Chapter Text
He remembers. He remembers waking up this fateful morning, the way the sun had slanted through the window and struck the cut glass mirror, throwing scattered glory across the stone ceiling in fractals of rainbow color. He remembers thinking what a good omen it must be, to have gemstones transposed above his bed, for his eyes alone.
Today, Thorin stares at the light dancing above him and is paralyzed by mounting horror. He knows that he is not in the halls of his ancestors because he feels no sense of peace. Thorin lies in his bed and recalls his death, and incalculably worse, the bloody end of his sister-sons. The extermination of their line, the ruination of Thorin’s greatest hopes, the brunt of a thousand indignities.
His fear calcifies into certainty. It shall not come to pass. Not in this life.
Thorin closes his eyes and takes a moment to plan, a one-man war council within himself. It is mid-morning, according to the angle of the sunlight pouring into his room. If Thorin is the only variable in this catastrophe, then Smaug will arrive at noon. Without a waistcoat made of his grandmother’s diamonds and his people’s pearls, the beast’s belly will be vulnerable. Perhaps an ordinary sword or arrow would pierce it, but Thorin must be swift, must be certain. He’ll take a crossbow, steal into Dale for a second time, nick as many Black Arrows as he can carry, and lie in wait on one of the hilltops he knows the Wyrm will cross over before it makes its way to Dale, then Erebor.
Thorin opens his eyes, offers a desperate plea to Mahal, and hurls himself out of bed. He yanks on his boots and dons the most unremarkable clothing he can find in a closet stuffed full of finery. Then he pulls his hair back into one lengthy braid to keep it out of the way and shrugs on a hooded cloak. He won’t be unrecognizable like this, but he won't be easy to identify, either.
He wastes no more time before he hurtles out of his chambers and down the corridor, waving off the royal guards who mean to flank him. He can’t look at them, knowing the fate that awaits them if he fails.
Thorin pays no mind to the gilded halls and lively ghosts that whirl by on his way to the armory. If he looks now, there will be no stemming the tide of memory and there’s simply no time. The burly soldiers guarding the armory bow and open the doors for him wordlessly. He immediately grabs the sturdiest crossbow he can find and, fortunately, it looks like it will accommodate the size of the Black Arrow, as well as a fistful of sturdy Dwarven arrows that he takes as a failsafe. He strides right back out again, mindless to the warriors greeting him and casting him curious glances.
He hurries down the southern stairwell toward the stables, struggling to remember, of all things, what the name of the fastest pony is. But when he arrives there, he hears the whickering of a young black one, high and unmistakable.
“Silverfoot,” Thorin murmurs. And there she is, big brown eyes blinking slowly as he opens the stall and rests a hand against her soft, soft nose. He had forgotten. She had burned with all the rest. But here she is, whole and well, her distinctive silver socks on display as she paws at the ground restlessly, detecting Thorin’s mood.
It’s the little things, Thorin realizes. The minutiae of the life he once had and may have again, if he’s quick enough to save it. He’s not sure how he’s meant to bear this. But he is young yet and this body is well-fed and refreshed after a good night’s sleep, so he slings the heavy crossbow across his back and saddles up Silverfoot as quickly as he can.
Thorin heaves himself up onto her back and, with no calm left to spare, urges her to gallop out of the stables and straight toward the open gates of Erebor. The sentries recognize him on sight and move to slow him down, to question his purpose for leaving, so he signs for them to stand down in urgent Iglishmêk. By the grace of Mahal, they do. Then Silverfoot is racing through the gates and the sun welcomes them into the world beyond as they ride for Dale at a truly breakneck pace.
They arrive at the city’s edge within the hour, and Thorin pulls his hood over his head, hating to appear suspicious but needing the anonymity all the same. He hardly recalls the minutes it takes to scale the bell tower, grab three Black Arrows off the rack, and haul them all back to his pony with the city of Men none the wiser. His adventures have made him into a sneakthief, it seems. Thorin would have loathed that once, but now it just seems useful.
They exit Dale as quickly as they came, making for the hills to the Northeast. Silverfoot begins to sweat and pant in earnest from the pace he’s set, the sun beating down on both of them. They’ve at least an hour to spare now, but Thorin can’t leave a single moment of it to chance.
Then the hills are cresting in front them, rolling lazily into distance, thick with wildflowers in full bloom. He slows Silverfoot to a halt and dismounts; he decides to let her wander, since there is nothing to tie her reins to in the tumbling green landscape.
Thorin gravitates to the tallest hill in the area and stands there, facing the Northeast, feeling nothing but his heart pound. The heft of the bow is reassuring in his hands, and he loads it with a Black Arrow, hearing it click into place with something that sounds a little like destiny.
The grass is green and sweet as it folds with the gentle winds. It is a beautiful day.
An eternity later, that enormous scaled body appears, arrowing down from the North. It’s ludicrous, entirely insane--but in that moment, Thorin thinks to himself that the drake is rather smaller than he remembers.
