Dreamslayer

My lord is often troubled with bad dreams, and always was from childhood: some reflect the evils he has faced himself, some are carried in his blood from days of old.

I was never so troubled. In Rohan, what I always feared was waking into the shrinking, suffocating darkness, listening for the real or imagined evils that came padding soft-footed up to my door. In Ithilien, in our airy chamber with my lord beside me, such night-wakenings are rare, but very sweet.  Sleep never had any terrors for me – until now.

Now I dream the same dream, night after night, and awake and lie for hours, afraid to go to sleep again. I dream that I stand once again before the Witch-King, and he casts back his hood as he did when I stood before him in reality, but he is no longer faceless. Now, beneath the mocking crown, he shows me a face.

It is my own face, but grown old, old, so old that no man could ever dream of calling it beautiful. And I shrink back, and awake weeping.

Now who will slay this wraith for me?