Desolation

Chapter Ten

Thanks to Isis for betaing this for me.

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A chill wind blew through the high valley, but the day was bright and fair. Sunlight fell in golden lances from the cloudless autumn sky, and the dying leaves rustled on the trees, vermilion and umber and saffron yellow. Elrond leant his back against the wall of smooth white stone, and smiled up at the serried peaks which marched, rank upon rank, away into the heights of the Misty Mountains. Far below him, he could hear the restless song of the Bruinen, and the din of the House as it prepared for the feast that would be held that night.

"A fair place, indeed, my lord, and quiet," his companion's voice broke his reverie, but his smile only widened as he turned to the maiden beside him. He had known her only a handful of months, and yet her voice was more glad to him than all the familiar silences of the valley.

"I am pleased that you so honour it with your praise," he said, not without a trace of merriment.

She swatted at his arm. "Word of flattery form themselves ill on your lips, Master Elrond. Mayhap you would serve the tales of your wisdom better if you spoke only the plain truth."

He opened his mouth to tell her that indeed 'twas naught save the truth to him, for all that his laughter might seem to belie it. But there was a sudden tang of metal in the air, rank and warm and bitter, bitter indeed. His gaze fell from her face, suddenly wan and cold in the bright sunlight, and then he saw. There was a great rent at the shoulder of her gown, and beneath it, he could see an ugly wound, blackened with poison. Blood spilt from it in crimson gouts, running over his trembling hands, staining his clothes, and soaking his dark hair, plastering it to his face, which was now as pale as hers. He tried to press his hands to the wound, to staunch the flow of blood, but his own limbs would not obey him, and shook with a sudden fearful palsy.

Celebrían looked up at him with desperation on her fair face, the blue of her eyes swallowed by pupils dilated with fear. "Traitor." she whispered, and was gone from him, the fingers of her ring-less right hand clawing at the fabric of his robes, tearing at the fine velvet like some wild animal, even in death.

And with the abruptness of dreaming, he was no longer there, although her blood still incarnadined his hands. He stood on barren and wasted ground, thick dust choking him, filling his lungs until he could no longer breath without fire lancing through him. Sulphurous fumes hung in the air, and what little light there was, was a deep, baleful crimson that darted in illusory flames across his face. The earth was uneven beneath his feet, a raw morass of tumbled boulders through which poisoned and stagnant streams straggled like dying serpents. He gagged, the back of his left hand pressed to his mouth, the palm turned outwards as if to ward off some desperate evil.

But in the next moment, he realised that what terror he had thought he had felt before had been nothing but a mirage, a faint image of the dire truth. For he stood in deep shadow, and, craning his neck, he began to understand. Barad-dûr loomed over him, the dark slits of its windows leering evilly from far above. And the great door was creaking open.

He tried to run; but he could not.

He tried to hide; but there was nowhere to hide.

He reached for his sword; but he wore no sword.

Instead, appalled, he lifted his ruined and wasted right arm until it was level with his face. He beheld that on his first finger, where his wedding band should sit, there instead lay Vilya, bright, and cruel, and blue as the lost skies. And, on his fourth finger, Nenya matched it.

He stood in the Land of Shadow, with the Rings of Power upon his hand, his useless, crippled hand, and Sauron the Deceiver knew his every thought and deed, and he had no will of his own.

There was a flash of terrible fire, and he saw the heights of Oilossë wreathed in dancing flames, burning, burning, ever burning until all lights went out, and there was silence in which the Music could never be heard again.

Elrond awoke, gasping for breath, clawing his way up out of the tangle of dreams which lay so heavily about him, as if they were real, tangible things. His breath caught and burned in his throat, and the imagined stench of Mordor fouled his mouth.

He realised that he felt his right hand as if from a distance, as if it did not entirely belong to him, except for the pain which was ever-present now. But even that did not surprise him, and he felt nothing but a sense of terrible regret, that everything which once was, was now undone.

Slowly, he rose to a crouch, wrapping his cloak around him, and forcing his fingers to clench around the hilt of his sword, to remember the patterns of wear on the ancient pommel. Aching, he pulled himself to his full height, and, drained by every step, made his way from the tent. With a start of distress he saw that the temporary encampment was busy with the activities of the morning - if morning it could be said to be - and that he had slept longer than any other, save only the youngest children.

