Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth by J.R.R. Tolkien

Author:J.R.R. Tolkien
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fantasy
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Published: 2009-05-04T15:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

THE THIRD AGE

I

THE DISASTER OF THE GLADDEN FIELDS

After the fall of Sauron, Isildur, the son and heir of Elendil, returned to Gondor. There he assumed the Elendilmir 1 as King of Arnor, and proclaimed his sovereign lordship over all the Dúnedain in the North and in the South; for he was a man of great pride and vigour. He remained for a year in Gondor, restoring its order and defining its bounds; 2 but the greater part of the army of Arnor returned to Eriador by the Númenórean road from the Fords of Isen to Fornost.

When he at last felt free to return to his own realm he was in haste, and he wished to go first to Imladris; for he had left his wife and youngest son there, 3 and he had moreover an urgent need for the counsel of Elrond. He therefore determined to make his way north from Osgiliath up the Vales of Anduin to Cirith Forn en Andrath, the high-climbing pass of the North, that led down to Imladris. 4 He knew the land well, for he had journeyed there often before the War of the Alliance, and had marched that way to the war with men of eastern Arnor in the company of Elrond. 5

It was a long journey, but the only other way, west and then north to the road-meeting in Arnor, and then east to Imladris, was far longer. 6 As swift, maybe, for mounted men, but he had no horses fit for riding; 7 safer, maybe, in former days, but Sauron was vanquished, and the people of the Vales had been his allies in victory. He had no fear, save for weather and weariness, but these men must endure whom need sends far abroad in Middle-earth. 8

So it was, as is told in the legends of later days, that the second year of the Third Age was waning when Isildur set forth from Osgiliath early in Ivanneth, 9 expecting to reach Imladris in forty days, by mid-Narbeleth, ere winter drew nigh in the North. At the Eastgate of the Bridge on a bright morning Meneldil 10 bade him farewell. ‘Go now with good speed, and may the Sun of your setting out not cease to shine on your road!’

With Isildur went his three sons, Elendur, Aratan, and Ciryon, 11 and his Guard of two hundred knights and soldiers, stern men of Arnor and war-hardened. Of their journey nothing is told until they had passed over the Dagorlad, and on northward into the wide and empty lands south of Green-wood the Great. On the twentieth day, as they came within far sight of the forest crowning the highlands before them with a distant gleam of the red and gold of Ivanneth, the sky became overcast and a dark wind came up from the Sea of Rhûn laden with rain. The rain lasted for four days; so when they came to the entrance to the Vales, between Lórien and Amon Lanc, 12 Isildur

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