Is he in league with Herumor? Can he be trusted, or is Borlas being led into a deadly trap? Despite the danger, the old man resolves to discover the truth.īorlas returns to his house, but it is dark and deathly silent: Saelon departs and Borlas wonders about the young man’s motives. The back and forth continues until Saelon offers to reveal more, but on a condition: Borlas must meet him after nightfall, and he must come garbed in black. Borlas has indeed heard the name and is startled and disturbed that Saelon also knows of it.īorlas asks what the followers of Herumor plan to accomplish, but Saelon counters by asking how it was that Borlas came to know about Herumor. He asks Borlas if he has heard of a mysterious figure called Herumor. Saelon eventually explains that there is growing unrest and discontent among the people since the death of Aragorn, the Great King Elessar. The two become engaged in a philosophical discussion on the nature of evil. He is in conversation with a young man, a neighbor named Saelon. One of the few in Gondor who remember the Third Age is an old man named Borlas, the younger son of Beregond (Captain of the Guard of Prince Faramir and a friend of the hobbit Peregrin Took).īorlas sits in his garden by the shores of the River Anduin, within sight of the city of Minas Tirith. A century has passed since the Fall of Sauron and the events of the War of the Ring are now fading from living memory. The tale begins in the reign of King Eldarion, the son of Aragorn. A composite of two of these drafts was published by Tolkien’s son, the late Christopher Tolkien, in The History of Middle-earth, Vol. The Lord of the Rings contained more obvious connections and references to what Tolkien considered his true magnum opus: an epic mythology stretching from before the creation of Middle-earth to after the fall of the island realm of Númenor that would be published posthumously as The Silmarillionįew Middle-earth fans are aware that Tolkien also began work on another book, a sequel to The Lord of the Rings, provisionally titled “The New Shadow.” Tolkien seems to have toyed with the story on and off in his later years but never wrote more than a few pages. The new book soon took on a life of its own, becoming one of the few sequels to surpass its predecessor, showcasing Tolkien’s remarkable talent for inventing languages and fictional histories (what fantasy writers today would call “world-building”). Tolkien began The Lord of the Rings as a sequel to his smash-hit fantasy novel The Hobbit.

The new shadow tolkien