Yeah, no, first rule of enchantment is that you don't trust yourself to check if you're enchanted! Strider is either far gone or rather naive to think otherwise. He can't even detect magic on himself!

"It sounds like burying it is better than carrying it, at least. I can do that, but I'd be using up a lot of powerful spells. But if we do all that, and then I cast Hide from Undead, hopefully the wraiths won't pick up any of our trails, or have reason to pursue you anymore."

That sounds like a plan, which is a lot better than the lack of a plan he had before! The only problem is that involves him going back to join the party he spent all night running away from instead of sleeping. This is the kind of thing he kind of swore off doing again, so he'll only do it if Aragorn commits and neither of them can think of any problems on their way back.

Gord seems to be hiding something.  Aragorn feels uneasy.

"But if we bury it, then the wraiths will find it, and what good is it that they won't find us?"

Yeah, there's the problem. "You're right, we don't want to give powerful magic to wraiths. I could probably still send it to another plane, and whoever picks it up is very unlikely to be as horrible as a wraith, but we'd be endangering a specific person, and there's no way to know if they'll agree when they hear our offer."

Even if it's worth it from Strider's point of view, Gord doesn't want to risk himself and spend money on moving the artifact from one set of near-strangers to another.

"We can still put the ring in my bag. It would hide it from the wraiths, almost certainly, unless they have a mage so powerful that nothing you do will work."

"I'm not agreeing to this yet, but supposing you lost the wraiths, what were you going to do?" Maybe it's something as inoffensive as living in a dark cave.

The way Gord says that first part sounds off.  "Wait, are you thinking of the wraiths as... acting for themselves, like the Barrow-Wights, and trying to take the Ring for themselves?  They're slaves of Sauron, enslaved by the Ring's magic when Sauron held it."

Would that have changed anything last night?  Aragorn doesn't know.

"We're trying to reach Rivendell, for safety and for counsel about what to do next.  And now, I suppose, to heal Frodo."

...oh.

Poor wraiths. It's always good to destroy undead to free their souls, but these ones are enslaved twice over. He doesn't have a way to help them, and it hurts. Maybe if Strider wasn't afraid of using the Ring's power, he could help them -

"You mentioned Sauron before. As the one god Who gives out magic around here. So He sent the wraiths after the ring, and gave them some kind of magic to locate it?" Gord probably shouldn't make an enemy of a uniquely active evil god without good reason. "Putting it in my bag and running for Rivendell is probably the best plan, from your point of view."

"But I'm not convinced that I should take on the risk of joining you. It sounds like a good cause," meaning Gord is going to ask Strider to confirm everything under a truth spell, "but if I helped every stranger's good cause I would be long dead. And so help fewer people. And there might be something much worse around that I don't know about yet and would rather fight without making Sauron come after me."

"In the long term I want to get stronger, which will happen naturally as long as I'm doing something worthwhile, until I'm strong enough to go home. I'll also need diamond dust and eventually whole diamonds," at least he hopes so, "and some other expensive components, and a new magic sword, but I expect I can buy all that for spells."

"You know this world much better than I do." And you don't know about zone of truth yet. "Give me your best argument for why I should risk myself helping you and not someone else."

"You get stronger... naturally?"  Aragorn boggles.  This sounds like something far over and above normal training and practice.

"The best reason is - well, for one, you appeared into Middle-Earth next to us, and in my experience when chance happens that neatly, there might be Someone behind that chance.

"And for another - if Sauron retrieves the Ring, he will be many times more powerful, probably powerful enough to conquer all Middle-Earth."

He bows his head gravely.

"I get stronger like anyone else does? If I keep walking into serious danger and strive for what I want and don't give up. And don't die along the way, obviously. When clerics get stronger, their god gives them stronger spells, and eventually I'll get ones that let me travel back home."

"I... really don't understand your first reason. Maybe Someone had a hand in it, but if we have no idea Who, it seems as likely to work against us as for us. If Someone wants me to do something, They should just ask me!"

"Sauron conquering the - middle continent? - does sound bad. If only because it's usually bad for anyone to conquer places. That might be enough, if I knew for sure what Sauron can and cannot do and what He's actually going to do. Can you say more about that? Anything that ought to affect my decision, I don't need all the political details."

"If you wait for Chance to explain Himself and ask you politely, you'll be waiting a long while."  Aragorn is happy for the god-pronoun's wordplay.

"I visited Sauron's dominions when I was younger, and..."  He shakes his head gravely.

Really, he should have talked about this before now; Gord's asking exactly the right question.  But, he's too used to how everyone who's grown up in Middle-Earth knows Sauron as something to dread, at least as a childhood boogyman if not worse.

