I do not need to tell Legolas that the Shadow is now whole, I believe that he senses it. I tell him anyway. I mutter it beneath my breath knowing that he is attuned to me and hears me, and I see him nod the briefest of movements, his face grim and eager. Now our focus is upon movement… we are in the wrong place for this.
We try – by Eru we try – to move our fight toward the incline not a hundred paces behind us, but the Shadow is becoming suspicious. It casts its glance to the battlefield where its spiders lie low but no elves remain. It shrieks and cries, but I hear something else within that sound: for the first time I hear doubt. It knows we are about something but it knows not what, and I take great heart from the fact that it did not glean our plan from Legolas' mind. He has held onto it so tightly that it could not rip it free from him, but it is no longer a mindless thing. It knows we do something; it knows that we seek to lead it, and it will not be led.
"We run short on time!" I hiss below my breath as we seek and fail yet again to get it to follow us. I speak lowly, knowing that Legolas hears cannot respond without the Shadow overhearing him. Instead he looks to me and he does not need words with which to speak; he fixes me with a look and I hear him as clearly as though he had spoken aloud.
'Trust me,' he says, and after a moment I reply:
'Always, I trust you,' and in that moment he drops his knives to his side. I do not know what he is doing, I do not know his plan but I must be ready for whatever it is.
The Shadow screams again and I am alarmed by the victory that I hear in the sound, then horror stricken as Legolas sinks to his knees. After a moment his hands also fall to the leaves at our feet, his hair a shadow about his face and he cries aloud… he is letting it in again!
I see it happening – I see the Shadow begin to leave the child. I see it move about her like I saw it in that dank and dark dungeon all those weeks and months ago. It moves like a drop of ink in water, it eddies and writhes within the air and any doubt or confusion that the Shadow may have had are wiped away. It no longer thinks or wonders on what we do, all thought is wiped clean as it tastes the touch of the host it likes the best. It sees a way in, but it thinks not a moment on the fact that it is being allowed so. It is blinded to it.
It takes everything I have not to try to stop this. I bite my tongue and I taste copper, I grip my axe tightly enough to feel pain in my hand but I root my feet into the ground and I take strength from the Song of the earth… I bide my time. I must trust in him, I must!
It is moments or years, I do not know. I cannot feel the passage of time any longer, although had I mind to I could count out every deafening beat of my heart. I watch my friend but I do not move, and it is exquisite agony to stay as I am. I trust in him. I trust in him better than I trust in myself and so I stand aside, a useless lump of graceless dwarf as my friend battles alone.
He allows it a taste, but a taste only. A great cry of rage and refusal is ripped from my friend and he is staggering to his feet again, his hair still tangled about his face. He looks to the Shadow with veiled eyes like flint… he grins, and it is chilling.
"If you wish it, you must take it," he hisses at the beast and it shrieks – by the mountains and the stars does it shriek. I feel my bones ready to splinter, my ears feel as though shards pierce them and I feel the terror that has always been stirred by the cry of the Shadow. It is angrier than it has been in a long while; Legolas has torn its victory away, he has closed himself off to it again after allowing just a taste of what it wishes. I know not where he has found the strength for such a thing, but we have its attention and it is blinded now by avarice. It thinks no longer on what we do – now it sees only what it wants.
We run, and it follows.
"That was extremely foolish, you idiot elf," I tell him through gritted teeth as we run. He makes no reply other than to grin at me and that makes me all the angrier with him, but I have no time to make more of it. We are pursued, and the Shadow is swift.
We fly through the forest with no thought to anything but speed; we know where we must be at the end of this but how we find ourselves there is secondary to the matter. I am weary and I trip and stumble, but there is a constant grip at my back hauling me over difficult ground. It is a strange sensation – akin to flying – but I concentrate on nothing but that which chases us.
For such a short distance it is as though a thousand leagues pass beneath my feet. Ever there is the constant, skin crawling sensation of corrupted breath upon my neck… of a clawed hand ready to grab at me at any moment. It is behind us – so close behind us – but I am unmolested the whole way. I hear it, I know that it chases but always we are a breath ahead.
We are safe until we reach the hillside, it is only then that things go awry. I see the ground falling away before me: I see the tangle of bramble and briar way below us, the loose soil and loam caught in tree roots all the way toward the ravine. I see it and I feel a moment of hope that we are so close, but then my legs are gone from beneath me.
