5. The Dead Marshes

The thick mist embraced Aragorn as he passed into fens and bogs of the Marshes, a shroud cloaking the Ephel Dúath and Ered Lithui; they loomed on the easterly horizon, a wall of indistinct mountains from a dream. He turned northwards, seeking his passage through the treacherous quagmires. The pools were loathsome, and they stank of rot and decay and noxious mist curled into the dim and gray sky. But as noisome as the Marshes were, at least Aragorn could take a breath now without the air stinging the lungs and throat. By now night was falling. The Marshes were plunged into a gloomy darkness – what starlight and moonlight pierced the ash and clouds hugging Mordor fell short of breaking through the fog.

Hundreds of lights sputtered across the black fens before him, an array of stars shivering before they expired. The corpsecandles. Aragorn cast himself on the ground beneath a lonely tree cowering on a patch of reeds, and he stared at the lights. In the water he saw faces, shining white in the dark pools, corrupt and sad, faces of men, elves, and orcs slain during the Siege of Mordor. They were like shadows, the faces seemingly tangible whilst nothing more than auras of the dead swallowed by the infringing marshlands. So many had died, and so many would die again. No Elendil and no Gil-galad walked this Middle-earth to lead the combined strength of Westernesse and the Eldar to overthrow the Shadow. And even if Aragorn, Elendil’s heir, had the valor within him to defeat Sauron, the carnage remembered by the flickering candles of the Dead Marshes would be unavoidable nonetheless.

The dreary dawn wrought little levity upon his spirit. He stumbled through the sticky ooze and moss, battling reeds snapping at his cloak and sidestepping around the meres, searching for firm places to walk and not sink into knee-deep mud. Often he floundered from one island tussock to another, sliding into stinking cesspools. Firm footing was an illusion. He hopped or crawled onto patches of pale reeds, and for every moment he readily traversed to the next patch, the reeds gave way and he staggered into the fetid black pools. Polluted mud and water splattered on his face, in his hair, on his cloak and pack and weapons. He was wellnigh coated in it.

As he circumvented a broad fen, tangled reeds caught his foot and he tripped, falling to his hands and knees on the banks of the muddy pool. Stinking black muck squished between his fingers. As he attempted to stand again, his eye caught something in the black slime. The marks of soft and bare feet. They resembled those of a halfling but no halfling would be anywhere within thousands of miles of this desperate place. His heart beat faster.

“Gollum,” he whispered into the bleak Marshes. By fortune’s machinations, had he stumbled into his quarry at last, after so many trials and much pain? What irony this was! Aragorn had relinquished hope of ever finding the wretched creature and had longed for the glorious woods of Lórien, but if indeed these tracks led him to Gollum and he found him, he must bypass Caras Galadhon. The tracks he could ignore and no one would know he had found and not pursued them. It seemed folly to chase the creature, for he had a day or two on Aragorn and could traverse the marshes faster than he. He had a duty to warn Galadriel of the armies building in Mordor, did he not? But alas, his sense of duty, his will to complete what he had started should the opportunity arise, would not be so lenient. Should anyone ask if he had found signs of Gollum, he had to either lie or admit that he did find tracks and disregarded them, and both choices soured his stomach. At any rate, the tracks led away from Mordor, skirting the northern edges of the Dead Marshes, Aragorn’s intended path towards the Emyn Muil. They were fresh and swift, appearing and disappearing, weaving through the noisome cesspools and bogs. So Aragorn too fought his way through the Marshes, staggering across the wet, unsound islands of pale reeds and tussocks.

Through the grimy glass the dead faces leered at him, and he avoided their eyeless and fatal stares. Always, the ghastly faces inquired whether he was a mighty enough lord to lead a great army to its doom on the slopes of Orodruin, whether he bore the courage of Elendil and Isildur, or merely their blood. Had he the valor to wield the light of a reforged Narsil? Aragorn averted his gaze, for that question was unanswerable. He did not yet know what strength flowed in his veins.

The sun did not dare show her face here, shedding no heat upon the blighted marshes. Every so often he found himself at a loss for where to go, facing a mire wider than he could jump, then he backtracked around until he found a less impassible route. On occasion he lost Gollum’s trail for several miles and roamed in lost circles, slogging through the intolerable muddy islets until it reappeared. Two days ago the Marshes had seemed an improvement over venomous fumes and fire-blasted rock of the arid Noman-lands, for at least some form of life existed here. But doubt cast a pall upon his heart and he wondered if he indeed knew the path out of the marshlands, whether it existed, or if he would find Gollum here. The creature weighed less than he and could take passages where Aragorn faltered.

