Chapter IX: Bring Me Your Stars
'Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to walk from here to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert.'
~ Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
He woke, lost in darkness. For a long while, it seemed the only sound in the world was his heart, beating thick and fast. But slowly his senses began to drift back to him. First was the pain, a fierce ache in every limb and joint. Then sound; low murmurs, the anxious whinnying of horses, the wail of the wind that ripped at his hair and cloak. Finally, sight. He was blinded by cold light, white as bone, a harsh glare on the black rocks.
Éomer tensed his muscles, gritting his teeth against the wash of pain that came as he rolled onto his side. He was could see scattered shapes, limned by the moonlight, lying on the ground. One was sitting, hair a white flame.
"Legolas," he croaked. His throat and tongue were swollen and rough, as if filled with sand, and his ribs cried out with every breath.
The Elf started, the first time Éomer had ever seen him do such a thing. He crossed the distance between them without rising, in a lithe, liquid movement Éomer had no name for, keeping his head down as if he were afraid of being seen.
"How are you faring?"
"I've fared better." Éomer forced a smile. "Do you have water?"
"Yes. Yes, of course." Legolas spoke distractedly, handing Éomer the skin but not looking at him.
The water tasted as sweet as any wine, and he drank until he thought he would be sick. He gasped for breath, handing the skin back. Legolas took it without a glance, staring out over the desert.
"What is it?" Éomer asked softly.
"A test," Legolas answered at length. Someone began to moan, and the Elf moved away in that same sinewy gliding motion. Éomer raised his head and saw him by Atkiray's side, giving him the water-skin. After a minute, the boy wormed his way over to Éomer's side, sinking on to the rough sand with a sigh of relief.
"How are you faring?" Éomer repeated the Elf's words softly, feeling the pressing urge to say something solicitous.
"That is my own concern," Atkiray answered, but his tone was neither vinegary nor insolent. Éomer understood the words were merely reflexive, and the Prince had come to him for companionship. It made his heart warm.
He stretched out his arms tentatively. There was an aching buried deep in his bones, but the worst of the pain seemed to have dissolved away. He sat up, grateful to see the horses were still there. Someone had tethered them to the old, cracked stump of a wire-tree. Gimli and Legolas had their heads together, crouching on their heels. He looked for Aragorn and a shock, worse than the pain, pierced him. The King lay still, and in the moonlight, his face looked old and grey.
He crawled his way over to the Elf and the Dwarf. Gimli glanced at him, the dark briar of his beard obscuring his expression, and then back at Legolas.
"Why doesn't he wake?"
"There's blood between them," Legolas said. The Elf's voice had a queer, disjointed quality, his eyes like green ice. It was as if he walked inside his own mind now, waiting for…. he was waiting for Aragorn, for their core of confidence to return. In that minute, Éomer understood more of what they were facing than he had all that long, long ride. It was something that toyed with the mind, found pleasure in breaking and scattering. Legolas's green-sense, Gimli's deep and abiding bond with the bones of the Earth, and the Fey blood that flowed through Aragorn's heart…...those were defenses against their foe, but they were also passageways for their enemy to slip into. Legolas and Gimli had drawn strength from their nexuses, and so they had woken first, but it was why they sat there alone and confused. But he and Atkiray were more immune. The fortifications of their mind had fewer doors and gates, and it could be a curse, but right now it was a boon.
He took the water-skin from Legolas, who let go of it numbly, and went to where Aragorn lay stretched out. His face was old, old, and beautiful, although-indeed, because it was drawn and grey. Even though Éomer knew Aragorn would be strong and unwithered when the frost was in his own bones and the snow in his own hair, he wondered if this was how the King would look when he passed beyond the Circles of the World.
He splashed water sparingly onto Aragorn's upturned face and shook him by the shoulders. For a fleeting instant, he caught the scent of oranges and wild roses, and something wilder, something deeper, both ethereal and earthy, like a rain-washed twilight. Then it was gone, the smell of the desert rushing back around him, and, groaning, Aragorn awoke. He glanced around him, the softness of unconsciousness already disappearing from his eyes. They were hardening, brightening, seeing much and more.
