Boromir Returns 5

Boromir Returns

Chapter 5

Once they had decided to bring the dead Man back to life, Sarelas hastened back towards the Lake where the strangers had left the boat and most of their baggage.
Going through the bags, she found a canteen, empty of course, and some small personal items, but no food whatsoever.
“Do we have to do this?” Asloren asked, watching her with a look of distaste on his face.
“Yes. It is either this or going back to our home and we would lose too much time this way,” Sarelas explained. “They might never come back for this, and their friend is in dire need of it now.”
Asloren nodded reluctantly.
Opening another pack, she found an item that convinced her that this must have been the dead Man’s belongings. It was a dagger, skilfully crafted, the sheath was of finely tooled leather, the hilt ended in the shape of a horse’s head. This, she was sure, was not the weapon of a simple soldier.
“There.” Sarelas tossed the dagger she had found in one of the bags to her brother. “That must have been his.”
“Is he from Rohan?” Asloren asked, looking at the weapon.
“I rather think he is a Man from Gondor,” she replied. There were spare items of clothing in the pack that surely would be useful, and at the very bottom, a small bag with coins.
“It may belong to the other Man,” her brother stated, still examining the dagger.
“He would not have left it behind,” she said. “If these are the dead Man’s belongings, they may not have had the heart to give them a more than cursory look. See.” She opened the bag and pulled one of the coins out. “The White Tree of Gondor.”
The gold coin lay heavily in her hand. It looked newly minted. The contours of the tree were clear and sharp.
Asloren stepped closer to her, his eyes also fixed on the coin.
Sarelas handed it to him and shook out the rest of the money. “There is more money here than our father earned in a year.”
“We could begin a new life just with this,” Asloren said.
“No.” She quickly took the coin back from her brother. “We are going to work a miracle, not work as grave-robbers.”
“This hardly constitutes a grave,” he said, pointing at the baggage.
“Robbers, grave-robbers, …” Sarelas shook her head, but she had to grin at her brother. “I am relieved that I am not the only one to fall under the spell of gold.”
Asloren frowned. He turned away and walked the few steps to the shore of the Lake.
With a sigh, Sarelas returned the packs and bags they did not need to their places under the up-turned elven boat. She turned the various pieces of bedding into two rolls. Some of the blankets were so small she first thought they had to belong to children, but then she remembered the halflings. There was little else worth taking, the canteen and the few pieces of cooking utensils. What good was a pot - and a very small one at that - when they did not have anything to put into it? Reluctant to leave anything behind, Sarelas packed the pot as well.
What she had been unable to discover was an item that gave a hint of the identity of the travellers, neither of the dead Man or any of his companions.
“We will still have to return home to fetch a few things,” she declared. “After we have taken care of the Man.”
Asloren turned back from the Lake to look at her. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” he asked.
“I am not just going to take his money and run,” Sarelas replied.
“We can put the money back, if you want to.”
“No.” She glared at her brother. “You are just afraid of what might happen.”
“Yes, I am,” Asloren said, “and so should you be.”
“I am tired of arguing,” Sarelas hissed, “there is no time to argue.”
Asloren sighed. “I know.”
Shouldering the packs, they made for the North Stairs.
It was not the first time, they had travelled this path, and, as before, Sarelas could not help feeling uneasy when they stepped into the passageway leading to the top of the Stairs. They were a marvel of engineering, cut into the steep cliff between the plateau on which the ruins of Amun Hen rose to the sky and the plains below. The passage and the stairs themselves were wide enough for two or three people to walk abreast. Nevertheless, Sarelas always felt trapped on the Stairs. There was no way to escape after starting the descent. In the olden days, when soldiers were travelling up and down this path, there would have been posts on either end of the steps. Now the posts were abandoned, there was no guard against the Stairs being turned into a deadly trap.
