The Last Satyr: The Two Paths Part 2
Despair

The boys were disappointed at their negative reception. Arnen Fang had reluctantly pointed out that is was the custom of dwarves to welcome foreigners, even if they be "wizards and magicians,” and assigned Gimli show them to their quarters.

They left the king's chambers and Gimli led them to the keep to climb its stairs, where they were given a room with a window. Graybeard said nothing to either Amien or young Joe and bade them be silent with his finger. Thus, they spoke not a word the whole way. Gimli Dol explained when and where the next meal would be served, and answered any questions they had about their quarters. Then Graybeard did the unusual and asked Gimli, “Do you have any questions of us?”

The dwarf officer had managed to ask nothing of his own curiosity in performing his duty, but to be invited to ask caught Gimli with the desire to learn more.

“Is there really an army outside Thera Pass?” he asked.

“Over two thousand strong,” said Graybeard.

“Two thousand strong!” exclaimed the dwarf.

But Graybeard simply closed the door on him with no further comment to then turn to face Amien. The man, watching him, observed. “Well! That certainly did not go well!”

“It could not have gone worse!” said young Joe bitterly.

Graybeard looked at them with such dissatisfaction as if they had both lost their minds.

“If you are an example of how humans think, then I cannot understand why you have been selected to inherit the earth,” he said. “Not gone well? Things have gone quite well! We thought the city destroyed. It not only isn't, but the walls are manned! We have friends here when we thought they were all dead! Tonight, we sleep in real beds! Tomorrow we eat real food! When we came here, we thought to replace a dead city of rotting corpses. Instead, we found a live one full of survivors! Is that not why we came—to replace allies?”

“We found no ally in Arnen Fang,” replied Amien.

“That is because Arnen Fang has found no ally in us.”

“If Arnen Fang is not our ally, why leave Marroh the dwarf with him?”

“To make him one. The two shall exchange news, of course, but Arnen Fang cannot resist asking questions of Marroh about our company. Marroh will give him honest answers, and Arnen Fang will trust him as one commoner to another. All alliances are based on trust. So we have no reason to complain, gentlemen. Rather, we have reason to celebrate!”

He opened his pack, always full of curious things, and extracted a wineskin as well as three pipes and a pouch of Shire tobacco. Uncorking the skin, he filled their goblets with a clear golden liquid.

“This isn’t drow wine,” noted Amien of its color.

“Oh! Heavens no! I wouldn’t drink the stuff if it were. This is mead!”

“Mead?” asked Amien. “How should you come upon mead down here?”

“I didn’t,” said the keeper. “I brought it with me. This is an elf skin from Lorien. Don’t worry about running out (Being an elf skin: it was bigger on the inside than on the outside.). There’s plenty for all!”

“How did the orc guards not discover this when they captured you?” asked young Joe.

“Suffice it to say that, when they looked in my pack, they didn’t see it.”

“Suffice it to say,” Amien explained to young Joe, “that it wasn’t there.”

Amien looked back now at Graybeard. “You put all your faith in Marroh and without a word of instruction to him?”

“Oh, no!” Graybeard said, shaking his head. “I put my faith in Gimli Dol and Amron.”

“Amron—the captain of the guard?” asked an amazed Amien. “Why him?”

“Because he’s part of the wall guard,” explained the old wizard keeper. “And guards talk to one another. What word do you suppose is spreading up and down the walls outside right now?”

“That there are over two thousand armed friends outside Thera Pass waiting to help them,” surmised Amien. “But isn’t that a bit of a stretch of the truth and that, in reality, there are two thousand desperately trapped outside Thera Pass waiting in need of their help?”

“I can’t help how rumors circulate,” offered Graybeard with an innocent shrug. “Or if the rumored number of those outside should grow from two thousand to ten thousand. Rumors do that, you know.”

“Yes, they do,” Amien smiled and nodded in interested agreement. “So you deliberately planted that thought in Gimli’s mind before he left this room?”

“A planted seed will not grow without water. I added no water. Marroh is the water, and he is good clean water and carries no instruction or false reports from me.”

“But you anticipate what he’ll say?”

“No. I anticipate what Arnen Fang will ask.”

Young Joe now showed how far his mind had followed their conversation.

“You shall have to teach me that trick,” he said.

“What trick?” asked Graybeard. “With Gimli?”

