towers

the palantír 779
beyond the river. But see how the White Mountains are drawing
near under the stars! Yonder are the Thrihyrne peaks like
black spears. It will not be long before we reach the branching
roads and come to the Deeping-coomb, where the battle was
fought two nights ago.’
Pippin was silent again for a while. He heard Gandalf
singing softly to himself, murmuring brief snatches of rhyme
in many tongues, as the miles ran under them. At last the
wizard passed into a song of which the hobbit caught the
words: a few lines came clear to his ears through the rushing
of the wind:
Tall ships and tall kings
Three times three,
What brought they from the foundered land
Over the flowing sea?
Seven stars and seven stones
And one white tree.
‘What are you saying, Gandalf ?’ asked Pippin.
‘I was just running over some of the Rhymes of Lore in
my mind,’ answered the wizard. ‘Hobbits, I suppose, have
forgotten them, even those that they ever knew.’
‘No, not all,’ said Pippin. ‘And we have many of our own,
which wouldn’t interest you, perhaps. But I have never heard
this one. What is it about – the seven stars and seven stones?’
‘About the palantíri of the Kings of Old,’ said Gandalf.
‘And what are they?’
‘The name meant that which looks far away. The Orthancstone
was one.’
‘Then it was not made, not made’ – Pippin hesitated – ‘by
the Enemy?’
‘No,’ said Gandalf. ‘Nor by Saruman. It is beyond his art,
and beyond Sauron’s too. The palantíri came from beyond
Westernesse, from Eldamar. The Noldor made them. Fëanor
himself, maybe, wrought them, in days so long ago that the
time cannot be measured in years. But there is nothing that