Desolation
Chapter Seven
Thanks to Nemis for betaing this *gives chocolate*
This chapter is rated R for violence.
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The march to Laketown through the perpetual night was long and arduous. The children wailed and cried out, their wounds but little tended. In truth, they had almost no supplies with them, for such had been the speed and ferocity of the unexpected attack. Elf-maidens walked along with tears coursing down their faces, cutting deep channels in the soot and filth that obscured their features, and yet in their hands swords were brighter than grief. Husbands carried their wives, wives their husbands. There was a sense of barely controlled disarray to the column, which could hardly be said to constitute a fighting force, and yet there was something deeper too, an old anger that seethed and roiled in the weary faces and tensed bodies under charred clothing. The might of the Firstborn had awoken in this exhausted and smoke-sick band.
They had had but a scant handful of hours huddled under the scorched and crackling eaves of Mirkwood before fear had pressed them onwards, half looking backwards in expectance that a host of Orcs would any minute nip at their heels, half looking forwards in dread of what lay before them. The pitiful group seemed to stagger through the open, rolling plains and low hills, lurching from one clump of sheltering trees and scrubby bushes to the next. They were crammed close together, bruised shoulder touching bruised shoulder, shying away from the darkness beyond, clumping hurriedly when red-eyed wolves, carrying with them the stench of death, harried the stragglers.
The leaders of the band were no less begrimed, battered and wearied than the rest as they struggled onwards through the once-fertile lands. Indeed, their hearts were heavier still, although they stood tall and proud, and their faces showed nothing but steadfast resolution.
Elrond brushed a strand of wind-whipped black hair out of his eyes and glanced at the starless sky glowering above them. It was a long time before he could tear his eyes way and longer yet before he spoke. When he did so it was in an undertone, barely more than a whisper, and his voice was husky and raw with pain. "So we are truly forsaken. Ai... Elbereth!" He looked back at the sky, his jaw set hard.
Thranduil followed his gaze to the featureless blackness and for a moment his face was so grim that it seemed he would agree with the other elf-lord.
"The stars shine yet," he said finally, "although their light does not reach our eyes."
"Maybe." Elrond inclined his head in recognition of the words' worth. They walked onwards for a mile or more in silence before he spoke again. "My... When I was held in Himring, Maglor told us of the darkening of Valinor. How very distant that darkness seemed with the roaring fire before us and our foster-father..." He trailed off; it would hardly be diplomatic to mention that with the kinslayer's arms around them, cradling their tiny bodies close, all evil had seemed so very far away. While Elrond had made his own peace with the kinslayings long ago, the child of both worlds, Thranduil had made his bitter hostility all too well known. "...That other darkness seemed scarcely real, and yet now I can believe we are tasting some fraction of it."
Thranduil smiled enigmatically. "My father was out of his senses with fear when the moon first rose, or so he told me, for its brightness burnt his night-accustomed eyes. More than once he cheered me from a fit of the sullens with those tales... How different perceptions can be..."
Looking over, Elrond could see that the Sindar Elf's eyes were shadowed by grief, and it was not hard to guess on what he thought. It had been hard to lose their elders, but it was never so cruel a blow as the loss of their children. Nevermore in this lifetime would they pass those tales on.
Elrond sighed, and trudged onwards through the tall grass which swayed and swirled in the rising wind.
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The lanterns were guttering frantically when they sighted the shores of the Long Lake, but there was no need for such pitiful flames to gaze upon the settlement of Men. A pillar of black smoke arose in the Southeast where the town should have been, silhouetted darkly even against the dread sky. A foul tang hung in the air and flickers of dull crimson seemed to creep along the ground.
Slowly they moved forward now, and not a soul among them did not hold some weapon at the ready, be they tried warrior or pastry-chef. The stench became heavier, more terrible, clogging their lungs, and amid the acrid reek it was all too easy to discern the nauseating smell of burning flesh.
