CHAPTER SEVEN: VISIONS TERRIBLE--AND BEAUTIFUL

Where to look? What do I want to see?

Faramir stared at the palantir comfortably positioned in its cradle, waiting. An engraved brass band half an inch thick encircled the indentation where the stone was seated. Slanting letters indicating the four directions were applied in gold leaf in their proper positions around the cradle, providing a compass for the viewer.

North! North east!, Faramir thought. I want to see what transpires in Rohan, in Meduseld.

He decided to experiment with the stone by first looking in on Eowyn, daughter of Eomund. And why not? Meduseld was only 150 miles away. It was wise to start small when dealing with strange devices.

The table that held the stone was narrow, slightly below his elbows. Faramir drew himself up, set his hands on the table's edge, on either side of the Anor stone. He leaned into the object, saw nothing but its unfathomable blackness.

How does one start up a palantir? Perhaps the proper commands were in the annals of some Steward from 500 years ago? It could take months to uncover that information, and he was devoid of patience. In Faramir's youth, Mithrandir had given him concentration exercises to hone his far sight skills. In rare cases had he experienced instances of far sight while awake. The skills were more effective when applied before going to sleep. In his dreams the visions of happenings far away would come. Surely his intense concentration skills seemed the likely tools for unlocking the palantir.*

Faramir closed his eyes and concentrated on the word "North." Then he opened his eyes, swept them over the palantir's opaque surface, and then fixed them on the engraved N on the table above the stone.

Thump!

He shuddered but tried mightily to maintain his concentration.

A second thump, followed by the terrified scream of a small animal, and Faramir wrenched his head away from the stone. About ten feet away, a white bundle of discarded sheets suddenly lifted from the floor like a ghostly apparition raising its head. The unearthly bundle remained in its pose, a weird, distended shape. Faramir's heart pounded against his chest. A small bump appeared where the edge of a sheet swept across the newly polished floor. A tiny mouse scurried out from beneath the hem of the crinkled white fabric.

Faramir let out his breath in a whistle. "Cirri?" he said. The sheets rustled energetically before the cat's black face appeared in high contrast to the surrounding pale fabric. Cirri chirped slightly and darted back under the pile of sheets.

Cat's only doing what I brought him up here for, Faramir reminded himself. He returned to the palantir.

Shock! Where once was only impenetrable blackness, the palantir's surface now was marked by arcing lines, extending from a single point in the center of the stone. Faramir's stomach contracted. North, show me North! his mind demanded, not at all sure that the powers behind the stone could understand. At first, there was no reaction. Then a fresh blue sky and puffy pink clouds appeared above the arcing lines.

Success!

Or was it? Faramir pulled his face from the palantir to look up at the ceiling. Sure enough, he saw the Observatory windows spoking from the dome apex. And outside the windows was a perfect mid-afternoon November sky. The image in the palantir was merely a reflection of the ceiling.

Dismayed but not yet defeated, Faramir returned to the palantir. Its surface was unchanged.

"North. Show me North," he spoke to the stone this time.

Was he mistaken or had the letter N on the table started to glow?

Clouds floated across the stone's surface. Then the tops of trees. Trees! You couldn't see trees in the windows of the Observatory ceiling. Trees floated into and out of the palantir's surface, faster and faster. They separated to show the tops of snow-covered mountains: the Ered Nimrais on Gondor's northern boundary. He recognized them from travels early in his rangering career. Only once had he crossed them into Rohan.

The surface of the palantir swept magnificently over the edge of the mountains from a height that seemed 200 feet in the air. This must be what a bird sees, Faramir thought. A giddy sense of elation and dizziness took over his mind. The palantir visions allowed his senses to fly like a hawk over rolling grasslands, the plains of Rohan, marked here and there by rocky buttes The pace was agonizingly fast--faster than any horse he had ever ridden.

Meduseld? Where is Meduseld? Could the palantir actually hear his mind or did it just wander willy nilly?

Like an eagle's eye, the palantir's surface honed in on the largest butte so far. As the butte approached, Faramir noted a range of long, low buildings with roofs of golden thatch scattered here and there on the steep, rocky hill. A pebbled road wound up the sides. The palantir's surface followed the road, traveled up it, and slowed down to the speed of a horse's easy canter.

Then the stone showed him a horse--a heavily muscled buckskin horse standing in a corral. The animal's unusually colored tan coat shown in the afternoon sun. A woman's hand wove a strand of beads into its black mane. Faramir gasped as the stone's surface moved from the hand to the woman's arm to her face--the beloved face of Eowyn. Every muscle in his body suddenly quivered. He had not seen her in nearly sixth months. In his memories she was beautiful. And now, the vision in the stone confirmed it, as he watched her finish currying her horse. Somewhere in his present existence, Faramir was vaguely aware of the cat rubbing against his leg and curling up against his foot.

