Sansûkh (Bagginshield & Gigolas)

Chapter Three

The days passed slowly. Two Dwarves who had died during the Battle of Five Armies (as they were now calling it) bowed to Thorin upon meeting him, and at least another six punched him square in the face. His grandfather patted his shoulder consolingly.

"You should have seen this place after Azanulbizar," was all he said.

He was shown to a work area in the smithies, and though the metals were the finest and purest he had ever worked with, he did not have much heart for craft. Mithril and silver made him melancholy, and the sight of gold filled him with a self-loathing so great he could taste it in his mouth. Only copper, steel or iron would he shape. Occasionally Thráin would work beside him, though they spoke but little.

Frerin did not come to the forge. His brother evidently sensed that Thorin needed time after what they had seen, and left him to his own devices. When he was not in the smithy Thorin spent time with his mother and nephews. Fíli and Kíli made him smile again, though it was strained. His mother comforted him as no other could, her fingers busy on her harp as she played old, peaceful songs from his childhood, untouched by any sorrow.

Eventually, however, Thorin could put it off no longer, and he made his way back to the Chamber of Sansûkhul to dive back amongst the drowned stars.

He went to his sister first. Dís still wept. He could not reach her through her mourning. He sat with her for long hours, watching her thin grey face grow ever thinner and greyer, and pleaded with her to eat. She did not.

He left, his heart heavy.

In Erebor, there was a funeral. Thorin watched as they laid the Arkenstone on his cold, dead breast, wrapped his parchment-white and stiffened fingers around the hilt of Orcrist, and sealed his body and those of his nephews in the tomb.

Bilbo cried bitterly the whole time.

As the white stone passed over Fíli's rent and rigid corpse, Thorin covered his mouth with his hands, pressing them so fiercely against his bloodless lips that he could feel the shape of his teeth beneath. With a savage curse he closed his eyes and fled that sight.

He opened them again to see a tavern in the halls of Ered Luin. There, unhappy and bemused, he watched his fiery young cousin get roaring drunk. Gimli sang and danced, drank and laughed, and sat slumped behind his tankard with his head in his hands. At one point he sent a powerful blow straight into the teeth of another Dwarrow for some slight made against his father's Company. The two eventually went staggering home arm in arm singing a bawdy marching song that the lad really should not know at his age. Compared to the hollow, wretched desolation of Erebor, Gimli seemed to burst with life, filled with youthful vigor and strength. His energy was contagious, and Thorin emerged from the starlit waters feeling somewhat lighter.

He returned to the forge and bent to his work with a renewed will. He finished a sword. It was his finest effort.

Then he steeled his heart and plunged into the pool again.

Dís did not weep any longer. She sat still as stone on the chair of Ered Luin, approving baggage train after baggage train and convoy after convoy that left for Erebor. She did not sense him. Her eyes were like chips of ice in her face.

Thorin begged her to hear him, but she was as unreachable as the moon.

Work was proceeding apace on the Mountain. Everywhere he looked Thorin could see the devastation caused by the dragon and the echoes of his folly. Even as the Kingdom slowly began to rise from mourning, Thorin could barely look at his living companions without seeing the light of the gold-sickness that had once danced in their eyes. No-one had been as thoroughly lost as Thorin himself, of course, but he had dragged them all behind him into his madness nevertheless.