Desolation

Chapter Eleven

Thanks to Lalaith and Isis for betaing this, and to everyone for reading and reviewing so kindly.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Elrohir shivered and pulled his cloak more tightly around his shoulders with his one remaining hand. He cast a covert look at his father, who was hunched over the campfire, stirring a pot of bubbling stew and talking animatedly with the Easterling chief.

A cold fist of dread clamped around the younger peredhel's throat despite his father's apparent cheer. Elladan's death had ruined him; cast his mind into a desolation which had outlived even his physical sickness, and from which only burning anger had drawn him back. But now he felt the same gentle touch again as he looked upon his father, his black hair caught by the drifting wind, his broad forehead pale and translucent in the firelight. It seemed as if the east wind should surely blow him away, far away across the Belegaer, beyond the drifting mists and the curve of Endor, to the white sanded coasts of Aman, to walk in sorrow beneath the vaulted arches of the Halls of Awaiting. The clever, long-fingered hands which had once lifted him up so easily when he had fallen, the strong arms which had held him as a child, now seemed but a shadow and a dream of a forgotten Age which darkness could not yet reach.

He sighed and stood upright, dislodging a scattering fall of scree with the toe of his boot. It tumbled down into the crevice below him, and was lost to sight.

As true darkness had fallen, they had moved surreptitiously back into this grim valley in the Emyn Muil, where the renegade band had held camp these last months. It was as well disguised as anything could be in this time, sheltered by overhanging arms of rock which enfolded it, blocking out the fierce sky. Dank and unwholesome mosses hung from the cliff walls in rank clots, but an untainted spring bubbled and gurgled at the upper end of the valley, and its stream bisected the tumbled floor, flowing from pool to cool green pool in murmuring cascades. Pausing briefly, Elrohir imagined that he could hear in its dissonant music an echo of the melodies of the Bruinen, and hear his mother's laughter, and his father's rising to join it.

He shook his head, and, stooping, grabbed the final empty water skin from the pile of replenished ones which lay at his feet. Dipping it into the current, he wedged it firmly between his elbow and his body before jamming the cork in place. A handful of long strides brought him to the ruddy flickering of the fire.

"Here, Adar: you needed water."

"My thanks." Elrond smiled briefly, and carefully dribbled water from the proffered skin into the pot before him, sniffing at the steam which arose from it.

"You should not be cooking." Elrohir settled himself on the ground beside his father, resisting only with difficulty the impulse to rest his head on his shoulder as he had done so often as an elfling. Unnoticed by either, Ulrang slipped silently away.

"I shall not poison you by accident, I promise, ion-nín," Elrond said lightly, his gaze never wavering from the cooking pot. But the line of his jaw, made only more severe by his fading, was tense and grim.

"You know that is not what I meant."

"I know." Elrond turned his head, and his son saw that his grey eyes shone with glints of crimson flame in the firelight, and deep runnels were carved through the grime on his cheeks; he was crying. "Ai, pen-nín tithen, do not remind me that I have found you only to lose you, that although your death was not there to sunder us, mine shall be." He clenched his weakened hand into a fist, resting it on his knee in a futile attempt to stay its trembling.

Elrohir dropped his eyes. He had not meant to precipitate these words, had secretly hoped that if they were not spoken, then they could not be true. Now he had not even that veil of falsehood behind which to hide.

"Adar…"

"Shush…" Elrond tucked his arm around his son's shoulders and held him close. Unbidden, the words of an old song sprang to his mind, a lullaby which his mother had sung to him in the house upon the cliffs above the Havens of Sirion, and he in his turn began to sing, soft and low as the autumn wind whistling through beech leaves. The sullen valley seemed to fall away, and the leaves danced once more in the woods of Doriath, and the air was sweet in the caverns of Menegroth, so very long ago, before the world was broken and the seas sundered. Elrohir muffled his sobs against his father's shoulder, tears streaking his cheeks, his eyes red, his hand clutching at the folds of his father's cloak. Eventually, even his sobs subsided, and Elrond's song trailed off into a silence which smelt of the sea, and of the springtime long ago.

"Let me at least cook for you once more."

Elrohir sniffed prosaically. "Well, if you must do so, you should return your attention to the meal before it burns to ashes."

