Shadows in the Sun

By: Zephyraria

Chapter II: Words by the Path

Eowyn sat by the fire of her whitewashed hearth and drew the blanket more securely about her shoulders.  The spring was yet new, and the night unavoidably cold.  She watched the flames pass over the crackling wood, leaving soot marks on the white granite.  It was night again, and she was alone.  The moment she had dreaded – or at least unconsciously so – had come.

The afternoon had been spent in a dizzying haze of jubilation.  Her face met anar’s embrace, not the first time in the last days, but finally, a time when she could sincerely believe in its promise.  Eowyn stared into the flames before her, but found no such bright reassurance there, not now.  Strange, she reflected, that one so set against life may, at its granting, be ecstatic.  But then, the body never took well to its own destruction.

Now night had come, and there was no Lord Faramir, no Merwen, no one beside her to speak those words, bright words that would scald her mind and purify it of all lingering doubts.  She sat again by a flickering fire, alone to her unsettled thoughts, words of hope forgotten, or heard too often so as to be useless.

Aragorn was alive.

And king; she knew it well.  A great king of this stone city and its brethren to the north and south.  King of Gondor, of Arnor, Dol Amroth, Ithilien. 

And she?  An outcast, at best.  To go home and tend hearth for her brother, again take up those womanly offices which had ever been her duties.  Soon enough, she thought, it would be as if there had been no war at all; nothing to change the land and the thoughts of its people.  We would be as we ever were, closeted in our manifold duties, each a link upon the chain, gilded though the chain might be.  Her brother would marry, indeed, he must.  Then she would be put aside, her skills long unneeded; a spinster, a strange relic of a forgotten spirit that had hoped for nothing but a chance to prove her worth.  And she had it.  She took it.  But what would it amount to?  Now she had fame, where to next?  Would she sit upon the King’s counsel and debate with the court?  Would she change anything at all?

Foolishness, she told herself.  The day is a blessed one.  Do not ruin it with foolish thoughts.  But the thoughts did not end there.

The king had a queen, the voice spoke inside her head.  And the Queen of Gondor would be nothing as coarse and furious as an embittered princess of the Rohirrim.

With a determined sigh Eowyn emerged from her deep-backed chair, and hoped the plants may offer her some degree of consolation.  Taking up the night-blue cloak that the healers gave her, Eowyn forsook the confines of her stone chamber for the dark solitude of the Gardens at nighttime.

The breeze was cool but not piercing; the paths lit enough by moonlight that Eowyn walked with ease, breathing deeply, her thoughts blissfully blank.  

Every so often she would hear music and song, for this was how Gondor would commemorate this newfound freedom and peace.  There would be no drunken revelry or raucous celebration here, only triumph in dignity, victory with song.    Eowyn recognized the words to a few, and knew them to be love songs, or songs of high empires in ages past, of Numenor in its founding days of glory. 

Her brother would find this dull, no doubt, but for now Eowyn sang softly along, and was glad of Gondor’s peaceful joy.  

Perhaps an hour had passed since she set out from her rooms when Eowyn deemed herself quite lost, but she did not mind. It was a walking repose, akin to undisturbed sleep.  Her heart beat steadily and calmly, as the night flowed around her in soothing eddies. 

Rounding a corner in the trees, Eowyn came upon a sight that made her pause in astonishment.

The path upon which she stood merged with six others that fanned out in a circular pattern, seven rays around a central sun.

Seven stones and seven stars, she thought.

In the middle of the conjoining paths was an expanding patch of green earth, upon which stood the most magnificent oak Eowyn had ever laid eyes on. Its boughs bent skyward, taller than the surrounding trees and houses, reaching ever higher until its uppermost branches touched the seventh circle’s wall.   The oak was immense and grand, but the perfect symmetry of branches from where it split in twain at the base gave it a fantastical wildness.  Wild yet ever so meticulous, she thought; no human could have done this. 

Eowyn took a step forward.  The tree stood bare save for a few early buds, yet still the sky was all but obscured by the profusion of branches which shot up from the stolid roots, arching in graceful majesty toward the night’s stars.

Eowyn moved closer until she was upon the green where it stood. 

A dried twig broke underfoot, its crackle breaking the humming silence.  Eowyn frowned at the disturbance.  But then she saw a still shape in the darkened oak flinch suddenly, and turn toward her. 

Eowyn froze in her tracks, her heart beating at a furious gallop.  She could see nothing of whatever it was that startled at her approach; she only felt the battle-ready tension rush through her veins with each silent breath, sending small gasps of alertness to her fingertips. 

Stepping back cautiously, Eowyn instead found herself exposed by a direct beam of moonlight, and was doubly startled when the shape called out to her.

“Lady Eowyn!”