Still, Smaug is gallingly confident, not even using the cloud bank to cloak himself as he drops altitude. Thorin waits. He waits until he can feel the reverberation of those wings beating in his bones, until Smaug takes up the whole of horizon. And when the dragon is almost on top of him, Thorin takes aim. The bare belly of the beast is tremendous and wide open and Thorin--
Thorin lets his arrow fly.
There is a roar that that seems to rend at Thorin’s very ears and an earthquake somewhere far behind his back. A cloud of dust and debris shoots out in every direction, threatening to knock Thorin forward, but he stands firm. He holds himself still and hears nothing but wind in his ears.
The cloud settles, and Thorin turns. A hulking mass of flesh and shimmering red scales shakes out its last, desperate breath. The beast is still.
Thorin breathes, his chest filling suddenly as if he hadn’t truly breathed since he had first seen this creature blot out the sun all those years ago.
Esgaroth will never rise from the waves. The city of Men is filled to the brim with women and children who will never know the choking poison of dragon smoke, who will never know true homelessness. And Erebor…
He turns his gaze to the Lonely Mountain, where the gates of Erebor stand gleaming and whole.
The feeling of relief crushes him utterly, disbelief following so swiftly on its tail that he cannot even weep. The arc of his life, closed before it can even begin. He is dead. He is born.
He is covered in dust. Thorin wipes it from his brow and drifts over to where he can see Silverfoot shifting from foot to foot in the distance, thoroughly spooked. He lets the process of soothing her fill the long minutes it takes for the scouts from Dale and Erebor appear.
They arrive on trembling mounts that won’t come closer, burdened with fine armor that shines in the sun. No one speaks. He almost wants to laugh at the identical expressions on the faces of these Men and Dwarves, the way they goggle at the heap of greed and rotting meat prostrate before them, forming a new hill.
The grass is sweet, the sun is high, and Thorin breathes.
The usurper is dead.
*
There is a tidal wave of celebrations, jovial and mead-filled and barely tinged by the fear of what may have come to pass. The last of the great dragons is felled, though that certainly hadn’t been Thorin’s primary concern. Nevertheless, an envoy from each of the surrounding kingdoms arrives within the week to inspect the corpse for themselves, and Thorin spends every day of it in a daze. Dís is so small and his father has not a single streak of white in his hair and Frerin--
Frerin is full of life and buoyant laughter and good-natured ribbing and he wants to hear the details of Smaug’s death over and over again. It’s all Thorin can do to sate his curiosity while others visibly listen in. Frerin is golden and perfect and when he asks Thorin how he even knew the dragon was coming, all Thorin can say is, “I just knew.”
Father claps him on the shoulder at least once a day and shakes his head, as though he simply doesn’t know what to say. And when court is held the next afternoon, the Black Arrow is pulled from the carcass and a messenger kneels before the throne, offering it up for Grandfather's inspection. The King Under the Mountain examines it with tired eyes, then glances at Thorin--no doubt wondering how the arrow he had forged for Dale's protection came into Thorin’s hands in the first place, let alone shot through a dragon’s stomach. Perhaps it’s a sign of how much his age and illness have diminished him when Thrór simply dismisses the messenger, orders the arrow to be returned to Dale along with the other two, and retreats to his coffers to recount the royal treasury. His single-mindedness is heartbreaking, but if their king is unwilling to ask how Thorin got ahold of the sacred arrow, then apparently no one else is either.
At the week’s end, a final grand feast lights up all of Erebor, bringing with it a flood of people so intense that Thorin can barely see the walls through all of the tall folk. His family surrounds him, happy and hale and piling more food on his plate, pulling him into quick-footed dances and the singing of old songs. They love him. They love him so much.
Thorin knows that this isn’t a dream, that his imagination isn’t big enough for something like this. But their obliviousness is nearly suffocating; their innocent wonder at his feat makes him feel like a dark, twisted thing hiding in their midst. Their lives are so different from his own, and they think he’s one of them, but he’s not, not even close.
But he does love them. Perhaps now more than ever before. Thorin is pondering this over his second helping of suckling pig when the delegation from Dale arrives fashionably late, and Thorin is swept up into the greeting line.
Girion is middle-aged and a week older than he ever was in his previous life. The mild-mannered Lord of Dale congratulates him, eyes him speculatively, and says, “Next time you’re in town... stop by for dinner, won’t you?”
Thorin’s lips quirk up in a rare smile at Girion’s slyness, and he answers, “I will.” Girion departs with a nod and then there is a blur of reintroductions and merrymaking as the event moves into full swing.
Two hours later finds Thorin exhausted, but too proud to show it. Balin catches his eye and chuckles a little at his expense, then he steers Thorin into a private parlor adjacent to the feasting hall.
Thorin takes advantage of the quiet moment to make sure his circlet is set on straight and to finger-comb his beard. Balin just watches him with eyes barely lined by age, and finally says, “I’m proud of you, laddie.” Balin tucks his thumbs into his belt and continues, “The future is perilous. Now it’s a little less so, knowing that you’ve matured so early on--that one day we’ll have a king like you to lead us, to increase the wealth of our mountain.”
Thorin is warmed by the sentiment, but the mention of wealth concerns him in a way that he cannot hide from his mentor. “What is it, Thorin?”
