A/N
To Katia: I also love the Éomer/Lothiriel pairing, so roughly half of this story is going to be focused on their courtship. :D

Chapter VIII: Where the Dead Bird Sings

Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. Have you heard

That silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird?

~ The Gates of Damascus, James Elroy Flecker

Fire screamed like bitter, thwarted rage, dancing all around a silver skeleton-tree. The tree was fretted with flame, its bony branches reaching up towards a black sky with despairing hands. There was a vast full moon in the sky, but it was too was red, for it was on fire. The whole world had caught flame. Crimson wings buffeted his head, ribbons of fire burning through the edges of the sky, racing inwards to destroy the stars. And he could see all this because he was hanging on that silver tree, the rope that suspended him between fire and fire beginning to burn, embers gnawing through the hangman's noose, sending him hurtling down towards flames that shrieked in tongues long dead…...

He woke covered in sweat, shivering like moonlight on water, and for a moment, he thought he was waking in fire. Before his eyes, a hundred hues of red and gold and orange met and melded in the sky. The land was black with the shadows of sunset, but outlined against the many-colored horizon, something like a lean and dirty hound skulked. A long bushy tail trailed behind it as it prowled closer to the camp, followed by dozens of its kind.

Éomer made no movement. This is a dream still. The creatures seemed to be somehow grinning, their tongues lolling, their yellow eyes empty but cunning. They loped towards him, going at a steady pace. The horses began to whinny and stamp with fear. Then Legolas had rolled to his feet, his white knives like a sudden lengthening of his arms, and Éomer knew this was no dream. He bolted upright, drawing Gúthwinë as he went. Legolas was moving forward, holding his knives tucked against his forearms, and then he slid into a crouch, staring at the foremost desert wolf. It whined under his gaze yet held its ground. Its companions fanned out around him, making no further move towards the camp.

A heavy silence fell, and nothing dared to break it. Legolas' eyes were locked on the desert wolf, and it seemed to Éomer that the Elf's green gaze pierced like emerald daggers, prying into the creature's mind, searching, tugging, pulling, as relentless as old guilt.

Suddenly the desert wolf shuddered and began to howl. Not as it did in the darkness, when it was the night's secret paramour, giving the darkness a music to dance to, but as if in pain. It pawed desperately at its head, rubbing its muzzle in the sand, and Legolas, startled at the ululating wail, fell backward, breaking the gaze.

Then the desert wolves turned and fled, going with a speed Éomer would have never imagined, their coats melding into the sands. Legolas stood up, slipping his knives into their sheathes. His face was troubled, in his eyes a look too much akin to fear for Éomer's liking.

"What is it?" Gimli asked. His voice was too loud in the twilit desert.

Legolas shook his head but did not speak. The light of the dying sun caressed his face but did not hide the worry etched there.

"Were they going to attack?" Atkiray asked. His voice cracked like a boy's. He is a boy, Éomer reminded himself. Whatever airs and subtleties he puts on, he is still a boy.

"I think they were," Legolas answered. He turned to the horses, who stood huddled together, their ears flattened against their heads. He caressed them each in turn, murmuring soft Elvish words of comfort.

Atkiray was staring East. "They never attack," he said wonderingly. "They never attack."

Without thinking, Éomer laid a hand on the Prince's shoulder, as if Atkiray was a stripling rider from his own Éored. "Go fetch yourself some supper. We ride soon," he said gently, and to his surprise, Atkiray went quietly, without jape or insult.

Their meal managed to be cold and cheerless, despite the fierce furnace heat. The air shimmered, tracing queer patterns in the violet distance. Legolas ate little and his face was troubled and melancholy. Atkiray made some nervous attempts at small talk, and Éomer answered as heartily as he could, trying to bring the boy some comfort amid all this uncertainty, and Gimli joined in. The Dwarf was far kinder than his craggy countenance and eternal axe led folk to believe, and Éomer thought Gimli's brief snatches of conversation calmed Atkiray better than all his blustering.

