The Green Dragon feels like one of the most comfortably local places in Middle-earth. It stands in Bywater, close enough to Hobbiton that Sam Gamgee can spend an evening there arguing about strange news and still belong unmistakably to the small world of gardens, mills, farms, and familiar neighbors. Yet an inn cannot live on … Read more
Saruman is no longer lord of Isengard when Gandalf meets him for the last time on the open road. Orthanc has been taken from his control. His armies are gone. His staff has been broken. Sauron has fallen. The once-formidable head of the White Council is reduced to a ragged wanderer with Gríma Wormtongue trailing … Read more
Among all the gifts carried out of Lothlórien, the cloaks are easy to underestimate. They are not as dramatic as Galadriel’s phial, not as precious as the three strands of hair given to Gimli, and not as obviously essential as the lembas that keeps the travellers moving when ordinary provisions would fail. They look, at … Read more
Gondolin is remembered as the Hidden City, but its secrecy depended on something more complicated than simply hiding a road. There really was a road into Tumladen. It could be discovered. It could be followed. People who knew it could even return by it. Yet none of those things meant that a traveller possessed the … Read more
Athelas should have been one of the most valuable medicines in Minas Tirith. When the wounded of the Pelennor are carried into the Houses of Healing, Faramir is slipping beneath the Black Shadow, Éowyn lies gravely stricken after confronting the Lord of the Nazgûl, and Merry has also been touched by that same deadly darkness. … Read more
Númenor received something that sounds almost like the answer to mortality. Its people were granted lives far longer than those of ordinary Men. The royal House of Elros enjoyed an even more extraordinary span, beginning with Elros himself, who lived for five hundred years. The early Númenóreans possessed health, knowledge, strength, wealth, and a beautiful … Read more
Merry and Pippin are among the most valuable prisoners Saruman’s Orcs have ever taken. They have been seized alive at Parth Galen, carried away from Boromir’s last stand, and are being hurried toward Isengard under strict orders not to kill them. So when Uglúk suddenly cuts their leg-bonds and forces them onto their feet, the … Read more
A letter from Aragorn should, at first glance, be one of the most unequal pieces of correspondence in Middle-earth. By the time he writes to Samwise Gamgee, Aragorn is no longer the weather-beaten Ranger called Strider. He is Elessar Telcontar, King of Gondor and Arnor, ruler of the restored northern and southern kingdoms. Sam, for … Read more
When Frodo leaves Henneth Annûn, he is no longer simply a lost traveller following the only guide who claims to know a road into Mordor. Faramir has changed that. Before their meeting, Frodo knows that Gollum is dangerous, unstable, and divided against himself. But he does not know the name of the mountain pass toward … Read more
Long before the beacons burned between Gondor and Rohan, one of the hills beneath them guarded a secret. Deep within the forest later called the Firien Wood stood a mountain known to Gondor as Amon Anwar, the Hill of Awe. On its summit lay a low mound. Beneath that mound rested the remains of Elendil, … Read more