"I did not read the signs aright," he muttered, as if to himself.
"What signs?" Legolas asked, coming to Aragorn's side. There was a silence, a silence not just between them but over the whole red desert. It was a silence in which anything could arise. The air hovered breathlessly, cool and restless, and the wind seemed to crouch like a living thing, waiting to gust.
"The ones that were never there," he said and laughed softly. "Think of it. We were told of dragons, and there was no fire. We were told of poisonous snakes, but I have not seen one asp."
"The Khatun did not lie to you," Atkiray said hotly.
"I know," Aragorn answered. "Have a little patience, my friend. That field is an altar, and this was the cleansing."
"What do you mean?" the Prince demanded, studying Aragorn warily.
"That there whatever has enthroned himself there thinks we are bringing him burnt offerings, to sacrifice to him in the desert."
"That is not the way of a dragon," Legolas interrupted. "Dragons are not humble, but they do not aspire to be gods."
"No," Aragorn agreed. "Only the fallen stars aspire to be the sun." He rose with a springing grace. "We should start now. He still believes our strength is sapped, so we will come on him unlooked for."
The moon was growing old, but Aragorn seemed tireless and swift, pushed on by a strength not entirely his own, moving with a surety that the ground did not warrant. For the field was not a field. It was a gnashing sea suddenly petrified, and they skidded across pitted slabs of rocks, crumbling and dark, sometimes purple with iron that had been cooked by earth-fires eons ago. There was limestone and skarn scattered around, but mostly it was a jagged array of black porphyry. The wind had risen again, and the air danced with dust and sand. Even through the cloth that covered his mouth and nose, and even over the dry reek of bitter, infecund land, Éomer could smell the rich odor of blood and decay.
Darkness was slowly giving way. The sky above was no longer black, but now a deep and sullen violet. Yet somehow, the promise of day gave Éomer no relief, for he knew dawn would not help them now.
He breathed shallowly; the thick, coppery taste of rot coating his mouth. It was growing stronger by the heartbeat, threatening to choke him. He glanced up again at the sky, and as his eyes trailed downward, he saw the man.
He sat on a flat black stone that looked over the pitted land. He was very still, so still that for a long minute Éomer believed him carved from rock, like one of the old Púkel-men that guarded the Stairs of the Hold.
Then, as the sky continued to lighten, he realized that it was no statue, but a living creature, although there was nothing that claimed him for the race of men, nor for any other race Éomer knew. His face might have been chiseled from stone, his features even and broad. Yet somehow, there was something dreamish there, half-buried in the cold features, something warped. His head was bent, and Éomer could not see his eyes, but his head was a smooth brown boulder, utterly hairless, and neither did he have brows or lashes.
It was Legolas who spoke first. His voice was hesitant, even timid. "Father? Are you well?"
The man-creature looked up. His eyes were pools of molten magma, the pupils black slits like those of a cat. "You are in my house now," he said. His voice was sonorous and guttural, carving the shapes of words from a single dark, musing sound. "You are my house now," he repeated. "In the house of the desertwolf and the scorpion and the sand snake. So come. Sacrifice to me in the desert, little priests."
Fanned out behind the man, like the guard of some old king, sat the desert-wolves. They were silent, yellow eyes glazed, tongues lolling out as if they were grinning. The sand was blowing past in ribbons of darkening gold, obliterating the sky. The wind howled like a beast in pain.
"We are not your priests," Aragorn said. His voice was clear, his eyes alight with a fellness and a feyness. "Take your sport to another place, and begone!"
The man-creature laughed, a dark and smoky sound. There was something cold about it, something infinitely contemptuous. "This may be a sport for me, but death is not a game the sons of Earth should play at. Offer me your burnt offerings, fools, and be sure that the savor is sweet to me, or I will burn the meat myself. One way or another, I will have my sacrifices."
