Chapter 8- Silence

Firstly, I must apologise for the massive time gap since my last update. My typical good intentions have been foiled by work, deaths, exams, thefts and other jolly things, and all since new year…but hey, we all know about the good intentions of writers. I hope the time delay wont have lost me your kind thoughts, I can't believe the feedback I received for this story. You are all so encouraging, and, at the risk of sounding soppy, I would never have gone back to the story if it wasn't for you guys. Thanks for everything,

Nenny xx

Disclaimer: I am only writing this story for my personal enjoyment. I don not own any of the recognisable characters or places in this story, and I am not making any financial profit from it.

Nienna over and out.

Chapter 8- Silence

Estel rode through the woods, his brothers either side of him. Slants of grey light were glimmering through the leaves. The man strained his sensitive ears to the sounds of the forest, every nerve on edge as he listened for an out of place sound. Nothing. This part of the great forest was young and green and echoed with birdcall and rustles of tiny mammals. And there were the sounds that made up the texture and life of the forest, sounds only wood elves could clearly hear; the creak and stretch of growing bark and the soft whisper of a million leaves opening to the sun.

The three elves were also wary and rode with their weapons to hand, watching the forest carefully. Aragorn wasn't completely sure what they were looking for. Thranduil's folk had searched this area thoroughly already and he realised he never expected them to find anything.

And there was nothing. Hours went by and above the forest Anar slowly climbed across the sky. The four of them moved deeper into the wood. The man imagined the other Rangers a way off to his right and left, the line slowly moving forwards through the wood. The Rangers had agreed on two days searching here, then return to the outskirts of the forest and move further round the forest. Celussë had taught the Rangers a call used by the Mirkwood patrol, one that was pitched to carry through the dense woodland. That was the signal for danger, or if something was found. So far though, all was silent.

The wood around them began to grow darker, the trees older and closer. Estel shivered and, realising he had fallen behind a bit spurred Mithren closer to his brothers horses.

"Now we must be on our guard," Glorfindel was saying quietly. Although Estel knew the sun was still high in the sky above them, darkness closed in; evil spreading like a poison from the festering sore of Dol-Guldor, slowly leeching the life from the once beautiful forest. As they moved deeper into the wood, they felt the layers of malignancy wash over them like ripples in disturbed water. All four shivered and Elladan turned pale. The horses skittered anxiously.

"Come on," said Elrohir through gritted teeth and the four dismounted. From now on, the search would be on foot. There was too much danger of missing things from horse back. The four moved off through the forest leading their horses behind them.

Estel looked around him nervously, both longing and dreading for a sign of the Prince. He yearned for an end to this nervous apprehension but dreaded what they might discover at the end of their journey. Without thinking, the young human trod on a twig which cracked loudly in the tense air. Glorfindel winced and Elladan froze.

"Sorry!" whispered Aragorn before he realised they were not looking at him, but something before them. He crept forward and saw the swathe of destruction crossing their path, and disappearing off through the trees to their left and right. Slashed branches hung from the trees and the path was trampled into a muddy quagmire of discarded rubbish.

"Orcs!" said Elladan rather unnecessarily.

Aragorn knelt and his fingers brushed the deep scars cut into the earth by the orcs iron shoes. "This path has been used a lot. We must be near a camp or something."

Glorfindel nodded. "What now?"

Elladan glanced up and then looked at Elrohir. They stood in silence for a couple of seconds before both of their eyes flicked down to look at Estel.

"What?" he asked uneasily, standing up.

"If we're near an orc camp, we'll go and look for…prisoners. "

"Use the trees to get closer?" guessed Glorfindel.

"Yes. We're not Woodelves, but it should still be alright. The trees are quite close. Its just…I'm not sure if Estel could do it."

All three turned to look at him. "It's okay." He said quickly. "I'll be fine."

Elrohir looked unconvinced. "Are you sure? I just don't want to have to take you back home to Ada in a box because you fell out of a tree."

Estel felt annoyed and embarrassed. "Elrohir! We don't have time for this. At the moment Legolas is the highest priority. Stop fussing!"

"Okay, okay!"

Glorfindel leaned over to tie the horses' reigns to a tree branch.

"Stop!" said Aragorn suddenly "If danger comes they wont be able to escape. Leave them free, we'll find them."

The elf looked at him, surprised. "Good point."

"Right," said Elladan, "One pair on either side of the road. That way we're less likely to miss something. Estel, come with me. Lets go." And with that, he leapt up, and catching a branch, lightly swung himself into the nearest tree.