And Thorin… Thorin may have repented for his avarice on his deathbed, thinking those words to be among his last, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not beholden to them.
He knows it is too soon to have this conversation, but Balin is earnest and open-minded and, most importantly, he knows how to keep his counsel. So Thorin answers him honestly. “I believe that it would be wiser to keep the majority of Erebor’s wealth in motion, circulating rather than stationary in the bowels of the mountain.”
Balin is perfectly appalled, exclaiming, “But Thorin, why? Because of the dragon? Son, I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but to all appearances you’ve defeated the last of them. And if there are any left, we know how to kill them.”
Thorin rails against Balin’s shortsightedness as though it were his own, his temper flaring when he answers, “And how do you think that dragon was lured here? Was it our wealth alone? What menace drove us to dig ever deeper in Moria? What made us ripe for plundering in the Grey Mountains? What dogs my family’s footsteps, poisoning us with our own pride?” He grips Balin by the shoulders and tells him gravely, “It’s not worth the risk. Nothing is worth that risk.”
Balin stares back at him, eyes wondering. Then his gaze darts over Thorin’s shoulder, and Thorin turns to see, of all people, Gandalf the Grey standing in the doorway. He releases Balin and turns to face their irksome, ever ill-timed visitor.
“Thorin son of Thráin,” Gandalf rumbles. “Those are not the words I expected to hear from a son of Durin’s line.”
Thorin falls back into the familiar exchange that is, in fact, only familiar to him. “It never ceases to amaze me how a wizard’s words have two meanings, and yet no meaning at all.”
Gandalf enters the room fully and closes the door behind him as he inquires, “Have you made the acquaintance of many wizards, then?”
Perhaps if Thorin did not know Gandalf, he would not hear his patronizing tone for what it is. So all that is left to Thorin is to name what Gandalf believes of him. “Of course not. For I am young, and foolish, and I have seen little of the world.”
Gandalf's bushy brows are raised and he frowns deeply, mumbling, “Yes, well. I’m certain that’s not the case.”
Then he pulls out his long-stemmed pipe and begins to light it even as he turns to Balin and says, “Could you give us a moment of privacy, Master Dwarf?” Balin nods jerkily and leaves, though uncertainty slows his steps.
The two of them take their seats on opposite couches, emerald to the eye and velvet to the touch. Gandalf takes his first puff on the pipe, watching Thorin through the lazy drift of smoke. And Thorin, if nothing else, would hope that he is not too proud to seek advice that could spare his people from suffering a second time. “Tell me what you know of gold sickness,” Thorin says.
Gandalf answers promptly and without even the thinnest coat of sugar: “Gold fever takes root in those who already possess some measure of greed. It occurs in many times and many places, but it is hastened by power, by fear, by gold. The bigger the hoard, the greater the risk. So it is with dragons, who are heralded by vast wealth. And a hoard bewitched by a dragon’s touch may induce dragon-sickness on top of all the rest.”
Thorin is exhausted just from hearing it, and drags a hand over his forehead, asking, “What would you do, were you in my place?”
Gandalf smiles and breathes out an irreverent little flower made of smoke. “Why, I would carry my fathers’ weight where I could and, when the day came, I would become a king that would sooner dump his gold in the River Running than keep it all in one place.”
Thorin is slightly concerned that he and a wizard are of the same mind, but the advice is sound. “I will think on your counsel,” he states.
"See that you do,” Gandalf answers briskly, and they rise as one to rejoin society, Gandalf extinguishing his pipe mere minutes after lighting it.
Thorin reenters the feasting hall, fully prepared to dance with the merry dead once more. The moment he passes into the hall, however, his eyes are drawn to the newcomer: the King of Mirkwood, frigidly conversing with Náin next to a tapestry depicting their ancestors bludgeoning each other to death.
There is no hot rush of anger. There is no cold fire of retribution.
Thorin has seen how Thranduil treats his friends in the direst hour. Thorin knows how he treated his own friends during the same.
The Elvenking glances away from the Lord of the Ironhills and their eyes connect. It would be cowardly and foolish to avoid him, so Thorin plucks a tankard of mead off the nearest tray and makes his way over to where Náin is splitting off to go dance with his cousins. Thranduil is tall and austere, and he looks down at Thorin with all but open disdain.
“Thorin, son of Thráin,” he says.
“Thranduil Oropherion,” Thorin returns. For a long time, that is all that is said. Thorin takes the measure of him and finds only what he expects to find: an Elf, towering over him and measuring him in turn.
They have the whole corner of the hall to themselves because the Dwarves are avoiding Thranduil with a ten foot radius out of pure dislike and the Men are too intimidated by him to get any closer than that. Perhaps this small measure of privacy is what emboldens Thranduil to say to a Dwarf prince he has only just met: “I warned your grandfather of what his avarice would beckon forth. It was a near thing, the destruction of you all.” He proclaims it cooly, folding his hands behind his back like he’s calmly bracing for Thorin to erupt.
Thorin searches for the words that would impugn Thranduil’s dignity the most, and promptly says them. “I will not defend the indefensible. But you are a healer. You know sickness when you see it. You know that sickness can be prevented, but that it ultimately has nothing to do with deserving it.”