Today, the path was empty, and there was no sign of any troops having passed through. Dead leaves were piled in the corners of the Stairs. The steps themselves were smoothed by use, their edges chipped and partially crumbling. An air of abandonment hung about the path. Not for the first time, Sarelas wondered what this place had looked like at the days of Gondor’s glory.
They walked in silence, giving Sarelas time to think about her decision. She could not deny that she was worried. She would have to be a fool not to feel anxiety about what she was about to do. Bringing the dead back to life was a deed that was not to be undertaken lightly. As little as she knew about magic, she was certain that what she intended to do was to interfere with the fabric of life itself, forces that even great wizards were loath to meddle with. But great wizards were known to be overly cautious, and that was an accusation nobody had ever levelled at her.
So, she told herself, what she planned to do was dangerous, it was no more dangerous than going into battle and she had never shirked from that either. She had taken a decision, and she would worry about the particulars of bringing a dead Man back to life when she had to. First of all, they had to find his body.
“What do we do if we do not find his body?” Asloren asked, as if he had read her thoughts.
“We are going to find it,” Sarelas said, only when she said it, she realised how sure she was that they would do so. It was a strange sensation, as if something was drawing her forward.
“The body may have been washed away by the River,” her brother insisted.
It was possible, Sarelas told herself, the current of the River Anduin was strong, it could easily sweep the body downriver for miles. But she had the strong feeling that the dead Man was close by, she was certain it was close to the Falls. Additionally, the body was weighed down by the chainmail, it would not float, not yet anyway.
“He is here,” she stated.
“Are you sure?” Asloren wanted to know.
When she nodded, he only raised his eyebrows but did not argue.
Sarelas tried to figure out what made her think that the body of the dead Man was close by. However, the more she thought about it, the less sure was she of her intuition. Perhaps it was just that she hoped so much for it that she mistook this feeling for any real knowledge. Desperate wishes could be very persuasive, she knew that.
‘He is not dead,’ her mother insistent voice echoed unbidden through her mind ‘I know he is alive. I would know if something had happened to him.’ But the strongest wish did not change the facts.
Sarelas gritted her teeth. This was different, she did not know the Man, his death meant nothing to her, and though she wished to find his body, if they failed it would not be the end of all things.
She would follow her instinct - as far as sense would allow.
They would retrieve the body from the River and work their miracle. Sarelas wondered how this miracle would play out. She had seen plenty of people die, had helped quite a few along the way, but bringing someone back to life would be a different experience. Her concerns for the dangers involved were giving way to curiosity of what would actually happen.
What would the Man’s reaction be when he found himself back among the living? Would he remember being dead? Would he be able to tell what happened after one died?
If this miracle actually happened, she reminded herself. It was possible that they dragged the dead Man out of the River only to discover that he simply remained dead.
Sarelas chased the thought away. They would not fail. They had to succeed. But even if they did not find the body, or the magic did not work, she would never return to the hovel they had lived in and their abysmal life there.
The last stretch of the Stairs bent back towards the Falls of Rauros, they ended so close to the cascading waters that the steps were wet and slippery from the spray. The roar of the waterfall was deafening. In former times a path had led away from the Stairs, but now it broke off only a few yards from the last steps, the stones washed away by the River that must have shifted its course since the time the North Stairs had been built.
They walked along the bank of the River, past the churning whirlpool at the foot of the Falls. The River was very wide here, its waters flowing less rapidly than they had above the Falls, before the Lake.
The forest was less dense than above the Falls. The sun shone through the trees, dappling the ground with light, glowing on the trunks of the trees. The air was balmy and clear, warmer than above, as if they had stepped from the last remnants of winter into spring. The only smells here were of earth and leaves. Birds chirped in the trees, as if there was no evil in the world.
But there was, and it was close at hand, Sarelas thought, as she looked across the River to the eastern shore. Even the shores of Emyn Muil appeared to be peaceful. The rocks climbing up from the River lay golden in the sun.
