A/N: Finally crossposting this to FFN, with intent to continue it. Follow my ficblog on tumblr, forbitten-fruit, for updates of the illustrated version!
Bilbo Baggins slipped through the gracefully curving stone halls of the elvish palace like a ghost, searching for anything that could help his friends. He kept his ears open for bits of gossip, and his eyes open for side doors or back doors or really any kind of door that wasn't the main one, though he'd had no luck with that just yet. He'd only been tripped over once, though luckily the poor fellow seemed to have had a bit too much wine, and wouldn't be believed.
And so, his creepings brought him to a chamber he hadn't been to before, sneaking in behind a servant, and getting shut in before he realized what was happening. His heart thudded in his chest so loudly he worried someone would hear. This wasn't where he wanted to be at all. It was the king's private chambers.
As might be expected in such a place, there was the king himself. His simpler gown suggested he was at rest, though he sat in a chair, and Bilbo's first thought was that he must be awake. Tiptoeing a bit closer, he saw the king's face was unfocused, relaxed and vacantly staring. Was this how elves slept? He had to admit he didn't have a lot of experience with elves. There was a bed, but maybe it was for other things. He really didn't want to dwell on that thought.
But—maybe he'd gotten careless, lost in his thoughts, and let out a breath too hard—the king was very much not asleep. That face, graceful and cold as the stone halls he lived in, inclined towards him, tilted slightly. "Yes?" the king said to what must have seemed to be an empty room, seeming puzzled, a bit uncertain. Bilbo held his breath.
"I tire of this game. Speak," the king said, this time with more confidence. Bilbo hoped he was bluffing, but had to breathe a bit eventually. Perhaps the king would start to fear he was losing his mind, if he kept talking to empty rooms. He'd feel a little sorry for him, if the king weren't holding all his friends captive.
"You try my patience," the king said, and he seemed to have honed on his position. Those wide, terrible eyes bored through him, unfocused yet with purpose. "I don't know what rumors you've heard, but I'm no fool. I could cut you in half by the sound of your breathing." His hand moved to his sword, and Bilbo decided it was time for a new strategy.
"O king! O…o magnificent one!" Bilbo squeaked, and the king frowned in consternation. "O mighty and exquisite king of the golden hall! Forgive me for trespassing here, I was just…."
"Who are you," the king said, as Bilbo had run out of ideas and trailed off.
"I am…I am…he who walks in shadow—not in the sinister way, just the sort of hidden one—I've come over hills and under them…."
"Never mind the riddles," the king cut in. "Perhaps I would be more entertained by them if they were not in my bed chamber. Why are you here, he who walks in shadows, but not in the sinister way?"
"I…I was hungry?" Bilbo ventured sheepishly.
The king gestured at the table he sat at, on which there was a platter set with cheese, wine, bread, grapes, and apples. "By all means, then. Who am I to refuse such a modest request?"
Bilbo hesitated. He was, in fact, quite hungry, and his stomach had already gotten started when he looked at the food, but the idea of sitting right in front of the Elvenking and shoving food in his invisible mouth did not suit him much.
"I haven't had time to poison it," the king pointed out, "as I hardly expected your arrival." He sliced a bit of cheese without looking at it, and ate it.
Bilbo went to the chair across from the king at the small table, which only seated two. The seat of the chair was wood, and the rest wrought from some sort of metal. It was intricate and beautiful, but also too high for him, and as he discovered when he tried to pull it back a bit, quite heavy. It took a few moments of scuffling, and a hideous scrape of the chair's metal legs on the stone floor, before he finally clambered up. The king, at least, seemed mildly entertained by all this, and gestured again at the food.
He'd just carved off a hunk of cheese and some bread, and was setting in on it, (because regardless of what the king meant to do with him, he could at least face it on a full stomach, it was a very hobbit way of thinking) when the king said something, a question by the tone of it, in a language he couldn't understand. Elvish, most likely. Or whatever elves spoke.
"Mm sorry?" Bilbo managed, around a wad of bread.
The Elvenking spoke again, just as incomprehensibly, but with a sort of different flavor. Neither of them sounded anything like the bits of Khudzul he'd heard from the dwarves. Poor Bilbo had hardly thought there were this many languages in the world. "Sorry, I really have no idea what you're saying," Bilbo said. "Just the Common Tongue for me, plain old tongue for plain old folk."
"Indeed?" the king said. "What manner of folk would you be, anyway?"
"Well, uh, that's…that's a complicated sort of question," Bilbo said. He didn't like to give any sort of information away, and felt quite protective of his home besides.
