- The spectrum of peace –
o
o
1. Thirteen months, nineteen days and this morning
'Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.'
- Andrew Boyd –
When the ships docked, she was the first ready to get down. And why not, after having had idle hours to prepare, unlike the rest of the crewmen. She only took two of her honour guard with her since she wanted to be swift through the city and that meant being inconspicuous. With two armies about, she though – and Captain Galahad agreed – that the risk of trouble was low, but she still remained a princess, as all constantly seemed to feel the need to remind her. For all Lothiriel cared, the whole garrison could come if they wished it, or none at all, if they deemed it better so. There was only the barest flicker of irritation in the back of her head, one she had not much time - or inclination - to peruse beyond the space of an eye-roll: trust men to remember protocol in the most inconvenient (and useless) of circumstances.
The docks of Harlond had never been an orderly place, and were even less so now that almost fifteen ships bearing the Dol Amroth insignia were about to be docked. There were also the remnants of what had once been the fearsome fleet of Umbar docked on the opposite side of the wide Anduin and Lothiriel could not help but stare at the black sails coiling in the wind. They were a memory of something frightening that could no longer harm you… but that did not seize to call forth apprehension, as her shivers instantly confirmed. However, to Lothiriel, the organized chaos of a shipyard was nothing new. She had grown up running round with three brothers in the hustle bustle of the bay of The White Ships which was thrice the size of Harlond. Crowds did not intimidate her either – life as a the daughter of a ruling Prince would have been very hard indeed if she had not forced herself to learn that skill early on. Point of fact, the Princess managed to move herself through the crowd of labouring men quite gracefully, without disturbing the activities around her much, until one of her men brought her horse to her. Malthen was uneasy with the noise of so many men around her. Her southern mound had yet to trust men in armour, but then again Malthen had been trained to protect Lothiriel against them, and not to trust them, something for which Lothiriel had found herself grateful for in the last year.
Lothiriel mounded her golden mare with the swiftness and grace of someone trained by the best, even though the animal was as tall as her brother's stallions - though certainly, much more daintily built. Admittedly, such grace was made all the easier by the fact that she was wearing breeches instead of one of her riding skirts. Those fluttering dresses were both pretty and comfortable enough for riding, but certainly not for moving about in a ship where a tangle in the wrong rope could cast you out in the water, or break a limb before you knew what happened.
"We make for the White City." She ordered as she turned to her guards, in the abrupt manner that she always spoke when her patience started running thin. "Keep up, for I will not slow my gait for you."
Out of the mouth of most women, it would have been a joke, but both her escorting knights knew better than to take her words for anything other the warning they were meant to be: they had seen her ride before, that wild beast of hers galloped like it had wings on its back and the mistress did not hold the animal back in the least.
As the wind slapped against Lothiriel's face bringing with it the stench of the battle and lingering death, her mind went to the last days spent sailing up the Anduin and then to the months prior. Almost thirteen months of gnawing solitude… the waiting, the anxiousness and slow decay into hopelessness as the shadow grew so strong that edges of it came even unto the southern sky of Dol Amroth. She thought of her own fevered attempts to keep the province running the same manner her father had; how she had struggled to keep all the powerful families from gnawing each other's eyes out. So many times she had lost sleep over decisions she did not know how to make, over failures she had perceived as inevitable. So many times she had wished for her father, any of her brothers… but they were gone where their duty called them, and she was left in Dol Amroth to fulfil hers.
Lothiriel and her brothers had grow up knowing that it would be so, once the hammer of the enemy fell. She had not been surprised to be left alone by the sea as her family raged a war north. Perhaps it was the fabled blood of elves in his veins, but somehow her father had always known he would be alive to see this great battle that would either make or break the race of men as he had always known that he and his sons would fight in it. Lothiriel had always thought that it was useless to leave her alone by the sea, when hopes of living through this darkness were so slim… but her father had been a man of hope, above all. Of faith. He had wanted her to keep their people alive for as long as she possibly could. He had told her that from the very day she had been able to understand it. It was his oldest teaching and his most precious gift, and in the end, it turned out to be why many thought – in the right – that Princess Lothiriel, just as her brothers, had had her whole life to prepare for the moment this actually happened.
She had thought so too - but nothing had been as she'd expected. Soon she learned there was a reason why ruling was called a burden: no amount of lessons at her father's table could have prepared her for the immense weight of that responsibility. Her father had borne the enormous pressure with such innate grace, but she, his daughter, struggled under it. There had been moments, in the privacy of her rooms, when Lothiriel felt she almost could not breathe from all the combined pressure of all the worries, all her wishes… it all seemed to want to suffocate her, so heavy they pressed on her mind and heart.
