towers

674 the two towers
king upon the topmost stair. Aragorn and his companions
stood nearby.
‘There is no time to tell all that you should hear,’ said
Gandalf. ‘Yet if my hope is not cheated, a time will come ere
long when I can speak more fully. Behold! you are come into
a peril greater even than the wit of Wormtongue could weave
into your dreams. But see! you dream no longer. You live.
Gondor and Rohan do not stand alone. The enemy is strong
beyond our reckoning, yet we have a hope at which he has
not guessed.’
Quickly now Gandalf spoke. His voice was low and secret,
and none save the king heard what he said. But ever as he
spoke the light shone brighter in Théoden’s eye, and at the
last he rose from his seat to his full height, and Gandalf
beside him, and together they looked out from the high place
towards the East.
‘Verily,’ said Gandalf, now in a loud voice, keen and clear,
‘that way lies our hope, where sits our greatest fear. Doom
hangs still on a thread. Yet hope there is still, if we can but
stand unconquered for a little while.’
The others too now turned their eyes eastward. Over the
sundering leagues of land, far away they gazed to the edge of
sight, and hope and fear bore their thoughts still on, beyond
dark mountains to the Land of Shadow. Where now was the
Ring-bearer? How thin indeed was the thread upon which
doom still hung! It seemed to Legolas, as he strained his
farseeing eyes, that he caught a glint of white: far away perchance
the sun twinkled on a pinnacle of the Tower of Guard.
And further still, endlessly remote and yet a present threat,
there was a tiny tongue of flame.
Slowly Théoden sat down again, as if weariness still
struggled to master him against the will of Gandalf. He turned
and looked at his great house. ‘Alas!’ he said, ‘that these evil
days should be mine, and should come in my old age instead
of that peace which I have earned. Alas for Boromir the
brave! The young perish and the old linger, withering.’ He
clutched his knees with his wrinkled hands.