The letter came with the first messengers of the morning. Small, light, written on commonplace paper. A perfectly unremarkable letter. Glorfindel opened it immediately when he saw the handwriting. His eyes stalled at the first sentence, and he was forced to reread the three lines of untidy script several times over before his mind fully accepted the meaning.
For a brief, crushing moment, he felt every one of his many years. He let his hand drop to his side, leaving his eyes fixed on the west-facing window. It was thus that Bereneth found him. She said nothing, but eased the little paper from his fingers and glanced over it.
"Ai Nienna," she sighed, pressing her open hand over her chest and bowing her head. "Pity the souls that linger here beyond your reach." They stood by the window together, watching the flurry of waking songbirds in silence. Bereneth broke the silence first."Will you tell her?" There was a mild note of exasperation in her tone, as though she already knew his answer.
"Not yet." He met her reproving stare with an apologetic shrug. "Not until this damn hunt is over."
"One of these days, Glorfindel," Bereneth said, fixing him with a piercing stare that he could only imagine she had learned from Gimlith, "you should ask yourself why you lie to her so much."
She turned on her heel and walked away before he could answer, leaving the letter heavy in his hand.
Aearis slipped out of the palace gates just as night faded into the grey of early morning and the star of Earendil began to rise in the West. The night had been sleepless as ever, but not, as was usually the case, due to the unholy hours of the healing halls or the endless demands for new compositions that Angolor heaped cheerfully upon her. The week before the great hunt had found her eerily and unwillingly idle. She suspected that the king himself had commanded an abrupt cessation of her duties to allow her to prepare for the trial ahead, and she found herself bitterly resenting him for it.
What preparation could there be for such a task? The great Mithlond library had provided her with endless tomes describing ways of dragons, extensive first- and second-hand accounts of their dread deeds and the heroes who had lost their lives-or, even worse, their minds-in battle against them. Brave warriors, faithful and clever and full of purpose. They had died in droves, burned by fiery breath or slashed through with vicious claws or simply caught in frozen terror by mesmeric eyes until they were run through by some lesser servant of the beast.
It seemed a glorious sort of death, if death it was to be, and Aearis thrilled at the prospect of it. But soon after the first eager flush came the sobering chill of conscience. What of Bereneth, who would follow her even into certain defeat? No dissuasion would sway the faithful shieldmaiden from her side, and the responsibility had never weighed so heavily on Aearis's shoulders. Take care of your sister.
Yet the fever of Narya burned still in her fingertips, rushing through her veins, and when she quailed under the enormity of the task, that haunting song of fire and storms brought her spirit roaring back.
And was not their hunting party more than the match of any of those warriors of old? Lagor, the young hero of the campaigns in the Misty Mountains, who killed trolls single-handed with his great battering shield and quick feet. Gildor, Rhossorieth's tall, fearless brother, who had fought alongside Glorfindel at the Battle of Gwathlo, singing merrily as he cut down the goblin hordes like wheat. Raka and Moroko, clear-eyed guardians of the forests of Isen. Even Cestedir had promised to return from Rivendell in time to join their party-that above all settled the anxiety that twisted behind her ribs. And, of course, Gil-galad himself, blazing with cold, glorious purpose.
She shivered as she descended the slope from the palace, westwards towards the port of Forlond. Absent-mindedly she reached into her pocket to feel for her silver flute and fixed her eyes upon Earendil, letting his kind, twinkling light settle the jitter of her pulse.
"How shocking. If I didn't know better, my lady, I should have thought that you intended to leave without a proper farewell." Aearis started violently and froze, scanning the trees that lined the wide path. After several seconds of suspense, Prince Thranduil dropped soundlessly from a branch just overhead, landing so that he stood not six inches from her. He favored her with a wide, feline grin. Bloody wood elves.
