Hello friends!

Anyone else in the mood to bring this story to an end this weekend? ;)

No Grave, No Memory is done already. On hand and ready to go are an Epilogue that follows this chapter, my usual Afterword that explains the creative decisions made in the fic, and a Preview of my latest project too :) I am just trying to keep from posting everything all at once because by failing to pace properly, I know I will lose story exposure, readers and reviews. I struggle with this often. But as this off-peak, weekday posting shows, sometimes I just can't help myself :(

Readers who may be familiar with my work are also familiar with my lack of restraint, lol. At any rate, what does it matter what I am saying... Here we are with the new chapter within just a handful of days from the last one anyway hahaha :) Just remember to feed this hungry writer on your way out and tell me what you think, if you can. C&c's are always welcome and treasured :)

Thanks to all who read and especially all who review :) Personalized responses on the way later, I just thought perhaps I should show my gratitude the way I know best - a quick continuation to the tale :)

Without further ado:

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9: Salvation

The Mirkwood

Third Age 2509

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"We were found by your grandfather at the feet of the mountains," Maenor says as he places another cool cloth upon the Prince's burning forehead. He picks up from where the tale leaves off and settles back on his seat beside Legolas' bed.

"We had just come from sites of slaughter at that point," Maenor continues with a grimace. "Merilel led us to the place of the first encounter, where we found Orthordir's body. She wept near inconsolably, and those from the village who were with us and knew him were just as mournful. It makes me angry now, at the time that we had taken to say a brief prayer for him before we moved forward. We knew we had precious little time and had to leave his burial for later. I did not even have long to examine his wound, for I think now that if I had, I would have seen how he was cut down by the make of the blade and the precision of its elven wielder. We left his body in the woods, and oh how his people wept for his loss and our abandonment of his hroa, not knowing of his treachery.

"We followed the tracks of the party," Maenor goes on, "to the edges of the woods, where we then found the tortured and dead royal guards. Thranduil would not even pause for a prayer or a thought after that. He knew we had to get to you and your naneth.

"When your grandfather came upon us, he was exhausted but otherwise suffered minor injuries," Maenor shares. "He hurried us along towards you, explaining on the road that you were betrayed by Orthordir, perhaps in conspiracy with others. He was their Silvan elder but even then, the betrayal was unfathomable to the villagers in our company. They could not believe it, they did not wish to. But the fact was driven home when the traitorous village guard who had intercepted us on the road from the stronghold gave himself away. He hurriedly abandoned us, turning tail with his horse, a confirmation that there was a deeply entrenched and somewhat organized betrayal within their community.

"One of the royal guards and another villager pursued him, Merilel included for she knew the ways and hiding places best; your adar had initially struggled with that decision, for we were so shorthanded already. But lest the traitor betray our arrival to our enemies or do anything else to sabotage your rescue, he simply had to be stopped. Thus did our numbers decrease by four more.

"Your grandfather that wily old Silvan," Maenor continues with a hint of fondness for the ornery wood-elf farmer, "was unbothered. It was a mission of stealth he said confidently, and larger numbers would have been detrimental. He knew we could not win a direct confrontation with the Gundabad horde. We had to settle for the formation of a small rescue party to infiltrate rather than invade the mountain fortress. Your father was just as content with relying on stealth rather than strength of numbers. Not that he had much choice in the matter, but the revelation of betrayal in the village had him doubting who he could trust amongst those who were still with us. We were seemingly in an unwinnable situation. But your grandfather had one more ace up his Silvan sleeve. He had valuable information."

Legolas listens intensely. His attention span is shaky at best, his hold upon his emotions tenuous. He knows he is in a vulnerable position, but just then he does not care. He listens with all the focus he can muster, eager to hear the parts of the tale he had been afraid to care for for so long. The valiant deeds eclipsed by his pain must be given a chance to shine through. He is determined to get them into the light. He is determined to be released into the light...

"Gundabad had several points of possible stealth access," Maenor says. "Hewed into the mountain fortress were vents for the movement of air, for example, and irrigation routes linked to the Langwell for access to water. There were paths up in the mountains of course, and paths cut into its feet for supplies that otherwise would have had to travel over high passes. Your grandfather had escaped through a path poorly guarded, he said, one manned mainly by what looked to him as either non-combatant servants of the uruk-hai, or at most the dregs of their soldiers. It was an insecure supply route, not fortified because we were not in open war.

"The route as he described it to us," the healer recounts, "was comprised of a long vein through the mountain, with paths branching out from its sides. We would pass store rooms, he said – for food, their foul drinks, weapons and armory, and materials for digging, mining and the maintenance of their fortress. We would pass the weapons forges too, before reaching the prisons. It was narrow, he warned, because these were not their main halls used for assembly, planning or marching – these were servant paths meant for supplies and secondary, non-warring functions. By his warning he clearly meant the way could be blocked easily if we were spotted, and with many paths branching along its side, it was not unlikely that we could be intercepted at many points. But narrow also meant another thing – the vastly greater number of our enemies would be less important because they had to fight us in close quarters and not as a group. And no orc would have had a decent chance fighting your father or your grandfather one against one. The Sindar King and the Silvan farmer... they were both mad enough to like those odds."

The thought of it almost brings Legolas' dry, cracked into a trembling, tentative smile. His eyes shine, and he hangs onto Maenor's every word.

"And off we went," says the healer. "But once out of the woods we had to wait for cover of night to move. The open plains around the mountains were tricky to navigate lest we be spotted, but we reached our desired path at her feet quickly enough. The entrance was hidden, but your grandfather had scouted his way through previously and knew what he was doing.

