Disclaimer: I own a lot: a house, a cat, a car, my own imagination (YES!), the things I do not own outnumber this list easily. So...



I used again the wonderful pages of the Encyclopaedia of Arda (GREAT!!!), I was helped by The Dark Lord (himself, this is dangerous), but he was the only one who could tell me the length of His Road from the Barad-dur to the foot of Mount Doom, and of course I used my copy of LOTR.

Although I try to stay faithful to the book, the comment from Gandalf when he chooses which way to go in Moria in the first movie is too good not to use.

On with the story...



Chapter 20 War raging...



All had fallen in place.

The rumours at the camp,

the fight with the Uruk,

the reason why she had 'lost' the host of Uruks,

why she could draw a map of their secret hiding places,

why she did not mind wearing a borrowed orc-garment,

why she knew where the orcs were going,

even why did she not wanted to tell him about her activities when they met in the White City.



The whole puzzle fitted if she was one of Sauron's allies. Or even his heir.



Only... when finished, the image on the puzzle did not fit the woman he had learned to know...



Legolas shifted without any sound into another crouching position. He heard the breathing of the men and when he concentrated he could also hear the almost soundless breathing of the elves that were sitting with him in the little cave inside the Ered Lithui. From here they could keep an ear and an eye on what they simply called 'The Mainroad on the Second Level'. It was the most used road by the orcs on this level. Legolas tried to determine where each of his men was by listening to their different breaths, but soon he drifted back to his thoughts.



From the moment she left, he had had this conversation with himself over and over again. Every time the conflict with the orcs would subside for a moment he tried to sleep but mostly...

He went over the same arguments, always coming to the now familiar point where he would sigh and just admit that he did not know. It almost seemed like his reaction towards her at the dinner in Minas Tirith had cast a shadow forward. "I do not want to think, I want to know..." and now all he could do was to think, and think and think again; knowing nothing for sure. One argument was undermined by another and he would get annoyingly frustrated, short-tempered and even grumpy. Things he publicly wrote on the conto of being around Gimli too long. But he knew that it was a meagre excuse, and so did his friend.



What about her eagerness to bring together an army to rout the vile creatures out?

So the orcs had the chance of killing them all at once?

That did not make much sense.

It would have been easier to kill all the generals one by one and it would have been easier if she would have let the orcs spread over all of Middle Earth.

And the terror in the face of the Uruk when she stated her name?

How would they have looked at Sauron once? Would that not have been in fear, like the Uruk had looked up to her?

But when looking at the Heir of Sauron, one would expect crouching submission, and that had not been in that look, anger had.



She had had more then one opportunity to kill him or his men... she had not acted on it.

Yet she might just have wanted to 'save' them for one big kill here in the mountains of Mordor; then again: that would not make much sense and was surely not the easiest way.



And what about her words that night in the marshes: "I had expected to be free... freedom is something I'll never have. It's just the same only the one who imprisons change..."



What was she? A turncoat, a spy, an heir, a 'Master Warrior', a respected friend of Arwen, a prisoner, what?



Her voice gave the answer in his mind: "I am a warrior, and you'll just have to take my word for it that my intentions are to stop this new terror and since I'm able to aid your cause this time, I certainly will, no matter how, no matter where... "



The simple facts were that, as for now, only orcs had been slain and the casualties on their side were not worth mentioning. Thanks to the detailed map she left them and the suspicious turns of fate. Fate he did not trusted... and yet trusted...



Was it fate that sometimes they would find sketches on the walls, made with charcoal, as an addition to the map? Was it fate that wrote at other times information in the Tengwar characters (elvish)? Information about how many orcs or about a secret tunnel or cave that they could use or where their enemies hid? If that was fate then Legolas strongly suspected Fate to have long brown hair and brown eyes!



Suddenly he was yanked back to the here and now when there was a terrible loud noise. A rumble and the sound of falling rocks that travelled both through the air and through the stones, echoed its way through the caves and tunnels. Before it had died down the company of elves and men were on their way to its source.