"I should never wish to disagree with you, your highness," she replied, curtseying with an exaggerated, coquettish flutter of her lashes, though her practical riding clothes were ill-suited to the task, "but I am sure I recall several farewells at last night's banquet. I believe I played no fewer than seven 'last songs' at your request." He sighed dramatically and fell into step beside her.
"Then why do I still feel so bereft, my lady? Answer me that."
"Are you certain it isn't simply a case of indigestion, highness?" she supplied, enjoying his company despite herself. Thranduil might be spoiled, frivolous cad, but he was a terribly charming one."The symptoms are similar, and you certainly ate a lot of scallops."
"No no, this is another affliction entirely. But tell me, my lady-in your expert opinion as a healer-how am I to endure this cruel deprivation while you are away?" He seized her hand and pressed it to his breast, a trill of exaggerated distress in his voice, though his eyes danced merrily all the while.
"Pray, sir," she laughed, retrieving her hand and settling it instead upon the crook of his arm, "take care, or you shall turn my head with all this flattery." He threw her a knowing, sidelong look.
"I very much doubt that," he replied as they resumed walking at a leisurely pace.
"You think me so heartless, then, that the attentions of a handsome prince would not stir my passions?"
"I think," Thranduil replied, smiling at her mock indignation, "that I might as well pay court to King Gil-galad himself for all the good it would do me." Aearis burst into peals of laughter at the image, and they talked companionable nonsense until the pier came into view.
"I wonder, my lady, if I might ask your counsel once more?" he said suddenly, drawing them to a stop. His tone had altered ever so slightly, and Aearis fancied that she could hear a note of well-concealed vulnerability in it.
"In my capacity as a medic, or as a heartless siren?" she asked, alarmed by the unusual sincerity of his gaze.
"Neither," he said, then hesitated. "Or perhaps both. But mostly in your capacity as Lady Bereneth's closest and most cherished confidant."
Aearis felt a split second's relief, closely followed by a second wave of trepidation.
Ah.
"I hoped," he continued, "that you might guide me in how I could turn her head. For she is quite impervious to all my usual methods."
Keeping her face carefully neutral, Aearis paused to weigh her words before responding.
"Well, your highness, I can hardly claim expertise in the matter of Bereneth's heart," she said finally. "But I cannot imagine that any lady is best courted by flirting tirelessly with her sister."
Thranduil gave her a rueful smile.
"On that matter I cannot agree with you, my lady. For she only seems to look at me when I lavish attention upon you. I suppose it must be that marvelous competitive spirit of hers…" he trailed off, eyes alight with some pleasant recollection of his lady love.
Who would have thought that stepping on a man would inspire such adoration?
She shifted uncomfortably, deeply conflicted. She could hardly deny that it would be a highly desirable match. Bereneth's wisdom, her noble spirit, her fearsome courage, would make her a worthy queen for the Woodland Realm, to say nothing of her connections as one of the few Silvan elves to gain favor in the Noldorin realms of Eriador. And if she could not love Thranduil, could she not at least come to respect him? Certainly her steady hand might do wonders to sober his wildness and caprice. Valier knew she had the practice.
But Bereneth was not meant for a political marriage. Aearis knew it as certainly as she knew that fire burned, that a loveless bond would kill her wonderful sister as surely as swallowing poison.
"I have a rather outlandish idea," she said, "but you must promise not to dismiss it out of hand." Thranduil raised a quizzical brow.
"I hang upon your lips, Lady Aearis," he replied, smiling unapologetically when she rolled her eyes.
"I suggest… " she began, then paused to watch him fidget impatiently. After a long, suitably suspenseful pause, she continued. "I suggest that you address yourself to Lady Bereneth and speak plainly of your interest. My sister has no patience for games or subterfuge, but she does respect honesty. I cannot promise you that she will return your feelings, for I shall not pretend to know her as well as I should. But she will be kind and direct, and at least you will know where you stand."
Thranduil stared at her. She held his gaze.
