Chapter 14: Studio Moria in the Sunset Mount
Despite its title, this chapter makes more references to The Faculty (one of Jon's better bad movies, co-starring Elijah Wood) than anything else. The whole thing is available on YouTube, but you'll at least want to check out part 9 and part 10.
The Lord of the Reports:
The Fellowship of the Tie
Book II, Chapter 14:
Studio Moria in the Sunset Mount
The members of the Company picked their way down an old and winding track along the base of the mountains as the sun passed through noon and began to go west.
"It's hardly fair to call Moria a Mine," Stevli informed them as they descended. "Doesn't give you the bigger picture. It's also a Studio, and an Office. Of old the Dwarves would broadcast from such places comedic sketches both great and terrible. Sadly, their glory days are widely thought to be over."
"What does he mean, 'thought'?" murmured Stepholas from several paces behind, softly enough that Stevli either did not hear or felt free to ignore it with dignity.
"Studio Moria in the Sunset Mount was only recently returned to," he continued, "but I've seen the first few broadcasts, and let me tell you, they are brilliant. And you're going to love the company. And the food! I'll get my cousin Pete to cook you one of his specialties. It's going to be great."
They reached a low cliff, the walls of which were nearly touched by the edges of a dark still lake that did not seem to reflect the sunset. "The entrance is somewhere in this wall," announced Lewis. "Dwarf doors are invisible when closed. Sometimes their makers forget where they are, and lose them altogether."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?" wondered Stepholas.
"Actually, this particular door was made by elves," said the Wizard. "They used it to get in touch with the Heads of Moria, back in the days when elves and dwarves knew how to spend five minutes together without turning it into a bitch-fest."
This quieted Stepholas and Stevli for the moment; then Jason voiced a thought which had been forming, if slowly, in his mind. "Say, is this the mine people were talking about back at RSU?"
"I told you," replied the Dwarf with some irritation, "it's not a mine, it's--"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," said Jason. "Is this the place that you haven't actually heard from for months?"
"Wait, what?" exclaimed Rob.
"Nobody told us about this!" added Ed.
"Why do you think I didn't want us to go this way?" demanded Lewis. "Fear of caves?"
"Moral objection, maybe?" asked Stepholas. "I know I'd object to living with people whose idea of home involves crawling around under rocks."
"And people wonder why the friendship between Elves and Dwarves waned," snapped Stevli.
"Are you saying it was the fault of the Elves?"
"Well, it sure wasn't the fault of the Dwarves!"
"Come on, guys," protested Jonagorn, stepping between the two before a full-fledged row could erupt. "This race thing, we're not going to settle it tonight, and we could really use cooperation within the Fellowship. So if you could just try to find some common ground..."
The two looked dubiously at him, then at each other.
"Maybe the Jeúmenorian's right," said Stepholas at last.
"Maybe he is," agreed Stevli thoughtfully. "Which is funny, because we've always found them to be sort of scheming."
"Really?" exclaimed the Elf. "We're very big on that too!"
They exchanged a high-five (or, more precisely, a low-to-medium five), then turned in unison to eye Jonagorn sternly.
"Are you going to let them get away with that?" demanded Kilbornomir.
The Stranger shrugged. "It got them to stop fighting, at least for now," said he, "and that's all I really wanted."
The time had come to say farewell to Smoochy. "A mine is no place for a pony," declared Lewis. "He has a better chance out here than he does in there."
Sam looked as though she might cry. "Don't worry, Sam," said Jonagorn as they unloaded the packs. "He's smart, and he knows the way back to RSU. He'll be fine."
The hobbits sat on the ground at the edge of the lake and sorted the items, separating the essentials from those they could leave behind. Meanwhile Stevli wandered back and forth tapping the stone here and there with his axe while Stepholas leaned against the rock as if listening.
Lewis simply glared at a fixed point on the cliff side, as if attempting to stare down the rock. Jason was not entirely certain which of them would win.
When the sun had sunk below the horizon, the wizard jumped to his feet. "A-ha!" he shouted, hands flailing. "Thought you could hide from me, did you? You'll have to wake up earlier in the morning to fool Lewis the Black!" He leapt for a relatively smooth portion of the wall and began running his hands over the rock, then stepped back triumphantly.