Evening fell and the temperature sank as the sun withdrew what modest light and warmth it had offered through the invulnerable clouds and mists. Biting cold cramped Aragorn’s muscles, and he no longer felt his fingers and toes. Stiffly he crawled across a marshy islet towards the skeleton of a bramble, shelter for the night. To his left, a corpsecandle flickered, like the white canvas sheet of a loose sail flapping in a breeze. He saw a movement in the corner of his eye, and he turned his gaze towards the stagnant mere on the other side of the isle. There, a gangly creature crouched over the black pool, peering into the water, hissing, “My precious, my precious, where issss it, my precious?”

It was oblivious to Aragorn’s presence. Aragorn remained motionless for a time, barely breathing, quelling his shivering. Slowly he drew his sword and then crept towards the creature, which was covered from head to toe in stinking green slime. The fetid smell made him almost retch, but he swallowed hard. Then the creature raised its luminous yellow eyes from the pool and saw him. It uttered a strangled yelp and attempted to flee, but Aragorn sprang to his feet, the sword of Gondor glimmering in the dying light of day. “Do not move!” he cried.

Gollum, for it was Gollum, frantically stumbled backwards at the sight of the sword and almost fell into the torpid pool. He shrieked, an ear-splitting wail rupturing eerie quiescence with hatred and terror. With his back against the mere and Aragorn and his bright sword blocking the one escape route over the sodden island, Gollum was trapped. Uttering a torturous screech, which was only eclipsed by the deathly voices of Nazgûl, he lunged at Aragorn, pale eyes smoldering, and Aragorn sent him sprawling into the murky water with a blow from the flat side of the sword. The craven creature whirled upon him, baring yellow fangs and staring down the gleaming blade of the sword, graven with the markings of Westernesse, the crescent moon and seven stars. He froze in terror, as if the markings woke some fear deep within his heart, and then sprang into the mere. Aragorn gave chase into the shallows, sinking to his knees in the black muck and cursing Gollum and his ill fortune in finding him here. Into the mere he would not follow his quarry, for he had no desire to learn whether legends he had heard of the fate of those who fell into the Marshes were true. Neither did Gollum, who had shied from the depths of the black pool and the corpsecandle and skittered through the reeds on its shores.

“Halt there if you want to live!” snapped Aragorn. He notched an arrow to his bow, aimed it, and fired. Then he loosed a second. They whistled through the air and dove into the mud not an inch from Gollum, one after the other: thunk, thunk. Gollum leapt away from them, splashing into a shallow fen. It was a contest now, a skirmish Aragorn intended to win. Whatever be their fate in Lórien, whatever the message Aragorn sent Galadriel, this creature would not see the other side of the Marshes free. If he did not submit to capture, Aragorn had few reservations about slaying him. He fitted a third arrow to the bow. This one would be no warning shot. Gollum withdrew into the pool and then looked to the arrow’s tip as Aragorn slowly drew back the bowstring. Forsaking flight, he dragged himself out of the pool, curling into a ball on its shores, weeping.

“Don’t hurt us,” he whimpered. “Don’t hurt us. Nasty Man and nasty long sword and nasty arrowses hurts us, my precious. It hurts us. gollum, gollum.”

Disgusted, Aragorn lowered his arrow and took up the sword again. The Númenorean engravings had struck the fear of Ilúvatar in Gollum, which had for a moment overcome the fear of the corpsecandle, an effect Aragorn did not rue. He said sharply, “Get up, you wretch. Over to the bramble there. Now.” He indicated the broken brush with the sword.

Gollum paid him no heed, as if Aragorn had commanded him in Quenya instead of Westron. “It hurts us, the nasty sword, it bites us, precious, bites us cruelly. We hatess it.”

“It will ‘bite you’ again if you do not heed my words,” said Aragorn, raising the sword. He should slay the vile creature, put him out of his misery once and for all, succeed in what Bilbo Baggins, Sauron, and surely others before them had failed. But Gandalf had insisted that Gollum should live and made plain that he thought Gollum had a part to play in this, though what it was or why, the old wizard could not say. Aragorn had been skeptical, and as he looked upon Gollum, this corrupted, miserable creature whose spirit the Ring had defiled and warped beyond all redemption, his skepticism grew. Pity had stayed the hand of Bilbo and perhaps clouded Gandalf’s judgment, and indeed, Aragorn felt it too. Gollum’s life was a sorrowful tale and the creature had been an unwitting victim of Sauron’s malice, but he had born the Ring for too many long years – it had devoured all that was noble and fair – and the formidable malice and hatred that Sauron had poured into the Ring was all that remained. Regardless of who or what he had been before he discovered the Ring, Gollum was a villain now, too dangerous to be on the loose and in Aragorn’s mind, not as deserving of life as Gandalf believed. But Gandalf desired Gollum alive and at any rate, wanted him questioned. Until he reconvened with the wizard, Aragorn would abide by what he and Gandalf had agreed to.