“The one in which you made everything in your pouch disappear.”

“Oh! That? You know,” said Graybeard, lighting his pipe. “I’ve never been able to teach anyone that trick yet.”

“I’ll bet the satyr could learn it,” said young Joe.

“He probably could,” admitted the keeper. “In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he can’t do it already!”

They all laughed, after which Amien watched him.

“You talk as if the boy is still alive,” he said. “That hardly seems possible, considering the mission you gave him.”

“That doesn’t seem likely, does it?” said Graybeard, giving his pipe a good draw to get it burning. “But he is clever, has fast hooves, and very high sense of self-preservation. The hope is slim that he is alive but I think he may surprise us.”

“He also has Leradien to protect him,” said Joe, reminding Amien. “And she is quite a force by herself!”

Graybeard just handed young Joe his mead and said nothing.

“You didn’t agree with young Joe,” noted Amien.

“Oh! Didn’t I?” said Graybeard as if roused from thought. “Sorry! But certainly, yes! She is quite a force.”

“And certainly she will protect him?” asked Amien.

“We can certainly hope so.”

“Though we don’t know so,” queried Amien suspiciously. “What is it you are not telling us?”

“Oh! Just the usual,” said Graybeard. “She could go mad or maybe something else.”

“What, something else?” young Joe asked.

Amien was also interested in the answer.

Graybeard chose his words carefully.

“Leradien has a Light Elf’s nature, but her demon’s blood has tainted it,” he said. “As a result, to us, it makes her seem a drow. A drow would want to keep the boy for herself so that she does not go mad from loneliness. But demon blood does not love—though the satyr can deceive her into thinking she can.”

“Meaning?” asked Amien.

“Meaning she’ll eventually discover she doesn’t love the boy.”

“Will she still protect him when she makes that discovery?”

“Both her drow half and her demon blood will be opposed to making any sacrifice for the boy.”

Amien eyed the ancient wizard as he set down his sword and shield to remove his pack with their accommodations. “There’s still more you’re not telling, isn’t there?” he asked, pulling off his boots.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because we have to ask you for more answers. You offer none of your own free will.”

“Perhaps it is because I don’t have the answers,” Graybeard said.

“Our captain’s advisor tells us he doesn’t have answers?” noted Amien. “I think not!”

Graybeard sighed, reaching for the wineskin at his side. With a practiced hand, he poured himself a generous serving of mead, the sweet aroma filling the air.

“Something terrible has happened to Ronthiel,” he admitted, his voice tinged with concern as he took a sip of the golden liquid. “As his keeper, I can feel it. His presence in me weakens. I can no longer feel him.”

Amien watched him closely, noting the slight tremor in Graybeard’s aged hand as he lifted the goblet to his lips. It was a rare display of vulnerability from the usually stoic wizard.

“What about the boy?” asked Amien, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.

Graybeard paused, setting down the goblet with a heavy admission. “I could never feel the boy,” he admitted, his gaze distant. “I am not his keeper.”

Amien’s brow deepened, his curiosity piqued by Graybeard’s cryptic words. But before he could press for more answers, a loud snore interrupted their conversation.

They turned to see young Joe slumped in his chair, fast asleep, the empty goblet of mead forgotten in his hand.

“Interesting,” said the man. “You celebrate with mead when the dwarves deny you aid and you know some evil befell Ronthiel of which you only now share. No wonder they call your kind magicians. You hide the truth with great skill. We are at our darkest moment and yet young Joe sleeps like a babe in confident ignorance.”

“It would do him no good to know the truth. Besides!” said Graybeard. “I prefer to keep a positive attitude.”

“Which tells me things must be even worse. What about Leradien? As her keeper, you must be able to feel her too.”

Graybeard nodded.

“I feel her,” he said, looking troubled. “I also feel her black blood. That is both unnatural and foreign to me and so quite useless to try and understand. All I know for sure is that something terrible has happened to Ronthiel. He has faded from my mind like a candle burning out.”

“So all has gone wrong?” replied Amien. “Our rearguard has failed to stop Lolth. We have failed in the advance. And when the Lady Shinayne attacks the orcs’ center with only two hundred Black Dragons, then they will also fail and die. It appears all our hopes lie on a possibly mad drider, a dwarf boy with no instructions, and a rumor.”