Chapter Three: Sky Called Down

The sun rose higher as he moved, clearing the last dark mountaintops over Mordor. Rays of light, like stretching fingertips, touched face, shoulder, sword. Not as comforting warmth, but as torch to cheat him out of secrecy, Aragorn thought. He moved above the hills and valleys of the earth, and those far down below, if indeed there were any in the borders of the evil lands, might have only seen the starburst of light thrown out from the hilt of his sword. Might have watched it curiously move in a twisting, rapid pattern up the face of the mountain, like a crazed firefly. Might have rubbed their eyes and looked again, only to find it had disappeared in a quick twist round boulder or cliff.

He moved at foolish speed, and he knew it to be so. The rocks were as razors, and the trailing, and now shredded, edges of his cloak testified to it. Twice he had been deceived by shadow and had taken missteps. Twice he had fallen because of it, and twice the knife-edge of stone split skin, once of knee, once of upper arm, and both wounds bled freely still. He'd no time to tend to them, and hoped the orcs would not smell the blood of man as they approached each other.

From the highest vantage point of the climb, he paused and searched for signs of his prey, but there was a heavy wood below, before the slimy, silvery glint of sun off the flatlands the streams emptied upon. This place was known as the Wet Meadow to man, and beyond that stretch of shallow wetlands were the deeper, older, and more dangerous, Dead Marshes. He imagined the party was hiding from the daylight in the wood, and the forest obliged them with protective boughs. He hoped to surprise them there before the coming of the night. He had cause for speed.

He felt the pull of Mordor add its evil to that which was inherent in this twisted place as he began the descent. Kicking wind delivered many blows to him, forcing him toward cliffs and ledges, driving dust into his searching eyes, and when that failed to slow him, hurling slivers of rocks at all exposed skin, opening skin at cheek and back of hand. Pulling his cloak hood close round his face, he ran on, more determined now that he saw how much will the Dark One had bent on having the Lady of Rivendell.

At last he came down from the mazes. Abruptly the wind died away, and for a moment he stood and breathed the foul, still air of the swamplands before him. He saw the deceptive traps and undying candles of the dead marshes far ahead, beyond the sheen of sunlight off the Wet Meadow. All of his senses were filled with impressions of rotting things, and he flared nostrils in disgust. He turned his back upon them, and Mordor, and instead hurried toward the wood he'd seen from above.

From on high, this stretch of forest had seemed small, conquerable. Now, as he moved from setting sunlight into cool darkness of the trees, he was forced to admit the difficulty of finding anything in the undergrowth. There was nothing to track, as the orcs had not yet passed this point. It was the disadvantage that cutting in front of them by taking the high pass had cost him. The woods were silent, giving up no secrets. It was not the easy silence of quiet places but an oppressive, threatening silence of watching things that made him hesitant to draw full breath of air.

Closing his eyes, he bent his mind toward the elf maiden he had never met.

He waited and tried to think of how to best find her, wishing for the intuitive powers of the elves he'd long witnessed, where thoughts were thrown across distances as a hand extended toward the meeting of another.

Aragorn, though he understood the nature and the ways of elves, did not have the natural ability of making his thoughts known to the elves in return. It was something he sorely regretted now.

Yet there, in the dark wood, his wishes were answered as he stood at the toe of a great oak. He heard a voice that he'd not heard before inside of him, in places that had never been called upon. But he knew her. It was the voice of ages, both heavy and light, soft and strong, ever steady in his heart, giving him faith in his course.

"Estel. I feel you near. They sleep yet but will wake soon."

Renewed as if with long sleep, he started forward with new spirit, and though he had no trail to follow, his footsteps fell surely, ever toward the source of the warmth in his blood that he began to understand was her.

And as the dusk came down, he arrived at their camp, a clearing amidst the dense wood. Circling slowly at first, he observed. Twelve that he could see, seven orcs and five men, sleeping noisily. They had destroyed the clearing, the earth was churned and broken beneath their feet, and they'd hacked limbs from trees for a fire, around which was scattered the bloody bones of some unfortunate prey.

He searched for the Lady, and almost overlooked her. She was tied to a tree with ropes and chains, and a dark orc's cloak had been thrown over whatever elven garment she wore. They had wrapped cloth about her head, in their ignorance, to keep her from using any magic upon them with her eyes or her words. Despite the blindfolds, her swathed head turned slowly in his direction, and he suddenly felt that he was laid bare across the distance.

He saw as she moved that there was a tight collar about her neck and to it another chain was linked and tightly wound about the tree.

Seeing one of the elves of Rivendell, and especially this daughter of the elf most dear to him, tethered as a wild and dangerous beast, caused his blood to heat, burning away reason. He very nearly charged forward.

"Careful, Ranger. There is a guard and he is near." Her voice floated into his mind again. The easy timber of it reached through his rage and he withdrew, backing down and looking around for the guard she spoke of.

The warning from Lady Arwen was fortunate, as the orc walked directly in front of him. He would have charged into the path of the guard, had she not calmed him.

Drawing a knife from his boot, Aragorn stepped behind the orc, caught him in two strides and with a swift, easy motion drew the blade deeply across his throat, loosing a river of black blood. He caught the gurgling and sputtering of the dying beast in his gloved hand when he clapped it over his mouth, silencing him. He lowered the dead guard softly to the ground with a care he didn't feel and went forward.

