CHAPTER 59

“Yes, milady, you did understand correctly. Let me dot the ‘i’s first: like my dead friend, I’m only an intermediary. There may be ways to search my brains with Elvish magic, but you won’t find anything there beyond what I’m about to tell you.”

“You all exaggerate Elvish powers...”

“So much the better. Anyway, your son is alive and in captivity. He will be returned to you once we agree on the price.”

“Oh, anything, anything at all – precious gems, Gondolin weapons, magic scrolls…”

“Alas, milady, his captors are not hostage-trading southern mashtangs – they seem to be of Mordor’s intelligence service.”

Her expression did not change, but her thin fingers went white in their grip on the armchair:

“I will not betray my people for my son’s life!”

“Don’t you even want to know how little you’d have to do?”

After an eternity that lasted a couple of seconds she answered “I do,” and Grager, the veteran of a hundred recruitments, knew that the game was his – all that was left was the endgame, with an extra piece.

“Some preliminary explanations first. Eloar separated from his squad and got lost in the desert. He was dying of thirst when he was discovered, so the Mordorian insurgents saved his life first…”

“Saved his life? Those monsters?”

“Please, milady – all these stories about smoked human meat might impress the Shire yokels, but not me. I’ve fought the Orcs for four years and know the score: these guys have always admired brave foes and treated prisoners well – that’s a fact. The problem is that they’ve found out that your Eloar had participated in so-called mop-ups – that’s a euphemism for mass murders of civilians.”

“But that’s a lie!”

“Unfortunately, it’s an honest truth,” Grager sighed tiredly. “It so happened that my late friend Baron Tangorn observed the work of Eloar’s Easterlings. I will spare your maternal feelings by not describing what he witnessed.”

“It’s some horrible mistake, I swear! My boy… Wait, did you just say ‘Easterlings?’

Perhaps he simply couldn’t restrain those savages…”

“Milady Eornis, a commander is as responsible for the actions of his subordinates as for his own. That’s how it is with Men, don’t know about Elves. Anyway, I’m only telling you this so that you understand that should we fail to agree on the price of his release, your son can’t place his hopes in the Convention on prisoners of war. He’ll be simply turned over to those whose relatives got ‘mopped up.’”

“What…” she swallowed convulsively, “what do I have to do?”

“First I’d like to clarify your position in Lórien’s hierarchy.”

“Don’t they know it?”

“They do, but only from Eloar, who may have been simply trying to impress them with his hostage value. They need to know how powerful you are: clofoel is a rank rather than a position, right? If you do unimportant things like bringing up princes or supervising ceremonies, they see no reason to deal with you.”

“I am the clofoel of the World.”

“Aha… meaning that in the Lady’s cabinet you’re in charge of diplomacy, intelligence, and, more broadly, Elvish expansion in Middle Earth?”

“Yes, you can put it that way. Are you satisfied with the extent of my power?”

“Yes, quite. To business, then. There’s a certain Mordorian prisoner of war in one of the Gondorian labor camps controlled by the Elves. You set up his escape and get your son back in exchange, that’s all. I do believe that you can put your conscience at ease as far as ‘betraying your people’ is concerned.”

“That’s because Lórien would never agree to such an exchange, since the prisoner is one of the royal dynasty of Mordor?”

“I will not comment on your guess, milady Eornis, since I don’t know myself. You’re right about one thing: should anyone in Lórien find out about our contact, it will cost both you and your son your heads.”

“Very well, I agree… But first I need to make sure that Eloar is, indeed, alive; the ring could’ve come from a corpse.”

“Fair enough; please examine this note.” (This was a key moment, although Grager did not know that. But Haladdin, had he the chance to see the stony-faced Elf-woman reading the jagged, as if scratched by a drunk, runes: dear mother I’m alive they treat me well – would have known right away that Maestro Haddami’s lengthy ‘getting into character’ process had not let them down.)

“What had these beasts done to him?!”

Grager opened his hands. “They say that he’s being kept in an underground prison, which isn’t exactly the groves of Lórien. So he’s not in the best shape.”

“What had they done to him?” she repeated quietly. “I won’t lift a finger until I have guarantees, you hear? I’ll turn all the labor camps upside down and…”

“You’ll get your guarantees, don’t worry. They haven’t started the whole thing with setting up a secret meeting to blow the prisoner exchange, right? They’ve even offered…” Grager made a dramatic pause. “Would you like to see him?”

