Mell Naneth,
I’d no idea how cruel Mortal parents could be to their children. These ‘fairy tales’ they tell their children to get them to behave are, often, quite shocking. It is a wonder such children sleep restfully, if at all. Wolves, Orcs, goblins, and trolls are just some of the bestiary critters populating such stories. Are most mortal children such unmindful things or are Bainiel and I particularly blessed with such loving, wise, and patient parents? I open with this topic since Remmorchant, or Shelob’s Lair as I have learned, is related to one such ‘fairy tale’ known to the locals here in Bree.
The story was written by a fellow named Piper Gold although, among the scholars in the Stair here, there is some disagreement about whether this name is real or just a performer’s affectation. He was also known as a tavern minstrel with a wife and baby girl. Although popular and talented, he was impoverished and barely able to keep himself, much less his wife and child. It is rumored that many nights he would play, sing, and drink while his family begged on the street to supplement his meager and ill-spent income. They seemed to have no roof of their own and regularly quartered with generous townsfolk until either the lady of the house grew jealous of the minstrel’s wife, for she was a beauty, or grew tired of Piper’s taking the hospitality for granted. Many nights, it is said, the little family huddled under a tattered blanket beneath the stars. One day, the wife and child disappeared; some speculated the woman had abandoned her husband to save the child from deprivation, but there is no solid proof of her whereabouts; these were folks of little importance so no one seems to really care.
Piper was also known for telling whimsical tales, particularly to entertain children in the Market Plaza, and depending on the street generosity of their parents. Some of the tales talk of magical Elves rescuing children or leading mortals to safe places to settle, others about abominations waiting in stealth to snatch children who’d misbehaved or who’d run away. One such story was about a giant spider, Shelob, and a cave far to the east which was supposed to lead to fame and riches but was instead her lair. Piper had written all his songs and stories down, thinking them treasures, and gave them to the Stair scholars, who stored them in a little-used part of the library. Here they collected dust and were mostly forgotten.
However, after his wife and child vanished, Piper would come to the Stair and pour over his tales for days, then disappear from town for weeks at a time searching for his family. He would return, gaunt and worn, his mind a jumble of the real world and the one his tales imagined. One day he vanished for good to parts unknown.
The Shelob fairy tale lies rolled up and tucked into a corner of a bottom shelf of a rarely used bookcase. On the back of it, I found more scrawling, roughly in the same hand as the minstrel, but jumbled and almost unreadable, as if the writer’s hand, eye, or mind were impaired. Two phrases are legible, and I copy them here for your consideration:
“...she’s sneaking down the winding stair/ that looms above the Morgulduin…”
“…a bat-winged, knife-eared beauty… around her neck a chain of iron, its eye of darkest night…”
I believe these might be meaningful.
I am waiting here in Bree for Ada to return from Esteldin.
Lin milui ion,
Ardanion
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