Chapter 5
Lindaril
"Brother? What are you doing?" she asked, squinting at him in the early morning.
"Sleeping," he mumbled through the sheets. "Go outside and bother Merenmacil if you want to ask stupid questions."
She didn't say anything, but Esgalmir knew she hadn't left. Just as he summoned the willpower to lift his face off the bed, he received a severe poke in the side, and jerked back. He looked up with a hurt expression.
"Wake. Up," she commanded, her grin giving the lie to her sober tone. "Merenmacil wants you."
"Well, what of it?" he grumbled. "He can come talk to me, or you can tell me now what he needs. It's too early."
"You wouldn't have any trouble if you hadn't been doing whatever-you-were-doing last night. What were you doing, anyway?" she added curiously. "I know you got back to camp late, but why?"
"You weren't asleep?" he asked, looking slightly embarrassed "I thought for sure you were..." She smirked.
"Clearly not." When he made as if to go back to sleep, she frowned. "Esgalmir, Merenmacil's serious. He may not be your official commander, but he was kind enough to remind me that we owe him for letting us use his camp. And now he wants you."
"If you must know, I was off scouting last night at his request," replied Esgalmir, head now under his pillow. "So I don't feel particularly indebted to him."
"Lindaril? Esgalmir?" Merenmacil's voice pierced the tent canvas. "Esgalmir, we need you again."
"Coming," Esgalmir grumbled, resigned. He sat up and Lindaril bounced off the bed. He blinked at her. "You're already dressed."
"Course I am, sleepy. And if you get up-" she made as if to poke him again "-you can be too!"
"Well, go out then," he muttered. He would have snarled if he had the energy. Lindaril snickered and headed out the door. Esgalmir dressed, grumbling about sisters, and then followed her.
Merenmacil was, predictably, waiting right outside the tent flap. His expression revealed that this was not just your typical do-me-a-favor request. Esgalmir straightened, wary.
"Esgalmir, we have a situation." Yep, he had been right. "One of the prisoners escaped last night . . ." The memory faded, but when Esgalmir reached out for reality, he found only another memory.
Esgalmir was sitting in a chair, an intricate chair. Dust motes danced before him in the afternoon sunlight, and he found himself strangely interested in them. A sudden air current set them all dashing about crazily, and he turned towards the door.
So that's what this memory was. Lord Elrond had just walked in, and he stood there, eyeing Esgalmir with- anger? Disappointment? Disgust? Pity? He was far too good at concealing his emotions. He stood for a minute, looking at Esgalmir, until Esgalmir began to wish he could just disappear. But Elrond continued standing there silently, regarding him, reading him, until it was almost unbearable. Then he spoke.
"What happened?" His voice was as inscrutable as his expression, but his eyes looked straight into Esgalmir's, into and through to his very fëa.
Esgalmir didn't need to ask what Elrond was referring to. He sat mute, trying to order his thoughts, hoping for a way to extricate himself from the consequences of his actions. Elrond stood patiently, waiting. Finally, Esgalmir took a breath.
"He made an improper insinuation." When his mouth finally opened, his words tripped over one another, rushing to escape. "Beleglas, he said, he said I and Lindaril, he said we, uh-" Esgalmir blushed deeply as he tried for an inoffensive means of communicating what Beleglas said. "-were lovers," he finished wretchedly, letting his head drop and looking very interested in the carpet's weave.
"Not surprising," replied Elrond smoothly. Esgalmir's head shot back up. What? Did Elrond think it too? "You forget yourself," Elrond warned calmly, seeing the look in Esgalmir's eyes. "I did not say I believed it or even hinted it. It is not surprising that Beleglas would say that about you and Lindaril: he himself loves her, or thinks he does. Yet she does not love him. What he said came from a bitter heart. But that is not what I asked: I asked what you did."
Esgalmir admitted Elrond was right. He knew Beleglas liked Lindaril, and perhaps it was a brother's protectiveness that pushed him over the edge, but he still thought Beleglas had gone too far to be borne.
"Beleglas said..." Esgalmir frowned, trying to remember exactly what Beleglas said. "He said, 'What do you and Lindaril have between you, exactly?' But there was the insinuation, the way he said it. He accosted me, I was visiting one of the gardens higher up and he came to find me. He wanted to talk about Lindaril from the start, I guess, although he began by discussing our past."
Elrond spoke again, and this time Esgalmir could detect something in his voice- impatience. "Esgalmir, I know what Beleglas said. I have talked with him. I'm not trying to get your side of the story, or what caused your reaction. I'm asking you what you did. Or can you not face it yourself?"
He was right. Esgalmir quit trying to justify his actions and just recounted them. "He said what he said, then I grabbed him- by the collar, I think. I had my dagger in my hand, I must have pulled it out then. And I told him to never insult my sister again or I would kill him, kinslaying or not."
Elrond sighed. "Thank you. Now, would you care to give me an analysis of your actions?" Elrond raised Esgalmir's chin to look in his eyes, and for the first time, he smiled. "Esgalmir, I am not here to judge you before your execution. I am here to help you, as always."