I feel claws at my legs - I trip and I feel myself carried onward by the speed of my flight, and it is as though I am flying again. This time my stomach lurches with the sensation as I fall headlong over the edge, plummeting down the hillside with no one there to halt my fall and no control over myself. I know what meets me there at the bottom of the hillside, and so I claw and scrabble and catch at whatever I am able. I will not meet my end this way!
I am scratched and bruised by my fall, but as my hands claw for purchase I eventually find my tumble arrested by a tree that has grown these many years in the tenuous hold of the hillside. My breath is stricken from me as I hit it, I see dancing lights that flare and glimmer but as I wheeze and struggle for breath I look up. I have fallen a long way, a long way indeed and I see Legolas silhouetted against the night sky. He fights to give me a moment to regain myself - he fights with all he has but he is alone, and he is swiftly losing whatever strength he has left to him now. We have little time, so little time left to us. It must be now… now or it will never happen.
"Send it from the edge, Legolas!" I cry, and if I have trusted him blindly before then he does the same for me now. He does not hesitate, he lets it rush to him and he is a ghost, melting beneath it so that it falls across his back and over the edge. I do not look to what he does but rather to the fall of the Shadow, and it rolls and tumbles down the incline much as I have. It falls, and with every part of me I will it to fall right to the end of things, but it does not. It catches itself a few feet below me upon a protruding root.
Much passes through my mind now. The edge of the ravine is so close but the brambles act as a barrier: even should it fall it would find itself caught by such a tangle of growth. We are close – so close!
I see my friend far above me and I see that he has driven himself far past the point where he should have stopped. He is burning strength he has not had for days, he moves on willpower alone and if he is able to push through such fear and weariness then how can I not? How can I quail at this? How can I be the one that pauses in fear at this moment; this when all may be resolved if I can find but one ounce of the strength he has carried for days and days behind us.
I see it there... the Shadow. Already it has started the long and interminable climb back up again. I make a decision, and I trust in my friend more than I have ever trusted in him before.
I launch myself free of the tree that holds me so carefully in its grasp. I jump free and I fall again, but this time I have a goal. I hear the elf cry my name but there is not a single thing I can do now but fall. And so I fall.
I crash into the Shadow and I grip and claw and hold onto its stinking, corrupted flesh as though it is the only thing in the world. My weight is greater than this poor, forgotten child that it wears like clothing. I break it free… we fall now together.
We fall down a hillside that smells of damp leaves and pine needles. I feel my skin torn and bruised, I feel the earth and the air spinning and tumbling about me. All is confusion, and although I fear those poisoned claws the Shadow is oddly silent. It falls as I do, too confused with the sense of falling to make a sound, and together we break through the brambles. We plunge through briar with the speed of our descent, and for a moment I feel nothingness about me.
It is a strange sensation indeed, to fly. I am gone into the dark places and air and silence are about me, darkness greets me and I am to meet my end in a way fitting for a dwarf, but I have placed my trust wisely indeed. My arm is torn, my hand feels as though it is broken in half, my fall is arrested and I have been here before.
I dangle above a precipice and I look to find Legolas there upon the solid ground above me, gripping my hand as though his entire world is focussed upon this moment. I feel the cold wind channelled by the ravine buffeting me, I am surrounded by a Song that sings of great depth beneath but I see only Legolas. I swing freely in his grasp and I see the pain upon him: he has fought valiantly with his knives but his hands are a ruin. It stops him not at all. My eyes seek his out and they tell me:
"I will never let you fall," and I believe him, by Eru I believe him completely but it is not just my weight that he holds. I feel a grip upon my leg just as I feel the grip upon my hand.
I look down and the Shadow clings to my leg, dangling with me above this precipice. I see it looking up at me; I am fixed by a hungry, hate filled gaze and all of a moment I am seized with panic that wipes my mind of any coherent thought. I fight, I kick and I twist my body to be free of it. Legolas cries with pain from the way I am treating the hand that holds me but I am blinded to it: never has fear had such a hold on me, I am desperate to be free of the Shadow's touch. I kick and kick and I kick at its grip: my boot meets the face of the poor child whose body it wears, and forever will I see the look it gives me.
It is afraid… so desperately afraid. It does not wish to fall into the earth again, it wishes to walk in the sunlight as all living things have a wish to do but some mercies cannot be given, some things must not be allowed. I feel pity but I do not wish to, and so I allow the revulsion to take me over. I bury the feeling, I bury it deep behind the horror and fear and exhaustion it has caused, and I continue to fight.
