DISCLAIMER: Tolkien is the man! I could never claim his stuff is mine.

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The guards that had been assigned to Anemosi's cell had been butchered and fed to their fellows for letting her slip through their fingers. Lanal was raging through the fortress, her gaze cutting down any unlucky enough to cross her path. In her fury, she had thrown Anemosi's body out into the blasted plains below the fortress, and had then secreted herself in her chambers. Her fury made the foundations of Mount Doom shake, but she was not totally undone. She still had three of the pivot points, and they could still be used...she only had to bide her time.

Anemosi's form came to rest on a stinking pile of refuse. It rested there for a few hours until a dark form clambered on top of the pile. It was Brule.

Brule was a scavenger. He had lived in Mordor for untold years, and was neither good or bad, only out for himself. He took no interest in the goings-on of Middle-Earth, but he did take an interest in the pale form that had been thrown in the midden. Underneath the stink, it smelled warm and sweet, like the mother he had almost forgotten. He wanted it.

He looked around himself carefully, making sure there were no sentries about to try and take his prize away. Lanal's guards laughed at him, scavenger that he was, but he laughed at them too; he was free, not merely the hands of a witch that never showed her face under the Sun. And no one, not even the witch herself, could take this prize from him.

He picked Anemosi's body up, surprised at how light she was. He climbed carefully down from the pile of filth and silently scuttled away towards his den. It was good that his prize was so light; a garrison of Lana;'s guards were marching towards him on patrol, and he barely made it under an overhang of rock before they reached him. They passed silently away, the only noise the sound of metal boots slapping against the ground.

Stealing a quick look around and seeing that everything was clear, Brule crept out into the open space and silently raced towards his den. Panting, he dove into the entrance hole and pulled Anemosi's body after him. He lit a small candle made of some kind of fat that he had stolen from the refuse pile, and examined his prize.

She was filthy, and very young. Brule took an experimental poke at her side, and jumped back when he heard her moan. Her eyes opened slowly, glowing and silver, and she coughed weakly. When her gaze fell upon him, Brule felt a sliver of warmth slide down into his belly and lodge there. Something had been awakened within him, and he spoke the first words he had said in over a hundred years.

"What are ye?" His voice was cracked and rusty from disuse, and his mouth, only used for chewing for so long, had trouble shaping the words.

She coughed again and spit out phlegm. "Where am I?" she asked, totally disregarding his question.

"In me den, lady," he said respectfully. There was something in her voice that made him think she was used to getting answers quickly.

She sat up slowly. "I should be dead," she breathed. "I was dead..." She shook her head to clear it, and turned her head to look at him. Her clear eyes met his, and he felt a chill flow up his throat. A silence fell in the little den as she closed her eyes, breathing raggedly. She began to whisper to herself, strange words in another, older language that Brule, knowing only the Common Tongue, could not understand. Her eyes flew open, almost blistering hot in their intensity, and she barely stifled a cry as she clutched her wrists. They had been cut open, he saw, but had healed quickly, quicker than should be possible. Slowly, the fit passed, and she recovered, breathing hard. He was silent until he could no longer withhold his question.

"What are ye?" he asked again, hoping for an answer.

"My name is Anemosi," she said slowly. "And I have much work ahead of me. I have been told what I must do." Her eyes glittered with a private fire, and Brule shivered. He had never found anything like this creature in the midden before. What was he to do now?

She turned to him before he could begin to puzzle out his options. "What kind of creature are you, that lives in Mordor, yet does not seem to have anything to do with Lanal?" She shivered as she spoke the name.

"I'm Brule, lady. I ain't no part o' what happens in that there tower, if you catch me. I just live here."

She raised a delicate eyebrow, and seemed to be on the point of speaking when another fit of weak coughing overtook her. He reached out and patted her awkwardly on the back until it wore off, and she was left shivering in its passing.

"Do you have any water?" she asked, her voice no more than a croak.

He nodded dumbly, and began to rummage through his belongings for a small water canteen. The water was muddied and gritty, but she gulped it down like wine. It seemed to help, and her voice was clearer when she spoke again.

"Well, Brule, it seems I may have to stay here until I am able to move again. The Lady has told me that you are to be trusted."

Brule blinked in confusion. What Lady? The only lady he could see was the one sitting before him. But he had no objection to her staying...now that she was awake, she smelled much better.

He was readying himself to produce another halting sentence when a sudden rumble from above his hole caught both their attentions.

Up in her chamber, Lanal had awaken from a dark and rushing nightmare of failure. She could sense a movement where before there had only been silence and dust, and she was afraid. What was this rustling in her mind, like a cough that would not go away?

"The bitch!"

In Brule's den, hidden and safe, at least for the moment, Anemosi and Brule could discern one voice out of the cacophony of noise above them.

"Find her! She is alive! I can feel her! FIND HER!"

It was Lanal, and she was hunting Anemosi.