CHAPTER 1

She awoke with a start, clutching her head and trembling in fear, she knew it had not been a dream. All she could think was, he knows, he knows where the Ring is. The blinding light of the eye of Sauron was imprinted on her brain, and clumsily she stood up grasping onto a branch to support herself, the pain pulsing in her back almost unbearable.

"Where am I?" She asked out loud, though she knew the forest to be deserted so didn't expect an answer. Cursing under her breath she swung her pack onto her back and pulled her cloak around her, she should have paid more attention to where she had been wandering when she arrived here last night. Not making a trail to tell herself which direction she had come from was an amateur mistake, the kind she hadn't made for centuries, and that worried her. But at present there were more pressing issues. Must tell them. Must make it to civilisation. Must warn them.

The girl moved through the trees as silently as she possibly could, her broken body threatening to give up at any second. I'm close. She thought, must keep going. The trail she had been following for days had become wider, and it had the unmistakable signs of constant use, this was the kind of place she would normally avoid like the plague, but now it gave her hope.

"Music", she breathed as the dainty sound of a harp drifted faintly across the air, driving her on until she found herself at the entrance of, "Rivendell", she sighed, it was the house of Lord Elrond, she could barely contain her relief. He was one of the wisest beings in Middle Earth; he would know what to do.

She stumbled forwards into the courtyard, her vision becoming blurry, not good. A shape was moving in her peripheral vision, coming closer, then a voice that asked,

"Ya ire ile?"

"Not elvish" , she said, her vision now positively swimming, "I need to speak with-", she staggered almost falling into the elf, "Lord Elrond." She finished.

"Why would that be?" the elf demanded. But she didn't get a chance to answer, because at that moment the world started spinning, and then went black.