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appendix a 1373
Shadow grew deep in Greenwood, and many evil things reappeared,
signs of the arising of Sauron. It is true that the
enemies of Gondor also suffered, or they might have overwhelmed
it in its weakness; but Sauron could wait, and it may
well be that the opening of Mordor was what he chiefly desired.
When King Telemnar died the White Tree of Minas Anor
also withered and died. But Tarondor, his nephew, who succeeded
him, replanted a seedling in the citadel. He it was who
removed the King’s house permanently to Minas Anor, for Osgiliath
was now partly deserted, and began to fall into ruin. Few
of those who had fled from the plague into Ithilien or to the
western dales were willing to return.
Tarondor, coming young to the throne, had the longest reign
of all the Kings of Gondor; but he could achieve little more than
the reordering of his realm within, and the slow nursing of its
strength. But Telumehtar his son, remembering the death of
Minardil, and being troubled by the insolence of the Corsairs,
who raided his coasts even as far as the Anfalas, gathered his
forces and in 1810 took Umbar by storm. In that war the last
descendants of Castamir perished, and Umbar was again held
for a while by the kings. Telumehtar added to his name the title
Umbardacil. But in the new evils that soon befell Gondor Umbar
was again lost, and fell into the hands of the Men of the Harad.
The third evil was the invasion of the Wainriders, which sapped
the waning strength of Gondor in wars that lasted for almost a
hundred years. The Wainriders were a people, or a confederacy
of many peoples, that came from the East; but they were stronger
and better armed than any that had appeared before. They journeyed
in great wains, and their chieftains fought in chariots.
Stirred up, as was afterwards seen, by the emissaries of Sauron,
they made a sudden assault upon Gondor, and King Narmacil
II was slain in battle with them beyond Anduin in 1856. The
people of eastern and southern Rhovanion were enslaved; and
the frontiers of Gondor were for that time withdrawn to the
Anduin and the Emyn Muil. [At this time it is thought that the
Ringwraiths re-entered Mordor.]
Calimehtar, son of Narmacil II, helped by a revolt in Rhovanion,
avenged his father with a great victory over the Easterlings