Finally I strike true – finally I kick it hard enough to break the hold it has upon my leg. I feel my flesh tear but I am free, it is gone: it falls into the ravine with a shriek that echoes loudly enough to cause my grip upon Legolas to weaken and falter. I feel his other hand grasp me just as strongly as the first and I am safe... I am blinded and confused, I do not know what happens but I am safe. The Shadow has gone into the earth. It has fallen and we are victorious.
I am ready to fall and lie just as I have fallen, to finally rest, but it is not over. I wish it was… I wish this was all required of us because I am spent. There is not a single ounce of strength left to me right now but once again I must trust in my friend. It is over, yet it is not. The Shadow is fallen, but we must yet live.
~{O}~
Legolas hauls me up over the ridge and back onto solid ground, but I recall little of the journey. I lie and feel my breath rasping into my lungs – suddenly I feel every bruise and cut and hurt I have sustained this night. My leg has been torn, my hip… I am fairly sure that my ribs are broken from my varied flights into trees. My head is bruised, my hand is in splinters and every muscle in my body screams for release, for rest.
I hear my ears singing and my eyes blur, but it fades and resolves into a fair voice calling my name. It sounds angry with me.
"I cannot carry you," he tells me. He is vexed. "You must be up! I will drag your dwarven carcass if I must but I will be intentionally neglectful if you make me do this… to your feet, Gimli!"
I groan mightily, and it is the sound a child makes when roused from their bed of a cold morning. It is childish and I feel shame, but it does not stop my response from being less than graceful.
"Do not hound me so!" I snap, but I am already swaying to my feet. He helps me. "I am getting far too long in the tooth for this business."
He snorts. I know well enough the difference in our years but they do not show on him as they do on me – I believe my point has credence. Nevertheless when we move away from the ravine I shake free of his support and totter my own way back through briars that suddenly seem far thicker and more impenetrable than they did. I curse and swear my way free, and then we are climbing back up the hill. I recall how easily I climbed this incline with Idhren earlier on this night – now it is a veritable mountain!
"We have little time left to us," Legolas tells me, and although it is good to know that he overheard our plan it is very unhelpful of him to be commenting so. I am well aware of the time left to us – I do not need his reminders.
"I can move no faster," I grit through my teeth. "Know you even the length of an hour? Do elves count time in such small numbers?"
"Perhaps you should have made doubly certain if you had such doubts," he replies archly. "In any case, you are being very unpleasant. I am weary too."
I bite off my next retort and focus only on our climb. I do not know why but it makes me feel endlessly better to focus my exhaustion into ill feeling toward him – after all of these days of him moving by the sheer power of his will alone, why then does he still outlast me? The mountains themselves will fall before I allow an elf to show me to be a weakling, and so I swear and curse and berate him beneath my breath, and I climb.
The hillside slides and shifts beneath my feet. It is an uncertain quicksand of settled leaves upon roots and sinking pine needles that do not hold my weight, but the elf grabs me by my jerkin, hauling me up places too steep for me to find purchase. I snap at him every time, but every time he is there to help me. He knows that my ill temper is born of pain and exhaustion, and so he hears not a word of my complaint.
I do not look at him. It is selfishness itself but despite how it aggravates me I need his strength at my side to keep my mind focussed, to bolster my own waning determination. If I see him now then I will see how little there is left in him to give, and I know I will falter. I keep my eyes trained ahead of me, and I continue.
When we trip and fall over the crest of the hill I am given no moment to catch my breath. I stumble and trip to my knees but again, there is a hand at my back and I am pressed forward. I do not run any longer, I stumble and stagger but it is movement and it is all that I can muster. My legs scream at me, my lungs heave and dark shadows dance before my eyes but I carry on. It is half a mile – just half a mile to the rallying point.
"You must lead us Gimli," Legolas tells me. "I know not where we go."
"Westward," I tell him, and I close my ears to how fragile his voice sounds. I close my eyes and ears to anything from him that would suggest he is anything but stronger than I am, and we continue onward. Past guttering, smouldering pyres that are all but gone out. Past dead spider after dead spider, curled and empty shells that litter the forest floor and befoul the air. Past the giant mounds of their monstrous kin, and then we are past them all. The sky lightens, daylight approaches. For a moment I allow myself to hope, to imagine that perhaps we might make it, but then Legolas speaks my name and the dread I hear in his voice stops me dead in my tracks.
I stop, wheezing and gasping. I look to the dark sky where a thousand burning arrows stream silently above our heads.
