Chapter 5: Durin's Forge

“Who are the nidings, Thorin?” Folco asked his friend when they with all possible precautions left the Secret Gallery and began to make their way to the staircase leading down.

“Nidings are those very dwarflings, one of whom we caught with you in Buckland,” Thorin answered grimly. “So the accursed one didn’t lie to us then! The orcs of the White Hand really do serve someone. And perhaps it’s his will that stands behind the troubles above. Only here’s the thing – who is he? I think only one Great Bright Queen could give us the answer. But where is she, what is she doing there, at home, beyond the Great Sea?”

The dwarf sighed and shook his head, as if answering himself to some cheerless thoughts.

The chain of dwarves strode through dark passages, choosing the narrowest and most inconspicuous. Twice past them passed, clanging with weapons and lighting the gray vaults with torches, large orc detachments – the same as the one they had captured, but Gloin and Dwalin led them so skillfully that the enemy both times suspected nothing. The dwarves sat out in dark side branches, behind deep wall projections, specially, it seemed, arranged for hiding from a numerically superior foe.

Many beautiful, striking in their decoration halls the hobbit saw during their short journey to the secret staircase. Some raised their ceilings into the darkness inaccessible to torchlight, and only by the echoing footsteps had one to guess the height of these halls. Others were divided by long rows of columns covered with intricate carving, and in deep niches stood sculptures of people, dwarves and animals, executed with extraordinary skill. The torches lit enormous mosaics laid out in gold, silver and precious gems, intricate iron lamps forged in the form of interweaving gigantic twisted cables. Alas, in many places the hobbit noticed traces of orcs too – many decorations were broken, carved stone figures smashed; from mosaics on walls crude, insensitive hands had gouged out bright gems…

With a light screech behind them the doors of the Secret Door closed. The torches lit a narrow staircase going into impenetrable shadow. They began a long descent. The hobbit counted six hundred steps when the staircase unexpectedly ended: a short corridor ended in the now familiar dead end of the Secret Gallery. Gloin and Dwalin began to confer in undertones about something.

“We’re on the First Level,” Gloin finally said, turning to the others. “Quite nearby runs the Main Highway. To the Second Hall – yes-yes, the very one where the Moria Bridge is – remains about two hours’ walk. Only now let’s decide – do we need to go there?”

“If orcs are in Moria, then they’ve surely already thought of blocking the Main Highway and posting guard at the Gates and on the Bridge,” Dwalin picked up. “But we need to go lower. Don’t forget, by the way, about the mithril in the walls of the One Hundred Eleventh Hall!”

“Let’s better try to sit here for some time and talk properly,” Thorin suddenly said uncertainly. “We have two enemies here – orcs and that for which we, actually, came here. We’ve encountered it twice, and both times it was very, very unpleasant. But maybe after that blueness on the staircase someone noticed something? Maybe something seemed, appeared? Say everything, even the most absurd – now every detail is important. Hornbori! What about the Ring?”

“It doesn’t give omniscience,” he admitted with a sigh. “It only sometimes prompts, but all this is so elusive… No, I don’t feel anything now.”

Thorin bit his lip.

“We have food for three weeks,” he said restrainedly. “In two dozen earthly days – which we, alas, will have to mark only by our stomachs’ rumbling – we need to understand what’s the matter here!”

The answer was gloomy silence.

“I think we need to go further down,” Grani suddenly spoke: his voice was dull, but in it were heard fearlessness and resolve. “We need to go down, and if ghosts bar our way – we’ll have to learn to fight ghosts too! I swear by the Moria Hammers and the sacred beard of Durin – Gimli and Trór and I would sooner let orcs eat us alive than turn back!”

No one answered the young dwarf’s hot speech; however, to Thorin’s call to rise and move on, everyone responded without hesitation.

“I propose going to the Castle Hall,” Gloin said, hoisting the load on his shoulders. “It’s the Sixth Deep Level, there’s water there, there used to be secluded places where one could hide. And it’s not a simple hall – by legend, it was hewn by the First Dwarf himself. They say that if you stand on Durin’s Stone at the hour when all forces are silent – both of Darkness and of Dawn, and only the Mountains gaze at you with the crimson pupils of the Flaming Eyes, you can ask counsel, and He Who Began the Beginning will answer you… So they say, but – who knows?”

“Before we reach the Stone, we’ll still have to pass along the Main Highway,” Dori grumbled. “And there are orcs – and plenty, I’m sure! We need to send someone ahead.”

An eternity, it seemed, the dwarves and Folco spent in agonizing, soul-sucking waiting, until from the darkness finally emerged Gloin, Dori and Bran.

“As I thought,” Dori said grimly, wiping his axe stained with dark orcish blood. “There’s a crowd of them – all small, Mordor ones. To the Gates there’s no point even trying. Where’s the descent down here, Gloin?”

“We’ll have to go around,” he sighed. Again passages, staircases, narrow secret doors, the guttural voices of bickering orcs somewhere around the corner – everything blurred in the hobbit’s memory, for his legs could barely hold him. The dwarves and he had been without sleep for a good day already, but strength still remained – to the last moment. Having huddled in some dark dead end, they lay down for the night.