“You owe your life to Gandalf,” Aragorn told Gollum, who had heeded the threat and upraised sword and skulked to the thorny brush, eyes downcast, sniveling and muttering curses to himself. His sword at Gollum’s throat, Aragorn unwrapped the rope he had received from Henneth Annûn and loosely bound Gollum’s slimy hands with it, sullying such fine rope. Gollum wriggled in protest and there was murder and wrath in his pale eyes.

“He puts the sword to our necks and he puts the ropes on our hands, precious,” cried Gollum. “We did nothing, oh, yes, we did nothing to him and he treats us to cruelly. The rope, it burns us, it burns us, precious. We hates it. Men, men of the west twisted it, fierce men with long swords. Curse them, precious, curse them.”

Ignoring the protestations, Aragorn wrapped another loop around the creature’s scrawny neck, a halter of sorts, though he thought a noose would be more fitting. Then he sank down beneath the skeletal bush, beset by weariness yet he warded off sleep, the sword resting across his knees. Grimly he watched Gollum paw at the knots, but they were seamen’s knots and few knew how to untie them. The pitiful creature gurgled in despair, wrapping his fingers around the rope on his neck and then casting himself upon the ground, writhing about and yammering and bemoaning his lost “precious.” So long as Aragorn had Gollum in his charge, the wretch would not taste freedom or the sweet succor of death.

A black veil shrouded the Marshes, as it would a lady at a funeral. The cold deepened. Aragorn, breathing into his abraded hands to warm them, languished for the warmth and light of Lórien or Rivendell or any place but here. Gollum, for his part, seemed unaffected by the weather. Back and forth he rocked, weeping and casting occasional furtive glances at Aragorn.

In spite of Gollum, Aragorn would hold to his intended course: out of the Marshes undetected and then up through the treacherous northern spires of the Emyn Muil, following the Anduin upstream a hundred leagues towards Lothlórien and crossing the Nimrodel and Silverlode on its most western fringes. Disappointment left a bitter taste in his mouth. To Caras Galadhon he could not bring his prisoner. There would be no respite for him in the fairest of all cities, little likelihood of alerting Galadriel and Celeborn to Sauron’s movements. The power of Galadriel, who had communed with the Valar in Aman, battled evil and kept it from the forest. Leading Gollum through Lórien’s outermost borders on its western eaves risked Aragorn’s life and his relations to the Elves as it was, yet he had little choice. The fortress of Dol Guldur stood at the edges of Mirkwood on the eastern shore of Anduin, a dark sentinel, the stronghold of Sauron where he had dwelt in secret for a thousand years after the Gondorrim had driven him from Mordor. While Sauron himself no longer resided in Dol Guldur, an outpost of Mordor it remained, a place of great evil. A Nazgûl dwelt in its terrible battlements, keeping close vigilance upon Lórien and the Mirkwood Elves. Only once during his many travels had Aragorn explored the realms of the wicked fortress, for few who went there came back alive. No, the safest route for hundreds of miles passed through Lórien.

Then his route continued upstream for many hundreds of miles to the northern reaches of Mirkwood, the kingdom of Thranduil of the Wood-elves, and there he would leave Gollum in the hands of the Elves. Mirkwood he and Gandalf had deemed the most suitable place to imprison Gollum in the event they found him. For many hours sipping ale in an inn near Fornost, a time and place hundreds of leagues and many years distant, they had debated and deliberated and discarded other choices. Leaving him with men would be perilous. Aragorn distrusted his kin; he saw no strength in Rohan and Gondor and did not dare reveal to them why Gollum need be kept prisoner. Théoden was aged and sickly, a weak king, and while Denethor was strong, Gandalf suspected he had used the palantír in the White Tower, which had bent his mind towards madness. Aragorn, recalling Denethor’s intense dislike of Thorongil and suspicion that he might be the heir of Elendil, did not believe the Steward would be overjoyed to see him under any circumstances. And his own kin, the Dúnedain of the North, had not the facility to confine the cunning and deceitful footpad. Dwarves they had forthwith dismissed. To the Elves then Gollum must go. But Lórien and Rivendell did not want him nor had they the prisons in which to confine him. Neither could Aragorn bear to sully the fairest realms of Middle-earth wherein his heart rested. And Gandalf had reviled the thought of bringing a bearer of the One Ring to the realms of the Three. Mirkwood, however, had dungeons deep within its caverns, and the Silvan elves, at times more concerned with perils facing Middle-earth than were Rivendell and the Noldor Elves, might feel more obliging of detaining Gollum. Thranduil’s people already knew of Gollum; they had begun the hunt for him seventeen years ago, following his trail through Mirkwood and back, though never catching him.

