Title: The Weeping Wraith, Chapter Three

Author: Katharine the Great

Summary: "What were the Riders trying to do?"  "They tried to pierce your heart with a Morgul-knife which remains in the wound.  If they had succeeded, you would have become like they are, only weaker and under their command.  You would have become a wraith under the dominion of the Dark Lord…" --Frodo and Gandalf at Rivendell

Notes: This is getting even more A/U as it goes on, and is still somewhat rooted in the movie's portrayal of characters.  Disclaimer: Some of this story is quoted directly from the trilogy itself.  I will note these excerpts with a …, so pay attention and don't sue me for plagiarism!  I wouldn't dream of such an offense against the great JRR!!

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            Cold.

            It was so cold…

            The cold had started at his heart, where the blade had cleaved his flesh and rent the steadily beating organ.  It was not the cool breath of winter, nor the icy touch of the River, but a dry, terrifying chill that seeped through his every bone and sinew. 

He stared out into the black, airless void, trembling with the unbearable cold.  He tried to curl in on himself to ease the bitter frost in his heart, but he could not bring himself to move.  His ears searched for the familiar sounds of his own breathing and his heart beating, but they had fled alongside the warmth of life. 

            Kelo!  Kelo! 

            The words echoed distantly.  It was his own voice, sounding much stronger than he felt now.  The command had been directed to the others.

            What others?

            He experienced a brief moment of panic, as he could not remember what others he had been speaking to.  Then, the memories flooded back.  The boats on the River...  the noise in the darkened, starlit woods…the shrieking attack of the black-shrouded Nazgûl…the blade…

            The cold…

            With a soft, shivery moan, Legolas of Mirkwood awoke.  His lungs expanded sluggishly, as though unused to the activity of breathing.  He cracked one eyelid open.  His vision was blurry and unfocused.  There was a harsh light all around him, white and unforgiving, but he could not see the source. 

            He shifted slightly and gasped at the explosion in his breast.  It was both frigid and searing at the same time, rattling every rib and forcing the air from his chilled lungs in a toneless cry.  It seemed to him that his heart writhed within him, groaning soundlessly against the ache overtaking the icy numbness clutching his chest.  

            Legolas opened his eyes all the way and forced his stiffened neck to turn so that he could take in his surroundings.  He was lying on the floor of a large black chamber, one that somehow reflected the blue-white light pouring from the large windows.  The circular chamber was wide and high-ceilinged, with black resin walls marred by wide crevices and thick ridges.  It was as though the walls had been flogged to tatters and then left to heal without any medicinal care, Legolas thought.  He did not recognize the fashion of anything he saw; there were no identifiable symbols anywhere.

            The Elf lifted his head slightly in order to look down and discern his own state.  His green and brown raiment was unchanged, albeit somewhat torn and filthy from his bout with the Nazgûl.  He was stretched out on his back, and his wrists and ankles were chained to rings set in the floor.  There was a large dark stain over his heart where the blade had struck him. 

            My heart…they destroyed my heart…

            Legolas allowed his head to fall back and rest on the floor.  The brief moments of activity had exhausted him unduly.  His skin felt cold and tight, as if it was too small for his body.  He twisted his head around once again to glance up at his hands, which lay limp and unresponsive above his head.  The long fingers were curled into claw-like formations.  Legolas squinted in the severe lighting.  The skin of his left hand was whiter than bone, and a spiderweb's pattern of tiny black veins traced across the surface.

            Elbereth Gilthoniel, the Elf thought in dismay, shivering with a renewed chill.  Merciful Varda, what is happening?

            "You are awake, son of Thranduil?" inquired a voice from the left.  The tone was deep with age and wisdom, yet Legolas' sensitive ears detected the speaker's thready anticipation.

            Legolas opened his mouth to speak, but instead of his own smooth speech there was a ravaged hiss in his throat.  His eyes widened with fright as he heard his own lips forming words out of the animalistic hissing.  "Who…are…you?" 

            The figure approached slowly, its soft footfalls accompanied by a pronounced thumping, perhaps that of a staff or walking stick.  A tall man dressed all in white, with a mane of thick white hair and a long beard to match.  His eyes were strong and piercing, and the coldness in them rivaled the frost in Legolas' body. 

            Legolas' eyes narrowed, and he barely noticed the angry hiss that escaped his rubbery lips.  Saruman, he thought.  The traitor at Isengard.

            "So you do know me," Saruman boomed, his voice echoing in the chamber.  "I have been watching you, Legolas of the Elves.  I know that you are one of the Company in league with the Ring-bearer."

            Legolas said nothing.  He did not know yet what scheme Saruman was concocting, and his own inability to speak with the melodious voice of his people was more than disconcerting.  He did not intend to speak again unless it was necessary.

            Saruman was not disturbed at all by the silence.  The wizard paced in a slow circle around his captive, his long staff tapping the floor as he went.  "Do you recall by what manner you arrived here?" he asked.  When he received no reply, he continued, "It would be a marvel if you did remember at all.  Very well, then, I shall tell you the tale.  You were attacked by the Nine Riders of Minas Morgul, and their lord stabbed you with the Morgul-blade.  He struck your heart, but such wounds from a weapon of Mordor do not kill the victim immediately.  The blow sent you into a cold trance, one from which you could not awake until called by one with the power to do so."

            Legolas heard a tinge of pride in the traitor's voice.  He sorely wanted to shout out condemnation and a promise that Saruman would not succeed in his plans, but the dry rasp in his throat prevented any such exclamation.  And so, Legolas kept his silence and allowed the fallen Istari to continue his explanation.