And then there was the ever present void of isolation around her, the feeling of walking on the edge of knife and the tiniest slip would case the downfall into ever darkness. Alone in the cold and without light. No helping hand, no one to turn to… That more than anything was the true nature of power: solitude.
How she had hated it then, how she had wished to escape from it. And how she had scorned herself for such cowardice.
Looking back now, she had found herself so wanting that it was a wonder her father had trusted her his realm at all: such girlish fancies she'd had, about what it meant to be the one that answered to no one else, bound by no convention, because you were the law and could do as you pleased. How nice it had seemed not to ever be told what to wear and what to say, never to be chided for rudeness or propriety. Lothiriel had fancied herself rebellious once, but she knew now that she had been simply immature. She could laugh at her old self now, though there was no humour in her anymore. How young she had been, just months ago: she had thought within power there could be freedom, but had found there was only solitude instead. Deep, bone gnawing loneliness.
But she had been a silly girl then, just thirteen months ago - (a lifetime ago, a whole different person ago…). Lothiriel knew better now, and the shadows in her eyes spoke of such knowledge.
The last months of her rule had gone by in this oppressive way, drowned in bleakness and a strange sense of forbidding, awaiting for some nameless evil to strike. And then, just when the routine of those dark days had seemed to want to choke her, the sky had darkened in the north, an eerie green light had pierced the clouds and Lothiriel had dreamt of the White City in flames. And oh, how she had cried that night, because she knew that the war her father had been fearing all his life, was about to take place. The war that would decide the fate of men.
But just when despair seemed to be ready to snap its jaws closed around her, the first rider since months had shown in the steps of their city, with tidings of a great battle in the fields of Pelenor, of the Black ships being overcome and a great victory won with great sacrifice… and that the beloved Prince of Dol Amroth, who had held the White City from the grips of Mordor, had almost met his death doing so. After those very few words, the blood had dried from the rider's lips and he had fallen into such a sleep that no one could wake him from.
There had been some talk among her father's advisors – her advisors really - about the Princess leaving Dol Amroth with provisions to help the White City survive the victory, but most had not objected, and those that had tried to, had been silenced with firm words and a steely glare. Not even Lord Elward tried to oppose her and since the man saw it fit to talk over her every word, that more than anything stood as firm proof that her determination had been keenly felt.
And so, here she was… her heart beating in her throat, riding fast and about to lose one of the men who had been the sole protagonists of her love all of her life. She rode, and ahead of her the fields of Pelenor stretched, strewn with little dots of upturned earth and the sheer amount of so many graves made her shiver. The walls of Minas Tirith, once such a vision, stood smoking and mangled. The evidence of the battle was raw before her eyes and it made her spirit shake with doubt.
How do you keep hoping, in the face of such reckless hate, in spite of so much death? Despair seemed like an old acquaintance coming back, its tendrils reached out to ensnare her and it was only through stubbornness, more like a habit now, that she resisted giving into it. It was reflexive, that surge of strength and gritting teeth: she did not want to give in. She refused to. The defeat of the heart precedes death, that was what her father always said.
So Lothiriel didn't even allow herself to dwell on the echoes of the horrors she was galloping through. If she let herself, she would break. If she even skimmed the surface of that endless pool of grief forming somewhere in a hidden place of her soul, where she stored all the hurts, she would surely never stop screaming. Because it was too much. This world had grown so brutal, so horrid, that the only way to live in it was so harden, to forget how to feel… so she did. She walled herself in, protected herself by stoning in her heart and conscience - and that was the only reason why, even though she was riding through fields of fresh graves, none of what she saw truly touched her. Why she could not feel or cry, of hurt for those that had known such atrocious deaths, protecting the very existence of men. Lothiriel felt ungrateful and undeserving of such a sacrifice, ashamed really, to be there alive, while so many lay dead… but those feelings were but faint echoes of other emotions, emotions much stronger that would have gripped and crushed her, if she but allowed them to.
No, she could not give in an inch, not when standing on a blade so sharp that even the echo of doubt would meant falling. Strength sometimes could make you stone and that was frightening, but the alternative was too terrible to contemplate: she had a father to tend to, brothers to hug. They were her goal, her anchor to what was good and true and real and sane… and as long as she had them to keep her whole, all would be well. She could fight for them, even when all the strength to fight for herself failed. She could do anything for them.
Even endure the impossible with a cold heart.
She would do anything, because she had to. Because they were waiting for her… The day they would not be, and she'd lose her ties to this world, would be the day she would be afraid for herself.
She truly hoped, that day was not so soon to come.
o
o
o
TBC:::