She was the fairest among all the spectacular visions he had seen thus far. He watched in delight while Eowyn mounted the horse and rode down the hill. She can ride again, he thought. Her broken arm and shoulder no longer hinders her. As if in reaction to his thoughts, the stone's surface closed in on her face, mouth expressionless but eyes afire.

"'Wyn, my dearest 'Wyn," he blurted out. "If only you could hear me." Her head jerked. For a moment, she stared straight ahead as if she had heard his words but could not see the speaker. Her hair whipped across her face.

Then, just like that, her face dissolved into blackness, finally replaced by the image of moving earth. Faramir exclaimed out loud. He gripped the edge of the table. He was losing control of the palantir. It was tugging away from him, obeying its own will, showing him unfamiliar landscapes. Flying across the stone's surface were vast forests, huts of primitive farmers, ruins of long-forgotten Elvish civilizations, and great granite mountains that dwarfed the familiar Mindolluin.

"What is this? Where am I," Faramir asked the stone, vaguely aware that the N on the table glittered brightly in response. The palantir's pace slowed noticeably to reveal a beautiful but barren expanse of deep valleys and high Tors topped with jagged standing stones.

"Who are you?"

"What?" Faramir's brain automatically responded before adequately realizing that he was being addressed.

"Who are you?" a low but compelling voice queried in his brain. The stone's surface changed to bleak ruins. For a fleeting second, Faramir felt eyes seeking his mind, grave and powerful eyes, strange but, oddly, he did not sense that they were evil.

Nevertheless, he was terrified. Unwilling to lose control to this palantir usurper, Faramir's mind demanded, "Who are you!"

Sharp teeth pierced through his leggings to scrape his calf.

He wrenched his eyes away from the stone and raised his arm reflexively to strike--but just as quickly stayed his motion. Cirri's gold eyes blinked at him. With casual innocence, the cat rubbed against the leg he had just nipped, scampered to the Observatory doors, and scratched at the crack between them.

Only then did Faramir realize that the hairs on his neck and shoulders were sticky with sweat. His legs trembled with the same fatigue that he had experienced after a squirmish in the wilds of Ithilien. He grasped both ends of the table and hovered over the stone. Its surface was opaque, unreadable. He could not in his mind hear the voice that demanded his identity nor feel the intense eyes that tried to assess him.

On the other hand, he certainly heard Cirri's insistent meows. Faramir remembered guiltily that he not fed the cat today, hoping that hunger might inspire the tyke to catch mice for his meal. Unfortunately, this tactic once again did not work.

"Okay, Cirri," Faramir sighed and swept the overgrown kitten into his arms. "Time for us both to eat. And then, I must confront whoever wrenched control of the palantir from me."

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Descending ten flights of stairs with a young nine pound cat clinging to his shoulders was slow going. Thus, Faramir had ample time to contemplate his experience and work up a hazy plan of action before he reached the ground floor of the Tower. He must find out who had challenged him in the Anor stone, though the thought of such a confrontation terrified him. Nonetheless, the challenge must happen tonight. The November sun was already low in the sky. His curiosity--and his dread--would not hold for another day. And perhaps, the palantir was best viewed by night. Evening was when Denethor chose to use it, which Faramir learned long ago from eavesdropping on his father as a youth. **

When he arrived in his offices, Faramir ordered Marod to bring Bes back to his townhouse. Then the demoted guardsman was tasked to fetch Faramir's leather armor and old ranger cloak. Tonight, Faramir determined to return to the Tower and seek out the one who had challenged him. If the Anor stone cooperated, he would face the challenger incognito. His cloak was an excellent disguise, as it had always been in the wild. He would not be alone. Marod would wait outside the Observatory doors, just in case...

Just in case what? In case the challenger is some evil minion of the Dark Lord who somehow survived the destruction of the Ring? In case the palantir was now marred by Sauron to show only twisted images designed to snap the mind of whoever stared into it? In case the stone was intrinsically evil, Dark Lord notwithstanding, as some fables had it?

Alone in his offices, Faramir fed the cat and slowly ate a late lunch though it was nearly dinner time. The issue of the palantir was terrible to contemplate. Still, he could not get thoughts of the stone out of his mind. Clearly whoever had challenged him was one of great intellect and power. How could the challenger have gotten hold of another palantir?

Faramir hunched over his desk , straining to remember the lore of the seven stones brought 3000 years ago from sinking Numenor. The great stone of Osgiliath was destroyed centuries ago. The stone of fair Minas Ithil was confiscated by Angmar and later used by the Dark Lord to ruin the mind of Denethor, son of Ecthelion. Of the three stones held in the North, two were lost, it was said, on a king's sinking ship on the Icebay of Forochel. A third was still said to exist, held by the elves in a land that the educated in Gondor deemed naught but the stuff of legends.

