a dam – so from all sides burst indignant, frightened, confused exclamations and cries of the people. Folco from surprise squatted and even covered his ears; the shouts at first stunned him. It cost Rogvold considerable effort to somehow calm them down. Folco with surprise and slight fear gazed at the faces distorted by rage and animal fear of these people, in whose courage and bravery he could be convinced himself.

“The matter’s clear!” Igg said, spraying saliva. “No-o, let whoever wants stay here, but I’m leaving. We have nothing to do here, you’ll croak and not notice with these dwarf tricks.”

“We contracted to go to Moria, and we’ve arrived!” Dovbur roared. “We can fight, and we’ve fought and are ready to fight anyone – but only a living enemy, if only a sword can reach him! But with these underground ghosts – no thank you, our blades are no good here! Maybe the honored dwarves have something better?!”

“Dovbur’s right! Dovbur speaks sense!” several men supported him.

Among them were Alan, and Veort, and Resvald – the youngest, most desperate and reckless of all. Little by little they divided into two groups – people on one side, dwarves on the other, and in the middle – a confused, frightened hobbit and grim, calm, extraordinarily straight and stern Thorin. He seemed not to hear the angry shouts of his recent companions, didn’t see how the dwarves’ gazes grew heavy and their hands little by little began to reach for weapons, especially after Gerdin shouted that he didn’t intend to perish for dwarf gold, still unknown by whom and how obtained.

“Enough shouting!” Grolf raised his voice meanwhile. “Pack your bags – and to the saddles. We have nothing to do here. And you dwarves too. We’ll leave together, if you want!”

Rogvold silently bit his lips, his head drooped, his fingers clenched the sword hilt, the hobbit cast a pleading glance at the huntsman – he had one last hope in Rogvold. Meanwhile the people really began to tie up their belongings, pulling them from the wagons. Thorin still remained imperturbably silent, the dwarves began to exchange surprised glances, seeing his strange calm; meanwhile Rogvold decisively raised his head and spoke, his voice filled with cold contempt:

“The dwarves came here not for gold, honored Gerdin, but following their dwarf fate, and it’s not for us to suspect them of mercenary thoughts. The underground is their world, and they didn’t call us with them, but with what’s on earth, we’re obliged to fight! And it doesn’t matter what our enemy will be, whence he’ll come, for if the depths belong to the dwarves, then to us, humans – all the rest of the earth. And who can tear the surface from the depth, the house from its foundation? Our world is one, and what today threatens the dwarves, tomorrow will fall on us, and we must be able to oppose it. And shame on us, Rangers, if we, whom no one is dragging down, abandon here friends with whom we’ve fought shoulder to shoulder! Do as you know, cover yourselves with shame without me, I’ll stay here even alone.”

Rogvold fell silent, raised his head and stood in one row with the dwarves. The people opposite frowned, scratched their heads, averted their gazes, someone muttered something, but only Igg began to object openly.

“We’ve covered many leagues together, Rogvold, son of Mstar,” he began, “and it’s not for you to reproach me with cowardice! But explain to me, what should I fight this pale horror with? With what, if I, who never showed my back in battle, cannot move either arm or leg, neither raise my sword nor shield myself when It approaches? If the cold of death penetrates to my bones and I feel life flowing out of me like water from a sieve? And more. Why do you think It threatens our world? It’s a spawn of the depths, where dwarves reign supreme. From their fussing in the underground this monster appeared! So who should oppose It – we or they? Answer me that!”

Igg smiled grimly and heavily sank onto a bag lying at his feet.

“It still couldn’t kill Thorin and Folco,” Rogvold said, not taking his steady gaze from Igg’s eyes. “So It can be opposed. As for how I know that It threatens our world too, look around! Aren’t these abandoned houses and overgrown fields an answer?”

Among the people rolled an unclear rumble of either approval or surprise, and Folco understood that their determination to leave was shaken.

“We’re losing time,” Thorin said simply and matter-of-factly. “It’s time for the tangars to go to the Gates, for the people – to set up camp, if, of course, anyone wants to stay. But all can’t stay anyway – like it or not, the first part of our journey is behind us, and it’s time for us to send news to Annuminas, as was agreed with the Steward. You people decide yourselves who will ride to the Capital, and meanwhile we’ll pack our rucksacks.”

Thorin, not looking back, strode to the wagon. Behind him silently trailed the dwarves. The people again crowded into a tight circle, again their alarmed voices were heard, but now shame was increasingly audible in them. After some time Folco saw that Dovbur and Igg were saddling four horses and tying on saddlebags. Rogvold, perched on a flat stone to the side, was quickly writing something on a sheet of yellowish parchment. The rest of the people stood around the departing ones. A little later the dwarves approached them too.

They parted calmly and sternly, without extra words and long farewells. The messengers were to deliver to the Steward the message and tell about all that had happened on the road. They intended to move north not by the South Road, but straight through emptied Ostranna, and then come out on the West Road several days’ journey east of the Hill.

The riders for the last time raised their hands in farewell, hooves struck the dust, and after a few minutes the figures of the riders disappeared behind the greenery of wild gardens. In three weeks the news should reach the capital of the Northern Kingdom.

The rest of the day passed in continuous bustle. The Rangers found themselves a secluded spot in a small ravine where stood several old but still sturdy barns, and decided to adapt them for housing; the dwarves transferred things into rucksacks, extracted from the very bottom of the wagons mountain tools that had lain there idle for a long time; torches were prepared, long thin ropes were not forgotten, to drag behind when going through dark underground labyrinths, and also – in extreme cases – good chunks of white limestone with which one could put a mark on the wall. A good two-thirds of the provisions migrated into dwarf bags; there was no counting on finding any food below. Kid stubbornly refused to part with his pot-bellied beer keg; Thorin tried for a long time to reason with his friend, but then spat in his hearts and left, declaring to Kid that he could of course take all the beer with him – if he carried it on his own shoulders. The Little Dwarf, however, remained very pleased with this, and not two hours had passed before he had fashioned harnesses from straps for the keg and after several attempts hoisted it on his back and even walked quite briskly with it.

Amid all this fuss and running, hurried, confused packing and searches, Folco, son of Hamfast, was quite lost, sitting with drooping head beside his small bag. Fear again cruelly tormented his heart; the Annuminas doubts came alive in him again, and now he sadly pondered what he would do underground, in this terrible and, as it turned out, really inhabited by some ghostly monsters Moria. He would have preferred the Barrow-downs, a hundred Wights instead of one of this creature! The games were over, and the hobbit only shivered chillily, though the day was warm and gentle. He swept his gaze over the greenery of the gardens and the blue of the river – how long would he have to content himself with contemplating the black walls of the underground?

In the power of these dark thoughts Rogvold also found him, also homeless wandering from side to side, whose young companions hadn’t admitted him to heavy work. The old centurion sank down beside the despondent hobbit and gently laid his palm on his shoulder.

“You’re at a crossroads, Kid,” the huntsman said with a sad smile, and Folco started – Rogvold’s voice seemed to him the voice of a deep old man, in it appeared soft notes unfamiliar to the hobbit. “Listen, Kid, listen to a man who’s seen much and lived well. Don’t go there.”

Folco cast a short glance at the former centurion and lowered his eyes. Rogvold had precisely guessed his thoughts.

“Leave dwarf matters to dwarves, Kid,” Rogvold continued. “You’re a hobbit, and your kinsmen are still much closer to us humans than to this strange underground tribe. What will you do there? How can you help? But here you’ll be needed, very much needed! Who more quietly than you can steal through the forest on reconnaissance? Who shoots better with a bow? Hard days await us here, on top, but still not as hard as there, below… And also – if you disappear there, I’ll never forgive myself, son.”

The huntsman fell silent and turned away. Folco sat huddled from awkwardness and confusion. What is Rogvold saying? How he doesn’t want to go… However, precisely in this second the hobbit decided. To stay after these words was unthinkable – simply impossible! It meant to eternally doom himself to torments of conscience.

“I still must go there, Rogvold,” Folco squeezed out of himself.

The former centurion, still looking away, shuddered.

