The King of the Dead

The Men of the Mountains

Before the Númenóreans came to Middle-earth the valleys of the White Mountains belonged to a people of Men akin to the Dunlendings and the folk of the Dark Years, who had raised the standing stones and the winding way up to the high field of Dunharrow in a time so remote that even the Rohirrim found the work already ancient. Like most Men of the West in the Second Age they had fallen under the Shadow and given worship to Sauron. Their king had his seat somewhere in the mountains, and when Isildur founded the realm of Gondor after the Downfall of Númenor, he came to the great black stone that Isildur had brought out of the drowned island and set on the hill of Erech, and there swore to be Isildur's ally and to fight for him at need.

The broken oath

The need came when Sauron returned in strength and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men was gathered against him in S.A. 3430. Isildur sent to the King of the Mountains to keep his word. The king would not. His people had served Sauron in the Dark Years and feared him still, and they hid themselves in the mountains and let the war go past. When Isildur came to the Stone again he laid a curse on the king and his folk: since they had refused to fight for Isildur while they lived, they should have no rest until they had done it, and if Sauron should be thrown down they were to be the last of Men to find peace, being summoned to their duty by an heir of Isildur in a later age. The Men of the Mountains fled before the wrath of Isildur into the roots of the hills, made no more war on anyone, and dwindled away in the barren places until nothing of them was left above ground.

The Paths of the Dead

But they did not leave. Beneath the Dwimorberg, the Haunted Mountain that stands over Dunharrow, ran a road through the roots of the range to the valley of the Morthond above Erech, and the Dead kept it. Nothing living came out of it. When the Rohirrim settled the land they walled the entrance with the Dark Door and shunned it; Baldor son of King Brego swore at a feast to walk the Paths of the Dead and went in and never returned. Only old tales remembered why the Dead could not rest, and only the line of Isildur, kept in the North, remembered what might rouse them.

The summons

On 8 March T.A. 3019 Aragorn, Isildur's heir, came to Dunharrow with the Grey Company of the Dúnedain and with Legolas, Gimli and the sons of Elrond, and passed the Dark Door into the Paths of the Dead. The Dead followed in the dark, an unseen host whose cold and whispering nearly broke Gimli. On the way Aragorn found Baldor's bones before an inner door. He came out at nightfall into the Morthond vale, rode through the night to Erech, and at midnight stood at the Stone and blew a horn. Out of the darkness came the sound of horns answered from far off and a rustle as of a great multitude, and the King of the Dead came to the Stone with his host behind him: a figure only half-seen, a king of an ancient fashion, crowned and armed and grey as mist. Aragorn asked him why he had come, and the king answered that he had come to fulfil the oath and to have peace. Aragorn unfurled the black standard that Arwen had made and declared the hour of the oath's fulfilment. He named himself the heir of Isildur and rode south, and the Dead came after him.

Pelargir

For four days the Shadow Host swept through Lamedon and Lebennin behind the Grey Company, and the living fled before them; the Men of Gondor were not the only ones who could not endure the Dead. On 13 March they came to Pelargir, where the fleet of the Corsairs of Umbar lay at the quays and the Haradrim were driving the people of the coast. The King of the Dead's host came on with Aragorn at their head, and the Corsairs, who had fought Men all their lives, broke before the grey terror and threw themselves into the river or fled ashore. Every ship was taken. Then Aragorn went up to the shore and called the King of the Dead to him. He told him that the oath was fulfilled, and bade him go back and trouble the valleys no more, and depart and be at rest. The king stood before the host, broke his spear across, cast down the pieces, bowed, and turned away, and the whole Shadow Host was gone like a mist that the wind takes. The Dead were never seen again, and the Paths were only a road.

Legacy

The King of the Dead had the oldest unfinished business in Gondor, and the only debt that Sauron's enemies ever collected from among Sauron's worshippers. His fulfilment of the oath won Aragorn the ships that came up the Anduin under the black standard to the Pelennor, which turned the battle and saved the city. Of the king himself nothing else is known, not even his name: only that he chose fear over faith once, and paid for it for three thousand years, and kept the oath at last.

Released from Isildur's curse by Aragorn on the shore at Pelargir on 13 March T.A. 3019; he broke his spear, bowed, and vanished with all his host.