As they came down onto the road, they saw the desolation, but they had neither time nor attention to spare for the burning wreck that had once been Laketown, for mutilated corpses lined the greenway, nailed to trees, spread-eagled on the ground or impaled on their own crude weapons. Even the most cursory check revealed that none could possibly be alive.
A child, of no more than seven summers, who had been proudly strutting alongside his king and the peredhel lord, seemingly blithely unaware of his mother's entreaties to return to her side, waving a kitchen knife menacingly, took one look at the carcass of a young maiden, slit from neck to navel by a wicked notched blade which still lay beside her, fouled in the mass of her spilled viscera, and burst into wrenching sobs, his face buried in the earth. His mother, struggling to keep his older sister from running away, was helpless. Elrond hunkered down beside the boy, wrapping the small, shuddering body in his arms. Rubbing soothing circles on the boy's back, he murmured to him just as he had when calming his own children from their nightmares. Gradually, the sobs subsided, although the boy still clung to the front of his tunic with remarkable tenacity.
"Who are you?" he asked bluntly.
"I am Elrond, a friend of your king."
"I am Galien. Are you going to kill the bad Orcs?"
Elrond looked down at the head of downy hair, the fearful eyes, and felt a rueful smile twist his mouth.
"Aye. I shall try my very best."
Galien nodded, apparently satisfied, and stretched out his arms. "Carry me," he commanded imperiously.
Receiving an approving nod from the elfling's mother, Elrond lifted the boy into his arms, trying to ignore the twinge of pain as the action pulled at his wound. While he succeeded somewhat in that, Thranduil's smirk was far more difficult to ignore.
For a moment they stood that way, their backs to the carnage, and the next they turned, all mirth forgotten or put aside.
It took a several hours to pick their way past the scattered bodies to the shoreline, but in this endless dusk which was neither night or day, time seemed suspended, like a crumb caught in thick honey.
Where once the town had risen from the waters of the lake, made proud and strong by the labours of the Men of Dale, only the foundations remained, blackened and charred. Lumps of carbonised wood floated in the bloodied waters, bobbing and colliding with corpses that were already bloated and fish-gnawed. A carrion bird perched on a man's head, cawing his challenge to the night.
"How?" someone asked far back in the crowd, and other voices took up the query.
Gently passing Galien to the wood-king, Elrond knelt and dipped one hand in the lapping waters. It came away coated with a viscous black substance. He sniffed at it warily, and his nose wrinkled in distaste. "Rock-oil! They must have drenched the town with such substances as sometimes seep from the ground." He resisted the urge to curse inventively, and stood quickly, surveying the still burning structure. "Get back! It may not be safe to remain so close."
As the crowd shuffled backward with considerable speed, he rose slowly to his feet and wiped his hand on a stray scrap of cloth lying on the shoreline. He had no desire to know whence it had originated. Flinging it into the waters, he made a cursory attempt to brush the sodden ash from his breeches, but it was to no avail.
"Orc-work from end to end," Thranduil spat, his fists clenched. The folk of Laketown had been allies of the woodland realm, despite the disturbance seventy years before over the dragon's hoard, and none would forget their demise.
"Sauron moves against us now," Elrond said quietly, so that the words would carry only to the ears of the Sindar king. "He has crushed the resistance to the south, and now moves north to subjugate all Middle-earth."
Neither needed to speak aloud. They both knew what that meant.
~*~
The camp barely qualified to be named thus, but it was all they had, driven as they were to the brink of exhaustion. All was quiet as the Elves gathered branches and began to weave them together into crude shelters, but then, as they worked, hands flying, huddled against the dark, one voice arose in song, and another joined it, and then another. The dirge rose and fell in the sweeping air like the swell of the ocean tides, scores of voices singing as one, in praise and lamentation to all the Valar in distant Taniquetil. As the last fragile frames were put in place and the cooking fires were lit, the song wound to its mournful close, the name of Nienna lingering in the air.
It did indeed seem that she wept for them; a light drizzle had begun to fall, sizzling and hissing into the fires, gradually turning into thick, cloying snow that gathered in pockets in the creases of their garments and in the shelter behind their makeshift tents.