The dark tunnel of the hobbit’s dreams, gloomy and formless, was suddenly lit by something reddish-fiery, writhing like a fabulous serpent; gray paws suddenly reached for the hobbit right from the folds of stone, cold fingers closed on his throat… there was no strength to cry out, to move… and everything suddenly broke off.

He was roused by the dwarves getting ready for the road. Folco, broken and with a terrible headache, could barely move; true, his companions looked no better. As it turned out, the stone pincers of monstrous hands had appeared to every last one. The mood was joyless, the debilitating fear before the unknown, which had almost receded during the valorous clashes with orcs above, again imperceptibly crept into the hobbit’s heart. But there was nothing to be done, and he, trying to keep closer to Hornbori, trudged after the dwarves.

The Morians couldn’t find the entrance to the Secret Gallery for a long time and led the detachment by ordinary staircases.

The Deep Levels sharply differed from the upper ones – the halls were more spacious and not so richly finished, the passages straighter and wider. Here were located countless workshops – everywhere lay scattered tools, overturned anvils and crucibles.

“This is nothing yet – just wait till lower!” Dwalin whispered in the hobbit’s ear. “Here jewelers and gem-cutters worked, and the ironworking, weaponsmithing halls are much lower…”

They also encountered living caves – here, as above, orcs had done their work. Staircases piercing several levels at once for some reason didn’t come their way, they trudged along sloping passages. It became noticeably hotter; Gloin, Dwalin, Lori, Thorin and Hornbori several times froze by narrow openings of vents from which came waves of dry, burning heat. Folco definitely began to feel Rogvold’s rightness.

Here they’re wandering now, aimlessly, without a clear plan, almost at random, with enemies at their backs and an unclear dark horror ahead… What does Thorin hope for? For Hornbori’s Ring?

Folco sighed. He now acutely sensed danger – right before them, beyond the smooth turn of the corridor. This feeling came somehow at once, his legs froze of their own accord.

Suspiciously in unison having lost their step, the dwarves suddenly stopped. No one could understand what was the matter, but gazes were riveted to the barely distinguishable in the torchlight outlines of the turning corridor before them. This wasn’t the dark, panic horror from which you run not making out the road, but an amazingly clear feeling of the end, the end of everything – one only needs to take a step beyond this turn. No one could move, reach for a weapon; first to begin slowly backing away were Thorin and Hornbori, drawing the others after them. No one asked anything, no one could utter a sound; they only slowly crawled backward.

So passed several minutes – or maybe an hour? – when behind their backs suddenly rang out a many-voiced crude singing and the tramping of dozens of heavy, iron-shod orcish boots. The enemies were completely different.

“To battle!” Dori croaked and turned, hurriedly pulling on his mail shirt. “We’ll die, but worthily as descendants of Durin!”

“Wait…” Hornbori grabbed his sleeve. “I’ll go forward.” He pointed in the direction opposite to where the strengthening with each second tramping was heard. “All of you after me! Folco, I’ll need your bow – be ready! Quickly, we have little time!”

In a tight bunch, holding each other, the dwarves with small steps, fighting every minute with approaching despair, moved forward, and Hornbori raised high his hand with the Ring and stepped toward the turn. Folco gripped under his jacket the hilt of the dagger with blue Flowers on the blade. He had no fear, but each step came with difficulty, as if he was making his way through viscous, sticky clay into which the surrounding air had unexpectedly turned.

The corridor turned smoothly, each step forward opened a new section of smooth walls. They had passed quite a bit when Hornbori suddenly croaked, as if lacking air, and froze. The torch in his hand trembled.

The polished surface of the walls disappeared under a thick moving cover of black shining either snakes or tentacles; they constantly moved, twined and untwined, constantly poking in different directions with blunt eyeless heads with a barely noticeable line – probably a mouth. It looked so terrible that it seemed taking a step forward would be easier if under your feet were a bottomless abyss – such an end seemed now to the shocked hobbit a deliverance. Or – back, while not too late, in honest battle to take as many orcish lives as possible, until a curved scimitar finds you yourself… Only not forward, into these living embraces of death itself! From revulsion and disgust, similar to those he felt when meeting a snake, the hobbit seemed to turn to stone.

Meanwhile the chaotic bustle of tentacles quieted, they slowly stretched in the direction of the motionlessly frozen friends, freezing themselves, like bizarre growths on walls: darkness looked through these tentacles – invisible cold eyes. With a sixth sense the hobbit caught that his invisible opponent also for some reason hesitated; this gave him strength.

Out of their stupor they were brought by the tramping heard behind. The orcs were quite near! And then, without agreement, they stepped forward. Hornbori raised high his right hand with the Ring – and the tentacles seemed all as one to stupidly stare at its golden brilliance, but as soon as they approached, cold pain in the heart, the pain of despair made the hobbit grip the dwarf’s sleeve and stop him. The tentacles were waiting for them, and the Ring couldn’t make them retreat – this is what Folco read in the brief tremor that ran through the countless rows of black living mold on the walls, a tremor of sweet anticipation. And then his hand of its own accord pulled from the scabbard the treasured gifted blade, and the blue Flowers on the steel blade blazed like patches of magical flame.

And then as if a fierce hurricane, having burst into the underground by an unknown path, fell upon the black growth. The tentacles swayed like an agitated grain field, hastily coiling and pressing to the walls. Each tried to burrow deeper, as if wanting to hide behind others. There could be no doubt – these tentacles knew such blades!