"Awake at last." Ulrang glanced up from the fire he was tending, a brittle and crackling map held in one hand. He nodded at one of his men, who handed the elf-lord a cup of strong, bitter tea brewed from the rapidly dwindling stock of herbs and fragrant barks. Elrond took a sip, grimacing at the taste, but was glad nonetheless for the heat which washed through him, its fumes clearing the miasma of sleep from his clouded head.

"If someone had roused me." he grumbled.

"Then you should have been no use to man nor beast before the next sennight was out," the Easterling said tersely, but there was an undercurrent of worry in his voice there for those who were accustomed to detecting such things to hear.

With a start, Elrond hastily reviewed the weeks of their trudging march, and understood that, although he had not noticed it at the time, he had indeed been allowed to sleep some time beyond the curtailed rest of his fellows each and every night. He scowled. "I have strength enough."

"That is not what Thranduil tells me," Ulrang remarked almost sardonically, sketching battle-lines in the dry earth with the tip of one finger.

"If we thought it would do us more good, we would have you up all night scrubbing shields, Master Elrond," a gruff voice interrupted from behind Elrond's left shoulder.

Turning, and bowing to Dáin, he could not help but laugh softly at this most unlikely of all alliances of Man, Elf, and Dwarf, for all his chagrin. "Very well. I see that I am outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, and there is naught that I can do to dissuade you." He lowered himself to the ground with that same, laconic grace of old, settling on the dusty ridge that encircled the fire pit. "I only ask that once I have awoken, you do not keep me from the deeds which must be done."

"None of us have that luxury." Thranduil scuffed the dirt with one foot, peering over the Easterling's shoulder at the ancient map, his blue eyes distant and bitter.

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The column trudged steadfastly onwards across the Brown Lands that lay before Mordor. The stench of death and decay was heavy in the still air, overlaid with notes of old burning, the dusty tang of ash, and the horror of scorched flesh. Aside from the grim and silent host, nothing living moved in that dead land, apart from the patrols of orcs which crept across the surface of the earth like foul ants, grinning and leering in their triumph. Ruined eyes stared out from tattered faces, full of hatred and malice for everything that once had walked beneath the clean light of Anor, and the silvered brightness of Ithil. Already the column had skirmished with them, not daring to leave one alive to report back to the Lord of the Black Tower, and not a few of this new-forged alliance had for the first time whetted their blades on orc-necks.

But there were few even of the orc-kind in this barren and desolate land. There was no work for them here, where neither Elf, nor Man, nor Dwarf had dwelt since years beyond count, and the column mostly went onwards unharried and almost unwatched, save for the eyes of a solitary eagle, drifting high on the winds. Gwaihir the Windlord was dead, but his kinsman had come from afar, and his long journeying had seen broken ice and grey-green seas, and he remembered places where the shadow did not yet fall. His eye was long and keen, and the light in its golden depths reflected the snows on Mount Taniquetil, and the bright spring in the gardens of Lórien. But he only watched, and sorrowed with his watching master.

And the land, little immediate danger though it exposed them to, brought them little comfort either. This place was touched indeed by the foul sorceries of Mordor, and the restless gaze of the Eye ever prickled across them, searching, and waiting. Hopelessness seemed to cling to them, even with the dust on their cloaks.

Almost unconsciously, Elrond reached under his tunic, feeling the silk-wrapped gem lying against his protruding ribs, slightly warm beneath his fingertips. Hope rose in him again, undaunted by the grim land below, and the dark sky above. The soft, comforting heat spread up his arm, returning some semblance of life to his diseased limb, some strength, although he guessed that that came rather more from his own belief in it, than from any innate properties. He sighed, and stumbled onwards.

Although the Eye was not yet upon them, the soaring eagle was not the only one to see their dogged progress through the Brown Lands.

The Emyn Muil rose to the heavens in jagged spires of rock to their right, its teeth tearing at the sky. Black and grey rock sheered up through the broken earth like the maw of some giant beast, and the shadowed valleys, deep and crooked, seemed ready to spill forth horrors untold.

Elrond felt a hollow uneasiness prickling in the back of his mind, the sense of observation, and of hatred. Seeking wisdom, he counselled Thranduil and Dáin to keep their banners furled.

He had no colours of his own to announce that an elf-lord of the houses of old walked here, and beside the glimmer of the Silmaril it scarcely seemed to matter, and thus only Ulrang's banner flew, a dark flicker of cloth against the sky, barely noticeable, proclaiming nothing more than that he was and his people were Easterlings, Men of the Darkness.

But still, the Peredhel's discomfort was not quenched.

