The increasing light showed they were in a
steepwalled gorge of bare and weathered rock. Gimli
looked about him dubiously.

"What kind of an army would linger in such a place?"

"A dead one." said Barahir.

The Dwarf nearly unseated himself whipping around
to stare at the Ranger. "What's that?"

"The people who lived in these high valleys in the
Second Age swore allegiance to Gondor when the Kingdom
was founded," Barahir explained, "but when Isildur
summoned them to war they killed his messengers and
hid in their caves, yet they could not escape his
vengeance.

"Isildur bound them beyond life to these barren
crags, cursed them never to find rest until their oath
was fulfilled."

Gimli swallowed. "And that's the army we're
seeking? An army of wraiths?"

"You wanted to come." Aragorn reminded him without
turning.

"I haven't changed my mind!" the Dwarf snapped
back, but Arwen heard him grumbling under his breath,
caught the words 'Men' and 'quite mad'.

Aragorn heard them too, she saw him hide a grin.

The gorge ended in a high, stony glen of dead
trees. "Just gets better and better doesn't it?" Gimli
muttered.

This time no one smiled. Arwen shivered. There was
death here. No - worse then death, unlife. A shadow
existence bound to Arda yet no longer of it. She felt
sick. How could Isildur have done such a thing? Snuck
a look at Aragorn's grim, set face and shivered again.

He dismounted and the others silently did the same.
They went on, leading their horses, under low thorny
branches until they came at last to the door, a gash
of darkness in the cliff face, framed by skulls wedged
into niches and cracks.

"The very warmth of my blood seems stolen away."
Gimli said, hushed.

An inscription in some strange, unElvish picture
writing had been painted above the door. "The way is
shut." Elledhir read, his voice loud in the silence.
"It was made by those who are Dead, and the Dead keep
it, until the time comes. The way is shut." continued
quietly. "Such were the last words of the last living
Man of the Accursed. Spoken to Brego, second King of
Rohan, who had them written above the door as a
warning in the signs of the Men of the North."

A rush of cold air, smelling of carrion, gushed
suddenly from the door carrying with it a deadly fear
which made even Rangers, hardened to horror, blench.

Their great horses trembled, with white showing
round their rolling eyes. But the Meara Brego and
Legolas' white Arod went mad, tearing the lead reins
from their masters' hands and would have fled had not
the press of Men and beasts behind prevented it.
Asfaloth was the least affected. Immortal horse of
Valinor he but flared his nostrils as at an ill smell
and his skin twitched as if irritated by flies.

It took some moments, and soft sung spells, to calm
the two Rohirrim horses. They stood trembling, heads
hanging, still afraid and ashamed of being so.
Asfaloth pushed his way between them, nickering gently
and nuzzling them as if they were foals. The two
Mortal horses pressed close to his sides and seemed to
take heart from him.

"That is an evil door," Halbarad told his nephew
quietly, "and death lies beyond it."

Aragorn looked up from the torch he was lighting,
"I do not fear death." he strode into the dark, his
voice ringing behind. "The time is come!"

Arwen caught up Brego's lead rein and followed, the
horse sweating, head hanging, but resigned now to his
fate. The passage was close and twisting, the rough
stone of the walls catching at her clothes and hair as
she half ran to keep up with Aragorn's long, swift
stride. Brego pressed close to her heels, she could
feel his breath hot on her neck. Her own came panting,
loud in her ears.

Suddenly the passage opened up into a wide hall and
Aragorn halted so suddenly she nearly collided with
him. "What -?" she began, then she saw it - a glitter
of metal off to the side against the cavern wall.

As the rest of the company crowded into the hall
behind them Aragorn went and knelt over what his torch
revealed to be the skeleton of a Man clad in armor not
unlike that Arwen had seen in the Rohirrim camp,
richly ornamented with gold. His finger bones clawed
at a stone door set into the half finished wall.

"What is it? What's wrong? Why've we stopped?"
Gimli pushed his way to the front, saw the remains.
"Oh." after a moment. "Any idea who he was?"

"Here shall the flowers of simbelmyne come never
unto world's end." Aragorn said softly, rose. "This
was Baldor, Prince of Rohan. Or perhaps one of those
who came after him."

"Why?" The Dwarf whispered. "Why would Men seek to
walk so terrible a road without need?"

Aragorn smiled a little. "Because we are, all of
us, quite mad."

Once when she was a little girl Arwen had disobeyed
her nurse and crawled through a stone crack into a
dark, deep little gorge, nearly drowning herself in
the rushing stream at its bottom.

'Why?' her mother had demanded, as she dried her,
'why didn't you listen to Nellas?'