Éomer felt his heart beating in his throat. He can smell fear; do not give him that. As if he had said his thoughts aloud, the man on the rock snapped around to look at him with a serpentine speed that made Éomer's gut lurch. "So you bring nothing to the altar," the man-creature mused. "And you are a lean and travel-stained lot. I must season the meat to my liking. Let us begin with you, horse-man, who still reeks of stables and ignorance."
"You have more hair than wit, old man," Éomer spat back, anger kindling in him. "Come down; only the gormless choose words over swords."
The man-creature's eyes were pools of fire. "Oh, Éomer, Éomund's son. Well do I know your name, as does every swinepen and hedge-born lout. Bite your tongue until your betters put you to use. For what are you? A king whose kingdom is built in quicksand, a ruler who could not rule himself, a dog who became a slaughterhouse cur when his pack died. You have grown fat from the deaths of your kin, Éomer." The man-creature seemed to smile in the foredawn light, and howls rose into the windy sky, like mocking laughter.
Éomer opened his mouth to speak and his throat closed so tightly that he could not force the words out. The man-creature's words clustered like carbuncles in his blood, rank and poisonous. The grief came on him all at once, a deep hurt, a soul-hurt. He felt a child once more, with the pain and anger only a child may have. Unbidden, ghost images rose into his mind, and there was Éowyn. Éowyn, limp and pale, her lashes forming dark crescents on her white cheeks, her face dead and patient and accusing. Théodwyn, who had withered like a flower with its roots torn away, dying in a room that smelled of fever and tears and lilies. Éomund, only a bearded memory, who rode away on a horse and returned on a bier. Théodred, his constant companion, his rival, his brother, sent to a lonely death, falling with a look of raw anger and bitter satisfaction on his face. Théoden, who had risen to sunlight in his waning years, only to fall under the darkness. And the pain and misery he felt now was his scourge, his punishment for living unscarred. It was only right, only just.
Far away, as if through a thick curtain, he heard the man on the rock speaking again. "And now to you, Prince, proud and golden as May sunshine. You stand among your skainsmates as if there is no blight upon you." Legolas was as still as any statue, his face bloodless.
"Nothing at all," the man on the rock mused. "No malice in your soul, no thoughtlessness in your movements. Only kindness."
"I…. did not know." The Elf's voice was choked, thick as grave-yard mud.
The man's voice was growing deeper, beginning to rumble like a thunder from beneath the world. "And yet that changes nothing. Agony was poured on the heads of the innocent through what you called kindness."
As if through a dark glass, Éomer saw that the Elf was weeping, alone and defenseless before the man's cold fire-gaze. Then Gimli had sprung between Legolas and the man on the rock, his deep eyes ablaze. "Speak to me!" he growled, his stout legs apart, his axe raised. "And I shall return the courtesy, and give you more besides, old man!"
And it seemed to Éomer that the man on the rock hesitated. He looked Gimli up and down like a hunter suddenly foiled by his prey, and the desertwolves did not howl anymore.
"What riddle is this?" the man on the rock replied at last. "An Elven princeling with his Dwarven nursemaid. These are strange days indeed."
Then Andúril blazed like a sudden flame as Aragorn swept it from its elven-sheath, and there was death in his silver eyes. "Spare my companions your pleasantries and speak to me. What manner of creature are you?" he said coldly.
"I would have saved you for last, as a man saves his favorite morsel to taste it longer in his mouth," the man on the rock said ruefully. "Long have I called, you Aragorn of Many Names, and you answered, but only after great length. Has your blood been so adulterated by that of lesser folk that you could not hear me?"
"I heard you. I have come. So speak."
The man's eyes were not angry, were not amused, were not impatient, were not anything Éomer could read. But most of all, the man's eyes were not human. "Her blood is still in you," he said softly. "It has a sweet smell about it. My eyes have been upon you for many years, my sand-hounds and snakes and owls. They searched every cranny, listened to every whisper that ran in the grass, found every footprint, and took every scent. It took much tracking, Elessar, whose foremother was Melian Mablui, but at the last I found you." A light flickered in the man's fiery eyes.
