A Peculiar Fellowship

Part Five

The trek through Moria proved dark and difficult from the very beginning. The fellowship, led only by the light of Gandalf's staff, stumbled along through the blackness of the abandoned mine for hours. Their feet found crumbling rock and overturned stones far too many times to count.

Eventually, the path narrowed, pressing close into the rock as it became a cliffside road. Laradel heard Gandalf murmur softly up ahead.

"The wealth of Moria was not in gold or jewels... but mithril." He shone the light of his staff over the ledge, and the others all peered over into the great cavern.

Laradel took in a breath of awe. When she was young, Thorin had told her of the beautiful mines of mithril, but she had never dreamed she would see one for herself. The depths of the cavern seemed to glow from within, as if it were a living beast and the mithril its heart.

Merry leaned a bit too far for Laradel's liking, and reached out to pull him back at just the same moment as Pippin.

"Careful now, Master Meriadoc," she whispered. "My father always taught me never to lose your head in a mine... Now is not the time to be distracted by fanciful whims."

Up ahead, Gandalf continued on.

"Bilbo had a shirt of mithril rings that Thorin gave him," he said.

"Oh, that was a kingly gift!" Gimli exclaimed.

"Indeed," Laradel said softly. "For even in the thrall of a Dragon Sickness, the bond of my father's friendship with Bilbo was true indeed. True enough for him to part with such a treasure in the midst of the wicked spell..."

A small touch at her elbow drew her from her thoughts. Dear Pippin, he offered her an encouraging smile. Laradel gently patted his shoulder, then moved he and Merry in front of her, so that she would be able to rush to their aid, should either of them lose their footing.

"Yes," Gandalf said thoughtfully. "I never told him... but its worth was greater than the value of the Shire!"

Laradel gave a small chuckle at that. "Ah, Bilbo... Back then, he'd have fainted away at the very notion... Now, I daresay he would find it quite amusing in his old age."

"I do think you're quite right," Gandalf mused.

The group fell silent once more after they passed out of the mithril veins. A steep set of stairs awaited them, then... three different doorways. The fellowship all looked to Gandalf to lead them on, but he did not move forward.

"I have no memory of this place," he whispered. Then, he turned to the others. "Let us rest here awhile... as I collect my thoughts..." With that, he turned and sat upon a rock facing the doorways, deep in thought.

Boromir and Aragorn were swift to start a fire, as the chill of the mines was biting with no great furnaces to warm the place as there ought to be, were it still in operation.

"Could you not guide us past here, Princess?" Boromir asked Laradel as they sat by the flames.

She paused at his chosen form of address. It had caught her off guard.

"That was not a title I ever claimed for myself, My Lord Boromir..." she murmured. "Thorin raised me as his own, that is true, but I was never intended to take the throne. I was not his true heir, you see. Fili..." Laradel felt that old familiar pain arising. "My cousin... my brother... But he was the first to fall that day." Shaking away the ghosts of the past, she returned to the question asked of her. "No, I cannot lead us. I never did visit Moria, even after it was reclaimed. My life was consumed with other things... such as learning the ways of my blood kin at Rivendell."