“Is he here?!”

“No, that’d be asking too much. You can talk to him through Seeing Stones. At the time and day we agree upon – say, noon of August first, all right? – Eloar will look into the Mordorian palantír while you look into yours.”

Eornis shook her head. “We don’t have Seeing Stones in Lórien.”

Grager nodded. “They’re aware of that. To speed things up they’ve offered to lend you one of theirs. You’ll return it with the prisoner – what else could you do? But they, too, demand guarantees: there are ways to locate one palantír via another – you Elves should know them better than me – and they’re not about to reveal their location to the enemy. Therefore, there are two non-negotiable conditions. First, the palantír you get will be blinded by an impenetrable sack and put into ‘receive’ mode… forgive me, milady, I don’t understand any of this, I’m just parroting their instructions. So, you will take the palantír  out of the sack and set it to ‘two-way’ mode only precisely at noon on August first. Should you dare do it earlier – to see how things are in Mordorian hideouts – then one of the things you’ll see will be Eloar’s execution. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Second, they demand that during this communication you must be far from Mordor, in Lórien. Therefore, on August first, when your palantír starts sending, they want to see in it something that can only be in Lórien… You know, at that point they’ve gotten really paranoid and we’ve spent almost half an hour figuring out some Lórien landmark that can’t be faked or mistaken for something else. Then someone remembered that your Lady has a huge magic crystal that shows the future; that’s just what we need, they said.”

“Galadriel’s Mirror?!”

“They called it something else, but I’m sure you know what they’re talking about.”

“They have to be crazy! It’s unbelievably difficult to get access to the Lady’s Mirror.”

“Why crazy? That’s exactly what they’ve said: this will be her chance to prove her position in the hierarchy… So: on August first, at noon, you will take the palantír  out of the sack and switch it from ‘receive’ to ‘two-way’ mode, and over in Mordor they will see Galadriel’s Mirror; then you’ll see your son, alive and well… relatively well, anyway. Then they’ll tell you who has to be rescued from which camp. All further communication will be conducted via the palantíri. Any objections?”

“This won’t work for us,” she said suddenly in a hollow voice; he immediately noted this ‘us’ – everything’s going smoothly.

“What’s the problem?”

“No magical objects may be brought into Lórien without the knowledge of the Star Council.

The palantíri are charged with very powerful magic, so I won’t be able to smuggle one past the border guard.”

“They’ve heard of this ban, but does it apply even to a clofoel of the World?”

She smiled crookedly. “You don’t fully know Elvish customs. The ban applies to everyone, including both Sovereigns. The border guard obeys the clofoel of Tranquility and no one else.”

“Well, if the border guard are the only hitch, I’m glad to solve this small problem that you think insurmountable,” Grager said with calculated casualness. “The palantír will be smuggled to you directly in your capital, Caras Galadhon.”

“In Caras Galadhon?” she froze in amazement and Grager felt with his very gut that something was off.

You’re afraid, he realized, for the first time during this conversation you’re actually afraid.

Why now, all of a sudden? Of course, learning that right in your own capital enemy spies can do things that you, an all-powerful royal minister, can’t do, has to be a shock. But the main thing is that this turn was a surprise to you, meaning that you have more or less anticipated the rest of our conversation after receiving Eloar’s ring… anticipated and set up a counter-game, which means that everything you’ve fed me so far was what you wanted me to believe, rather than your real feelings. I should’ve figured it out before: you broke and agreed to be recruited way too easily, and you had to know that this is a recruitment and you’ll be on the hook for the rest of your life – after all, we’re colleagues, in a manner of speaking… Sure, her son is in enemy’s hands and at risk of a grisly death, but still, she’s a courtier, which means she had to go through a helluva lot of intrigue and betrayal on her way to the clofoel’ s chair, or whatever they sit on at that Star Council of theirs. It’s Haladdin’s decision, of course, but in his place I wouldn’t have trusted her with a penknife, much less a palantír. Betcha she’ll cheat the learned doctor like a little kid during the exchange. Then again, maybe she won’t… meaning she won’t be able to. The guy has his own aces up his sleeve: I’ve no idea how he’s going to get that crystal over to her in the Enchanted Forest, secretly, but I’m certain he’s not bluffing.”

“You’ve heard correctly, milady, in Caras Galadhon. You’re in charge of the Festival of the Dancing Fireflies this year, correct?”