One short glance – and Hornbori quietly whistled to his friends; another second – and the tramping of feet mixed with shrieks and howls announced that the detachment was discovered. The dwarves rushed forward and froze before the sight of black tentacles covering walls and ceiling, but Folco raised high the flaming blade, and the light emanating from it in waves made the dwarves, huddled in a tight bunch, step under the living vaults.

Never will the hobbit forget their path between the moving walls, never forget the incomparable horror – not for himself, but for his friends now under his protection.

Folco didn’t hack at the black growth – now it feared him, but in him wasn’t the strength of glorious warriors of the past, before whose wondrous blades this filth fled, now come alive again in the underground. If he got into open battle, the tentacles would also fight… Strange, fragmentary thoughts, coming from who knows where, raced through the hobbit’s head; meanwhile behind them the advance orcs with large torches in their hands rushed around the turn and found themselves right under the first rows of tentacles. Folco happened to turn at this moment and saw how toward the orcs shot hundreds and hundreds of black living ropes. A terrible, like nothing else death howl filled the underground. Tightly swaddled corpses of orcs were dragged somewhere up, into the darkness, and those running up from behind the bend in the wall in turn fell prey to more and more new black tentacles… The torches went out, the surviving orcs rushed back, and the dwarves saw no more. The moving cover suddenly yielded to clean stone; they had passed the terrible place and were reliably protected from any pursuit. Folco turned, brandishing the shining dagger – and like a convulsion passed through the last rows of black hands, animal tremor of horror!

Breathing heavily, wiping wet foreheads and staring at each other with widened eyes in bewilderment, the dwarves collapsed on the floor beyond the first turn when the black growth disappeared from sight. Folco felt only terrible tiredness, but mixed with it was some new pride.

“What, what was that?” immediately from all sides poured impatient questions. “How did you handle them?!”

Kid ran up to the hobbit and squeezed him tight, sniffling suspiciously; Thorin, shaking his head admiringly, slapped him on the shoulder; the others looked at Folco with respect and surprise. Not for the first time now the short one proves first where the best fighters falter!

Folco couldn’t say anything to his friends’ questions, the thoughts flashing in his head were too indefinite and fragmentary.

“They… They’re very old, I mean – they’re from terribly distant days,” he said, vainly trying to catch the vague images hovering in his consciousness. “I don’t know where they’re from – perhaps from the Under-Moria Paths – I only know that they fear this blade.” He showed his dagger. “They’ve seen it before, that’s certain, or ones like it. They know nothing of the outer world, they crawl from the depths to devour… But what moves them? I don’t know where I got this from, honest, it just somehow seems so to me, that’s all!”

They listened to him very attentively, and then Vjard slapped his forehead and said he’d heard in his mountains an old, very old tale about the many-handed living in the underground world; long, long ago the dwarves had already encountered them. He couldn’t extract anything more from his memory, no matter how Dori and Balin teased him.

“Weren’t these the ones Gandalf once spoke of, who passed the Under-Moria Paths?” Thorin quietly murmured in the hobbit’s ear.

“What kind of wondrous dagger do you have?” Stron shook his head admiringly.

These words gave a different direction to the hobbit’s involuntarily disordered thoughts.

“Why then did Olmer give me this treasure?” he thought. “Didn’t he know anything about it? Or did he know? No, he couldn’t not know, must have at least guessed. Or maybe this dagger doesn’t help on the surface, against Olmer’s present enemies? Could the elves have made it, this blade? Very much like Their work, though who knows them, the elves… Would be good to talk with one of them!”

Folco sighed, seeing as if in reality now instead of the gloomy gray vaults foliage flooded with moonlight, and bright summer stars, and the silvery reflection of elvish garments, magical, secret, deeply hidden flame in their eyes – wise and sad. He had never seen elves – long ago Rivendell had emptied, long ago Lady Galadriel’s beautiful Lothlórien had been abandoned by her kinsmen. Folco had only read about the Firstborn in the Red Book and other hobbit chronicles.

Something hard pressed into his nape, and he came to. From longing for the green, bright world left there in the distant past, Folco nearly howled;

he himself couldn’t understand, wiping away uninvited tears, what he was actually grieving for – for that world that was now, or for that magical world of the past that had sunk into oblivion after the destruction of the Great Ring of Power.

“Time to go, time, tangars,” Thorin urged his companions. “To the Castle Hall there’s still much trudging.”

“And what’s there?” Grani asked with a grunt, getting into the straps.

Thorin said nothing, and Folco involuntarily wondered: and indeed, where was that fear that flooded the lower levels, which no one who lived here among the Morians could overcome? They had descended already very deep, but if one didn’t count the shadow at the Gates and the blueness in the shaft, hadn’t yet met anything for which, actually, they had come here.

They reached the Castle Hall the next day – more precisely, several hours after, having slept, they again set out. The night, so to speak, passed quietly, nothing disturbed them, and soon they found themselves on the Threshold.

The last dozens of fathoms the corridor went straight, and the hobbit, to his amazement, saw ahead a crimson even light. Soon torches became unnecessary;

the dwarves almost ran, hurrying to look at this wonder of wonders of the Underground World.