"Speak directly? In matters of love?" he said, speaking slowly with marked disbelief. Then he laughed that unfettered, belly-deep laugh of his and began to walk again. "You are the most marvelous radical, Aearis. I shall miss your eccentric notions terribly. Do try not to get killed, won't you? And return to me my red-haired lady as soon as you are able."
They had reached the pier, where Gil-galad's fleetest ship, Suraranya, the sort of ship that songs were written for, awaited her in the golden light of dawn. The king himself stood upon the deck at the prow, his great spear glinting almost as brightly as his eyes as he looked out over his realm. Gildor and Rhossorieth stood together a little ways off, speaking in low voices. To the untrained observer, she might have been bidding her brother an affectionate farewell, but the tension in their smiles and the flashing of Rhossorieth's eyes told Aearis that they were in the middle of a discreet, bitter argument.
Lagor greeted her with a cheerful grin and a bruising clap on the back after bowing deeply, if slightly reluctantly, to Thranduil. Moroko and Raka watched warily from several paces away. Bereneth had not yet arrived.
Aearis amused herself watching Thranduil and Lagor exchange veiled hostilities until Bereneth finally appeared. And when she did, she was not alone, for she led Dinalagos at her left side and Glorfindel walked at her right. He was dressed in the same practical traveling gear as the rest of him, with a large pack slung over one shoulder and his greatsword, Baradram, sheathed at his hip. His hair was loose and a little wild, billowing around his face like the rays of the rising sun. Her heart leapt, then sank, at the sight of him. She busied herself greeting her large, uncouth dog, who sniffed her nose once before burying his snout deep in her pockets to seek stray morsels.
"Cestedir was unavoidably delayed in Imladris," Glorfindel explained in a flat tone before she could ask. "I shall join in his stead, if Ereinion permits it."
Aearis leveled a questioning look at Bereneth, who shrugged. She might have pressed the matter, but she was forestalled by the king's greeting.
"Hail, Glorfindel," Gil-galad called from the deck of the ship. If he was surprised, he made no sign of it. "Will you join us after all?"
Aearis thought she might have seen a flash of displeasure in Glorfindel's eyes before he bowed deeply, concealing his face. When he straightened, he did not meet her eyes and he regarded his king with blank politeness.
"Gladly, if your majesty will allow it."
Their gazes locked. Gil-galad was smiling that mirthless, beautiful smile of his. Glorfindel was expressionless.
"Of course, my friend! Nothing would please us more! Isn't that right, Lady Aearis?" Forcing a thin, polite smile onto her face, Aearis inclined her head and said something noncommittal before turning her attention back to Thranduil. She nearly laughed out loud at the marked change in the Prince's manner now that he stood in Bereneth's presence. He was absolutely preening, throwing back his shoulders and tossing his head like a showy mare. He had contrived to get hold of the befuddled girl's hand, and she watched with mild bemusement as he bowed over it repeatedly. Aearis allowed the scene to continue for several seconds longer than she really needed to, until Bereneth began aiming increasingly irritable glances in her direction. Finally, after one particularly steely look, she stepped in and disentangled her sister from the over-eager prince.
Thranduil seemed to be of a mind to follow Bereneth onto the ship, but Aearis stopped him with a pointed look.
"Give her a chance to miss you," she whispered in his ear, which he bent obligingly to her lips. "No young lady yearns for he who is ever-present."
He smiled and moved close to whisper to her in turn, his breath dancing over the point of her ear.
"Ah, I take your meaning. Is that why you brush off old Glorfindel so callously?" She started and her eyes darted involuntarily towards the glowing gold warrior. He was ascending the gang-plank with Lagor, joking and laughing with the appearance of perfect cheer.
Rhossorieth approached her, detaining her until the others had boarded Suraranya.
"My lady," Aearis greeted her with a bland smile, bracing herself against a final attempt to dissuade her from the mission ahead.
"Peace," smiled Rhossorieth, raising a hand in a conciliatory gesture. "I know better than to waste my counsel on unwilling ears. Gildor has already quite exhausted me on that front."
