If you, like Amdirien, are interested in how Thorongil had spent the twenty-eight hours that passed between the ball and his meeting the Princess in the tavern by the docks, you must go back to the moment chaos struck the palace.  Thorongil was prowling about the side corridors - Altazîr had suggested he watch the south wing, which was the least heavily guarded. Though he was much further away, he heard the same scream from the ballroom which Amdirien did. He rushed through empty hallways and came a few minutes later to the site of the carnage.  He pulled a silver dagger from each of his sleeves.

He came to one of the four great doors to the ballroom - in any ordinary setting they would have passed for massive wooden gates.  They were twenty feet tall at their center and more than half a foot thick. Two black robed figures stood guard. They had hardly raised their weapons when they each were felled by a silver dagger to the neck.  Thorongil took his weapons from their bodies before they had even hit the floor.

He gave the great doors a push and as he expected they proved to be barred against him.  He spoke a word in his native tongue which had shattered far stronger doors than these, and with a tap of his finger the doors exploded inwards, sending four black robed figures, who had been holding the door against him, tumbling backwards and impaled by large splinters of wood.  As Thorongil entered the ballroom his black armor appeared upon him and a black sword sprang from his hand.

In the enormous gold-ceilinged central chamber of the palace all the guests were huddled in one corner.  More than a dozen men armed for battle assailed them while more held closed the remaining three doors. The nobility of Umbar were being quickly cut down, all the ball attendees could use in their defense were cutlery, pieces of furniture, and musical instruments.  One former soldier was doing particularly well with an oboe, and Anders was holding off two cultists with a wooden chair. Despite their gallant efforts at least fourty men and women lay dead on the polished marble floor.

At the sight of Thorongil, with his black clothing and red fire in his eyes, the remaining loyal men and women of Gondor lost all hope.  This, surely, was leader of their the enemies. The cultist were confused, unsure what new power had interrupted their slaughter.

The people of Gondor’s spirits rose as Thorongil threw a dagger into the nearest assassin of the Dead Hand.

“Grab his sword!” he yelled, and one of the nearest Gondorians did so.  As ten cultist descended on Thorongil he quickly cut them down. As he killed more of his enemies the tide quickly turned.  More and more weapons were taken from slain assassins and the slaughter turned to a proper battle.

The Dead Hand soon retreated.  Thorongil found Anders. “Where's the Princess?” he roared.

“She went to get more wine!” he replied.  They both sprinted to the door the Princess had left by only minutes.  Gadron, the Ranger who Anders had befriended minutes prior, followed behind them.  Altazîr almost crashed into Anders as he came running in by the same door.

“Where's Amdirien?” shouted Anders.

“I sent her to her guard,” he replied.  “Take a right, then the second left, then the third right!”

Thorongil and Anders nodded.  Followed by Gadron, commander of the Rangers in the city, they rushed along the path prescribed for them.  They came to a small door that led outside. Thorongil nearly broke the handle of the door as he rushed out.

Thorongil and the two Rangers found the Princess’s guard but no Princess, and they weren't properly outside the Palace.  They were in a walled garden, and though they knew it not, they are far from the door Amdirien had been sent to. The pouring rain dampened both clothes and spirits.

Thorongil was furious.  “Search around the palace for the Princess, but I don't think you will find her.”

“We have to find her!” cried Anders.  “Alone in this hostile city, hunted by who knows what...”

“She's not alone,” began Thorongil.

Suddenly the door back into the palace, the only door out of the little garden, shut and locked.  Anders knocked furiously.

“We are betrayed,” growled Thorongil.

“How else could so many enemies get into the palace?” asked Gadron.

“They didn't just get in,” observed Anders, “they made it all the way to the ballroom without anyone raising the alarm.  Not a sound!”

Thorongil pulled a rope with a metal hook from behind his cloak.  He tossed it up a wall of the garden and it hooked itself to the top.

“You never know when you'll need rope!” said Anders.

One by one they climbed the wall.  It was a long drop on the other side but they all survived it.  Last of all came Thorongil, bringing the rope with him.

“Trust no one,” he advised.

Turning to Gadron, Thorongil asked where the Rangers made camp.  With that information he set off into the night.

Moving with incredible speed he creeped around the perimeter of the palace grounds until he found a few assassins of the Dead Hand waiting by a door.  He observed them from a distance.

“This is taking too long,” grumbled one.

“How long do we wait?” asked another.

