Disclaimer: I do not own Lord of the Rings or any associated characters.
******
"Legolas! Legolas, answer me!"
"Damn you, elf, wake up!"
Legolas lay on his back unconscious. On either side of him, Aragorn and Gimli knelt, trying desperately to wake the elven prince. But the elf did not stir or show any signs of response as his worried friends frantically shook the lifeless body. Legolas' eyes remained tightly shut and body utterly limp even as Aragon lifted him up and cradled the blond archer's head in the crook of his arm.
"Aragorn, what's wrong with him?" Gimli cried, trying to hold back the rising panic in his voice.
Only moments before, while the rest of them had been excitedly watching the knights race around the tournament ring, Legolas had suddenly jumped to his feet as if startled by something. But before anyone could react to his strange behavior, Legolas had just as suddenly collapsed to the floor. Blood was pouring from a cut on the elf's right temple where his head had cracked against the wooden railing of the seating box when he had suddenly been taken by this mysterious swoon.
"Do you want me to send for help?" Arwen offered worriedly from Legolas' feet as her husband attempted to staunch the flow of scarlet fluid seeping down the side of his friend's face with his hand. Reaching into the sleeve of her gown, the queen quickly produced a handkerchief and offered it to Aragorn.
Taking the cloth and pressing it to Legolas' head, the trained healer shook his head, "No. Just give me a minute. I can do this."
"What do you think happened to him?" Gimli again implored. The dwarf was becoming increasingly agitated by the elf's unresponsive nature and by the sight of blood that continued to seep out his unconscious friend's head.
"I do not know. There is little reason for him to have fainted so suddenly," the king answered gravely. Worry creased his tanned face. Shifting the limp body in his arms, Aragorn gently pressed two forefingers to the underside of Legolas' chin, feeling for a pulse. He did not have to probe deep to find it; the elf's heartbeat raced under the tips of his fingers shallow and fast. Slightly worried by this, the man then moved his free hand up to Legolas' pale face and felt his forehead. "He is slightly warm, though not running a fever of any kind."
"Legolas was complaining about the heat earlier today..." Gimli offered, hopeful that this might somehow help Aragorn diagnose what was wrong with Legolas.
But before Aragorn could do anything with this new information, the elf in his arms slowly began to stir. A low moan escaped Legolas' lips as he tossed his head weakly against Aragorn's chest. Those huddled closely around the awakening elf waited in breathless anticipation as the prince's eyelids fluttered slightly.
"Come on, Legolas. Come on now, that's it. Wake up," Aragorn coaxed softly, smoothing back several long strands of blond hair from the elf's sweat dampened face.
Gimli also edged closer to Legolas' side and gently took the elf's hand into his own. "Blasted elf better wake up..." the dwarf muttered under his breath as he stared raptly into the prince's face.
Aragorn immediately realized how worried Gimli really must have been if he was bestowing so much unmasked concern onto the elven prince. Even though the two shared one of the closest bonds of friendship Aragorn had ever seen, they would still on numerous occasions vehemently denounce having such strong affections for each other. It was the curse Legolas and Gimli both carried for sharing such a cross-racial friendship when Elves and Dwarves still held such suspicious contempt for each other.
"He's coming around," the king whispered in relief as he felt the slim archer tense in his arms, signaling a return to consciousness.
Blinking slowly in groggy disorientation, Legolas again issued a soft moan. One of his hands automatically reached up to the throbbing area of his head where Aragorn was still applying pressure to with a now blood-sodden cloth. Finding a hand already there, the semi-conscious elf dropped his hand and settled back into Aragorn arms, letting his head roll back into the bend of Aragorn's elbow.
Groaning, Legolas groggily blinked his liquid blue eyes open and stared up at the faces hovering over him. But what immediately happened next was something Aragorn and Gimli never anticipated.
Legolas screamed.