~*~

Elrond rested his bowl on his knees, grateful for something beside cram and gruel to eat. The company was arrayed in circles around the various fires, and silent shadows passed between them, garbed in black and in grey, and in all the colours of Gondor and of Rohan. On a high pinnacle of rock at the entrance to the valley, his keen sight caught the shifting movement of a sentry, even though no glint or clink of metal betrayed the Man. The evening's talk was subdued, and no laughter lit the night.

The tall, stern Númenórean who had stood by Elrohir's side and who had borne Andúril, sat cross-legged beside him, the leaping flames casting eerie tongues of scarlet radiance across his face. His expression was pensive, and his long, slender hands – scholar's hands - moved restlessly, the fingers tapping now at the hilt of his sword, and now on the ground before him, sketching seven circles, one inside the other, only to rub them out again with a brisk wave of his hand. His companions watched him, but made no comment, and Elrond thought he saw sorrow in their eyes – and pride.

Looking up, the Master of the Last Homely House realised that Elrohir, too, had been watching the Man's movements.

"I think it is time for your tale now, my friend," Elrohir said quietly, and there was compassion in his grave face, although even his father could not read what it was for.

"Indeed, although I wish it were not." The Man grinned ruefully, and nodded to the hooded figure next to him. The soldier groaned, and stretched his gangling limbs, cracking the joints as he stood up.

"As you bid me, cousin." His tone was light and almost jovial, but his face in the firelight, while still showing vestiges of youth, was grim, etched with weary lines of grief.

The Gondorian watched him for a moment as he turned away from the encampment and began to scale the goat path which wended its way up the gully's walls. "My kinsman, as you see." He sighed, and there was an odd light in his grey eyes. "Nay, let us be done with it. He is Amrothos, my cousin, and the Prince of Dol Amroth since his father's death before the Black Gate. I fear what vengeance may drive him to now that he has naught else, neither father, nor brothers, nor sister. And I…" He halted, and his gaze grew very distant. "I am – or rather, was – the Steward of Gondor which is now fallen, even as Númenor once fell." He lifted one hand to his brow, and Elrond saw there a great seal ring, an onyx of unusual splendor set in mithril and engraved with the crest of the South Kingdom, and of the House of Mardil.

"Lord Faramir?" Elrond asked quietly.

"Aye." He dropped his hand, and the sudden brilliance went out of the dark stone. "Although I know not how you come to know my name."

The elf-lord smiled, and looked up at the heavens as if seeking the star of his father. "In Rivendell, many things of the world were known." His smile broadened at an old memory. "But in truth, it was the Lord Aragorn, my foster son, who brought news to me that a second son had been born to the Steward of Gondor."

Faramir bit his lip, and stared glumly into the depths of the fire. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but whatever he might have been about to say was forestalled by the return of the Prince of Dol Amroth from the deepening gloom of the night. And in his wake came another figure, bearing a simple box in both hands. A mere youth he seemed as he stepped into the circle of flickering firelight, tall and slender as a young willow, beardless beneath his heavy helm, but he bore a sword at his hip with confidence, and the flames glinted off the intricately chased leaf mail of the Rohirrim, a deep, burnished gold beneath the streaks of dried blood.

Faramir rose, and bowed slightly, clasping both of his hands over one of the warrior's, holding it tight against the face of the box.

Elrond wondered at the gesture, but soon the moment had passed, and the newcomer settled into the circle, placing the box reverently before him. He seemed to hesitate, his hand hovering over the catch, and then Faramir forestalled him, opening it gently, and lifting out its sole treasure. It was the winged crown of Gondor, a strange sight indeed in this place, wrought in pearls and silver, and white metal, with seven gems of adamant encircling it, and a jewel more magnificent than all the rest to surmount it.

At length, although none had tired of looking upon it in silence, the Steward spoke again. "I brought this out from Rath Dínen, the Silent Street, on the day when Minas Anor fell, and the Tower of Watch was cast down. All else fell to ruin, and the forces of Mordor took the city, but we would not allow the crown of the kings of the line of Elendil to fall into their hands."

Elrond took it gently into his own, turning it over and over, remembering all those who had worn it through the long years of the Third Age.

"So some yet escaped from the ruin of the White City?"

