towers

840 the two towers
one day, one day soon. That is the only way big armies can
come. But away down west He is not afraid, and there are
the Silent Watchers.’
‘Just so!’ said Sam, not to be put off. ‘And so we are to
walk up and knock at their gate and ask if we’re on the right
road for Mordor? Or are they too silent to answer? It’s not
sense. We might as well do it here, and save ourselves a long
tramp.’
‘Don’t make jokes about it,’ hissed Gollum. ‘It isn’t funny,
O no! Not amusing. It’s not sense to try and get into Mordor
at all. But if master says I must go or I will go, then he must
try some way. But he must not go to the terrible city, O no,
of course not. That is where Sméagol helps, nice Sméagol,
though no one tells him what it is all about. Sméagol helps
again. He found it. He knows it.’
‘What did you find?’ asked Frodo.
Gollum crouched down and his voice sank to a whisper
again. ‘A little path leading up into the mountains; and then
a stair, a narrow stair, O yes, very long and narrow. And then
more stairs. And then’ – his voice sank even lower – ‘a tunnel,
a dark tunnel; and at last a little cleft, and a path high above
the main pass. It was that way that Sméagol got out of the
darkness. But it was years ago. The path may have vanished
now; but perhaps not, perhaps not.’
‘I don’t like the sound of it at all,’ said Sam. ‘Sounds too
easy at any rate in the telling. If that path is still there, it’ll be
guarded too. Wasn’t it guarded, Gollum?’ As he said this, he
caught or fancied he caught a green gleam in Gollum’s eye.
Gollum muttered but did not reply.
‘Is it not guarded?’ asked Frodo sternly. ‘And did you
escape out of the darkness, Sméagol? Were you not rather
permitted to depart, upon an errand? That at least is what
Aragorn thought, who found you by the Dead Marshes some
years ago.’
‘It’s a lie!’ hissed Gollum, and an evil light came into his
eyes at the naming of Aragorn. ‘He lied on me, yes he did. I
did escape, all by my poor self. Indeed I was told to seek for