"Your counsel is never unwelcome, my lady." Rhossorieth raised a sardonic brow. "Whether I follow it is a separate matter entirely."
"Then indulge me once more, Aearis, when I ask that you know your limits. There may come a time when you cannot win every fight, as inconceivable as that might be to you now."
Behind the admonishment, Rhossorieth's sloe eyes were faintly creased with worry, and her hand twitched as if suppressing the urge to reach out. Aearis bit back the urge to defray the tension with a jest and offered what she hoped was a reassuring smile. Her eyes flickered to Gildor, then Glorfindel and Bereneth, and the same anxiety rooted again in her chest.
"I will defend them with everything I am, my lady. I can promise nothing else."
"That," Rhossorieth pointed out severely, "is more or less the opposite of what I said." She sighed and shook her head. "But I am grateful. Safe journeys, Singeareth."
Aearis bowed deeply to her, then swung herself onto the deck of the ship by the rope that tethered it to the pier and let a wild grin break out over her face.
"Will you take us out, my lady?" Gil-galad bowed to her, a little deeper than usual, and gestured to her to take the helm. She met his glittering, challenging stare and set her hands-mercifully steady-upon the spokes of the great wheel. The smooth, dark wood felt warm and alive under her grip.
A breeze picked up and swelled their sails, and Aearis felt the sea call out to her blood as Gildor weighed anchor. Suraranya seemed to spring to attention, to respond to her lightest touch, as though her very thoughts dictated the ship's motion. The ocean opened out before her as they crossed through the Gulf of Lune into a vast, endless sky.
Sîr Angren, two weeks later
The ocean tide and a favorable wind hastened the travelers up Sîr Angren, though the ship's wheel shuddered under her hands from time to time as they navigated the impetuous currents of the river. The coastal sands faded swiftly into deep forest and the air grew hot, wet, and smothering, full of the calls of strange, shrieking birds. At least, Aearis hoped that they were birds.
Dim light filtered through the canopy, falling upon glossy green leaves and complex, brightly-colored flowers that clung parasitically to unlucky trees and released a heavy, sickly-sweet odor like perfume poured over rotting corpses.
The first several days of the voyage passed in uneasy boredom, time marked only by the shifts of the oars and the helm, and by the seemingly endless games of chance that Moroko demonstrated to his captive audience. Most were played with many-sided dice, and required the player to perform wickedly complex calculations in the blink of an eye.
"It seems to me," Aearis observed one day, glaring severely at an unrepentant Moroko after her fifth consecutive loss, "that the odds of this game quite heavily favor the game-runner."
The hunter grinned wide and blindingly white.
"The odds favor the watchful, Maznik. Look. Wait. You will find the pattern when your clever mouth shuts." Aearis shot a questioning look at Raka, who stood leaning against the railing and overseeing the gambling with an expression of mild pity.
"Maznik?" she mouthed. The Avarin woman chuckled, a deep and pleasant sound, like the crooning of rock-doves.
"You will not like it," she cautioned. "You have no proper word for this. The word means 'little-soft.' Like a newborn kitten attacking a leather boot. Fierce, but-"
"Yes, yes, alright," Aearis snapped, waving her hand to forestall the rest. "You were right. I don't like it at all." She turned to Glorfindel, who had shoved what appeared to be an entire apple into his mouth to stifle his laughter "You had better hope someone else is willing to tend to you when you choke on that." He saluted her cheerfully with two fingers.
She fared no better in the next game, and she rose soon after to assume the shift at the oars that she had gained with the rest of her gambling debt. Glorfindel played one more game-which, judging from the colorful curses that floated across the deck, he lost quite thoroughly-before rising to his feet and sauntering over to watch her toil.
"Can I assist you, my lady?" Aearis suppressed a grunt as she pulled the oar. The sweltering, humid air felt absolutely smothering, and the river was swollen by a heavy rain the night before. Keeping pace with Gildor on the other side of the deck had her muscles screaming out for relief. She cursed her stubbornness even as she answered.