"Sauron forces everyone to worship him, and men are offered in sacrifice at his altars.  He and his lieutenants rule as tyrants moving everyone like ants or game-pieces to their plans.  Or at least, he would do that - he had not fully exerted his power over the parts I visited, which is why I dared visit and could escape.  But he had started to, and I heard enough from the lands where he had ruled longer."

Ugh. Another world, same old troubles.

So according to Strider, there's a probably-Lawful-Evil god who rules part of the continent and will conquer the rest if He gets His ring artifact back. Gord has no idea if he'd approve of the rest of the continent as it is now, but stopping a Lawful Evil god from conquering it is probably a good idea even so.

"If that's true then I'm going to help you. I will cast a truth spell on you, which will prevent you from knowingly lying, and ask you to repeat the relevant bits. I have no particular reason to distrust you, but it's a big thing to trust a stranger about."

"This is a good time to tell me anything else you'd like me to be convinced of. About yourself, the ring, the halflings. I'll need a quarter-hour to prepare the spell, you can think while I pray. It will last about eight minutes. Then you can tell me more about this world while we walk, and how you all ended up in this situation. Do you accept?"

"Thank you," Aragorn says first, from his heart.  That's the important part - Gord wants to help.  "Of course I accept."

Then he adds, "But I'm curious - you said a truth spell?  You're not going to ask me for an oath? And..."  Aragorn's never heard of anything that could be called a truth spell, unless he counts how older Elves will look into your eyes and see your mind and heart.  "... Your spell will just keep me from lying; it won't let you look into my mind?"

If not, he'll need to decide what he wants to tell Gord.  He can of course talk about the hobbits and Rangers and Gondor and Elves all he wants, but what're the important things to say?  And is it important to mention how he's the rightful king?...  Well, it'll almost certainly come up at some time, and Gord might be upset if Aragorn left it out now...

"And if you need to focus on preparing the spell, do you mind if I look for some athelas leaves nearby?  I can use it to help cure sicknesses."

Gord's first instinct is that Strider is Lawful and expects strangers like Gord to be too, but that's not the only way to interpret it. Gord has known some very Chaotic people who took oaths seriously because swearing an oath was their way of indicating they were being serious.

"I don't know what oaths mean in your culture. Where I'm from, some people are against lying, or against lying about making alliances, and calling something an oath doesn't add anything to that. Others might lie but won't forswear an oath. And of course some people give false oaths anyway, and you can never be sure about a stranger."

"I don't know what an oath means to you, so it wouldn't convince me any more than your plain words under a truth spell. You can swear or tell me about it under the truth spell, if it's important to you."

"The spell won't let me read your mind, that's a wizard spell. It will only prevent you from saying anything you know is wrong, you can try saying 'two and two make five' and see what it feels like. The spell will affect me too, it works on everyone nearby, but I don't have a way to prove that I'm not exempting myself from it or that I'm not reading your mind." Swearing about it isn't special to Gord and if it were he couldn't prove that either.

"Do what you like while I pray but return quickly; we'll be short on time getting back to your party." If Strider wants to slip away discreetly and not speak under a truth spell, Gord won't stop or pursue him.

"Oaths are - whether you mean them or not, you put some of your power into them -- or I can tell you later when you've cast the spell."

What do oaths mean to Gord, if he doesn't even know that?  Or do they work differently in his world?  And if it's that different, what else might be different --

As soon as Gord starts praying, Aragorn is happy to go look for athelas.  He doesn't go too far, but he's glad to have something else to do to fix his mind on this world rather than his frenzied imaginings of what Gord's world might possibly be like.

Everyone here has a... magic ability to constrain themselves with an oath? And if you break one, you presumably lose the 'power' you invested. Strider isn't a mage... at least Gord thought he said he wasn't a mage, but that might have been a misunderstanding... does he mean that you'd lose some of your strength, the thing Gorum wants you to have more of? And anyone can do this - or at least, Strider expected Gord to think that Strider could -

Either this realm is very Lawful or Gord is very confused. ...Or both. Or maybe they're all fey here, that sounds like it could be a fey thing?

He prays for the power to see through to the truth.

After a little searching, Aragorn finds a few kingsfoil plants, with enough leaves to at least help Frodo's injury.  Or Gord's, if his healing didn't fix everything.  Or the next wound someone gets.

Meantimes, he realizes that there can't be a world where oaths are meaningless.  Even if most Men somehow lived like orcs - even then, someone giving their word would mean something, however light and however often they broke it.  And there would be people who wanted it to mean more.

Thus fortified, he returns to greet Gord after perhaps a quarter-hour.

"You might feel the spell take hold. Don't resist it, I'll know if you do." Gord can't actually reliably tell these things with detect magic, but together with tone and body language cues he can make an educated guess.