Silently he crept to her, but she did not start when he lay a hand upon hers in greeting, or when his bloody knife sliced through the ropes wound about her body. With careful fingers he picked up the heavy chains and disentangled them from the tree, until at last she was free but for the collar about her neck and the hood over her head secured by it. He took great care to be silent, daring to hope they might creep away and not stir the orcs or men, though the dark parts of him wanted revenge for this treatment of the lady.

His fingertips had just grazed the leather noose when he heard movement behind him, too late. There was a sharp cry of warning from the Lady, the first sound of her that reached him through his ears instead of through his heart. A moment later a heavy weight hit him hard across the shoulder blades and sent him sprawling away from her.

He twisted with the speed of a snake and brought the knife he still held upwards and into the throat of a large man, heavy of limb. His enemy shrieked airlessly and collapsed atop him. Aragorn struggled from beneath him and made it to his feet just, barely, in time to clear his sword of sheath and meet the blade of the orc who came for him next.

And so it began for him, and he found himself, back to tree, swinging madly and fighting a force greater than he'd ever fought in his solitary marches across the free lands. He remembered little as the sword sliced through air, through leather and mail and home into flesh. They were falling slowly, falling beneath his blade and his nerves were hot and his eyes fierce, and the bitterness on his tongue was bloodlust.

And then something unexpected happened. The first ray of moonlight somehow found its way through the trees and pooled at the feet of the Lady, who had cast off collar and hood. She stepped forward to stand within the silver light, an orc sword firmly clasped in one hand. In a smooth motion, she shrugged from the orc cloak and it whispered from her shoulders, to reveal a gown of pale, pale blue that seemed first to absorb, and then give back, the light of moon.

Aragorn, for a moment--or an age, he'd never be sure--forgot his battle and looked at the Evenstar for the first time. Time stilled and shimmered about him as something tangible that could be seized and ripped back. But he would never want to go back from this moment, would never again in his mortal life remember what filled the days before his knowledge of her.

He was awed by her. She stunned him as all the might of Mordor might not, and for the first time in his life he was aware of a force more powerful than all dark armies, more pure than the silver light of moon, and more hopeful than the first morning of all life.

She was a creature caught between twilight and dark, forever walking in the dreaming hours, the hours of things impossible and inevitable. She hung in the balance between dying sun's lavender rays and rising moon's silver beams. She was built of classic and ethereal lines, of contrasts of lightness and dark, in ivory skin and hair as black as the deepest night hour, eyes of silvery blue, as shifting light on deep, still water.

"Tinuviel." He felt the name leave him in a breathless whisper, for he had not drawn air since he saw her.

He thought he'd fallen for a moment into eternal dream, into a vision of what there was beyond this life, of another world where the beauty of it all was nearly painful for the new eyes of the next realm. And yet, he thought that if he gazed upon her for the infinity of an afterlife, never would he be able to look away from such grace and light.

He was moved. Moved beyond all action or thought by the sight of her.

And so it was that he didn't see the heavy blade come down until it was nearly too late. Though he recovered in time to avoid the full blow and to strike at his opponent, it was not enough, and the broad side of the sword made contact with his temple in a glancing blow. A warm spray of blood hit his cheek, throat, eyes.

He went down upon his knees and saw blackness at the corners of his world, might have given over to it but for that source of light before him. Her sword was raised, her eyes burning as she looked to the heavens, and wrath seemed to spill from her fingertips. As she was beauty, she was also strength and peril.

There was a ringing in his head, so he could not hear the words she hurled at the sky, but he looked upwards. Dumbed and slowed by his blow, he watched passively as the trees seemed to rear back and fling up great arms, opening a passage for the sky she was calling down.

The rest of his enemies closed in upon him for the kill, as he raised his sword reflexively, but weakly, in defense. Dizzy, disoriented, and defeated, he dreamed that from the wheeling stars above, winged horses circled and dove. Upon them were tall conjures of elven solders of old, both beautiful and terrible, and the light shining from them pushed back all the darkness of the wood and blinded his enemy.

Day had returned.

Aragorn regained his feet and found the strength to defend himself, cleaving the body of the orc who would have ended him.

There were men and orcs still standing, but the great brightness won, and shrieking and cowering, they turned and fled from the light of the elf soldiers lost in the battles of yesteryear, summoned down from the stars by the light of their most beloved.

When he and the Lady were alone in the clearing, for just a moment he stood, sword in trembling hand, knees unsteady, and vision still blurring and blackening, though his eyes never left her.

He was bleeding, from the wound in his head and from several more he'd suffered. The blood ran from him in warm, tickling trails, dropped off his fingertips and jaw.

"Tinuviel," he whispered again, the one thought that made itself known in his throbbing and jarred head. The world took a swift, sharp spin under his boots.

And even as he bent his hard will against it, the sword slipped from his fingers and he followed it silently unto the ground.

~*~

*To be continued…

Note regarding the conjures of Elven soldiers: A little liberty I took, inspired by the horses called out of the river when the Nazgul arrive at the Ford of Bruinen in the pursuit of Frodo.