"A handful of the best soldiers trusted by both the Elvenking and your grandfather went in with the pair of them," Maenor continues. "I can be handy with a sword at need, all of our generation have had to be. But your grandfather, learning of my main profession as the royal physician, would not have me anywhere but safely outside. It was our first inkling of how badly you were, Legolas. He said if they were lucky enough to make it out with you and your naneth, I would have the most important job of them all. He asked for some of my miruvor and herbs, but refused to risk bringing me."

Maenor remembers it well. His hand that itched at the sword on his belt. The fight that bucked inside of him, making his heart beat quickly, his thinking crystallize. He'd seen what had been done to his kinsmen on the road to Gundabad and he had an appetite for the enemy's blood. But at the old Silvan's words, he saw Thranduil stiffen. He saw the lines around the King's mouth and eyes tighten. He saw a muscle in his jaw jerk. They all knew they were likely going to be rescuing the prince and the queen in poor condition, but the old Silvan's impassioned determination to preserve the healer in anticipation of his impending usefulness had made it all too real.

"And so I was left behind outside of Gubdabad," Maenor says. "And our tasks included keeping the exit open at all costs and having the horses ready to fly. They vanished into a hole on the side of the mountain, a flurry of cloaks barely visible in the night, quick, soundless, lethal. Of all but one of them... it was the last I would ever see."

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Mount Gundabad

Early in the Third Age

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His vision had never ever been this clouded, but Legolas saw his father clearly, almost as if he was aglow.

Thranduil ran and skidded to a stop at his knees at the point in the hallway where Legolas and his mother held hands, and he lowered the hood of the cloak that concealed his light, so that he could look at each of them urgently.

Thranduil's glorious head of golden hair was pulled back severely and tied near the top of his head, falling into a neat tail that ran long behind him. He was garbed in his warrior's best, armed to the teeth and ready for a fight.

Legolas could not tear his eyes from his father, whom he always knew was formidable but had never seen quite like this. He was like a vision of the heroes from ages past, the kind written of in the books.

"Thranduil you damned fool," the Queen greeted her husband with half-hearted censure. "You should have sent someone else."

The Elvenking said nothing, but squeezed at the clasped hands of his wife and son, and looked up as his father-in-law started working on the doors of Legolas' prison. Another handy villager they had brought with them was busy working on the queen's. There were soldiers on the lookout around them, keeping careful watch that they would not be disturbed.

At a wordless, meaningful look from his wife, Thranduil rose and walked to where Legolas lay, pressed against the bars of his cell, unmoving, not speaking. His bewildered eyes followed his father's every move.

"Legolas?" he called, to no discernable reaction other than a wide-eyed stare. "Ion-nin?"

Thranduil reached inside the cell, and stroked at his ailing son's hair, gently pulling strands away from his face. He winced at his son's fevered brow, and his stern countenance shook in torment and anger as he took in the rest of Legolas' form. The cloak that blanketed his nakedness was not enough to hide his blackened shoulders, his discolored arms, his swollen legs.

"Can he be moved?" he whispered, for he was a veteran of the old wars, a soldier from a violent age, the son of a slain King. He knew what the living dead looked like, those who were just, just waiting for the final breath.

"We do not have any choice," the Queen said from behind him.

Thranduil nodded, and he plucked out a flask of miruvor from his robes. He lowered himself to the ground in an attempt to have Legolas partake of some of it. The young prince was still staring at him wordlessly.

"He cannot take in drink," his wife told him shakily, and Thranduil's hands trembled for the implications of it. But he just nodded, wiped his hands at his clothes, and pressed his smallest finger into the opening of his flask, coating it with the precious, restorative cordial. He then lowered the digit to his son's dry, cracked, lips, which he wet with it. Legolas licked at the minute amount, and Thranduil watched if it would take.

When Legolas' gaze sharpened and he licked his lips for more, Thranduil lowered himself to the ground beside his son and did the same thing. They went through it several times, before Legolas found it in himself to say,

"Ada."

The Elvenking nodded in satisfaction, before touching his son's overwarm cheek affectionately and rising to his feet. He walked to his wife's cell and knelt beside her. She released he hold on Legolas' hand to tug at Thranduil's hair. His lips quirked into a grim smile.

Legolas' cell was opened around the same time as that of his mother's. His grandfather hurried in to tend him, and so Thranduil went to check on his wife. The Elvenking's hands first went to the sides of her face, that he could look upon her eyes. He began to pat her body down for breaks, but she hurriedly captured her hands in his and held onto them insistently.

"I do not think I can walk," she told her husband.

He nodded, and untangled himself from her hold so that he could examine her legs and feet. If he took notice of the blood streaked down her limbs, he made no mention of it. His gentle fingers ghosted over her broken toes, her lost nails, her burnt soles.

"Let us try," he murmured, "and if you are unable I will carry you."

She looked in Legolas' direction. "He needs you more."

"I have him," her adar told her confidently, as he checked upon his ailing grandson.

"Do you have a healer in your company?" she asked as she bit back a strangled cry. Thranduil had raised her up to stand and she tried to put at least some weight on her feet. They did not hold, and her husband was quick to sweep her off of them. He held her in his arms, closer than was practical but not nearly closely enough for his heart's need or desire.

"Maenor awaits us at the exit," Thranduil assured her.

"Legolas is in dire need of him," she said, briefing them quickly on her son's condition. "It is as you feared, adar. He was tied by the wrists at his back, and hung from them for I do not even know how long. His shoulders were dislocated, I repaired what I could but they are damaged beyond my basic knowing. His limbs are discolored, at some points black." Her speech quickened as her distress heightened. "The swelling is so bad his skin is torn in parts. I do not think he took injury in his lower extremities but his legs are swollen too. I do not know wherefrom it comes, an infection from the tears on his skin or some other injury I do not understand, but he burns with a fever and it brings him fits. His attention wavers, he drifts in and out. I cannot keep him engaged, there are things he cannot remember. He's not passed waste in days. He does not feel much pain. He cannot keep down water. I didn't, I don't know what else to do."