“So he is not to be held accountable?” Thranduil snaps, his eyes flashing.
“No,” Thorin answers, the font of rage that always lays within him beginning to brew and bubble. “But nor is he a foul, ignoble creature, as you seem to think him to be.”
The few Woodmen of the North who have dared to skirt the outer edges of their corner cast them wary looks, and Thorin tries to stopper himself from saying anything incendiary by taking a pull of the mead he’s been ignoring. In spite of the company, he loses himself for a moment in its sparkling dryness, fragrant and crisp. He has not tasted its like in centuries.
Minutes pass as they stand in silence. Then Thranduil, gazing out at the bright, merrymaking masses, says, “You would think that a dragon had not just borne down on their homes, intent on laying waste to all they hold dear.”
This past week’s exhaustion and tonight’s mead must be making their mark upon him, because Thorin simply snorts, “Smaug would have scorched the earth itself for the sheer pleasure of it. The death toll, the wasteland--it all would have been incidental to the act itself.”
The Elvenking looks at him sharply and, disregarding the conjecture entirely, asks, “How did you come by his name?”
Thorin answers him honestly: “He could have no other one.”
“You are as incomprehensible as the chittering stoats of the Ettenmoors,” Thranduil says frostily. Thorin’s blood fails to boil. If anything, it’s a relief to converse with someone that looks and sounds exactly the way Thorin remembers him. Who disdains Thorin, and always will.
So Thorin is surprisingly at ease as he lazily ponders aloud, “Are there any stoats along the Ettenmoors? I was given to understand that they mainly inhabited Dunland.”
His father no doubt believes he’s rescuing Thorin from an immanently uncomfortable conversation when he strides over, wraps an arm around Thorin’s shoulder, nods to Thranduil, and leads him away, saying, “Come, my son. It’s time to dance the Quarter Step. Then we’ll open the good wine.”
*
When Thorin finally reaches his bed in the early morn, he lies awake and considers his position. In spite of the respect he is accorded by the mountain’s inhabitants and the abundance of family he has regained, Thorin has very quickly rediscovered the frustrations of being demoted to crown prince. When he was a pauper king with only a loaf of bread, he could at least decide who got which slice. Now, his fealty is sworn to Dwarves that he loves, Dwarves to whom he owes everything that he is and everything that he aspires to become. His father and his father’s father--whose minds will betray them, and who will in turn betray every oath they’ve sworn.
Every time he considers the problem, it turns and folds in on itself. If he aims to take the throne sooner, the process of it will change him and the political landscape of the mountain irrevocably. There is no guarantee that he won’t fall prey to gold sickness soon after his ascension, either. And if he makes no move for the crown, Erebor may fall to ruin just the same. Thorin is saturated with a sense unworthiness for the task set in front of him.
In the end, he decides to take a wizard’s approach: meddle wherever possible, but shy away from claiming power for its own sake. He will simply have to hope that his good intentions will have some bearing on the outcome. Such is the lot of Thorin, son of kings and inheritor of madness.
Twice-born, thrice-damned.
*
There are plans to mount the dragon’s teeth along the parapets, as a grim warning and proud reminder. In the coming weeks, Thorin remains adamant that no piece of the dragon’s carcass enter the mountain. Father, who makes most of the king’s decisions for him these days, fails to see his point. “You are superstitious, my son,” he chuckles.
Thorin, standing before his father's desk with his very best posture, replies, “And within the bedrock of superstition, a clear gem of wisdom.”
Seeing that the dragon’s slayer will never waver on the matter, Thráin leans back in his chair and finally sighs, “Yes, well. Best not to tempt fate, I suppose.”
“We’ll need to remove the corpse before the smell sets in,” Thorin advises as he begins to relax. Of all the things that may threaten the might of Erebor, at least dragon-sickness won't be in the mix.
So they carve up the dragon and sell its hide to the highest bidder, offer its claws to the caravan traders headed East, and bury its entrails. It is no secret, however, that he was the staunch obstacle between the Dwarves who had already begun to make bone-polish en mass and their morbid monument. Dwalin, as it turns out, is among them.
They are sharpening their knives side by side on the edge of the training grounds when Dwalin dredges up the matter, waspishly noting, “They’re just teeth. Could always tear them down if they looked bad or soured our gold.”
Thorin turns to look at him, eyeing the bare crown of his head. Somehow, he’d forgotten that Dwalin had gone bald before he was even out of his stripling years. “That would be foolhardy,” Thorin says, turning back to his blade.
“Says the Dwarf who shot an arrow made for a windlance out of a crossbow,” Dwalin returns.
Thorin grumbles, “It worked.”
That is, as far as Thorin is concerned, the end of the matter. And perhaps it's a lingering pettiness over the dragon’s teeth, but the denizens of Erebor generally begin to regard Thorin as superstitious. That suits him just fine. After all, Thorin is equally firm that hunting parties shouldn't travel in groups of thirteen--in fact, they shouldn't even travel in groups of fourteen or fifteen. Thorin is now thoroughly convinced that they should be composed of groups of ten or sixteen, and nowhere in between. His father humors him because it costs him nothing, but Thorin begins to miss not needing to be humored--the respect he commandeered, the solemnity he was owed.