In the midst of a large cloud of dust they found the remainders of a group of Dol Amroth's soldiers. "Help us... We have to dig... the others!" one of them was shouting, already removing stones from what looked like a cave in. "Stop! Don't touch those stones!" Legolas shouted as more stones came tumbling down. "Don't you see, this pile is unstable, if you take away more stones, you'll just cause another cave in!? What happened?" he asked the man. "We were closing in on a band of orcs when suddenly the ceiling caved in, just out of nowhere! I think..." "Dîn! Silence!" a shout from one of the elves interrupted the man. "Lasto...[Listen...]" With their enhanced hearing the elves could faintly pick up cries from behind the rocks. Legolas's eyes widened: "Valar nuithar" he whispered [May the Valar not allow it to continue] and then he started giving rapid orders: "We have to rescue them quick! Six men get ladders or anything else that might serve as shores. I want Elves digging, please be aware of new cave ins! And you," he pointed to one of Dol Amroth's soldiers: "see if you can find Gimli, the dwarf!" The orders were carried out at once. The soldier, he had been talking to before they were interrupted, grabbed his arm: "My Lord, what did you hear? What is happening to my comrades?" Legolas sighed; he could see the fear in the man's eyes. But fear for the unknown tends to take enormous forms, so he answered: "They are under attack, I think this cave in was the result of some devilish plan of the orcs, it is a trap, I'm sorry" The soldier turned pale and then with a resolute face started moving the stones, that had been removed from the pile by the elves further down the tunnel. "We'll get to them! We'll get to them! We'll get to them!" Legolas heard him repeat again and again. 'And I do hope it will be in time,' he thought before joining him.



It took them several hours, Gimli had helped, but even he could not work magic and making a new and save entrance was a slow and precise job. In the last two hours no noises had been heard from the other site. They all feared the worst. Finally they cautious entered the cave. By the light of a torch they could see that the floor was scattered with bodies. "These are all corpses of orcs!" one of the elves shouted relieved. Another elf called for Legolas. "My Lord, here are two soldiers; they are unconscious and badly wounded, yet alive".



The two soldiers were transported to the healer's tents. No other soldiers were found in the cave, a more thorough search of the cave revealed some cleaved timber supports that had kept the ceiling from falling inward. There was another cave in at the other side of the cave. They started recovery-work again right away, knowing that the orcs probably left that way, taking their prisoners with them.



During their first night of healing the two soldiers spoke in feverish dreams of a fierce warrior that had come out of the ceiling and who, with an irrepressible rage killed the majority of the orcs. The rest had fled before this 'god of vengeance'. Yet, when they regained consciousness, the next afternoon, they did not abandon their stories. One of them confessed to Legolas that for a moment he had thought that Tulkas (1) himself had materialized in the cave: "It is that I saw him take a blow, leaving a deep gash in his thigh. So I don't think it can be Tulkas, I don't believe that one of the Valar could be hurt by a simple orc-blade, now could he? Sir, I mean, you're an elf, I'm just relating to old stories I've heard about the Valar." Legolas did not know what to say. He had a pretty good idea of whom had come to the rescue of the soldiers.



From that moment on the rumours about a mysterious warrior increased. Some called it fate, some spoke of the ghost of a mighty warrior from the War of the last Allience that helped them. If nothing else, it did wonders for the moral of the troops.

When some days later the missing men were found, tended to and well, the rumours went sky-high. A mysterious lady was said to have helped the injured and captured men. She only left moments before the others reached them, but a search produced nothing. The orcs were found later, dead of course. Legolas's own ideas about this 'Fate' were confirmed when one night one of the soldiers came to his tent and handed him a small piece of paper. "I swore that I would not tell a sole about this, and since I owe her my life... The only words I ever heard from her were: "Get this to Prince Legolas of Eryn Lasgalen," and with a nod the soldier left again. Gimli watched his friend as he slowly unfolded the paper.

"Well, she is still alive..." was Legolas's only comment. He offered Gimli the note. It was in elvish, written with charcoal. "What does it say?" Gimli asked. "... no matter how, no matter where..." Legolas sighed. Gimli waited for more, when nothing more came, he urged his friend: "And?" "And nothing, there is nothing more," came the surly answer. Legolas started furiously throwing around things that were lying about: extra pieces of armour, maps, and clothes. Gimli let him be for a moment, then he cleared his throat: "If you're trying to tidy up this tent, don't bother, I've got an elf that does that every day, sometimes twice a day actually." The kind reference to their cherished different opinion on 'tidyness' made Legolas stop his actions and bent over the heavy cuirass of his friend he looked up at him and smiled. It was one of the saddest smiles Gimli ever saw. He could see his friend's heart break through it. "It's a part of a conversation we had," Legolas admitted, lowering himself and sitting beside the dwarf-cuirass. "She said then that she would aid us 'this time', 'no matter how, no matter where'". The elf closed his eyes shortly, he shook his head lightly and then seemed to gather himself. "Well, I'll leave this mess to your elf, I need to fight. I'll find a group that's going into the caves."







