The break of day's claim of innocence and new beginnings had reset the tempo of night's anguish, but the fleeting rush of keenest joy was nonetheless eclipsed by the interminable shadow of death and decay that had befallen them. It was painted exactly the way Eowyn loved as she skirted the parapet of Meduseld, the fierce wantonness of Rohan's dawns that fused the dying and the newborn.
Perpetual it was, at least to Eowyn of Rohan, such that there was barely a recollection of a time where the tinkle of laughter edged out uncertainty. Now the suffocating shroud of lies in which Rohan was shelled into engendered slow, inexorable dips into insanity.
Theodred had died during the night, his face now blue and hard. Under the inflexible flow of Saruman's forces, riders of the Mark had reason to quail.
Oh Theodred, cousin…Rohan is poorer without you.
His father, Theoden king, had been for too long a time, the mere puppet of Grima son of Galmod, drooping and regressing under the woollen, poisoned malaise of indecision and obscurity.
Eomer, Third Marshal of Riddermark and beloved brother, banished from the lands with their able-bodied soldiers and horses.
Just as she thought the profound dramatics found in the downward spiral of events had spun full on its axis, the sudden uplift of the wind brought under its bulge three hasty figures that galloped on horseback, clad in shifting, fleshly colours of Arda, brandishing arms of sorts.
Phantom riders, or perhaps asylum seekers.
A company of three, no, four, comprised of who, she did not yet know. But in that short time they had dismounted and were disarmed by the doorwardens in front, leaving the old man only his staff.
Had they not realised that any purposeful meeting of sorts with a King who barely held his own was already a battle lost? It was not something she wished to see – the utter failure of Rohan and the humiliation of the house of Eorl in the Golden Hall, where faltering, lying words came from a puppet.
Someone spoke, cautious words of greetings and customary pleasantries.
Meduseld swayed under a sudden, tense silence…and a noise followed soon after, disturbing and loud, one that she could not ignore.
Eowyn ran, footfalls sharp, consumed only by the vision of the confrontation between the enigmatic Istar and the shadow of Rohan's once majestic King. The need to run and protect her King was strong, to shield him nonetheless within the sour, nomadic drift of mind that Wormtongue's deceit had created, all in the hope of sparing him further pain.
Strong arms gripped her from behind; they stopped her in mid-run. A remarkably striking man with weathered yet aquiline features withheld her progress, the silent and charismatic command in his eyes deafening.
Hold. Wait.
The forward momentum made them both spin an infinitesimal left, and then he steadied her, pulling her towards his own body for leverage, the sudden pressure of his hands on her upper arms forcing her to look upwards, to witness the fertility that bloomed from passing chaos.
Then the rebirth occurred. The most extraordinary of renaissances under the synthesis of stress and powerlessness, coalescing before her eyes. Beneath the vigorous stream of the wizard's words and the provocative angle of his staff, the King bared his teeth after the stuttering of the tongue, reared his head backwards and slumped, as though that short action has stunned him.
The solid hold on her arm no longer stayed her back. The motion, frozen in time, had melted, freeing her to run to the King, beholding the gradual return of acumen and the welding of his faculties as the snowy debility faded from physical sight. He was transformed, reborn with the new desire to act and the cauterising zeal to overwrite the previous resignation to hopelessness.
She felt a relief so great, an exultation so desperate that it splintered but for a moment the nerves of steel forged when she perceived so long ago that Rohan would crumble under the Wormtongue.
"I know you," he murmured and paused. "I know your face, sister-daughter. Eowyn." It was a soft cry of regret, of deep emotion that made the corners of her mouth turn hesitantly up.
She brought him to a standing position and noticed for the first time, the visitors to Rohan. A man, the white wizard, a dwarf, and an elf, as though the representatives of the peoples of Arda congregated under their hall.
Theoden was speaking. With an effort, she tore her gaze away.
Then he seemed genuinely puzzled.
"Where is Theodred?"
**********
There was a heaviness that had descended upon Edoras and it troubled him greatly. It was in times like these where Legolas Greenleaf sought the vast terrain for respite, the bond of the Eldar to Arda that he seemed to feel the strongest amid wretchedness and woe.
But in the shieldmaiden he found a flicker of something dissimilar to the morose landscape, housing the same fortitude he'd briefly glimpsed in the Eomer Eadig, the man who had identified himself as the Third Marshal of the Riddermark.
Eowyn, shieldmaiden of Rohan.
A name that arched his tongue and resonated softly in the sighing of the leaves.
Carved of ice and steel, she stood fair and apart from the Rohirrim as she sang Theodred's elegy, a compellingly mystic but incomplete idea that drew him obstinately back to soothing memories of Anor's piercing rays upon crisp snow. A different spirit soldered by cool pity and detachment, of fiery stillness and galvanised movement, almost akin to that of the Eldar, simply merely lacking in the wisdom that age brought. Yet even the Elder children of Iluvatar lacked the vigour of mortality that she exerted so freely. Its blaze intrigued him, and in her he felt the brief union of both races, a stupefying entity that many would tremble at.
