CHAPTER 17 - The glimmer on a starless night
Legolas had returned to see Kal having fallen asleep. His gaze lingered on her figure, eyes narrowing to some degree.
"Has she done aught to distress you?"
Despite himself the elf nearly jerked. He had missed that Faramir was there. How could he forget? Legolas looked to his old friend, and shook his head.
"You look as if you were confronted with a specter," Faramir said, appraising the stiff and pale appearance of the other.
"In a manner of speaking," Legolas said thoughtfully, ignoring the line of questioning. He was getting accustomed to the manner of his friend, and knew thwarting him was useless.
He sat down onto the moss covered ground as Faramir offered him of the fish he had cooked outside. Another crude candle burned weakly before them.
"Where do you find these?" the elf asked, motioning to the essential light giving object.
"I make them," Faramir answered. "You know that given enough time, need becomes the greatest of masters."
Legolas indeed knew the truth of this. They sat in companionable silence.
"And so, you intend to carry on in search of him?"
The question caused the elf to still his movements. He placed the crude wooden platter down, crossed his arms over his knees. "I made a promise I cannot break."
Faramir grimaced. "Promises from a different age, principles of another time."
"Not this one," the elf spoke, staring emptily ahead. Images of dark silky hair and sad eyes swam before his vision.
"Few survive the Black Land and fewer still endure its nightmarish ways."
Legolas ran a hand through his unbound hair. "I feel I am close. I only need...," he looked to where she was. "I need a way inside."
Faramir looked distraught then, and a strong pity could be seen in his eyes. "Legolas... I can understand hope, but this... forgive me, and I know your abilities surpass those of many, if not most beings I knew. But this is a dangerous and dare I say... foolish endeavor for one to do alone."
"I will not set forth alone. I feel he lives, Faramir," the elf said with such conviction the old ranger nearly believed him. "I cannot explain nor justify it. But I do, and I am not the only one."
"... the lady Arwen?" the old ranger seemed astonished.
Legolas nodded in confirmation.
Faramir looked into the candle. "Alas, how destinies unfold. To be sundered from one's kind and thrust into a forever wait. Never dying, yet never truly living. Indeed I would feel the most sorrow for your kind, if there were any left."
The elf cut through that trail of thought. "I have watched the gate for routine changes and repeatedly assessed the numbers flowing to and fro. I only need-"
"He watches the gate," came a new voice, causing elf and man to turn their heads. "There is no way as you say, into Mordor through the Black Gate. It is guarded on both sides by many eyes, not least of all His," Kal spoke, and then silence engulfed the shack.
Legolas frowned, not having expected the half-orc to listen on their conversation. "Eaves dropping is not honorable, nor is it wise," he muttered finally, knowing she had done this before.
But Faramir took a different approach. "You are certain of this?"
"As I live and breathe," Kal added, shifting closer to the pair from her spot.
The elf observed her movements were not as stunted and hindered as before. He was unsure whether his attempt would bring results, but apparently it had.
"I assume you know of its ways well," Faramir was saying.
Legolas felt unsettled. Why was the mortal encouraging this?
"The earliest years of my life were spent in Núrn, in the southernmost region of the Black Land."
"I have heard of this place," Faramir said thoughtfully.
"Then you probably know its fields are worked by slaves of the empire, producing sustenance for His armies. Eventually, as I grew and was remarked by our leaders as one healthy and strong, I was recruited to serve in the Tower."
Legolas' eyes shot to meet hers for the first time since earlier. Earlier, when he had felt the warmth of her hand over his. He shook the image and recurring sensation away.
"You were in the dark fortress?" his question seemed to come from a place far away, though the elf knew he had uttered it.
"I have toiled in the Tower for years under the service of His alchemists," she said, and the elf felt the pain lacing her words.
He felt the pain?
The elf looked away from those unusual eyes, orbs akin to burning embers. Legolas set his attention on the old ranger, finding him rapt with honest curiosity.
"We cleaned their chambers, the libraries, what was left of their experiments in the laboratories, as they called them..." Kal trailed away, and despite himself Legolas looked back to her. He saw the remnants of the past, and fear growing in magnitude behind her eyes. Her dark hair tumbled out of her braid into a black mass over her shoulders and down her back as the half-orc brought her knees to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them.
They listened in silence, looking to the one who had seen more than they. For neither had been on the other side of the gates, and none met any who have escaped to tell of it.
"And there was no way, no path to escape?" Faramir hedged, his voice having lost of its bite towards her, and void of any sort of wit.
Kal snorted a mirthless laugh. "From the Tower? He dwells there. His eyes are everywhere. I have never seen Him but... one cannot help but feel when He is close."
The quiet of the night was pierced by the lowly sound of a pained animal somewhere in the distance.