She spoke as she watched her father tend her son, and with every revelation of Legolas' struggles, Thramduil's hold on her tightened and tightened.

"This is very grave indeed," the old Silvan said as he hurriedly examined his grandson and helped him slip into an extra tunic they had brought for him. "There is no time to waste. We must go." To Legolas, he said, "Laeg, do you know who I am?"

"Of course," Legolas murmured up at him. "Grandfather."

"Do you know who you are?"

"Yes," came the hesitant reply, after a thoughtful beat. He was not sure what the eccentric had in mind in asking.

The old Silvan tsked at him playfully, as he arranged back the blanket/cloak he had removed from Legolas' broken body, to keep him warm over his tunic. "You sound unsure so I will clarify. You are a child of the woods. You are Silvan. And what did I tell you about us?"

Legolas wracked his brain, and held firm to the tenuous control he was keeping on his mind.

"We," he said breathily, "We can take a beating."

"That is absolutely right. Damned straight." His grandfather grinned at him. It was mad, wild, untamed, Silvan grin, but it faded quickly. "I will lift you now. Your naneth says you do not feel pain, but I can almost promise you - this you will feel. Try not to struggle against me, try not to help. I will bear all the weight. Be kind to this old farmer."

And with these word he lifted, and Legolas' world exploded in a wave of blinding white, before sinking into a deep, cold black.

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Escape, for Legolas, came in a series of piecemeal sensations and disjointed images.

He was in his wiry grandfather's arms, and he bounced lightly with the fleet-footed Silvan's jogging pace. He drifted off in the mildly rocking sensation.

He knew they encountered yrch from the sounds of small skirmishes, the scent of their bodies and blood. This jolted him from semi-consciousness. His grandfather started running. Legolas knew because the footfalls were faster and heavier and, though he did not believe it was possible, even more painful. The backs of his knees and his shoulders bounced against his grandfather's arms, at these points where he was held and cradled. The world rushed by around them. His eyes rolled up in his head at the dizzying sight.

He jolted awake when an alarm was sounded in the fortress, and Legolas' grandfather went even faster. This made his footfalls heavier, and Legolas bounce harder and higher against him. He would occasionally bounce high enough that he could see from over his grandfather's shoulder. From this vantage point, he could see that they were running down a narrow hallway, and that there were a great band of orcs in hot pursuit. He also saw that the elven soldier they were with and had assigned to guard the rear had stopped running. He turned to face the horde with his sword raised. He turned his head to the side and yelled for the rescue party to keep running, but two of the villagers stood with him.

The three elves slowed down the orcs giving chase, killing many and scattering their bodies to the ground to block the way, to delay their push forward in pursuit of the escapees, to give the royal family the slimmest chance at escape.

Legolas saw the three heroes get cut down, mercilessly. He closed his eyes in grief, but spiraled away to unconsciousness in his exhaustion.

The narrow hallway seemed impossibly long, and when he stirred again they were still running. He woke in time to see the last guardsman at their rear be felled with an axe. There were now no more guards – no more heroes – between Legolas and the old Silvan who carried him, and the orcs that pursued them from behind.

"Leave me," he moaned at his grandfather, even as he knew it would be futile. "Leave me, grandfather..."

He wasn't sure if he was even heard, until the old Silvan defied him wordlessly and only held him tighter, and only ran harder. As he bounced with his determined rescuer's footfalls, he could see the orcs behind them running at a mad pace, as if the very whips of their master was behind them...

They were nearer and nearer to closing the distance between their bloodlust and their prey.

Legolas turned his head away in despair and saw his father running in front of them, the Queen held securely in his arms. Thranduil was fast and strong and covered a lot of ground, and Legolas was beginning to see a pinprick of light in the near distance, getting larger and larger. It had to be the exit. Escape was near.

His parents had a chance.

If they can survive, he thought, if they couldpleasejust live... they could begin a family anew. They would grieve for him, but they could sire a new heir, continue their careful reign of the Kingdom, especially in times that were becoming as tough as these.

He closed his eyes and sought out rest, and strength for what was to come. One way or another he would find a way to fight. He would buy his parents some time, just as their lost soldiers had tried to do for him.

He was jolted awake by a flash of pain. He was sent falling to the ground, as his grandfather was hit from behind. The old Silvan, a crossbow shaft protruding from his back, promptly shoved Legolas away and in one smooth motion, recovered his feet, drew out his twin white knives, and turned to face their marauding foes.

The old Silvan was just as much a beast of warring as the orcs were. He would slit their throats two at a time and toss their bodies aside, onto the next with barely a blink or a breath.

Legolas groaned and pushed himself up to crawl against the walls of the narrow hall. He took deep, quick breaths and felt his heart quicken and his mind sharpen as the battle seeped into his veins, lent him a reserve of determination and strength. He pushed up against the wall to sit, and he grabbed a sword from the dead hands of one of the orcs his grandfather had felled and set aside. And then onto trembling legs he pushed up against the jagged rock, and let it hold most of his weight as he more or less stood, as ready as he could possibly be in the state that he was in, to fight.

To die fighting.

He kept the heavy sword low and dragging on the ground. He decided he would lift it only at need, so that he could conserve his strength. He did not even test if he would be able to do so, for even his grip on the hilt felt tenuous. He prayed for strength. He prayed for a quick, merciful death. He could see his grandfather weakening, and he took a deep breath in preparation for joining the fray.

He glanced momentarily at his parents, hoping they would be well away. But to his crushing disappointment, his father had skidded to a halt and turned back to face him.

In the loudest, most demanding tone he could muster, he commanded the King – "Keep going, aran-nin! Keep going...for the love of the gods!"