The king poured him a glass of wine, and pushed it towards him.
"Oh no really, I couldn't possibly. But thank you," Bilbo managed.
"I insist," the king said. "I can hardly make out your words with all that dry bread in your mouth. Please."
He had a point, and seeing as it was the only beverage on hand, Bilbo conceded and took a sip, then relaxing at the mild flavor, another. Like the bread and cheese, which he'd barely been able to enjoy under the circumstances, the wine was exquisite, bringing to mind sun-drenched fields and autumn air. He was no stranger to wine, but this went to his head a bit more than he'd expected, for all it tasted so mild.
"I mean you no harm," the king said, "after all, I didn't seek you out at all, it was you who came into my bedchamber uninvited. Most kings would assume you were an assassin and cut you down without a word, but I gave you a chance to speak…and if you are an assassin, you are a strange one. I have shown you hospitality, though let us be truthful here, no one comes into a king's bedchamber looking for a meal. Perhaps I would have been more understanding if I'd found you in my pantry, little one who walks in shadows, but not in the sinister way. I believe you will find all this to be more than reasonable. But it is also reasonable that I should require answers, and straightforward ones. Who are you, what is your name, what manner of creature are you, and why have you come here?"
Bilbo did in fact have to admit that this was rather reasonable. He'd seen terrifying things in his journey, but elves were not orcs, and aside from being taken prisoner, no one had been mistreated. As he could hardly imagine they'd committed any crimes, perhaps they would all be let go, and put this misunderstanding behind them. And besides, he'd never known anyone with food this good or wine this potent to be evil. "Well, er, your Kingliness," Bilbo began, for he had no idea how to address a king—there was Thorin, of course, but he'd always just called him Thorin—"I think I can answer those. My name is Bilbo Baggins, and that's more or less who I am too. I'm not a creature at all, I'm a hobbit."
"A hobbit?" the king repeated. "I am not familiar with that name. What do others call you?"
"Men call us halflings," he said. "I don't know what others call us, we don't often meet other folk."
"A halfling!" the king exclaimed. "I thought those were only in stories for children."
Bilbo laughed, possibly finding this funnier due to the wine. "That's what we say about elves."
"I would not believe you, if it were not for the fact that you're much too light and quiet to be a dwarf, and too short to be an elf."
"Ah," Bilbo said, at the reference to his height. "You can see me?" He had rather worried about how his food looked when he chewed, being invisible and all.
"As clearly as I see the bread in your hand," the king said. "Why…what have you heard?"
"Mm? Oh, nothing," Bilbo said, eating more bread and washing it down with wine. With his hands under the table, he tried taking his ring off, and his sudden appearance seemed to make no impression on the king at all, his expression placid as a lake on a windless day. Giving the ring a dubious shake, he tried putting it back on. Still nothing.
"This still does not answer the question of why you are here," the king pressed, pouring another glass of wine, which Bilbo gratefully accepted.
"Well, I was just traveling, on my way to Lake-Town," Bilbo said, figuring this was true enough, no need to mention where he intended to go after that, or his traveling companions. "I had some trouble with the giant spiders, and ended up quite lost and hungry. I slipped in with some of your guard, not meaning to trouble you, planning to be right on my way…but I haven't had occasion to slip out again, you see."
"Indeed. Is that all?"
"Yes?" Bilbo squeaked, unconvincingly.
The king's terrible gaze was on him, wide and empty as the open sky. He wasn't sure why he was thinking that way, terribly florid metaphors…the wine, of course. He took another gulp, to calm his nerves. It struck him suddenly that dwarves live a long time, and if tales are true, elves live forever, but a hobbit could easily waste his entire life in a dungeon like the ones here, old and forgotten in a blink of an eye. He didn't want to die like that.
"There's something you're not telling me."
For a moment Bilbo wondered if this was some kind of elf magic, making him desperately want to tell the king everything—the biscuits he'd filched as a small hobbit boy (and continued to filch, when he was no longer so small…) or every time he'd thrown a rock at a squirrel. But fear for one's life and too much wine can accomplish as much as any magic. And worse still, he was afraid to lie or omit the truth, because he feared the king knew more than he let on already. No one had ever been able to see through his ring's magic before. What else could those blue eyes see through? Could the king even now be rifling through his thoughts like the Sackville-Bagginses through an inheritance?
"How can you see me?" Bilbo asked at last. He had to know what he was dealing with.
"What do you mean?"
"Well just, er," Bilbo stammered. "Usually people don't notice I'm even there."
"People," the king repeated. "All people?"
"Of course. Until you."
