Timeline Event
Frodo and Sam climb to the top of the Morgai
Event Type: General
Age: 3rd Age - Ring War
Date: March 16, 3019
Description:
An event in the prelude to the Destruction of the One Ring; see that entry for an overview:
They woke together, hand in hand. Sam was ... ready for another day; but Frodo sighed. His sleep had been uneasy..., and waking brought him no comfort. Still ... he was stronger, more able to bear his burden one stage further. They did not know the time...; but after a morsel of food and a sip of water they went on up the ravine, until it ended in a sharp slope of screes and sliding stones. There ... the tops of the Morgai were grassless, bare, jagged, barren as a slate.
After much ... search they found a way that they could climb, and with a last hundred feet of clawing scramble they were up. They came to a cleft between two dark crags, and passing through found themselves on the very edge of the last fence of Mordor. Below them, at the bottom of a fall of some fifteen hundred feet, lay the inner plain stretching away.... The wind of the world blew now from the West, and the great clouds were lifted high...; but still only a grey light came to the dreary fields of Gorgoroth. There smokes trailed on the ground..., and fumes leaked from fissures in the earth.
Still far away, forty miles at least, they saw Mount Doom..., its huge cone rising to a great height.... Its fires were now dimmed, and it stood in smouldering slumber, as threatening and dangerous as a sleeping beast. Behind it there hung a vast shadow, ominous as a thunder-cloud, the veils of Barad-dûr that was reared far way upon a long spur of the Ashen Mountains thrust down from the North. The Dark Power was deep in thought, and the Eye turned inward, pondering tidings of doubt and danger: a bright sword, and a stern and kingly face it saw, and for a while it gave little thought to other things; and all its great stronghold, gate on gate, and tower on tower, was wrapped in a brooding gloom.The Return of the King, LoTR Book 6, Ch 3, Mount Doom
Contributors:
Elena Tiriel 22Aug06