The Lost Road and Other Writings. Christopher Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ passed under an arch of shining leaves, and walked swiftly down rock-hewn steps to the white beach. Elendil looked about him, but he could not see his son. A picture rose in his mind of Herendil’s white body, strong and beautiful upon the threshold of early manhood, cleaving the water, or lying on the sand glistening in the sun. But Herendil was not there, and the beach seemed oddly empty.

      Elendil stood and surveyed the cove and its rocky walls once more; and as he looked, his eyes rose by chance to his own house among trees and flowers upon the slopes above the shore, white and golden, shining in the sunset. And he stopped and gazed: for suddenly the house stood there, as a thing at once real and visionary, as a thing in some other time and story, beautiful, beloved, but strange, awaking desire as if it were part of a mystery that was still hidden. He could not interpret the feeling.

      He sighed. ‘I suppose it is the threat of war that maketh me look upon fair things with such disquiet,’ he thought. ‘The shadow of fear is between us and the sun, and all things look as if they were already lost. Yet they are strangely beautiful thus seen. I do not know. I wonder. A Númenórë! I hope the trees will blossom on your hills in years to come as they do now; and your towers will stand white in the Moon and yellow in the Sun. I wish it were not hope, but assurance – that assurance we used to have before the Shadow. But where is Herendil? I must see him and speak to him, more clearly than we have spoken yet. Ere it is too late. The time is getting short.’

      ‘Herendil!’ he called, and his voice echoed along the hollow shore above the soft sound of the light-falling waves. ‘Herendil!’

      And even as he called, he seemed to hear his own voice, and to mark that it was strong and curiously melodious. ‘Herendil!’ he called again.

      At length there was an answering call: a young voice very clear came from some distance away – like a bell out of a deep cave.

       ‘Man-ie, atto, man-ie?’

      For a brief moment it seemed to Elendil that the words were strange. ‘Man-ie, atto? What is it, father?’ Then the feeling passed.

      ‘Where art thou?’

      ‘Here!’

      ‘I cannot see thee.’

      ‘I am upon the wall, looking down on thee.’

      Elendil looked up; and then swiftly climbed another flight of stone steps at the northern end of the cove. He came out upon a flat space smoothed and levelled on the top of the projecting spur of rock. Here there was room to lie in the sun, or sit upon a wide stone seat with its back against the cliff, down the face of which there fell a cascade of trailing stems rich with garlands of blue and silver flowers. Flat upon the stone with his chin in his hands lay a youth. He was looking out to sea, and did not turn his head as his father came up and sat down on the seat.

      ‘Of what art thou dreaming, Herendil, that thy ears hear not?’

      ‘I am thinking; I am not dreaming. I am a child no longer.’

      ‘I know thou art not,’ said Elendil; ‘and for that reason I wished to find thee and speak with thee. Thou art so often out and away, and so seldom at home these days.’

      He looked down on the white body before him. It was dear to him, and beautiful. Herendil was naked, for he had been diving from the high point, being a daring diver and proud of his skill. It seemed suddenly to Elendil that the lad had grown over night, almost out of knowledge.

      ‘How thou dost grow!’ he said. ‘Thou hast the makings of a mighty man, and have nearly finished the making.’

      ‘Why dost thou mock me?’ said the boy. ‘Thou knowest I am dark, and smaller than most others of my year. And that is a trouble to me. I stand barely to the shoulder of Almáriel, whose hair is of shining gold, and she is a maiden, and of my own age. We hold that we are of the blood of kings, but I tell thee thy friends’ sons make a jest of me and call me Terendul⁴ – slender and dark; and they say I have Eressëan blood, or that I am half-Noldo. And that is not said with love in these days. It is but a step from being called half a Gnome to being called Godfearing; and that is dangerous.’⁵

Elendil sighed. ‘Then it must have become perilous to be the son of him that is named elendil; for that leads to Valandil, God-friend, who was thy father’s father.’⁶

      There was a silence. At length Herendil spoke again: ‘Of whom dost thou say that our king, Tarkalion, is descended?’

      ‘From Eärendel the mariner, son of Tuor the mighty who was lost in these seas.’⁷

      ‘Why then may not the king do as Eärendel from whom he is come? They say that he should follow him, and complete his work.’

      ‘What dost thou think that they mean? Whither should he go, and fulfil what work?’

      ‘Thou knowest. Did not Eärendel voyage to the uttermost West, and set foot in that land that is forbidden to us? He doth not die, or so songs say.’

      ‘What callest thou Death? He did not return. He forsook all whom he loved, ere he stepped on that shore.⁸ He saved his kindred by losing them.’

      ‘Were the Gods wroth with him?’

      ‘Who knoweth? For he came not back. But he did not dare that deed to serve Melko, but to defeat him; to free men from Melko, not from the Lords; to win us the earth, not the land of the Lords. And the Lords heard his prayer and arose against Melko. And the earth is ours.’

‘They say now that the tale was altered by the Eressëans, who are slaves of the Lords: that in truth Eärendel was an adventurer, and showed us the way, and that the Lords took him captive for that reason; and his work is perforce unfinished. Therefore the son of Eärendel, our king, should complete it. They wish to do what has been long left undone.’

      ‘What is that?’

‘Thou knowest: to set foot in the far West, and not withdraw it. To conquer new realms for our race, and ease the pressure of this peopled island, where every road is trodden hard, and every tree and grass-blade counted. To be free, and masters of the world. To escape the shadow of sameness, and of ending. We would make our king Lord of the West: Nuaran Númenóren.⁹ Death comes here slow and seldom; yet it cometh. The land is only a cage gilded to look like Paradise.’

      ‘Yea, so I have heard others say,’ said Elendil. ‘But what knowest thou of Paradise? Behold, our wandering words have come unguided to the point of my purpose. But I am grieved to find thy mood is of this sort, though I feared it might be so. Thou art my only son, and my dearest child, and I would have us at one in all our choices. But choose we must, thou as well as I – for at thy last birthday thou became subject to arms and the king’s service. We must choose between Sauron and the Lords (or One Higher). Thou knowest, I suppose, that all hearts in Númenor are not drawn to Sauron?’

      ‘Yes. There are fools even in Númenor,’ said Herendil, in a lowered voice. ‘But why speak of such things in this open place? Do you wish to bring evil on me?’

      ‘I bring no evil,’ said Elendil. ‘That is СКАЧАТЬ