“Well…” he said slowly, turning to the hobbit and gazing for several moments straight into his eyes; Folco didn’t avert his gaze, and the huntsman again lowered his head. “Well, you’ve also become a prisoner of your word… " He suddenly straightened sharply. “But if you’ve decided – then go. Only remember – I’ll climb anywhere to pull you out.”

Rogvold turned and strode away, very tall, straight, stern, not at all old yet. The hobbit passed his palm over his forehead, wiping away sweat.

By evening, when the sun had already descended and the valley drowned in pre-night twilight, it suddenly turned out that everything was ready and the dwarves had nothing more to do on the surface. For some time all stood in confusion, gazing at the massifs of cliffs, illuminated by the crimson sunset glow; there, especially clearly visible now, stood several mighty oaks – and between them were the Gates.

“Shall we go?!” Thorin pronounced half-questioningly, half-affirmatively.

The dwarves, exchanging glances and talking quietly, began to load the heavy rucksacks on themselves. The people rushed to help them, for a moment businesslike talk flew over the valley, but now everything was finally ready, and the dwarf detachment huddled in agonizing anticipation, now already impatiently glancing at Thorin. He sighed deeply and chopped the air with his hand:

“Let’s go!”

In a tight crowd they all together strode along the road to the Gates. The people walked with them; Folco once more caught Rogvold’s pleading gaze and hastily averted his eyes.

The road suddenly ended. They passed, like under an arch, under the crowns of century-old oaks closing over their heads, and the road ran into a smooth, sheer rocky cliff, into the gray stone wall of one of the giants of the Misty Mountains. There was nowhere further to go. They had arrived.

Thorin turned to the Moria Wall, raised his right hand and loudly, distinctly pronounced:

“Mellon!”

The gray smooth surface of the rock was crossed in different directions by finest silver lines, weaving into the pattern familiar to Folco and Thorin with the star of Fëanor and the emblem of Durin – hammer and anvil. However, the stone doors of the Gates didn’t move an inch. The dwarves were dumbfounded.

“Mellon!” Thorin cried even louder, with despair, pressing his clenched fists to his chest.

A dull underground rumble was heard, a black narrow crack split the stone’s surface in the middle of the pattern, marking the edge of the doors, but the Gates remained closed.

The dwarves dropped their rucksacks, crowding behind Thorin. The people, exchanging amazed and alarmed glances, stood in a semicircle behind their backs. Again and again Thorin repeated the treasured word; Moria answered with a muffled roar, but the Gates still didn’t open. Finally Thorin turned away in despair and, as he stood, sat right on the stones, dropping his head sorrowfully. A painful silence fell.

At first everyone turned to the Moria dwarves; however, Dwalin and Gloin merely spread their hands. Something had happened to the creation of dwarves and elves still crafted in the days of the Second Age; the path into Moria was closed.

“Maybe they’re locked from inside?” Dori ventured to break the silence with timid hope, but Gloin shook his head negatively.

“When the bolts are lowered, this protrusion should be recessed,” – his fingers touched the rock – “but it’s sticking out, as usual. There’s something else here…”

“What then?” Dori asked eagerly.

“Who knows, has the power of the elvish spell weakened?!” Gloin suggested. “Though why should it?! Twelve years ago, when we left Moria, everything was as usual.”

“So what, are we going back?” one of the Rangers spoke up.

Darkness thickened. The sun drowned in shaggy clouds that had wrapped the western horizon, brief southern twilight came, the first stars peeked through breaks in the clouds. Everyone milled around helplessly before the Gates, not knowing what to do: the dwarves knew too well the impregnability of their fortress to try to break into Moria by force.

And then Hornbori stepped forward from the dwarf ranks. His face seemed to have turned to stone, his eyes sparkled, he slowly walked toward the Gates, as if toward a mortal enemy; he imperiously extended his hand forward, and the hobbit noticed a golden radiance that for a moment surrounded the ring on the dwarf’s finger, the radiance flashed and disappeared, and Hornbori, squatting as if dragging a huge weight on himself, pulled his hand with the ring toward himself, as if grasping an invisible handle; he quietly pronounced: “Mellon” – and from three dozen mouths burst a joyful cry. The doors shifted and slightly parted! The crack widened and deepened, and Hornbori, sweating before their eyes and constantly wiping himself with his sleeve, kept pulling and pulling the doors toward himself, and the ring shone brightly on his finger, and the black stone seemed to emit a faint light. The Gates yielded a little more; into the gap one could already insert fingers, and then something happened to Hornbori. He suddenly stopped, swayed; the doors again began to close.

It’s hard to say what pushed the hobbit in this moment; he acted by intuition, as if in a dream, or perhaps simply suddenly felt the warmth emanating from the dagger hanging on his chest with blue Flowers, and magically understood that he must do something. He was pulled toward the Gates, and he pressed his whole body to the black gap.

The dagger from Gundabad appeared of its own accord in his fist, the blade that flashed blue slid into the gap, the hobbit moved it from bottom to top, as if ripping open an unyielding dense barrier, and the Gates again began to open. More and more confidently and powerfully Hornbori pulled them toward himself, and in the next instant, when Folco’s dagger found itself at the level of the hobbit’s eyes, something creaked behind the doors, clanged dully, and the doors flew open in one moment, throwing back both Folco and Hornbori. Had Folco stood a bit farther, and Hornbori, conversely, a bit closer, the heavy Gates would have crushed their heads. However, everything ended with only a few bruises and scratches.

The dwarves and people, forgetting even about the Gates, rushed to help the fallen; some time was spent feeling and brushing off the hobbit and dwarf; grunting and groaning, they finally rose, and only then did everyone, as if on command, fall silent and turn their heads. The Gates of Moria gaped before them as a black bottomless abyss. Behind them showed a high arch, and further everything drowned in impenetrable darkness.

Words and exclamations froze on lips. The last barrier had fallen: it was time to get down to the business for which they had made a long and dangerous journey.

Gloin and Dwalin disappeared beyond the threshold; the flame of their torches dispelled the gloom behind the black arch – a small entrance platform became visible, and beyond it two steep wide staircases – one up, the other down. The dwarves carefully examined the opened doors from inside and found nothing special; they couldn’t understand what prevented the Gates from opening.

The dwarves exchanged glances. Before them lay open the entrance to the Black Abyss. They again donned on their shoulders the straps of heavy packs; crackling, resinous torches began to burn. The dwarves crowded on the threshold, the people stepped back slightly, and between the two groups lay that invisible but distinctly felt line that always separates in the last minutes those leaving and those remaining. Suddenly Rogvold impetuously stepped forward; bending double, he silently embraced the hobbit, pressed him firmly to his chest and released him.

“Take care of yourself,” the old centurion said quietly, straightened sharply and walked away.

Folco for several moments wandered lost on the platform before the Gates, but in this moment Thorin raised high a hissing, spark-spraying torch and with firm step entered under the first vault, behind him the others trailed, Folco walked last; Thorin and Gloin with Dwalin began to climb up the staircase, and the hobbit looked back one last time.

In the black half-oval of the gateway arch, flooded by the last sunset rays, in the gray half-light of approaching night, in a tight group stood the Rangers, having raised their hands in final farewell. They were parting – for how long? Who knows how long their underground wanderings will last?

The hobbit stumbled on the first of the steps and hastily fixed his gaze on the floor – here there was no room for gawking. A long ascent began, the steepness of which was aggravated by the heavy rucksack on his shoulders. The hobbit hunched over, trying to arrange the load more comfortably; he pulled at the straps with both hands, he had no torch – he had to follow without pause the trembling spot of light from the fire in the hands of Bran walking ahead. At first Folco had no thoughts – he counted the steps and puffed, bathed in sweat, forgot for a time all his fears.

However, the staircase ended, and before the dwarves opened a long vaulted corridor; they strode along it. They walked silently, only from ahead came from time to time the quiet voices of Gloin and Dwalin, exchanging brief incomprehensible phrases. Folco now walked second to last – looking back, Bran suddenly frowned and let the hobbit pass ahead. Soon they passed the first fork; in the light of torches Folco saw a staircase going in one march up, another down; in the depths behind it were guessed vague outlines of new corridors. Soon they passed a light but perceptible stream of cool air – Folco remembered that in the rocks above Moria numerous ventilation shafts had been cut. So far they followed the path of the Fellowship; remembering the descriptions of the Red Book, Folco was surprised why on their path they didn’t encounter the cracks that had so frightened Peregrin then. At times from somewhere below came the splash of water flowing in invisible drifts:

once they crossed a real bridge thrown over a deep cave whose ceiling the torchlight didn’t reach. From the blackness on both sides came an incomprehensible, not particularly pleasant smell; from Gloin’s ear didn’t escape alarming notes flashing in the indistinctly pronounced words.