Sarelas suppressed a curse. She had not noticed that it had grown so late. The sun would disappear behind the Misty Mountains in less than an hour. It would be dark not even an hour after that. They had to find the dead Man before night fell. It would be folly to try and search for him in the dark. Tomorrow it would be too late.
It may be too late already. The Man had been dead for a few hours. Her mother had insisted that the magic would not be curing any damage the body suffered after life fled, it could not reverse the effects of decay setting in.
There had to be some leeway, Sarelas thought. She threw her pack on the ground and unbuckled her sword. The medicine had to reverse the immediate effects of death. A body changed in more ways than just the heart stopping when death came. If this magic gift of her mother’s was truly working, it would have to cure the injuries that had caused death and heal the effects of the body having stopped functioning.
Moreover, it had to somehow call back the spirit of the person from wherever it had slipped away to. Sarelas shuddered when she thought what would happen if the magic only returned life to the body without returning the person inhabiting it. - No, that could not be. Her mother had claimed the magic was bringing a person back from the dead, not only reviving the body.
Asloren placed his pack next to hers and started to unbutton his jacket.
“I am going in,” he stated.
Sarelas opened her mouth to protest, but her brother shook his head. “I am a better swimmer,” he said. “And you have to keep your strength for working that miracle.”
“Yes,” Sarelas assented. He was right, but she still felt that as it had been her idea she should be the one taking the risks. Though, she guessed the miracle would be risky enough
Asloren slipped out of his jacket and shirt. “Have you ever wondered why mother gave it to you and not me?” he asked.
“She did not give it to me,” Sarelas stated, “she gave it to us.”
“No, she gave it to you,” he insisted.
“Probably because I happened to stand there when she had the idea,” she replied. Thinking back again to the moment her mother had handed her the medicine, she realised that Asloren was right, Siriawen had given it to her daughter, not to both her children. “Perhaps she knew you were more likely to get yourself killed…”
Asloren laughed. He pulled his boots off. “Apart from the one time in Calenhead, nobody ever tried to kill me. You, on the other hand, go out and look for trouble.”
Sarelas shrugged. “I do not think that our mother had any particular reason why she gave it to me rather than to you. If anything, it was because I was angrier - or at least louder.”
“I think she gave it to you, because she knew you had to strength to use it.”
Sarelas looked at her brother, standing there naked and shivering a little. He held her gaze and nodded in silent confirmation of his own words. “Unlike her,” he added.
“I doubt it,” she said with a shrug. Would her mother really have thought her daughter was capable of doing something she herself dared not to do?
Silently they stepped back to the edge of the River. The water looked dark and deep. It was said that the River took care of its dead. Sarelas could not recall where she had heard this, but looking at it flowing past her, she could believe it. There was something forbidding about the River. Who was to tell what was hiding under these waters?
“This is not going to be easy,” Asloren said with a sigh. “Are you sure, he’s down there.”
She nodded. “Over there,” she said, pointing down-stream without hesitation.
Looking the way she pointed, she saw a silvery-grey shape a short way further downstream. The elven boat. For a moment she thought she must be imagining it, but the boat did not vanish into thin air. It lay in the water, swaying gently. By all appearances it ought to drift down the River, but it remained where it was close to the shore.
“The boat,” Asloren breathed. “I would call this a good omen.”
Sarelas turned to look at her brother. “You do not think the boat actually wants to help us.”
“It may,” he stated. “It is an elven boat.”
“It is just a boat.” Sarelas shook her head.
“It is here,” Asloren said. He started toward the boat. “He may still be in it.”
“He is not,” she replied. The boat may be useful, but she was sure it had not come down the Falls with its occupant.
“How do you know?” her brother shouted back over his shoulder.
“I just do,” Sarelas said, more to herself than her brother.
She ran after her brother, catching up with him, as he waded into the river and pulled the boat closer to the shore. As she had expected, it was empty. Not a single item that had been placed in it with such care by the dead Man’s companions was still there. No drop of water either.