The blood-cuddling cry of terror ripped through Aragorn and Gimli's ears like a hot knife. In the blink of an eye, the elf bolted upright and violently twisted out of Aragorn's grasp, practically throwing the man to the ground as he threw the protective arms from around him. Eyes wide with unmistakable fear in their cerulean depths, Legolas scuttled backwards across the ground until his back finally flattened against the front of the seating box with a hollow thud. The prince's chest heaved in short, shallow breaths of air as he sat like a cornered animal pressed against the short wooden wall.
"Legolas!" Aragorn cried sharply, completely startled by this sudden outburst. Gimli and Arwen knelt beside the king, staring at Legolas in shock. Quickly regaining his composure, the man spoke soft and slow, trying to calm the clearly terrified and disoriented elf. "It's us, Legolas – your friends. We are not going to harm you. You are safe. It's alright."
Recognition seemed to spark in the archer and the immediate fear dimmed in his eyes. Legolas sat for a moment in silence staring in bewilderment at the worried faces of his friends huddled near him. "Where... What happened?" he finally croaked. The elf slowly raised a shaking hand to the side of his head. He involuntarily winced as his fingers brushed against the tender patch of sliced skin.
"You fainted and cut your head when you fell," Aragorn explained calmly as he got to his feet and bent down in front of Legolas to examine him again. The man reached out tentatively to touch the elf's injured head, almost afraid Legolas would recoil away from him as he had just done. But the archer did not and Aragorn gently reapplied pressure to the oozing cut above Legolas' right eye. The side of Legolas' head was already beginning to swell into a large goose-egg, but the cut was finally beginning to clot and the bleeding ebb away.
"I fainted?" Legolas repeated in a small, confused voice. He hissed sharply under his breath as Aragorn dabbed at the tender cut on his head.
"Not only did you faint, but you also gave all of us one nasty scare!" Gimli broke in and shouted angrily. The dwarf picked himself off the ground and stalked over to the elf. Dropping down eye-level with the dazed prince, he stared into Legolas' face threateningly. "If you ever do something like that again, I swear I'll hack all those pretty little braids of yours off with my own ax! Do you understand?! What ever made you do such a thing?!"
The dwarf wasn't angry with Legolas himself; he was upset by how much the elf's faint had truly scared him. Now that he saw Legolas awake and alert, Gimli's anxiety for his friend's welfare was quickly becoming overshadowed by a swelling of wounded pride. He did not like having his emotions wrenched about and unwittingly displayed for all to see in such a way. Frustrated and half-embarrassed for being so shaken by Legolas' sudden fainting spell, the stout little dwarf hid his emotions behind a facade of anger. But his act did not fool either Aragorn, Arwen, or Legolas.
"I didn't faint," Legolas muttered weakly as Aragorn continued to tend his cut head. The prince slowly shook his head as if trying to shake cobwebs from his mind. "I don't know what happened, but I did not faint..."
"Warg's dung you didn't!" Gimli snorted, "I saw it myself."
"And so did Arwen and I," the king of Gondor confirmed with a solemn nod of the head, "It was probably the heat. Gimli said you were complaining about it earlier today before the tournament. You probably just got too overheated and blacked out. It is nothing to be ashamed of, Legolas. It could happen to anyone–"
"No!" Legolas cried sharply, surprising everyone by the intensity of his voice. Jerking his head out of the elven-trained healer's grasp, the elf struggled to pull himself onto his knees and stand.
"Legolas, you must stay still. You could faint again if you move too fast," Aragorn cautioned as he put a firm hand on the Legolas' shoulder and tried to push the fighting elf back to the ground. "You might have a concussion. I do not want you moving around so quickly."
"I tell you I did not faint!" the blond prince cried stubbornly, "Did not anyone else see them?"
"See who?" Gimli questioned gruffly.
"The ones in the crowd," Legolas said. He finally managed to shrug the man's hand off his shoulder and hoist himself up onto his knees, much to Aragorn's dismay. The elf reached up, gripping the top of the seating box's railing, and gingerly got to his feet. Legolas' head spun with vertigo as he righted himself and stood straight. The elf's knees shook under him slightly as though they were filled with jelly.