Elrond moved from group to group attending the wounded, his borrowed cloak discarded, his tunic unbuttoned and his shirtsleeves rolled up. The cold was deeper than the airs which shuffled and whispered for mile upon mile above them, deep enough to discomfort the hardiest of the Firstborn, but he scarcely noticed, so great was his concentration on his patients.
He was suturing a deep thigh wound, squinting by the fitful light of a lantern, when he felt a light touch on his shoulder. Placing the last stitch, he bound the wound tightly and rose.
"We are lucky that there are so few serious injuries."
"My kinsfolk are hardier and more skilful than many care to admit." There was more than a hint of the old arrogance in the wood-king's eyes.
"I know," Elrond said softly. "I saw it in my mother."
Thranduil dropped his gaze first. "However, you are in dire danger of burdening us with another casualty."
"There is no such risk."
"You are trembling, peredhel."
Elrond lifted one hand to deny it, but he saw that his fingers were shaking, and let it fall.
"Come on." Thranduil slung one arm around his shoulders, the other proffering the discarded cloak, supporting him as he stumbled away, his dragging feet catching on stones and knotted hillocks of dried grass. Snow drifted down upon them, settling in the half-elven lord's dark hair like the unseen stars of night above them.
The bustle of the camp was almost incongruous amid the endless, hostile night and in wordless concord they left it behind them. Huddled deep in their cloaks they settled themselves down on a knoll of broken and fragmented granite, dappled with lichen the hue of the finest amber, which had thrust itself up through the soft grasslands. For a long time they sat in silence, listening to the sibilant susurration of the wind rushing over the empty land, and the muted hum of the camp.
It was Elrond who spoke first. "What should we do with the women and children?"
The crisp, decisive tone of his words amid all the half-sounds of the land startled Thranduil into an ungainly twitch. Hurriedly, he attempted to cover his movement, smoothing at his simple raiment as it had once been his habit during complicated diplomatic sessions to smooth at fantastical silks and velvets in procrastination.
Watching, a small smile tugged at the corners of Elrond's mouth. Only too often had he been infuriated by that very gesture in the midst of some political wrangle.
"We cannot take them into battle," Thranduil said solemnly.
"Of course." Elrond nodded, but the shadow of doubt in his eyes deepened perceptibly. "And yet can it be right to leave them?"
"What mean you?"
"Where might they hide that might not fall? And if it fell, they would only have themselves as protection. Their fate then would be no better, and mayhap worse, than if we kept them close. Nowhere now is safe from the all-encompassing arm of the Enemy. Nowhere is now secure for them. Nowhere may they have hope of remaining undetected by that fell force. Your women and children have some measure of ability in the arts of war, and we might more readily protect them on the fringes of battle than a hundred leagues distant from it."
Thranduil jumped to his feet, whirling to face the peredhel, his pale eyes dark with anger, his handsome face contorted into ugly lines. "It is madness you propose, and more, it is massacre, to lead babes and maidens, unarmed and unprepared, into the thick of the most terrible and futile battle you or I have ever known, for all our years of experience?"
Elrond stood slowly, utilising every last ounce of his will to hold his vast impatience in check, deliberately keeping his voice and his every movement calm and smooth. "Look about you, mellon-iaur. The world has lost its sense. Indeed it is madness I propose." Fleetingly he wondered how many of the maidens he would lead to war would suffer Celebrían's fate; he put that thought aside. "But in a maddened world the course of madness may yet run true. Your people know this already, for they live it, as do we. These are no frail, defenceless folk you lead in these dying days. They know their deaths are near, and although their weapons may not have seen war in many a year, they are willing to raise them high and wield them with valour, warrior and maidens and babes all." He paused and stared bitterly into the distance. "I like it as little as you, my friend, but I can see no other choice than this."