The Hall opened at once, and the hobbit froze, gaping. This was a titanic cave, a good mile across and of such height that the eye could barely make out the outlines of the vaults. Amazing creations of water and stone, giant stone icicles hung from the ceiling, toward them from the floor grew their twins – gray, black, crimson, forming a real stone forest. The hobbit didn’t immediately make out the paths laid in this thicket – they wound between the hardened deposit-covered pillars just as in the living forests of his Shire. All the paths led to the center of the Hall, where rose in a gray mass the Castle itself. Countless towers and turrets, galleries, passages, toothed walls, mighty jutting buttresses – all this was woven, bound by the hands of unknown masters into such a tight ball that one could spend a life examining it thus, from the side. Numerous narrow loophole windows cut the smooth surfaces of walls; on sharp-peaked roofs rose iron poles with complex, incomprehensible images – most likely some coats of arms. And with a dark maw, vividly recalling the upper Gates, the chasm of the entrance gaped at them. Folco looked around, seeking the source of the even crimson light illuminating the titanic Hall, but didn’t see it; he already wanted to ask about this when nearby quietly, as if afraid to disturb the peace of the ancient hall, Gloin spoke:

“This is the Castle Hall… The light in it is given by the Flaming Eyes – from them, from the very heart of the Mountains, stretch light channels laid even under the First Dwarf. The stone there is polished so that gigantic mirrors resulted, gathering light and then dispersing it here, in the Hall. And there, you see, that very Stone of Durin…”

Folco squinted, trying to make out what Gloin was pointing at; at first his gaze helplessly wandered among the bizarre stone trees, and suddenly from his eyes as if a veil fell – on a clear platform rose what seemed now bathed in blood a white sharp-pointed fragment, who knows how finding itself here. Something swift was in its appearance, in its sharp edges, in the rearing, sharp, like spears, projections. It stood alone in the middle of the gray-crimson world of the titanic cave, and Folco understood that this stone truly deserved to be called the Stone of the First Dwarf.

Silently, stretched in a long chain, they walked through the stone forest surrounding them. Folco asked Dwalin why the dwarves living underground needed to build this Castle too.

“This Castle wasn’t built by dwarves, Folco,” Gloin answered quietly. “Dwarves only gave it those outlines you now see. The cave and the Castle – they were created by the Mountains themselves…”

They stopped before the Stone and for some time simply silently looked. From under it beat a little stream; the silence of the huge cave was broken only by the quiet burbling of water flowing among stones.

“At the hour when all forces are silent – both of Darkness and of Dawn, and only the Mountains gaze at you with the crimson pupils of the Flaming Eyes, stand on Durin’s Stone, ask counsel, and He Who Began the Beginning will answer you…” Hornbori suddenly pronounced in a singsong, as if enchanted. The corridor suddenly ended, they found themselves in a small hall whose floor was covered with an equally thick layer of dust. The torches illuminated roughly finished walls, simple stone benches, a low ceiling without any decorations, and in the middle – a huge stone anvil and looming over it as a dark mass the gigantic Forge. Above it in the ceiling could be seen the narrow opening of a ventilation shaft. Thorin and Shorty dropped to their knees.

“Durin’s Forge…” Thorin whispered with his lips alone.

And then something unimaginable began. The rest squeezed into the smithy, new torches were lit, and the dwarves, sitting in a circle, suddenly all in chorus began to sing a lingering solemn song in their strange language. Folco didn’t understand a word, but in the merged guttural harmonies he could clearly hear the blows of a hammer. The dwarves’ eyes burned with wondrous fire – this was their finest hour!

Much time, as it seemed to the hobbit, had passed since the moment they entered Durin’s Hall, but in reality only minutes had gone by. Then Grani, sent back to the Hundred and Eleventh Hall, raised the alarm, and the hobbit with his own eyes saw the hunt for the Fire Worms.

The Worms, as Gloin had predicted, began crawling out of the darkness of the corridor toward the kinsman shot by Folco. Gloin commanded; an iron net fell on the fiery curves of the swift body. The Worm writhed desperately, the steel net heated red-hot, but the dwarves with special hooks found in the Forge dragged the inhabitant of the underworld to the Forge…

And then, when in the tightly closed stone Forge hissed ominously, writhed, and spat fire a good dozen Worms, Folco examined with interest the traces they left on stone. The Worms could melt it and if necessary could make passages right through the rocks, like their earthworm kinsmen somewhere on a hobbit lawn. Thorin gathered all the dwarves in a tight circle. The mystery began…

It was difficult for the hobbit to understand what his friends were talking about. With difficulty, from fragments of phrases, he grasped that the talk was about using the find and forging unprecedented mithril weapons, combining in them the power of the Ring and the Memory of Durin. Folco didn’t quite understand what that was. The dwarves spoke of something long familiar, as if their most cherished, most secret dreams were beginning to come true. Now quickly, now slowly fell in the silence of Durin’s Forge the words of ancient spells – and the gold of the Ring, removed by Hornbori from his finger and passing in turn from one spell-pronouncing dwarf to another, shone brightly. And then into the furnace, to the Worms, they thrust an ingot of mithril and several iron bars found behind the Forge. The dwarves also didn’t spare some fragrant potions from thick ancient bottles of green glass that stood, covered with dust, on shelves along the walls.