Legolas immediately tightened his grip on the railing for support. For a second, he thought he was about to be sick by the way his stomach clenched in his gut by the sudden shifting of positions. The throbbing in his temple intensified as a rush of blood pounded in his ears. But he was too proud to show his weakness to any of his friend; especially Aragorn who had cautioned him against such actions. He waited until the queasiness passed and his vision focused again. Slowly, the world stopped spinning.
"What are you talking about, Legolas?" Aragorn asked with concern, coming up beside the elf at the railing. The king stood far enough away from the pale looking prince to give him room, but close enough to catch him if he should suddenly faint again.
"I saw some people in the crowd..." he said, looking out over the tournament ring to the opposite side where several hundred people stood and sat. Legolas was immediately startled to find that instead of watching the main ring, the crowd's attention was now turned onto the small seating box of the king. Several hundred sets of eyes stared back at him. A hushed murmur was rising out of the crowd as spectators leaned towards their neighbor and whispered to each other under their breaths. Legolas could feel the gaze of the people on him, watching him.
The race had ended several minutes before with an uproarious victory of the second knight. But when Aragorn had not risen to give some sort of praise to the winning knight, the people had immediately noticed something wrong in the king's sectioned seating box. All that could be discerned was that one of King Elessar's guests – the elf from Ithilien – was lying on the ground with the king, queen, and dwarf huddled around him.
The tournament proceedings had immediately been halted when Legolas collapsed. Some of the more curious spectators of the crowd were standing on the lower rungs of the tournament ring's fence trying to better see what was going on. Everyone there stood in a tense state of anticipation waiting to see what had happened to the king's friend.
"Legolas, what is going on?" Aragorn whispered, becoming increasingly worried by the elf's unnatural uneasiness and noticing the large amount of attention now drawn to them by the crowd.
"I saw some people... They were wearing dark grey cloaks," the prince tried to explain, as he swept his eyes over the hushed crowd of onlookers staring back at him. But as his sharp elven eyes scanned the crowd, Legolas saw no sign of the mysterious cloaked figures.
"Legolas, there are hundreds of people out there. There is no way you could have seen anyone like that..." the old ranger tried to reason, placing a reassuring hand on Legolas' shoulder.
"I know what I saw, Aragorn," Legolas growled, turning on the man. Aragorn immediately noticed a strange glint shining in the elf's eyes; a mixture of fear and apprehension, or perhaps something else he could not quite place. "There were five of them. They were standing right there in that middle section," the blond archer motioned across the field, "One of them reached out and motioned directly at me. I... I don't really remember what happened next. I got up, but then..." Legolas trailed off uncertainly. The elf shook his head as if trying to rattle some forgotten memory from his brain. "Ugh! 'Tis all a blur," he sighed wearily, rubbing the pinch of skin between his eyes. "All I can remember for certs is that I heard a strange song which words I could not understand, and then..."
A flood of unbidden images rushed into Legolas head. A blood-red stained sky. A desolate wasteland of blackened ash. The stench of smoke and burnt flesh. All the horrific visions flashed through the elf's mind like images cast by the light of a sputtering candle.
"Legolas...?"
Legolas felt his knees buckle under him as the images of five shadow-cloaked wraiths with faceless black holes under low hoods of dark grey flashed in his mind. He could not help but shudder as he remembered the way the ghostly phantoms stood over him singing their strange, haunting chant as the deafening roar of a thousand tortured souls screamed in his ears.
"Legolas?"
The elf was startled out of his trance by the sudden calling of his name, and elicted a small gasp as though he had been awakened from a deep sleep. His head snapped towards Aragorn who now stood close beside him with a strong hand on his slender shoulder. "Are you alright, my friend?" the king asked with great concern in his voice. The man's eyebrows knitted together in the center of his face as he observed Legolas closely. The elven prince looked extremely pale and shaken. His usually sharp and piercing blue eyes seemed distant and troubled, and the warrior's whole demeanor seemed to be set on edge.
Legolas stared back at Aragorn silently with a look of subdued panic in his eyes. "I...I...," he stuttered, shifting his eyes distractedly back across the field to the crowded seating section opposite them.