Thranduil let his hand fall forlornly to his side, his fingers clutching claws of despair, tearing soundlessly at the sulphurous air. "Aye, I know. I have seen their deaths in my dreams. But the state of Arda Sahta is fouled and rotten indeed if even the might and majesty of the Firstborn cannot save yearling babes and sucklings from the fray."
"Then let us make fair of foul."
"And our payment for our deeds? Shall that be in Valinor?" the Sindarin Elf asked slowly.
"I know not, for I find that I can scarce think of Valinor as of late," Elrond replied in a low whisper. He knew it was there, did not doubt the benevolence of the Valar, and yet it all seemed so very far away, utterly unreachable.
"How very strange," Thranduil mused softly. "I find my thoughts straying more now to that Blessed Realm than ever before has been their wont."
Elrond opened his mouth as if to speak, to elucidate on his growing despair and dislocation, but a sudden uproar from the camp below shattered the moment. Angry, fearful voices rang loudly through the frigid air; the clash of metal against metal, the sighing hiss of arrows fired at random by unsteady hands, the dull thud of flesh against flesh and the scurrying patter of hurrying feet on hard ground.
Both elf-lords tensed, their hands flying to their sword hilts, unsheathing the blades in a screech of metal. Shoulder to shoulder they strode forward, eyes keenly alert, urgently searching the gloom for the source of the disturbance. The sounds of the struggle only grew ever louder as they made their way down the slope at something only marginally less than a run, the voices more insistent. Shadowy figures emerged from the murk, a knot of dark forms struggling on the ground while bystanders hollered an assortment of contradictory advice. Suddenly one voice rose clear above the babble, hoarse and abrasive with anger and exhaustion. "Let be, let be, you fools! Are you blind as the night to think me an Orc?"
Elrond froze. The voice, for all the ruined quality of its melody, had spoken with an unmistakable Lothlórien accent, and it seemed somehow familiar. Shouldering his way forward, he followed the light of a lantern which was being swung from hand to hand as the folk of Mirkwood crowded closer and closer.
An Elf was lying on the ground, pale, streaming blood from a dozen cuts, his fair hair trampled into the earth. A huddle of maidens and warriors alike were holding this solitary figure to the ground. A gaunt-faced lad of no more than sixty summers, the youngest of Thranduil's guard, who had walked in silence, his clothes rent in mourning for his family, was kneeling on the Elf's back, rhythmically slamming his head into the ground, a soft flow of obscenities escaping from his lips.
Thranduil flicked his fingers almost negligently, and the boy's comrades surged forward, dragging him off the prone form, shaking him none too gently until he relaxed in their grasp like a dying fish.
One swift look from Elrond induced Galien to desist from bouncing up and down on the stranger's legs.
Slowly, painfully, the Elf clambered to his feet, as if the very movement cost him the last dregs of his strength. Although he could barely stand, he shifted ceaselessly from foot to foot. It was not hard to discern why: the soles of his feet were raw and bloodied from running until his shoes had worn away with the speed of his passing. He gasped for breath, pain evident in every note, and gradually lifted his head. Beneath the bruises, the streaks of dried and fresh blood, and the soot stains, Elrond recognised him. Many a time and oft had he seen that face at the borders of the Golden Wood, when he had travelled to and fro with Celebrían by his side and the sunlight bright on his face. Before him, bedraggled and utterly wretched, was Haldir of Lothlórien, one of the three brothers for whom the Wood had been their very existence, their soul and their heart. Elrond found that he did not wish to speculate on the condition of the others. He caught the younger Elf's forearm in a brisk warrior's grip, ignoring the pain that lanced through him as Haldir reciprocated, his fingers digging into the open wound.
The Galadhrim archer smiled weakly, and the expression did not reach his eyes, lingering on his face like the rictus of death. "I must have private speech with you, my lord."
With a quick glance at Thranduil, who looked none too happy at this turn of events, but schooled his features into benevolent neutrality for the benefit of the onlookers, Elrond assented, leading the way back to the hillock, huddling in the pitiful shelter of the tumbled rocks as a merciless wind swept in from Rhovánion, whirling the snow hither and thither in treacherous eddies.