Brightly, very brightly the flame suddenly blazed in the Forge, and the dwarves stood in a tight circle, covering with their backs what was happening… What followed merged for Folco into long hours when hammers rang tirelessly, molten metal splashed furiously – for in the Forge it could be not only heated but also melted. From somewhere appeared complex forms, liquid metal ran in a fiery trickle along the channel prepared for it, and then again they threw it into the furnace, and after that the hammersmiths didn’t spare their hands. The dwarves made only brief breaks to hastily swallow a piece of bread and gulp down a glass of beer, and again returned to the anvil…

But they didn’t only forge. The hour came when Thorin with a disgusted expression on his face hurled into the heat of the Forge the sword from the Barrow-downs that had so long led the Undeath on their trail. Folco expected something unusual, but the furious flame of the Worms, which had so heated the walls of the Forge that one couldn’t not only touch them but even stand nearby, silently swallowed the work of an unknown smith dedicated to the dead world, and it turned into a glittering puddle.

However, no sooner had the hobbit closed his eyes than a terrible sepulchral howl reached his hearing, filled with pain and impotent fury. Before the hobbit’s mind’s eye appeared a strange picture: dark hills, trees on the slopes – and a whitish creature in a cloak and helmet swaying in the wind, ancient, disgusting, deadly. And dying. The sword dedicated to the Barrow-wight disappeared, and with it disappeared the focus of ancient Darkness. The wind that rose tore the gray cloak into the smallest, invisible shreds, the helmet crumbled into rusty dust…

In the end sleep overcame the hobbit. The dwarves, it seemed, had completely forgotten about him; work absorbed them entirely. Folco got used to the heavy ringing blows, ceasing to notice them…

When he awoke, in the Forge stood an unusual silence; now the dwarves were concentratedly drawing long and thin threads from the fiery mass, twisting rings; their fingers worked with extraordinary skill – chains of mail rings grew right before one’s eyes… Superfluous and unnecessary Folco felt himself at that moment – and silently set about cooking.

Many hours passed before even the most steadfast tired. However, dragging the dwarves away from the Forge proved not so simple. A few hours of sleep, a hastily swallowed piece of bread and dried meat – and back to work…

Long underground days stretched on. Time slowed its course, Folco felt that they stayed awake much longer than usual on the surface. The dwarves economized on provisions, trying to stretch their existing supply as long as possible. Folco found himself completely idle. Usually he huddled in the very corner of the Forge and silently watched how the heavy hammers rose and fell. The dwarves forged new axes and short thick daggers, low helmets covering the whole head with movable visors, mail coats entirely covered with scales of mithril plates… Sometimes they went down the corridor to the Mines for new Worms; catching these creatures proved difficult and dangerous, they had to wander long through echoing tunnels waiting for the coveted gleam on the walls – and then the reliable steel net came into use again, though patched many times. The fears retreated somewhere; they reminded of themselves only by a constant dull feeling of vague anxiety, to which everyone had grown accustomed and stopped noticing.

No less than seven long “underground days” passed from the hour when under the hobbit’s hands the passage to the cherished Forge opened. And suddenly Folco’s ears felt as if plugged – such silence suddenly fell in the Forge. The work was finished, and the dwarves in a crowd approached the hobbit bewildered by this silence. Thorin stepped forward and silently, bowing respectfully, laid on the hobbit’s knees a small helmet with a solid visor, a mail coat-bakhterets, mail shoulders, gauntlets, greaves, and new throwing knives. Folco gasped looking at the wonderful gift: unable to utter a word, he pressed the precious armor tightly to his chest and in a trembling voice began to thank his friends confusedly;

the dwarves squinted blissfully – it was felt that they were pleased by the praises of the unsophisticated and sincere hobbit.

And then Thorin hung his old mail coat on a hook driven into the wall and struck it with his new axe from the shoulder. The blade struck sparks, and a narrow straight hole appeared in the shoulder of the armor; the dwarves murmured approvingly. Then Thorin tested his old axe on his new armament in exactly the same way – the weapon bounced from the mithril armor with such force that it flew out of the dwarf’s hand and fell ringing to the floor.

After this they didn’t remain long near Durin’s Forge. Taking with them several ingots of precious true silver, they strode along the Fire Worms corridor down to the endless labyrinths of the Morian Mines.

It became hotter and hotter, thirst tormented them, toward them from the depths came a stream of hot air. Folco was bathed in sweat; there was no water in the Mines.

Almost at random they wandered through the endless, alike as two drops of water mountain workings. Two or three times they encountered Worms hastening to clear out of their way; as before they noticed nothing suspicious. More and more often Thorin’s brows drew together toward his nose; more and more often Hornbori pushed forward; more and more often Viard sighed ruefully.

Several languid, stuffy hours in which they vainly tried to sleep brought no desired rest. Not many torches remained; food was running short and, most importantly, water. And descending became ever more difficult, the way was constantly blocked by rubble; sometimes between piles of collapsed rock and the vaults enough space remained, but more often they had to look for bypass routes, and if not for the knowledge of Gloin and Dwalin, they would have remained forever in this labyrinth terrible in its sameness. However, time passed, and they couldn’t find in the empty workings anything that would give a clue to the mystery. Some of the dwarves lost heart; despair sometimes seized the hobbit too. How hateful these gray walls and ceilings had become to him! How tired his eyes were in this world devoid of greenery and life! He often dreamed of the Shire; how many hopes there were when he and Thorin were just beginning their journey!..

