Halifirien

Halifirien was the last and highest of the seven beacon-hills that ran westward from Minas Tirith along the northern edge of the White Mountains. It stood apart from the main range, wooded on its lower slopes by the Firien Wood, through which the Great West Road passed. Its name in the tongue of the Rohirrim means the holy mountain, and the Gondorians called it Amon Anwar, the hill of awe, for a silence hung about it that travellers noticed and did not like to break. The Mering Stream, flowing from the hill into the Entwash, marked the boundary between the Eastfold of Rohan and the province of Anórien in Gondor.

At the top of the hill there was a small level lawn ringed by trees, and here, unknown to almost everyone, Isildur had laid the body of his father Elendil after the war of the Last Alliance, so that the King's tomb should rest at the midpoint of the realm, where it could watch over both halves. The site was tended by the Stewards, who kept the secret, and by no one else.

The tomb was placed there early in the Third Age, shortly after Elendil's death in S.A. 3441. Its location gave the hill its holiness and its name. In T.A. 2510, after the Battle of the Field of Celebrant, the Steward Cirion brought Eorl to the summit, revealed the tomb, and there gave Calenardhon to the Éothéod; Eorl swore the Oath of Eorl on Elendil's grave, and Cirion answered with an oath for Gondor. Because the hill now lay on the border rather than in the heart of the realm, Cirion afterwards removed Elendil's bones to the Hallows of Minas Tirith, and the summit became a place of meeting rather than a shrine. Its beacon was the one whose light told the Rohirrim that Gondor called for aid, and in March 3019 Théoden's host rode past its slopes to the Pelennor.

The hill rose between the Mering Stream and the Firien Wood, on the northern face of the White Mountains, roughly a hundred and thirty miles west of Minas Tirith by the road. Calenhad was the next beacon to the east.