They are like falling stars, like a cloudburst of flames sailing beyond us and dread chokes me. I watch them fly as though mesmerised – it is a beautiful sight – and the elf stands beside me. I look to him now and I see past the hurt and pain, I see beyond the blood and filth. His head is tilted to the sky as it ever is, filled with wonder. Always he seems to be looking beyond us, and I cannot ever imagine what the world looks like to him. He sees his stars lit up in flames and when he turns his regard back to me there is fear in his eyes, but there is also a fire to rival anything we are about to witness.
"Care to wager that I can beat you the last of the way?" he asks with a hint of his usual mirth, and I cannot help but shake my head in disbelief. I laugh, for how else can I respond to such insanity?
I do not hear the moment that the vapours within the ravine catch afire but I feel it. The ground beneath me lurches and there is a moment when the Song of Mahal twists and shrieks in my heart: decrying what we have done here, railing against the damage we do. The ground heaves and I take a moment to glance behind me, but it is only a moment. Legolas grabs me and shoves me: we are running again but I cannot wipe the image from my mind.
There is a wall of fire behind us: higher than the trees, a half mile long quite easily. I can feel the heat as it pushes against my back, carried by a mighty wind hotter than any fire. It is as furious as the heart of Orodruin itself! I hear a great roaring: a rending and a tearing sound like the cry of some mighty beast let loose upon us – the forges of Mahal burning upon the soils of Arda right at our very backs.
The conflagration travels through the rock; the gas still held within the hillside is thinned enough to catch flame, and as the land splits and air floods this gas filled honeycomb of pockets the inferno only grows in might. We have certainly succeeded in our task… but perhaps we have been overly enthusiastic.
Legolas stumbles and is almost to his knees for a moment – he gasps and his hands cover his ears but it is not the sound of the exploding hillside behind him that has him so stricken. He looks to me and I see a flicker of the true damage the Shadow has done to him: the staining upon his fëa, the horror of all he has known these last days.
"It screams, Gimli. I hear it… it burns!"
"Then you must close your ears," I instruct him, and I am careful not to show anything of the horror his words instil within me. I cannot think on it. Not yet, and not now. I pull him to his feet as he has been pulling me to mine – oh, how we switch and change between us – and although I know he hears it still he follows as pliant as a child. His face is pinched and haunted but he runs. My weariness is pushed aside; I find strength where I thought no strength could be found. I cannot find rest if I am not fast enough: we will be caught… we must be quicker!
We race one another and I hear Legolas choking upon the smell – if it is noxious to me then truly it must be foul to him. As I hear the rending and shrieking of the Song of Mahal then he hears the fading and dying of the life that burns behind us, but we must close our hearts to our respective Songs. We must run all the faster, for the land has begun to pitch. What once was flat ground is now a hill as the land collapses, this half mile upon which we run sinks now into the yawning chasm we have created.
There is a part of my heart that sings… it cries and it challenges the Shadow to scrabble its way free from this grave but I push it away. I will first make sure that it is not my own grave as well. There will be time enough after this for celebration: first I must see this sunrise upon kinder ground and I intend to – by stone and stars do I intend to. I run onward and Legolas races beside me, determined to outrun the cries of the burning Shadow.
As we flee – as the trees about us begin to collapse and the hillside falls in pockets about our flight I remember another such desperate race. I do not know why the thought has come to me but I remember a mountain that was almost our tomb up in the Hithaeglir. I recall it clearly, but although it was similar that flight was the start of our nightmare, and this one at the very end. Did we escape that mountain only to be swallowed by this? I think not. I know not.
It is there, I see it! I see fires ahead of us that are not of this conflagration. I see them as a faint glimmer in the distance but it is a distance I can measure, it is an end, it is so close!
"Legolas!" I cry, but of course he has seen it. Our efforts double but we are not swift enough – we have been too slow. We have not outraced this destruction.
I both feel and hear a sound equally. It sounds deep in my blood where I hear the Song, but I would have both felt and heard it whether I was attuned to the call of Mahal or not. This is the air concussing, this is my very bones vibrating and both Legolas and I stagger as a steady series of explosions shake our footing. Something has caught – one pocket of gas has caught another, and then another racing faster than ever we could. The trees to our right creak and lurch and fall with a mighty crashing sound, fire plumes up even higher than they ever stood and the only air available to breathe is hot and fetid. The land lurches, dips, and then begins to rise.