For now, Aragorn hovered between waking and sleep, shivering in fear of the shadows, strange phantoms, creeping through the meres and across the opaque sky whenever his mind drifted too near sleep and forgetfulness. When he blinked away cobwebs of sleep, the night was quiet and still, the only sounds the hiss of the foul wind through the reeds and Gollum’s irrepressible snuffling. He floated away again, as though borne on a ship, and he saw mountains, the Ered Nimrais rearing their heads beyond the shimmering water of the Bay of Belfalas, the sky blue and clear, the wind fresh. There were faces all about him, shining, joyous faces, faces of men and elves who had died at the gates of Mordor and on Orodruin’s fire-blasted flanks in great battles long ago, and they were calling his name, Elessar. Something moved. Abruptly he fell back into the waking world of the gloomy Marshes and raised himself up on his elbow; at once he saw Gollum skulking towards him, hatred and loathing burning like the fires of Mordor in his pale eyes. As though unaware Aragorn had wakened, Gollum leapt at him, hands clammy and wizened grasping for his throat, but Aragorn nimbly rolled sideways and struck Gollum in the head with his fist. Livid, Gollum whirled upon him and found himself face to face with the sword, its blade graven with the serpentine markings of Númenor. He cowered, trembling, the rage in his eyes vanquished by terror.

“Do that again and you will not live out the night,” snarled Aragorn, holding Gollum by the throat. The putrid stench of the miserable wretch inches from his nostrils dizzied him, and he tossed Gollum roughly aside in repugnance.

The remaining hours of the long, and dark night brought Aragorn neither slumber nor peace. He lay curled on his side, wide-awake, though Gollum huddled dejectedly on the other side of the island and did nothing more to threaten him.

* * *

At morning’s pale light, Aragorn had a swift and cold breakfast of dried pork, dried fruit, and Gondorean waybread and then jerked Gollum to his feet with an unkind tug on the rope. The creature had been cringing beneath the broken bramble. As Aragorn pulled him along, faltering through fens and bogs, he shrieked, a piercing racket shattering the tomblike silence of the Marshes. They walked in this manner for several hours until Aragorn found a skeletal chain of tussock isles crossing the cesspools. Herein he had a moment’s respite from intently concentrating on his path; turning to Gollum, he demanded, “Tell me, were you in Mordor?”

“Why should we answer its questions when it treats us so harshly, preciouss?” Gollum said.

“Were you captured in the Black Land?” repeated Aragorn.

“So cruelly he tortures us,” wept Gollum, “So cruel to us. He wants the precious from us, yes, that is what he wants, but we mustn’t let him have it, oh, we mustn’t, precious. We’ll keep it, yes, yes, and hides ourselves from it, from the eye! It watches us!”

“Who tortured you? Sauron?” said Aragorn, unsure if Gollum referred to Sauron’s minions, himself, or both. Ungently he yanked upon the rope, for Gollum had balked in a patch of dying reeds, hid his face in his slimy hands.

“No, no, don’t make us walk beneath the eye!” howled Gollum, throwing his weight against the rope. “Nassty man makes us show ourselves to the yellow face, nasty cruel man hurts us with his swordses and his ropes. We hates it, precious, we hates it. In the dark they won’t see us. The eye sees all; it will see us and take us back there.”

“I know you understand me,” snapped Aragorn, taking a deep breath ere his patience frayed. “You understood Bilbo Baggins well enough to bandy riddles with him. I shall make this even more unpleasant for you if you do not tell me now whether or not you were in Mordor and what they did to you there.”

“Baggins, yes, he stole the precious, he did. Thieves, filthy little thieves. They stole it from uss. We hates it, we hates them all that steal the precious, we wants it and we will find it. Baggins stole it from us, precious. Very tricksy he was, very false, but we’ll find him, we’ll get it, won’t we? gollum, gollum.”