He misses, too, the hard-earned calluses on his thumbs, and the scars here and there that told the story of his life. This body is all but unmarked, and it's hard not to feel distant from it, at times. The feeling builds when he converses with Dwarves of his own generation and their every word resounds with their unending pride in themselves and in Erebor, their understanding of themselves untarnished by tragedy.
That sense of displacement is somewhat soothed over the coming months as Thorin settles into the minor responsibilities and training regimen of a prince. When he finds himself in deep, meaningful discussion, it always seems to be with the eldest council members. Thorin takes comfort in the long view that they take, the way that they are veterans of everything and take so little for granted. It doesn’t hurt that they think he’s as superstitious as they are.
Thorin is just wrapping up a conversation about signs of a dust-up in East Bight with Khunri--by far the oldest Dwarf on the council, who is stooped over with a beard that only just avoids touching the floor. That’s when Frerin comes around the corner and spots them there, chewing the fat. He starts laughing, calling out, “Brother! Lingering after council meetings to trade wisdoms--you really are an old man before your time.”
Khunri pats Thorin on the back with his ancient, leathery hand, answering, “He’s an old soul. That is no bad thing.”
Thorin has no time to appreciate the irony of that observation before Frerin is shoving an envelope in his face, declaring, “It’s a letter from King Treebugger!”
“Good for you,” Thorin says.
“No, you dunderhead. It’s for you.”
Thorin takes the letter. As he tears it open, a small token slides into his palm. It’s a wax-backed stamp with an artist’s rendering of a stoat on it, a map of outlying villages near the Ettenmoors in the background. In flowing, cursive Westron, the letter reads:
Enclosed, you will find the answer to your inane question.
Thranduil
King of the Woodland Realm
And there follows a stream of titles and official seals that far outpaces the body of the letter.
“What is it?” Frerin says, leaning over his shoulder to get a better look at it.
“Evidence,” Thorin answers.
*
For all that Thorin is living within a fantasy of justice, of penitence, and of comfort that he scarcely could have dreamed up for himself, he falls right back into step, abiding the march of days onward into a now uncertain future. Although it is perhaps less uncertain than before.
Thorin is insistent, for instance, that Girion pull from the water every boat that Dale can safely store before the first day of winter, although autumn has given every indication that this winter will be a mild one. When the lake freezes solid for the first time in half a century and the merchants’ fleet is spared, the harbormaster sends him a tearful letter of thanks, making no mention of his own furious resistance to the precaution.
Of course, Thorin had only known because he remembers scrabbling for sustenance at the riverbank that winter, watching the weary scouts return from upriver to report that the lake was unfishable, that both the land and the water had turned them out.
In the short term, the ships that will haul his kingdom’s treasures to new shores have been spared from the elements--for this winter will have them in its snowy grip until April--and Dale has saved a fortune on varnish alone. The long term is another matter entirely. He does not know how to feel when the words seer and wise-eyed are bandied about more and more when people think that he cannot hear them. Despite the convenience of it, he refuses to speak one way or another on the matter. If anything, that seems to stir up the rumors even more.
That is not what Dís confronts him about, when she corners him in the library that spring. They discuss Frerin’s agitating new habit of chewing his fingernails until she turns to him out of the blue and examines him from head to toe. "You've mellowed. You've sharpened. You've become a little bit more, I think. Somehow. At some point," Dís says, decisiveness fading into bafflement. It’s incredible to think that she was this perceptive at such a young age, even without exile compacting her into a Dwarrowdam of diamond-sharp wit. Then she tugs on his collar, demanding, “Now where is that lovely opal rivière you were wearing last week? You hardly ever seem to wear more than a ring or two, these days.”
“The most gold-rich prince in Middle Earth and he won’t keep his jewelry on,” Khunri mutters aggrievedly from where he’s skulking among the stacks of scrolls.
And to a certain degree, he is correct. Thorin wears only the necessary number of golden armlets and jade boot-buckles and other such frippery. He doesn't look at the Arkenstone. He doesn’t look at Grandfather’s Ring of Power, shining dully with potential even in the dimmest rooms. Thorin does not yet feel the draw of any of these objects, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t.
Nár, the nobleman to whom his Grandfather is closest, staunchly maintains that gold fever is like lightening and only strikes a Dwarf once--imbuing him with immunity thereafter. As far as Thorin can tell, Nár still expects to see their king emerge from madness with newfound invulnerability any day now. While that hope has been without merit for many years, perhaps there is some truth to the general claim. For all their sakes, Thorin hopes so.
*
It occurs to Thorin, a full year after the death of Smaug, that he has never really pondered why he is in this place, in this time--reliving it and yet living it for the first time, so sharply does it depart from the life he’d known before. It’s not the sort of thing a Dwarf can search himself for and come up with a satisfying answer.