            "As the head of the Order of the Istari, I have many creatures at my command," Saruman was saying.  "Countless birds and beasts that serve my will, all throughout the land.  The great red bird Gúoshë, one of my many observers in the trees, was watching when you fell at the River bank.  He hurried to inform me as to your impending fate, and I immediately dispatched a company of Uruk-hai to collect your body from the bank.  The Nazgûl had long since departed; they never tend to those they wound.  The Uruk-hai delivered you to me yesterday, and here you have been since then.  I called you from the trance when I deemed the time was right."  Saruman peered down at Legolas with burrowing eyes.  "Do you know what is happening within your body, Legolas Greenleaf?  Do the Elves tell any stories or sing songs about the fate of those struck by a Nazgûl blade?"

            Legolas blinked, unwilling to let even a single word out so long as his voice was trapped in that awful hissing.  He met Saruman's gaze with a steady glare, and was surprised to see the wizard look away.

            "'Tis true that the stare of a Wraith chills the blood," Saruman remarked, straightening up.  "I have not spoken plainly before, but I shall do so now.  You are among those who have died but are not truly dead, Legolas.  Your life-energy is fleeing from your body as I speak, driven out by the poison of the Morgul-blade.  Your heart and lungs have ceased to vibrate with the functions of life.  Soon, your physical form will fade entirely, and then you will become a true Wraith of the Dark Lord: invisible and completely subject to his will."

            Legolas schooled his expression to one of blank passiveness, but his spirit cried out in horror and revulsion.  He could feel the cold tightening around his ruined heart, whispering a dark siren song into every fiber of his being.  The Dark Lord was already calling him into service.  Soon, the chains on his limbs would not be able to prevent him from fleeing to Mordor, to the black tower of Minas Morgul, where the Nine Ringwraiths resided.  Oh, Elbereth, please, not this!  I would die a thousand deaths before I would become a slave of the Dark One! the Elf wept silently.  For an immortal being, death was a serious matter, one that was not taken lightly.  To wish for death was a harsh thing indeed.

            Saruman seemed to see straight through Legolas' stony expression, in the way that all of the Istari seemed to be able to discern hidden things.  "I see that your fate both terrifies and sickens you, Elf-prince of Mirkwood.  Do you wish for death instead?"

            Legolas still remained silent.  He would not yield anything to the traitorous wizard, not one word in response to his queries.  A plague on you and upon all the evils you have perpetrated, Legolas thought angrily at Saruman.

            "I tell you that your fate shall be neither of these," Saruman told him.  "You shall not serve Sauron as a Wraith at his bidding, and you shall not die naturally."  He took in a breath, as if pausing to savor the moment.  "You shall serve me. The first of the Wraiths of Isengard."

            Legolas could not contain himself any longer.  "I…will never serve you!!" he spat, flinching at the ugly shriek that burst from his lips.

            If Saruman was unsettled by the hideous wail echoing in the chamber, he did not show it.  Instead, he lifted his long staff and held it horizontally over Legolas' prone form.  "You shall serve me!" he thundered.  "As the lord of your kind, the race of Elven-wraiths, which will spring forth from Legolas Greenleaf's blade!  My power will assert over that of Elves and Men, over that of the Dark One himself!  I shall master the One Ring, and my army of Elven-wraiths will roam the land like a plague upon the rebellious!"

            With that proclamation, Saruman upended his staff and plunged the end of it into the gaping wound in Legolas' chest.  The wood plunged through the jagged rent in the Elf's heart, and Legolas' spine snapped up off the floor in an agonized arc.  The agony exploded throughout his body like a sudden blizzard, consuming him and forcing a dreadful scream of anguish from his grated throat.

            Saruman's voice rang out over the Elf's escalating shrieks.  "Hear me, O Wraith of Morgul yet to be born!  For you shall not serve the one who called you, but instead the one who binds you now!  Possessed only of my will, and powerful beyond the imaginings of mortals, you shall do my bidding as no other has or could since the dawn of my reign!"  The wizard then began to chant in a sonorous voice that resonated in Legolas' ears like the steady beats of a great drum, and the agony soared to ever greater heights.  "A shade in thy fashion, a slave to my will, neither living nor dead, sworn only to kill, by whim of your Master, Saruman the White, now bend to the darkness, and flee from the light!"

            Legolas heard the chorus of bones snapping from the strain in his body, and as the screams poured in ever-increasing volume from his lips, he felt the terrible weight of Saruman's will bearing down on him.  It crushed him to the floor, despite his desperate writhing and flailing.  He saw a great white mass hurtling toward him, driving out the blackness in his mind, but the white was even more terrifying than the black, and colder still.  Lords of the Valar, spare me this doom! he cried out wildly, shrinking away in the face of the wizard's force.  Save me from this evil, lest I be forced to bow to it!

            Then there was no more time for thought or prayer.  Saruman's command stuck him with the force of a tempest.  Legolas fought and struggled against the invasion, but it was to no avail.  He felt his grip slipping as he was battered by the howling winds of Saruman's strength.  The bloodless cold throbbed at his unbeating heart and radiated outward in sharp spikes.  Shivers of exquisite agony raced along every nerve ending, and Legolas howled in rage as he felt his spirit, everything that made him an Elf, a Firstborn of the royal house of Mirkwood, slipping further and further from the core of his being.  White static filled his vision.  And with a last scream of rage/pain/grief/terror/sorrow, Legolas tumbled down into the void beneath the howl of the blizzard in his soul.

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            Far away, in the shining woods of Lórien, four days before the remnants of the Company of the Ring were to arrive and join their wounded hobbit friend, the Lady Galadriel gazed into her Mirror.  A blinding white agony filled her heart and mind, and she fell to the ground, crying out as no Elf ever had in that sacred place.

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End of Chapter Three!  Anyone freaking out yet?  Don't worry, everyone, I won't leave you hanging.  Chapter Four will address Legolas' fate.  Please, review!