Elrond fumbled inside his heavy cloak and retrieved a flask of fiery spirits, infused with an assortment of herbs, which in the absence of miruvor or any other more complex healing substance had served to ease the pains of his patients. Haldir took it gratefully and swallowed, wincing at the powerful bite. He cradled the flask between his hands, glaring at it gloomily, seeming to grapple for appropriate words.
"Someone should tend your wounds," Elrond said concernedly. The mixture was potent enough to have given the younger Elf an appearance of liveliness, yet he was still and silent, his limbs convulsing with a palsied tremor.
Haldir shook his head. "Nay. This is of such import that it can be no more delayed than it has already been." He unfastened his cloak, and Elrond could see the seeping shoulder wound, crudely bandaged, which the garment had concealed. Even as the peredhel moved to tend the wound, the Sindarin Elf raised one hand to halt him. It held the object he had been searching for, a tiny silken pouch that had hung on a long cord about his neck. It was stained and filthy from the headlong flight from Lothlórien, but the quality of the cloth was fine and the colours had once been exceptionally fine, a blue as bright as sapphires, entwined with the silver of Telperion.
In silence, the marchwarden passed it to his companion. In silence, Elrond held it in his hand, turning over and over. The weight in his palm was terribly, horribly familiar, had haunted his nights and troubled his days. She had nearly died for it, been lost to him for five hundred new springs for its power and its might. The embroidery beneath the sword calluses on his fingertips was intricate: the delicate crest of Finarfin garlanded with mallorn leaves and surrounded by frail runes invoking the protection of Aulë.
His heart hammered in his chest with all the might and fury of the Smith's forge, beating a rapid, arrhythmic tattoo. He lifted startled eyes to the messenger. "What is this?"
"It is what you believe it to be, my lord," Haldir said, his gaze purposefully averted from the bundle.
Elrond returned his attention to the almost audible thrum of power against his palm, the soft murmur of water burbling over rocks, the fall of rain in the evening and mists in the morning. In anguish, nausea rising through him, his thoughts turned to Celebrían. If by some chance whim of fate he was permitted to survive this war and attain the West, what then? How could he tell her of this? How could she possibly forgive his survival? That such a small thing could bear such a burden of lost hope and broken lives... That loss should never end, never stop, and that by all these losses he should lose Celebrían... Vilya flared against the skin, white-hot, burning, searing, bright as the day... He cried out in pain and fear, one hand clawing to tear Vilya from his neck, the other arm extended to throw the tiny pouch from himself, to cast it out into the oblivious darkness...
A hand touched his shoulder lightly, and he span, a knife already in his grasp, pressing into soft flesh. He blinked slowly, his eyes glazed with confusion. Only after some time had passed was he able to focus on Haldir, gazing in indignation at the cold blade digging into his neck.
The knife slipped from Elrond's nerveless fingers and a thin stream of blood trickled down Haldir's neck, soaking into his tunic.
The elf-lord realised that his own skin felt clammily cold and his hands were shaking uncontrollably, but the wound to his arm felt as if it had been filled with molten lead. When he spoke, his voice was harsh even to his own ears, laden with sick dread. "How came this to be? That I...?"
"The Lord and Lady live yet," Haldir said quietly, understanding something of Elrond's fear, the panic seeping into his voice. "The Golden Wood is lost, and many of our people slain, but not all hope has died with them. The Lord and Lady lead the remnants westwards into the plains and the Wilderland, where it may be that they shall fight yet for the freedom they lost. There they shall open a new front to this war, that time may be bought for the true fight, which is now yours alone."
Elrond tried to remind himself that Galadriel was hardly powerless, even without the ring; no disciple of Melian could be that. But the bundle weighing heavily in his palm would not allow his mind surcease. This had been a great power to relinquish willingly, and he was shaken to his core that his indomitable hervess-naneth, who for all her many undeniable virtues could not be doubted to crave power, had given this up to him.