In fact, it’s at the annual trade negotiations in Dale that Thorin realizes that altering the course of history has permanently altered his own priorities, as well. The deep winter has faded into a late, waterlogged summer. Their royal procession enters Girion’s hall to the sound of whickering ponies and the pounding rain. Thorin tries to ignore the incessant drip of his hair and cloak against the stone floor. There is a damp strand of hair clinging to his cheek and, almost immediately, he feels Thranduil’s eyes boring into him from across the room. Thorin is being greeted by the Lord of Dale, however, and is obliged to not return his stare until a few moments later. But when he does glance over to where the King of Mirkwood is seated, Thranduil is gazing out the window, fingers flexing idly along the lacquered wood of his staff.
As it happens, Thorin is directed to the seat opposite of Thranduil’s and the meeting commences before a single word passes between the Dwarves of Erebor and the Elves of Mirkwood, as Girion had no doubt intended.
Thorin is surprised to find himself listening intently to the matters at hand, but somehow feeling wholly unthreatened by the tariffs Girion puts forward and the counteroffers his father proposes. He recalls these meetings from his youth; the way his eyes pinged back and forth between the arbiters, the way his heart stumbled at the potential loss of coin, how these decisions would compound over the course of an entire year’s transactions. This time, however, Thorin can appreciate the importance of the deliberation taking place, but he is also calm, with half an ear turned toward the downpour outside.
It is one thing to disparage his own greed; it is another to begin to be rid of it.
The negotiations adjourn after running several hours over, and supper is promptly served. Thorin repeatedly refuses the dark Elvish wine being poured by Girion’s staff, brought along by Thranduil as a gesture of goodwill. At the third refusal, Thranduil makes a bridge of his fingers and rests his chin on them, staring at Thorin with a strange light in his eyes. “Is it not to your liking, Prince Thorin?”
“None but the sweetest and lightest wines are,” Thorin answers, willing to defuse the situation but unwilling to make apologies for personal taste. “I am not fond of bitterness, even in the oldest of wines.”
The dinner guests around them seem to release a collective breath as both of them turn their attention back to the spread in front of them: roasted waterfowl, honeyed ham, salted parsnips, tureens of hearty stew, and a great sturgeon that’s as long as the table is wide.
Thorin eats his fill and finds himself loosening his belt later that night, when they’ve retired to their handsome guestrooms rather than brave the storm to return home. Their delegation trickles into their shared sitting room and, despite the sleepy atmosphere, Frerin starts a rousing chorus of “The Merry Miner of Michel Delving.”
When the high-spirited tune drifts off into the night, Frerin offers his silver harp to Thorin, who declines as gently as he is able. No good could come of it. The only thing his fingers will play is “Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold.” He knows. He has tried. And Thorin will not play it to an audience that, by the grace of Mahal, will never understand what it means.
Father turns to Thorin, his garnet earrings tinkling as he shakes his head and asks, “You haven’t so much as touched your harp in a year, Thorin. Why is that?”
Thorin has never been able to lie to him, so does not. “It would tempt the future,” he says.
Perhaps he truly is becoming superstitious, because he believes it.
*
A fortnight later, Thorin sends the King of Mirkwood a twenty-year-old catalogue of regional wines rated according to bitterness, in which the Elvish wines overwhelmingly scored the highest numbers due to how long they sat in the barrel. When the King of Mirkwood in turn sends him a copy of a healer’s report documenting the health benefits of consuming bitter foods, a semi-regular correspondence ensues.
Somewhere along the way, the useless scrolls and tokens evolve into items of actual use and interest. To a certain extent, the exchange becomes… aggressively extravagant. Thorin, for instance, sends the Elvenking a parcel of seeds that shine like jewels--pretty, but hardly valuable. In return, Thorin receives ten sachets of priceless blue lavender, impossible to find and harvest for anyone who hasn’t lived in the forest for a century and each one worth his circlet on the market.
It takes him a few months to come up something truly impossible to surpass, but when he does, he can feel a smirk on his face whenever he thinks of it: a jeweler’s loupe. A golden one embossed with intricate loops and swirls, with a glass so fine in it, Thranduil could find the bittering agents in wine, or see the gem-like quality of his seeds at the minutest level, or perhaps discover which one of his royal heirlooms has been fake all along. Thorin informs him of this in the letter attached.
He is still waiting for a reply when he receives an unspeakably expensive fur coat from the harbormaster on the eve of his Birthing Day. Thorin is uncomfortable with the wastefulness of it--which is odd because when Thranduil sends him something extravagant, Thorin just feels motivated. In any case, all of this exorbitant diplomacy puts him in mind of his old allies, with whom he dearly wishes he could split his treasure accordingly. Most of them have yet to be born, but one of them is nearly as old as the hills and is just as reliable.
Thorin had seen that massive black bear tearing through goblins as though splashing through choppy gray water; he remembers being carried from the battlefield, bloodied and borne to safety by the paw of a gentle giant. He would not pass on the chance to have such an ally again. So Thorin goes out of his way to befriend Beorn from a distance, sending one raven with an inordinately polite letter of introduction and its mate with precious phial of what the head cook calls “secret spice,” but what they in the West call cinnamon.
