The Last Ring-bearer - Kirill Yeskov [184]
Gandalf kneeled in front of the palantír. A dense chain of blue-violet sparks shimmered into existence between his palms, and he began winding it around the crystal exactly as if he was winding woolen thread into a ball; a tangy freshness came into the air, as if a lightning had struck somewhere nearby. The other three wizards have already poured all their power into the head of the White Council and now stood around him motionless and silent, like statues; none of them dared think of the all-consuming fiery dragon that could hatch out of its crystal egg at any moment. Gandalf's hands moved faster and faster; hurry, White Wizard, there's a lot at stake! A lot? How about everything?
Finally he sank to the floor and just sat there for a few seconds, eyes closed. He had to use his teeth to uncork the flask of Elvish wine – his hands were now forever numb, as if frozen. Holding the flask between insensate palms, he drank a couple of swallows and handed the flask to Radagast without looking. They made it, despite everything… The ray of light going from their palantír to the one at Orodruin was now scarlet-purple rather than blue; the moment those guys take their crystal out of its protective silver net, Gandalf's spell will coil around it like a blue snake. He wouldn't want to be the one to touch that ball… Now it's time to catch my breath and consider how we might grab that palantír which will surely remain lying there among the rocks of Orodruin.
**
Haladdin tore himself away from contemplating the scarlet gold-tinged lava boiling almost at his feet in the crater. Squinting and shielding his eyes with his palm, he estimated the position of the sun, already a bit past noon. Lórien lies substantially to the west of Mordor, so noon at Orodruin should be about a quarter-hour before Lórien's. Looks like it's time to take the palantír out of its bag and wait for the Mirror to appear in it – provided that Kumai did his job… He rebuked himself: don't dare think that! You know with absolute certainty that he did everything exactly as requested. You can look forward to killing that woman – all right, Elf-woman, what's the difference – in just a few minutes. Well, that's been mulled over a thousand times. I suppose I could ask Tzerlag (there he is, snoozing by the rocks – nerves of steel!) to 'carry out the sentence,' but that'd be really…
The voyage to Orodruin was not too hard. Runcorn accompanied them to the Hotont pass – the ranger wanted to scout a good place for a house in the upper reaches of the Otter Creek anyway – where Matun met them. Matun viewed the rendezvous with 'Haladdin's scouting team' as a short vacation from the front lines – war still raged home in Mordor, whereas here, beyond the Mountains of Shadow, everything was nice and quiet. By that time Faramir had made every possible effort to make peace with the Shadow Mountain Trolls, fully succeeding in his diplomatic efforts last week when a delegation of three Trollish elders visited Emyn Arnen. Someone – let's not point fingers – did not like this rapport one bit, so a special assassination team waited for the elders at the outskirts of the Settlement. However, Baron Grager's intelligence service acquitted itself admirably: not only did it avert the attempt, it proved that the provocation was directed from beyond the Anduin. The assassins that survived