The king's expression darkened. His hand went to Bilbo's wrist, preventing him from running. He wore his special ring on that hand, and reflexively clenched his fist to protect it. The ring was just under the king's long, pale arm, but he didn't look at it.
"How, exactly, did you sneak in with my guard?" the king asked. "They are trained better than that."
"They didn't see me," Bilbo said, and tried to twist his hand free, but the king's grip was like stone.
"Because you were invisible," the king said, and Bilbo didn't see the point in contesting it. "And you've been having me for a fool this whole time."
"I haven't been having you for anything, aside from brunch," Bilbo protested. "I…I assumed you knew! You saw through it, unless it's broken…." It didn't seem broken, and he still felt half in the shadow world, but the king hadn't reacted at all to him pulling it off, so perhaps it wasn't just the king who could see him.
"An invisible halfling," the king said contemptuously. "And I suppose the little green men singing under the toadstools told you to come here for afternoon tea. There are things that walk invisibly in shadow, my little friend Bilbo Baggins, but they are not halflings, and they do not mean my kingdom well."
Bilbo was getting to be quite afraid at the king's dark tone. It was evident he thought he was some kind of servant of evil. It might be better to just come clean and be thrown in prison with the dwarves, at this rate. "I am a hobbit, sir, a halfling if you will, and I'm not usually invisible. I don't even know why it's stopped working," he babbled. "It must have run out of magic or something, I don't know, but I'm just a regular old hobbit now, and I don't mean your kingdom anything except to wish it a good day…."
"It?" the king repeated. "What's stopped working?"
"Well, the..the thing that was making me invisible…." Bilbo tried to wriggle out of the king's grip again, getting increasingly worried now that the subject was turning to his precious ring, which he still felt powerfully protective of, even if it had failed him. "You…you don't want it anyway, since it's broken, and it wouldn't fit a great elf like you, much too small and plain, only fit for a hobbit really…."
"Your masters in the south gave you something to help you spy on me, didn't they? I can help you, you know. They must have been cruel to you…even a creature such as yourself would want to escape that. I can protect you from them. No one else can do that. But you must cooperate with me. What have you learned, what did they give you, and what did you come here to find?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, I've never been to the south, I'm from over the Misty Mountains, and I don't have any master. I came here for food, I've learned that your wine is stronger than it seems, and as for…as for that, no one gave it to me, I won it, fair and square. I found it, so it's mine," Bilbo said, the panic in his voice turning to passion on the subject of his ring. Fear of being killed or imprisoned had almost entirely been replaced with terror that the king would want his ring. It wasn't fair, he had so many jewels already, he had no business taking a poor hobbit's legitimately owned possessions, and….
His thoughts paused, a new one big enough to push all the others out of his mind beginning to form, as he looked into the king's clear blue eyes. His ring wasn't broken after all, was it? As well as I see the bread in your hand indeed—if he'd known it was a riddle, he'd have solved it faster!
"You're blind," Bilbo blurted out. "That's why you didn't know I was invisible. You're…you're as blind as my great uncle Fastolph."
The king's mouth was set in a firm, thin line. "And now you know a bit too much."
Bilbo realized how poorly he'd played that, and cursed the wine silently. "I…I can be discreet…."
"As can I," the king said. "You've guessed one of my secrets, but it seems I've had less luck with yours. There are no strongholds of evil west of the Misty Mountains, but in the heart of those mountains some very strange things are said to dwell…." The king's free hand moved to Bilbo's cheek hesitantly, touching the soft, ruddy flesh, the thick, curly hair falling over it. "A halfling," he mused, evidently convinced that Bilbo was no orc, at least. "Tell me about what you found, and where, and how you won it."
"I…I found it on the ground, just lying there. A gold ring. I know that sounds…and then I played a game of riddles with some strange creature, and barely escaped with my life. And it's saved my life, from those spiders, I'd be dead without it. It's mine," he insisted, "not given to me by anyone, not to spy on you or anyone else."
"A gold ring?" the king repeated with interest. "Such things were forged…well beyond your ancestors' memory, most likely. They were made by my kin, and are ours by right. Perhaps one of the minor ones, a practice in the craft, long ago lost to the ages…."
"Look, I don't care who made it," Bilbo said, finding his courage burning hot once more under the terror, as it had with the giant spiders, "and if one of your kin didn't think it was worth keeping, I'd say it's forfeit. Finders keepers, and all that."
"If they lost it, they lost their lives in the bargain," the king said. "In any case, even such a minor ring is dangerous in the hands of someone unskilled. I fear for your safety if you continue to use it—these are powers beyond your ken."
