3: Halbarad’s Library (Orthonn)
There is a child in the library.
Halbarad sweeps the more depressing reports into a drawer before the boy can do more than poke at them. Rangers may be trained young, but this one is eight-next-week according to his own careful introduction, and innocence is precious too.
“My Ada told me that you have maps,” Orthonn tells him, caught awkwardly between wide-eyed coercion and sincere intensity. The effect is even more adorable than the child could have planned for.
“I do, many maps,” he says, and thinks of the ones in the drawer. Of Annúndir, studded with the grey wax that means warg-dens. Of Bree-land and the Lone-lands, with attached notes about which Rangers to replace the fallen with, which scraps of history to abandon to time and ignorant men, which risks they can take.
But Orthonn has heard too much of the North Downs, for the Rangers’ children never leave it. He wants to see Gondor, and Arnor-of-old stretching down to lands even Halbarad has never seen. Those don’t come out often. Even the crackled old paper is glad for the change, Halbarad thinks.
