The Lord of the Rings: The Stairs of Cirith Ungol (Part Three)

Frodo’s heart goes out to Faramir: will he get to Osgiliath before this mighty host cuts him off, and even if he does, can he possibly hold the fords against the King of the Nine Riders and his army? He weeps, thinking that now even if he accomplishes his task, the West will have fallen, and there will be no-one left to tell. ‘And still the host of Morgul crossed the bridge.’

Sam’s voice cuts into his horror, urging him to snap out of it, to wake up. The last of the army has passed on into darkness and the gates of Minas Morgul have closed. The nacreous light of the city is fading into silence and shade, but there is still a brooding presence there, watching, and the longer the hobbits stay there the more likely it is to spot them.

Frodo stands. The despair has not left him, but he no longer cowers under its weakness. He smiles grimly. Even if no-one ever knows what he does, he has to do what he has to do. If he can. He takes his staff of lebethron in one hand and thrusts the phial of Galadriel away next to his heart, hiding its light. ‘Then turning from the city of Morgul … he prepared to take the upward road.’

Gollum, who had crawled away out of sight when the gates had opened, comes crawling back, chastising them for standing exposed out there, saying they must make haste: the danger has not passed. They follow him along the climbing precipice until the come to the ‘first stair,’ steep as a ladder, though it has a wall now on either side. The steps are uneven, broken and breaking, and the higher they climb the more aware they are of the fall behind them.

Finally when they feel they can take no more, Gollum turns back and announces they have reached the top of the first stair. Frodo and Sam follow him and rest a bit in the deep dark passage above. Ahead of them is a passage going up, although at a gentler slope and with no steps. Gollum announces that they have passed the Straight Stair; now the Winding Stair is before them, longer, but not so difficult.

Sam asks, what after that? Didn’t he mention a tunnel of some kind? Oh, yes, says Gollum. But they can rest there before they try that. And if they get through the tunnel they will be nearly at the top. A chill wind is blowing down from the heights. Frodo, though sweaty from the climb, now shivers in the cold. This is no place to linger. They must climb on.

The passage seems to go on for miles, and all the time the wind freezes them or seeks to blow them over the edge. They know they are at the top when they can feel no wall on their right hand, only a chasm yawning there. In the flickering flaring red light from Mordor the tall peaks in front and to either side of them seem like ‘pillars holding up a vast sagging roof’ as they stand on a wide shelf of rock. Gollum leads them forward, staying close under the cliff, away from the chasm.

They are no longer climbing, but the path is broken with rocks and fallen stone and they must proceed slowly, with caution. The night and the path seem endless and they cannot tell how long ago it was when they left the Morgul Vale. At last they become aware of another wall looming before them.

‘Again they halted, and again they began to climb’, along a path like a snake winding to and fro up the cliffside. At one point it turns right at the cliffside, and Frodo can look down into the great ravine at the head of the Morgul Valley, a deep pit below them with the gleaming wraith road winding tiny at the bottom. ‘He turned hastily away.’

At long last they reach a final flight of the staircase, short and straight, leading to another level. In the red light of Mordor Frodo can see, ahead of them and high above, ‘the very crown of this bitter road.’ There, there are two cloven shoulders of stone, each crowned with a horn of stone. Looking closely, Frodo sees that the horn on the left is a tower, a red light gleaming at its top. He points this out to Sam.

Sam growls at Gollum. So his ‘secret path’ is guarded after all. Gollum concedes that all ways are watched, but perhaps this way less than the others; maybe they have all marched off to war. ‘But hobbits must try some way.’ Sam reluctantly agrees, but they must rest before they try this tunnel. They’ve been climbing for hours.

Frodo agrees. They must gather their strength for what seems the final push to get into Mordor. If they can just do that, the terrors of what must be done then can be faced; for now, they seem far ahead, and this the last lap. ‘All his mind was bent on getting through or over this impenetrable wall and guard. If once he could do that impossible thing, then somehow the errand would be accomplished, or so it seemed to him in that dark hour of weariness, still laboring in the stony shadows under Cirith Ungol.’

Bits and Bobs

Not much to note, except that Tolkien worked hard to pin down the appearance and approach to Cirith (at first spelled Kirith in his drafts, and always pronounced with a hard C) Ungol; his many sketches are reproduced in The War of the Ring (Volume 8 in The History of Middle-earth).