"...If you're not used to resistable spells, try to relax and sort of welcome it in. I'll cast it on this rock, it affects a small area, if you leave you won't be affected until you come back. Duration is around eight minutes." 

Zone of Truth. He doesn't resist it himself; he doesn't want to lie by omission and it's good practice.

Aragorn feels the magic pressing on him.  It's not like staring into Galadriel's Mirror or listening to a minstrel - it feels like a wind blowing on him, or a horse leaning against him, or the wraiths' fear pressing on him.  He instinctively feels like he wants to resist - but he relaxes.  Gord told him that the way for them to trust each other is for him to let it in, and so he does.

It doesn't feel like anything once it settles over him.

"An interesting feeling," he says.  "It feels more like the wraiths' magic than the Elves - though I'm not sure that means anything?

"To start with:  I haven't lied to you, ever, since we first met.  I'm here to stop Sauron from reclaiming the Ring, because I deem that the most needful thing I could be doing now.  If you're asking why there aren't more of us - few people know where the Ring is or who has it, and that was a good thing since we only lately learned that Sauron had realized it was in the hands of a hobbit."

He pauses.

"To test the spell...  I have gone by many names.  I am Aragorn.  I am Strider.  I am Thorongil.  I was born in --"

He can't force out the words he was going to say ("the Havens of Sirion").  It's a strange feeling; he isn't sure whether he likes it.

"- in Eriador," he finishes truthfully after a few moments' pause.  "The spell seems to work."

(And like he'd guessed, it lets him say everything but a straight lie.)

Detect Magic shows Strider-of-many-names to be enchanted, and he seems sincere; Gord is going to trust him.

"I'm Gord. I haven't tried to deceive or harm you and your party, and as far as I know I haven't." Truth spells can be weird about saying you didn't 'lie'; saying you didn't deceive sometimes works better.

"I intend to help get the ring to Rivendell, or somewhere else you think is safe it that doesn't work out. I intend to help and protect your party while we're traveling together."

"If the two goals conflict I will probably prioritize the ring but not totally, I'm not going to suggest abandoning one of the halflings if they can't keep up or can't fight, it's hard to say something general ahead of time.  If one of you does something I find unconscionable, I may abandon or try to stop you but will still try to get the ring to Rivendell." Better to get that out of the way now than find out when it's too late.

"If I encounter something terrible along the way, someone I want to help, I will... in some cases want to deal with that before going on. But few situations will be as important as the ring."

"I also intend to tell you about most of my abilities and spells, it might be important. Almost all of them are common to clerics, but if people here really don't know about clerics then please don't spread that knowledge without my approval. I'd like you to tell me about your relevant abilities too."

"If there's anything else that I might find hard to believe later on, best to say it now."

Good.

"I wouldn't ask you to abandon one of the halflings either, at least not quickly."  (He uses the native Hallit word; it's close enough.)  "And - no, people don't know about 'clerics'.  I don't think there's ever been someone gifted quite like you, and they certainly haven't been common."

"There're a few things I want to tell you now lest they come up later, but first -" (he's happy for the excuse to delay mentioning his lineage, but he still frowns for the topic) "- I'm concerned that if your healing did not totally cure the dagger's curse, it might weaken or kill you later.  Or, worse, it might turn you into another wraith under their command.  If you had not healed yourself, I would have said it might happen in a few days for a Man; longer for a halfling, but now that you did -"

He shrugs.

"So, if you feel anything that might be a sign of that, please tell me.  I can at least hinder the curse with athelas."

"I'll definitely tell you," Gord agrees. This is just common sense (and common decency) when you might be afflicted by an undeadifying curse!

"I feel fine now after casting the spells, so if it does come back I expect I can hold it off by casting them again, but you never know. And I'll run out of diamond dust eventually. How do you cure it entirely? - that's probably not urgent."

"I don't know."  He shakes his head.  "Elrond of Rivendell might know - if anyone in Middle-Earth."

"And there's something I might mention about my ancestry while we have the truth-spell, but it can wait if you have any more urgent questions to ask?

"I'm not going to judge you by - what you said under the truth spell and what you only said later." Exact words only matter when dealing with devils and if you're dealing with a devil your mistake isn't in using the wrong words.

"You can just say you don't intend or expect to mislead me for the next while. About things that affect the mission, or that I would care about. If you think there's something I won't believe you about it later despite all that, then I guess you should say that. I don't know what could be so unbelievable about your ancestry but I don't know what kinds of ancestries are common around here."

"...I can also cast this spell again another day if we need it."

That's an easy thing to say.  "Thank you.  I do not intend or expect to mislead you about our mission, as long as you continue an ally.  And I do not intend to lie to you, regardless of what happens.

"Perhaps what's happening around here is more important than my ancestry."  He grins a slight grin, and kneels down to sketch a map in the dirt.  It isn't as detailed as he would've liked, but still something.

