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Whoa! Then how?..
This information, the nazgúl s voice was suddenly metallic and officer-like, is already in
your possession, so please work your memory.
Damn, just what I need& get lost, willya? Wait, what was that he d said about the Mirror
and the palantíri?
The Mirror and the palantíri arose as product of separation of the Eternal Fire, so the same
Fire would destroy them, right?
Bravo, Haladdin! Precisely so, and in no other manner.
Wait a second, where am I supposed to obtain this Eternal Fire?
The entire Orodruin is at your service.
Are you kidding? Where s Orodruin and where s Lórien?
57
The Last Ring-bearer
Sharya-Rana spread his hands: This is precisely your riddle.
Haladdin shook his head. Yeah, no joke& So: one, sneak into the Elvish capital; two,
charm their queen; three, steal a thousand-pound medallion; four, drag it to Orodruin& all
right, I won t count lugging it up to the crater as a separate task& and I have how long to do
all that?
Three months, the nazgúl said drily. A hundred days, to be precise. If you re not done by
the first of August, you can wind up the operation it won t help anyone any more.
To appease his conscience, Haladdin had actually tried solving the riddle, wracking his mind
for two or three minutes no way, no how! and finally asked in relief: All right, Sharya-
Rana, I give up. What s your solution?
I don t have one, the other replied calmly, turned what used to be a face towards the stars
and muttered with a strange sadness: How time flies& less than an hour left&
What do you mean, you don t have one? Haladdin finally managed to get out. Didn t you
say that there is a solution?
True, there is, but I don t know what it is. Even if I knew, I would not have been able to
divulge it to you, as that would immediately doom the entire enterprise. The rules of this
game stipulate that you have to travel this road all by yourself. This doesn t mean that you
have to go it alone; you re free to accept any technical help from other people at your
discretion, but all the decisions have to be yours alone. As for myself, I stand ready to
provide any information that can be useful in your mission, but no concrete hints; consider
me a sort of an Encyclopedia of Arda, but bear in mind that you have less than an hour.
Any information? Curiosity overcame all his other feelings.
Any non-magical information, the nazgúl corrected. Anything your heart desires: mithril
technology, Elvish dynasties, the Ring of Power, Mordor s sleeper agents in Minas Tirith
and Umbar ask away, Haladdin.
Wait a minute you said non-magical and just mentioned the Ring of Power! How so?
Listen, Sharya-Rana remarked in some annoyance, looking at the sky again, you only
have about fifty minutes. Honestly, that stupid business involved no magic and has no
bearing on your mission!
That s a concrete hint!
Touché! All right, if you can spare the time listen. It s up to you now to decide what s
important and what isn t.
He regretted his curiosity, as he understood that those memories were rather unpleasant to
Sharya-Rana. But the nazgúl had already begun his tale, and once again it seemed to
Haladdin that the darkness under the cowl hid a ghostly sarcastic grin.
58
The Last Ring-bearer
This had been one of our many attempts to split the Western coalition, which,
unfortunately, did no good. We made a luxurious ring the goldsmiths had a lot of fun
spread a rumor that it s supposed to confer power over the entire Middle Earth, and shipped
it over Anduin. The hope was that the Gondorians and the Rohirrim would battle each other
over this little gift. Well, those did indeed swallow the bait, hook, line, and sinker, but
Gandalf figured out whose idea it was right away. To save the Western coalition from
falling apart, he tricked them all: got to the Ring first, but rather than keep it, caused it to be
thoroughly lost.
He hid it really well; our intelligence service took more than two years to pick up the scent.
It turned out that the Ring was in the Shire, a backwater in the far North-West: whitewashed
shutters, rose gardens, a pig in the mud in the middle of the main street& So what to do?
Neither the Gondorians nor the Rohirrim have ever stepped foot into this Shire. Steal the
Ring and drop it off at Anduin again our involvement would ve been clear as day. So
someone had a good idea: to pretend that we re seeking the Ring, too, and thus dislodge its
lazy owner. But in our conceit we Nazgúl decided to do this ourselves, quick and easy, here
today, gone tomorrow& this was way below our pay grade, to put it mildly, but a dilettante
is always a dilettante, no matter how smart he is. Two real spies would ve done a lot more
good than our entire Order.
Strictly speaking, the Nazgúl can take any shape they want, but back then we used our real
look, just like now. Take yourself you re an educated man, and still you paled a little, so
can t blame the local yokels. To make a long story short, we dressed to impress and paraded
in a few local towns, just about shouting from the rooftops: Where s the keeper of the Ring
of Power? Get him over here! It s a good thing they don t even have police over there, let
alone a counter-intelligence service; the professionals would ve realized immediately that
this was not at all how you catch someone. Well, those village simpletons the Ring-keeper
and his friends took it all for real, so we herded them East slowly, just scaring them once
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