Part 2

“Good morning, March Warden—Elvellon,” said Legolas, stepping aside to allow his guests to enter.

The Elf and the Dwarf returned his greeting, then greeted his lady—Haldir with a hand upon his heart, Gimli with a nod and a grunt—and the four friends took their places at the breakfast table.

Two days had passed since the accidental crew of the flying ship, The Shieldmaiden, had returned from Caras Arnen, and little more than a week since Eowyn’s carpet bag, with the djinn inside, had fallen overboard, somewhere in the foothills of the Ephel Dúath.*

As she served her friends with bowls of porridge, Eowyn was smiling. She had grown very fond of the irascible djinn, and felt responsible for his current misfortune. And although she was sure, and Legolas agreed, that the djinn—having bound himself to her, as her servant, for the rest of her life—would return to her the moment some unfortunate passer by released him, she was anxious to rescue him herself, and as soon as possible.

“You are sure that you can find the place again?” Legolas asked the March Warden.

“To within a few hundred yards,” replied Haldir, helping himself to some bramble jam.

“So close?” said Eowyn, who still found it hard to comprehend the sharpness of Elven senses.

Haldir nodded.

“Fortunately,” said Legolas, stirring jam into his porridge, “there are few trees in that region, and Master Eldarwen assures me that there has been no snowfall since we,”—he grinned—“since we flew away on our adventure, so it should be easy enough to spot your bag upon the ground, melmenya, and—provided the bag and the lamp did not part company as they fell—I see no reason why the djinn should ever know that you lost him.”

He patted her hand.

...

As they ate, the friends planned their expedition.

Haldir estimated that the trip would take at least three days, and told them of a farmstead where the Men, he believed, would be willing to give them shelter for a night or two.

Eowyn, who had made herself responsible for collecting reports of orc attacks, and of any other incidents that might signify a threat to Eryn Carantaur, confirmed that there had been no recent sightings in the region. “Though yesterday,” she said, “Lord Caranthir told me of some strange stories from farther east.”

“Strange in what way, melmenya?” asked Legolas.

Eowyn laid down her spoon. “It is hard to say,” she replied. “Apparently, a pedlar, tramping along the Caras Arnen Road, told Valandil of a group of freshly-dug graves he had stumbled upon, somewhere north of the Doro Lanthron Hills. A sheep herder, wintering his flock at foot of the Ephel Dúath, has reported seeing strange tracks leading down from the mountains. And a poor simpleton of Sad Lanthron has been terrifying the local children with lurid tales of a skeleton riding past him on a ghostly horse...”

She shrugged. “Caranthir has recorded all of these, but neither he nor I can see what truth might lie behind them.”

...

* Eowyn found the djinn in The Strange Sea Road, and lost him in Westron Wynde.