"No, thank you. I am quite as capable of rowing as anyone else."
"Oh, certainly," he replied, bowing deeply. "I would never say otherwise."
"Not in so many words," she muttered. He shrugged, then settled down to lean against the mast with a hand draped loosely over his knee and drank deeply from his waterskin. Aearis found her gaze following the droplets of escaped water that trickled from the corner of his mouth down to his jaw and over the sinews of his neck.
"Thirsty?" His voice rumbled with amusement. She swallowed hard and tore her eyes from the place where his crisp white shirt opened out to his chest, settling them instead on the forest. It was restful, letting the negative space between the trees fill her vision, and the burning pain in her arms receded slowly. The shadows here were absolute, impenetrable, but full of hidden intrigue. If she stretched out her fëa to listen-really listen-to their rustling whispers, she could just begin to make out the shape of a song. It unwound languorously, beautifully, full of the lazy self-assurance of perfect domination. It was woven into the land like a pulse, and Aearis could hear the groan of the bowing trees, the obsequious murmurs of the leaves, the choked acquiescence of the river.
It was a lullaby. Sweet, tranquil, possessive, protective. She extended a little further to graze the shadows, to part them just a little-there was a flare of panic, aggression, then retreat.
"Aearis." Her name came to her as if from leagues away, spoken urgently as two massive hands gripped her shoulders. The oar had slipped from her hands, and she stared down at her empty palms in fascination. There were four pale, crescent-shaped scars in the raw pink flesh where she sometimes dug in her fingernails too deeply.
"Soft," she heard herself say. An uncompromising grip on her chin forced her eyes up to meet Glorfindel's hard, bright gaze. The last dregs of the strange lullaby boiled away under the intensity of his light.
"What did you see?" he demanded. His nails had dug deep into the skin of her shoulders.
"I thought…" she trailed off, closing her eyes and struggling to recover the impression of the seductive song as it slipped away like water through her fingers. "I heard someone singing." She turned to look into the shadows again, but they remained silent. A cavernous hollowness had settled in her chest, yearning after the elusive song. "It's gone now." Glorfindel did not flinch at the sharp rebuke in her tone.
"This is worse than I thought," he muttered, "If the beast can enchant you even without showing its eyes."
"I'm not enchanted," she snapped, blood rising. "I was listening, that's all."
His finger underneath her chin forced her gaze to meet his again. She winced as he searched her eyes with scorching intensity for what felt like an eternity. Finally, when she thought she could bear the scrutiny no more, he exhaled sharply and stepped back. She nearly stumbled forward when he released his grip, feeling strangely disoriented at the loss of contact.
"You must guard yourself," he sighed, running a hand through his hair. "This is not a friendly realm, it will not do to be so… permeable here."
She opened her mouth before readying an argument, but she was spared whatever nonsense she would have said by Gil-galad's approach. Since they had entered the forest, he vanished frequently into the trees to scout ahead of their path, suffering no company and giving no warning. This habit clearly provoked both Gildor and Glorfindel, but the King paid no heed to their mounting ire. Now the King leapt over the rails, sprightly as a Numenorean sailor, his pupils blown with hunting frenzy, teeth bared in a wide, hungry grin.
"Did you feel it out there, Aearis?" he said without greeting. "The beast is near, I can feel it. The forest shudders with its power."
She met his smile with her own, exhilarated by excitement that radiated from him.
"Yes," she breathed, "its song is unlike anything I've ever heard." Gil-galad drew closer, but Glorfindel stepped between them swiftly.
"Ereinion," he said with a hard edge to his voice, "a word." It was not a request. Aearis watched them retreat into the guts of the ship, both men bristling like hungry wolves.
"If the dragon had better kill us quickly," Gildor murmured as he replaced Aearis at the oar, "or those two will finish each other off before it has the chance."