But Thranduil was not going to have it. He lowered the queen to the ground, drew out his sword, and started running back to where his son stood. He was fast, but not fast enough to reach them when Legolas' grandfather took another hit and fell to his knees.

As one of the orcs stepped forward to issue the old Silvan the killing blow, Legolas pushed against the wall and threw himself and his borrowed sword forward with all his might. He and the beast that would have killed his grandfather landed in a mass of limbs on the ground. Legolas ended its life with a sword to its heart.

The old Silvan used the opportunity given him by Legolas to rise back to his shaky feet, fondly call his grandson a stubborn wood-elf, then raise his swords anew while Legolas recovered his breath on the ground, and used the sword plunged into his enemy's chest to push to rise. He then pulled the blade from the felled enemy's body, and drunkenly thrust it into the body of another. It was more a lucky kill than a calculated one, for he was breathless and dizzy, near-spent.

He pulled out the blade from his fresh kill, but needed all of his body's strength to do it. He staggered backwards on unsteady legs and nearly fell to the ground. His father reached him then and steadied him. Thranduil kept Legolas standing with a left hand to his elbow while keeping his other hand, his right sword arm, raised for a fight.

And thus did three woodland elves stand unbowed before a bloodthirsty orc horde in the enemy's very own mountain fortress: the wounded Silvan farmer with twin knives raised and an arrow protruding from his back. The half-Silvan, half-Sindar Woodland Prince who was also half-dead and half-dressed, using a borrowed orc sword and standing on borrowed strength. And the Elvenking himself, hungry and particularly lethal because all whom he loved in the world were with him on this last stand, here in the very heartland of enemy country.

The air was thick with tension as the three elves stared down their massed enemies. The two sides stood a few meters apart as they all pondered their options. Both the orcs and the elves sensed orcish victory. But even though they knew they would win, the orcs also knew the elves were going to take many down with them, and none of them wanted to be the ones to step forward first and be the one to die.

"Surrender," one of the orcs said, "There is no escape."

It took a tentative step forward and was trailed by a few of its compatriots. The three elves jointly stepped back.

"Elvenking," the old Silvan goaded his son-in-law and in his native Silvan dialect, "If you are half the elf my wayward daughter has fallen for, you will have the stomach to bear my grandson away and leave me alone to deal with this filth."

"I have the stomach to deal with anything you can throw at me, Silvan," said the Elvenking mildly, as adept in the dialect as the other, "but I think I have a better chance of holding them off for longer while you bear him away."

"I can barely carry myself let alone another," the older elf said flatly. "The wounds I bear will not let us get far. Gather your scattered wits and find your balls, will you? Leave this old farmer in peace knowing his grandson is safe."

"You should both run and leave me," countered Legolas breathlessly. "I do not look like much but I swear I can buy you time, and you will be better runners without me."

"He is as log-headed as his mother and as arrogant as his father," Legolas' grandfather lamented. His eyes turned steely with resolve. "And you are both too slow to act."

Without further consultation, he threw himself at the stunned orcs with his weapons raised. And Thranduil, unwilling to let his father-in-law's sacrifice go to waste, did the only thing he could; while the old Silvan occupied their foes, he hurriedly slung Legolas' arm over his shoulders and pulled him away.

Legolas tried to keep pace with his father but his swollen, unwieldly legs kept buckling beneath him, sending them to the ground a few times. Every collapse sent Legolas' mind spiraling away, but whenever they fell, Thranduil determinedly scrambled and pulled the both of them back up and forward, up and forward. Every time his father pulled at him, consciousness rushed into Legolas' body, dizzying and insistent.

"Leave me," he moaned, but was duly ignored. He must have said it a number of times he thought, all to the same effect until he resolved that he might as well keep quiet. If his father was fighting so hard for him, then he could be just as determined.

Forward they went, closer and closer to the exit, and to the spot where Thranduil had left his Queen to sit and wait.

Except when they got there, she was suddenly nowhere in sight.

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The Mirkwood

Third Age 2509

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"My first sight of you was in your father's arms," says Maenor. "The Elvenking had burst out of the cave exit at a desperate run, carrying you. I thought for sure you were dead." He winces at the memory. Not only did he think Legolas dead, he looked like a days' old corpse. His body flopped along bonelessly with the King's every movement. His eyes were half-open and unaware, he was discolored and mottled, a bloated, swollen mess. But mostly, Maenor thought Legolas had died not from how he looked, but from the desperate madness in Thranduil's wide eyes.

"We had no time to examine you," Maenor continues, "for we went straight for the horses and ran at a mad pace away from there. The King held you before him and took point riding, while we protected you from the rear. I watched behind me. Our rescue attempt had stirred the hornet's nest – there were orcs streaming from every point of exit from the mountain. Sone of them went in pursuit of us, while others seemed to be just eager to escape Gundabad. Thick smoke was coming out of the vents and any other opening or hole from the foretrss. Some of the orcs running out were on fire, and all were sooted and coughing. My last sight of Gundabad as we fled away, was the exit you had come from collapsing in on itself. The winter cold and the sudden temperature rise from he fires within created thermal damage to the rock, or the fires ate at the support beams, I do not know. But it just folded. You and your father were the only ones alive of the rescue party to come out from there."

Legolas' brows furrow and he closes his eyes in a bid to remember more, but all the effort yields is a headache. He presses a hand over his eyes and head, and then pounds dully at them.

"But I don't understand," he says. "We were almost to the exit, us three. She was alive, near the exit. Near the light. Why did she not go out?"

"Your adar informed us only briefly of what happened in that passage," Lastor replies. "the rest we had to piece together with the subsequent investigations. Do you recall I mentioned earlier that one of the traitorous village guardsmen had unknowingly been sent as a scout to follow where you were taken captive? In Gundabad, he spotted the rescue party in wait and gave its presence away. It was how the horde in that mountain practically came down upon you just as you were leaving."