However, the hobbit was mistaken thinking that soon they would turn back and the last difficulty on their path to light would consist in overcoming orc ambushes. They were stubbornly making their way through another rubble when Dori walking in front suddenly stumbled, waved his arms trying to keep his balance, and with a short muffled cry disappeared between the stones. The dwarves rushed to that place: among the stones gaped a not very wide crevice flooded with impenetrable darkness.

For several moments the dwarves looked with horror at the stone maw that had swallowed their comrade; it seemed to the hobbit that this insatiable mouth was twisting in a malicious and gloating smirk. However, no sooner had Thorin pulled the ties of his bag to get the rope than from the darkness below came Dori’s familiar voice:

“Hey, where are you there? Let someone else come here, Gloin, Dwalin! Never in my life have I seen such corridors…”

A sigh of relief escaped the dwarves. Hornbori leaned over the crack:

“Dori, is it deep here?”

“A fathom and a half,” came the answer. “How did I not break my neck?”

Thorin threw the rope down, tying it firmly to one of the sharp fragments of rock, and together with Hornbori, Gloin, and Dwalin disappeared into the crack. For several minutes their muffled voices came from below; Folco couldn’t make out the words, but everyone spoke with noticeable surprise. Finally Thorin’s head appeared from the hole.

“Come down!” he called. “I don’t know what, but it looks like we’ve found something.”

Carefully and silently, the dwarves disappeared one by one into the mysterious crack. The agile hobbit descended without difficulty, although the bag behind his shoulders interfered considerably. Feeling stone under his feet, Folco looked around.

They stood in a low corridor, completely round, without the obligatory in all Morian passages flattened floor. The ideally smooth walls of the tunnel bore no traces of polishing; here and there small black drips had frozen, like hardened melt.

“This isn’t cut through,” Gloin broke the silence. “This is melted through, or I understand nothing about tunnels!”

Exchanging brief remarks, the dwarves felt the unusual walls. In the light of torches the crack in the ceiling and the hanging rope were still visible. Thorin adjusted the axe at his belt and called out to the others.

“The corridor goes from east to west. Heat pulls from the west. Where shall we go?”

“West,” Hornbori said hollowly. Folco involuntarily shuddered – the dwarf’s voice was filled with anxiety which hadn’t been felt in him for a long time. The dwarves turned and strode forward, toward the hot breath of the depths.

“Gloin, is there anything else from the Mines below us?” Thorin asked his companion.

The Morian shook his head negatively. They strode forward silently and alertly. The hobbit felt uneasy; the pressing heaviness he had long noticed was becoming ever more palpable, thoughts jumped, and to drown out the vague anxiety he asked Thorin quietly:

“Listen, how did you know that the corridor goes from east to west?” Thorin smiled.

“You always know where up is and where down is, brother hobbit, like everyone born on earth. But we dwarves aren’t born on the surface… only in the depths, and therefore this is innate to us.”

The conversation broke off. A low, creaking, hissing sound reached their hearing, rolling before them in the impenetrable gloom. A dull wave of fear rolled over the hobbit – and again, for the umpteenth time, he felt that this blow was taken by the Ring. No, not accidental were both the Wraith at the Gates of Moria and the blueness in the shaft deflected by Hornbori! The Ring was helping them, and with it they were much stronger. But now they met something else.

Without conferring, they stopped. Blood pounded in their temples, foreheads covered with clammy sweat; freezing, they peered into the blackness – for there unmistakably was felt blind, gigantic power. Folco clearly sensed before him a force compressed like a spring – but not hatred. Thorin raised the torch high and led them forward, and beside him strode Hornbori, and behind – Folco, not knowing himself how he found himself in the front ranks. An avalanche of dark despair that flooded his soul pushed out for a time everything else from his consciousness; much time passed before he remembered his dagger. Suddenly the creaking hiss sounded again; the dwarves stopped and little by little began backing away, step by step.

With a distorted face Dori threw his hands up high, as if stopping the wavering ones, and rushed forward headlong. He didn’t utter a word, but the rest moved after him. Now no one doubted that they had found what they were seeking.

How much farther did they go toward the ever-intensifying heat? Folco forgot everything, losing all sense of his surroundings. Torches grudgingly lit the smooth black walls, the dwarves walked stretched in a chain – otherwise walking on the round floor was impossible. The blackness pressed with its intangible mass, animal horror beat in every heart, but strength still remained; proudly straightening, Hornbori strode, holding out his hand with the Ring.

When the heaviness in his chest became quite unbearable, the hobbit finally decided. He pulled out his cherished blade, and with the crimson light of the pitch fires mixed the blue reflection of the wonderful weapon. The edges of the blade burned bright blue, the Flowers gleamed deep blue. In the silence of the tunnel it was as if an invisible thin string rang, but immediately a wave of thundering, roaring sounds crashed down upon them – as if a wakened beast was roaring; in this roar already was heard the hatred that wasn’t there before; the eyes of Darkness saw something that brought their inhabitant into furious rage.