"Uh, Lewis," said Rob after a minute, "nothing's happening."
"Shows what you know," replied Lewis, though he was too excited to sound properly angry. "Just wait. The markings on these doors only actually show up under starlight and moonlight."
As if on cue, the clouds broke apart, and the Moon shone on the grey face of the rock. Then slowly on the surface, where the wizard's hands had passed, faint silver lines appeared, growing until they outlined a design topped by a great arch of interlacing letters in an Elvish script.
There was a round of applause from the Company.
"It reads," said Lewis, pointing to the letters with his staff, "The Doors ... of Michaelsin, Lorne ... of Moria. Say the word ... friend ... and enter."
"What's that mean?" asked Ed.
"Simple enough," Lewis told him. "The password to open the doors is 'friend'." With that he turned to the doors and pronounced, "Mellon!"
The members of the Company held their collective breath.
When it became apparent that nothing was happening, they let it out one by one. "What was that?" asked Rob. "Some kind of slow-acting spell?"
"No," replied Lewis gruffly, "it was the word 'friend', in Sindarin." He faced the door again. "Meldo!"
The result this time was no less dramatic than the last.
"And that was 'friend' in Quenya," added Stepholas helpfully to the hobbits.
"We've already said 'friend' in Common," muttered Lewis to himself. "Ami! Compadre! Amico! Tomodachi! End-fray!"
"Frenemy," suggested Stepholas.
The wizard translated that as well, and then began cycling both words through older tongues not familiar to anyone present. The other members of the Fellowship began to shift uncomfortably, and then lean against the rock or sit down altogether, not willing to stay on their feet if this was going to take all night.
The sound of Lewis shouting continued in the background, peppered with words that quite definitely did not mean 'friend' in any language.
Rob picked up a rock and tossed it into the water, where it skipped a few times and then vanished with a soft slap. Ed grabbed one of his own to throw after it; this one went straight down.
"No, you idiot, you've got to get flat ones," began Rob, but then Jonagorn caught both of them by the shoulders.
"Don't disturb the water," he said. "No telling what's in it."
Lewis threw down his staff and sat down in a huff next to Jason. After fairly vibrating for a moment with the effort of sitting still, he immediately rose and began to pace again.
"We should never have let Smoochy run off before we knew whether we would have to turn around," said Kilbornomir to no one in particular. Sam began to choke up again at the mention of the pony; Jason put an awkward arm around her shoulders, but rather than face her in this state he turned his gaze to the letters in the archway.
"Lewis," he said all at once, "are you sure you're supposed to say 'friend'? Maybe it's addressed to friends, and 'say the word' refers to some kind of password that only a friend would know."
The wizard stopped short, stared at Jason, and then looked back up at the silver letters. "You know what's crazy? You could actually be right," he said at last.
"You could sound a little less surprised about it."
"In fact," continued Lewis, "I don't think that says 'word' at all. I think it says 'wørd'."
Jason blinked. "They sound the same to me."
"There's a slash through the O in the second one. It's an elf thing."
"Oh, I get it. Well, what's the wørd that opens the door?"
"If I knew that, you dolt, I would have said it already," snapped Lewis.
Jason saw at once that there was no reasoning with the wizard in this mood, so he turned instead to the other members of the company. "Hey, Stepholas! You're an elf, right?"
"You know, it's a funny thing," said Stepholas, "but I don't actually see race. People tell me I'm an elf, and I believe them, because I can work this haircut."
"He's an elf, all right," said Stevli, rolling his eyes.
"I knew you were a dwarf right off," replied Stepholas acidly. "I don't see race, but I can sure smell it."
Jonagorn stepped between them again. "Common ground, guys," he said. "Jason, did you have a question?"
"Thanks, Smiler. Stepholas, what with you being an elf and all -- if I said 'and that's the wørd', what would you think I was talking about?"
The elf brightened considerably. "There are so many things it could be! Wikiality, Expecting, Superegomaniac, Sigh, I Am The Great And Powerful Oz, Monkey Butter..."
