SUILAD! Thanks for keeping up with my fanfic! You are awesome! Hope you enjoy this chapter! Please, if you can leave a review!

Chapter 4

That night, they had to climb a tree again to be safe from tha spiders. Gimli and Legolas took a little meal, but the woman refused to eat and only leyed as far as she colud to sleep.

"She is a real pain in the ass." Said Gimli to his friend after the meal. "Why don't we just leave her here to the spiders? Nobody needs a thief!"

"I don't think she is just a thief." Legolas said lowly.

"What do you mean?"

"I talked to her last night. She was the one that gave the diamonds to the guard of the palace."

"Why didn't you tell me before?!" Asked Gimli upset.

"I didn't find the right time."

"So you think she is planning something?"

"Maybe... Or maybe not. We must wait for her to make a mistake."

"Or we can throw her to the spiders and make her speak..."

Legolas smiled and said no with the head. Gimli rolled his eyes again. Then he turned around and closed his eyes. He fell asleep quickly. Meanwhile Legolas stayed awake and alert. He was deeply thinking about old memories when suddenly he realized that the woman was awake and staring at the sky again.

"I thought that you were an elf." Said Legolas watching for the first time her ears. They were like a couple of common human's ears. "Tell me, how old are you Tarí?"

"Why do you ask?" She replied without seeing him.

"Becuase you look very young. Around your twenty's... But the look in your eyes is so much older. Perhaps that's the reason of why you try to avoid my glance every time I stare at you."

Tarí didn't say anything in a long time. It was as if a sad and terrible memento had just crossed her mind. Legolas waited quietly until she sat down and looked at him.

"I'm older than you, for sure. However I have forgotten my exact age." She answered finally in a kind tone.

"But you are human, aren't you? How is that possible?" Legolas kept asking anxiously.

"I stopped being a human since a lot of years." She said deeply as if she were only talking with herself.

"What happened to you, then?" He approached discretly.

In that moment a branch cracked. The two of them got aware imediately. Gimli woke up too and took his ax. No one spoke. The only sound around was a soft breeze and their hearts beating. Legolas took his bow and a row. He took a breathe and in that instant a horde of spiders appeared around them. Gimli cut in two the face of one of the creatures while Legolas finished with a couple of rows two of them in a second. Tarí was trying to escape from one big spider but then another one appeared in front of her,

"Set me free!" She shouted "Cut the rope!"

"No way!" Shouted the dwarf.

Legolas thought for a moment. He couldn't let her die in that way. He killed one of the spiders with a row and then threw one of his daggers to cut the rope. He was about to throw another row to the other spider, when Tarí took the dagger and killed the creature by her own. The elf and the dwarf kept killing spiders for some more minutes, but Legolas didn't loose her any second. When the last spider was about to scape, Tarí jumped above it.

"C'mon, kill the beast, girl!"Gimli screamed.

Tarí turned around for an instant and stared at Legolas's eyes.

"She's going to escape..." Said Legolas in a whisper.

She smiled to him even more quickly and rode the beast down the trees.

"What are you waiting for?!" Asked Gimli maddly. "You are the one that knows this forest and jumps from one tree to another!"

Legolas got out of his lapse of shock and ran from one branch to another following the beast and the woman. He saw them again a minute later. She turned around aware of his presence. She rode the spider just one more yard and then she killed it with the dagger. She jumped from it and began to run through the woods. Legolas threw a row and he trapped part of her robe in the ground. She fell down, but immediatly tried to take the row out. He jumped from the tree and in that moment she took out the row.

"Why didn't you kill me?" She asked panting.

"I told you, you will be judged in my city. So, stop doing this more difficult and come with me, Tarí." Suddenly, Legolas saw one of the cuts in the leg of the girl. It was bleeding a lot. "You are injured. You won't get to any place like that. Other creatures will trap you and you will be their dinner. Is that what you want?"

Legolas gave a step further, however she gave one back and raised the row and the dagger.

"If I get back to that city of yours it won't be as a prisioner, Lord Elf." She replied firmly.

"Who are you really?" He asked giving one more step.

"I'm not about to tell you that story, Legolas son of Thranduil." Said she.

"You planned all this, didn't you?" Asked Legolas again. "Since the begining, since we met in the bar. But what's the next move? Are you expecting me to let you go or to trap you again?"

"You tell me, milord. What does your soul tell you to do? What have you seen in your deep visions, in your arcane dream?" Tarí asked in low Sindarin.

Legolas eyes got lost in the nothingness as he travelled into his own mind for some seconds, then he stared again at her eyes.

"I'll regret letting you go..." Legolas anwered and then he kept again his bow. "But I'm going to do it, Lady of the North."

Tarí put down the weapons and made a reverence.

"You may keep the dagger. You'll need it in this forest." Added the elf.

The woman kept the weapon and turned around.

"Perhaps we'll meet again..." She muttered and carefully took out something from the pocket of her robe. "Meanwhile, take this as a payment for your dagger." she left the thing in the floor next to the arrow. "And make sure you wear it, Prince Legolas, it's a jewel worth of a royal elf."

Legolas saw one more time the injury in the leg of the woman. It wasn't bleeding anymore, it was actually almost clossed. She ran through the woods again and her shadow disappeared soon. Legolas hurried to take the jewel from the ground. It was a necklace. A silver chain carring a white stone. It had the shimmer of the stars. Legolas coudn't even imagine the value of that stone. In fact this was the first time that he saw one. They were stollen once, when his grandfather was the king and no one knew really where were them all this years.

When he returned with Gimli he was still thinking about what had just happened. He was so concentrated that he lated a minute to listen to his friend.

"I can't bealive you couldn't catch a girl! She was just a little girl playing with a dagger!"

Legolas turned around. Gimli opened a lot his eyes.

"Where did you get that stone?!"

"She gave it to me." Legolas smiled a little without being concerned of it.

"So she paid you for letting her go and you accepted?!" Gimli was about to have a heart attack.

"Not exactly. No!" Suddenly the elf returned to the real world. "We... Made a kind of deal. She is not what we thought, Gimli."

"So... What is she?" Gimli raised a brow and crossed the arms.

"I still don't know. But I'm sure we'll know that soon."

"I hope you are right, my friend." Gimli sighed.

"I hope that two..." Legolas said to himself and both returned to their own jorney.