The elf's sharp eyes hurriedly scanned the sea of faces. He could not make out any signs of the mysterious cloaked figures. It was as though they had just disappeared. But that was impossible. Where could they have gone? It was too crowded for them to have maneuvered through the crowd and leave the tournament field so quickly. Perhaps they had just melded back into the crowd. But if that was so, why was it that no one else seemed to notice five tall men dressed in dark cloaks amongst them?
~Am I imagining things?~ Legolas wondered, beginning to doubt what he had seen. ~Perhaps it was the heat like Aragorn said. No one else seems to have noticed them. Maybe it was all just an illusion...~ But this logical reasoning did little to ease the elf's growing uneasiness. The images of the apocalyptic dream remained too fresh and vivid in his mind. It was as though he had really been there, and heard and felt everything that had happened. He swore he could still hear the faint echo of ghostly victims screaming in his ears.
As his sharp elven eyes scanned the crowd one last fruitless time, Legolas suddenly no longer felt safe. Shaken and paranoid, Legolas could almost feel the lurking presence of the mysterious wraiths somewhere nearby, watching him. He had to get out of there.
"I... I am sorry. I fear I have caused too much trouble here," Legolas finally said, reigning his wandering eyes in from the murmuring crowd and looking at Aragorn. "I will leave before I ruin the day's festivities any further..." The elf quickly made to leave but was immediately stopped by Aragorn.
"No one is asking you to leave, Legolas. I would much prefer it if you stayed here," the man said as he placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. For some reason, Aragorn suddenly felt that Legolas' unrest went much deeper than a mere faint. He wanted to keep Legolas near him, feeling that he had to watch over the clearly panicked elf and find out what was troubling him. Thinking quickly to back up his request, Aragorn added hastily, "Your head still needs to be seen to. If you let me send a servant for some bandages, I can do it here, and then we can finish watching the rest of the tournament."
"An excellent idea," Arwen agreed with forced blitheness, sensing what her husband was trying to do. "I will send for a servant..."
"No!" Legolas cried shrilly in panic, seeing his chance of escape vanish in that very instant. Aragorn, Gimli and Arwen froze, staring at the elf in shock. Immediately startled by his own outburst and seeing the shocked expressions on his friends' faces, the prince again tried to concoct a plausible excuse to leave the crowded tournament field. With every passing moment the elf was growing more and more uneasy and nervous by the mysterious disappearance of the cloaked men. As the crowd continued to stare at Legolas from the seating benches across the ring, he could feel their eyes closing in on him, hewing him in by their collective gaze.
Legolas tried to calm himself. Every particle of his being was screaming at him to run and hide. Trying to regain some composure, the elven prince tried to hold back the panicked tone in his voice, and said as smoothly as he could, "It... It is just that I wish to lie down for awhile. I am feeling a bit tired... Please, do not trouble yourselves with me. I will be fine. I will see you all later tonight at dinner."
Moving before any of the others could react, Legolas gave a hasty bow to the king and queen of Gondor and turned sharply on his heels and all but ran for the small wooden set of stairs leading out of the royal seating box. Left to stare in shock at the retreating elf's back, Aragorn and Gimli stood speechless. Before disappearing down the stairs and out into the bright sunlight, Legolas gave one final nervous glance over his shoulder past his friends to the other side of the tournament ring. Aragorn and Gimli did not fail to miss the naked fear and apprehension shining in Legolas' ice-blue eyes.
As Legolas disappeared from sight, Gimli turned to Aragorn with a startled expression twisted across his bearded face. "What was that all about?"he exclaimed, totally confused by the elf's unnatural behavior.
"I do not know," the old ranger replied truthfully with a shake his crowned head.
"Should I go after him?" Gimli asked uncertainly. Half of him wished to run after the fleeing elf and force him to tell him what was wrong. Gimli was extremely disturbed. Legolas was never one to admit he was tired or beg for rest, even when he was a moment away from collapsing with exhaustion. Gimli was also perturbed by the fact that there were very few things in existence that he knew of that could have shaken Legolas so badly. But while worried and deeply concerned for his elven friend, the dwarf felt himself somewhat obligated to respect Legolas' need for privacy.