As the Red Book predicted, the tunnel made a smooth turn and noticeably went downslope, beginning in addition to branch. Now they walked more slowly;

Folco noticed that the Morians ahead began to linger more often at forks, and Bran closing the chain from time to time made marks on the walls. The hobbit himself, though his kinsmen were accustomed to underground life, would have long ago been lost in this endless labyrinth, he could hardly keep in consciousness the direction – at first they walked north, now began to increasingly turn east.

Involuntarily comparing what he saw in the meager light of tar torches with what he had read in the Red Book, Folco was once more convinced what an abyss of labor and care the dwarves had invested to seal all the cracks, lay the floors with smooth slabs and turn once gloomy caves into halls sparkling with mountain crystals on the ceilings. They passed a whole series of them, five pieces, completely identical to the inexperienced hobbit’s eye; unexpectedly the detachment turned from a wide corridor and began to climb a steep staircase. They had left the path of the Fellowship and now were climbing upward.

The ascent lasted long. Composed of many marches, the staircase wound in the body of the mountain; from each landing began new and new passages, narrow and winding. The load on the hobbit’s back seemed to visibly gain weight; sweat flooded his eyes, the straps cut into his shoulders; the hobbit was suddenly pulled sideways, and he understood that he wouldn’t go far today.

However, the dwarves noticed this and immediately declared a halt. They settled on one of the landings from which departed and disappeared into impenetrable darkness a narrow, roughly finished corridor. Several paces beyond the landing it turned; the torchlight illuminated the gray surface of walls rounded at floor and ceiling. Gloin and Dori went on reconnaissance; soon they returned, and the Morian looked satisfied.

“We’ve arrived just where we need to be,” he said, sitting down. “This is one of the staircases going from the First Level to the Seventh. The Seventh Level was residential, as was the Sixth. The Moria Mines begin under the First. And these landings we’ve been passing – these are branches to storerooms. We need to climb to the Seventh Level and get to the Record Hall – it’s now next to Balin son of Fundin’s tomb.”

Folco tried to figure out where this was, but couldn’t; according to the Red Book it appeared that the Fellowship took a whole two days to reach the Record Hall; they had been walking only a few hours so far.

Silence fell. Frankly speaking, the hobbit expected some solemn, appropriate phrases from Thorin, Gloin or Hornbori; however, the dwarves merely dropped their packs, sprawled by the walls and lit pipes. Folco fidgeted with impatience, and his companions seemed to have entered not the great Moria Kingdom, Khazad-dûm in their language, but a shabby inn somewhere between the Hill and the Misty Mountains. Someone untied and passed around a bundle of dried fruit, someone uncorked a flask. Folco had already prepared to ask Hornbori himself what had helped him open the doors, when suddenly, having casually glanced down into the black depths of the seemingly bottomless stairwell, beyond the edge of the trembling torchlight he saw a slowly rising upward bluish glow, cold, like unexpectedly come alive and climbing up well water. In the same moment, forgetting everything, he with a desperate cry blindly rushed away, seeing and understanding nothing. His will went out; blind, formless horror drove him forward before he could understand what, essentially, he was frightened of… Before his eyes flashed the corridor walls; several more seemingly extremely long moments – and he crashed with all his momentum chest-first into the stone door blocking the passage. His legs refused to serve him, he sank powerlessly onto the rough floor and curled into a ball, covering his head with his hands. Someone’s hands caught him, some voices called around him – he could no longer comprehend anything. Someone placed a hand on his forehead, and then it became easier; the flashing at enormous speed disconnected visions yielded to the black vaults of the Moria corridor and the alarmed face of Thorin bending over him.

“Yes, again something from the Depths,” answering the hobbit’s mute question, Thorin said in a quick whisper.

Thorin’s palm slipped under the hobbit’s head, so that now Folco could look around. The panic terror little by little receded, but Folco’s hands still shook. He tried to sit up with difficulty – this succeeded, they supported him. Only now could Folco finally look around and understand what was happening to him.

It was early morning, he lay on a cloak thoughtfully thrown on the dew-wet grass;

nearby, gripping his head in his palms, sat Thorin; between his fingers oozed water and showed wet strands of hair. Around crowded people and dwarves; the latter, as one, had an extremely frightened and exhausted appearance – all in one night had sunken cheeks, inflamed eyes, and some had noticeably more gray in their beards. The people seemed more cheerful – they were rather alarmed, though their faces also testified to a restless night.

[Continuing translation…]

Gloin and Dwalin had already flung open the door against which the hobbit had crashed at full speed; behind it torches scantily lit a spacious empty room with a low ceiling. The hobbit with difficulty forced himself to shift his gaze to the staircase landing – around him with weapons drawn pressed ready for battle friends, and at the very edge of the short corridor stood Hornbori, with a high-raised torch in one hand and lowered axe in the other. The glow had disappeared, but the horror, the glassy eyes of Kid next to the hobbit, didn’t pass so quickly.

Much time passed before they could recover from what they had endured. Without going into long conversations, Gloin and Dwalin at a quick pace led them up the same staircase – Hornbori now walked last, and all the other dwarves kept looking back at him with new interest, respect and some fear.

They counted almost three hundred steps upward when the staircase unexpectedly ended. The hobbit’s legs were buckling, but he wouldn’t have agreed now to stop for rest near this gloomy abyss where the endless staircase went, hiding in darkness. They came out into a wide and high passage, and to his greatest surprise, the hobbit discovered that the darkness here wasn’t as impenetrable and impermeable as on the lower levels. The spacious gallery was flooded with soft pink sunset light; it turned out that in places windows were cut in the rocks. They moved along the corridor southward, as Folco understood – along the very edge of the Moria Cliffs. On the left hand constantly appeared empty halls, stretched in a continuous row low stone doors, in the gallery itself were found skillfully carved from stone benches. The numerous doors proved to be entrances to living caves; the detachment looked into one of them.

The torches lit up a spacious hall with a high ceiling; skillfully worked petrified streams hanging from the ceiling seemed like fabulous monsters that had suddenly stuck out their glistening heads. Covered with fine carving, white slabs stood out sharply against the background of gray walls with black veins; high above the door showed a narrow lancet window. Along the walls stretched a row of deep niches; in the middle stood an extensive stone table, its tabletop was split, and a large piece lay nearby on the floor. The niches were filled with a heap of clothes thrown in haste mixed with tools, tubs, chests, wooden benches and chairs – broken, as if someone in blind rage had been smashing them against walls; clay pots, glassware had turned under someone’s heavy blows into a formless mess; the carpets that once covered the chests were hacked into small pieces, and dark crimson rags were scattered throughout the cave.

Struck by the sight that opened before them, the dwarves bewilderedly wandered from one wall to another – in each niche presented the same picture. Someone found a pile of broken children’s toys – trampled fragments of clay and wooden dolls and with special hatred snapped in half little swords and shields.

If they hadn’t looked closely, having glanced into the cave only from the threshold, they probably would have left calmly, deciding that the disorder in the hall was the result of hasty flight. However, now all doubts disappeared. An evil, stupid and vengeful will, having amused itself here enough after the departure of the owners, vented its hatred of them on defenseless utensils and innocent toys, thereby betraying its presence.

The dwarves, gray-faced and choking with anger, went around one cave after another – everywhere chaos, devastation, desolation…

Meanwhile over Middle-earth closed the veil of a light summer night, and the light in the gallery dimmed completely. Torches were lit again, but to go further today, into the western branch of the Northern Wing, where the Record Hall was located and from where it was quite near to the Gateway Chambers and the Moria Bridge, they didn’t dare. Having found a small cozy cave with a vaulted ceiling supported by a row of whimsically carved columns, they settled for the night. Here was found both a table and wide chests with flat tops that could serve as beds, and most importantly – nearby in the gallery under a fine stone canopy from the rock beat a spring. A stream of clearest water, cold to the point of toothache, fell with a light splash into a slightly bubbling stone basin, from which began a white stone-lined aqueduct, disappearing into the stone thickness of the mountains, going somewhere down, to the lower levels.