Two weeks later, Thorin gets a reply from Beorn in his big, scrawling letters that reads only:
PRETTY SPICE. I WONDER: WHAT COULD A DWARF PRINCE WANT FROM ME?
Thorin replies that he has heard tell of Beorn’s legendary strength and hatred of Orcs and that he wishes only to extend an offer of friendship and other niceties that he hardly remembers writing. The response reads:
FRIENDS CAN’T BE MADE WITHOUT KNOWING EACH OTHER’S FACES, NOW CAN THEY?
Thorin contemplates that message for a while, and decides that a creature as brusque as Beorn wouldn’t write that if he didn’t mean it. It’s been a quiet spring, so nothing needs Thorin’s explicit attention, and the royal guards are getting restless, having been confined to the mountain with their rulers for the past few years now, excepting a few customary trips to Dale. So Thorin clears his schedule and answers:
You are correct. I will arrive before summer’s eve. Reply immediately if you do not wish to have visitors.
He stamps the official seal of Durin on it with relish. After half a lifetime of wandering, being cooped up in this glorious mountain has been as difficult for him as it has been for the guards. They’ll take the Old Forest Road, which is only just beginning to fall into disrepair.
Thorin promptly starts a list of gifts that he believes Beorn would enjoy--simple, unostentatious pleasures. Unfortunately, it all ends up being food: jarred lemon curd, pounds of salt, dried mushrooms, pots of raw syrup, and tart pickled plums. And then, on a whim, he includes the useless brooch that Dís has been trying to get rid of for years: a stylized bumblebee made of jasper and onyx that was too big to be anything but cumbersome for a Dwarrowdam of her size.
He’ll be hard-pressed to explain the importance of this expedition to anyone except himself. Fortunately, people have begun to question Thorin’s strange requests less and less. As for the long term, Beorn has a beard any Dwarf could respect and is a fierce warrior besides. A friendship may seem odd now, but it will seem less unlikely with time.
*
And, true to his word, it’s a week before summer’s start when Thorin finds himself standing in Beorn’s sunlit yard, his guards abandoned at the front gate. They’ve spent some minutes bandying back and forth introductions, as Beorn greets him with typical suspicion. Thorin begins to wonder in earnest if Dwarves seem this secretive and wary to the rest of Middle Earth. Still, he persists: “Your home is as sizeable and beautiful as I had heard, Master Beorn.”
“And how did you hear it?” Beorn enquires amiably, but with an edge to it as he towers over Thorin effortlessly, arms folded over his barrel chest.
“Gandalf the Grey is a gossip,” Thorin answers without a drop of shame. “As are the ravens.”
“So are the sparrows,” Beorn returns. “I’ve heard that you’re a superstitious Dwarf. Do you believe that making nice with a Skinchanger will protect you from the harm of animals, or somesuch?”
“No,” Thorin says, honestly surprised. And then, curiously, “Would it?”
Beorn chuckles and says, “That it would not, princeling. Noon will cook us if we keep squabbling out here. Come inside, and bring those plums you’ve brought. The smell of them is making me miss my lunch.”
It’s a mere three hours later--once Beorn has finally welcomed the rest of his royal entourage around his great table laden with sweet breads and goat cheese and berries and honeyed nuts--when a raven arrives bearing a letter. Thorin scans it quickly, and stands.
“Father has had a grave riding accident. A deep head wound and too much blood lost from his leg. He doesn't have long,” Thorin announces, half-numb.
As they depart for Erebor, Beorn says, “The swiftest route will be--”
“The Elf-path, I know,” Thorin says, and spares not a moment for pretty parting words. They ride hard for the Forest Gate and launch themselves at full speed into Mirkwood. It’s a long week of exhausted ponies and cram and a handful of hours of sleep. Still, the forest is mercifully lighter and greener than Thorin remembers it, and the path is much more well-trodden and, excluding a few dark patches, is easy to follow--at least by comparison. Thorin knows they’re making progress when they cross the Enchanted River unscathed, but Thorin feels eyes on him after that. All the way through their trek in the wilderness, their ponies flick their ears to the side as if they hear something that the Dwarves on their backs do not. It is not to be taken for granted, using the Elf-path without permission and, thus far, without repercussion. Thorin will have to find some way to signal his thanks.
The woods finally begin to lighten again and the air feels fresher, and soon they break out into the flat green expanse, exhaling their relief at the open sky above it. They cross the river at its narrowest point. They thunder over the plains. The Lonely Mountain finally peaks into view. It is all a sense memory, for Thorin: the soreness of his legs, his panting timed with Silverfoot’s, the incredible silence of those well-oiled gates as they open, the pounding disorientation of racing up the stairs to his father’s bedchamber.
There is a high ringing in his ears and a dry, choked feeling in his throat as he sees Frerin and Dís clinging to each other at the back of the room. Then the crowd of council members and nobility parts for him and finally, finally, Thorin kneels at his father's bedside. His father, who looks so pale and miserable and blinks slowly down at his eldest son and rests a weak hand on Thorin's bowed head.