Aragorn seemed to deliberate before he spoke, and the silence was heavy. Then at last he said, "It seems to me that Melian is ever the cynosure of your thoughts. Speak to me! Are you of her breed?"
Éomer rose slowly. The grief still pounded hot and heavy at his core, but his eyes were clearing. To his right, Legolas a pace or so behind Gimli, his face as cold and white as an ice sculpture. Éomer had never seen a face so pale and yet living. Atkiray stood to his left, eyes were wide and black, and ahead of him, the man on the rock rose, moving with a cold and precise grace. Behind him, the desertwolves cowered. Instinct seized Éomer with a giant's grip, telling him to run, to run as far and fast as he could. But he stayed still, watching, waiting for Aragorn to show his hand, praying he had one to play.
The man stepped onto the sand. He was tall, with the sleek build of a predator. Heat seemed to roll off him in sullen waves. The young sun was a glint of gold over the jagged edges of the red mountains. The newborn light seemed to catch on something white, a mile or so beyond where they stood.
The man-thing's voice was deep and deadly. "My breed is beyond your knowledge, Elessar, so guard your tongue, lest you look to lose it." His eyes burned as if he were flame made flesh. Above him, the sky was gold and scarlet and the sunrise ran and burned and seared with burning tongues of fire. "We were before the eldest stars, and we shall be when all the stars are drowned. Do not presume to know my kind after a few travels spent with your old greybeard."
His whole body seemed to flicker, as if he could no longer sustain his glamors, and there was a roaring darkness behind that illusion. Éomer saw teeth like curved knives, the length of a man's arms, and he moved without thought, drowning in instinct.
Gúthwinë sang the song of naked steel as it slashed out, aimed at the man's exposed throat.
And the man laughed.
Gúthwinë shivered in Éomer's hand like it had struck a wall of rock, and he cried out in shock and pain, dropping the blade. The man's head struck out like a snake, knocking Éomer to one side, and suddenly the man was no longer a man, but something else, huge beyond reckoning. The red light of a stormy sunrise bathed the wyrm's black diamond scales in a hellish glow.
And Éomer understood.
This was no painted dragon or greedy hoard-warden that hissed on the walls of the Golden Hall, only to be thrown down by a venturesome man. This was a creature of an older order, of a power so oneiric it beggared belief. It was ancient, this thing, this old shard-borne harrower of the darkness.
The dragon blotted out the sun with wings that cracked like thunder, and all was dark about it. It struck out at Éomer, jaws wide, fire glowing deep in its gullet. Its breath blistered his face as he lay half-stunned, waiting for death. A strange thought came to him then, and it was I promised Lothíriel I would see her again.
He rolled as the dragon's teeth closed together, ducking under the long, scaled neck. Where it lay on the sand, Gúthwinë glowed white-hot under the dragon's breath.
The heat beneath the wyrm's belly was fierce and terrible. Sweat blinded him as he crawled, leaving crimson handprints behind him, for the sharp rock pierced his palms. He could hardly feel the pain, for death was in the air. It was hot and bitter, and he did not want it.
And it seemed to him the legs of the dragon were simply the vast pillars of a high-hall, and the hosts of dead men lined that hall, their eyes blue fire and their hair as the sun in the morning. They were his kin, the horse-kings, the golden roses of Rohan, as beautiful as the dawn to his exhausted eyes. He saw a lady so lovely she was the wonder of the world, with a red rose flowering on her breast. He saw a man so lordly that he seemed more god than man, and his yellow hair flowed like gold. He saw a woman with a crown on her head and a spear in her hand, pale and fierce. He saw a lord with a dragon's tooth strung around his neck, and in his eyes, mirth and danger made music together. He saw his father, tall as any king, kiss a slender laughing woman that could only be his mother. He saw Théoden, his golden shield shining like an image of the sun, and he saw Théodred standing near, lean and tall and smiling. And he saw Éowyn, clad in mail, and under her arm was a helmet, from which streamed a white horsetail, the twin of his own. He stared at her, even as all around him the hosts thundered and laughed and sang, raising drinking horns banded with silver and chalices studded with gems. The hooves of a thousand horses shook the ground, and his heart beat in tandem with the drums of the fields.