"Aye. Most of those whom you see here were left for its protection, or for the defence of the West Road against the enemy who were then in Anórien. Three thousand of the Rohirrim were left to that task, under the command of Elfhelm, and those who remain fight with us now, or else in the hills and dales of the White Mountains, where as yet the sound of the sea is strong, and the Orcs do not like to come." He paused once more, his face very pale, his fingers twitching ceaselessly. The young Rohirric soldier took his hand and held it, stilling the restless movements. "When the Enemy had penetrated even to the higher circles of the City, and we saw that neither valour nor sacrifice could save it, then we made our way through hidden paths out onto Mount Mindolluin, and thence into the mountains. From that place, we came hence, fighting when we could, and resting when we had to."

"Then Gondor is no more, and Rohan is gone," Ulrang said wonderingly. "Long my people have desired this, and yet I find when it comes, it is as a hammer stroke to me, and my heart is heavy with it." His guttural accent was thick with some strange emotion.

"Say not so," the youth spoke up, touching one slender hand to the horse emblem at his breast. "For it shall not be so while I live, my troth on that." Glancing uncertainly at Faramir, he disentangled his hand from that of the Steward, and slowly began to unbuckle his helmet. The helm came free easily, and pale golden hair poured down the warrior's back.

Elrond resisted the temptation to stare in amazement at such a turn of events. From the corner of his eye, he was aware that Thranduil was not nearly so successful.

"I am Éowyn of Rohan," she declared, tilting her chin up as if daring them to deny the justice of her claim. "My uncle is dead, and my brother is dead, and so must this lordship be mine although I no longer have any desire for it." Her face was very beautiful, but very harsh, her eyes flinty and dark.

"She is the queen of Rohan," Faramir added softly, and no one demurred.

There seemed to be little inclination for further words, such was the weight of those already spoken, and at length Elrond touched his son's shoulder tentatively. "Take the crown to your sister, when this is finished."

Elrohir frowned in confusion. "To Arwen? But surely with Estel dead…?"

Elrond smiled sadly. "She bears his child, the child who shall be the next king of Gondor if we do not fail."

The younger peredhel bowed his head, hiding the surprise which lit his face like a sudden star. "It shall be so, my father."

~*~

When they marched the next morning, it was in silence, slipping from one pool of shade to the next across the broken and ruined surface of the Brown Lands, their passage scarce more than the whispering of the winds. The infernal night of Mordor did them unwonted surface, and for a time they were hidden from the prying eyes of their enemies.

Marching at the head of the column, Elrond turned his face to the West, and for a moment he felt a breath of wind on his face, sweet and clear from Lebennin and the Ethir Anduin. And in that moment, he saw, or thought he saw, through a sudden rent in the roiling clouds, a single star sinking far into the West, out of the sea towards Valinor. And then it was gone, as if it had never been, but the warmth of Maedhros' Silmaril beneath his ribs spoke otherwise.

As they stumbled onwards, footsore and weary, their hearts leaden with griefs old and new, their minds never at rest, their throats parched and their eyes gritty with wind-blown dust, the Emyn Muil fell away to their right, its peaks and gap-toothed ridges fading into a distant smudge against the horizon. Before them, the Dagorlad, the Battle Plain, unfurled itself in all its hideous splendour, mile after mile of unalloyed devastation. Elrond wondered that it should end here, where he had trodden with such high hopes in the dying days of the Second Age, and that all the long years of the Third should be thus forgotten and wasted, their achievements and their joys cast down, and their defeats raised up.

But even the Dagorlad was not as it had been, for here and there the coarse sand was scorched and melted to obsidian smoothness by new heat, and the stench of putrefaction hung heavier in the air, until all were forced to cover their faces before they could continue, and Elrond found himself once more carrying the Silvan child who had wept by the shores of Esgaroth. The vile reek of the Dead Marshes away to their right rose up to join it, mingling in a cacophony of rotting death.

And yet there was nothing else for them: the dead world behind, and their purpose clear before them, as with every mile the jagged heights of the walls of Mordor, enclosing the Cirith Gorgor and the Morannon, rose higher into the darkened sky.

And so it was by night that they came on the wings of the storm, and made camp not a handful of leagues distant from the Black Gate. In the darkness they heard the fell cries of Mordor, and steeled their hearts for the morrow.

***

TBC

Reviews are very much welcome.