Suddenly there came shouting, and a number of guards came charging down the road.  The black figures rushed down an alley and disappeared into the night - or so they believed.  Thorongil trailed them at considerable distance, but there was no risk that The Predator would lose his prey.  He tracked them for more than an hour into a disheveled part of the city.

Coming around a corner Thorongil found that suddenly the cultists had vanished.  There was no sign of them! Walking slowly down the alleyway he came to a large storm drain.

Though in this section of the city very little Numenorean stonework remained intact above ground, the entirety of central Umbar was build on an intricate network of tunnels that ensured water was properly returned to the sea without turning the streets into rivers whenever a strong storm blew through.  In a torrential storm such as that which raged that night, rapids and waterfalls roared below the empty streets. Thorongil slid down the hole and found that at the base there was a roughly hewn walkway beside the roaring water. There were also tracks: boot tracks.

Thorongil silently tracked his quarry through the maze of tunnels below the city.  Twenty minutes later he came upon the sounds of many people talking.

“Who has seen Durgnîr?” shouted a commanding voice.

“We lost him too!” shouted another man.  “But he got his target.”

“That's the whole list,” said the voice.  “Well done.”

Thorongil peered into a wide chamber.  Here many tunnels brought water collected from the surrounding neighborhoods of Umbar.  The water left by way of a single wide tunnel that flowed towards the sea. Hundreds of columns were spread evenly throughout the wide open room, and around the columns were small stone walkways.  Small bridges, held up by archways under which the water could easily pass, connected the pillars in a grid of narrow pathways above the torrent of rushing water. Between many of the pathways the Dead Hand had construct wooden platforms, so in the center of the cistern there was a wide floor.  In the center was a raised platform with an altar, though it looked to have fallen into disrepair.

Thorongil slipped into the cistern and carefully moved from shadow to shadow around the edge.

“Did we get the princess?” asked the man who was clearly their leader, standing by the altar.  There was no answer.

As Thorongil moved along the narrow ledge that ringed the cistern he came to a small door.  It led to a small room - once an place to keep supplies for repairing the cistern - and he slipped quietly inside.  Countless scrolls sat rolled on racks against the walls. On a table sat a map. It was a map of the palace, marked in great detail with patrol routes and passages to be used!  All around the building there were lines and arrows showing their plan of attack. In the bottom right corner was a seal.

Department of Internal Affairs

“Altazîr,” muttered Thorongil, like the low growl of a beast.

As if in answer came Altazîr’s voice from outside.

“Report!” he roared.

“Everyone you asked for is dead,” replied the leader of the Dead Hand.  “We did not find the princess, but she was not part of the original bargain!”

“That is of no consequence,” answered Altazîr.  He could deal with her later - perhaps she would prove more useful alive, though her presence complicated matters.

Thorongil rolled up the map and with it slipped back into the main chamber of the cistern.  Altazîr was standing by one of the many tunnels that fed water into the chamber.

“Now it is time for our reward!” demanded to leader of the Dead Hand.

“Indeed it is,” answered Altazîr.  He turned and walked some ways up the tunnel he had come by.  Then he blew a horn, and it echoed deafeningly through the tunnels and off the hard stone walls.  A moment later hundreds of armed men rushed into the cistern from the walkways beside every incoming tunnel.

“Traitor!” roared the the Dead Hand’s leaders.  Battle was upon them, and they were outmatched. Altazîrs guardsmen were handpicked for this mission, and far better equipped than the cultists of Sauron.  As the battle raged Thorongil stayed out of the fighting. A number of Altazîr’s soldiers went to the tiny record chamber Thorongil had recently vacated. They doused the contents in oil and set it alight.  There was to be no record of anything that had happened that night, save blood and bodies flowing down to the sea.

As the battle became clearly futile, the last surviving cultists threw themselves in the rushing river below their feet.  Thorongil, after uttering some strange words at the map to protect it from the water, leapt in as well. More than half of the members of the Dead Hand who tried to escape that way drowned or were killed as the current dashed their heads against stone pillars that held up the tunnels and cisterns they passed swiftly through.  Those few that survived, with Thorongil in tow, were thrown from a large pipe into the seas. Only a few survivors made it to shore.

From here it is not hard to guess how Thorongil made it to the tavern where Amdirien would meet him.  It took him a long while - the outpouring of the rainwater into the sea was far from the docks. He was surprised to see the Tar-Minyatur gone, and he hoped at first that Amdirien had gone with it, but he knew in his heart that it was not so.  She would not have left Anders in Umbar. Thorongil rightly guessed that Amdirien might come looking for him in the tavern, so he waited patiently and sipped a glass of wine.