The first bloodshed came at the end of their fourth day upon the river. All at once, in the middle of the night, all the forest's endless fugue of violent sounds had ceased suddenly in the middle of the night. The heavy, nightmarish silence woke Aearis from her uneasy dreams. She had taken to unfurling her bedroll on the upper deck and sleeping with her back to Dinalagos, whose steady panting and warm, solid form had the strange power to lull her back into fitful sleep when the cruel whispers of the corrupted trees and the polluted river woke her in a panic. But tonight, no power could calm Aearis's fraying nerves when her eyes flew open and the cold sweat on her skin made her shiver and wrap her mother's cloak tight around her shoulders. The air was still and heavy, suffocatingly tense in the absence of the usual fell animal cries.
Then it began. Gently. Sweetly. A song like poisoned honey wine, just at the corner of her consciousness. A slow drip at first, then gaining strength until it rushed down her throat with choking force. She leapt to her feet and grasped blindly for her lute. Her vision was entirely dark, blackened by a night so absolute that not a single ray of star nor moon could penetrate the looming canopy. A huge set of teeth closed around her wrist and she tried to scream, but she could make no sound. But the jaws did not bite down, and instead she found her hand pulled gently rightward, until it rested upon a familiar set of strings.
She tried to say "Thank you, Dinalagos," but still her voice failed under that mantle of unbreachable silence. Her arms were weak. Almost too weak to support the weight of her own instrument. The first chord was too quiet. The second was stronger. Blood rushed back to her faltering fingers and she felt the magic of Elrond's gloves coursing, strong and quiet, through her hands. Life, and succor, and music.
The music sprang from her fingertips like welling blood. Somewhere far away in the depths of the forest, she felt something shudder as the silence broke. A breath of cold, pure wind, descended from far above the trees, circled her and stirred the Lorien cloak, set a rush of power kindling in her skin. Her song gained power, grew imperious and commanding. The trees at the bank of Sîr Angren creaked under the sudden rush of swirling breezes that flushed the stagnant air in the canal. The next thing she heard was the heavy patter of sudden rain, drumming upon the thick leaves above them and dripping down to land in gentle droplets on her cheeks. She nearly wept with joy.
She heard a deep, resounding cry, familiar but unidentifiable, and the darkness split at the seams, screaming as it receded from the glowing force that bounded out onto the deck. For a moment, she was paralyzed by the golden light that tore a hole in the permeating night. Then the warmth reached her. Like the first sip of heated whiskey on a cold midwinter evening, it crept down her gullet and spread out to thaw her. Her throat opened and her voice returned, wild and rapturous. Her currents of wind parted the canopy overhead and starlight poured down upon their ship.
As her eyes adjusted to the light, fear returned. The scene that unfolded before her was something out of a terrible dream. Hulking beasts sprang from the trees, their luminous, predator's eyes glowing with feral bloodlust. Dinalagos had leapt forward to engage a great, fanged creature with a feathered crest and a long, reptilian snout. Raka and Bereneth loosed arrow after arrow from their singing warbows, and Moroko's great hammers flashed as he crushed flesh and bone. And at the center, the golden warrior fought beside Gil-galad, who seemed to be formed of the firmament itself. And with each thrust of the High King's great spear, another of the terrible beasts fell dead.
A pool of dark, shining liquid spread steadily across the deck, reflecting the scene of carnage. But her song could not falter. She poured out her spirit to the night, spun her spells around the invading beasts, drove their hearts to burst in terror and their limbs to fail beneath them, and the battle became a rout. When the battle ended, as abruptly as it had begun, the smell of foul blood mingling with the sickly fragrance of the forest flowers overpowered her senses, and she sat down heavily in the seeping blood, her fingers still wandering absently over the strings of her lute.