So that left two stones that certainly existed, the Anor stone upstairs and the Orthanc stone. Faramir shuddered at the thought of the Orthanc stone, which the wizard Saruman had used for years while the Dark Lord corrupted his mind. That stone journeyed to Minas Tirith with
Mithrandir before the seige. After the Coronation, Aragorn told Faramir of his intention to surrender the Orthanc stone to Eomer King for safe-keeping until Aragorn returned from the far North.

Had some unspeakable adversary stolen the Orthanc stone from the Mark? Or could the challenger perhaps be a man of Rohan charged with care of their stone. Perhaps the challenger was, indeed, his future brother-in-law? He recalled how the strange grey eyes did not seem evil, even though they had tried to probe his mind. Fortunately, Cirri had interrupted Faramir's mental wresting before the challenger had gotten very far.

In the late afternoon, Marod arrived with the ranger garments. With the guardsman's assistance, Faramir donned his now well-oiled but nevertheless well worn leather breastplate and vambraces for the first time in months. Could his clothing mislead the fearsome spectre, which might possibly be just a figment of his over-worked imagination.

Faramir and Marod began their long ascent up the twisting staircase. No sooner had they climbed one flight than they were assailed by a chorus of meows. Cirri stepped out from shadows cast by the late afternoon sun through the slatted windows. Faramir sighed, "Take him up. If we leave him, he'll only try to follow us. There are too many steps to the Observatory for a small animal to manage."

When they finally arrived at the Observatory level, daylight was clearly fading. Marod withdrew several lanterns from the utility closet. Faramir took one and unlocked the Observatory door.

"Stay here unless I call for you," he told the guardsman. "If you hear anything untoward, come in right away. If I don't come out before the sound of the midnight chimes," Faramir gulped, "come for me."

"My Lord Steward, are sure you will be alright?" Marod said.

"I don't know," Faramir admitted. He opened the door, paused for a moment as Cirri bolted into the twilit Observatory, and then closed the door behind himself. The now exposed statues in the Observatory hovered in the dimming light, a frozen audience awaiting Faramir's attempts to do the deed that petrified him. The pedestal that bore the palantir waited in the center of the Observatory.

Faramir set his lantern on a bookcase some distance from the palantir to keep down reflections on the stone's surface. He drew up a chair beside the pedestal and sat down. Then he withdrew a indigo scarf, which he wrapped over his nose and mouth, ranger fashion. Finally, he pulled the hood of his cloak low over his face.

Concentrating with all the ferociousness that Mithrandir had taught him, Faramir's mind called out to the stone, North. Take me North.

A grey cloud formed in the center of the palantir. It whirred vaguely, trying to coalesce into a solid substance.

Impatient, Faramir called out to it, "Show me North!"

Just like that, the engraved N glowed. In his mind, Faramir called out in his mind to the challenger, You who have spoken to me, show yourself. I do not fear you. Declare your intentions. Do you mean me ill or are you friend?

The cloud stopped spinning though it seemed to Faramir that an hour must have passed before its image was clear. The image in the surface of the palantir moved slowly, showing the wreckage of ancient buildings and deep pits that spoke of recent excavation. The crumbling granite blocks glowed wet with recent rain. The continuing movement revealed the reason why Faramir could see into the stone with such detail, even though it was clearly past sunset in these unknown lands. Two strategically placed lanterns, quite similar to the lantern in the Observatory, were placed on the walls of the new construction.

Then the images in the palantir revealed a solitary male, human or possibly elf kind, huddled over a crumbling table. He was clad in dark colored leathers bearing no visible standard. The hood of his cloak hid his face as he hovered over an object on the table.

Who are you! the stranger's silent probes demanded. Where have you found the stone that you use? What right have you to use it.

One who has the right, Faramir's mind countered. He leaned back into the chair and parted the edges of his cloak, to reveal the insignia of the Stewards of Gondor on his breastplate. He sent his most powerful thoughts out, I am the heir of the House of...

Oooof.

Cirri had jumped into his lap, destroying Faramir's concentration and forcing the exclamation out of his startled mouth. The cat stared at him and then turned. Leaving his hind legs in Faramir's lap, the cat set his forelegs right on top of the palantir. He stretched his gangly feline body over the palantir, nonchalantly showed Faramir his posterior, and commenced to rub first one ear and then the other against the stone's surface.

"Faramir?" a voice seemed to emanate from the stone. Cirri emitted thunderous purrs as he vigorously marked the stone with his chin. "Faramir...your cat?"

That voice was coming, not from the stone, but from the pedestal. Unlike the formidible voice in Faramir's mind, this audible voice was friendly and unmistakable.

"Moggy, you are impossible," Faramir groaned and removed the cat, who had just enthusiastically claimed the palantir as part of his territory. "My liege?" he queried hopefully.