"Yeah, yeah, okay -- um, I don't think I want to know about that. Okay, so there are lots of wørds. But if one of them were going to be the wørd, what would it be?"
"Oh, I think there's no question about that," replied Stepholas. "The wørd, the Word of the Year, the wørd that started it all, that would be -- truthiness."
The arch divided down the middle where no crack had been visible before, and with a great slow rumble the doors swung outwards.
Kilbornomir let out a low whistle, which was completely overwhelmed by Lewis' triumphant shout. "Hah! All right, everybody in. If we're going to do this thing, let's do it fast, and get the hell out as soon as possible."
They strode in, the moonlight shining cold at their backs, though it stretched only a little way into the dark cavern. "Who turned out the lights?" demanded Stevli.
Lewis glared at the tip of his staff until it burst into luminance out of sheer terror, then held it aloft and let the rays fall where they would. A broad hallway with many pillars stretched out in front of them, at the head of a short but wide flight of steps. The whole floor was strewn with what appeared to be suits of dwarvish armor.
"This is no mine," said Kilbornomir.
"I told you," said Stevli, "it's--"
"It's a tomb."
At that instant Jason nearly tripped over a suit of armor before his feet, and saw the withered visage still in its helmet, the arrow protruding from the hollow socket of the eye.
At that moment several things happened.
Stevli ran forward, darting from body to body, and then fell to his knees and let out an anguished "NOOOOOOO!" far more intent than any he had fired at Stepholas.
The elf, for his part, bent to examine one of the arrows. "Orcs!" he hissed. Kilbornomir and Jonagorn drew their swords as Stepholas nocked his own bow.
"New plan," shouted Lewis, somehow making himself heard over Stevli's echoing wail. "We get the hell out now!"
And something seized Jason by the ankle.
He fell with a cry of surprise and fear -- and disgust, because the thing was slimy.
The other hobbits leapt after him, shouting and grabbing, to no avail; the rest of the Fellowship swung round to see the surface of the lake churning and seething. Up from the depths rose something pale brown, sinuous, and ugly, erupting with tentacles and tendrils. These burst from the water with a great splash and wrapped around Jason's legs, lifting him into the air and slamming him against the ground before dragging him towards the water.
"Smiler!" yelled Sam. "Help!"
She, Ed, and Rob drew their short swords and slashed at any tendrils that came near, while Jonagorn and Kilbornomir charged past them and waded into the water, hacking off the thrashing tentacles as they went.
Soaked and battered, Jason found himself held aloft and staring at a kind of face, with grasping claws sprouting from the cheeks, slitted eyes, and, opening beneath him, a mouth with far too many teeth.
"Stab it in the eye!" shouted Jonagorn.
"I'm not -- the hobbit -- for the job!" gasped Jason in reply.
With one determined stroke Jonagorn sliced through the base of the tentacle holding him, and he dropped into Kilbornomir's arms. The two men charged for the shore, where Stepholas stood with his bow, as the creature rose up out of the water and lurched after them.
"Guaranteed to jack you up," murmured the elf, and fired a single arrow; the shot went true, piercing the monster's left eye.
A great quantity of briny water erupted from its mouth to spray them all over, and then, shrieking horribly, it retreated.
"New new plan," came Lewis' yell. "Back in!" The Company was already on the move, the hobbits running as quickly as they could on their short legs, Kilbornomir lugging Jason, Stepholas and Jonagorn side by side.
"How did you know that would work?" panted Stepholas as they dashed over the threshold.
"Lucky guess?" suggested Jonagorn, putting a hand gingerly to his own eye as if realizing just how much he appreciated having it.
They had reached the steps when the tentacles returned with a vengeance, groping and wriggling across the threshold. Lewis turned and paused. If he was considering what word, or wørd, would close the gate again from within, there was no need: many coiling arms seized the doors on either side and swung them round. There was a horrible slamming, and the crash of rocks on either side falling into place.
A cold silence settled. Their eyes did not adjust to the darkness, for it was too absolute to provide anything for the eye to work with; then at last Lewis' staff began to gleam again.