“Did you tell the Enemy that Baggins stole ‘the precious?’”

“But we can be tricksy, too, can’t we? We survived, we escaped.”

“So you were in Mordor,” said Aragorn. “And you got out? Is that what you are saying?”

“But the ropes are burning uss,” wailed Gollum. “The yellow face hides nothing from him, my precious, he sees all, he sees, he sees. The Eye sees and he wants the precious! But if nasty man lets us go we will keep it from him, we will, keep it safe, keep it for us.”

“Did you escape from Mordor?” pressed Aragorn.

“We will finds it, we must finds it, but the light hurts us. The cruel nasty light.” Gollum hid his eyes in his hands and writhed about in the tussocks. “Why does he do this to us, precious. We was minding our business and he puts the ropes on us. The cold, cold ropeses that burns out neck! Must take it off!” He clawed uselessly at the rope.

Aragorn gave up for the present, exasperated by the futility of pursuing Gollum with questions. Mayhap he was cunning enough to spew inanities at Aragorn with every query, but not even in his most aggrieved nightmares did Aragorn perceive the torment and woe of the dungeons beneath Barad-Dûr. Whatever horrors they had inflicted upon Gollum could have warped his mind beyond the bounds of lucidity. Nevertheless it remained clear that he desired the Ring and posed a threat to the one who carried it. If indeed Sauron had spared him from the dungeons, Gollum must have been released upon an evil errand, unwittingly since the creature was more terrified of the Dark Lord – his adversary who desired ‘the precious’ – than he was of Aragorn and would elude Sauron’s will more readily than he eluded Aragorn’s.

Gollum continued his prolonged crying and whining about eyes and yellow faces, making a racket loud enough to rouse the curiosity of every orc within a hundred leagues. He weighed naught, but lugging him through the bogs and meres grew wearisome as the shadows lengthened. Aragorn bade him to be silent and held the gleaming dagger to his face.

A bolt of courage struck the creature, and he hurled himself into Aragorn and sank his teeth into the vambrace on Aragorn’s left forearm. Sharp fangs burrowed beneath cloth and leather. With the hilt of the knife, Aragorn struck him hard, again and again until he tore away with flesh and leather in his teeth, recoiling from the blows, covering his head and whimpering like a whipped hound, as though he had done nothing to deserve it. Blood, hot and sticky, surged across Aragorn’s arm, soaking through the vambrace and cloth and dripping onto his hand. Her unbuckled the vambrace and rolled back his sleeve, examining red teeth marks driving into the flesh, unsightly lesions oozing blood and yellow fluid. A moment of dizziness and nausea impinged upon him and then swept past. The wounds needed bathing, but the water here caused deadly infection, and he had no drinking water to spare. So he did what he could, crumbling his few athelas leaves on the lesions and then binding his arm in cloth. In pain but tolerable pain, he would contend with it until he reached the cleansing water of the Anduin on the other side of the Emyn Muil.

Then Aragorn turned his attention to Gollum, who squirmed amongst tussocks in fear that Aragorn intended to slay him, breath hissing between clenched teeth. Suppressing barely concealable rage, Aragorn tugged sharply upon the rope and when Gollum shook and gibbered incomprehensibly, grasping at the reeds, Aragorn raised the knife towards Gollum’s head. If ever he was going to slay the maggot, he should have done so there and then. Hitherto he had trusted the foresight of Gandalf, and stayed his weapon in spite of his better instincts. Instead of striking him with the steel, he unkindly shoved the creature into a fen with his boot. Gollum quieted his shrieking and wailing. Nonetheless, he refused to walk willingly and suffered to be hauled along like a plow behind a horse.

“Enough of this.” Aragorn said, fixing Gollum with a piercing stare, and Gollum flinched away from the steely gray eyes. “As you are no cart and I am no horse, I will not suffer to drag you to Mirkwood.”

At the name of Mirkwood, Gollum goggled and he fawned pathetically at Aragorn’s cloak, whimpering, “Elveses... No, don’t take us to the elveses, fierce nasty elves that hurts us, precious, they hurts us. We be good, we be very very good if he doesn’t take us to the elveses... We tell him anything he wants to know, yes, about the Black Land, even. gollum, gollum.”