The golden man knelt before her. The battle-lust had not yet faded from his shining eyes, but he spoke to her slowly, gently, as one might to a frightened child. She might have resented it, but he radiated such pleasant, welcoming heat. Instead, she lurched forward towards him like a moth, dropping her lute carelessly into the pooling ichor where it landed with a reprimanding twang of strings. He caught her and held her as she clung greedily to his torso. He invoked her true name softly, and his voice rang through her veins with compelling force, awakening her from the dreamlike horror suddenly and completely.
"What happened?" she whispered, her voice hoarse from the exertion.
"The beast's influence extends further than we guessed," he replied, speaking into her hair and gripping her more tightly with each word. "This part of the forest obeys his will completely."
"Is anyone hurt?" She could tell instantly from the tensing of his shoulders that the answer was not a happy one.
"The dragon's influence was too much for Lagor," he replied after a moment's pause. "He woke in the grip of madness and drew his sword on Gildor. They are both alive, but-"
"Where is he?" She had broken free and seized her lute before she had finished asking the question.
He sighed and followed her down, leading her to the quarters that the two elves had shared for the duration of the voyage. Lagor was bound hand and foot to his bed, and a single bloody lump was rising at his temple. His eyes were burning with madness, wide and unseeing. Gildor lay terribly still on his cot, gazing blankly at the ceiling. His tunic had been torn away, and a long, deep gash in his left side had been hastily bound.
"Raka and Bereneth were manning the oars," Glorfindel explained behind her in a soft, sad voice. "I was asleep in the next room when I heard him scream."
Aearis crossed the room to Gildor's bed and began a swift diagnosis. The wound was jagged and prone to persistent bleeding, but it had missed his major organs. She began a shaky song of restoration as she pulled a needle and thread from the satchel at her hip. In the other bed, Lagor thrashed violently at the sound of her song. His fëa was frantic and vicious, like some cornered, feral monster. He was not the courtly, cautious young man she knew. No, he had become something else entirely; some poison had seeped into his very core and changed him, perhaps irrevocably. She had heard tales of possession, of course. Demonic spirits that seized the fëa of the unsuspecting and dominated them, broke down the mind and courage until nothing remained of their victim save an empty, obedient shell. But never before had she felt the evil of it first-hand.
Gildor's body responded readily to her healing song, and she was soon satisfied that the danger to his life had passed, for his spirit was hale and hearty, and he fought for his survival with every ounce of his extraordinary strength. But Lagor's tortured mind slipped under her grasp, eluding her power and falling further and further into dark, unreachable depths. She sang all through the night and the next day, and Glorfindel remained at her side for every moment of it, lending his power as he joined his voice with her healing music. She reached out to the tortured young man with her songs, opened her fëa to his, but Lagor strained against his bonds and spat curses in a dark, ugly language. Sometimes, when Aearis stretched her power to the very brink of exhaustion, the young captain of Lindon seemed to surface for minutes at a time, but he could not see them. He stared blindly into the distance and pleaded for his life with an invisible captor. Then, too soon, he would revert to rage and cruelty. On and on went the struggle, until even Glorfindel was spent.
"He will not be truly freed until the beast is dead," he murmured to her as they stepped out into the corridor, thoroughly defeated. "All the land sways under the dragon's thrall. And I fear that more of us will fall under his spell, unless we find his lair soon."
But the way had grown treacherous, and even Raka and Moroko were disoriented in the depths of the jungle, for the land seemed to shift every night. Aearis passed her nights weaving wards of protection against the venomous whispers that came to them out of the darkness, and her days alternating between ineffectual naps and shifts at the rudder of the great ship. Every day, she felt her strength diminish a little more, sapped by the parasitic hunger of the land around.
But still, the beast itself eluded them. Sometimes a scouting party would return with reports of the faintest sound of slithering on dry leaves, of the strains of a fell song that drifted to their ears on a breath of wind, but nothing that could lead them to their quarry. On the third day after the midnight attack, Aearis found herself unable to sink into even the shallowest sleep, and she relieved Gildor from his post at the rudder soon after dawn. For several hours, she felt blissfully alone, sinking into a sort of numb tranquility.