"So much for plans," the wizard growled. "Only one way to go now. Come on! We're going to be guests of Studio Moria for at least the next four days, and we should find a spot without so many corpses before we break for dinner."
The Lord of the Reports:
The Fellowship of the Tie
Book II, Chapter 14:
Studio Moria in the Sunset Mount
The members of the Company picked their way down an old and winding track along the base of the mountains as the sun passed through noon and began to go west.
"It's hardly fair to call Moria a Mine," Stevli informed them as they descended. "Doesn't give you the bigger picture. It's also a Studio, and an Office. Of old the Dwarves would broadcast from such places comedic sketches both great and terrible. Sadly, their glory days are widely thought to be over."
"What does he mean, 'thought'?" murmured Stepholas from several paces behind, softly enough that Stevli either did not hear or felt free to ignore it with dignity.
"Studio Moria in the Sunset Mount was only recently returned to," he continued, "but I've seen the first few broadcasts, and let me tell you, they are brilliant. And you're going to love the company. And the food! I'll get my cousin Pete to cook you one of his specialties. It's going to be great."
They reached a low cliff, the walls of which were nearly touched by the edges of a dark still lake that did not seem to reflect the sunset. "The entrance is somewhere in this wall," announced Lewis. "Dwarf doors are invisible when closed. Sometimes their makers forget where they are, and lose them altogether."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?" wondered Stepholas.
"Actually, this particular door was made by elves," said the Wizard. "They used it to get in touch with the Heads of Moria, back in the days when elves and dwarves knew how to spend five minutes together without turning it into a bitch-fest."
This quieted Stepholas and Stevli for the moment; then Jason voiced a thought which had been forming, if slowly, in his mind. "Say, is this the mine people were talking about back at RSU?"
"I told you," replied the Dwarf with some irritation, "it's not a mine, it's--"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," said Jason. "Is this the place that you haven't actually heard from for months?"
"Wait, what?" exclaimed Rob.
"Nobody told us about this!" added Ed.
"Why do you think I didn't want us to go this way?" demanded Lewis. "Fear of caves?"
"Moral objection, maybe?" asked Stepholas. "I know I'd object to living with people whose idea of home involves crawling around under rocks."
"And people wonder why the friendship between Elves and Dwarves waned," snapped Stevli.
"Are you saying it was the fault of the Elves?"
"Well, it sure wasn't the fault of the Dwarves!"
"Come on, guys," protested Jonagorn, stepping between the two before a full-fledged row could erupt. "This race thing, we're not going to settle it tonight, and we could really use cooperation within the Fellowship. So if you could just try to find some common ground..."
The two looked dubiously at him, then at each other.
"Maybe the Jeúmenorian's right," said Stepholas at last.
"Maybe he is," agreed Stevli thoughtfully. "Which is funny, because we've always found them to be sort of scheming."
"Really?" exclaimed the Elf. "We're very big on that too!"
They exchanged a high-five (or, more precisely, a low-to-medium five), then turned in unison to eye Jonagorn sternly.
"Are you going to let them get away with that?" demanded Kilbornomir.
The Stranger shrugged. "It got them to stop fighting, at least for now," said he, "and that's all I really wanted."
The time had come to say farewell to Smoochy. "A mine is no place for a pony," declared Lewis. "He has a better chance out here than he does in there."
Sam looked as though she might cry. "Don't worry, Sam," said Jonagorn as they unloaded the packs. "He's smart, and he knows the way back to RSU. He'll be fine."
The hobbits sat on the ground at the edge of the lake and sorted the items, separating the essentials from those they could leave behind. Meanwhile Stevli wandered back and forth tapping the stone here and there with his axe while Stepholas leaned against the rock as if listening.
Lewis simply glared at a fixed point on the cliff side, as if attempting to stare down the rock. Jason was not entirely certain which of them would win.
When the sun had sunk below the horizon, the wizard jumped to his feet. "A-ha!" he shouted, hands flailing. "Thought you could hide from me, did you? You'll have to wake up earlier in the morning to fool Lewis the Black!" He leapt for a relatively smooth portion of the wall and began running his hands over the rock, then stepped back triumphantly.