Éowyn's eyes shone like burnished silver. He had never seen her so happy, and he wanted to be with her, to share in her joy. But if she stood in the company of Eorl the Young and Hilde of the Red Rose, of Éomund and Théodwyn who lay long under the sod, it meant she was dead, and he was dead too, dead or dying.
But Éowyn was not dead. She was sleeping now under the softness of a summer dawn, hale and happy and alive, loving, and beloved by a heart who matched her own. This was only one more trick, one more illusion. He slammed his shield-hand palm-down, into the soft green grass that carpeted this hall of dead men gone to glory, and pain shot up his arm as black rock pierced his flesh. He was under the belly of the dragon, with no weapon save his wits, and those had never felt so dull.
The wyrm was moving, the heat throttling. He rolled this way and that as the claws scraped and rent the stone. He could hear noise above him, Atkiray was crying out, shouting something in Haradrim. But he could understand the meaning of the words; fear is the same in any tongue.
The dragon began to laugh, a sound like the breaking of the world. Terror strove to shatter his senses, but he kept it at bay, crawling towards the tail that coiled like a whip. And then he was in open air, the sky above a field of slaughterous red.
The dragon crouched like a monstrous cat toying with its prey, its molten gaze trained on his companions. Éomer could not see them, for the wyrm's bulk blotted them out, but he could feel the edges of the power held over them, a power that pierced the heart with poison and despair, a power that would rather break the mind and burn the soul before it killed the body.
Atkiray cried out suddenly, his voice sharp and boyish, and fell to the ground. Dark blood dribbled from his broken lip. Gimli stood over him, his face so twisted with fury Éomer could scarcely recognize it.
By Atkiray's foot lay Gúthwinë, still unwarped.
He waited, numb with hope and fear, not daring to breathe. Then, in a single fluid motion, the Haradric Prince kicked Gúthwinë as he rolled to his feet to grapple with Gimli, sending the blade skittering across smooth black rock towards Éomer. He never looked in the other's direction, never seemed to see him, and Éomer loved the boy like a brother in that moment.
Aragorn was shouting in Sindarin, but the beauty of language had no power here, in the dragon-realm. Now the words sounded like a bitter mockery of all that was good and fair. There was cold fury in the Elessar's tone. Legolas spat back a response; his voice black with rage.
Éomer crouched and picked up his sword, the hilt still hot in his hands. The dragon made no sign. It seemed to have turned to stone, focusing its hatred onto the four, waiting for them to tear each other apart.
Éomer could feel the fringes of that hate, cold and creeping. He felt small and mewling, and with that realization of weakness came a crash of terrible anger. What madness had possessed Aragorn to lead them out into the desert, where men die? And why had they followed like oxen to the slaughter? His mind fled backward, grief turning to hatred in the blink of an eye. If his mother had spared a little love for her children and clung to life for their sake, instead of relinquishing it so freely after Éomund's death, what then? Would he be here? No. If his sister had taken up the duties laid upon her instead of riding, he would not be haunted by dreams of her dead face. If Théoden had heeded his council, so many ills could have been avoided and Théodred would be alive, would be a King, and Éomer would be free to do as he willed. But now what? They had ignored him, doubted him, cast him aside, treated him as a child. What debt did he owe to any of them? The dragon would let him depart. He would find his horse, ride West or East or North or South, do as he pleased until the end of his days.
His fingers loosened around the hilt, and it slipped easily through his sweat-slick hand. He caught at it almost instinctively, and as his grasp tightened again, images drowned him. He saw empty feast halls and windswept hearthstones, warriors under the ground, and broken harps smashed on red-stained cobblestones. The steadings and the fields lay burned and desolate, too large under the grey sky. Shadows danced over the barrows of corpse-kings, boneless and terrible. Crows dug their talons into the bone-houses of dead horses. The sky swallowed the smoke.