They kindled a fire and ate hastily, hurrying to put out the flame that could betray them. The torches were extinguished – in the darkness only faintly flickered the brass lamp Kid had found earlier, fueled with oil from a miraculously intact little tub. These were the only two whole things they found among the wreckage.

The stone door was locked from inside with a heavy steel bolt – as Gloin explained, the custom of locking even internal doors appeared after the first signs of alarm on the Deep Levels. After this they pushed the chests closer together and began an unhurried conversation – they had much to discuss.

First of all, all the dwarves, as if the dam restraining their curiosity had burst, showered questions on the hobbit and Hornbori, trying to understand what had happened in the hitherto faultlessly working mechanism of the Gates. Hornbori was made to show the ring on his finger.

“Tell us everything as it is, Hornbori,” Dori laid a hand on his shoulder. “What did you and Folco do at the Gates?!”

Dori’s voice seemed cheerful, but the hobbit clearly heard the tension hiding behind his smile. Hornbori spread his hands despondently and, as if accepting Dori’s game, answered in the same tone in a dejected voice:

“Well, it seems you can’t hide anything from you, I’ll have to confess everything and throw myself on your mercy. It’s all because of this Ring!”

Everyone around fell silent. Folco felt a chill in his chest; before his eyes the Red Book seemed to come alive!

Hornbori sighed, passed a hand over his beard, as if collecting his thoughts. He carefully removed the Ring from his finger and placed it in the middle of the table; for a moment the hobbit fancied that the darkness disappeared, the walls disappeared and the mountains became as if of glass – he seemed to look right through the thickness of stone, seeing simultaneously all the gigantic tangle of Moria corridors; only the very bottom was hidden by a crimson curtain. Here, at the top, everything suddenly seemed long familiar, settled and safe to him – from below however crept dull hatred.

Folco didn’t have time to sort out his sensations properly – they proved too fleeting;

now he stared without pause at the Ring, in the depths of whose black stone barely noticeably smoldered a tiny flame, like the flame of a distant forge. And Hornbori spoke, and his words formed into fabulous visions, and the past came alive in reality before the entranced hobbit…

Hornbori received the Ring from his father, who in turn from his grandfather. Dying, the old dwarf ordered everyone standing by his bed to leave, leaving only Hornbori, his eldest son. And his father told Hornbori that his grandfather was one of the few desperate dwarves of the Misty Mountains who went to Dol Guldur together with the elves – lords of Lothlorien, when Lady Galadriel brought down in dust the walls of the grim fortress of the Nazgûl. The curious dwarves the day after the victory climbed the ruins to gawk at what remained; among the collapsed walls Hornbori’s grandfather, then still a very young dwarf, saw a black entrance to some dungeon and, without thinking long, dived into it. Through breaks in the roof light penetrated inside, and on the floor among the rubble he noticed a wonderful, brightly shining Ring. He couldn’t overcome temptation and picked it up; and having put it on his finger, could no longer take it off. However, the Lady couldn’t fail to notice his find and, according to Hornbori’s father’s words, told grandfather that his trophy was, perhaps, one of the Seven Dwarf Rings, more precisely, one of the three surviving ones, since the other four had been destroyed by dragons. The three preserved fell into the hands of the Unnamed One, and no one knows how and for what he used them. According to Galadriel it appeared that Hornbori’s ring once belonged to Thror, one of the last Kings-under-the-Mountain, lord of the Lonely Mountain. His grandson was the famous Thorin Oakenshield – companion of Bilbo Baggins!

“Who knows how it all really was,” Hornbori continued quietly. “Who knows how it all really happened, but one way or another, I wore this Ring for many years and noticed nothing special about it. I happened to hear the ancient elvish spell: Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky; Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone; Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, and One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne. Well and there further about Mordor. But the Three Elvish, the Three most beautiful Rings lost their power, and their owners went to the Far West. Most likely, I decided, the Dwarf Rings also lost their might. But everything proved not so… " He spread his hands. “And at the Gates something suddenly stung me.” He shook his head, trying to express the inexpressible. “I pulled the Gates toward myself, as if on a rope… barely had enough strength, and without the hobbit wouldn’t have managed at all. What did you do to them, Folco?”

“Wait about the hobbit, let’s figure out the Ring!” Thorin rapped his palm on the table, frowning. “If this is really a Dwarf Ring, what can it do? And also – who and when forged them? The Enemy? Or not? A mortal who puts on one of the Great Rings should become invisible… And what about us? And still the main thing – from whose hands did these rings come? Was it a Light or dark will that created them?”

“Whoever it was, the Ring has already shown its power,” Vjard noted. “And if this is really one of the Seven – who knows, didn’t some part of its ancient might come alive in it from proximity to the heart of our world, the world of tangars?”

“But what was this ancient might?” Hornbori answered with a question to a question, clasping his head in his palms. “Not one of our legends has preserved memory of their action!”

Silence fell. The lamp flame smoldered soundlessly; in the darkness one could barely make out the faces of nearest interlocutors. Hornbori spoke again:

“When this blueness began to rise from below and immediately it became bad, I suddenly thought I could somehow help. When everyone ran, I stayed, though everything inside was shaking, and simply stood, and the glow suddenly stopped, went down and disappeared. That’s when I understood that the Ring did this again. It dispelled the fear, didn’t you feel it?”

“True,” after a pause Thorin nodded. “Well then, friends, this is a good sign!” The dwarf straightened. “Part of our ancient powers has come alive – so let it serve us as a shield against the Fear of the Depths, against the Mountain Bane! And there’s still something with the hobbit! After all, without him the Gates wouldn’t have opened! So what did you do, Folco?”

The hobbit had to tell everything as it was. The dagger passed from hand to hand, and Folco anxiously and senselessly followed it with his gaze around the circle, immediately feeling uncomfortable when on his chest were empty scabbards. The dwarves clicked their tongues, scraped the blade with their nails, tested it for flex – and returned it to Folco with words of general bewilderment. Like the few who had seen the dagger in camp the night after Folco and Thorin’s meeting with Olmer, no one could say anything.

“The Gates as if some will held them,” Gloin said thoughtfully, extending the dagger to the hobbit. “I’d like to know – whose…”

“We’ll go down – we’ll find out,” Thorin threw decisively. “And what do you say about all this?” He waved his hand around himself, as if indicating the walls of the cave invisible in the darkness.

“Only one thing – here, in Moria, we have an enemy,” Dwalin answered without hesitation. “We caught a foreign scent back when we walked across the Dry Bridge, and now there’s no doubt – orcs have been here!”

Everyone understood that they couldn’t descend to the Deep Levels having at their backs a strong and numerous enemy. After long arguments they decided to go down by secret passages. The conversations could have gone on endlessly, but Kid protested.

“Enough!” he yawned widely. “Night will pass, morning will advise,” he said. “Let’s better sleep, in the morning we’ll rummage around the upper levels – maybe we’ll see something?! But now, if I yawn one more time, I’ll tear my mouth to my ears. Whatever anyone else, I’m going to bed.”

The dwarves fussed a bit more and lay down to sleep. Balin and Skidul remained to stand guard in the outer corridor. Folco tossed for a long time on the hard chest, until black emptiness swallowed him too.

The night passed quietly. Four times the guard changed, and not in vain – already toward morning Gloin and Hornbori noticed a torchlight in the far end of the corridor, turning into one of the transverse galleries. Judging by the carelessness, those who were there either didn’t know yet about the dwarves’ presence, or Gloin and Dwalin’s maneuver had confused them, and they were convinced that the dwarves had immediately gone down. This needed to be used, and the sooner the better.