No one could withstand it. Falling to their knees, covering themselves with their hands, dropping torches, the dwarves recoiled backward, and only Hornbori remained standing, holding in one hand a torch, on the other the Ring shone brightly.

Folco hastily hid the dagger and wasn’t even surprised when the underground roar began gradually to subside. But the hobbit understood that they had noticed him and now wouldn’t let him go so easily.

The dwarves clustered behind Hornbori and froze. What held them at that moment from flight? The hobbit saw despair and fear on their faces; Viard’s hands trembled, but no one, not a single one stuttered about turning back.

Silence fell. However, in it could still be heard a dying dull growl, and when they finally moved forward, they hadn’t walked even a hundred paces when they noticed ahead the familiar bluish glow. The hobbit’s heart sank, but he didn’t experience the former will-and-reason-extinguishing fear he had lived through on the platform by the shaft – on the contrary, some kind of excitement awoke in him, and besides, a thought surfaced in his consciousness with unexpected clarity: “This isn’t about you.”

Someone among the dwarves cried out hoarsely, someone fell flat; Folco remembered Dori’s enraged eyes with an axe in his hand and Shorty unexpectedly stepping forward with two blades drawn; and then the blue wave reached them, the hobbit was spun by a hot, dry whirlwind, he couldn’t keep his feet and fell flat.

However, this didn’t last long. When Folco raised his buzzing head, complete darkness reigned around – the torches had gone out, only in one place he noticed a handful of smoldering coals. In the darkness around him sounded grunting, puffing, incoherent exclamations… Thorin spoke:

“Whole? Everyone here? Dori, Hornbori, where are you?”

They answered him. All the dwarves turned out unharmed, getting off with only light fright, not going into any comparison with the shock that nearly destroyed them at the beginning of their Morian wanderings.

By touch they struck fire and again lit torches. Bran proposed to rest and think, they supported him, flasks went round, leather pouches scraped as they were untied.

Everyone spoke at once, interrupting each other: why was everything different this time? Some of the dwarves had already decided that their final hour was coming, but it turned out that all this could be endured.

Folco confessed that most likely it was his dagger that caused the surge of underground anger; they looked at the hobbit warily, and Viard even moved farther away. As usual, no one could say anything sensible until suddenly the unusually calm voice of Shorty, who seemed to be peacefully dozing by the wall, rang out.

“As for me, there’s nothing to guess about here,” he dropped, filling his pipe. “This blueness – it’s from them, right? Like an exhalation, or something, I think. Only not a simple exhalation, but… alive. Wait, let me finish! Up there, it threw itself at us, itself, understand, well, its nature is like that, but those from whom it came, they don’t care about us. If they wanted to deal with us, they would have dealt with us twenty times already! They don’t care about us! And we can walk here until the end of time…”

“So what – back up?” Dori bristled.

“No, why,” Shorty shrugged, “I’m like everyone else…”

No one could object to Shorty, but not because there was nothing to object – no one could prove the opposite, just as he himself couldn’t, and so they rested a little more, ate, and moved on.

Their wandering through the Sub-Morian Ways lasted another three full underground days. The corridor melted through by an unknown creature led them to a small hall – a creation of ancient fire, and there they saw with their own eyes the Flaming Eye. Because of the terrible heat they couldn’t approach closely, but they saw – probably the only ones among mortals – the mystery of the birth of a Fire Worm in the seething crimson cauldron where molten stone boiled. The light emitted by the Eye of the Mountains painfully cut the eyes, and Folco remembered the words of the note: “Beware of the Flaming Eyes.” They hurried away.

Leaving marks on the walls, they moved along a corridor leading downward and to the southwest. This was already an ordinary cave corridor, once washed in the body of stone by patient water. However, going there proved much harder than through the melted tunnel. The dwarves again encountered growths of black tentacles on the walls; they broke through with difficulty, despite the hobbit’s dagger, some of the hungry tentacles decided to test the strength of the mithril armor of Durin’s descendants – and Viard was saved only by the combat skill of Shorty who appeared nearby. They also encountered a gigantic Fire Worm from which they had to flee at full speed, and then, when they descended even lower and heard the splash of water flowing somewhere nearby, in the dark passages near the bank of the Morian Moat – and they reached it too – Dori noticed the faintly glowing back of a Deep Watcher in the impenetrable water, and Folco treated the monster to an arrow, after which it immediately disappeared into the darkness; in the passages near the Moat, of which Gandalf had said that its bottom lies beyond light and knowledge, they understood why the great wizard didn’t want to darken the bright day with a tale of what he experienced in these tunnels. They didn’t go farther when they tried to break through west of the Moat. Before their eyes with a terrifying roar the vaults and wall collapsed in the corridor before them, something appeared that at first reminded them of a Fire Worm, but they immediately understood that this wasn’t a Worm; dark-crimson flame illuminated the vaults, a red-hot lump floated from one wall to another, a hiss sounded, and the creature disappeared into one of the branches… For a long time the dwarves couldn’t force themselves to come out of hiding.

They climbed back up and finally came upon another melted tunnel, rejoicing at it as if it were the Main Tract of Moria. It went from east to west, like the first, and, as in the first, from the west pulled dry, hot air. Leaving behind the mysteries of the Sub-Morian Ways – something told the dwarves that the answer lay not there – they again strode along the slippery floor to the west.

