Aglahad and the Dead City (In Tharbad: Volume Three)

18

We ate breakfast in silence. We all glanced at each other as we chewed on the last of the stale bread and dried beef, as though we were fed up of the sight of each other. I'd had an unsettling dream during the night and the memory of it still disturbed my waking thoughts.

Aglahad finished the last of his cold tea. "I dreamt that the skin-changer was here last night. I fear, though, that it was real. A Sindarin maid dressed in rags."

Lofar stopped chewing. "I too had that dream. But I saw a vampire."

"Like the one that stole the palantír?" Lóni said. "Please say it was a dream for I too thought the monster had come."

"Not a bat," said Lofar. "A fair elf-maid, pale of skin, dark of feature, with huge black wings." Now his voice wavered a little. "She whispered her name in my ear: Daeroval."

"Daeroval?" I muttered.

"You've heard the name?" said Finduilas.

"An ancient tale. Daeroval was one of the Vampires of Angband. She fled into the mountains at the end of the Elder Days." I left it at that, hoping that the others were too tired for storytelling.

"An ancient tale," the boy said. "Ancient but brief."

"There is nothing much to tell," I explained. "The Vampires of old were skin-changers. They also had certain – necromantic powers."

"How do you mean?"

I looked at Lofar. "They could raise the dead."

Later, as the others broke camp, I took an opportunity to draw close to Finduilas as she was rolling her blanket. "Did you have this dream?" I murmured.

She nodded. "She told me one of us would not walk out of Belegost."

* * *

We silently followed the remains of the road through the dark, green forest. As we walked, we collected suitable branches for torch-making. And I managed to find a patch of hwannor growing on the shady side of an elm tree.

Finding our way was simply a matter of tracing the scattered stones that were once part of this illustrious highway.

By mid-morning, we were once again high above the valley, keeping a good pace up the mountainside. The road here had hardly been touched by time. No moss grew at this height and it hadn't suffered from rock falls or the other upheavals that scarred much of the valley. A stout, stone wall, topped with a finely-carved coping, protected the outer edge of the road as it snaked up the mountainside. One last return levelled out and led us westwards into a glorious cloudless afternoon.

After two more leagues, we came to a junction where another road doubled back, climbing even further up the mountainside.

"It seems to lead up over the pass between those two peaks," Aglahad noted, pointing to the south.

It wasn't until I had looked about me for a few moments that I realised I had been here before.

"I remember this place," I said. "That is the way to Nogrod."

"When were you last here, Siri?" It always amused the boy to demonstrate how old I was.

"Oh, sixty-eight centuries, give or take."

He gave a little delighted chuckle.

"You have aged almost as well as this road," Finduilas said with a wry smile. Lofar gave one of his sonorous belly laughs.

"Belegost must be near then," Lóni said.

I nodded. "The road crosses the river at the foot of this slope."