The dwarves feverishly armed themselves, once more checking the mounting of axes and halberds, the strength of hammers and maces, the reliability of chains in spiked flails. Each of them, not sparing his back, dragged on himself full armament, and now the faces of Folco’s companions disappeared behind steel visors of helmets; long mail shirts with thickly set iron plates overlapping each other and therefore resembling fish scales covered their chests; some even took along small round shields. Taking with them a good supply of torches, they locked the door to their temporary refuge, and Gloin hid the key. Stretched in a long chain, they moved north, where the light of a foreign torch had flashed.

Gloin walked ahead, beside him – Hornbori, Thorin and battle-eager Dori; Bran, Balin and Dwalin brought up the rear. Folco found himself in the middle next to Skidul and Stron. Right behind the hobbit’s back sounded the light sniffling of Kid.

They moved in short dashes from one shelter to another; Folco held his bow ready, loaded crossbows were in the hands of several dwarves. About half an hour passed this way; the sky in the west still remained gray, but in the gallery it was already quite light.

Soon the living caves ended, spacious halls began to alternate with black branches of corridors. The dwarves doubled their caution, Gloin and Thorin took turns pressing their ears to the floor, freezing for a long time, and the rest stood, afraid even to breathe, let alone move; finally rising, Gloin declared that he heard a faint echo of footsteps – on the Sixth Level, below them.

“We’re going down,” he threw briefly. “Dwalin, where are you? Come here, we need to find the Staircase.”

“To the right, to the right, are you blind?!” Dwalin responded grumpily. “Push, there’s the black vein…”

Gloin silently passed his hand over the rock, a light creak was heard, and the slab descended, opening the entrance to a narrow steep staircase. The dwarves one by one squeezed into the black opening.

“Don’t light torches,” Gloin warned. “Hold onto the walls, there are no chasms here.”

The hobbit counted a good hundred steps down when he suddenly felt on his face a weak but fresh breath – the descent ended, they came out into a spacious hall, scantily lit by light from a single window under the very lancet ceiling; from here began immediately five corridors. Gloin and Dwalin rushed to their dark entrances. A few seconds later Dwalin beckoned invitingly.

“They’re coming here,” the dwarf whispered breathlessly to his running up companions. “They have nowhere to go here, all the passages of this part of the Level converge here.”

“Spread out!” Thorin commanded. “If there are two or three dozen – we’ll hit them, if more – we’ll let them pass. Kid! Stay closer to Folco!”

Thorin wanted to say something else, but from the depths of the corridor distinctly came tramping, and the dwarves hurried to take cover. The hobbit hastily checked the bowstring and pulled two arrows from his quiver.

Several agonizing minutes passed; Folco saw the stern fighter’s fire in the eyes of Kid crouching nearby; the other dwarves, pressed into the granite walls, disappeared in the gray gloom – not a creak, not a glint. And meanwhile the first reflections of torches fell on the floor, and a moment later the head of an orc detachment – and these were precisely orcs – appeared from the corridor. Folco saw them for the first time and for a moment forgot everything, looking at the primordial servants of Darkness with wide-open eyes.

Tall, broad-shouldered, long-armed, the orcs walked in a disorderly crowd, all with shields and curved scimitars, in low horned helmets different from the dwarves’ tall and closed ones; the wide, flat faces of the orcs were open. In the meager light it was impossible to properly examine their garments. There were just over two dozen of them.

“Khazâd!” the ringing battle cry of the dwarves of the Northern World flew up and beat under the ceiling.

In the same second the walls seemed to spew out the old masters of Khazad-dûm, and the ancient rocks once more, for the umpteenth time, heard the ringing dispute of orcish swords with dwarf axes.

The cave immediately filled with heart-rending howls and shrieks; the dwarves rushed to attack silently. Appearing from all sides, they knocked the orcs into a heap, pressing them into a blind corner of the hall.

Having recovered from the surprise and seeing that Kid had already rushed forward, Folco released the bowstring; a hefty orc with a torch poked his head into stone. The hobbit didn’t see what was happening with the other dwarves; he could only follow Kid.

The surrounded orcs fought with a fury that Folco didn’t expect to meet in this spawn; but today the fight was equal, one on one, today there was room for dwarves – masters of single combat, and the orcs didn’t have time to build a wall of shields.

The hobbit tore at the bowstring of the elvish bow as fast as he could find a target. Not one arrow was wasted, all found their way, and Kid, with sword in one hand and dagger in the other, didn’t let orcs get close to the hobbit, who had quickly been noticed by them as an unerring archer. A strange feeling suddenly seized Folco – his mind was miraculously cleared, here decisions arose immediately. His eyes chose the next orc, determined the lead, and at the same time he saw how the sword flashed in Kid’s hands: here an orc, covering himself with a shield, swings his scimitar, but the movement of the dagger, quick, lightning-fast, deflects the enemy blade aside; Kid, all twisting, dives under the enemy’s shield and almost lying strikes from bottom to top, piercing the orc with his long straight sword, and immediately jumps up, and now his sword parries the blow of the next enemy, and the dagger makes a thrust, and the orc doesn’t have time to put up his shield; but on the right another opponent. Kid only begins to turn toward him, but he suddenly snorts and falls with the hobbit’s arrow in his throat…

And suddenly it all somehow ended at once. The dwarves stopped – there were no more enemies, on the hall floor in shapeless heaps lay their bodies, dark blood, without lingering, spread over the polished stone.

Folco lowered his bow. How are his friends, are they all safe? For a long time he couldn’t count his own. But no, all fourteen, all on their feet…

“Hey, you long-beards, what have you done!” Thorin suddenly shouted angrily, tearing off his helmet. “Killed them all, and who will we interrogate? Had your fun, nothing to say! Dori! I’m yelling at you – enough, no, you absolutely had to pin that last one to the wall and take his head off! Could have interrogated him, then taken it off…”

“So, what shall we do now?!” Gloin approached Thorin, wiping his axe blade as he walked. “There’s a shaft nearby – all the way down, to the Seventh Deep – maybe throw them all there?”

Dori, from whose face the battle anger hadn’t yet gone, in turn took off his helmet, wiping his wet forehead, and bent over the body of one of the orcs, beckoning the others to him with signs. Folco suddenly felt nausea and hastily turned away, unable to look at the corpse of an enemy with a split head. Their friends’ voices reached him:

“Why are they without armor?!”

“What, all of them? And this, look, on the back?! Brothers, they were carrying mail shirts in bags!”

“Didn’t expect us, then,” came Thorin’s voice. “Ho! And what’s this on their shields? Folco, come here!”

The hobbit, trying not to look at the orc corpses, approached his friends. Thorin stood in the middle, squeamishly holding at arm’s length a round orcish shield with an edge notched by someone’s axe.

“You look at the emblem,” Dori tugged the hobbit’s sleeve.

The hobbit looked and gasped – on the shield flaunted the so familiar from the Red Book crudely painted image of the Red Eye of Barad-dûr! Having mastered his momentary confusion, the hobbit explained to his friends the former meaning of the ominous sign. Silence fell.

“Here’s the answer to your question, brother hobbit,” Gloin pronounced. “They’re descendants of Mordor orcs. Probably someone from this snake tribe escaped retribution and hid in some secret dens all these years. But how quickly they sniffed everything out! Did they find out themselves or did someone put them wise?”

“Ask something simpler,” Thorin muttered in response. “Now try catching them here again! By the way, why do they need weapons if Moria’s been empty for so long?”

“Means it’s not quite empty,” Hornbori threw, looking around. “And we need to understand who else might be here on our head!”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Trór intervened angrily. “Where will we put these?”

“Into the shaft, I suppose,” Thorin dropped. “Come on, get to it, tangars, and don’t turn up your noses!”

The dwarves quickly dragged the pile of orcish bodies to a black abyss fenced by a low parapet, from where wafted dry underground heat. Gloin drew air through his nose.

“On the Seventh Deep everything’s as before,” he informed his companions. “Heat from the Flaming Eyes, as always… But the furnaces are extinguished.”

“So, shall we dump them?” Bran inquired businesslike, turning to Hornbori standing nearby with arms crossed on his chest, with a thoughtful and concentrated look.

“Dump them, what’s there!” Thorin shouted angrily. The orc bodies, one after another, plunged into the depths, no matter how Folco listened, he never heard the sound of falling.