With that knowledge, he felt free to turn to his own thoughts. His dream seemed to have dissolved away upon his waking, but it had left behind a bitter taste. He had a confused memory of shifting fire, writhing red and orange and yellow, and a white tree, spectral and symmetrical. And there was a knot of dread coiled in the pit of his stomach as well.

Fire. I might as well be dreaming of it, considering the heat. But no, that would not pass muster. Not anymore. Once, he realized, he would have been content with his answer. He had been a man who had scoffed-either indulgently or cuttingly, depending on the company he was holding-at portents, presages, and superstitions. But since the day on the Wold, the scales had been stripped from his unwilling eyes. He had understood the world he rode in was not his own, and he was forced to accept the consequences of such an understanding.

There were no desert wolves that night, and the uncertain silence was worse than anything Éomer had ever known. A sick sense of helpless fear clung to him. The moon was a bulging dragon's eye, and sometimes when Éomer glanced with it, he thought it was tinged the palest red, like milk mixed with a drop of blood. In that baleful light, the wiretrees looked like the skeleton hands of giants buried alive. He spent the ride struggling to convince himself that he was becoming an old wife, putting too much stock into dreams, but his reassurances were as reflexive, and as meaningless, as a sailor's oaths.

The next night, the desert wolves began to howl again, but far away this time, a pale concatenation that bayed to the old moon. By that time, the desert had begun to change. When they stopped in the early morning, as night slipped sullenly from the sky, Éomer could see bare red mountains rising suddenly from the plains. The sand, too, was changing. There was still more of it than Éomer would have liked, but now there were outcrops of hornfels, scatterings of slate baking in the sun. The wind continued to blow.

The night after that, they came to an old volcano-field, a wilderness of tumbled rock with vast valleys and hills. They were forced to dismounted when they got to it, and Éomer strained his eyes, trying to pry open the darkness and see what lay ahead. The wind soughed over the jagged field, making a faint, whispery moan.

"There's as much gold here as there is blood in a heart," Gimli muttered to himself. Éomer saw no gold, but he saw shale and what looked like black glass with chips of ruby embedded in it.

"Porphyry," the Dwarf said when he asked. "And walk slow when you go. With this rock, there's a shaft or a chimney every ten steps."

"Should we wait for day?" Atkiray asked, and Éomer understood the value of his question. Although they rode the risk of fainting from heat-fever if they traveled in the day, the risk of traveling this during the night was an even greater one. A man could break his leg as easily as breathing in this field, sun or no sun, and there were shafts and pits and treacherous footing aplenty. Even a man who had spent his life on the open plains could see that.

In the moonlight, Aragorn's face was pale and drawn, and his look was troubled. He looked back the way they had come, and then forward the way they were going, where the great jagged plain stretched.

Éomer followed Aragorn's gaze back and forth, and then his eyes rested on the man himself, and realized with a start that he was near invisible. The cloak seemed to hide him even more carefully than before; it draped around him with the colors of night and lands, and those hues shifted with Aragorn's movement. It was the same with Legolas and Gimli. He tried to fight the nipping jaws of jealousy, but they bit just the same. The three might ride under the very nose of the dragon, if indeed there was one, but he and Atkiray would be nothing but fire fodder. His mouth gave a bitter twist he could not hold back.

Aragorn stood for a moment in thought and then said at length, "There is evil afoot. We should tether the horses here, I think."

"You think that this is where the dragon has made his home?" Gimli asked softly.

"I do not know. But there are no signs. And dragons are not cautious creatures: why should they be?" He turned to Legolas. "What do you say, Green-speaker?"

"I say that the rumor of the Earth is dim and confused," Legolas answered, his face troubled as well, his hands restless.

It was Aragorn who moved first, and it was then Éomer first felt true terror. The King's hands went to his forehead, and he gave a low cry of pain, staggering. Legolas moved faster than Éomer's eyes could track, bracing Aragorn up before he could fall. The Elf's face was also drawn, nearly grey, and Éomer could feel something moving inside his skull, pricking like white needles. It went from a prickle to a blaze in seconds, a fire that nearly blinded him. He fell, clutching his head in his hands. Large, callused hands softened his fall, and the ground was hot and rough beneath him. The world vanished in a red roar of pain.