"Enough!" he called at last. "We shall make our midday meal here."

Thranduil quirked an eyebrow at him. "We could go further."

"The line is faltering, and there is a spring nigh, one that is not befouled by the Enemy. We shall have little enough rest and water soon enough."

They ate but a frugal meal, thin broth that was little more than water with a few herbs and roots cast into the pot, in which they softened wafers of cram, the waybread of the Dale, grey, and dry, for all that they were nutritious.

"Foul." Thranduil settled himself beside the peredhel lord, drawing his long legs up under his thick woolen cloak. A bowl of the gruel was balanced in one hand, and in the other he held a fragment of cram which he was regarding with particular distaste.

"Dip it in the broth," Dáin suggested, although the King of the Lonely Mountain did not look as if he was any more enthralled by the prospect than the rest of the company.

"And spoil good broth?" Thranduil asked wryly.

Elrond smiled wanly at the pair, recognising that some understanding had been founded, against all hope, in these darkest of days. Returning his attention to his bowl as the wood-king chewed determinedly on the edge of a cake of cram, he crumbled his own waybread into his broth, until it became a non-descript brown-grey substance that was as unappetising as it was needful. Resolutely, he spooned it into his mouth, ignoring his stomach which rebelled against the very idea.

A relentless pain was growing behind his eyes, dulling his senses, miring his thoughts in grey mist. His stomach clenched with sudden, formless fear. He clutched at the chain which hung around his neck, and was almost surprised to find that it was still there, still held taut by the two Rings suspended upon it. A sudden fever flushed through him, and he gasped for breath, reaching out desperately for Celebrían, so distant, and yet so near.

I do not know, meleth-nín. I do not know, she replied to his unasked question. She was afraid, and he was grieved that he might have brought this fear upon her, this sense of utmost dread, bleak as the land around him.

You did not. But she spoke no more, offering him wordless comfort, but hiding her fears from him.

Elrond blinked, and realised that Thranduil has asked him a question.

"You feel it too, do you not?" the Sindar Elf asked. "We are being watched."

"Aye." Elrond shuddered as Celebrían's awareness drifted away, and the darkness reasserted itself.

"And I would guess that that is but a shadow of what you feel." Thranduil's eyes were sharp and grave, deep-shadowed by the march.

"Aye . But if you feel it too, then let us move quickly. It is not safe for us here."

They broke camp in haste, tamping fires down with dirt, filling flasks from the spring line. Not one among them did not hold a weapon to hand as they set off, huddled close together, the children marching in the midst of the column when they could, carried when they could not.

Together, at the fore of the host, were the leaders, stern-faced and grim: Thranduil, golden as a fair sapling, Dáin, bent and wearied with age, his eyes angry, and his axe tight-clasped, Ulrang, unreadable except in his sorrow and determination, and Elrond, tall and fell as the greatest of his ancestors, his eyes star-bright, his damaged hand tight around the hilt of his sword. Together, they strode forward, into darkness and into doubt, the ragged peaks of the Emyn Muil marching along their right flank.

By Elrond's guess, it was afternoon now, turning towards the darkness of the night, although little light could be seen to judge one way or another.

He saw - or thought he saw - fleeting shadow-shapes slipping through the deeper darkness at the foot of the mountains, silent and deadly in their determination. He quickened his pace, eager to break free of the unseen pursuers, his lanky gait covering the ground easily, much to the consternation of Dáin.

But, in the end, even that was not enough to save them.

They had come into a narrow defile between a jutting shoulder of the Emyn Muil and an outcropping of razor-edged rocks which glistened with water even in the faint light. It was silent, and nothing stirred, but that was nothing usual in these lands. The sky was almost shut out entirely. For a moment, Elrond thought he caught the scent of green things that grow, but he shook his head. Nothing grew here, and most certainly nothing wholesome and green.

Even Elven ears could not have detected them beneath the soft footfalls of the column, and their tread was light indeed. Within the space of a heartbeat, swordsmen had slipped from the ravine walls, and archers bent their bows from the towering rocks, threatening a deadly hail.

"Orcs!" Thranduil spat.

"Not orcs but Men," Elrond said quietly, watching the steady blades of those nearest to him. Indeed, the figures were too tall and slight to be orcs, but he did not doubt their allegiance to Sauron for all that.

