The wagons began to move again, and Galathon stumbled forward with them. He was all a jumble of thoughts and emotions. A great weight of sorrow pressed down on him—for the callous treatment he had received at the hands of his brothers, for the uncertain and frightening future he faced as a slave, for his father and aunt and youngest brother when they learned of his disappearance.

He carried on, toiling after the bechyr, watching the ground go past without really seeing it.

"Edhel," a voice spoke. He looked up.

It was the bachor who had spoken to him earlier. He rode in the back of the wagon amongst the wares, and now he sat backwards to speak to the young slave who was now his charge.

He was swarthy, with dirty blond hair bleached in the sun, and hazel eyes that held a smile. He was dressed like all the bechyr, in a strange hybrid of styles, mixing inferior material with fine, decorated with dwarven, elven, and human motifs.

"Are you thirsty, Elf? Do you need water?" he asked. Galathon shook his head mutely and dropped his gaze. After a moment, the bachor tried again. "My name is Istvan," he said. "What's yours?"

"Galathon," he answered quietly, "son of Seidiron." The words burned within his heart—he was a slave now; he had no father any longer.

He could not bear the thought just yet, and so he asked, "I am to be sold in Dorwinion?"

"Nay, not Dorwinion," Istvan answered. "We have people enough to tend the vineyards of our fair city. You go to the Quendi of Íjhapto. They need slaves to dig the irrigation ditches and make bricks for their palaces."

Íjhapto. Galathon had heard the name before. The elves who lived there were true Avari—the unwilling. They had never traveled to the west—nor even started out and turned back as Galathon's own people, the Nandor, had done. It was spoken in Greenwood that the Quendi of Íjhapto were a strange people, with strange ways. They did not live close to the animals, as the Nandor did, nor even as their distant cousins, the Avari of the north. They built as did the men of the south, of Khand. They farmed a fertile land, watered by ditches dug into the Sea of Rhûn. The city of Henaten stood on the southeastern banks and was the capital of a large series of settlements and cities stretching southward and east along a series of wells and lakes connected by a canal that provided water for their farming. The cities were prosperous from trade with Dorwinion and all of those men's contacts in the north, as well as the cities of the Variags of Khand whose culture they so much resembled.

"They do not speak Sindarin there," Istvan added. "They speak their own noble variety of the tongue of Khand. You must learn it if you are to work there—or to do any work in the house rather than the fields."

Yes. A farm-laborer would not need to speak the language so well, but a servant of the household would. A sudden desire took Galathon to be a house-slave rather than a field-slave. It was not much—the difference between one position of little honor and one of little more, but it would be something. A goal—something for him to live for—to concentrate on, that he might not dwell on his pain while the wound was still so fresh.

"Do you speak it?" he asked the bachor, who was watching his expression closely.

"Aye, a bit—enough to get on there when I must, at least," Istvan admitted.

"Would you teach it to me?"

Istvan regarded him with surprise, then laughed. "You're an eager one, young Galathon," he said, impressed.

"Young?" Galathon repeated, cocking his head to one side.

"Very well, you are most likely older than me," Istvan conceded, but not full-grown yet."

"No—I am but forty-two," Galathon stated.

"Well, a mere ten years my senior, then!" Istvan said, leaning back comfortably. He regarded Galathon with a thoughtful expression. "You really want to learn Íjhapton?" Galathon nodded eagerly. Istvan nodded. "Very well. We can begin at once."

000

Ôlion bade his betrothed goodbye and watched her ride away, headed toward her parents' house. Lathron came to stand beside him and watched the elleth until she disappeared around a curve of the road.

"Had she no success either?" he asked. Ôlion shook his head. "Neither had Ornwen," Lathron admitted. They stood staring down the empty road a minute, then turned as if by one consent and headed back toward the stable yard.

"If not for Fairion's sake, I think he would lose him," Ôlion admitted quietly.

Indeed, Seidiron had said as much when he and Nethiel had come in to see him.

Nethiel, with her warm heart, ran to him and knelt on the floor beside her father-in-law's chair, flinging her arms about him. But Seidiron had turned his face away to hide the tear that slid down his cheek.

"Can you not even spare me a smile, Father?" Nethiel had asked, heartbroken not for his treatment of her, but for his own pain. "Will you not smile again?"

"No," Seidiron said, though he put his arm around her shoulders. "If not for Fairion, I would set my fëa free and fly to Mandos to my son."

Ôlion could hardly bear to see his father's grief. And Fairion, crying so whenever Mudanwen did, crying for the parting he so little understood. All he knew was that his big brother Galathon would never again toss him in the air or kiss him at bedtime. Ôlion felt guilt gnaw at him that he had ever allowed his brothers to put Galathon in that pit in the first place. He was eldest, and responsible. He should have stood up and been a leader to them. But he had failed them and his father—and most of all, he had failed Galathon.

Lathron would never admit it, but he and the others had felt the culpability of it weighing on them as well. One evening when Ôlion had been with Mudanwen and Fairion trying to comfort their father, the three of them had sat in the kitchen in uncomfortable and guilty silence.

"Perhaps—" Eglerion said, his voice sounding small and thin in the quiet, "perhaps we should tell him—or ride to Dorwinion, and—"

"No," Lathron had snapped. His own fear and guilt made him angry. "We resolved to do it, and we have. What, should we pain Adar further by telling him his own sons sold their brother for eight ounces of silver? No, let it be." And none of them had voiced the suggestion since.

The family carried on as best they could. The older brothers went mutely about their tasks. Fairion was quiet as a mouse. Mudanwen became irritable as she tried to do everything at once. And Seidiron slipped out of his own room every night and lay down on the bed of his lost son until morning.

TBC

AN: Gen. 37:34-35

Turns out the plural of bachor is bechyr. Whoops…

trecebo: Thanks. It's kind of hard to make them good guys and bad guys at the same time…

Princess Siara: Oopsie. Yep—Íjhapto, which would be pronounced eezh-HAP-toe. It's a good thing that part of Tolkein's map gets a bit blank, and I can play with it as I will… The Variags of Khand are canon, tho.

Erasuithiel: Thanks!

Please review!