This being a report of a conversation heard one day in the town of Trestlebridge between two friends sitting on the stonework of that hamlet's namesake bridge.
Freddie sat down on the parapet, her legs hanging above the abyss "Would you tell me something, Feaandir... how many times have you been to Fornost before?"
The lore-master took up his pipe weed pouch and opened it. He took his time in answering.
"Twice."
Freeing his pipe from its threaded loop inside his shirt pocket, he tapped it out with his hand. "I am from the South, this you know?"
Freddie nodded "You don't appear a "Breelander, yes... of course you went to the ruins for knowledge... Can you tell me about your experience there?"
"I came north several years ago, from Pelargir. A scholar...also a fool...but my job description would be scholar."
He took a pinch of pipe-weed from the pouch, carefully laid it into the smooth white instrument, and placed it between his teeth.
"What I came for was Fornost." He said as he took up fire.
Touching the fire to his pipe he took short quick draws to kindle it before saying, "You see, in my country we know almost nothing of how the old North kingdom fell, the details I mean. And I came to those ruins exactly for those details. With as near to a perfectly open mind as I could manage. Eager for knowledge. Do you know your lore-master friend Erasm well enough to know why that was idiotic of me?"
A few puffs of the aromatic Old-Toby calming him visibly he finally sat down facing her.
Freddie looked puzzled "I suppose not..."
"'An open mind is a gate into the soul.' So they taught me in my schooling and I should have taken them more literally. I wanted knowledge so badly that my spirit and my will were open. I thought Fornost a dead place...and it was but it was also a place of the Dead."
His gaze traveled to the distant waterfall and perhaps beyond it. "You've seen me talk to the animals. I have some small talent at it. I was doing it at the teaching of Mother and Father long before I learned that it had a name. But names are important. The elves call it 'osanwe-kenta' but in the Westron we might call it 'thought-speech'. I cannot do it over any great distance and I, frankly, think that it's primary value was helping me learn the meanings of the sounds that my animal friends make...but there it is. It is not only the living though that can communicate in this way."
She looks befuddled "So, the open mind invites guest residents, so to speak?"
"Exactly! I never even knew it had a name or any lore until lately studying with the people of Rivendell. Too late as that was. And I was so curious about Fornost. So eager. It never occurred to me that the Dead might not, as your friend said, stay dead."
Fredericka looks very curious "Yes, I understand the nature of your curiosity... so what happened to you in Fornost for the time?"
"On my first visit to Fornost I was not as attuned as you were. I took no account of the Dead in my planning not and they whispered in my ears unstoppered. They covered their tracks so to speak and I forgot their presence and a presence that was greater than theirs. I still do not remember much of that trip, even with the help I have received from fairer and wiser folk. I remember only a sense of brooding ... dark and oppressive ... failure. And that I lost a friend there. One I have not seen since."
Feaandir smoked for a time in companionable silence.
"It was only on our visit together, my second, that I remembered something more of my first visit. But the instant I did was the instant I realized I had lost you. That I had betrayed you and did not know. I will never be able to repay that debt."
She studied his face, curious yet disbelieving "You remember now though..."
"I remember enough. Several things in fact,"
He held up a single finger, "First: there are spirits in the barrows, all outside and throughout the ruins. They are the spirits mostly of the city's ancient enemies...and it's betrayers. I remembered then speaking to some on my first trip, though most I had to fight or banish. They told me of the betrayal and loss of the city a thousand years ago. Fornost indeed fell to treachery...and they whispered that it was always so and always would be so and would be so in my homeland soon if only I knew. They promised secrets and lore if only I would let them see the world again through my eyes...or someone else's...perhaps I had friends...friends I could bring to them..."
Feaandir's voice drifted off but he roused himself and looked up at Fredericka with a brief flicker of shame. But he held up a second finger and charged on. "Second: there are orcs. A great number of them. Unlike a warband. Orderly. Less a horde and more an army. But these spirits and orcs were not true source of the dread we felt when we arrived."
"What was it?"
"There are wraiths in Fornost, older and fell things from the time of its fall or perhaps before. I have met them and spoken them. It was after I realized that I had betrayed you I came to my senses and I was before the great gate leading up to the city proper."
Freddie sat there, listening intently.
"I was casting all about, afraid to call after you for fear of awakening whatever it might be that I dreaded. But it was silent. The orcs and wargs were nowhere to be seen. Then I started walking. I did not will it...but I started walking. I could have screamed then but I could not scream then. I walked all the way up the causeway to Minas Erain, my body not my own, and stopped in front of its gates."
"Inside were the orcs, wargs, spirits, yes, all these things, but they were silent. They stood almost like they were an army at review. Do your militia stand in ranks? They do at home. And their arms gleam and we are proud. These were dimly lit or glowed of their own pale light and I was afraid. I walked past wolves lined up in perfect lines, staring straight ahead, ignoring me completely."