"We're at Weathertop, here.  Down the Road east across the Lone-Lands, where hardly anyone lives, is Rivendell where Elrond and the elves dwell in the foothills of the Misty Mountains."  And scattered north of Rivendell are the hidden villages of the Dunedain, but he won't mention that.  "West is the town of Bree, where I met the Halflings; Men and Halflings dwell there together, but few of them.  West of that is the Shire, where Halflings live - and they keep almost entirely to themselves, knowing very little of the world outside.  The four traveling with us are almost the only Halflings to travel farther than Bree in two generations.

"There used to be a kingdom of Men across all this region, called Arnor, but it fell ages ago."  He sighs.  "To an army led by one of the wraiths we faced last night.  The last of the king's men retreated to become rangers, trying to keep some peace for travelers and the few people who still live here.  The halflings still honor the king in name, but... few outside Rivendell remember him beyond that name.  I'm one of those Rangers, and it has been a hard task few recognize.

"But now... Frodo's uncle Bilbo found the Ring.  By chance, it might seem, though Gandalf and I agree that Someone was guiding him to it.  Nobody recognized it at first, but now it has passed down to Frodo, and Gandalf told us what it is, and... the Dark Lord has found it too."

"I too don't expect or intend to mislead or lie to you about our mission. And I'll let you know if anything threatens our being allies." Strider didn't say he wouldn't mislead him about anything that might concern Gord apart from the mission, but on second thoughts that's fair, how can he know what Gord might care about?

He studies the map. "How far from here to Rivendell? Could we encounter anyone else - you said you hoped to find Gandalf? What monsters are there?"

"And - the same wraith led an army here long ago? How can a wraith lead an army, were they all undead? ...Are they still around?" A wraith that's lived for a long time and (claims?) to have led an army and toppled a kingdom sounds very different from a random wraith encountered out in the wilds! On the other hand, there must be a reason it hasn't created a million spawn by now...

There's clearly a story to be told about how the ring was found, by both sides at once, and then sent across empty lands with an unprotected group. Strider seems to think it's not mission-relevant or at least not urgent, so Gord will let it be for now.

"Twelve days' walk for me, perhaps, on the Road.  But more with the halflings, and more still since I fear we cannot use the Road lest the wraiths find us again."

He sighs.  "And that means we're less likely to meet any friends, should any Elves or Dwarves still be abroad now - or my fellow Rangers.  With ill fortune, we might meet trolls or orcs from the Misty Mountains.  Neither of them are as common as they were, but the wraiths might have stirred them up.

"And no, the army of Angmar was living... mostly... and mostly died long ago.  Most of the Dark Lord's minions are alive.  Is it different in your world?"

"I have a spell that removes tiredness; it could let all of us walk quickly for as long as we're not sleeping, but if I prepared it that many times it would leave little room for other spells. Better to be slow and safe. I don't think I have anything that would let us travel faster; I can't teleport or let us fly or conjure horses, or magically conceal our tracks." Speaking of which, they had better start walking back towards the hill if they're going to be in time to heal Frodo and still move somewhere else before nightfall.

"In my world there are no undead armies but there are also no undead leading armies. Except liches, I suppose, and then only in stories - liches are evil undead wizards who did it to themselves. There's a story about a lich who led a giant undead army but that was a thousand years ago. I suppose a wraith leading the living isn't the weirdest thing I've ever heard of."

Something itches in his mind. "To be clear, when I say 'in my world' I mostly mean on the continent I'm from. I've met people who came from Garund, the continent to the south - it's only a small sea between the two - but there are at least two other continents with oceans in between and I have no idea what goes on there. Although powerful wizards can teleport between the continents, so there's a limit to how isolated they can get. And I'm sure I don't know most of what goes on at home either, but an army of undead I expect I'd have heard of, if there was one around right now."

"Should we move during the day or night? I was planning on sleeping through most of today, and now that I won't get to do that I really should sleep the following night once we get away from the hill. I'm the only one who can see magic but I can't always be on watch and anyway if the wraiths come within sixty feet where I can see them, at night, it's already too late. But their horses at least can see during the day - I don't know how far and how well horses can see..."

"I still don't understand their tactics. We can't hurt them at range - I took down one of their horses at five hundred feet with a summoned cat but they probably won't fall for that again and it can't hurt the wraiths themselves. They can follow us from a distance during the day, keep a watch on the hill to see us leave, then attack once night falls. Even if we see them coming and prepare to use fire, at night they have the advantage unless we get another miracle. And they fought me in daylight, so I still don't understand why they can't just take the ring while you're away and Frodo is unconscious, if it's true that they can sense it without needing horses. What's stopping them, Merry with a torch?"