'I wanted to see what was there.'

'But why, when you'd been told it was dangerous?'

And her father had laughed. 'It is her Mortal
blood, Sweetheart.' he'd told Celebrian. "There is no
riddle so deadly a Man will not seek its answer - and
consider his life well spent if he finds it."

"Yes." said Aragorn, and she realized she'd spoken
the last words aloud.

"But he didn't find his answer." Arwen said, and
somehow that seemed sadder than dying alone in the
dark.

"Yes he did," Aragorn answered, "but not here."
****

The hall continued to widen until it ended in a
vast, echoing space barely illuminated by their
torches. Arwen sensed a gulf to their right and what
she could see of the cavern walls seemed to have been
worked to resemble the facades of buildings. A broad
flight of steps led up to a door, or rather the
semblance of a door, elaborately carved.

A sickly, greenish pale light glowed into being
above the steps and formed into the figure of a Man,
or rather the decaying appearence of what had once been
a Man. A corpse in mail with a sword at its side and a
crowned helm on its head.

"Who enters my domain?" it - he - demanded.

"One who would have your allegiance." Aragorn answered.

The phantom King seemed to glare. "The way is shut. The Dead
keep it and do not suffer the living to pass."

Aragorn drew Anduril, the blade glimmering
silver-gold, advanced to confront the thing. "You will
suffer me." he answered, voice cold and clear. "The
time is come."

"None but the King of Gondor may command me!" the Dead
King snapped, and then he laughed. And as he laughed
his legions of dead warriors, greenly glowing like
himself, poured forth from the gaping maws of
inumerable dark doorways, flowing across the great
gulf dividing the cavern to surround the living in
their midst.

Arwen swallowed with a dry throat, clutched tightly
at Brego's reins with trembling hands. By the sickly
light filling the cavern she could see the pale, set
faces of the Men around her, beads of sweat glistening
on their brows. But Ranger discipline held, only Gimli
and Legolas moved, unslinging bow and raising axe in
futile defiance.

Aragorn turned back to the King of the Dead. "I give  you
the chance to redeem your oath. Fight for us!" the King
made no response. Aragorn turned to the legions of Dead
warriors. "Fight and regain your honor!"

Still no response. Gimli snorted. "You're wasting your
breath,  Aragorn. They had no honor living, and they have
none dead."

"Dwarvish tact at its best." a voice breathed in
her ear. She looked up to see Elladan trying, not very
successfully, to smile.

"Now I know I'm more Woman than Elf." she heard her
own voice whimper in reply. "I'm terrified." Her
brother put his arm around her.

"The way is shut" The Dead King told the living. "Now you die."

He strode towards Aragorn, sword rising to strike. Legolas'
arrow passed without effect through his ghostly head. The blade
slashed down, Arwen tried to scream - and Anduril caught the
phantom sword and swept it aside.

"That blade was broken!" 

"It has been reforged. "Aragorn reached out to gather
a handful of ghostly mail in his fist and put Anduril's gleaming edge
to the Dead King's throat. "I am the King of Gondor, your liege lord."
then flung him back and leveled Anduril's point at his breast.

"I am Aragorn son of Arathorn, and am called Elessar the Elfstone,
Dunadan, heir of Isildur Elendil's son of Gondor!" the long blade blazed
golden white, the sunfire reflecting in his eyes. "Redeem your
oaths. Fight for me and I will release you from this living
death! What say you?"

King and Dead said nothing, but seemed to shrink from
the power blazing unveiled from the living King. "What
say you?" Aragorn demanded again.

The Dead vanished.

Arwen blinked in the sudden darkness. Their torches
had gone out unnoticed during the confrontation. The
only light came now from Anduril, and the Man who
carried it.

He turned to them and Arwen, chilled to the heart,
saw nothing of her husband and her love in those wide,
burning eyes - no longer either grey or blue but
golden white like his sword. "Come." he commanded.

And they did, following him across the great cavern
to a second wide hall that slowly narrowed and twisted
into a claustrophobic passage that seemed to go on
forever.

A pale light grew ahead and Arwen heard the sound
of running water. Brego nudged at her, hurrying her
along. They emerged into a narrow, steep walled chasm.
An old road ran between the sheer cliffs, with an icy
rill of a mountain stream dancing alongside.

Brego shoved past her eagerly to the water. She
stumbled, would have fallen had Aragorn not caught
her. She looked up at him. His face seemed grey tinged
with weariness in the dusky half-light. She reached up
a hand to hesitantly touch his cheek.

He glanced down at her, smiled briefly. Then spoke
over her head to the Men who followed them. "Let the
horses drink their fill. They have a long road ahead
of them.