Having climbed back up to the cave where they had spent the night, the dwarves hurriedly packed the things remaining there. To linger longer on top made no sense: on the way back Gloin remembered where the entrance to the Secret Gallery was, and now a difficult three-day journey to the eastern borders of the Moria kingdom awaited them.

“How’s the axe, Thorin?” Folco asked his companion in passing, when they, heavily loaded, were already going out the doors into the corridor, and Thorin silently showed the hobbit a clenched fist – which among dwarves was a sign of highest trust in a weapon.

“We’re going to the Record Hall, as agreed,” Thorin announced when everyone had come out and the door was again locked. “On the way we’ll listen – if we notice anyone else, we’ll have to work with axes! We desperately need at least one orc alive.”

The Secret Gallery really proved secret – the entrance to it was covered by stone doors indistinguishable from the surrounding walls, opening at the pressure of Gloin’s hand on an inconspicuous protrusion near the very floor. Inside was impenetrable darkness. The dwarves adjusted the bags on their backs, grunted, drank beer from Kid’s keg and without long conversations set off on their way.

“So, at least one enemy we know for certain,” Hornbori threw to Thorin on the move. “How do you think to deal with him?”

“If everything else proves old wives’ tales, then by autumn we’ll need to summon a militia from Erebor and from the Misty Mountains,” Thorin answered solidly.

“Excellent, but who will stand at the head?”

“The one the hird elects, don’t you know?” Thorin bridled.

“Of course, of course,” Hornbori agreed easily and fell silent.

The Secret Gallery, distinguished from ordinary ones by an almost complete absence of forks – during the entire many-hour journey the hobbit counted only five branches – led them to another staircase, this time spiral. Gloin stopped, dropped the pack from his back and suggested resting before they go down the Endless Staircase. At these words the hobbit’s breath caught.

“You want… you want to say that this is that very Endless Staircase that goes through all Moria from its very bottom, long forgotten by the dwarves themselves? Didn’t Gandalf pass along it in his time? It should come out on the peak of Celebdil…”

“That’s right,” Gloin confirmed solemnly. “It’s the very one. We need to go down it one level – so we’ll be on the Sixth; the Record Hall is on the Seventh, but the Secret Gallery here goes too far south, and it’s more advantageous for us to cut across.”

They descended a hundred wide, triangular at the edges steps and found themselves on another landing – it differed from the upper one only in the greater number of corridors beginning from it.

And again long hours of monotonous tiring journey; the underground silence was broken only by the crackle of torches, the heavy breathing of dwarves and occasionally – the soft gurgling of water flowing somewhere into the blackness along stone troughs. They stopped twice; the hobbit lost all sense of time, having tried to count steps, he lost count after three thousand. Finally, when Folco understood that he would fall now and nothing would make him rise, Thorin and Hornbori – they now walked together and all the time quietly conferred about something, moreover arguing quite heatedly – announced that it was time to settle for the night.

They dropped their bags right in the tunnel, on bare stones. Falling asleep, Folco saw through closing eyelids the figures of Thorin and Hornbori sitting nearby; they talked quietly, and then Thorin rose and extinguished the torch.

In the morning – though whether it was morning or day, no one, naturally, knew; simply when everyone woke, Gloin and Bran again struck fire by feel, and having eaten hastily, they moved on.

This stretch of time passed the same as the previous – except that the Morians, and with them Thorin and Hornbori, increasingly pressed to the walls, trying by some faint sounds audible only to them to determine something for themselves; occasionally Dori joined them, the rest entirely trusted their leaders. Now, after the battle, they could somehow more boldly speak about the ghost that had frightened them at the entrance to Moria and the mysterious blueness rising up the stairwell. Not to think about it the dwarves couldn’t, but not knowing what to say, in the end began to build suppositions, each more fantastic than the last, and gradually so frightened themselves that they nearly attacked Kid with their fists for voicing the simple-hearted guess about a new Great Bane.

Soon the hobbit was deadly bored with this endless wandering through the longest and gloomiest underground, resembling the insides of some petrified boa: the load on his shoulders began to seem almost unl iftable, and simultaneously appeared some evil premonition, agonizing uncertainty – as happens when you’re expecting some very large trouble and don’t know only whether it will happen now or tomorrow, and it’s unknown how to act to avoid it… The enemy was nearby, the hobbit clearly felt this, but an unusual enemy – ghostly, though not bodiless.

The water in the flasks was running out, and no end to the journey along the Secret Gallery was foreseen. Finally they stopped again, and to the hobbit’s great joy, Thorin announced that one more night – and the next day they would come out to the Record Hall, where they would stop to look around.

And again Folco slept poorly – suddenly it became damp, he froze and with difficulty waited for the moment when Hornbori began to rouse the others. The hobbit’s eyes after the sleepless night stuck together and burned, his legs obeyed poorly, he could straighten his back only with difficulty. However, almost nothing remained to go, soon the Record Hall and rest, rest, rest!..

The tunnel ended in a blank wall without the slightest signs of doors. Gloin and Dwalin had to fuss considerably, and the others – to endure several unpleasant minutes, until the secret door flew open and they came out into another corridor, much wider, straighter and more spacious than the former. The smooth floor, finished walls betrayed its significance; the torches lit ahead a semicircular arch, beyond it was guessed the space of a considerable hall.

“This is the Twenty-First Hall,” Gloin said, respectfully lowering his voice. “A memorable place… We need the northern door.”

“Behind it should be a corridor, and on the right hand – the door to Mazarbul,” the hobbit smiled, remembering the pages of the Red Book.

So it proved. The door that nine Fellowship members once bravely defended from the onslaught of orcs and trolls was now tightly closed. The floor before the door was clean, and this surprised experienced Gloin: dust lay everywhere in the Twenty-First Hall, on the western side of the Moria caves – here, before the door of the Record Hall, for some reason there was no dust.

Having approached closer, they found the answer. The stone slab of the door was covered with whitish scars from blows by some sharp metal tool; it looked as if they had tried to open the door from the corridor.

“Someone very much wanted to look inside,” Dwalin smirked.

“So what, is the door closed?” Thorin inquired.

“And not with a simple lock,” the Morian continued. “Look around, friends. This mustn’t be heard by these…”

The dwarf turned his face to the door and quietly pronounced something in a singsong. Into the open doorway poured gray predawn light. Inside the Record Hall everything was restored as it was in the times of Frodo’s wanderings – chests in niches, and under the window – a white tomb slab on gray stone and the lines familiar to Folco in the Common Speech and Moria language.

“Greetings, Lord Balin, son of Fundin,” Thorin said quietly, and all the dwarves knelt; the hobbit followed their example.

Having paid tribute to memory, the dwarves dispersed to the corners, examining the chests. Here, unlike the living caves in the west, everything had survived, but having opened the first unlocked chest, they came upon a note thrown on top of books wrapped in canvas. Some hasty hand had scrawled uneven lines:

“To whoever crosses the threshold of the land of ancestors, whom dark horror and despair don’t stop. Brothers! Beware the Flaming Eyes – they are death when the mountains begin to breathe. Don’t descend to the lower levels – fear drives you mad. We don’t know what it is; it comes from underground. In the Moria Bridge the Deep Fear has appeared again, of which we’ve heard nothing for two hundred seventy years. Into the abandoned caves of the west orcs have penetrated; there are too few of us to fight. Summon the elves! Only they, probably, can help us. This is ancient evil, and it’s beyond our power. In the chests you’ll find a detailed description of everything that happened in Khazad-dûm! And also – seek mithril! It’s on the Sixth Deep, walled into the wall of the One Hundred Eleventh Hall – the road there is through the Castle Hall. Wait for the time when the Flaming Eyes close in sleep – let the riches of ancestors again serve the tangars. We didn’t manage to save them. Farewell! Erebor will always be ready to rise at the first call of daredevils. We’ll gather strength and wait. Don’t hurry to accuse us of cowardice…”

At this place the note ended. There was neither signature nor date. Thorin turned the sheet of parchment in his fingers, chuckled and passed it around. When the note again returned to him, he put it back in its former place in the chest, closed the lid and without thinking long, seated himself on top. The tired dwarves, having dropped from their shoulders the considerable weight of weapons, tools and provisions, settled wherever. Kid on the sly extracted the stopper from his keg…

However, they didn’t manage to begin council and delve into the long, verbose discussions so beloved by dwarves. A barely audible rustle came from behind the not tightly closed door of the corridor leading to the Twenty-First Hall. Hornbori jumped up as if tossed and in the blink of an eye found himself at the opening. Not one of the dwarves had yet managed to comprehend anything when Hornbori with a short angry cry slammed the door and leaned on it with all his body.