"They beat us repeatedly. They... forced, themselves on those who served them," Kal ceased then, her hand caught in warm fur, her heart struggling to suppress the dread of the reminiscence. Pale hands, burning into her skin. Then Eron whimpered, and drew closer into her. The wolf was there, providing unknowing but much needed support. It aided in staying balanced. Perhaps she had said too much for them to care. But it mattered not now. "There were days, when I wished to die, the only hindrance being I had not found any poison or weapon at hand, or had nothing to trade for them. It was usually the case by the time I gained the courage. And then, somehow I never achieved it. Some had. But I lived, and was eventually drafted into His army. My fortune, if one could call it such, was that I was still alive when they began their efforts to gather new recruits among the slaves and prisoners, when time came to set out farther into the world. We were nothing but property to them. And some fared worse than others. The orc, the Uruk-Hai were our masters. The Haradrim and Easterlings and other men ran to do their bidding, ever turning on their own kind."
The elf listened for any sign to foretell dishonesty in her breathing or the tone of her words. It did not come.
"As for the Tower, it much depended on the manner of cruelty and mind of the alchemists on the floor you were assigned to. They bred soldiers," she looked to Legolas, who did not meet her gaze, "out of elves and other captures, but elves were the most sought for their resistance, it was rumored."
Legolas rose from his spot. "I will take watch."
"My friend, that is not necessary, it would be my turn for the night-" Faramir tried.
"I will do it," were the last words he heard before the elf disappeared, leaving man and child with the half-orc.
"Was he always like this?" Kal found herself asking.
Faramir regarded the half-orc with mild curiosity. His grey eyes had lost of their hardness. "Before, when hope existed, we were all quite different." He leaned back against the wall. "None more than he." And the old ranger said no more on the matter.
"Will you tell me of Gondor? Of the old kingdoms?" Kal dared ask, and meeting his eyes she saw surprise etched on the ranger's features. In the end he lowered his head.
"Anything in particular you would like to know, Kal of Mordor? Or shall I begin with its history?" Faramir asked, his fingers running through Celeg's unruly hair. The boy had leaned into his grandfather and his lids were heavy, foretelling slumber.
"How did they come to be? And where did the elves come about in this tale? How is it that your kindreds are so different in strength and length of life?"
Faramir looked at Kal as she began to pour question after question, and the widening remnant of a smile spread across his stern features.
The night had turned colder, and stood cloaked by a heavy mist. A reddish sky poured over the land and at times foul smells would permeate the air.
From his crouched position atop the improvised and sheltered roof of the structure wherein Faramir and Kal stood, the elf could hear all that was being said. Not an end goal, but it aided, if poorly. It proved a respite against allowing thoughts of past failures to take hold. And they ever did, night after night.
She was truly interested in the goings of the world. A curiosity only seen in younglings as the elf recalled. But then she was little more than a child.
Compared to him at least.
Such different origins, hard lives on either side, with many opposed values. And here they were, beings none would expect under the same roof.
Sharing tales.
He sighed, irked at the thought. The world had long since turned foul, and this should do little to surprise him. And yet...
The elf looked to his hand, curling it into a fist. Legolas closed his eyes, recalling the warmth. Traveling upward, through his arm, reaching to his chest.
He shook his head. The goal is one. I made a promise.
Legolas looked to the menacing dark mass burgeoning over the world, the memory of those kindled by Varda still alive within him, still aching. He had not seen them in so long a time. It felt as if aeons have passed with endless grey black skies. Gone were the golden fields and fresh green forests, of wild fen and fair wood. His own home, green and great, crumbling with time.
Now only as green as the memory of it.
He shuddered. It had appeared so, once more, thrumming with life before his eyes. Seldom did he allow remnants of such to resurface, as they only lengthened the grief and shadowed his mood. But today...
Today, a half-orc hailing from the Black Land had joined him in mind and memory just as the elf attempted to aid with her wound. He had begun the chants in thought. And then he had seen this thought, his own, free, ebbing and flowing, through her eyes. He had no wish to connect with anyone in any way, shape or form, and it never happened without his will. More so, it had been scores of years since he had felt such.
But when the elf removed his hand and she caught it, grasping it with such intensity and honest eagerness to her chest, he nearly flinched and had been amazed, at first. Then he had been angry. At himself, for not seeing to his own. And now, though he grudgingly held fast against it-
He was afraid.
This creature. Blood of his tortured and enslaved kin ran through her veins. He anticipated, eagerly, being rid of her as soon as the possibility arose.
His hand went to his neck, fingers reaching for the warm stone at his breast. If only...
The elf dared not finish that thought. His innermost self shifted, where he felt sore and exposed, and the emptiness gaping back appeared nothing less than a wide chasm. A chasm he had beheld and searched for meaning many, many times before.
A half-breed of Mordor, the stubborn thought reemerged.
Legolas breathed in deeply, attuned to the quiet of the night. And now you hold proof of the other half. He had only suspected it before, ever since he first laid eyes on her.
The elf shifted into a cross-legged position, his head in his hands.
Such a thing cannot be.
His keen eyes then followed the whispers of the wind, searching, sifting through the darkness without.
It cannot.
A/N:
Thank you all for reading and sharing your thoughts! And welcome if you recently joined this story.
Guest reader Wow: I hope this sheds some light on the vision vs memory question from the previous chapter.