He wept, there in his mind, wept for the desolation of his kingdom. For he loved it, and the dragon could not understand that. It had tried to make him leave, but love had turned its stratagems against it. He loved the green grass that billowed in spring, and he loved the blue sky and the golden halls. He loved the horses that drank the wind as they ran, and he loved the thunder of their hooves over the plains. He loved the songs that were rich and rolling and the tales that stirred the blood. He loved the Mark with love with a love that was deep and stern as the mountains, a love that could not falter even if duty rankled.
It was love that made him raise the blade. There was no magic on this blade, no charms or spells wrought into it. Neither was it made from the ore of a fallen star nor blessed by any gods. It was only a sword and the man who wielded it was only a man.
"Melian!" he shouted aloud, understanding that word would draw the wyrm's attention like no other. "Melian Mablui, moonlit Queen!"
The dragon's head snaked around, faster than a whip. Now there was anger in its golden eyes, a rage that burned ten times hotter than any fire held inside its blistering bone-house. "Prating fool!" it roared, its voice thundering over Éomer in a tide of fire and stone. Its breath knocked him to his knees, his face was scorched by the wash of heat.
"Melian," he said again, stumbling blindly to his feet, remembering every word Legolas had told him. Then more words came to his lips, words untaught, and though he understood what he spoke, the language was hot and heavy and strange on his tongue. "For you loved me in your own way, but I warned you to fear the heat of your heart and the cold of your mind. The Dragon of Dor-lómin was the only dragon I would ever hold dear, and for you, I no longer have even pity. A worm is always a worm, even if it has scales. For you named yourself Power, and made yourself slave, hiding beneath the earth lest the stars spell your doom. You clung to the skirts of Time, your claws in the stone and your head in the sand. You thought that once your elder brother was cast down, you would rule alone and unimpeded, but I tell you this, the Age of Powers is no more. It is the Age of Men, and you have no place in this world. Begone! I never loved you!"
The dragon roared, jaws gaping open, unleashing shapeless slavering sounds of fury and pain. Éomer felt some measure of pity for the beast in that moment, but the force that thrust his arm forward had forgotten the name of mercy.
Gúthwinë dripped with red as the light of the crimson day caught it, and then it was buried in the fang-crowded jaws of the dragon, going greedily up past flesh and bone, piercing the mind. Fire flowed up from the gullet as Éomer stood, but he did not see it. What he saw was the closest thing any man of the House of Eorl will ever see of Valinor, and he treasured up all that he saw and hid it in his heart.
Then the scales came away from the body, eddying away on the wind as a billow of jet-black leaves, and the body of the worm fell away in ash and smoke. It rose in a poison-grey flurry to the sky. There it loomed up, up, up, greater than reason, a shrouded figure upon a field of red. It seemed to Éomer that, as he watched, it wavered to the North, but there was no home for it, and looked towards the South, and saw nothing, and turned East, but found no resting place. At last, it held out its hands to the West and the West denied it utterly. There was a long, thin wail on the knife-edge of hearing, and the wind took it all away, so that all that left on the hard rocks was a pile of blackened bones, small and brittle, the bones of a scorched snake, coated with the melted metal of Gúthwinë's blade, a peace offering sacrificed to the red sky.
The desert-wolves that had cowered behind their master rubbed their muzzles in the sand and looked at the five companions with curious eyes. Then they turned and ran off at a lazy lope, sometimes nipping at the flanks of their companions. When they were gone, the wind died away with the sound of ten thousand bird wings fluttering.
Éomer's hands dropped to his sides as if they were heavier than fate itself. The sword-hilt clattered to the ground with a clang as loud as a scream. The blade had melted away. He felt old and frail in that moment, as fragile as glass.
There was a voice behind him, and the words galloped over him, meeting and melding into a stream of noise that he could not understand. He sat down, his legs crumpling beneath him, and held the hilt of Gúthwinë like a young girl may hold her straw-doll, when all the world is too strange to be reckoned with.
A/N. So I hope this isn't anti-climactic! I've edited this chapter to death and I'm still not a fan of it, but I hope it's okay. Thanks to everyone for reading! :)