The path through the trees was far from easy for the human. Ahead of him, he could see Elladan lightly stepping from branch to branch with barely the slightest movement of leaves. The man followed, trying to step where his brother did and clinging onto the branches around him. "Tree-walking" as his brothers called it was definitely harder that it looked, but Aragorn gradually began to get the knack of placing his feet along the length of the branch instead of across it, of spreading his weight and of how to move quietly through the thousand hanging leaves. Growing up with elves had certainly given him the advantage over other humans. He glanced to his left, but Elrohir and Glorfindel had long since vanished into the arboreal darkness.

The ground beneath the trees was often littered with debris and the wanton destruction of orcs when faced with helpless lives. In several places they came across trees needlessly torn and hacked by blunt orc axes. Every so often, Elladan would halt, and drop down to the forest floor. But however hard the pair searched, there was no sign of an elf amongst the orc prints, and they carried on through the trees into the gloom.

A raven crouched in the branches of an ancient yew. Sharp, yellow eyes searched through the gloom for carrion from the orc road and they spotted their target. With a stretch of wings, the bird lifted weightlessly from the branch and flapped down onto the dark ground. The raven poked at the blackened object with its beak, and, pushing its head underneath, pecked at the noisome leather. The creature carked in anger as its scratching claws encountered an inedible metal buckle, and, giving the leather a final stab with its beak, the raven flew off in search of easier pickings.

The orc road was empty and silent again, in the gathering dark. Suddenly, a golden-haired elf dropped silently onto the path, not five paces from where the raven had been 20 heartbeats before. He crouched, frozen, every sense tuned for danger, but with the raven's flight, the area around was empty of life. Not natural for a forest. The elf flicked his eyes up to his companion above, and moved noiselessly through the shadows towards the discarded object on the roadway.

Elrohir crouched on the tree branch, and watched Glorfindel stoop and pick up the leather belt. The Elf Lord looked at it for a long time, and Elrohir's heart sank within him. Oh Valar. The belt must be Legolas's. He had been here. Elrohir, though normally the far more emotionally stable of the twins, felt himself feel faint with fear for his friend, and he gripped the branches tight. Legolas must have- Suddenly, the back of his neck prickled and, on instinct, he spun round just in time to see an enormous spider poised to leap on his back. The creature rolled back with a hissing squeal and dropped dead to the ground. Elrohir let out an unsteady breath, and looked at the knife he wasn't even aware of drawing. It dripped grey slime from the creature's belly. Elrohir jumped to the ground, moving quickly away from the trees.

"Spiders!"

Glorfindel spun round, drawing his sword in the process, just as ten Mirkwood spiders dropped on them from the trees above.

The fight was vicious, but quickly over. Glorfindel dispatched the last spider with a quick swing of his sword, kicking the bloated body away into the shadows. He turned to find his young companion sitting on the ground, hunched forwards over his knees. With fear, he moved quickly to him, and kneeling, grasped his shoulder. "Elrohir! Uume the ni mae?"

Elrohir lifted his head. "Ye, mellon nin, maem… I was bitten, my arm…"

"Valar!" Glorfindel breathed as he steadied Elrohir, carefully rolling up his left sleeve. The bite was deep, a dark red purple, and already the white skin around was tinged with the black venom. Glorfindel swore.

"Now, now." chided Elrohir, grinning. "There's no need for that."

Glorfindel looked at him incredulously. "Mellon nin, have you gone mad?"

Elrohir shrugged and grinned again. "Maybe. Perhaps the antidote in my bag is just a hallucination".

"Antidote?" Glorfindel swiftly emptied the bag onto the floor, picking out a small green bottle labeled with Aragorn's rather untidy scrawl. "Where-"

"Estel. Celussë showed him how to make it back at Rivendell." Elrohir quickly sipped from the bottle, before handing it back.

"That young man will be an excellent leader." replied Glorfindel quietly, as he tipped several drops onto the wound. It bubbled unpleasantly. Elrohir paled slightly, but said nothing.

"You should warn Elladan that there are spiders lurking about." Glorfindel said, carefully wrapping a bandage around the new dressing on Elrohir's arm. A familiar tangy smell rose from the linen. It had been soaked in athelas water. Good. Glorfindel fixed the end of the bandage with three thorns in the traditional elven manner, before rolling Elrohir's sleeve back down.

"Do you want me to strap it up?" he asked. Elrohir shook his head, stretching his arm.

"No, it's alright. I can use it well." He looked up, impressed. "You are a good healer."

"Your father is a good teacher. Pack your bag, I'll hide the corpses."

Glorfindel stood as if to walk away, but turned back to Elrohir at the last moment. His eyes were tired.

"Elrohir. You had better tell you brother about this too." He held out the blackened leather object. It was a broken knife belt, its mithril buckle formed as the beech leaf of the Mirkwood royal family.