"We fought to keep that exit open," Maenor adds. "There were skirmishes outside and from where we were, we could hear commotion within. And then we smelled the smoke, and felt the heat. We were running out of hope that anyone of the Elvenking's party would make it out of there, but we kept to our mission. The exit stayed clear and sure enough, out aran-nin ran out bearing you with him. Coughing, sooted, despairing – but alive, having succeeded in rescuing you."

"Didn't you see the queen at all?" Legolas whispers, "Near the entrance? Do you recall nothing of what exactly had happened to her?"

Maenor shakes his head. "Of whatever had happened within that passage, I have no direct knowledge. All the king said after he allowed us to debrief him later on was that she had died in that frantic run to the exit. He said he couldn't save her."

Thranduil had kept that debriefing short, vague and dispassionate. But Maenor remembers well that the Elvenking was far from these things on that road from Gundabad.

It had practically been wrenched from Thranduil to command, "Move out!" and the healer Maenor, never having been a particularly good soldier by heart or profession, was the only one to hesitate at the King's hoarse command. Thranduil was still coughing from the smoke that had choked the passage, which spew heat and tongues of flame from its mouth. Maenor stepped forward to help Thranduil with carrying his son, and the King took a quick, breathless moment to pause at the entrance of the cave fortress he had just come out from, with an expression of such haunted regret that it shook Maenor to the core.

And then he reached for the end of his long, bound, golden hair, stretched it out, and with a flick of his sword, cut it close to his neck. He threw the long, glorious strands into the fire, before turning back to Maenor and reclaiming his son's body.

"Leave the dead!" the Elvenking ordered, as he headed for his warhorse.

And off they went running, practically flying on the backs of their steeds, with orcs at their heels. But whatever had occurred inside the fortress, the pursuers were on foot, disorganized and many were injured. The enemy archers made poor attempts to halt the escaping elven party, and their arrows bounced harmlessly off armor, or missed wide around them.

Horse hooves thundered over rugged terrain, then over winter valleys and snowy plains. The world around them sped by in a blur as Thranduil led the way forward in search of a safe place to stop and tend to the wounded. No one tired, as long as the king in front of them blazed the trail.

Maenor watched Thranduil go in front of him, war horse eating ground. The Elvenking was an unparalleled rider on any beast, while the healer tried his level best to keep up and not break his own neck, if only because he knew his skills were needed.

Suddenly, the Elvenking's mighty steed swerved with the bidding of its master, and reared with a defiant neigh to a sudden stop at a clearing. The horse hadn't even returned to all fours before the King dismounted with his frail son in his arms, robes and cloaks flying behind him as he went to his knees on the ground and laid Legolas there.

"Maenor!" he yelled, but the healer had already jumped from his own horse and was scampering forward with his well-stocked healer's pack.

Maenor skidded to his knees on the snowy ground beside his King and Prince, and he scrambled to examine the, truth-be-told, dead-looking young elf lying on the ground. If Legolas wasn't so hot with fever, and if fresh red blood was not running from his nose, Maenor would have bet he was long gone.

"Hir-nin Legolas," he called repeatedly to the Prince as he placed a hand to the pulse point at the young royal's neck. It was there to Maenor's relief, but thin, thready and racing. When it stuttered, Maenor felt his own heart jerk and his stomach flutter. He was only more alarmed to find the elf was barely breathing.

"Legolas," he called out more insistently, rubbing his knuckles at the other elf's chest. "Legolas, come on now."

He did not yet understand what was ailing his patient, and he thought fleetingly that a more thorough examination might yield some useful information. He called for the assistance of other elves around them. He commanded one soldier to lay blankets upon the ground, so that the Prince could be laid in better comfort. He didn't know if they were setting camp here but he asked for a tent, but the Prince needed immediate attention and the King did not contest him so he asked for one, so that Legolas could be removed from the cold. Maenor commanded someone to start a fire and boil some water. He did not yet know what he would need it for precisely, only that he likely would. He spoke all of these as his adroit fingers removed his patient's clothes and then patted and ran down the battered body beneath.

On the surface of Legolas' ills were signs of beating, rope burns, exposure, and deprivation of food and water. There was a serious knife wound at his lower back, skin healing and the cut not infected but still tender. But there were damages of more menacing origins elsewhere upon him. The swelling in his extremities were severe, and there was particularly brutal damage to his shoulders and arms, where Maenor found blackened bruising, muscle injury and skin tears.

Maenor winced and his mind raced, as he formed a theory the outcome of which he did not welcome. He leaned over Legolas' face, opened his mouth and sniffed at the younger elf's breath. He pulled away and chewed at his lips as he pondered his options.

Or more precisely, because he had slim to none, he pondered what to tell his King. There was little to be done for an organ that was severely failing. All he could do was give Legolas comfort and care for his most immediate ills, and hope his body could survive and heal the damage inside. But Maenor knew that with the young prince's progression, the likelihood of that happening was poor.

The young elf before him was probably going to die, and as if to drive home that brutal prognosis, the breaths Legolas was barely making shuddered to a stop.

Maenor looked up at Thranduil, who read immediately what was in the healer's eyes.

"No, Maenor, damn you," said the mourning husband and father, with tears welling in his angry, blazing eyes. He gripped Legolas by the damaged shoulders, and Maenor only briefly considered stopping him from paining his son further, but he doubted it mattered much, now.