"I managed just fine until you came along," Bilbo grumbled.
"It's elven-made, and not meant for other folk," the king insisted. Greed had taken hold of him, showing on his face. "You will return it to me, now." His hand slid down Bilbo's wrist, to his fingers, searching, and Bilbo began to struggle in earnest.
The king was bigger than him, certainly, and had an unexpected strength for his sparse frame, but he was not all-powerful, and desperation to save his precious ring gave Bilbo strength, enough to give the Elvenking trouble. In the heat of the moment, Bilbo tried to draw Sting, but the king, perhaps hearing the scrape of it leaving its sheath, twisted the dagger away from him before he could strike, turning it so the point narrowly missed Bilbo's face.
"Another thing of elven make," the king said, keeping the blade trained on Bilbo so that he didn't dare run. "How many of our treasures have you pilfered?"
"That is also mine fairly, unless it was a gift from your kin to the troll I took it from," Bilbo said.
"Spoken like a professional looter of corpses—and I have no doubt you'd find yourself entitled to my crown once you'd done what you planned with this little knife of yours."
Tossing the blade aside, he again seized Bilbo's hand and attempted to remove the ring from his finger. Bilbo kicked and bit and screamed and cursed without any sense of dignity left about him, making such a fuss that just as the ring was pulled from his hand, the door burst open with several of the king's guard at the ready.
The king was standing over Bilbo, who had curled up on the floor in misery, his hand closed around the ring. He turned to his surprised guard. "It is under control. Leave us," he said, and when they hovered a moment longer, staring at Bilbo's wretched self, he said again, "Leave!"
"Give it back," Bilbo groaned. "It's mine. Mine, I found it. You have no right, no right…."
Ignoring him, the king returned to his seat, and opened his hand, exposing the ring in his palm. Bilbo lunged at it one last time, but the king sent him reeling back with a kick. The ring expanded in the king's hand like a lump of butter melting on a hot griddle, becoming elf-sized rather than hobbit-sized. The king ran his fingers over it and gasped, his expression a mix of wonder and fear, his unseeing eyes very wide. "Impossible," he murmured. "No, no, it can't be…tell me how you found it, every detail."
"I told you," Bilbo said, through thick tears, choking back a sob. "I found it, on the ground. It's mine, it's mine…."
"It seems to have had quite a hold on you," the king said. "But I believe you now that you were not sent by any enemy—there is no one in all the world who would give this to you, if it is what I fear and hope…."
"What is it?" Bilbo asked, in spite of his distress. He'd loved his strange little magic ring, but hardly expected it was something that could frighten a king.
"Nothing that concerns you." The king laughed, a strange sound, beautiful yet somehow sinister. "You couldn't comprehend what you had the means to do with this." He paused, considering, and gave Bilbo his dagger back. "Keep it, a proper gift from those who made it this time. You're free to go, and yes, you may have all the food you can carry."
Bilbo took Sting and considered one last desperate attack, but decided he still wanted to live and sheathed it. He realized that though he'd hoped for his freedom rather than being locked up or killed, it didn't do him much good without the dwarves, and without his magic ring, he had little hope of sneaking back to free them. There really wasn't any point in going to Erebor alone—the best he could hope for was a safe trip back over the Misty Mountains, if that dreadful pale orc didn't get to him first.
"I…haven't been completely honest with you," he began. "I did come over the Misty Mountains, but I didn't come alone. The dwarves in your dungeons are my companions, and I'd be lost without them."
The king smiled slightly. "I have known that since you told me your name. My guards are not deaf, and I've been told they ask each other if anyone's heard from Bilbo."
"Then why did you make me think you thought I'd been sent by some kind of evil?" Bilbo protested.
"To see if you'd tell me the truth, for one. And for another, I still thought you might be—and the dwarves with you. There have been dwarves that served the Enemy in the past, and who knows how far Durin's line may have fallen in exile?"
"But you don't think that of us now?" Bilbo asked. He had, after all, tried to stab a king, something he never imagined would be part of his life story when he left the Shire.
"If you are, then your incompetence is heartening," the king said. "Go on, I will inform the guards you are my guest here. You may wait until I make my decision on your friends; I may allow them to join you."
Bilbo took a hesitant step towards the door, still feeling the awful tug of his precious ring in the hands of another. Spite took hold of him, and he turned over his shoulder, saying, "What if I were to tell your little secret, since you stole my ring and won't return it?"
The king laughed again, and it made Bilbo feel no better this time. "It doesn't matter now. Tell the whole world, if they'll believe you. They'll underestimate me at their peril."