"This part of the forest was beautiful once." Raka spoke, far too close to her ear, and Aearis had to suppress a jump and a shudder. The Avarin woman moved so silently that even the air seemed to grow still when she approached.
"There is beauty in it yet," she said, but without conviction. True, there was beauty here, in a carnivorous sort of way. But it was impossible to ignore that whisper of death, of a ravening, all-consuming appetite running through the very roots of the trees.
"If you sing, I will take the helm," Raka said after a time. Aearis forced a smile, but she could feel herself turn pale. Since Lagor's flight of madness, she had been singing for hours every night as the others slept, holding off the creeping, insidious voices of the forest nights ever more narrowly. The protective cocoon that she spun around the ship felt more tenuous with each passing night, and the malevolence that pressed in on all sides grew ever more insistent as they sailed deeper into the shadow. When he was not called upon to man the oars or scout the forest beyond, Glorfindel would sit beside her and sing sweet harmonies that wove into her songs and strengthened the fiber of them. She could feel in those moments how generously he gave of his fĕa to feed hers, which buckled with every passing day in this smothering, greedy, draining forest. She felt the river choking on the weeds and dirt, heard the last cries of songbirds' nests before they were consumed by predators that crept and slithered and clambered just out of view, and her own spirit shrank in the face of it. But Glorfindel glowed with his ever-steady light, and his tireless strength nourished her.
She ceded the wheel reluctantly to Raka and drew her lute from its case. Her fingers had grown so raw from strumming that she had taken to wearing Elrond's gloves constantly, even in sleep, when their soothing magic ran through her fingertips and allayed the burning sensation that lingered under the skin.
"You are waning," said the Avarin woman as Aearis began plucking at the strings. She glanced up sharply to find Raka's pale eyes fixed forward into the darkness. "You never sleep. You pace like a…" Raka trailed off, searching fruitlessly for the Sindarin word before reverting to her own language, "rau in a cage. In my tribe, we would say that the wind is at your back."
It was the longest speech Aearis had ever heard from the taciturn woman. She kept playing, but softly, searching for words to prompt her to speak more.
"This forest is cruel," she admitted. "It steals my breath."
Raka turned those strange, piercing eyes upon her, and for a moment Aearis felt as though there were cold, searching fingers grasping underneath her skin. Her fingers stuttered and silence fell. With one hand still upon the wheel, Raka reached into one of the many leather satchels on her bandolier and withdrew a small bundle of wrapped cloth. She tossed it to Aearis carelessly, and it fluttered through the air to land weightlessly in her lap.
She was pulling at the ties before she had a chance to pause and think. The white cloth unfurled in her hand to reveal a heart of bright crimson. It was a cluster of small, delicate red blossoms, with petals that crumpled like silk. They released a sweet, mildly spiced fragrance that set her heart racing and her mouth watering.
"They grow to the south of the Angren, in old battlefields," Raka supplied when Aearis raised her eyes to cast her an inquiring glance. "We call it emerhari. Mothersblood, in your language."
"What does it do?" Aearis prompted. Raka smiled slowly, and her eyes glittered.
"Burns in the veins," she said. When Aearis looked unsatisfied, she explained her enigmatic statement with the faintest trace of amusement. "Our healers use a tea made from the petals to drive fever and kill contagion," She paused, and Aearis fancied that she saw fleeting hesitation in those merciless eyes. When she continued, the Avar spoke so quietly that Aearis had to lean in to hear her. "But there are... other uses. A drop of emerhari nectar is said to release the spirit from its cage and drive a warrior to new heights of vigor and glory. Perhaps it can help you,. For if your voice fails now, Maznik, we will all be lost to the Beast."
Aearis found herself lifting a single flower to gaze into its center. It seemed endlessly deep and irresistibly attractive.
"Is it dangerous?" she heard herself ask. As if from a thousand miles away, she heard Raka's deep, rumbling chuckle.
"Yes."