"Yes, but do not pester him about what happened. Just keep an eye on him. I do not think his head injury is very serious, but he could have another fainting spell is he does not rest," Aragorn cautioned. Staring thoughtfully in the direction Legolas had just gone, the man said, "I do not think all of this was brought on just because of the heat. Something else is wrong. But I doubt Legolas is going to tell us what is bothering him until he is ready."
"That goes without saying..." Gimli muttered as he turned to reach for his ever-present axe leaning against the armrest of his chair.
"I cannot leave here just yet. Once the tournament is done, I will return to the palace and see to Legolas. He may not take to it kindly, but try and make sure he stays inside until then," the mortal king said.
Hefting the weapon up onto his shoulder, the dwarf gave a nod of understanding and exited the seating box to catch up with the blond archer. As Gimli also disappeared from sight, Aragorn slowly turned to comfort Arwen who stood near him, clearly distraught with worry for the elven prince of Mirkwood.
"Do you think Legolas will be alright?" she asked her husband, her ancient grey eyes imploring reassurance.
Aragorn forced a smile onto his face. "I think so. But I think there is something more to this than we see. Do not worry, I'm sure Legolas will confide in us ovnce he has had time to rest and collect his thoughts." Tenderly taking the elf-maiden's hand into his own, the man led his queen back to the gold-backed chairs lined across the seating box. "Come. We must oversee the rest of the tournament. The people are becoming restless." Nodding, Arwen retook her seat next to Aragorn.
By now, the herald had reappeared in the center of the ring and was anxiously waiting for the king's orders to proceed. But the crowd was no longer interested in the horse races. Many were engaged in muttered conversations with those around them, speculating as to what exactly could have happened to the elf in the king's seating box. But their speculations were cut short as Aragorn rose from his seat and a loud trumpet blast hushed the crowd into a murmured silence.
As the king signaled for the herald to announce the names of the next two knights to come forth like nothing had happened, Aragorn found his thoughts again gravitating towards the northern wood-elf. Yes. There was something very wrong with Legolas. He could see it in his eyes. Whatever Legolas thought he had seen or heard had truly shaken him. But whatever it was that had frightened him so badly was yet to be seen. Perhaps when he finally returned to the palace they could find out more...
But until then, all Aragorn could do was to hope that whatever Legolas' vision was, was not some precursor to some greater evil...
******
"It is him. He is the One..."
"Are you sure of it?"
"Yes. His reactions to the vision were unmistakable. We have finally found Feäglîn* "
"But he is so young..."
"Age does not matter. I saw the spark in his eyes... He is the One. The Light of Manwë has returned. This elfling may seem weak and fragile now, but once his powers have been awakened, he will become the most powerful being in the world."
"Then we must act quickly... Before they get to him."
"Yes. We will make contact tonight, when the elf is alone."
"Do you think he has any knowledge of who he really is, or of what power he possesses?"
"That is unclear at the moment."
"But what if he remembers? It could be disastrous to the mission – especially if they get to him first."
"It is doubtful he would have any memory of his original role in this drama. All we can be sure of is that we must protect him from the Brotherhood..."
"Do you think they know we have found the One?"
"It does not matter. They are not far away – I can feel their presence nearby. We may have reached Middle-earth before them, but they have managed to locate the galednel** almost as quickly as we have. They will waste no time in making their move. We must keep the One away from them or all will be lost..."
"But what if they get to him first?"
"Then the stars will sputter and die, and the world cast into darkness..."
TBC...
Fancy-schmancy index of elven phrases and vocabulary
* Feäglîn ~ Meaning 'shining spirit' from the Quenyan words 'feä' (spirit) + 'glîn' (gleam or shine, as with pertinence to the eyes); a given title that will be explained in later chapters.
** galednel ~ meaning 'green elf' from 'galen' (green) + the Sindarian word 'edhel' (elf).
Ok, we're up to the point in the story I left off with before I switched the story over to my original pen name and lost all my other wonderful reviews *sob*. Anyway, I'm closing in on the homestretch of the fourth chapter and should have it up soon. (Famous last words…) So 'till then!