"Yes sir." Esgalmir gave him an apologetic smile. "I shouldn't have reacted so quickly or so harshly. I did not think about what Beleglas said or why he might have said it, and I think I was being proud too. Proud and haughty," he whispered, his eyes slipping away. "I was showing off my prowess to myself, treating Beleglas like an enemy. Pretending to be a high and mighty lord who had suffered a grave insult." He dropped his head again, this time in shame and repentance.
"It was a grave insult," Elrond told him gently. "You did not imagine it; when Beleglas told me, he did his best to conceal what he meant by it, but I would have taken it to have the same meaning myself. However, I agree with you that you over-reacted. More thought, less action, perhaps." He grinned. "I might have done the same thing a few centuries ago. But now you need to apologize to Beleglas, and he to you- and to Lindaril." Esgalmir nodded miserably.
"Come..." Esgalmir rose to follow Elrond from the room. Even as he did, it dissolved and he vanished into another memory.
The place was cold, cold as Morgoth's lair. Esgalmir shuddered, wondering what he was doing in such a bleak area. It wasn't cold physically as much as mentally: something had happened here, or would happen here, that hovered around his heart like a mist of ice.
He looked up through the trees, seeking the stars. But the night was overcast, and even the moon was hidden. He recalled what this was, and what had happened- almost more of a nightmare than a memory. He sat down and continued to wait.
Lindaril had invited him out to "a little place she knew." Her demeanor had suggested that she had something important to tell him, and so he complied, but now he wondered if she was just playing another trick on him. Looking at the haggard stones around him, leaning and worn, he was beginning to suspect the latter. After waiting another 15 minutes, he decided it was time to leave.
Just then something slipped into the clearing in front of him. It was a wolf, a huge and ancient chieftain of the tribes of the Misty Mountains. Esgalmir crouched back into the small bay, preparing to climb his way up and escape the hunter, very glad the wind was blowing towards him. Then he realized the wolf was not hunter, but hunted.
A shadow moved in the trees, almost too dim for even Esgalmir's eyes to catch it. The wolf turned, sensing its pursuer, and growled deep in its throat, a growl of challenge and of fear. Then the shadow crept into the clearing, and Esgalmir caught his breath.
It was a cat, a giant cat twice the size of the wolf or more. He had never seen such a creature before. The fur was black and smooth, almost slicked against its form. Its tail slithered across the grass, and Esgalmir saw with a touch of fear that it was reptilian. The eyes glowed a malevolent blue, and he understood that this was not a natural creature.
He wished he had brought his bow with him. The animal in the clearing was the source of the cold feeling, he realized, some dark creature bred or created by the Enemy. Its teeth dripped saliva as it moved in for the kill, a horrid beast playing a horrid game.
The wolf was almost trembling in fear, its growls turned into whimpers. Esgalmir, drawn by a terrified curiosity, watched as the cat-creature circled in towards the wolf. The wolf tried to flee several times, but the cat could move like a striking snake, and there was no chance of escape. Esgalmir could almost feel the cat laughing, sneering at its helpless opponent, but it finally tired of the game and dove in.
There was no fight at all. The cat feinted with a paw, and when the wolf snapped defensively, its other paw whipped around from underneath and virtually ripped the wolf's head off. It deliberately moved in, settling down and eating steadily.
Animals hunted one another all the time, there was nothing strange in that. But the killer here was an unnatural, brutal creature, and the whole thing just felt wrong. Especially when the cat rose from its feast: there was nothing left but a dark patch on the ground. Esgalmir resisted a violent urge to be sick.
The beast set about ironically washing itself, as if such a filthy creature could care about cleanliness. It suddenly paused, one paw in the air. Esgalmir heard with a horrible feeling of dread and disbelief his sister's voice, finally coming out to meet him. She was singing to herself, not loudly, but it was enough for Esgalmir to hear- and the cat. Esgalmir glanced back through a crack in the stone to see Lindaril walking down the path. She stopped, suddenly, like a predator herself, then crouched against the stone.
When he turned back, the creature was gone. He didn't even know which way it had gone, whether away from them or towards. His fear threatened to overcome him, to become his whole being, as he realized it was now stalking Lindaril.
He never really knew what happened next. When he had calmed down enough to sort his memories out, he only remembered a howling screech, a sudden scream, and a blend of colors, gray and black and washed-out green. Lindaril told him what happened, later.
The creature had leapt out from a tree, landing right in front of her. Then Esgalmir had appeared on the stones above, had leapt onto the creature as it attacked, with the only weapon he had- his boot dagger. Confused by the second attacker materializing, and doubtless slowed somewhat by the full meal, the creature had been too slow to defend itself, and Esgalmir's dagger cleaved through its jugular. The howling screech had been Esgalmir himself, the scream Lindaril.
As he jumped back from the dying beast, Esgalmir returned to complete consciousness, breathing heavily and dripping blood from his knife hand. Lindaril stared at him, her irises practically vanished in her fright.
"Es- Es- Esgalmir?" Then she fainted.
Esgalmir knew the next thing he had done was to pick her up and carry her back to camp. But now more memories were grabbing at him, and he lost the image.
Disjointed, confused sensations struggled to dominate, the memories surging out now, mixing themselves- he could hear Lindaril's voice while he saw the foul face of an Orc, feel his hand on the bow as he smelled the scent of a fire. He blacked out.