Legolas is too graceful to fall and I am too solid, but we are nearly tipped from our footing. I look about and we are surrounded by ground that is being swallowed into itself; we are lit angry red by the fire that rises high into the sky and steals the air. I turn toward our refuge, and what I see has my fists tightly wrapped in my friend's shirt.
There… right where the stone is too impenetrable to harbour a single shred of vapour. There is the point to which we are headed. I drag him onward again.
The land is splitting. We may reach safety but be trapped on the wrong side of a divide as the hillside sinks, and I cannot imagine surviving this ordeal all of the way through only to fail so close to our destination. Legolas has seen what has me so panicked and says nothing, but now we are running up a far steeper incline and he needs the breath, for he has none left to him.
Steeper, steeper it rises… the land breaks away about us and we are surrounded by flames. Soil and stones fall about us in a river, trees and undergrowth are torn from their roots and then we crest this mighty hill. We crest it, but although it has slowed it moves still. We balance now on the very edge of what once was perfectly flat ground, our feet braced upon the shifting soil and the scar of sundered stone. It is all I can do to keep my balance as the hillside sinks, but the flames recede and I can see our destination. I can see it… we are there!
I cannot jump the distance.
Legolas looks at me in readiness, his eyes feverish and eager in a face marble white beneath the blood and dirt. May Eru bless his elven heart he does not realise. He does not understand the limitations of mortals at times, but this crack in the earth is too far… I cannot jump it. Perhaps if I were less weary, less hurt. Perhaps if my body did not sing and cry so with every movement – perhaps if I were fresh upon the road then I might in a fit of insanity attempt it. I go to look down to see what would greet me at the end of such a fall, but my friend grabs at my arm. The strength of his grip is enough to draw a gasp from me and I look instead to him – he does not wish me to know what lies beneath us. His eyes tell me so.
'You do not wish to see,' he tells me, and I trust him in this. I can imagine it well enough.
We are still sinking. The gap widens interminably. I turn my attention briefly to the other side of this open barrier – it is jagged and sloped, not a clean cut at all. We stand upon an overhang which makes the footing seem even more tenuous to me.
"Can you make it?" I ask him, and he assesses the distance with a look I have seen him use before. He measures himself just as critically.
"Any other time, aye, I could jump this without a second thought but now? Now I do not know. I will never know if I do not try it."
I see before me the elfling that Almárean has told me about: the one who would never be told he could not do something without the trial of it first. He is right; neither of us will know anything past this if we do not try. We will stand here until we sink into the flames, and if we jump and fall into fire and ruin then at least we will have died in a bid to live. It is no fitting end for me, too timid to save myself, and so I steel my heart.
"I won, in case you were too distracted to note it," I tell him. He looks blankly at me and so I clarify: "I beat you here."
"Of course you did not," he snorts in horror. "Dwarves do not win at races against elves; you must not have been paying proper attention."
"I have been paying very close attention to everything these past hours, and dwarves can quite easily beat elves. It is easier still when they are half dead."
He mutters something beneath his breath and looks down at the conflagration deep beneath us just as he stopped me from doing. I did not think he could grow any paler.
"Legolas," I say to him softly, catching his attention. He stills and looks up, surprised at my tone, and I take a deep breath. I grip at his arm, he meets my gaze and understands what I am to suggest. I cannot find the words though.
'Together… we jump,' I say to him, and he smiles to me. It is small, but his whole face softens and lights with it.
'Together, my friend,' he answers to me.
And so we jump.
TBC
They've done it! They've only actually gone and done it (probably) aaaaand then promptly jumped off a cliff. Frying pans and fires, boys.
So anyway, we're nearly there. The Shadow is finally dead (probably) and now we just have to find out if and how the guys survive this. We shall do so next week, followed just two days later by the epilogue where we sort out the aftermath. All sorts of angsty angst will be had. Buckets of it.
I'd really like it if this story could go out with a bit of a bang rather than a whimper, so even if you're not a usual reviewer and still aren't planning on reviewing this week (please?) then what would make this whole thing worthwhile is a big response next week. For all of you who have read and lurked but not popped your head up, you wouldn't believe the difference it makes by just typing a few lines in that box at the bottom down there. I'd love it if this creature that has taken over my life could get a bit of a fond farewell. Also, it'll be my birthday. Which I know I've mentioned before but I figure the more I say it, the more used to it I'm going to get.
That's quite enough out of me anyway. Thanks to my usual reviewers and my guests, I hope you have a brilliant weekend and I'll see you next week for the last two chapters!
MyselfOnly