The sun was sinking and light was failing in the hollows. The hill now loomed up before them and above them, and they wondered what need there could be of a guide to so plain a mark. But as Mim led them on, and they began to climb the last steep slopes, they perceived that he was following some path by secret signs or old custom. Now his course wound to and fro, and if they looked aside they saw that at either hand dark dells and chines opened, or the land ran down into wastes of great stones with falls and holes masked by bramble and thorn. There without a guide they might have laboured and clambered for days to find a way.
At length they came to steeper but smoother ground. They passed under the shadows of ancient rowan-trees, into aisles of long-legged aeglos: a gloom filled with a sweet scent. Then suddenly there was a rock-wall before them, flat-faced and sheer, forty feet high, maybe, but dusk dimmed the sky above them and guess was uncertain.
'Is this the door of your house?' said Turin. 'Dwarves love stone, it is said.' He drew close to Mim, lest he should play them some trick at the last.
'Not the door of the house, but the gate of the garth,' said Mim. Then he turned to the right along the cliff-foot, and after twenty paces he halted suddenly; and Turin saw that by the work of hands or of weather there was a cleft so shaped that two faces of the wall overlapped, and an opening ran back to the left between them. Its entrance was shrouded by long trailing plants rooted in crevices above, but within there was a steep stony path going upward in the dark. Water trickled down it, and it was dank.
One by one they filed up. At the top the path turned right and south again, and brought them through a thicket of thorns out upon a green flat, through which it ran on into the shadows. They had come to Mim's house, Bar-en-Nibin-noeg, which only ancient tales in Doriath and Nargothrond remembered, and no Men had seen. But night was falling, and the east was starlit, and they could not yet see how this strange place was shaped.
Amon Rûdh had a crown: a great mass like a steep cap of stone with a bare flattened top. Upon its north side there stood out from it a shelf, level and almost square, which could not be seen from below; for behind it stood the hill-crown like a wall, and west and east from its brink sheer cliffs fell. Only from the north, as they had come, could it be reached with ease by those who knew the way. From the 'gate' a path led, and passed soon into a little grove of dwarfed birches growing about a clear pool in a rock-hewn basin. This was fed by a spring at the foot of the wall behind, and through a runnel it spilled like a white thread over the western brink of the shelf. Behind the screen of the trees, near the spring between two tall buttresses of rock, there was a cave. No more than a shallow grot it looked, with a low broken arch; but further in it had been deepened and bored far under the hill by the slow hands of the Petty-dwarves, in the long years that they had dwelt there, untroubled by the Grey-elves of the woods.
Through the deep dusk Mim led them past the pool, where now the faint stars were mirrored among the shadows of the birch-boughs. At the mouth of the cave he turned and bowed to Turin. 'Enter, lord!' he said: 'Bar-en-Danwedh, the House of Ransom. For so it shall be called.'
'That may be,' said Turin. 'I will look at it first.' Then he went in with Mim, and the others, seeing him unafraid, followed behind, even Androg, who most misdoubted the Dwarf. They were soon in a black dark; but Mim clapped his hands, and a little light appeared, coming round a corner: from a passage at the back of the outer grot there stepped another Dwarf bearing a small torch.
'Ha! I missed him, as I feared!' said Androg. But Mim spoke quickly with the other in their own harsh tongue, and seeming troubled or angered by what he heard, he darted into the passage and disappeared. Now Androg was all for going forward. 'Attack first!' he cried. 'There may be a hive of them; but they are small.'
'Three only, I guess,' said Turin; and he led the way, while behind him the outlaws groped along the passage by the feel of the rough walls. Many times it bent this way and that at sharp angles; but at last a faint light gleamed ahead, and they came into a small but lofty hall, dim-lit by lamps hanging down out of the roof-shadow upon fine chains. Mim was not there, but his voice could be heard, and led by it Turin came to the door of a chamber opening at the back of the hall. Looking in, he saw Mim kneeling on the floor. Beside him stood silent the Dwarf with the torch; but on a stone couch by the far wall lay another. 'Khim, Khim, Khim!' the old Dwarf wailed, tearing at his beard.
'Not all your shots went wild,' said Turin to Androg. 'But this may prove an ill hit. You loose shaft too lightly; but you may not live long enough to learn wisdom.'
Leaving the others, Turin entered softly and stood behind Mim, and spoke to him. 'What is the trouble, master?' he said. 'I have some healing arts. May I help you?'
Mim turned his head, and his eyes had a red light. 'Not unless you can turn back time and cut off the cruel hands of your men,' he answered. 'This is my son. An arrow was in his breast. Now he is beyond speech. He died at sunset. Your bonds held me from healing him.'
Again pity long hardened welled in Turin's heart as water from rock. 'Alas!' he said. 'I would recall that shaft, if I could. Now Bar-en-Danwedh, House of Ransom, shall this be called in truth. For whether we dwell here or no, I will hold myself in your debt; and if ever I come to any wealth, I will pay you a danwedh of heavy gold for your son, in token of sorrow, even if it gladdens your heart no more.'
Then Mim rose and looked long at Turin. 'I hear you,' he said. 'You speak like a dwarf-lord of old; and at that I marvel. Now my heart is cooled, though it is not glad. My own ransom I will pay, therefore: you may dwell here, if you will. But this I will add: he that loosed the shaft shall break his bow and his arrows and lay them at my son's feet; and he shall never take an arrow nor bear bow again. If he does, he shall die by it. That curse I lay on him.'
Androg was afraid when he heard of this curse; and though he did so with great grudge, he broke his bow and his arrows and laid them at the dead Dwarf's feet. But as he came out from the chamber, he glanced evilly at Mim, and muttered: 'The curse of a dwarf never dies, they say; but a Man's too may come home. May he die with a dart in his throat!'
That night they lay in the hall and slept uneasily for the wailing of Mim and of Ibun, his other son. When that ceased they could not tell; but when they woke at last the Dwarves were gone and the chamber was closed by a stone. The day was fair again, and in the morning sunshine the outlaws washed in the pool and prepared such food as they had; and as they ate Mim stood before them.
He bowed to Turin. 'He is gone and all is done,' he said. 'He lies with his fathers. Now we turn to such life as is left, though the days before us may be short. Does Mim's home please you? Is the ransom paid and accepted?'
'It is,' said Turin.
'Then all is yours, to order your dwelling here as you will, save this: the chamber that is closed, none shall open it but me.'
'We hear you,' said Turin. 'But as for our life here, we are secure, or so it seems; but still we must have food, and other things. How shall we go out; or still more, how shall we return?'
To their disquiet Mim laughed in his throat. 'Do you fear that you have followed a spider to the heart of his web?' he said. 'Nay, Mim does not eat Men. And a spider could ill deal with thirty wasps at a time. See, you are armed, and I stand here bare. No, we must share, you and I: house, food, and fire, and maybe other winnings. The house, I guess, you will guard and keep secret for your own good, even when you know the ways in and out. You will learn them in time. But in the meantime Mim must guide you, or Ibun his son, when you go out; and one will go where you go and return when you return
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