Siege Mentality

Chapter Ten

*Screams* Help, help! My muse is eating me alive. Please give him some reviews to eat instead.

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Elrond was not happy. It was his first day out of bed, yet no one else seemed to be up. He leaned his uninjured shoulder on the wall, contemplating what he should do next. However, the section of wall he chose was actually a door. He landed sprawled on something which most definitely was not the floor.

"Ow, my head."

"Ow, my shoulder."

"Please, please, please do not let that be Glorfindel, O Elbereth. I promise I will be good … and nice to Lindir … and I will clean out the stables. Please…"

"What are you going on about now, Erestor?" Elrond scrambled to his feet and looked at his dazed advisor.

"He is being pursued by the golden-haired ninny," the other voice explained.

The elf-lord turned his attention to the Son of Gondor who was now sitting up in the corner, rubbing his head, amid a mass of empty wineskins.

"From the complaints coming from his rooms, Glorfindel is in no state to pursue anyone this morning. Now get up Erestor."

The Noldo pulled his hands away from his face cautiously.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

The bedraggled pair followed Elrond from the closet. However, they walked straight into Glorfindel who was sitting on the floor groaning, his head between his knees.

"Nooooooooo." Erestor bolted down the corridor and out into the gardens.

The Master of Rivendell nudged his seneschal with the toe of his boot.

"What was that all about?"

"Too much wine and some … interesting impulses."

~*~

The Peredhel stood in the middle of the dining room, and observed the chaos with grim foreboding.

Gandalf was waving an empty beaker around, his broken leg propped up on a chair.

Boromir sat with his head on the table, fast asleep and slightly green-tinged.

The Hobbits were experimenting to see if the upholstery was edible.

Celeborn, tied firmly to his chair, was yelling at Maglor, who was brandishing a carving knife.

Lindir stood on the table, one foot on an empty platter, yelling, "No more! No more! I refuse to serve anyone until this household stops behaving like the host of Fëanor at the kinslaying at Aqualondë."

Maglor immediately rounded on him.

"If the Teleri had just given us the wretched ships…"

"Oh, that would have been such a good idea," Celeborn snapped.

The din became louder and louder, and Elrond crept from the room unnoticed – that is, apart from by a couple of pairs of eyes which were lower to the ground than normal.

"Mister Elrond, sir." He felt an insistent tug at his trouser leg and looked down to find Sam and Frodo smiling up at him.

"Yes?"

"What are they going on about?"

"Old grievances, little ones: grievances older than your race."

"If they are so very old, they cannot be that important, so can we have some breakfast?" Frodo broke in.

"I shall see what I can find." Elrond resigned himself to the task of quartermaster and stomped off – as much as any elf can stomp – towards the stores.

He paused in bafflement at the junction of two corridors. He had prided himself on knowing the layout of Imladris down to the last chimney-nook, but that was before the dwarves' impromptu alterations. Now, he was lost. As he contemplated his options, Legolas sauntered into view, limping slightly, with a girl in tow.

Elrond glanced curiously into the box she was carrying and immediately wished he had not.

"That is Lindir's garlic crusher!" he exclaimed. "And that is the cord from the curtains in my room!"

"Would you like them back?" she held the objects in question aloft.

"O Eru, no." He regarded them with distaste and hurried off, finally getting his bearings through sheer desperation.

As he bent to pick up a sack of mushrooms, wincing at the pain in his shoulder, his control finally snapped.

"No. This is enough! No more!" He stormed back towards the main area of the house and grabbed Aragorn by his arm, not even noticing that the Man was emerging from Arwen's rooms.

"Get your brothers and meet me in the library in ten minutes."

When they were assembled, he explained his plan…

~*~

The search for whatever means the fangirls were using to infiltrate Imladris had proved remarkably unsuccessful. All he had found was Erestor huddled against the base of a tree refusing to be moved and a tunic he had lost the previous summer. Elladan and Elrohir were trying to rediscover all their childhood haunts and Aragorn had mysteriously disappeared.

Elrond decided that his quest was futile and turned to retrace his steps to the house. He almost fell over a curious object half-buried in the grass. As he steadied himself against the trunk of a tree, a mist formed round it and a girl emerged.

"Well," she said briskly to no one in particular, checking her make-up in a small mirror. "I wonder which way it is to Leggy."

Before she knew what had hit her, she was pinned to a tree.

"I know my rights," she shrieked. "I demand to see the U.S. consul."

"Did that thing bring you here?" Elrond brandished the tangle of wires in her face.

"Yep."

"Then it can take you back."

The furious grey eyes were so determined that she began to scrabble round in her handbag for the sheet of instructions. "Umm, I've got it here somewhere…"

"Hurry, the orcs are coming," he lied.

"Oh that doesn't bother me." She held up a can of pepper spray and a metal nail-file in proof. "Anyway, Legs will rescue me."

"I would not be so sure." Elrond grimaced at the thought of Legolas' activities the previous night.

Eventually, with much cursing and many broken nails, she was returned to her proper place and time.

The Peredhel knelt down to examine the apparatus and beheld the lost palantir of Amon Sûl tethered to an odd looking box. Gathering the seeing-stone and its accoutrements into his arms, he stalked back towards the Last Homely House and barged into the room where Legolas was whispering hotly in Sarai's ear.

"Would you like to explain to me what this is?"

"Well, I would have thought that you would recognise one of the palantiri." Legolas decided that the best option was the most brazen one – as always.

"And what, pray, is it doing attached to this … this thing?"

"How would I know?"

"If you do not, you are more of a fool than I thought you. This contraption brings your girls into my valley."

"I confess that I know that, but I do not know how it works." He had never bothered to find out. The first girl had quite literally dropped into Fëanor's lap in Valinor long ago, her laptop slung over her shoulder: a gift courtesy of Morgoth. The jewel-addled Noldo had brought it to Middle-earth in the hope that it could be used in the war, and after long ages it had somehow passed into the hands of the Line of Isildur. One particularly squint-eyed little idiot had rigged it up to the palantir of Amon Sûl and a terror was born. For much of the Third Age, it had lain dormant, but now, with the final confrontation with Sauron at hand, it had awakened, spewing forth a torrent of hormone-ridden girls.

"It's a computer." Sarai leaned over it. "A bit of a shit one, but it's got a modem."

"What in the name of Mandos in a computer? Or a modem?"

"A computer is an information-thingy and a modem is a thingy for sending information."

Light dawned on Elrond's face, despite this cryptic explanation.

"I begin to see how this works. The palantir finds the girls and this 'modem' brings them here," he breathed. "But it will work no more."

With that, he flung it to the floor and stamped on it until it was nothing but a collection of shards of metal and plastic, although oddly enough it still beeped occasionally.

"And I shall put the seeing-stone in a place where none will find it." He was thinking of Elladan's sock drawer, a place that the younger elf scarcely visited, preferring to keep his socks in a pile under his bed.

Feeling an incipient headache from Sarai's lurid red hair and silver-green-violet eyes, he wandered off to do precisely that.

Legolas sat for a moment toying with his braids until inspiration struck him.

"Sarai?"

"Yes, Leggy-kins?"

"Would you do something for me?"

"But of course: I love you, sweetie."

"Ride to Orthanc and ask Saruman if I can borrow his spare palantir. If he complains, remind him that he still owes me from our last poker game. Oh, and do you have one of these modems?"

"No, but Selrai does."

"Your sister who is attracted to Hobbits?"

"Yeah, her. If I tell her where to find Frodo, she'll give it to me."

And so she set off, only too willing to demonstrate her improbably perfect horsemanship.

Legolas grinned. It was always useful to have friends in many places.

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