"Uh, Lewis," said Rob after a minute, "nothing's happening."
"Shows what you know," replied Lewis, though he was too excited to sound properly angry. "Just wait. The markings on these doors only actually show up under starlight and moonlight."
As if on cue, the clouds broke apart, and the Moon shone on the grey face of the rock. Then slowly on the surface, where the wizard's hands had passed, faint silver lines appeared, growing until they outlined a design topped by a great arch of interlacing letters in an Elvish script.
There was a round of applause from the Company.
"It reads," said Lewis, pointing to the letters with his staff, "The Doors ... of Michaelsin, Lorne ... of Moria. Say the word ... friend ... and enter."
"What's that mean?" asked Ed.
"Simple enough," Lewis told him. "The password to open the doors is 'friend'." With that he turned to the doors and pronounced, "Mellon!"
The members of the Company held their collective breath.
When it became apparent that nothing was happening, they let it out one by one. "What was that?" asked Rob. "Some kind of slow-acting spell?"
"No," replied Lewis gruffly, "it was the word 'friend', in Sindarin." He faced the door again. "Meldo!"
The result this time was no less dramatic than the last.
"And that was 'friend' in Quenya," added Stepholas helpfully to the hobbits.
"We've already said 'friend' in Common," muttered Lewis to himself. "Ami! Compadre! Amico! Tomodachi! End-fray!"
"Frenemy," suggested Stepholas.
The wizard translated that as well, and then began cycling both words through older tongues not familiar to anyone present. The other members of the Fellowship began to shift uncomfortably, and then lean against the rock or sit down altogether, not willing to stay on their feet if this was going to take all night.
The sound of Lewis shouting continued in the background, peppered with words that quite definitely did not mean 'friend' in any language.
Rob picked up a rock and tossed it into the water, where it skipped a few times and then vanished with a soft slap. Ed grabbed one of his own to throw after it; this one went straight down.
"No, you idiot, you've got to get flat ones," began Rob, but then Jonagorn caught both of them by the shoulders.
"Don't disturb the water," he said. "No telling what's in it."
Lewis threw down his staff and sat down in a huff next to Jason. After fairly vibrating for a moment with the effort of sitting still, he immediately rose and began to pace again.
"We should never have let Smoochy run off before we knew whether we would have to turn around," said Kilbornomir to no one in particular. Sam began to choke up again at the mention of the pony; Jason put an awkward arm around her shoulders, but rather than face her in this state he turned his gaze to the letters in the archway.
"Lewis," he said all at once, "are you sure you're supposed to say 'friend'? Maybe it's addressed to friends, and 'say the word' refers to some kind of password that only a friend would know."
The wizard stopped short, stared at Jason, and then looked back up at the silver letters. "You know what's crazy? You could actually be right," he said at last.
"You could sound a little less surprised about it."
"In fact," continued Lewis, "I don't think that says 'word' at all. I think it says 'wørd'."
Jason blinked. "They sound the same to me."
"There's a slash through the O in the second one. It's an elf thing."
"Oh, I get it. Well, what's the wørd that opens the door?"
"If I knew that, you dolt, I would have said it already," snapped Lewis.
Jason saw at once that there was no reasoning with the wizard in this mood, so he turned instead to the other members of the company. "Hey, Stepholas! You're an elf, right?"
"You know, it's a funny thing," said Stepholas, "but I don't actually see race. People tell me I'm an elf, and I believe them, because I can work this haircut."
"He's an elf, all right," said Stevli, rolling his eyes.
"I knew you were a dwarf right off," replied Stepholas acidly. "I don't see race, but I can sure smell it."
Jonagorn stepped between them again. "Common ground, guys," he said. "Jason, did you have a question?"
"Thanks, Smiler. Stepholas, what with you being an elf and all -- if I said 'and that's the wørd', what would you think I was talking about?"
The elf brightened considerably. "There are so many things it could be! Wikiality, Expecting, Superegomaniac, Sigh, I Am The Great And Powerful Oz, Monkey Butter..."
"Yeah, yeah, okay -- um, I don't think I want to know about that. Okay, so there are lots of wørds. But if one of them were going to be the wørd, what would it be?"
