The luminous tower fascinated him, and he fought the desire that was on him to run up the gleaming road towards its gate. Gollum says not, and for once I agree with him.'įrodo passed his hand over his brow and wrenched his eyes away from the city on the hill.
'Not that way! No, not that way!' whispered Gollum, but the breath between his teeth seemed to tear the heavy stillness like a whistle, and he cowered to the ground in terror.
Sam caught his master in his arms, as he stumbled and almost fell, right on the threshold of the bridge. Then suddenly, as if some force were at work other than his own will, he began to hurry, tottering forward, his groping hands held out, his head lolling from side to side. Frodo felt his senses reeling and his mind darkening. The water flowing beneath was silent, and it steamed, but the vapour that rose from it, curling and twisting about the bridge, was deadly cold. Figures stood there at its head, carven with cunning in forms human and bestial, but all corrupt and loathsome. Luminous these were too, beautiful and yet horrible of shape, like the demented forms in an uneasy dream and they gave forth a faint sickening charnel-smell an odour of rottenness filled the air. Wide flats lay on either bank, shadowy meads filled with pale white flowers. Here the road, gleaming faintly, passed over the stream in the midst of the valley, and went on, winding deviously up towards the city's gate: a black mouth opening in the outer circle of the northward walls. Every step was reluctant, and time seemed to slow its pace, so that between the raising of a foot and the setting of it down minutes of loathing passed. Again he pulled at their cloaks urgently, but he spoke no word. For a moment the three companions stood there, shrinking, staring up with unwilling eyes.
#FRODO KEEP YOUR SECRETS PARROT WINDOWS#
In the walls and tower windows showed, like countless black holes looking inward into emptiness but the topmost course of the tower revolved slowly, first one way and then another, a huge ghostly head leering into the night. Paler indeed than the moon ailing in some slow eclipse was the light of it now, wavering and blowing like a noisome exhalation of decay, a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing. Not the imprisoned moonlight welling through the marble walls of Minas Ithil long ago, Tower of the Moon, fair and radiant in the hollow of the hills. All was dark about it, earth and sky, but it was lit with light. Upon the further side, some way within the valley's arms high on a rocky seat upon the black knees of the Ephel Duath, stood the walls and tower of Minas Morgul. He cowered against the stony bank.Ī long-tilted valley, a deep gulf of shadow, ran back far into the mountains. Now, feeling the way become steep before his feet, he looked wearily up and then he saw it, even as Gollum had said that he would: the city of the Ringwraiths. As soon as the great Cross-roads had been passed, the weight of it, almost forgotten in Ithilien, had begun to grow once more. Frodo's head was bowed his burden was dragging him down again. Crawling under its shadow the road went on, and rounding it sprang east again and began to climb steeply.įrodo and Sam were plodding along with heavy hearts, no longer able to care greatly about their peril. Black and forbidding it loomed above them, darker than the dark sky behind. This road, too, ran straight for a while, but soon it began to bend away southwards, until it came right under the great shoulder of rock that they had seen from the distance.
They left the ring of trees and crept along the road towards the mountains. Reluctantly Frodo turned his back on the West and followed as his guide led him, out into the darkness of the East.
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