“Orcs, orcs in the corridor!” he shouted, trying without moving from the door to reach his axe. “Quickly, Gloin, Dwalin!”

From behind the stone door now came distinctly audible tramping of many feet and a dull growl, filled with such hatred that everything inside Folco turned cold. The door, into which now pressed Hornbori, Grani, Gimli, Trór and Dwalin, shook finely, then came a booming blow by something heavy, the door shuddered but didn’t yield. Gloin hurriedly whispered the words of the spell, finally he sighed with relief, and in the same instant the door stopped wobbling. The blows on it became much more powerful, but they were felt now quite differently – the door no longer jerked back and forth, only slightly shuddered.

Hornbori wiped sweat from his forehead.

“There are no fewer than a hundred of them there,” he said in an undertone to his friends crowded around him. “And these are some other orcs, not those we laid out on the Sixth Level. These are taller, broader-shouldered, and their faces are more regular, it seemed to me… There were lots of torches, I made out a ram.”

“What shall we do?” Vjard looked around hunted.

“Open the doors – and forward!” A cruel smile twisted Dori’s lips.

“So they’ll turn you into a pincushion, only instead of pins will be their arrows?” Vjard shrieked.

“Wait, wait!” Gloin raised his hand. “They’re unlikely to break the door – it’s not one of those that can be smashed or torn from its hinges. Let’s calmly retreat through the eastern door – the one under the window.”

“And where then?” Bran grumbled, glancing at the door shuddering under measured blows.

“Down,” Gloin shrugged. “In the end we came here to sort out not orcs. The staircase goes to the First Deep, from there we’ll easily penetrate the Castle Hall and lower.”

“We won’t penetrate anywhere now,” Thorin suddenly smiled grimly, having imperceptibly moved to the eastern door. “We’re surrounded, it’s a trap…”

Without agreement, the dwarves in a crowd rushed to the opposite wall. From behind the eastern door came the same tramping and growling. The door itself, like the first, was locked by spell, and there was no reason to fear that the enemy would force his way here; but what to do next?

Sticky cold fear crept through the hobbit’s heart; the situation seemed hopeless. He saw how dwarf faces grew heavy, how eyebrows drew together… Conversations ceased; all were depressedly silent.

“We’ll break through,” Hornbori said hoarsely. “If only they don’t smoke us out of here like rats from a hole.”

No one objected to him, and then Thorin said, suddenly beginning to unfold his blanket:

“Then we need to rest properly… They won’t break the doors, so we can calmly sleep a few hours, and then…”

“Wait! Maybe we can negotiate with them?” Vjard spoke up with timid hope. “Maybe buy them off with something?”

“Perhaps with you,” Dori’s eyes flashed, and they didn’t mention it again.

The dwarves got out blankets, sprawled freely and lit pipes.

The din behind the door didn’t cease. There were no shouts or shrieks to be heard – the orcs pounded the door silently, and this made it even more frightening. Folco couldn’t find a place for himself and tossed from side to side. Nearby snored the imperturbable Kid, who had dozed off as if he were in some Annuminas tavern. The hobbit’s gaze, aimlessly darting over walls and ceiling, suddenly fell on the window, and in the same second he seemed to be tossed.

“Thorin, Thorin, what if we go this way?” He poked his finger in the direction of the small square opening in the wall from where light penetrated. “What’s there, below?”

Thorin was silent for several moments, thinking, and then jumped up and rushed to the window, raising the others as he went.

A minute later all the dwarves were fiercely gutting their bags, extracting from their depths long ropes with iron hooks on the ends – reaching the window was not simple, one had to crawl several fathoms along the light shaft slanting upward. And it was still unknown how to descend below…

All this happened in silence. A bunch of dwarves, collected and extraordinarily focused, crowded at the eastern wall. Gloin threw the grapnel, the steel claws caught on the edge of the window opening. The dwarves exchanged glances, and then Kid stepped forward. Deftly, as if all his life he had done nothing but climb ropes, he crawled upward, bracing his feet against the shaft walls. Soon he reached the window and stuck his head outside. He looked for a long, endlessly long time, Dori’s knuckles whitened on his convulsively clenched fists; finally Kid tore himself from contemplating the surroundings and turned to his impatiently waiting companions.

“Need to slide down about thirty fathoms – there’s a window there!” Kid reported in a loud whisper. “But the rock is like a mirror…”

“Secure the ropes,” Thorin ordered, also in a whisper.

Having aimed, Kid pushed down two thick gray bundles, then leaned over, peered and joyfully slapped his sides.

All this took them considerable time. First went Thorin and Hornbori. After them the others – without luggage, in mail shirts and with only axes. Those remaining in the Record Hall sent after them the bags and then left themselves. Last to leave the Hall were Dori and Folco. Already diving into the blackness of the lower window, Folco regretted that, firstly, during the descent he couldn’t tear his gaze from the rock and, secondly, that he hadn’t taken with him a single dwarf chronicle.

And again the darkness of the Sixth Level passages, again they hurriedly go somewhere into the gloom, again in the torchlight appear and disappear staircases, arches, crossroads, high halls with columns and without them… Their journey continued several hours. They again overcame a long smooth ascent and found themselves, as Dwalin whispered, again on the Seventh Level.

“I won’t leave here without a living orc,” Thorin stubbornly insisted in response to his companions’ entreaties.

After long and careful searches they found the entrance to the Secret Gallery and there, behind the impregnable stone door, set up another temporary camp. Having given themselves one more brief rest, the dwarves and Folco again set off hunting.

Of course, if not for Gloin and Dwalin’s skill, they would never have managed to approach the orcs unnoticed. The number of enemies seemed not to exceed thirty; all indeed noticeably differed from the first orcs they had met. They seemed larger, taller and straighter, with not such long arms and more regular faces, though cross-eyed;

instead of the orcs’ favorite scimitars they had short and thick double-edged swords.

The hall where they ambushed the orc detachment was a dead end, from it there was only one exit – precisely this was blocked by the line of steel-clad companions of Folco. To their ears came distant, dull blows of the ram on the impregnable door of the Record Hall. Thorin silently drew his axe from his belt – and the dwarves silently, in one iron fist, struck the unsuspecting opponent.

The breath-holding Folco, this time left behind with his bow, expected that his friends would pass through the crowd of enemies as last time – easily, swiftly, unstoppably: however, instead of howls of horror the dwarves were met only by a furious roar of many dozens of throats – and from the Hall, scantily lit by several torches on the walls, at the tangars moved orcs in full armor: arrows whistled in the air, from right and left on the attackers aimed bunches of swordsmen; steel rang against steel; the broken orc line quickly healed the breach; there were more and more enemies, no fewer than six dozen, and they fought unlike the previous ones – desperately and skillfully. Folco yanked the first arrow from his quiver.

Surrounded on three sides, the dwarves, however, didn’t lose either steadfastness or self-control; snapping back with short irresistible flashes of axes, they slowly began to retreat to the hall exit; having looked closely, Folco saw that in the middle of the line his companions were dragging something convulsively jerking, writhing.

The orcs pressed, from their throats burst a frenzied, bestial either roar or battle cry, neither side yielded to the other, but there were almost no fallen on the floor. Folco laid out only two, wounded another, a dozen arrows were wasted, sliding off the sturdy orcish armor. Between the dwarves and orcs arose an emptiness – the orcs slowly advanced, the dwarves retreated just as slowly, until suddenly the one the dwarves had managed to bind shrieked heart-rendingly. In the same instant the empty space between the advancing and retreating disappeared, the orcs threw themselves straight at the dwarf axes, not sparing themselves; two arrows of the hobbit in a row hit two orcs in vulnerable places – between breastplate and helmet, but the orcs disrupted the order in the until-then calmly and powerfully retreating bunch of dwarves, and the retreat turned into flight. Fortunately, the dwarves managed to break away from their pursuers; they dived into some narrow corridor and disappeared in impenetrable darkness. The orcs, who had only one torch, rushed past, and Folco’s companions and he himself after all the tribulations of this day reached the reliable doors of the Secret Gallery, where they could finally catch their breath.