Darkness was falling and Estel reached out for a branch, realising he could no longer see his hand in front of his face. The path through the ancient trees was becoming slower and more treacherous with every passing minute, as night filled the forest. Elladan watched his brother warily. He had not told the young man about Legolas's belt that the others had found, or about Elrohir's injury, only passing on a terse instruction to watch out for spiders. The boy had enough problems already, Elladan could see the constant strain of tree-walking was badly tiring him, and, although he knew Estel would never admit it, he could see also see that he was in pain from his half-healed shoulder wound. He was not sure if it was the proximity to evil or merely the onset of night, but there was a deep chill in the air too. Twenty years of living with the boy told him the human would have to rest soon, but Elladan couldn't bear the thought of being so close to the orc camp, and turning back. Not now. Not after the belt. Elladan was frightened.

After they had been moving for about an hour and Estel's healing shoulder was aching painfully, Elladan suddenly stopped and held up a hand. Aragorn froze, hardly daring to breathe, every sense tingling for danger. Elladan looked up, as if listening.

"Elrohir has seen a clearing through the trees. An orc camp." He whispered.

"Deserted?" said Aragorn half hopefully.

Elladan shook his head. "Hundreds. We are quite close."

"What now?"

Elladan was silent for a minute while he spoke to his twin, before relaying the conversation to Aragorn

"We move on, until we are on the opposite side of the camp from Elrohir, and stay in the trees away from the lookouts. No combat, just…check there's no sign of the prince before we head back to the other Rangers."

Aragorn nodded, trustingly. "Shouldn't we whistle? To let the others know about the orcs, I mean."

Elladan grinned ruefully. "We're already way out of earshot tithen gwador. The only thing a whistle would attract now is the orcs."

The human shivered slightly. Suddenly his two brothers and Glorfindel whom he had always thought invincible didn't seem like such good odds against hundreds of orcs. "Let's just check the camp and get back to the others then."

The elf smiled slightly. "An excellent plan. Lead the way."

Full darkness had fallen, and the air beneath the trees stilled into deep silence. A sudden draft, the exhalation of some giant leviathan, brought a fetid stench wafting towards the two brothers. Estel gagged and quickly covered his nose with his sleeve. Elladan felt his own eyes water.

"What is it?" asked Estel muffledly.

"Yrch." Elladan replied grimly. "Keep going. Quietly now."

A deep, rootless sense of dread crept over Elladan, and through his mental link with his twin, he could sense Elrohir was feeling it too. Malice seeped from the very bark of the trees, their hearts twisted by the interminable darkness that was swathed about them by the shadow's return.

Suddenly, Estel stopped, his breath in his mouth as he caught Elladan's arm. "Look!" He breathed.

In front of them, the trees suddenly dropped away, a huge clearing cutting across their path, stretching into the distance. The red glow of a dozen watch fires threw up immense shadows of the two hundred orcs sprawled on the ground and around the new tree stumps. The hewed trucks and branches had been dragged away and dumped forming a ring around the outside of the camp; sap slowly bleeding from the newly killed trees.

"There's so many." The young man whispered. Elladan couldn't even nod a reply, caught up in the now familiar flood of anger, fear and grief. The land he loved was slowly drowning in darkness and he was powerless to save her.

Looking down at the vile creatures stretched out in snorting sleep on the ground below, Estel felt a sudden wave of dizziness sweep across him. Feeling as if he were about to pitch forward, he reached out blindly, catching hold of Elladan's sleeve again to steady himself. And with another surge of nausea, his eyes darkened and the world reeled, he felt himself fall and suddenly-

A still, green forest, misty in the dappled sunbeams. The song of a distant thrush echoes gently up to the sun. The silver ribbon of a tiny stream splashes over mossy rocks, and everywhere a good, clean, green smell extrudes from the peaceful earth.

A distant figure moving through the gentle trees. A man, dressed in black. He holds out his arms as he walks, to savour the warm sun, the light is dancing through the leaves of a branch learning over the path. The man looks, raises a hand to caresses a single, hanging beech leaf as if in greeting.

But at the touch of that finger, the leaf curls up, withering on its branch, crumbling into black dust as it slowly falls to the ground.

A slight creak above, and the twig of the beech slowly turns black and twists away, the rot spreading up the branch, faster and faster, as with an increasing rustling sound, leaves rot and blacken, dropping to the ground. Finally, the blackness plunges into the tree's trunk, and the tree emits a piercing shriek, its bark peeling away in black clots.