When the cave in incident happened the battle was already coming to an end. It took the allied troops not more then one week to rout the orcs out. Most were killed, some fled towards Khand and even further east. Days followed in which the generals formulated a treaty stating that the men of Rohan, Gondor and Ithilien would take turns watching the northern border of Mordor and make sure that form the Ered Lithui no threat would rise again. Their major concern remained 'the Heir of Sauron'. Finally they decided that all of them would search their libraries and other sources for information about this Heir. Legolas promised to ask his father about it and look for information in their Royal Library which now also contained the archives of Lothlórien. At this moment the last papers were being written in the different languages and already people started to get ready to return to their homelands. Gimli was writing on the dwarvish translation and since their language was a secret one, he did this in seclusion. So Legolas had come up with the plan of exploring a bit of Mordor. He had never actually been there. After the One Ring was destroyed and the realm of Sauron ended, they had retreated to the field of Cormallen, now was a good time to reward his curiosity or to go 'happy sand biting' as Gimli had disparaging called it.



So after weeks in the company of others, Legolas found himself alone, surrounded by the dust and sand of Mordor. For a wood-elf this bare and empty land was unimaginable. He saw nothing, nothing but just sand and rocks. It seemed like within a radius of several miles there was no living thing here. His mind was set on reaching Oroduin, once the Mountain of Doom. His trail was distinct, not by prints, as elves did not leave those. And for that matter: anyone could walk this dessert without leaving a single print: the sand would rush back into place, before you could turn your head to look at your footsteps. No it was the trail of dust he left that stood out quite clear against the nothingness on the plain. This only convinced him even more that there was nothing out there. His trail was the only one.



He had been walking from Minuial (2) and all this time he had sensed no presence at all. The plains were deserted. Since the fall of Sauron nothing had lived here. The orcs had retreated to the mountains. The only reason they were once crossing these bare and hot plains had been Sauron's will. And when that was lost...

The absolute silence of this land enhanced the elf's senses. His outstanding abilities of hearing, seeing and even feeling were stretched because his mind could not comprehend the emptiness of this country. Still besides the light crushing sound of the sand under his feet, he could hear absolutely nothing. He halted, his deepened senses had picked up an ever so light rumble, a barely noticeable shiver went trough the earth and seemed to continue inside his body, through his fibula all the way up to the base of his neck. With a shudder Legolas tried to lose the awkward feeling of emptiness, darkness, loneliness of being smaller then the smallest grain of sand. Moving again, he looked up to the mountain, a hazy shape, vibrating in the already hot air. In spite of the fact that he had witnessed the downfall of Sauron first-hand, the site of mountain seemed to ooze a treacherous air. He had learned from Sam and Frodo just how close things had been. But for the unlikely creature Gollum the ring would have had its way and that way would have been right back to its Master; Sauron, the Lord of the Rings.

Although at the moment that the Ring was thrown back into the fires where it was forged the mountain had reeled, and almost exploded, in the years after it still had erupted now and again, the course of its lava only a bit altered by the huge rocks that had been tossed from the depths of the earth on 45 Echuir or 25 Rethe or 25 Súlimë (3). Legolas smiled. He was so used to converting the dates of the different calendars that he immediately thought not only of the date by the Reckoning of Rivendell, but also of the Shire Calendar and the Gondorion reckoning of time. He had to make an effort to find the date in the Dwarvish Calendar, since the Dwarves used a lunar calendar, based on the moon. It was a complicated system (4); it implied that a month like Echuir (the early spring month) would eventually end up during the last days of Firith (the late autumn month). The dwarves had a solution for this: they reset their calendar every year! It was really very complicated. But it kept Legolas mind busy for some time and that was welcome, since it would take his mind of his own troubles. Just when he found out that it probably would be 17 Adar (5), the foot he put down did not meet sand, nor rock, but nothing at all! Legolas had been walking at a considerable pace and his body kept moving forward; making him tumble down. In a reflex he rolled into a tight ball, like a hedgehog and painfully hit a rocky underground. Instantly a flash of sharp pain made him wince. In the same moment his whole body started to shove down a shaft. He bounced and was thrown from one wall to the other but finally he came to a sudden stop by crashing into a straight rock foundation.