And again everything repeated. Again they had to overcome themselves at every movement, blood oozed from cracked lips, hot wind beat in their faces. They came across branches too, but all these mysterious tunnels led in one direction – west, deviating slightly north.

“Just like worms to bait, all crawling to one place,” Dori remarked gloomily, returning from reconnaissance in the nearest corridor, and his words lodged long in the hobbit’s memory.

“That’s it!” Thorin announced, checking the water flasks. “We can’t go farther, we must turn back!”

“Wait,” Hornbori suddenly stopped him. “Something doesn’t feel right. A mile or two won’t decide anything – let’s go a little farther.”

Folco, not forgetting for a moment his vision in the Castle Hall, grew alert. Ringing silence hung over them; in the hobbit’s heart an invisible string tensed to the limit – nearby, very close to them, lay something before whose power were insignificant both the might of ancient wizards and the strength of elf-warriors.

Reluctantly, grumbling and grunting, the dwarves got into their straps. However, they managed to go very little. They hadn’t taken even a hundred steps when suddenly their legs refused to obey them: like a battering ram, the intangible force of darkness struck at their souls. Folco understood that the Ring softened and weakened the pressure of this force but couldn’t fully deflect it. They stopped, staring with widened eyes into the darkness before them. The hot oncoming stream suddenly died down; Hornbori slowly, very slowly lifted his foot from the floor, and at the same moment all the rock around them began to shake, a heavy rumble sounded, stones from a collapsed wall rolled forward, and darkness crept toward them.

Nothing more terrible than this had happened in the hobbit’s life. He went numb, unable to move or cry out: as if bewitched, he looked at the approaching something and clearly understood that this was the end from which there was no salvation and couldn’t be. There was no glimmer; all feelings died. In what approached there was no hatred – and this made it even more terrible. The hobbit’s stopped pupils glazed over.

And then like lightning suddenly pierced the indestructible stone roof, flashing in the darkness of the underground with a blinding flash. This was Hornbori, swaying, who nevertheless stepped forward – and the Ring shone like a small sun on his right hand. It radiated and sparkled, Hornbori strode toward the darkness, and the rest as if threw off the heavy fetters of an unknown spell. Everything trembled inside the hobbit – he believed that Darkness would retreat this time too, that they would break free from these deadly embraces!

The darkness indeed stopped, as if in indecision. Rolling before this in a solid wave of blackness – in the light of torches it was visible how the slightly gleaming vaults disappeared under its living waves – it reared up as if it had run into an invisible barrier; ripples ran across the black wall. And then the high-risen crest of the black shaft crashed down, right onto Hornbori standing with his head raised high; a dull and terrible sound rang out, not quite a clang, not quite a crunch. The dwarf disappeared under the Darkness that swallowed him, and at the same second unbearable pain made the hobbit collapse to the floor in terrible convulsions; but he managed to notice, losing consciousness, that the terrible wave was rolling back, leaving on the floor the prostrate body of Hornbori…

Falling, he as if accidentally grabbed the dagger on his chest, and probably this gave him strength to see how all his companions fell around him and that only Thorin, growling, crawled to the motionless Hornbori, bent over him, soundlessly screamed something, and then with a desperate movement tore the Ring from the limply thrown hand and shoved it somewhere under his shirt… At this everything broke off.

He came to slowly and painfully. When the bloody fog of terrible visions finally released him, the hobbit saw that he was lying in the well-familiar Hundred and Eleventh Hall, and around him crowded his friends. At his head, near the rolled-up cloak placed under his neck, sat Shorty, who had just removed the bandage from the hobbit’s split forehead.

“What happened? What’s with us?” Folco squeezed out, but Shorty turned away. “Where’s Hornbori?”

The dwarves silently parted, and the hobbit saw a gray stone tomb in the middle of the hall, covered with a red granite slab. Everyone was sorrowfully silent, and Folco felt his nose stinging and tears welling up in his eyes.

“When you fell, Thorin crawled to him,” Bran nodded toward the grave, avoiding calling the fallen friend by name, “and dragged him to us.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t remember how we got our feet out of there – never happened to me before. No, we were wrong to quietly call the Morians cowards. Nothing can be done here, friend Folco, the underground ones have terrible strength. Even the armor – mithril armor on him – was pierced! Time to leave, brothers.” Bran spoke louder, now addressing everyone: “We have nothing to do here. As for me, it’s time to end this and go to our mountains. Moria is lost to us.”

“That’s debatable!” Dori bristled. “We need to fight, and we must understand how. Let hundreds perish – they’ll clear the way for tens of thousands!”

The gloomy silence of the others answered him, even Gloin and Dwalin stood staring dejectedly at the floor. All the dwarves seemed crushed, shocked, and confused; even Thorin didn’t respond to Dori’s passionate speech.

“We’re running out of provisions,” he said hollowly. “Time to go up, we’ll decide everything there. And Rogvold must be tired of waiting…”

The passage proved difficult – there seemed to be even more orcs. Twice their small detachment broke through the enemy ranks, fighting with such fury that no one could stop them. They carried much mithril with them, and their new armor proved truly impenetrable. It saved the hobbit’s life too when a huge orc stabbed him with his curved scimitar right in the chest. Four days they went up and finally found themselves before the Gates.