“No paddles,” Asloren stated.
“What would a dead Man do with paddles?” she asked.
“What does a dead Man do with broken weapons and helms?” he returned. “And we need a paddle if we want to use this.”
Sarelas nodded and climbed into the boat. If they could pry one of the seats lose, it may just work as a make-shift paddle. She tried the three seats in the boat, but they did not budge, as if it were created of the same piece of wood as the sides of the boat. Irritated she kicked of them, and with a bounce it came lose at once, almost throwing her into the River.
“I told you, it wants to help us,” Asloren stated and climbed into the boat.
“I want to hear you repeat this when your butt is full of splinters,” Sarelas said, as her brother was sitting down on one of the remaining seats. He did not seem to trust the good intentions of the boat too much, as he stopped and ran his hand across the seat, before settling down.
Sarelas pushed the boat away from the bank and started to paddle awkwardly with the seat. The current was not as fast as she had feared. The River ran in a shallow bend and the main current was on the far side, below the Emyn Muil.
The dead Man was very close. She could feel it. She did not know why, and she did not want to wonder whether she actually did know or whether she was simply going insane. Judging from the way her brother looked at her, he was already taking care of this.
“Here,” she said, stopping her paddling.
The boat did seem to have a will of its own, as it remained rooted at its spot as soon as Sarelas stopped paddling.
For a moment they looked at each other.
“This is the most peculiar boat I have ever encountered,” Asloren stated.
“I just hope we can trust it,” she said. If her feeling about knowing where the dead Man’s body could be found made her uneasy, this peculiar boat really worried her.
Asloren shrugged. “It is useful.”
Leaning over the side, Sarelas stared into the dark water, running swiftly under the boat. The River smelled rich and earthy, not as if it were hiding a body. And surely, there were more dead buried in the River than the one Man. Over the centuries hundreds if not thousands of people must have found their end in the River’s waters. It also would hardly be the first time a body was retrieved from the floods. The River would not mind.
Sarelas shook her head. What was she thinking? It was not as if the River god would rise from the depth and punish them for trying to take the Man back.
“Are you sure, he is down there,” her brother asked. He too stared into the water, judging from his expression the prospect of having to dive into it was not to his liking.
“He is not likely to go anywhere,” she replied sharply.
Sarelas was far from sure that the body of the dead Man was actually down in the water below them, and the longer she thought about it, the less sure she became. But the boat had stopped here. No, she had stopped and the boat as before when they had found it remained just where it was.
Asloren put his hand into the water, pulling a face as he did so. “The water is cold.”
“It is February,” she snapped.
The water was cold, the River deep and dangerous. And instead of braving these dangers herself she let her brother do so.
For a long time, Asloren stared down into the River, one hand trailing in the water, then he sat up and with a shrug said, “I guess we better retrieve the body before the fish start on him.”
He stood up and jumped headfirst into the stream.
“Be careful,” Sarelas shouted, but her brother had already disappeared beneath the waves.
Sarelas stared at the rippled surface of the River. This, she thought, may well be the rashest decision in the series of foolish and unfortunate decision that was her life. What would she do if her brother drowned? A cold feeling gripped her at the idea. Then she had to try to find her brother, or die trying, and use the magic to revive him. He had a better claim on it than the unknown Man.
With a splash, Asloren’s head reappeared above the water, a few yards further into the River. Taking deep breaths, he first grinned at her, as if to reassure her that he was alright, but then he shook his head. He had not found the dead Man yet. After a few moments, Asloren dived again.
Sarelas forced herself to stay calm. Her brother knew better than her what he could risk. If there was no chance of finding the body, surely, he would have told her. But was it at all possible for him to find the Man? The current of the River Anduin was strong, its waters dark. Asloren would probably not be able to see the body even if it was only an arm’s length away. All they had to go on, was her peculiar feeling that the Man’s body was here.