Almost of their own accord his fingers worked the knot loose, drawing the silken cords apart, and Nenya fell out into his palm, the adamant glinting brilliantly in the scant light.
"If she lives yet, why does she send this to me, to danger? It would have been better by far that she kept it by her." He paused, frowning. "Is this indeed the truth, that she lives?"
Haldir raised one eyebrow with a hint of disdain. "It is the truth indeed. My lady knew there would be doubt within you and bade me speak her message: 'A great fate lies before you, son of Eärendil, whether you will it or no. What was once begun under the boughs of Tirion must be wrought to its conclusion by your hands. What was sundered must be healed. And oath's undoing must be its final triumph. You take this ring to danger, and mayhap it shall bring you and I and all the world to ruin, yet if your path holds true, it shall be safer in your hands than in the depths of the sea or the roots of the mountains. And you shall know it when you see it.' Thus spoke my lady, and bid me bring this thing to you."
Elrond twisted the Ring in his had, seeming to see a hundred thousand faces mirrored in its depths. The words had little meaning for him as of the moment, and yet he could feel their portentous weight, as if an iron bar had been set across his shoulders. The path was straight before him, although he could not see its ending, and indeed could scarce perceive his next step. Onwards he would go, to doom and to destiny.
Slipping the chain from his neck, he threaded Nenya onto it beside Vilya. When he replaced the metal cord, it seemed heavier than ever, bearing far more than the burden of two such simple bands.
"Go now and rest. There is some little food, and Thranduil's folk may be able to tend your injuries." He bowed to the Silvan Elf. As the other limped away, he sank down upon a rock with a pained groan catching in his throat. His arm ached bitterly, and the chill damp seeping through the mossy stone only served to exacerbate the dull ache, but it was the lump of nauseous dread, black and immovable as night or death, which rose in his throat, that preoccupied his thoughts and wrung the noise from him. Although sounds of approaching sleep issued forth from the impromptu camp, he had never found rest further from his mind. His thoughts tangled around and around one another like a knotted skein of wool beneath a kitten's paws. Again and again, they returned to Galadriel's words, and again and again he could make neither head nor tail of them. What was this fate of which she spoke?
And you shall know it when you see it.
The phrase nagged at him. Although he knew not why, he felt certain that it had not been the ring of which she spoke there, but he could find no adequate explanation. Sighing, he lay back against the rock, pulling his cloak tightly around himself, and watched the clouds roiling above, like a stew-pot on the brink of boiling over. Flashes of lightning lit their undersides, and far away to the south fires burnt crimson against the horizon, lighting up the unnatural night. The world was on fire, cast into an inferno from which none could escape, and he was in the midst of it all.
He could almost fancy that there were stars above him, but they were only flecks of light, formed of pain before his eyes. Hope was so very far away, further than the silver sparks that danced before his sight. To she whom he loved more than life itself he would bring blackest despair, if life were, beyond all chance or luck, granted to him. Her parents gone to some unknown fate … her home … her children…
Grief mingled, twined together, until he could no longer tell which was for her, and which for the world and himself, for her grief would always be his, for as long as the world endured.
Lothlórien was burning to the south, and the rings stung against his skin like a venomous bite. The shadow seemed to fall around him like a heavy curtain, but when he uplifted his eyes to the heavens, they were undimmed, despite their tears.
With the last of his strength he reached out, knowing not for what he reached, yet always knowing. He called out to her, in his sorrow and in his regret, his soul yearning for her.
And then she was there, as surely as if she had stood beside him, the deft touch of her mind soothing his thoughts, grieving with him, swelling his dwindled resilience with her own.
He knew not how long he sat there amid the upturned rocks in the desolate wilderness, renewing that which had been lost. His cares he could not forget, but he chose her, chose to believe her when she believed him; chose the light as he always had, but with newer vigour.
In the end, it was such a simple thing, and as he dozed within the gentle compass of her mind, he thought he saw a glimmer of the dawn in the night.
TBC
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hervess-naneth – mother-in-law.
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