rock. About the lower slopes of Amon Rûdh there grew thickets of aeglos; but its steep grey head was bare, save for the red seregon that mantled the stone. 14
As the afternoon was waning the outlaws drew near to the roots of the hill. They came now from the north, for so Mîm had led them, and the light of the westering sun fell upon the crown of Amon Rûdh, and the seregon was all in flower.
‘See! There is blood on the hill-top,’ said Andróg.
‘Not yet,’ said Túrin.
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 Mîm 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. 15 Then suddenly there was a rock-wall before them, flat-faced and sheer, towering high above them in the dusk.
‘Is this the door of your house?’ said Túrin. ‘Dwarves love stone, it is said.’ He drew close to Mîm, lest he should play them some trick at the last.
‘Not the door of the house, but the gate of the garth,’ said Mîm. Then he turned to the right along the cliff-foot, and after twenty paces halted suddenly; and Túrin 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 upwards 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 Mîm’s house, Bar-en-Nibin-noeg, 16 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. 17 From the cleft a path led, and passed soon into a little grove of dwarfed birches growing about a clear pool in a rock-hewn basin. This pool 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 Mîm 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 Túrin. ‘Enter,’ he said, ‘Bar-en-Danwedh, the House of Ransom; for so it shall be called.’
‘That may be,’ said Túrin. ‘I will look first.’ Then he went in with Mîm, and the others, seeing him unafraid, followed behind, even Andróg, who most misdoubted the Dwarf. They were soon in a black dark; but Mîm 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 Andróg. But Mîm 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. Then Andróg was all for going forward. ‘Attack first!’ he said. ‘There may be a hive of them; but they are small.’
‘Three only, I guess,’ said Túrin; 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. Mîm was not there, but his voice could be heard, and led by it Túrin came to the door of a chamber opening at the back of the hall. Looking in, he saw Mîm kneeling on the floor. Beside him stood silent the Dwarf with the torch; but on a stone couch by the further wall there lay another. ‘Khîm, Khîm, Khîm!’ the old Dwarf wailed, tearing at his beard.
‘Not all your shafts went wild,’ said Túrin to Andróg. ‘But this may prove an ill hit. You loose shaft too lightly; but you may not live long enough to learn wisdom.’ Then entering softly Túrin stood behind Mîm, and spoke to him. ‘What is the trouble, Mîm?’ he said. ‘I have some healing arts. Can I give you aid?’
Mîm turned his head, and there was a red light in his eyes. ‘Not unless you can turn back time, and then cut off the cruel hands of your men,’ he answered. ‘This is my son, pierced by an arrow. Now he is beyond speech. He died at sunset. Your bonds held me from healing him.’
Again pity long hardened welled in Túrin’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 ransom of heavy gold for your son, in token of sorrow, though it gladden your heart no more.’
Then Mîm rose, and looked long at Túrin. ‘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 arrow nor bear bow again. If he does, he shall die by it. That curse I lay on him.’
Andróg 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 Mîm, 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!’ 18
That night they lay in the hall and slept uneasily for the wailing of Mîm 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 sun the outlaws washed in the pool and prepared such food as they had; and as they ate Mîm stood before them.
He bowed to Túrin. ‘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 Mîm’s home please you? Is the ransom paid and accepted?’
‘It is,’ said Túrin.
‘Then all is yours, to order your dwelling here as you will, save this: the chamber that is closed, none shall