Leaning into the stone, he now saw that King Elessar had removed his hood and smiled tentatively. Faramir had not laid eyes on his sovereign and friend in six months. His heart swelled just to see Aragorn alive and well and unimagineable miles away.

Swiftly Faramir lifted his hood and tore the scarf from his lips. "I found it," he blurted out. "This is the Anor stone, the stone of the Stewards that we thought destroyed when my father burned. He gave it to Bes, head of the Observatory night staff, who led me to it just this morning. It's quite a story. I will send you the full details."

"What wonders still survive in Middle Earth," Aragorn remarked, nodding his head. "I had thought the powers of the stones would fade after the destruction of the Ring. Yet here we speak over great distances, like the kings and stewards of old."

"For a moment, I thought you were the elven king of old that the stories tell of," Faramir said, "the one who commands the greatest of the stones from some remarkable stronghold in the far North West. I should have realized that you might use the Orthanc stone occasionally to survey the lands of Eriador and Gondor."

"The Orthanc stone is in Rohan under Eomer's care." Aragorn swept one arm outward. "Here are the ruins of Annuminas, the ancient citadel of Anor. We were digging the foundations of the new capital just yesterday, when this table was uncovered. Its drawer contained the most unexpected wonder". He held out the palantir, "This is the stone of Annuminas."

Faramir spoke hardly above a whisper, "The histories here in Gondor report that this stone was drowned."

"Not drowned," Aragorn said. "Removed from Fornost and buried here by the last king of Arthedain on his flight from the great battle to Forodwaith. We found a stone tablet in the drawer with the palantir, explaining its history. Arvedui's rescuers would not have known this. They assumed that he had both the Amun Sul and Annuminas stones with him when his ship sank. I do not fault the historians in Gondor for not having the entire facts of this story."

"What wonders indeed," Faramir grinned. "How could you tell that someone was using another palantir?"

"I'm not sure," said Aragorn. "I felt a strange urge to look upon it. I didn't use it yesterday when it was uncovered. Yet the thought of the palantir weighed on my mine. I wonder if that is the way the kings communicated over distances with their stewards? "

"They summoned each other in thought?" Faramir replied. "That seems almost Elvish."

"So it does," Aragorn agreed. "The most powerful Elves can summon each other and communicate in thought over vast miles. The palantiri were Elves' gifts to the Numenoreans, so that the lords of the humans could replicate Elven far sight through use of the stones."

Relaxing now, Faramir loosed the clasp of his cloak. Once again, Cirri was in his lap, this time curling up in a contented ball. "We should set up a regular time to communicate," Faramir spoke enthusiastically. "Perhaps once a week at dusk I can give you a report of conditions in Gondor."

"Excellent!" Aragorn laughed. "And I can give you whatever directives that you need to carry out activities in the South. You might not have expected to become Steward, but you already well serve Gondor and myself. Now, how do we let each other know when we need to speak, in case summoning each other in thought doesn't work as we expect?"

For a moment, Faramir was stumped. "I don't really know." Then the answer quickly dawned on him, "The Annals. I'm sure it is written in the Annals of the Stewards of Gondor. They've been hidden here in the Observatory for hundreds of years with no one to read them, except the odd Steward and his Warden of the Palantir."

He could see Aragorn's smiling image in the stone. Faramir's muscles relaxed with a sense of deep relief.

"I received a detailed report from Eomer last week," he heard Aragorn say. "Rohan is rebuilding nicely. He is well and so is Eowyn, though he writes that she misses you a might too much."

Faramir grinned and drew his hand over Cirri's velvety coat. The palantir of Anor sat silent in its fur coverlet. It was not an evil device, but a worthy inheritance from his father, after all.

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AUTHOR'S NOTES

* Faramir and Far sight

Faramir's far sight abilities are fodder for much speculation among fan fiction writers. I interpret far sight as the ability to see what's going on at far distances. It's an ability akin to elven telekinetic powers, such as Galadriel's mirror and Elrond's deep sense of "thought." With such
powers, the wielders of the Elven Rings kept watch on Middle Earth during the Third Age.

In my stories, Faramir's far sight is a small scale version of the the elven capability. Gandalf has instructed Faramir on how to use the sight. But Faramir can't really control far sight well. Instead, he gets occasional flashes of insight while awake or troubling visions in his dreams. So he becomes a perfect conduit for others using farsight (Gandalf, Elrond, and especially Galadriel) to pick up on what's happening in Gondor. I deal with Faramir's skill with farsight--or lack thereof--in several chapters of my novel-length story "Avoidance," archived here on Stories of Arda.

** Faramir eavesdropping on Denethor while Dad looked into the palantir?

Only in my 'verse, of course, so you may consider it AU. The scene is in my story "13th Birthday," also archived on this site.

*** The palantir of Annuminas still exists?

Only in my 'verse.