Gandalf leapt up and seized his staff, which he had left propped against the end of the mantelpiece when he'd come into the room. "Sam, take Frodo out of here!" he ordered as he advanced to meet that darkness taking shape. "Now!"
Sam had no idea what was happening, but he saw enough to realize that there was danger and he scrambled to obey. He climbed onto the bed and took Frodo's arm to try to draw him away to safety, but Frodo would not move. He sat frozen to the spot where Gandalf had left him and stared at the terrifying scene before him. He couldn't bear to watch, but he could not look away. All his nightmares were coming true.
There was something dark, an ebony creature with eyes like glowing red embers, clambering over the edge of the cradle. It was not quite formed--its limbs and body distorted like a shadow cast over an uneven surface--but solid and growing swiftly larger. Soon, it would be man-sized.
"It's got ahold of Drogo," Sam cried, and would have left Frodo to go to the baby, if Frodo had not held him back.
"No, don't!" He might lose his child today, and might lose Gandalf, but he did not intend to lose Sam as well.
"What?" Sam looked at him incredulously, shocked that Frodo would not want to rescue the baby as well.
"We mustn't." When Sam tried to pull away, Frodo clung to him all the harder, wrapping both arms around him to hold on as tightly as he could. "Don't, Sam! It's out of our hands."
As he stood over the thing in the cradle, Gandalf shouted some words that Frodo did not recognize. Then, in the common tongue, "Begone, foul fiend! Whatever powers you once had in this world are ended! Your time is done!" The wizard raised his staff; Frodo shrieked in spite of himself as Gandalf brought it down.
The end of the staff struck the dark shape and split it in two. There was a thunderous roar of hatred and rage that rang in the hobbits' ears, and the room was filled with smoke and a blinding burst of light as if the house were ablaze.
"Frodo, get down!" With a fierce effort, Sam yanked him from the bed. It was impossible to reach the door, so Sam threw himself to the floor, pulling Frodo down beside him. They huddled together with the corner of the bed providing meager cover as the outer wall of the room and part of the room directly above were blasted open. The thick, black smoke rose up and out through the gaping hole and spread like a cloud on the sky over the city.
*A dark spirit of malice borne upon the winds...* Frodo remembered Gandalf's words about the last time Sauron had been driven from his physical form. But, this time, the spirit was too weak to hold itself together. It did not drift toward Mordor, but was lifted on the breeze, rising higher into the air and dissipating until the last of it was gone.
Gandalf lay in a heap on the floor amid the rubble, his garments and long, white hair splayed around him. His staff lay near his hand, its carved head blackened and charred as if it had been held in a fire. The cradle had toppled over. Sam ran over to search frantically through the tangle of blankets, and found them empty.
"Where's Drogo?" he cried. "What's happened to the baby?"
"There isn't one," Frodo moaned softly. "There never was." But that did not lessen his grief. He had suffered so much because of Sauron. He'd thought that being ensnared by the Ring, falling under its spell, and then losing it, was the worst thing to happen to him--but this was ever harder to bear, for it cut into the depths of his heart. Could worse be done to him than this?
While Sam stood stunned and bewildered beside the fallen cradle, blankets still gripped in his hands, and Gandalf regained his feet, the other members of the household came to the doorway of the room and gaped at the disaster. Frodo curled where he lay, weeping for a child that had never really existed, and for all things that ordinary hobbits wanted that he thought he'd never want himself.
When Gandalf picked him up from the floor, Frodo sobbed in the wizard's arms. "Is it over, Gandalf? Is he finished with me at last?"
!~|end|~!
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