"Gods be damned, you stubborn wood-elf," the father hissed dangerously at his son, "Do you hear me, Legolas? Hear me now, ion-nin and hear me well. You do not get to perish here, like this. Not after everything that has happened, not after everything we – I – not after everything I have paid. Do you hear? If you die I swear there will be no forgiveness from me for your abandonment. I swear the only remembrance of you will be the blood of your people and the razing of all this land, for I will forsake the gods and defend nothing, stand for nothing, devote myself to nothing – except upon the complete and utter destruction of those who had claimed your life and that of your mother's. I will ground them to nothingness and dust, no matter the cost. I will find them no matter where they hide, and anyone who stands in my way will be dead by my hands. There will be no stone left unturned. I will flatten every mountain lest they cower there. I will empty towns, dredge rivers, burn forests - I will tear this world apart.

"Do you hear me, ion?" Thranduil seethed, and he shook for all his rage, and he shook for giving the kind of half-mad, heartbroken vow that only a cursed immortal can give, the kind that could change the face of the earth.

"If you die, there will be no salvation for me," he whispered.

Maenor's healer's heart would not let it stand. "Aran-nin..." he said shakily. "Do not let these words be the last he hears, please. That he has lasted this long is a testament to his strength, but there are some things he cannot move by his will, no matter how hard he should try. Please my lord, have mercy upon your son's soul and let him find some peace. This is not fair to ask of him-"

"Speak to me now of what is fair, healer, I dare you!" the Elvenking thundered, and his eyes could sear holes into Maenor's suddenly trembling form, for Thranduil was their King and commander not only by name, but by the very weight of his fea.

Maenor tried to find the courage in himself, in his healer's sympathetic heart, to say something back, to continue to plead his case.

But Legolas spared Maenor the bother. And Legolas spared his father the dangerous curse of his blasphemous promise by making a large, struggling breath.

Followed by another, and another –

"What in all of Arda is going on here?"

Maenor jumps in surprise, and for a quick moment he is confused, for the dangerously angry voice of his memories of the brutal past had somehow sliced its way into the present. He promptly rises to his feet and stands at attention, just as Lastor and Brenion do.

Thranduil is inside Legolas' chambers, and stalking toward them with questions in his eyes, the smell of Dor-winion in his breaths, and a sense of danger to his purposeful stride. Maenor wracks his brain for an answer to give his king, just as surely as the two ministers with them were doing the same.

Legolas spares them all the bother. He does this because he knows Lastor is as equally capable of lying as he is with offering callous truths. Because he knows Brenion, as Thranduil's oldest friend, is capable of compassionate but inextricably pandering pity. Because he knows Maenor is likely to fall into saying a bad joke. And any of things could get all of them into Thranduil's bad side for a punishing century or two. So he took up the cudgels for them all.

He pushes up to his elbows and leans heavily against the back of his bed. For a moment he is dizzied and there is two of his father before him, so he takes a gamble and stares bravely up at one of them, hoping it is the right one.

"Maenor looks after me just as you instructed, aran-nin," he replies. "And our ministers are here to clarify upon misinformation I unintentionally made during my debriefing."

None of these were untrue, but Thranduil was not born yesterday. He stops beside Legolas' bed, and sits next to his arm.

"I'd mistaken what I had seen of the Lady Celebrian's torture with my memories of naneth," Legolas says truthfully.

Thranduil stiffens. "Well now that this whole sordid affair is sorted, you can be left for proper rest."

"We discussed my memories," Legolas confesses, "Things I'd forgotten that I remembered. We yielded valuable information that can be of some use to training our soldiers."

"My ailing son was debriefed on his sickbed, was he?" Thranduil asks, turning his eagle-eyed gaze disapprovingly upon his ministers. "He is fevered and ill, quaking in his bed, half out of his mind screaming nonsense and you interrogate him?"

"It was by necessity," Legolas says quickly, "and by my own choice-

"Have you taken over speaking for my ministers, who otherwise bicker and never shut their mouths, ernil?" Thranduil asks him, with an edge to his voice.

Legolas shakes his head, already feeling how his evasive, wily father is making attempts to control their line of conversation, away from things he does not want to discuss, away from thoughts he would rather bury.

"Aran-nin," he says tentatively, but changes his mind at his father's official title, for he too has his own means of controlling conversation with his domineering father. One cannot fight Thranduil with strength against strength, will against will, and expect to win.

"Ada," he amends, "As I said the debriefing was by my choice. The incident stirred in me questions that I was hoping you and our ministers would be able to address."

"This conversation is tired and the matter long at rest," Thranduil murmurs. His voice is soft, but there is a dangerous warning threading every syllable of his words. "The past is dead and gone. There will be no more talk of it."

"I have but one question and I beg your indulgence," Legolas implores. "We were all near the exit on that escape from Gundabad. Why did the queen – naneth - not leave with us?"

A dangerous silence clouds the room. Thranduil raises his eyebrows pointedly at his son. "This conversation is tired and the matter long at rest," he says again, with a sharper, thinner edge that is closer to cutting.

"Did you leave her so that you may carry me, ada?" Legolas whispers. "Did you choose me over her? How did she die? Are you even sure she is dead? What if-"

Thranduil's nostrils flare in his rage, but all he does is raise a hand for his rebellious son to cease from speaking. He stares at Legolas' anguished, earnest face coldly, and does not even look at his ministers as he speaks to them.

"You will leave the Prince's chambers," he told them flatly, dangerously, "and ponder all the ways you have... disappointed... me."

Maenor hesitates, because always, he was a healer first before anything else, before he was a subject of the Woodland Realm, even before he was terrified of Thranduil. "I cannot be gone long. There are medicines he needs to take, aran-nin."

"It will be a brief discussion," Thranduil snaps, and the three ministers scurry away. Legolas tries to sit up straighter, wanting to be in a less vulnerable position in facing his father.

"What if she is still alive there?" Legolas asks, and tears well in his eyes at this thought that was both brutal blind hope and also deep-seated fear, helplessly entwined in each other.