Slowly, one Man detached himself from the others. He was hooded and cloaked, and his face was hidden from view. Elrond noted that he limped slightly, and that, although his right hand held a curved orc scimitar confidently, he had no left arm. On that side, his cloak fell limply along the emaciated line of his body. He was tall for a Man, and a strand of dark hair escaped from under his hood, drifting across the empty space where surely his face was, if only it could be seen.

"What have we here?" he drawled in a voice cracked by dust and heat and dirt. "More scum in these lands come to rob us?"

Elrond felt his lip curl in defiance, realising that this might well be the end of all things. The Silmaril burnt warm and kind and fierce below his faltering heart, and he took what little strength he could from the knowledge of that. "We come to take back that which is ours."

"And we come to deny it to you." The stranger's shoulders tightened beneath his enveloping cloak.

"So you give everything to the Dark Lord, even our lives?" Dáin took a step forward, and spat at the Man's feet.

The Man laughed coarsely. "We serve none save ourselves - unless it be the Lords of the West, and the Lord of Rivendell which is lost. And surely he is dead." And he fell silent.

The sword clattered from Elrond's hand. If he could have spared a sideways glance, he would have seen that the others looked dumbfounded, although their hands remained true on their weapons.

"Reveal yourself, if you deem the truth of any more worth than the lies of Sauron the Deceiver!"

The stranger laughed again, bitter and cold, and shrugged his hood back from his head, smoothing it to his shoulders with a negligent hand, his sword trapped between his elbow and his thin frame. His hair - or what was left of it - shone black as a raven's wing in the half-light. To one side, it was burnt close to his skull, frizzled by terrible heat. Half his face was marked by partly healed burns, pink and shiny, stretching from temple to jawline. He was drawn and gaunt, but his eyes shone with defiant starlight, grey as the mists of dawn over the Western Seas.

And Elrond knew his face. Tears sprang to his eyes, streaking paths through the grime on his cheeks.

Surely this could not be. Through doubt, and through darkness.

He took a step forward, and found the stranger's sword pressed to his throat.

"If you ask, I shall kill you slowly, but if you do not, I shall not spare the time to ensure it before disposing of the rest of your foul kindred."

It was difficult to speak; almost impossible to frame words, so tight with memory and grief was his throat.

"But I am your kindred. Do you not recognise me, ion-nín?"

"What trickery is this?"

The growing dread had resolved itself, and he saw it for what it was. Briefly, he thought of the Rings of Power slung about his neck, and of the Silmaril by his side, but he dismissed them in an instant. Keeping his hands in plain view, he slipped the golden band from his forefinger. It came away easily now, all too easily. The gold was warm, and he could see the patterns etched on it by age and use. "Your mother gave this to me."

There was an unmistakable nick where a child's flailed blade had caught his hand, drawing blood and marking the softer metal.

The stranger beckoned one of his companions forward, a Númenórean by his countenance, pale and dark-haired, his grey eyes keen and sad. The Man held a flickering taper close, and together they examined the ring, the simple gold, and the old markings.

There was no time to react. The stranger's face contorted with sudden fury, and he paced closer, drawing a slender-bladed knife from its sheath at his waist. Elrond found himself backed against the canyon wall, staring into anger-dilated eyes. "Where did you get this?"

"From the Lady Celebrían, your mother."

"You lie."

"Am I so much changed?" Elrond closed his eyes in momentary sadness, but made no move to defend himself, even when the sharp point prodded precariously close to his jugular. "When you were but two years of age, you nearly drowned me in the second pool, and only your mother saved me. And, later, you could not understand ever why I let her depart into the Ancient West."

"Adar?" The fierce, grim face was suddenly vulnerable. "Can it truly be you?"

"It is. Elrohir, ion-nín, it is."

Trembling fingers traced the sunken line of his jaw, and it was only a moment before he lifted his own to mirror the actions. Surely this was only a delusion, fever-born madness. Soon, it would fade like silver mist upon a meadow at dawn, fleeting beauty that pierces the heart like a dart, and then is gone forever. Surely, within a heartbeat, he would alone with his grief and his loss, and the echoes of his sorrow in Celebrían's mind. But the vision did not fade, and the fingers of his son's remaining hand, callused by war and fire, turned his chin slightly to expose the faint line of pale scar tissue left by that long-gone incident, on a fine summer's day in Imladris, when all the world seemed fair and new. So very long ago.

