The leaders had reached the top of the cliff now and stood catching their breaths, watching the long, long line of soldiers winding up behind them like ants climbing a rock wall.
"Do you think the land will ever recover?" asked Elendur sadly, snapping off a dead branch from the snag of a fir tree beside the path.
"A wound may heal," replied Cirdan, "and a warrior ride again as proud as before, but he bears the mark of it forever. If we can force Sauron to loose his grip on this land then life will eventually return, given enough time. But that which is once touched by Sauron can never be wholly clean again. Eregion was once one of the fairest of lands, and it is barren and deserted still. Mordor will remain a poisoned desert as long as the world lasts."
"Is all of Ithilien despoiled forever then?" asked Elendur with a knot of despair around his heart. Ithilien was the land of his birth and he loved it dearly.
"The extent of the taint will depend on how long he ruled the land and how extensively he despoiled it. He has not long occupied Ithilien, nor has he built great factories and forges here as in Gorgoroth. There is hope yet that the land will recover, though I fear a shadow will always lie on this valley and the city where the Ringwraiths ruled."
"Where they still rule," growled Isildur. "I swear, when we have dealt with Sauron I will return here and destroy every one of them. I will expunge their evil, root and branch, and cleanse this land of their poisons. Ithilien will be a garden again, and the people will return to their homes and farms. This I swear."
Cirdan looked at him sadly but said no more. They mounted and continued on their way, the road now winding through a rolling stony land, ever up toward the jagged ridge line high above them. Elendur rode up beside Cirdan and Elrond.
"Shipmaster," he said. "You mentioned the land of Eregion, but I do not know where it lies. Was it one of the Drowned Lands, like Beleriand?"
"No," replied Cirdan. "Beleriand and Nantasarion were drowned in the last struggles of Morgoth at the end of the Elder Days. Eregion was founded much later, though many of its people had come from Beleriand. Celebrimbor was its lord, and it lay west of the Hithaiglin, which Men call the Misty Mountains. It is now called Hollin by Men, I believe."
"I know Hollin," said Elendur. "I rode there with grandfather once. A grey and empty land, I thought it."
"Aye, so it is," said Elrond. "But once it was a place of great beauty and good works, for Celebrimbor was a master builder and smith. Green were its fields and bright its cities. Brightest of all was Ost-in-Edhil, where dwelt the craft-Elves known as the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, the Jewel-Smiths. Never were there greater foundries and workshops than those of the Jewel-Smiths. Led by Celebrimbor, they learned to make jewels such as never grew in the earth. They developed new alloys of metals that had marvelous new properties. Some even glowed in the dark by their own light, it was said. With these new materials, the Jewel-Smiths made jewelry and ornaments and tools and weapons, unequalled anywhere before or since. And then they forged the rings of power, great and small. Few now honor them for the deed, for Sauron learned the art from them and so began the Great War."
"But Celebrimbor did many other great works," added Cirdan. "The Floating Gardens at Ost-in-Edhil enchanted all who beheld them. And the Crimson Palace, and the Ice Caves, his hand made them, though few remember it today."
"Eregion was wide and green," said Elrond, "and the Elves tilled their fields and traded their produce with their friends the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm."
"The Elves and Dwarves were friends?" asked Elendur in surprise. "Forgive me, but I have never heard of any great love between your races."
"It is true, sad to say," replied Elrond. "We have little contact now, nor indeed much desire for it these days. The Khazad are a proud people — some might say stiff-necked — and they love gold and forged things above all else, even their former friends. They cannot be blamed for it. They were made ahead of their time by Aulë the smith of the Valar, and they alone of all the Children are not of the making of Ilúvatar the Father. Still, that is no fault of theirs, and many great deeds have they done in the struggle against evil. As you see, a handful have joined our host. A few companies are even with the kings in Gorgoroth, and they have fought long and hard in our common cause."
"In Eregion of old," added Cirdan, "the Little People could often be seen walking and laughing with Elves. But all that is gone now. Sauron's hordes swept across Eregion, destroying all before them. They pulled down the lovely towers and gardens of Ost-in-Edhil and slew its people. Many Dwarves too were slain, and the gates of Khazad-dûm were closed and have never yet been opened to our people. Celebrimbor was slain and his Jewel-Smiths were driven in fear from Eregion."
Elrond shook his head sadly. "It was a dark time. Many thought the realm of peace was doomed in Middle-earth. Gil-galad sent me with an army from Lindon to defend Eregion. Fierce were the battles with Sauron's hordes."
Elendur looked at Elrond in wonder. "You fought Sauron before?" he asked. "What was the end of it?"
Elrond shrugged sadly. "This is the end of it," he replied. "The battle tomorrow should determine who will rule in the end."
"What I meant was: What happened in that earlier war?" asked Elendur.
Elrond smiled. "You Men cut time into too many small slices," he said. "It is still the same war. It was the same war when we Noldor first returned to the Mortal Shore to do battle with Morgoth the Enemy. It was the same war when we fought in the plains of Eregion. This present conflict is the same war. And it may even be that tomorrow's struggle will be but another battle, and that in future ages Men and Elves will continue to serve in the same war."
"But what happened in Eregion?" Elendur persisted.
"We arrived too late to save Eregion. Ost-in-Edhil's last defenses were overrun and we found only scattered bands of the people hiding in caves and hidden valleys. We strove against Sauron, but he was too strong for us and we fell back to the north. I led one band, the remnant of my best division. We found a deep-cleft valley and built a refuge there. Others joined us later."
"Was that valley Imladris, where my mother and brother now wait?"
"Even so. Men often call it Rivendell. We took refuge there, and soon Sauron came to rule all of Eriador and threatened even fair Lindon, last and greatest of the lands of the Eldar in Middle-earth. But his victories were short-lived, for aid unlooked-for came to us out of the western seas. Your own ancestor Tar-Minastir, King of Númenor, came with a great fleet of many hundreds of ships to the Havens at Mithlond. Together we drove Sauron's armies out of the west lands, back across the Misty Mountains and the Great River Anduin. But Eregion was destroyed and Celebrimbor went through the Curtain before his time, and his wonderful skills were lost to us forever."
"Was Eregion never settled again?" asked Elendur, thinking always of the fate of Ithilien.
"A few Elves went back, but they soon returned to Imladris. The land was changed, they said. There was a sadness and a sense of loss in all the land. Where once cool forests grew, now only dead grasses whispered and muttered in the dry winds from the east. The flowers and gardens were gone, the grass withered and brown. Even the water does not taste right, for the sweet springs are now bitter and burn the tongue. It is not a foul place, a place of evil, but it is a spoiled land. It is not truly ugly, but it has none of its old beauty. To those who knew it of old, it is a place of great sadness and infinite regret."
"Would that Ithilien does not become so," said Elendur. "It was once the fairest in all of Gondor."
"It shall be again," swore Isildur with a cold look in his eye. "I did not build Minas Ithil to be a haunt of ghouls and undead things, nor its houses the warrens of orcs. The city has been befouled, the glens of Ithilien poisoned, and the shining white walls of Osgiliath blackened. But we shall renew them. We were driven from our homes twice by Sauron — once from Númenor and once from Minas Ithil — but we shall not be again."