"Oh she is dead, princeling, and how," Thranduil guarantees his son. "She is ash and dust. She is reduced to nothing, and thus she will stay." His voice catches, and he is at the very edge of anger, the very edge. But he tries to curb it by studying his son, who is gray-faced and trembling. "You really have no recollection, do you? Life is strange isn't it? How some of us try our hardest to forget, while others try to remember."

"What happened to naneth, ada?"

"She died, Legolas, what else do you think happened?" Thranduil growls. "It was a dangerous endeavor and many died. Many. She died, just like everyone else who was not you or I. She died. Is that not enough to know?"

"No-"

"Well that is just too bad," Thranduil sneers as he rises to his feet and turns his back on his son, "for that is all that will be said of the matter. I will not speak anything more of this, and I will not suffer your questions."

"No, adar, please - "

"This discussion is ended."

"No," Legolas argues, and he is angered now too, not just anguished. He pushes up from his bed to trembling arms, tugs away at his blankets in his own bid to rise, to not be so easily dismissed. "No. It cannot be left like this, ada, I am losing my mind, do you understand? I lose my mind with returning there. I lose my mind with confusing one moment from another. I lose my mind not knowing. I have a right to know, ada. She was my mother and I was there, I have a right to know, more than you have any right to conceal things from me. You are not entitled to withhold my truths for your comfort and your convenience. These are my truths! I have a right to them."

"You, princeling, have entitlements only as far as I allow them," Thranduil thundered at him, "You speak of your rights as if you have some monopoly on this tragedy, on her loss – "

"That's rich hearing this from you," Legolas seethes, "you who hoard her memory selfishly, like a dragon sated on his treasure."

"You are sorely mistaken if you think there is treasure to be found in the memory you seek," Thranduil says bitterly. "Let it rest."

"But that is where you are mistaken," Legolas argues. "Because I am betting she would have been brave. I am certain she would have risen to meet her fate heroically. She promised me, even in the worst of her ills, that her spirit will burn through. I am certain that is what she did. I know she would have been glorious-"

Thranduil turns to him so swiftly he takes Legolas aback, and suddenly his face is a breath away from his father's.

"She was faithless!" Thranduil says, darkly, dangerously. His anger pours from his soul, is mirrored in his eyes, is streaming from his mouth. "She failed us in every conceivable way. She failed us in bringing you to that accursed village and in the sphere of treacherous filth. She failed to sense betrayal under her own roof. She failed to protect you. She failed in escape. She failed me when she did not believe – "

He cuts himself off, and takes ahold of himself for he has started to shake almost as badly as his child.

"You are perhaps right in one thing, Legolas. She burned. She burned. You think you wish to know how precisely your mother died? Well let me relieve you of this one curiosity," he diminished his desperate desire for answers cruelly, "Her flesh melted from her charred, charred bones. Her face was deformed and devoured by hungry flame –"

Legolas' coherent thoughts desert him, then. In his mind's eyes and ears, he sees and hears how memories of his mother have been creeping up on him, of how the answers he seeks have been couched and hidden in the language he has been using in thinking of her.

In the spirit he was so certain would burn through.

In images of a fabled phoenix rising from the ashes with flames for wings, incandescent.

Legolas closes his eyes and lets the flames of memory licking at the edges of his mind devour and engulf him. He chases after it, all these thoughts of fire and flame. He thinks of a burning spirit with an angry, vindictive cry, and he thinks of his mother's mad, Silvan promise.

Later, she had said, I will tear this accursed place down...

The memories trickle in.

His father dragged him forward. The Elvenking hauled him up whenever he fell, and dragged him forward again. They fell together, rose together. His grandfather behind them was fighting like a Silvan – everything in, nothing left for later. But the orcs were many, and some slipped past his weakening defenses. The enemy were hard at the heels of Thranduil and his son.

They paused at where the Elvenking thought he had left the Queen. His head whipped from side to side as he tried to locate his wife. He had been so occupied picking up and propelling forward his wounded and rapidly weakening son that he'd lost sight of her, and the corridor they were in was lined by many paths and many doors and only lit dimly by the occasional mounted torch.

She emerged from one such side door a meter or so behind them, and was now between them and the orcs. She was crawling on her hands and knees because she still could not walk from the damage that had been done to her. She was inexplicably soaked to the skin, but not from water. Her tattered clothes were heavy with it, dragging on the ground that was also quickly soaking. Whatever room she had come from and whatever had been in there – it was leaking and spreading out into the hall. In rivulets, and then streams.

The smell wafted toward Thranduil and Legolas in the narrow, enclosed space. It was overpowering, making their eyes sting and their nostrils burn.

It was alcohol. The same foul, potent brew they had forced her to drink into pliant inebriation. It was a powerful concentration meant to be partaken by large bodies of incredible endurance. She had chanced upon the drink stores, in one of the many rooms that lined the supply hall.

The brew was foul and its stench overpowering in the tight space. More importantly perhaps, it was flammable.

The warrior queen turned toward her husband and said, "You cannot bear us both away, my love!"

"I can," Thranduil argued, already beginning to turn around for her, maneuvering around Legolas' heavier weight and clumsy attempts to move with him.

"Take him and go," the Queen insisted, "Fly!"

"Adar, I am lost," Legolas drawled at his father, when his knees buckled again and he brought the both of them to the ground. He spoke as quickly as he could and even then he slurred. "Take her away and start anew. Take her away and start anew..."

"I swear I can –" Thranduil insisted, but the Queen chose that moment to save her husband from an impossible decision, and to save him from making a promise he would have broken.

She pushed up to her legs with a pained, strangled, determined cry, and threw herself against the wall, where a burning torch hung.

"No!" Thranduil screamed, but she did not heed him.