"Oh, I think there's no question about that," replied Stepholas. "The wørd, the Word of the Year, the wørd that started it all, that would be -- truthiness."
The arch divided down the middle where no crack had been visible before, and with a great slow rumble the doors swung outwards.
Kilbornomir let out a low whistle, which was completely overwhelmed by Lewis' triumphant shout. "Hah! All right, everybody in. If we're going to do this thing, let's do it fast, and get the hell out as soon as possible."
They strode in, the moonlight shining cold at their backs, though it stretched only a little way into the dark cavern. "Who turned out the lights?" demanded Stevli.
Lewis glared at the tip of his staff until it burst into luminance out of sheer terror, then held it aloft and let the rays fall where they would. A broad hallway with many pillars stretched out in front of them, at the head of a short but wide flight of steps. The whole floor was strewn with what appeared to be suits of dwarvish armor.
"This is no mine," said Kilbornomir.
"I told you," said Stevli, "it's--"
"It's a tomb."
At that instant Jason nearly tripped over a suit of armor before his feet, and saw the withered visage still in its helmet, the arrow protruding from the hollow socket of the eye.
At that moment several things happened.
Stevli ran forward, darting from body to body, and then fell to his knees and let out an anguished "NOOOOOOO!" far more intent than any he had fired at Stepholas.
The elf, for his part, bent to examine one of the arrows. "Orcs!" he hissed. Kilbornomir and Jonagorn drew their swords as Stepholas nocked his own bow.
"New plan," shouted Lewis, somehow making himself heard over Stevli's echoing wail. "We get the hell out now!"
And something seized Jason by the ankle.
He fell with a cry of surprise and fear -- and disgust, because the thing was slimy.
The other hobbits leapt after him, shouting and grabbing, to no avail; the rest of the Fellowship swung round to see the surface of the lake churning and seething. Up from the depths rose something pale brown, sinuous, and ugly, erupting with tentacles and tendrils. These burst from the water with a great splash and wrapped around Jason's legs, lifting him into the air and slamming him against the ground before dragging him towards the water.
"Smiler!" yelled Sam. "Help!"
She, Ed, and Rob drew their short swords and slashed at any tendrils that came near, while Jonagorn and Kilbornomir charged past them and waded into the water, hacking off the thrashing tentacles as they went.
Soaked and battered, Jason found himself held aloft and staring at a kind of face, with grasping claws sprouting from the cheeks, slitted eyes, and, opening beneath him, a mouth with far too many teeth.
"Stab it in the eye!" shouted Jonagorn.
"I'm not -- the hobbit -- for the job!" gasped Jason in reply.
With one determined stroke Jonagorn sliced through the base of the tentacle holding him, and he dropped into Kilbornomir's arms. The two men charged for the shore, where Stepholas stood with his bow, as the creature rose up out of the water and lurched after them.
"Guaranteed to jack you up," murmured the elf, and fired a single arrow; the shot went true, piercing the monster's left eye.
A great quantity of briny water erupted from its mouth to spray them all over, and then, shrieking horribly, it retreated.
"New new plan," came Lewis' yell. "Back in!" The Company was already on the move, the hobbits running as quickly as they could on their short legs, Kilbornomir lugging Jason, Stepholas and Jonagorn side by side.
"How did you know that would work?" panted Stepholas as they dashed over the threshold.
"Lucky guess?" suggested Jonagorn, putting a hand gingerly to his own eye as if realizing just how much he appreciated having it.
They had reached the steps when the tentacles returned with a vengeance, groping and wriggling across the threshold. Lewis turned and paused. If he was considering what word, or wørd, would close the gate again from within, there was no need: many coiling arms seized the doors on either side and swung them round. There was a horrible slamming, and the crash of rocks on either side falling into place.
A cold silence settled. Their eyes did not adjust to the darkness, for it was too absolute to provide anything for the eye to work with; then at last Lewis' staff began to gleam again.
"So much for plans," the wizard growled. "Only one way to go now. Come on! We're going to be guests of Studio Moria for at least the next four days, and we should find a spot without so many corpses before we break for dinner."