He looked upon Elrohir, the angled line of his brows so alike unto his own, the crinkled laughter lines at the corner of his weary grey eyes such a startling reminder of Celebrían, although they were drawn tense by fear and doubt. It was as if the younger Elf walked with a shadow ever behind his shoulder, its chill, pale fingers touching his dark hair and sapping the heat from him, and all the joy which had once been his. So very long ago. For Elladan was dead, gone beyond hope of recall until the Lord of Mandos chose to release his fëa to new life, and Elrohir could no more forget than his father could his lost twin.

Thus it was that Elrond wept even in his joy, his broad shoulders, frail now with illness and approaching death, shaking convulsively. With his healer's instincts of old, he brushed the cloak back from Elrohir's ruined left side. The sleeve of his tunic was pinned to his jerkin, and it was mottled with bloodstains, both the dull black-brown of old blood, and the livid crimson of new. It was this latter which finally convinced Elrond. His son bled, but it was proof indeed that he lived yet.

"Ion-nín." He cast his good arm around the younger Elf's shoulders, and held him tight, crushing him in a desperate embrace. "Pen-nín tithen." Their breathing came in ragged gasps, too glad and too sorrowful for mere words, and it seemed that although they stood yet under the charred sky of Middle-earth in the darkest of days, a little of the light of Valinor was laid upon them, wondrous beyond the reckoning of mortal Men. And they were revealed in their power, and in their glory, for it seemed to those who looked upon them that they were great lords both fair and fell, and that in them, the blood of Melian, and of King Greycloak her spouse ran true. They turned their eyes away, and wondered on it.

"Beyond hope, and beyond darkness, I find you now, ion-nín." He cast a questioning eye at the bloodied sleeve, and Elrohir nodded in acquiescence.

"And I you, father." He turned his head away, hissing with sharp pain as Elrond drew the cloth from the crudely bandaged stump. It was indeed a horrible sight, and for all his years, the elder Peredhel quailed, and fought against the nausea which arose within him, and the black bile of hatred against he who had been the cause of this and so much other pain and suffering. The arm had been severed just below the shoulder. The stump which remained was raw and scarred with dark burns, the flesh, although untouched by putrefaction, pale and wan beneath the markings, and shards of snapped bone gleamed yellow-white through it. It was healing, slowly, but healing; this monstrous deformity. Elrond probed it with delicate fingers, and could find little that he could do to aid it, save to suggest some poultices which might be seen to have properties of healing, if ever again they came into the lands where such wholesome herbs grew.

When Elrohir spoke, it was as if his voice came from afar, from some land which had seen neither the light of the sun nor of the moon, stilted and harsh, fading into silence, and rising into crescendos of sorrow and toil. He told then of how they had stood on the two orc-mounds on the Morannon, the Lords of the West with their banners high and bright and grim, there, before the Black Gate of Mordor. He told of the coming of the eagles, of Gwaihir, and all his brethren, swift and bronzed in the north wind. Of Éomer King, and men of the Riddermark, those of Gondor, of Lossarnach, and the fiefs, of the Grey Company from the North, and of Imrahil of Dol Amroth, in whom the Elven blood still shone.

His face grew pale, and his hand trembled as a Man palsied by great old age; his father took it, and held in both his own, the broad, strong healer's hands now cold as never had been their want, but their power not yet dimmed.

So Elrohir went on, and his face was proud and stern even as the greatest of his forefathers; but there were tears in his grey eyes, and upon his pale cheeks.

"We waited, and although we were assailed by a great host, yet still we did not utterly give in to despair, for wise were your choices, my father." Elrond opened his mouth to demur, but the expression on his son's face silenced him. ". And wise was Mithrandir, arrayed in white, and valiant indeed were those who stood with us, even at the very Teeth of Mordor. We fought on, and night came upon us, swift and unbidden, but it seemed to us that 'twas darker than the Night of Valinor, and the stars were put out above us, and the shrieking of the Nazgûl grew great indeed, and terrible. Even as the darkness fell, we fought on, and our swords hewed the helms of our enemies, and our swords were dark and fell with their blood. But there came a time when we wished only for darkness, and for surcease. For away to the south, in the Land of Shadow, the Dark Lord himself put on the One Ring that Frodo of the Shire and the strength of the West had long held against him, seeking only its destruction. Alas, at last the quest of the Ringbearer failed, and he was taken, or so we guess, we who live yet, taken in some passage of that terrible land, and the burden was torn from him, and his tale is sundered forever from the tales of this world.