Freddie whispered "And what happened there?"
"I ... I do not mind telling you know that it quite un-manned me. In a way it was fortunate that I could not run because I would have. But he did not want me to."
"...he?"
"The master of Minas Erain is a fell spirit. Dark armor, rune cover'd and ghostly shining as of ancient days. Weapons of mastery he had on him...weapons of the like I had come north to seek. I know not the spirit's right name. He called himself 'Remmenaeg'".
Freddie opened her mouth slightly in shock "Have you met the master of Minas Erain then?
"Met? Hah. We were not formally introduced." Feaandir smiles ruefully.Shakes his head, "But I have. You see, I am ... or was ... his spy."
Fredericka acknowledged his joke with a nod, but she is too astonished to react more than that "You are a spy? It is very hard to absorb, and even harder to process."
"I think...with the help of Master Elrond and his Elves, that my link to Remmenaeg is well and truly broken. But I assure you it was true...for a time beyond my memory...but not I think longer than a few months, this spirit saw through my eyes. I spent much of that time wandering between there and Rivendell. I do not know what he saw or whether it was of much use to him. He is very old and knows well your Breeland and the North Downs...the Lone Lands. I think I was but one of many spies in his service. And probably not the most potent of his captures. A dark lord of considerable power and ... majesty, of a sort, in his day...but I got the sense that he did not relish games of the mind but rather preferred feats of arms."
Feaandir shuddered and watched the smoke trail off into the air from his pipe.
Fredericka turned her face straight at Feaandir "And I trusted my life into your hands more than once... How naive and simple of me... I should have seen your past... " She shakes her head "Are you sure the connection is truly broken?"
Feaandir nods his head. "The people of Rivendell assure me of it. They have long experience with the ways of the Enemy and the ways of the mind. As potent a Man as he was, Remmenaeg is was just a Man - now a wraith of a Man - they have nothing to fear from him. I trust them. Never again though will I listen to a song out of the dark. I know their tune now..."
Fredericka: She nodded "I believe the Eldar... What song?"
His face relaxing and a light in his eyes, he began quickly, "They speak in Rivendell of Middle Earth, of the world, arising in song in a time before Men. Ages and ages ago. But there was discord in the music...that discord was sung into being long ago by a Power among the Powers. More I know not. My people in the south were Faithful, but we have lost much. I only know that I will never hear the song of evil again without resistance."
"After I was drawn to his throne, he spoke to me for a time. I did not see you there and did not know where you were."
Freddie rubbed her knees nervously "That's not good news" Yet, she kept on listening.
"He spoke of my folly. He showed me treasures from the old armory of the North kingdom...exactly the sort of things I had traveled so far to find. He showed me exactly the sorts of things that I had hoped to turn to the needs of my people ... and he showed me my errors. My idiocy. My arrogance. The simplest and most basic matter of studying the Enemy is not to become the Enemy. I wanted to use ancient and fell power against ancient and fell foes."
Feaandir shook his head.
"Folly."
"This the spirit took great glee in pointing out to me...with both words ... and pain."
Fredericka's expression reflected both compassion and shock.
"I do not know how long it when on but then...you saved me."
Softly now, he said, "do you remember?" Feaandir eyed her intently.
She shook her head "or attempted to..." she paused "I recall nothing..." and looked up "but that is nto the sort of thing I'd refuse to believe, I am not afraid of risk, so it sounds like me"
Feaandir laughed heartily, a merry sound and a thing that took years of care from his face.
"Yes! Yes at that sister you might truly be a handmaid of Osse himself!"
Fredericka giggles. "If I saved you, and you are free of the bond, I am happy to have done this."
"While he talked I saw a glimmer of light in the darkness. Behind him. At first I thought it was another one of his night-fey. Their were spirits all around, corpse candles, and weird glows in all the hues of the northern skies at midnight...but this was a cold silver light and it was constant. And it was behind him. And he never saw it."
Feaandir smiled at the memory, "The first thing I knew besides pain and despair was that that light was a blade and that your face was intent above it wielding it to a purpose. How you snuck past the army outside of the doors I would like to know but you struck as from a darkness and he howled in agony...a physical and palpable thing that I threw me down. I saw you go tumbling back into darkness...and when I stood up I found myself gripping my staff and with my will my own again. I set about me with blade and staff and fire and light, every trick Father ever taught me I used that night."
"But, though I treasure his memory and am not without a modest amount of will myself, my escape had nothing to do with Father's tricks. My enslaver disappeared after you struck. His army was in disarray, howling, and setting on each other for a time. So, for the second time, I fled Fornost in terror."
He looked at her a for a long second.
"But at least I fled free."
