With Hope and Without Hope

Chapter 34: The Seeing Stone

Aragorn shook his head as the images before him blurred and faded. He looked down beside him: a stone floor. About him all was dark. As his eyes focused, a shape stood out, grey against black, not far from him. Saruman was speaking, but Aragorn could not hear the words.

He panicked for a moment. Where were the bodies? Elves dear to him since childhood had been slaughtered in a one-sided battle unbalanced by a massive force from Mordor. He had watched his brothers fall, then his foster father. When Arwen had been pierced by arrows he thought they had pierced his own heart. All had lain quiet in death. He had been helpless to offer aid, but at the very least he could see they had proper burials.

No... no, that was not right. Something about this was not right. He looked at Saruman again. Saruman. Isengard. The palantír. He had witnessed the battle through the Seeing Stone, which vouched for the truth of the vision...

But something was not right. His instincts raised an alarm, but they had betrayed him in recent days, and he was reluctant to heed them again. More likely, Aragorn's weary mind was working to create an answer that could deny what he had seen. But the palantír could not lie.

Saruman was certainly powerful enough, however, to manipulate the palantír, distort the truth somehow. Was the latest slaughter simple truth or truth distorted into a nightmare? Neither Saruman nor Sauron could use the palantír to create images as they wished. At least, he knew not the magic that could do so. Saruman was learned in old lore, though, and may have discovered old power that Men had forgotten. Perhaps he had learned to twist reality into that which he desired. Had Saruman learned to create images with no truth in them?

As Aragorn struggled to separate truth from tale, what was to come mixed with what was, Saruman's fantasies mixed with reality, and he was left with a desolate world. In his growing weakness, the world of the palantír lingered longer. He yearned to sleep. At least then he would not know the reality he could not escape.

Escape-a hope he had abandoned when Saruman took him into his keeping. As he had expected, he was rarely left alone. His only plans awaited opportunities that never arose. To make things worse, he had not eaten since the day they'd arrived, whenever that was, and his body grew weak.

As his mind cleared, Saruman's slippery tones crept into his consciousness, and he remembered to steel himself against another onslaught-of what? He only knew he must keep his mind occupied, so as to not hear the seductive voice, but in the end, it was a waste of precious energy.

"You do know that it need not be as you have seen it, do you not? The destruction of so many lands is but one possibility for the future. There is time yet to spare some. Of course, for others, it is indeed too late." Saruman circled Aragorn as he leaned against the wall, head on his knees. Was Saruman saying that he had indeed created these images? Were they designed as some sort of threat?

"Which would you save, if you would save half of them? Three? Two? One? I have the power to do such a thing." Aragorn gave no response, though he was sure it pleased the wizard. At their previous meeting, he had paid for his protests with more time looking into the fires of Orodruin. Now he would ruminate on what power Saruman could have acquired, instead. "Hm? Which would it be? The Shire and its witless halflings? Mirkwood and its backward wood-elves? The cherished home of your youth? The home of your elusive and mayhap unrequited love?"

Aragorn's eyes widened. He struggled to hide his fear amid the shock and anger. Saruman chuckled. "Do not wonder on what I know. Your mind is not so closed to me as you would have it. And I say there are those you would save. Would you stand back, refuse to take up arms because the battle is not as you had imagined? Do you yet insist on fighting only a battle that you command? Or would you submit to another for the sake of your kin, your comrades... your beloved?"