First Legolas listened, but when he heard nothing he slowly got up, checking every bone in the process. Nothing was broken, and his well-trained muscles ached not that much. 'Wait until tomorrow!' he thought with a grim grin. He looked up a long stairway and above him he saw a little white rectangle about the size of his hand. I've come a long way, he thought. He inhaled and was cast back into memories of Moria. The smell and taste of the air, foul and musty, caused his brain to make a link with that place. Legolas lit a small torch he got used to carry around during the 'Battle of the Caves', as some called this last routing out-party, and was surprised when the light from it was reflected by a thousand fluorescent stones in the walls. Legolas was used to his father's caves and on his travels with Gimli he had seen some extraordinary ones, but this took his breath away. As far as he could see the lights lingered on in soft blues, greens and reds. It was amazing to see that something that smelled, tasted and looked like a foul dungeon, looked so beautiful when seen in another light. He unsheathed one of his long knives and went down the corridor that was level here. He was surprised that he wanted to explore this orc-hole after all his time in the Ered Lithui and after his unnerving experiences in Moria. But the emptiness of the land above him was unnerving too and he had the feeling that he had to make sure that this hole was abandoned and safe: force of habit.

It was not long until he came to a fork. In the right-hand passage there were only a few of the fluorescent stones and the air smelled fouler, while in the left-hand passage the blue stones turned the ground into a river that languidly curved. This confirmed Legolas's feeling that if the stones were part of this habitat, they were at least sometimes placed in certain patterns. 'Well, did not Mithrandir say: "When in doubt, Meriadoc, always follow your nose"? So I shall follow my nose and eyes on this one' he thought as he went down the left-hand passage. Soon the path started to slope down again. To his surprise the air got better and better while the path went deeper and deeper. However he could not suppress the feeling that he should head back, maybe to return with Gimli and some men. He did not like the idea of spending the night down here. The feeling that he should return to the daylight again was growing and growing when in the walls there appeared black rectangles. 'No stones' Legolas thought. When he came nearer he saw that they were doors made of wood covered with cobwebs. There was no sign on the first one and it was firmly closed, he continued to the next one. But when the darkness again surrounded the first one, he saw red stones light up above the door. It was something in Cirth (6). With the torch held back Legolas made an effort to read the old runes. He concluded that it should be something like 'rhotk' or 'bodhl' or 'yonk'(7) And that did not get him any further, he supposed it was in the Black Speech. The three doors on the right all barred the same inscription. The inscriptions on the opposite doors were something like 'pizumu or pinjumhu'. At the end of the hallway there were two more doors, above the one on the left was 'maaukumru or maulhumjhu' in the same red stones. Above the right one were two words: 'shûmb shlhayûlmb'. When he came closer to inspect the two doors he immediately noticed the lack of cob webs on the right one. This door was of a different, reddish kind of wood and completely wiped clean. He stepped back and read out loud this time: "shûmb shlhayûlmb".

His words echoed through the hallway and when it came back it whispered: 'Sûmob Slaiumlob'.



A/N:

(1) Tulkas was the last of the Valar to descend into Arda. Since he battled with Melkor, I assumed that a fierce and angry warrior would mostly resemble him.

(2) The Sindarin name for the twilight of dawn, when the stars faded.

Based on the Map of Mordor in the Return of the King, it is roughly 30 miles from the Gate of Barad-dur to the foot of Mount Doom. (Thanks to the Ring Lord, the Dark Lord of Mordor)

(3) Its all the same date: 25 march 3019 Third Age; the day the One Ring was destroyed.

(4) Since a lunar year is only 345 days long it is eleven days short of a solar year. This means that if you use a fixed lunar calendar, a certain date would shift six months every seventeen years. This was overcome by using a flexible calendar; the Dwarves reset their calendar every year! Their year starts on 'the first day of the last moon of autumn'; the Dwarves find a point where the lunar and solar (seasonal) calendars coincide, and restart their calendar from that point.

(5) Since Tolkien based his culture of the Dwarves on the Jewish one, I took the liberty using 17 march 3019 (17 because 25 Renthe is 17 March) on the Jewish (lunar!) Calendar: 17 Adar.

(6) Cirth is elvish for Runes. In their older and simpler form they spread eastwards in the Second Age, and became known to many peoples, to Men and Dwarves and even to Orcs, all of whom altered them to suit their purposes. (From LOTR Appendix E (p. 1153 in my copy)

(7)Black Speech: yonk = general storage; pizumu = arms or weapons; maukumru = fighthall (training room). I used the Angerthas in Appendix E and looked at runes that looked like the ones that resembled the letters to make up the phoney words.



14 September 2003: the last (?) changes.