Legolas watched her with a curious gaze, unable to decipher past her vehement magnetism, fatigued and strangely alive at the stern intensity and fervour she seemed to pour into all that her hands touched.
But now she sat alone on a grassy mound facing the tomb, fingering the wild flowers that bloomed without care, lost in magnificent thought and the fever of –
"Lady Eowyn?" He bit back an involuntary smile at the sudden lack of grace that she had unwittingly displayed when she leapt upward at the sound of his voice, stumbling a little at the slightly twist of an ankle.
"Master Elf," she laughed softly. "I did not hear you come."
"Forgive my temerity, lady. You wish solitude, something that is in my power to not deny at the moment," he observed.
"No, stay, please. Do not leave on my account."
It was as she had expected – the brash, affectionate dwarf whom she had instantly taken to, the fount of wisdom that was the Istar, and the stunning, inscrutable ranger. Already he drew many around him, and to him with an indelible strength and confident fearlessness that proclaimed him champion among men.
But an Elf or even a dwarf, uneasy companions even though they were – in Rohan! The Rohirrim were unused to travellers, particularly those of any other race than of their own. More often than not the visitors slipped thinly through Rohan's borders unannounced and out of mind thereafter. Eowyn watched the Elf closely, recognising the same polite aloofness in him that she sometimes tended to exhibit, and heard with little surprise, more words that he spoke this day than in the past few days combined.
His reserved mien remained, but in him there seemed to be a soothing balm; perhaps it was his manner of speaking, or the generous outflow of sympathy that he conveyed, or an intuitiveness that bode well despite her limited interaction with those outside the race of men.
What does one say to an Elf?
Eowyn found that she could not care. The day had been too exhausting, and the maniacal fight against the rising shadows had only begun.
"What do you see, my Lady?'
A question that ran with numerous answers on its tail. But she chose a different way.
"It is simply Eowyn, Master Elf," she replied rather curtly, not turning to look his way. Weren't pleasantries better dashed away after the stifling formalities of last rites?
"What passes your vision?" He repeated the question steadily, unflinchingly in his gaze.
"Is there a certain answer that you appear to be looking for?"
He smiled briefly. "Tell me, Eowyn."
She drew back with a sly smile, knowing that he had baited her.
"Very well." The smile disappeared as sudden as it had come. "Shadowless skies and spaces, Master Elf. Theodred's passing –" She stopped short, knowing of no better expression, finally declining to speak further.
The grass was not crushed beneath his feet as he stepped onto the mound that she had nearly fallen off, perching neatly on its slope and moved his gaze outward, keeping her in the periphery of his vision. Abruptly he turned to face her, taking her hands loosely in his.
"Leap, Eowyn," he urged gently, with more than a hint of solemnity in his voice. "Leap far and faithful, on the other side of the shadow!" He sighed at her apparent lack of response. "Arda's tapestry may be marred, Lady, but the shadows can – they must be! – pushed back. Do not confine yourself to the present! Think of the last hour, think of triumph, not defeat. And there will be space aplenty afterward, for the unending sweetness of dreams."
She laughed now, devoid of mirth, disentangling her hands quickly, morphed once more into the breathtaking but sombre beauty of a rainy dawn.
"Perhaps, Master Elf." Surely she did not need to tell him that in the gap of nearly half a millennia the fields of Calenardhon had been tightly squeezed by orcs of the White Mountains and the Dunlendings of the west, having fallen beyond hope had not Gandalf the White brought salvation to the Golden Hall. "There is much to fight for."
But to risk a glance at him meant also to relinquish a gloom that made people in their misery content to dwell upon, yet she feared that it was merely opening a window of artifice, wherein she could obstinately build an individually faultless world far abstracted from reality. An Elf's promise of hope was to her still an inadequate emblem of faith.
"I am sorry for your loss." His mouth twitched so minutely, so fleetingly that she could only imagine she saw that first open display of emotion.
She could only sigh, a curiously eloquent inflection of the fullness of grief turned momentarily into wonder.
"Darkness falls," Legolas paused diplomatically as he perceived her cautiousness, restrained by the perspicacity and prudence found in heir of kings. He would leave her be, as she willed. "There is a matter that I must tend to. I bid you a good night, my Lady."
"Eowyn," she answered unthinkingly which spurred a moment of sharp scrutiny and silence on his part. He looked up sharply, and saw that she was unusual, a hybrid spirit of conflagrate steel and velvety sentiment.
"If you will call me Legolas."
He left, cloaked by colours of verdurous seasons, swallowed effortlessly into the violent spew of the sunset and she watching him, until she saw him no more.
**********