"For the Dark Lord took up his Ring, and it was placed upon his finger, and he was whole again. He wreathed the peaks and dungeons of Barad-dûr with foul reeks, and with flame and smoke, and for us, watching amidst the hue and cry, the southern sky grew bright and terrible. For then the host of orcs, and of the Men of the Darkness fell silent, and even the voices of the Nazgûl were dimmed, as a great wall of fire came upon us. It touched them not, but many fell in that hour; the great part of the six thousands with whom we rode. Éomer King, and the Riders of Rohan, Prince Imrahil and the Men of the great fiefdoms and realm of Gondor, and the Men of Arnor, grim and dour-handed; Legolas of Mirkwood, and Gimli of Erebor, and Peregrin Took, and the eagles of the air." He paused, and his eyes were distant, fixed on some horror the others could not see. "And Elladan. For we stood at the forefront of battle, on the crown of the hill, my brother and I, and as the reek came upon us, he cast himself down upon me, with words of fraternity that I cannot yet bear to utter. So it was that even as he died, he was my shield. My left side was to Mordor, and still it burnt, but I did not die, although still I might reckon it better if I had." He touched his right hand to the ruined stump, and his eyes were grim and dark. "Long I burnt in fever, but it did not consume me, and I awoke to find that one of the few others to survive had hewn my scorched arm from me, and left me crippled to walk upon this Middle-earth."

There was utter silence in the ravine, and no one there dared to break it. The very wind seemed to die away. Elrond was ashen-grey, and Thranduil''s eyes were as cold as the night of the Void. Dáin's broad, craftsman's fingers tapped his leather belt restlessly, and none could read in his bearded face what he thought of these tidings.

Elrohir swallowed again before he continued. "I saw then that our host was utterly destroyed, and naught but their bodies remained. But of Mithrandir there was no sign."

Elrond bowed his head. "He was taken into Barad-dûr."

The younger peredhel nodded slowly, his suspicions confirmed. "And yet among all the waste and ruin of battle, there were some tokens of things passed which had survived the rage." He inclined his head almost imperceptibly to the tall Númenórean. The Man carried a longbow, and a quiver of arrows at his back, but the elf-lord's attention was caught by the fact that he wore a sword at both hips. Carefully, almost reverently, he unfastened the one which sat on the right side, and held it out. There was sorrow in his eyes, and the shadow of grief, grief for men and for cities both. He bowed, and held out the sword to Elrond in both his hands.

"It seems that even the flames of Mordor cannot yet consume Andúril, Flame of the West, Narsil reforged, my lord."

Elrond closed his hand around the familiar hilt, feeling burning tears tightening his throat. It was indeed Andúril, and no other. If he had needed proof that his foster-son was dead, now he beheld it before him. The noble blade was smirched with soot and ash, nicked at the edges, but unbroken.

Then Elrohir's hand gripped his and dropped something cool and smooth into his unresisting palm. Looking down, he focused only slowly. The Elessar, the Elfstone wrought by the hand of Celebrimbor in the form of an eagle with wings outstretched. He stroked his forefinger along the familiar lines, remembering when Celebrían had worn it, riding out of the morning down over the moors into the deep valley of the Last Homely House.

I was wondering when you would remember me, Celebrían's voice was acerbic, but he knew she had been weeping; he could hear the ripple of tears in her tone as the running rills of the Bruinen in winter, and joy too, joy born of the deepest despair. Oh Elrond.

I know . I know, he said, reaching out for her, entwining his thoughts with hers.

"Mother?" Elrohir guessed.

"Aye."

The younger peredhel broke into a wide, yet oddly shy grin. "Tell her."

"She already knows."

Ulrang watched the exchange from a distance, his eyes darting from one to the other in an attempt to follow the complexities what happened. As the bowmen relaxed their guard, he sidled cautiously closer to Thranduil, and spoke in the wood-king's ear. "His son?"

"Aye, one of twins." Thranduil's voice was barely audible. "They rode to war in company with my son, as much as any know, but mine shall never come riding back to me beneath the skies of this Middle-earth." Turning his head, the Easterling saw that the Elf's face was fierce and grey, drawn into deep lines of sorrowing grief.

"I am sorry."

"There is no time for sorrow." Thranduil fingered the hilt of his sword. "But I would have vengeance."

"Then you have my pledge in vengeance."

The Elf glared at him for a moment, and then dropped his eyes. "Then you have my thanks, for that is all I have left to give you."

But neither Elrond nor Elrohir had ears for such words at this time, and they shared their grief, and for a little while it was lifted.

TBC

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