She scrambled to cling to the torch and bring it down. It fell to the ground beside her with a crash of coal and tinder and oil and flame, which caught on her clothes, caught on the soaked ground, raced to follow the flammable, powerful vapors from the alcohol that surrounded her in a pool, and trailed into the room of its source, and trailed to where their enemies stood over her fading father's just-crumpled body.

Thranduil and Legolas gaped at her for a long, stunned moment. Her mouth opened and closed and she said something to them, something Legolas could not hear from the roar if the flames, for fire was so very noisy. He could not hear it from the savage beating in his heart that dominated his muffled ears. He could not even read her lips for his eyesight has long dimmed from his struggles, even before the smoke and the flames she ignited plunged the hall into limited visibility.

It might have meant nothing. For all he knew she was screaming. Or maybe her mouth was not moving, it was drooping down, melting off, her face distorted by the fire...

Thranduil gathered his son into his arms, for the thick, black smoke was stifling the space, and the liquid and the vapors and the flames trailed toward them too, fire indiscriminate, devouring the evil, devouring the good, devouring the bodies of heroes lost alongside their cruel enemies. Devouring grandfathers, wives, mothers, with equal relish and efficiency.

He couldn't breathe, and ensconced in his father's arms, he could also feel the older elf's struggles and coughing as they ran to the exit. Legolas bounced with his father's frantic footfalls, and as darkness creeped on the edges of his vision, the last thing he saw from over his father's shoulder was his mother caught aflame.

But she rose to her feet, for by now the torture of them was equal to the all-encompassing torture of her entire body. She rose, and stood between her enemies and the family she so desperately wanted to save.

Legolas emerges from the vision panting, gulping in one desperate, inadequate breath after another. Tears stream from his eyes, down his cheeks, falling from the edge of his jaw, down to his father's sleeves, for Thranduil is now holding him by both arms, steadying him but also shaking him.

"You see now, don't you?" Thranduil insists, "and so now we let this matter rest-"

"No," Legolas gasps, gripping his father back. "No, adar, she said something in the end. Her mouth moved, but I couldn't hear her from the roar of the flames, her last words, her last words..."

Thranduil sucks in a breath, and father and son look at each other for a long moment. Legolas can almost swear he sees tongues of flame on his father's shining eyes. He is lost in memory too and in all too many ways, had been right in his claim that Legolas had no monopoly on this tragedy.

The Elvenking's mouth opens, and closes. It let Legolas hope for a fleeting moment that he would be given an answer. It happens again, and Thranduil works his throat around the words lodged there. They are stuck and strangled. His face crumples for a brief moment at the inability to speak, to be reduced to this quivering, confused, mute, paralyzed mess.

And suddenly, his expression closes. It closes before Legolas eyes – at the twisted, crumpled look that first softens, then flattens, then freezes over. At the shining eyes that blink, blink, blink, until the tears shaking in them retreat and hide behind a sharp, glinted, glacial surface. All the lines of his face smoothen, all these grooves that speak of a life lived are flattened to an impassive surface. Gone are the laugh lines that once spoke of joy, gone is the wrinkled forehead of worry, gone the crinkles at the corners of his eyes that conveyed any sense of warmth. He is frozen over. And the final answer Legolas needs is lost beneath that surface.

"There will be no more talk of this," Thranduil says with a soft finality. Legolas knows by the steely expression on his father's face, by the sudden immovable calm, that the conversation is indeed over. His father has turned this page because to brush against it, to indulge in it, could very well be his undoing. Because the grief is still too near. Perhaps it would always and forever be too near...

"This sordid exercise is over," Thranduil continues, "by your King's command, Legolas. And I will suffer no more of your, or anyone else's, defiance. Whatever you learned from your memories that can help our soldiers has been secured and that is well and good, and what lessons are important will be imparted and passed on. But nothing of what had happened to you or your mother will ever be spoken of again. Never, never again. The past is gone, and further talk of this is forbidden. Do not challenge my resolve."

For a long moment Legolas considers arguing, debating, pleading, begging. But he is too tired, too heartsick. And most importantly of all, he holds his tongue because of how he fears hurting his father more deeply. For his mother's death hurt Thranduil indeed. Monumentally. Unimaginably. And so Legolas holds his tongue for his love of his father, and not because he is so ordered.

"Swear to me," Thranduil urges his son in a low voice, and the words are uttered somewhere between begging and commanding. "Swear to me."

Legolas takes a deep, shaky breath, and contemplates if it is really in himself to let things go like this.

"Swear," Tgranduil whispers, veering sharply in the direction of begging and Legolas does not have the heart to refuse him.

He blinks his eyes in tears at his own loss, at the loss of any more answers. But his love is stronger, he thinks, and he will suffer whatever he has to suffer. He nods.

With Legolas' wordless acquiescence on something Thranduil can recognize as difficult and painful, they are at peace again. All is forgiven. And they can move forward again, and they can banish the paralyzing ghosts of the past.

"You burn," Thranduil says suddenly, and the word 'burn' makes him wince but he says it nonetheless, for he feels his son's fever radiant from their proximity, and even through his blankets and clothes.

"Good gods, Legolas, what have you done with yourself," he mutters, as his son blanches before his eyes, and then sags in defeat, exhaustion and illness in his arms. Legolas' head lolls back, and Thranduil braces his son's body with his own, while reaching for the back of Legolas' head and neck to support him. Thranduil pulls Legolas forward into his chest, and sneaks in something that is suspiciously close to an embrace, as he leans forward and lays his son back to lie on the bed.

The Elvenking calls for Maenor, who rushes back inside in a heartbeat, not having gone far from there at all.

TO BE CONCLUDED IN THE NEXT CHAPTER, an Epilogue of three interludes: a Kingdom waits for its Prince to wake; a Prince returns to his People; and a Father and Son find each other.