Chapter Two

The Edge of Life and Death

A/N: Well hello there. Very encouraging to see lots of views so soon after the first chapter went up! The story is all planned out, but nothing is set in stone…yet. Leave a review, tell me where you want the story to go, what you'd like to see more of, less of, etc. Let's be reader-writer partners in crime! Otherwise, happy reading!

Were there space enough to do it, Bard would pace around his cell with furious anxiety. The harder he slammed on the bars, imploring the goal guards to listen, the louder they mocked him. At one point, he was lucky to dodge a flying glass.

It was between night and dawn, the dragon was coming to destroy every man, woman and child in this town as prophesied, and here he was, one widower with a splitting headache, powerless to do anything. He rocked back and forth, worrying over his children. Sigrid was smart and responsible, and Bain was courageous, but Tilda was small and fragile. Would all three of them have the nouse to escape in time, or were they sitting ducks?

A light clank between the bars on the upper window interrupted his trembling panic. Bard jerked his head up and fixed his gaze on a familiar face: the redheaded witch with soft, owlish eyes. She stared down through his window as he sprang up from his cramped bed.

'It's you!' he gasped.

'It certainly is,' she whispered. Blood spatters and black ash stained her white face. 'Listen -'

'The creature,' said Bard, 'it's heading for Lake-town, isn't it?'

'Yes, which is why we don't have much time. I am here to get you out.'

'Bless you, good lady, bless you!'

'Before I do, I have only this to say,' she checked behind her to make sure no one was around. 'The weak spot, beneath his wing. It exists.'

Bard steadied himself against the grotty wall.

'It exists? I knew it, I knew my ancestor's aim was true!'

'Hurry now,' said the witch, holding an arm through the bars. 'Defend your people.'

From her palm there shot a beam of orange light. She muttered some words Bard could not catch, and in the next moment, the lock on his cell door had fallen to the floor.

'I cannot thank you eno -' he started, but when Bard turned, she was already gone.

Below the gaol window, Cauna blinked back to her darker hair and eyes. She stepped onto Thorin's sword once more and secured Astra, who had been stuck, speechless and immobile out of sight, in her grip.

'You see him in the distance?' Cauna murmured, pointing at Smaug's form, still cutting through the air as slowly as a knife through hard butter. 'When we are away and safe, I think I will return him his speed, that he might unleash his claws and fiery breath into this miserable little dock town.

'Yes,' she said to herself, 'he shall have some play. But at the end of all things, I have little energy to compete with a fire-drake for power in this world. The Bowman will rise to the challenge of his bloodline. He will defeat the beast. After a little mayhem, naturally.

'Meanwhile,' she turned back to meet Astra's alarmed eyes, 'I need to take back what is rightfully mine.'

By the time the navy sky turned fully pale, Cauna had flown Astra out to the forest edge across from the enormous lake on which the town sat. She landed them further towards the centre to ensure they would be hard to reach.

With Astra still frozen in a standing position, arms stuck to her sides, Cauna had no problem whatsoever tying her to a sturdy tree with a coil of rope she had swiped from the gaol's dock.

Once she was bound, Cauna finally released Astra from the immobility spell. She slumped forward, spluttering and groaning as she tried to stay upright - her legs were like fallen stone pillars.

'Come, Astra, at least gather enough strength to look me in the eye.'

She gritted her teeth and did so, not out of obedience, but to face this nightmare that had come back and stolen her sister.

'Good, that's good.'

'Why…why are you doing this?' Astra rasped. 'How are you doing this?'

'I was always going to do this,' said Cauna. She knelt down to Astra's level. A cold breeze ruffled the trees around them on the first morning of Winter. 'You remember less than your twin of that night, but I know you remember being hit.'

Astra shuddered, still trying to regain control of her body.

'Stoic sister, even you felt me simmering at the surface in moments of flared temper, moments at which you were most powerful. Part of me almost wishes that you had been dragged to the mountain in Ember's place. You could have been even more than you are with my magic. But no matter.'

The witch slowly clasped a hand over each of Astra's temples, with enough strength to keep from being shaken off.

'Finally, it is time to bring past and future into my present.'

Birds overhead were sent spiralling off course by a tremendous burst of green light. Lost somewhere in the ferocity of this display were Astra's screams.

Cauna herself hissed between clamped teeth, as her old power of pastsight painfully fused itself back with her blood. When the green light eventually flashed away and she felt it safe to do so, Cauna relinquished Astra, whose head fell limply back against the tree, eyes closed.

The witch staggered backwards, unable to see for visions, one after another, of past and future, of a hundred different things in such quick succession she had no idea what they were. Until they slowed, gradually, like a spinning wheel on dying momentum. Cauna knew not to fight the disorientation; she soaked up the pastsight like a sponge hurled into the sea, and suddenly there was clarity.

'The hobbit,' she muttered, blinking her eyes open. She saw Astra's memory of Bilbo Baggins before they set off into Mirkwood, and felt similarly drawn to the object concealed in his pocket. A ring…the ring.

Cauna raised herself to standing, steady enough on her feet to stare at the Lonely Mountain in the distance. It was as though she could see him now, cowering in the wake of Smaug, the One Ring of Power still sitting in his waistcoat like a harmless trinket. But he knew it was more than that. None of them had yet realised the sheer magnitude of the Ring's magic, none but Cauna, who felt the bittersweet darkness of what was to come in later decades.

The youngest Darell sister could wait. Reeling and restless from additional power, Cauna resolved to stop at nothing before closing her hands around the Ring, and the Arkenstone, both of which transfixed her in temptation.

Flying would be too conspicuous, and too quick - Cauna had enough energy to march to the mountain on foot. She left Astra tied to the tree, alone, to die at nature's hand.