For an impossible second she thought it was Aragorn who addressed her thusly, though she knew herself mistaken.  Aragorn was days away, still upon the fields of battle.  He could not have reached here so soon.  Besides, the man’s voice was lighter, less roughened by weather and smoke, and its tone, surprised.    Eowyn still did not recognize it, though if she had considered, there were few in the city that knew her well, and could address her by name.

Seeing her confusion, or perhaps he only perceived her hesitant silence, the man said again, in the same lulling tones, “I am sorry to have startled you, milady.  This is Faramir, nothing alarming.  Please,” it continued, and she thought she recognized the shape of the Steward’s recalcitrant hair, “will you not wait and allow me to greet you more properly?”

Her astonishment banished all powers of speech; Eowyn could only watch in growing fascination as the Steward of Gondor descended from his perch with the grace and speed of one who has lived in trees all his life; his skill made him seem younger, a skinny adolescent almost, running back to long-neglected studies.  Eowyn wondered now why he was here, and alone.   

He jumped off the last branch, landing with limber grace upon the soft earth, and came to bow before her. 

“Good evening, Lady Eowyn,” the Steward of Gondor said quite calmly, as if he merely chanced upon her during one of his strolls.  “I hope you will forgive me; despite all appearances, I truly had no intention of alarming anyone.”

His voice had changed – that was why Eowyn did not recognize it.  There was a lightness and humor in it that she had not heard before.  It was as if something rather effervescent fluttered above the formality of his normal baritone; as if he spoke and smiled at the same time.  Now that she recognized Lord Faramir, Eowyn did not know why his voice had put her in mind of Gondor’s king, save that its edge of authority could command the faith of many men; but that was little enough.

By now she had recovered sufficiently to muster a coherent reply.

“Milord, your presence was unexpected, that is all.  I assumed that all had gone to join the revels; in fact, should you not be leading them?”

His dimly lit face took on a wry expression at this reminder of his duties.

“It is a night for kings and warriors,” he said, slowly, but not placatingly, “and for all those who have so long awaited this victory.  My presence was not required save for a few opening words; goodness knows they do not need me for my song.” 

He smiled. “We each commemorate life in the way we know best; you yourself have chosen to walk the gardens by cover of night.”

Eowyn had no answer for that. 

Then, to make up for her previous lapse of graciousness, she took on a diplomatic tone, and said, “Let us take these paths together, then, and speak together, if you will.”

“I would be honored, milady.” He replied, seriously it seemed, and waited for her to take the lead.

Eowyn took a step forward, and then stopped, uncertain of her whereabouts.  The dizzying pinwheel of paths spread around her, and in this clearing surrounded by an impenetrable forest she knew not where she was, and had not the faintest idea of where she wished to go.  Eowyn looked up at the steward, who towered over her right shoulder.  He gazed back, the grey eyes forever searching; strange, she thought, how he could look politely inquiring at the same time.

“I shall entrust the lead to you, milord; I’m afraid I am quite lost.”

She realized with a detached puzzlement that she did not concede weakness often; but then, she had never openly apologized for her forwardness until today.  The presence of the Steward seemed to bring out this hesitancy in her; but that cannot be so, for he never exhibited any inclinations of changing her behavior – it was not his nature.  Perhaps it was merely the occasion, and her mood of late, that spurred such deviations from character.

Meanwhile, he only nodded in some sympathy to her words, having found them quite unremarkable.  “I know the feeling,” he said, and looking about, followed a cobbled path to their left, the third of the seven. “The gardens, I believe, were intended to provide the atmosphere of some…orderly woodland, perhaps; but sometimes forest would be a better description.”

“It is an ambitious establishment, and all the more fantastical for its sheer unlikelyhood,” she agreed, “a forest in a city of stone.  They maintain it well - perfectly, in fact.  The gardeners, it seems, are just as enthusiastic as the healers.”

“Enthusiastic is not the word I would use,” he replied with a grimace.

The gesture contorted his usually somber features into a comical mask, and Eowyn gave a short laugh, mostly borne of surprise.  He smiled back merrily; he had thin lips that would manage a disapproving glare better than a cheerful grin, but Eowyn thought he preferred to smile. 

They were walking on a torch-lit path that would close to the city’s walls, at a faster pace than Eowyn’s previous, but she kept up with his longer stride easily.

The Steward continued, “It is quite apt, really, that the gardens should be such a maze.  Patients often find it useful, in running from their healers, to become intentionally lost for an entire afternoon, if only to obtain some solitude.”

“You speak from experience, Milord?” she said, arching her brows in mock consternation.

“I?” he gave a rueful sigh, “I, on the other hand, have been confined here often enough that it is in my personal interest not to be caught in the first place, than to resort to the standard excuses.”

She thought about Ioreth, and Merwen, her healer; “Yet I do not doubt that the healers know these grounds only too well, if only to hunt out their wayward charges.”