This time, her brother surface right next to the boat, shooting out of the water like a great fish. He grabbed the side of the boat and held on to it, gasping for air.
“Are you sure…,” he started, asking the question Sarelas dreaded.
“I had been, but I am not sure anymore,” she replied. “Perhaps this is a fool’s errand.”
“But you were sure?” Asloren asked, and when she nodded, he said, “that is good enough for me.”
“I wonder whether it is good enough for me,” she replied.
“We will see,” Asloren said. “Diving for bodies sure makes a difference to planting potatoes.”
“You were not planting potatoes.”
“No,” he agreed, “but doing the laundry is hardly more exciting.” He grinned again. Then he looked down into the water. “Here, you said?”
“Yes.”
Asloren looked up at her again. “The water is frightfully cold,” he said and with that let go of the boat, diving into the deep again.
The boat, Sarelas noticed, still held its position. The elves who crafted it must have worked some spell into its fabric that would let it float above the currents of the stream. It was unlikely the boat’s staying on this spot had any relation to the whereabouts of the body they were seeking. Why should an elven boat have any link with a Man? However, why should she feel - if only in a very nebulous way - a connection to him? A bond that allowed her to feel where his body was? She had probably just imagined it, just as she had thought the boat was actually helping.
There was also the question why a Man was travelling in an elven boat in the first place. But this was a question that only the Man himself could answer. Just as only he could explain why he was travelling with such unusual companions, or what the Orcs had searched for and why they had captured the halflings.
If she had, however, imagined her conviction that the Man was here, they would not find his body and these questions would never be answered.
A movement in the water caught her eye. She could see Asloren reappearing from the depth of the River, slowly this time, as if he had difficulties swimming. His head broke through the surface of the water, then something else appeared out of the River, a second head, but it hung forward, its face still under water.
For a moment Sarelas could hardly believe her eyes. He had done it. Asloren had found the body of the dead Man.
But Asloren had difficulties. Swimming on his back, he clutched the body to his chest and tried to reach the boat, but he hardly was able to keep his own head above water.
Snapping out of her immobility, Sarelas pushed her make-shift paddle into the River and propelled the boat with a few strokes closer to her brother. She dropped the plank back into the boat, she leaned over and grabbed the shoulder of the Man’s tunic.
Turning around, Asloren hooked his right arm over the side of the boat and kept a hold of the body with his left hand. For the moment he seemed to be well occupied just breathing.
Without thinking, Sarelas tried to keep the Man’s head above water, but the leather tunic was slippery and when she tried to pull him further out of the water, he almost slipped out of her hold again. It did not matter, she realised, he did not need to breath.
The body was heavy, weighed down as it was by his chainmail. It almost seemed to be trying to slip through her fingers. Sarelas shooed this though away. The Man was dead, and his body did not want to do anything. And the Man himself surely wanted to return to life.
“Can you hold him on your own?” Asloren asked.
“Not like this,” she said, “I have to get a better hold of him.”
She knelt down in the boat and leaning further out of the boat, managed to get first one arm and then the other under the arms of the dead Man. When she nodded, her brother carefully released his hold. The weight of the body pulled her further forward, and she was glad that most of the weight of the dead Man was buoyed by the water.
Her face was almost on the shoulder of the body, and she could smell the river water in his clothes and his hair. He smelled dead.
Asloren dived under the boat, and from the bobbing movement of the boat, he must be climbing in from the other side.
Any normal boat, Sarelas realised, would have capsized with her leaning over the side and her brother holding on to it, and both of them holding the heavy weight of the dead Man. Without the strange qualities of the elven boat, they would never have been able to accomplish this.
“Let us get the Man in the boat,” Asloren said. He knelt down next to Sarelas and together they pulled the heavy body into the boat. The Man did really wear a golden belt and his clothes though torn, wet and stained by blood were of the best quality Sarelas had ever seen up close.
“We better get him to shore before we revive him,” she told her brother and paddled towards the shore.

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