The dwarves breathed heavily, their armor bore deep traces of enemy blows; Balin was wounded in the shoulder – his mail shirt had failed him; Bran was saved only by a miracle – an orc sword slid along his visor, leaving a deep dent in it. The usual dwarf boasting and bragging wasn’t to be heard – everyone averted their eyes and looked gloomily at the floor; there was no need to prove that they had escaped only by miracle.

The dwarves had managed to kill only five opponents;

four more were struck down by the hobbit’s arrows. Gazes involuntarily turned to the captive lying on the floor curled up. At Thorin’s sign they dragged him closer to the laid fire.

The orc proved large, almost a head taller than the tallest among the dwarves, Stron. In the ruddy firelight the skin of his face and hands seemed almost brown; his eyes – narrow, slanted – were like most of his kinsmen’s, but his nose resembled more a human’s, as did his mouth with firm, well-defined lips. High too was his forehead, unlike the low and flat ones that most mountain orcs had. His eyes looked with hatred at the dwarves, in this gaze was no fear – only hatred and some deep, surprisingly conscious doom. Thorin began the interrogation. He asked the usual questions: where did the orcs come to Moria from, what do they want to do here, how many of them are there, who are the leaders – but the captive stubbornly remained silent, indifferently staring at the stone floor. With a dull threat in his voice Thorin repeated the questions – the answer was again obstinate silence.

“Heat iron,” Thorin hoarsely ordered his men, and Dori with Skidul stuck several long hooks into the flame.

“So what, will you talk or what?” Thorin pronounced ominously, looking expressively at the captive.

He noticeably shuddered but said nothing. And then Hornbori decisively pushed Thorin aside and stepped toward the prisoner. Folco was surprised – never before had the verbose and dignified Hornbori had such a majestic and commanding appearance. He raised his right hand, and the golden band of the Ring flashed like a small tongue of flame that had suddenly jumped into the dwarf’s hand. For a second Hornbori stared point-blank at the orc, and then the latter slowly and with effort began to speak. The dwarves exchanged amazed glances. The orc spoke in the Common Tongue, but poorly, the hobbit understood him with difficulty.

Answering Hornbori, who had taken the interrogation into his own hands, the orc hoarsely and confusedly told the silent dwarves that his kinsmen had forced their way into Moria when it had already been abandoned by its old masters; here they had to encounter orcs of another tribe who had crept in here even under the last dwarves – between the tribes enmity began. From the twisted lips of the captive burst inarticulate curses at the address of these enemies; he hated them hardly less than the dwarves. To Hornbori’s question where they themselves came from and where those orcs opposing them came from, the captive answered that his race was from those who once served the great mage and sorcerer whose name now only the elders remember; this long-dead, unfortunately, lord they called the White Hand. Folco immediately perked up.

The orc told much more interesting things about how the few of his kinsmen who survived the fire of the last war hid in gorges and valleys of the Misty Mountains;

how the Rohirrim hunted them like beasts; how news came that the White-Skins had killed to the last all the orcs who tried to hide in the North;

then his kinsmen decided to try their luck in underground… The dwarves also learned that here, into Moria, had broken through almost seven thousand orc warriors and twice as many of their women, elders and children.

Folco tugged Hornbori’s sleeve and whispered a few words in his ear; the dwarf raised his eyebrows in surprise but still asked the question prompted by the hobbit. Ugh, how the orc jerked, how his eyes rolled! But he had nowhere to go, some force made him speak, and he squeezed out of himself that yes, from time immemorial in his people – among those who served the White Hand – the custom was rooted of abducting women from human settlements to mix orc blood with the blood of people free from primordial service to Darkness. On many dwarf faces appeared grimaces of disgust.

They also learned that Saruman’s orcs hadn’t yet died out in the vicinity of Isengard; but there it’s dangerous, very dangerous – the forest monsters catch the unlucky, and woe to him who catches the eye of the animate oaks and hornbeams of Fangorn! They know no mercy, and there’s no dealing with them – they possess titanic strength and are indestructible. To the question where the orcs hiding in Moria get food, the captive squeezed out with difficulty that they still live by raids on villages on both sides of the mountains; they, however, avoid burning settlements and causing great evil – otherwise either the royal cavalry of Rohan will come, or the swordsmen’s druzhinas from the state of the Beornings;

the orcs try simply to take ransom, having properly frightened the cowardly villagers. However, their enemies, the mountain orcs, curse upon their heads, upon all their race to the twelfth generation, like madmen, rob, burn and kill; and soon a great war will begin. They beware approaching the terrible Elvish Forest to the east of Moria – they go for booty North, along the Anduin valley. But perhaps soon everything will change…

“What exactly?” Hornbori inquired. The orc twisted all over, convulsively trying to clamp

his mouth shut himself, but words against his will continued

to fly from his mouth.

“The underground is now ours,” the orc croaked, “this place is for us. The Crimson Darkness again rules the Lower… People in the north are seeking us, and we go with them on the South Road and on the West Road too. Soon will come the end of the cursed elves. The master will return… And there will be battle, and we’ll yet see, we’ll yet show everyone – both the cursed mountain worms from the caves of the Misty Mountains, and the White-Skin murderers! And what’s below will bind everything… and we’ll be together…”

His eyes rolled back, his head fell on his chest. Hornbori hurriedly bent to him, then spread his hands.

“That’s it! Collapsed unconscious.” He sat by the fire. “So how do you like this, tangars? Crimson Darkness on the Lower Levels! People in the North! And also a ‘master’… What shall we do next?”

“We’ll do nothing here,” Vjard waved his hand doomed. “Need to leave while we’re still whole…”

“Oh no,” Dori hissed. “Crimson Darkness, you say? Until I see it myself, we’re not going anywhere! End to the cursed elves – you hear where he’s aiming? No-o, we need to go down. Let there be even seven thousand orcs here, even seventy-seven thousand – we can’t leave until we understand everything. I propose – immediately down. There we’ll see.”

“And what about this one?” Thorin threw grimly, nodding at the orc. “Look, seems he’s coming to, blinking his eyes.”

“What Crimson Darkness? Why ’end to elves’?” Hornbori asked the orc sternly, again raising his hand with the Ring.

“Coming is That Which Slept in the Depths…” the orc croaked. “Their Hour is coming… And we’re going after them… though we’re already almost a third human…”

“Stop, Hornbori!” Thorin rose. “You see – he has no words. He senses it, senses with his black nose that came to his ancestors from the Lord of the Great Darkness, but explain he still can’t. Dori’s right. We need to go down. Isn’t it clear now that not only we dwarves, but the whole West is in terrible danger? We can’t waste time. Let’s go down! Only here’s one more thing…”

Bending low to the captive, he growled right in his face:

“Who is the ‘master’? Where is he – here or on the surface? Is he an orc or a human? What do they say about him? If you tell the truth,” – he paused a moment – “we’ll release you, I swear by Durin’s beard! Hornbori, help! How do you know he exists? What else do you know about him?”

“I haven’t seen him,” the captive shook his head desperately. “I know that he’s on earth, and nidings came to us from him last year… And I know that he is… this can’t be explained to you. He’s the one who will gather all that was scattered, and the Crimson Darkness will also move… I know nothing more, I swear by the White Hand!”

“Alright,” Thorin exhaled. “How is it, Hornbori?”

“He’s not lying,” came the quick answer, “he really doesn’t know.”

“Then untie him, and let him go,” Thorin threw grimly, stopping with a gesture Dori who had jumped up with an indignant cry, after whom about half a dozen more dwarves protested. “We can’t break our word. Let him go. Let him even lead his people to our trail… We’ll have to work with axes!”

“With ones like this, you’ll work all right,” Bran muttered. “Strong at swinging swords, not like these northern ones…”

The orc disappeared into darkness, and the quick tramping of his boots soon died away.