Thorin, who sees no reason to lie, says to the floor, “It is a shame, for you to leave us this way. I forgive you for it, but it still rankles.” He lifts his face to look at the gauze around his father’s forehead, the way he seems to have aged immeasurably in no time at all.
His father stares up at him with tired eyes and says, “I am sorry to do it. But… I was beginning to feel it, anyway.”
Thorin shakes his head mutely, unwilling, for once, to discuss their sickness openly, to be pragmatic about the inevitable. His father folds his hands across his stomach like an old man and croaks, “It calls to me, even now. The Arkenstone. My jewelry box. Your silver brocade. It is killing me, and it began to do it long before my fall.”
Perhaps it’s the dehydration or the presence of others, but Thorin's tears won’t come. Father begins to fumble with his earrings, fingers struggling with the sleek little clasps. “Here, take them. They’ve weighed on my mind long enough. I want you to have them, and when they make that maddening little noise when you turn your head, you will remember me. You will remember that you must surpass me, that you must do me more than proud--you must throw off our curse, at any cost. I know you can, Thorin. You’re just that stubborn.”
Thorin wants to tear his own hair out; he wants shake his father until he’s scared him back into good health. And yet Thorin’s heart is glad for it, knowing that his canny, cunning father is saying all this in front of the gathered nobility on purpose--so that when Thorin combats the gold-sickness preemptively, they will know that it was their unnamed, unofficial regent’s dying wish.
He gives a particularly hard tug on his earrings and Thorin gently pulls them off for him, saying quietly, “I will.”
Thorin tucks them into his pocket and rises to sit on the edge of the bed. He leans forward to knock their foreheads together lightly, then simply stays there with his hands resting over his father’s. He hardly recognizes his own voice as he says, “Is there anything… is there anything else?”
Thráin’s eyes are closed and Thorin watches water gather around his father’s eyelashes. And then he says, “I miss your mother, Thorin. I miss her so much.”
Thorin keeps his forehead against his father’s, even as he draws one last heaving breath and subsides, settling. After a long moment, Thorin draws back--head empty, heart numb, racing for an emergency that has already passed.
For all that there are twenty Dwarves and Dwarrowdams present, the room is as silent and still as if they had all died with Thráin. Then Thorin convinces his aching thighs to let him rise and says, “I will inform our king.”
He does not ask where their king may be found.
Thorin walks through halls already filled with the sounds of mourning and enters the treasury quietly. As he walks forward, the King Under the Mountain looks up from the stack of rubies he’s tabulating and says softly, with complete surprise, “Fror.”
Thorin doesn’t wince, hearing his king call to his long-dead brother. In the throes of gold-sickness, he too had nearly called Fili by Frerin’s name. For the illness robs them not only of sense, but also of time.
So Thorin comes closer and says, “No, Grandfather. I am Thorin. I have come to inform you that your son is dead.”
His king stares up at him blankly, twisting the ring around his finger restlessly. Then the King Under the Mountain turns back to the sorting table, silently dismissing him as the click-clack of rubies being stacked fills the room.
He does not scorn his grandfather as he leaves him to his counting and sorting. Thrór son of Dáin has succumbed after years of combatting the influence of the Arkenstone, the seventh ring, and the hoard of gold weighing on his mind at all hours. Who is he to disdain him? Thorin hadn’t lasted a week.
*
Dís pierces Thorin’s ears that very evening, and he wears his father's garnets to the funeral. She and Frerin look younger than ever, standing close together, looking inward, discovering loss as they have never known it.
Grandfather is coaxed from the treasury and sits next to Thorin for the full thirty minutes of funeral rites. Once the last word is spoken and the mourners rise to offer their farewells to Father’s body, the King Under the Mountain seems to recall that he is intended to lead the procession. He shuffles up the steps and leans over the casket to take a final look at his only son’s face. Whatever he sees there, it has him turning on his heel and hurrying back to the coffers before Nár or the rest of the council can persuade him to stay.
Thorin watches as his father is kissed goodbye by hundreds, is loaded into the burial chamber, and is set within the stone. All the while, his subjects weep openly for their regent, for the uncertainty they now face.
The Key to the Secret Side-Door is pressed into his hand by his father’s third-closest advisor, Ganir. “Your grandfather wouldn’t take it,” is all the councilman says. It is a sharp, angular little thing, with a distinctive hourglass shape within its handle. It is cold and it is memory taken physical shape, and every time Thorin touches it, he feels as though he is standing in front of a wall that refuses to become a door.
*
After that, Thrór simply… fades.
It is perhaps the longest two months of Thorin’s life, but it is quick, in the scheme of things.
He buries his grandfather with the Arkenstone set into the very center of his casket cover and with his Ring of Power on his finger. There are a few token objections, but with Nár sobbing in front of them--wailing for the heirlooms to be cast into the darkness, for their influence to die along with their king, to end this miserable cycle, Mahal condemn you--the council proves surprisingly biddable.
So Thorin stands before the halls of the dead for the second time in as many months with Frerin and Dís, pale and drawn on either side of him. They watch as the glittering casket disappears into the darkness; they watch as the stone takes their king back with a crack!
*
Thorin reclaims Erebor.