“I will not bind myself to a promise I cannot keep,” said Aragorn. Gollum felt the terrible call of the Ring; he would make any promise and betray it just as swiftly if he thought it advanced his agenda of finding his precious. Deceit was the one thing Aragorn was certain of in his dealings with Gollum. “And you will walk or I shall tie you up here for the carrion-eaters or servants of Sauron to find and pick the meager flesh off your bones.” He unsheathed the sword. For reasons unbeknownst to him, its Númenorean etchings disturbed Gollum more than did the White Tree on the dagger. His point made, he returned the long sword to its scabbard, for wielding it was nigh impossible as he floundered through cesspools.

The threat seemed in earnest and Gollum bowed his head, cowed by the cold steel of the Westernesse sword and the thought of whatever Aragorn’s words wakened in his imagination. Willing he was not, but he resisted less and showed a great deal of obedience when Aragorn laid a hand upon the hilt of his sword.

The dead faces grew ever more mesmerizing as his weariness and the ache in his injured arm beleaguered him. The cold and damp marshes aggravated his wounds, both the new teethmarks in his forearm and the older lacerations and bruises from the Haradrim spear on his shoulder. He thrashed and slipped through mud and ooze, grim and stoic, stooped over, footsore and cold from water soaking through his boots, straining his eyes through the thick mists.

When night fell, he found himself gazing into the proud, fair and corrupted face of a fallen Elf lord in the dismal pool, the pupil-less eyes open, haunted, the golden hair streaming about the shoulders. The candle danced in Aragorn’s intense gray eyes. He could not turn his gaze from the dead face; the ghoulish eyes seized his heart. Kneeling upon the muddy shore of the mere, he reached for the pale face, his blood-soaked fingers disturbing the grimy glass of the water, distorting the grave image beneath it.

“Tricksy lights,” hissed Gollum. “Mustn’t follow the tricksy lights.”

Startled, Aragorn abruptly withdrew his hand, as though the water stung him, and turned to Gollum, aghast that the creature who surely wished for his death had spoken helpfully. A conflicted soul indeed. What deep fissures had the Ring rent through his mind that drove him to sink his teeth into a man’s flesh in one moment and save him from peril the next? Isildur had desired to make the thing into an heirloom, passed down to all of his heirs, a grim thought sending chills coursing down Aragorn’s spine, a visceral fear of what might have been had Isildur not perished in the Gladden Fields.

Gollum at any rate had resumed rocking himself and muttering effusive gibberish below Aragorn’s hearing, as if someone else had warned against looking into the pools. His eyes were half-lidded, and he made no response to Aragorn’s querulous stare. Though Aragorn had no intentions of sleeping, he rested his eyes and behind his closed lids saw the colorless face of the dead Elf lord in the mere. He could not rid himself of it. Softly, he sang a few verses of a sad and befitting tune in the ancient tongue telling of the death of Gil-galad in the days of the Last Alliance.

Gil-galad was an Elven king.
Of him the harpers sadly sing:
the last whose realms was fair and free
between the Mountains and the Sea.

His sword was long, his lance was keen,
his shining helm afar was seen;
the countless stars of heaven’s field
were mirrored in his silver shield.

But long ago he rode away,
and where he dwelleth none can say;
for into darkness fell his star
in Mordor where the shadows are.[i]

Above him the heavy clouds shredded and the shimmering moon cast a pale, white light through the deep blue strips of cloud and smoke. Not a glimmer of moonlight had he seen since he had departed from the Morannon; the ashen specter elated him, sickened from too many days in gloomy gray light. In the blue-tinged glow, he saw the Emyn Muil, a jagged, murky mass to his northwest perchance a day’s walk away. The same moon shone upon Gondor and upon Rivendell and Lórien and upon his homelands in the North, the lost kingdom of Arnor. Beyond the rugged rocks, it shone upon the Anduin as it cut through the Argonath and Sarn Gebir and plunged down the Falls of Rauros.

Neither the moon nor the Elvish lay mollified Gollum, who buried his head in his hands and cried, “The white face, it hurts us, precious. Its eyes watch, always watching, it sees us. gollum, gollum. It is painful, yes, beneath the white face, yes, he makes us walk beneath it he does... Cruel men, cruel elves, they don’t know, they don’t understand, they think the light is their friend, but its hurts us, it burns us, doesn’t hide us, doesn’t keep us safe...”

On this went for some time until Aragorn, too wearied and in too much pain to listen, cuffed Gollum in the side of the head with the hilt of a knife and told him to be still. He swore to himself that he would gag the little wretch or abandon him tied to a rock or tree if he continued his endless whining and babbling into the ominous and silent night. With a murderous and sullen growl, Gollum obeyed and curled into a dejected ball as far from Aragorn as he could manage on their tussock island.

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[i] The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Ch. XI.