towers

the choices of master samwise 959
And for a moment he lifted up the Phial and looked down at
his master, and the light burned gently now with the soft
radiance of the evening-star in summer, and in that light
Frodo’s face was fair of hue again, pale but beautiful with an
Elvish beauty, as of one who has long passed the shadows.
And with the bitter comfort of that last sight Sam turned and
hid the light and stumbled on into the growing dark.
He had not far to go. The tunnel was some way behind;
the Cleft a couple of hundred yards ahead, or less. The path
was visible in the dusk, a deep rut worn in ages of passage,
running now gently up in a long trough with cliffs on either
side. The trough narrowed rapidly. Soon Sam came to a long
flight of broad shallow steps. Now the orc-tower was right
above him, frowning black, and in it the red eye glowed. Now
he was hidden in the dark shadow under it. He was coming
to the top of the steps and was in the Cleft at last.
‘I’ve made up my mind,’ he kept saying to himself. But he
had not. Though he had done his best to think it out, what
he was doing was altogether against the grain of his nature.
‘Have I got it wrong?’ he muttered. ‘What ought I to have
done?’
As the sheer sides of the Cleft closed about him, before he
reached the actual summit, before he looked at last on the
path descending into the Nameless Land, he turned. For a
moment, motionless in intolerable doubt, he looked back. He
could still see, like a small blot in the gathering gloom, the
mouth of the tunnel; and he thought he could see or guess
where Frodo lay. He fancied there was a glimmer on the
ground down there, or perhaps it was some trick of his tears,
as he peered out at that high stony place where all his life had
fallen in ruin.
‘If only I could have my wish, my one wish,’ he sighed, ‘to
go back and find him!’ Then at last he turned to the road in
front and took a few steps: the heaviest and the most reluctant
he had ever taken.
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