“Yes,” he said, quite seriously, “I suspect that knowing one’s way about the gardens is how the healers distinguish between those worthy of their robes from the less desirables.  I can see the Warden depositing frightened apprentices in the center and – pen and clock in hand – leaving them to find their own way out.”

If she had expected any conversation from the Steward of Gondor, it was not this.  “And the one who followed the Warden’s tracks out of the maze?”

“That, lady, would be the Ranger, not the healer,” he replied, smiling again.

Eowyn smiled back, she could not help herself.  Proving herself a match for his silliness, she said, “Among my people, legends have it that Eorl could ride a full-grown stallion before the age of four.  Thus any self-respecting parent with great ambitions for their children, would – upon that fateful birthday – be tempted to try such, despite any earlier words to the otherwise.  ”

 “And so it has come to be,” she continued, watching the smile spread from his mouth to his eyes, unfolding like light on an overcast day as a rain cloud slowly yields the face of the sun, “that many young men among the Rohirrim grow to adolescence with rather lop-sided noses, as a mark of their rite of passage.”

He laughed, a rich, full-throated sound that she felt deep in her stomach, and then looked at her face – her nose, to be precise, “You did not seem to have done half so badly, Lady Eowyn.”

She was quiet for a second, “only the sons of Eorl had the honor, I’m afraid”.

“That is certainly unfair,” he paused, as if thinking on it for a second, “that all the unsuspecting male children must be put to this, and alone!  Though even they were lucky, upon reflection, for didn’t the myth say that Eorl could ride from birth?”

“It does,” Eowyn looked at him with a new respect, “you know our tales well, Lord Faramir.”

He hedged the compliment becomingly, with a scholar’s modesty. 

Eowyn pressed on, “I was not aware, either, that you spoke my native tongue.”

He looked at her, some confusion on his face, so she said, “your translation this morning was flawless, and effortless, too, it seemed.”

“This morning…” he considered it for a moment, brow furrowed with concentration, and she wondered if he had forgotten.

“I recall that you quoted those words from an epic of your people, am I correct?”

Eowyn nodded, “yes.”

“Ah.” He smiled at her, “the fact is, milady, I do not know your tongue half as well as I would like.  All we have here – even in the great vaults of The Library, are only translations of Rohan’s tales.”

Her interest was piqued, “Only translations?  That must have been a great trial in its own right, as my language has been passed orally and unwritten for countless years.”

“Oh yes,” he agreed with a scholar’s grimace, “But interestingly enough, most of the texts I have come across actually contained an ‘original’ version, by which I mean the phonetic equivalent of your language in the devices of the common tongue.  I used to speak them aloud – when no one was around – to imitate some of the inflections, and that is the only reason I had any conception of what you spoke this morning.”

Then he sighed suddenly, “We of Gondor know so much of the high elven speech, but almost none of that of Rohan.  But then, I suppose, there have been few teachers.”

“There will be more, now,” she said.

He nodded, smiling, “Aye, there will be more.”

Ridiculous, how she suddenly felt the need to offer her services.  Eowyn stopped herself short. 

“I heard you speak of the Great Library of Minas Tirith, milord.  Am I correct in assuming that The Library is not a single dusty room, filled with a few shelves full of dusty tomes?”

“You have not seen The Library?” he whispered, aghast, and she bit back a smile, shaking her head.

He sighed as if the stars had collapsed around him, “I can do you no justice, describing them.”

In reality, Eowyn thought, a few minutes later, he could talk of them quite ably.  She watched as Lord Faramir continued in his descriptive tour of the Great Vaults, seeing how his eyes shone, and how his face, ever somber, was now generous in expression; he gestured with his hands as he spoke, and she noted the tapered, elegant fingers.  A musician’s fingers. 

He was strange to her, like this city of stone and its songs of old; but she found him neither unpleasant nor ridiculous.  There was no scorn in her heart for the glory which slowly revealed itself to her, only a slow-building excitement.  Eowyn listened to the Steward’s voice, half-entranced by its mere sound.

The darkening thoughts of earlier this night were dispelled by his presence, as fog is burned to nothingness by the morning’s sun.  And Eowyn looked again at the Lord Faramir, and saw grace and nobility upon his brow, knowledge within his keen grey eyes, and kindness upon his smile.

Then she looked away, disturbed by her thoughts, and tried to breathe deeply. 

By some unseen magic they had already returned to the Houses, and Eowyn could see her chambers quite clearly from where they stood.   

He turned to her, and spoke again with that sincere intensity which she has come to expect from him, “I would gladly show it to you, if you wish to see it.”

He still spoke of the libraries. 

The clock struck ten; Eowyn held still and counted the strokes, she had mind for little else. 

“Tomorrow,” He added, “We all have duties of our own.  After supper, perhaps.”

She nodded, forcing herself to meet his eyes with a steady glance, and said, quite calmly, “I would love to see it.”

They parted before the Houses, smiling; he with another short bow, and she, with a backward glance.