The man ignores the dying tree and moves to the next, a delicate silver birch; he runs a finger across its smooth bark. This time, the infection attacks the trunk first, the blackness eating deep into the tree's heart within seconds. Another dying cry bursts from the tree, and the sounds mingle as the living trees slowly shrivel away. The man walks to the next tree, touches its bark, and soon, all the trees are screaming and weeping sap tears, and the man is laughing amid the putrefied falling leaves. As he walks, the grass behinds him shrivels and dies, the stream he crosses flows with blood. The laughing man moves through the murdered forest, death goes before him, pestilence follows behind, and drowning it all are the screams of the trees.

"Estel!" a voice cried and the world swirled sideways; the young man jerked his eyes open to see the ground a dizzying 20 feet below his dangling legs. He gasped, looking up, saw Elladan's white face and the Elf's grasp on his wrist, the only thing preventing him plunging down amongst the orcs below. Heart in his mouth, pulse pounding, Aragorn's boots scrabbled against the bark as Elladan slowly pulled him up into the tree with the strength only an Elf could summon. Once safe, Aragorn grasped the branches tightly in his trembling hands, his mind reeling as he tried to steady his breathing. Elladan clutched his shoulder, peering into his eyes with worry and fear. "Tithen Gwador, are you ill?"

"No, I'm fine, it's just…I saw a place, and…a man, he…the trees…they were screaming…and the blood…" Aragorn stopped as the full horror of the sight flooded back into his mind, the death and the screaming. And the blood.

"What happened to me?" He looked up at Elladan.

"You went all rigid, and then you sort of slumped and just fell out of the tree. I thought you had been shot." He stopped, looking at Estel for an explanation, but the man did not answer. Aragorn's mind was in turmoil. What was happening to him? First, that strange certainty about Legolas when he had been sitting with Celussë, and now this. This dream? A Vision? What did it all mean? He shook his head, trying to clear the ghosts from his mind.

Elladan, watched his brother worriedly, the panic of the last few minutes slowly fading, as Aragorn's sudden illness seemed just as suddenly over. The Elf closed his eyes, and, forcibly calming himself, focussed on the bright thread of his twin's essence in his mind, calling his name. This communication they shared was more than just a chance gift, he knew. They were probably lucky to get away with just fraternal telepathy, considering Galadriel was their grandmother.

"Elrohir?"

"I'm here 'Dan." Elrohir answered. And, sensing Elladan's worry, asked "What's happened?"

"It's Estel. I don't think he is well."

Elrohir's mind suddenly fogged with concern.

"He's alright now." Elladan clarified, "He just fainted or … something."

"Is he going to be alright?

"Oh yes. Well, I think so. He's not injured. It's probably just tiredness."

"He'll be alright for a few more minutes then?"

"Look 'Ro, you're injured too. I really don't think-"

"'Dan. We have to look … now we found the belt."

Ah yes. The belt. Elladan had felt the anger that had coursed through his younger, more impulsive twin at the sight of the orcs. Suddenly, Elladan felt Elrohir's mind pull back from his own, and he heard the echo of Elrohir's real voice in his head. He waited patiently while Elrohir spoke to Glorfindel until Elrohir returned.

"Glorfindel and I are going to move eastwards, widdershins round the camp through the trees, so you-

"Go West, yes I know. If you see anything-"

"I'll keep in touch."

The two pairs, separated by the clearing, moved on round the camp, slower now the darkness was making silent movement difficult, and nigh on impossible for the tired human. However, silent they most be, so they crept on through the branches, leaves rustling at their passing. The stench grew fouler, making Aragorn's head light. An orc snore made him start, and he realised he was holding his breath. His eyes hurt from trying to pick out the details of the slumbering bodies in the flickering light. He could almost convince himself he was seeing elves everywhere.

Suddenly, Elladan stopped as Elrohir flooded into his mind, filled with a dark thrill of panic.

"'Dan! I can see the prisoners. There are about thirty."

"That'… a lot" Elladan commented, fear rising in him again.

"There are orcs everywhere, I-"

Elrohir broke off suddenly, and Elladan felt a sudden surge of shock and horror before Elrohir managed to mask his emotions from him.

"What is it?" asked Elladan, frantic with dread. "Elrohir?"

"I can see him. Legolas." Elrohir whispered.

"By all that's holy…where is he? Is he alright? Can he see you? Can you-"

Elrohir was trembling.

"Elladan…he's dead."

translations Uume the ni mae? Will you be well?

Ye Yes

Maem I am well

Mellon nin My friend

Tithen GwadorLittle brother

Gwador nin My brother

Ada Dad

Anar the sun

Hopefully a new chapter shall shortly be forthcoming, although I am running out of ideas...Strange as it may seem, this is not intended to be an AU. Now you know...

With thanks to my darling Kementari, who stepped in at the last minute when my beta Raven went on holiday. Thanks tithen gwathel, love you.

namárië ar sérë, híninya

nienna xx