A/N: Yes, I am that mean not to pick up directly where I left off with Legolas; but some things were going on while Aragorn and Legolas were getting the children out of the city that need to be covered before the story can go on…

It had been a long and mostly sleepless night; like none that Merry, Pippin, and Sam had experienced together since the night that Eldarion was born. Was it to be wondered, though, that they could find no rest? All of the hobbits knew about the suspicion that had been cast upon the guards – they'd been on edge ever since Aragorn and Legolas had brought them into their confidence about the plan that was meant to flush out the traitorous ones. Just thinking that the people who were supposed to be protecting them might actually be plotting against them…. It was unfathomable, a waking nightmare; and there seemed to be nothing that they could do to make the situation better.

That night the three hobbit families had gathered together in the adjoining chambers that was usually occupied by the Gamgees, drawing what comfort and rest they could from each other's company when shots coming from the corridor had let them know that Gimli's house had been set on fire. Immediately Sam, Pippin, Merry, and their wives – thank goodness that the children managed to sleep through the ruckus! – rushed over to the only window in the chambers that faced in that direction and crowded around it, watching in horror as the home of their dear friend burned. It had been a crushing blow; not only did it mean that there were indeed traitors in their midst but also that Eldarion, Laurelin, and the infant twins would have to be spirited out of the city as soon as possible. In fact, knowing that word had undoubtedly reached Aragorn and Legolas' ears, the children's flight from Minas Tirith was probably already happening even as they first laid eyes the flames.

For the first time since the Quest of the Ring Pippin, Merry, and Sam felt very small in more than just stature. Their wives were trying to be understanding but couldn't help feeling frightened; their own children's safety could no longer be guaranteed. They could do nothing about Aragorn's increasing frustration, Legolas' distress and repressed fury, and the general misery that had seized all of their loved ones. Now their dear little nephew and nieces were going to be gone from their home for Valar knows how long and all they could do about it was remain in their chambers like Aragorn and Legolas had requested and wait for news about what was going on to come to them.

Well, remain in the Gamgees' chambers for the most part: Sam, Merry, and Pippin had broken their promise in that respect, but more out of consideration to others than for any other reason. After watching people start to fight the fire Rose, Diamond, and Estella, realizing what difficult times most likely laid ahead, had decided to try to capture what sleep that they could that night. They'd begged their husbands to do the same, even while knowing that it was useless to do so. Not wanting to disturb their families, the three restless hobbits had snuck out, slipping a short way down the corridor to Merry and Estella's bedchamber. There, they resolved, they would keep each other company until they could find something a little more useful to do.

After several minutes Merry and Pippin had suggested playing a game; and had pulled out a checkers board when Sam declined to participate in anything like that at such a troubling time. They were nearing the end of their competition when Sam drifted over to the door to listen for any type of movement that might give him a clue as to what was going on. "You shouldn't eavesdrop," Pippin called over to him while Merry was deciding where he wanted to move one of his remaining few pieces.

"I'm not doing any such thing," retorted Sam.

"Just like you were just tripping up the hedges at Bag End?" chided Pippin, wringing his hands. He wasn't sure what was making him more edgy at the moment, waiting for news or Merry's slowness; he was grateful to have Sam around to keep his mind distracted. "Just remember, the last time you were caught eavesdropping you ended up having to go all the way to the heart of the Mountain of Fire in order to make up for it."

"Well, Mr. Gandalf ain't here to hit me over the head with his staff now," replied Sam. As soon as he spoke the old wizard's name his expression became more sad than worried – though the latter emotion was still very much prominent. "I wish he was; it would be worth getting another headache if only he could be here to set things right. He would have been able to figure out who's responsible for this whole stalker nonsense; and his word would have been enough to go on, too – there would have been none of this 'trying to get proof' business. Poor Gimli wouldn't have had to lose his house, and our nephew and nieces could have stayed in the city instead of getting smuggled out of here like some criminals!"

"Who knows?" sighed Merry wearily. "But he still would have punished you for eavesdropping; maybe turned you into something – unnatural."

"I can't imagine a worse punishment than being in this spot right now," lamented Sam; "unless it's compared to what Strider and Mr. Legolas must be going through."

Pippin's empathetic smile gave way to a smug smirk as Merry moved one of his pieces – the last kinged one – right where he wanted it to be. With a flourish the younger hobbit jumped the recently moved checkers and plucked them up to add to his collection. "Three to go," he observed wryly. He gestured to Merry with exaggerated politeness and offered: "Your move."

"I know that," said Merry in a calm voice. He knew that it drove Pippin absolutely insane when he showed no emotion while they played a game; so, of course, he did that as often as he could. "Only fools rush in, Pip. I think it's worth taking my time to figure out what I'm going to do next."

"And you should do just that," replied Pippin, playfully condescending as he surveyed the board. His opponent seemed to have few options that wouldn't lose him more pieces. "Especially since I'm winning and you're losing pieces by the bucket."

"That's a terrible analogy, Pip," noted Merry as he concentrated on the checkerboard.

"That may be," said Pippin in a slight sing-song voice, "but that doesn't change the fact that I've got you on the run."

By the door, Sam jumped suddenly and pressed his ear against the wood. "Shhhh! I think I hear footsteps," he hissed at his friends. His look of anxious anticipation faded into disappointment the next second. "I did, but I guess they weren't coming to tell us anything. Unless – of course! They think that we're still in my chambers! Maybe I should head down there and see if anyone's been knocking at that door. I hope no one down there's slept through any knocking –"

"Sam, stop," pleaded Pippin, his expression solemn as he turned to the other hobbit. "Our wives are unlikely to be sleeping all that deep; they'd hear someone and they'd send whoever that was in this direction. Please just sit down right now. Take a rest. Watch the game and then play the victor after I beat Merry."

Sam shook his head. "I wouldn't be able to think about what I was doing," he demurred.

"Well," said Pippin, clucking his tongue when Merry made yet another foolish move. Only fools rush in, indeed! He couldn't help feeling a little bit full of himself when he jumped the newly vulnerable piece. "That's not stopping Merry here, now is it?"

"The game's not over yet," Merry reminded him. He shifted his focus away from the board momentarily to take a good look at his friend by the door. Sam looked absolutely dreadful, like he'd aged several years during the course of the night. Judging by that and Pippin's appearance Merry was sure that he looked no better but at least he and his cousin were attempting to relax a little. "Seriously, Sam; Pippin does have a point, and more than just the one that's on his head."

"Thank you," said Pippin obliviously, his expression changing slowly as his fatigued mind caught exactly what Merry had said about him. "Hey…"

"Even if you don't want to play me after I win you should still sit down," Merry interrupted him, his eyes not leaving Sam. "Please, Sam; if you keep going on like you are you're going to drop before any news comes."

"As long as I'm listening I feel like I'm doing something," explained Sam, fighting his impulse to crack the door open and peak out; or maybe just sneak down the corridor until he ran into someone who might be able to tell him anything. It was too bad that he would probably be seen by one of the guards, who would question what he was doing out and about so late. He, Merry, and Pippin had taken a big enough risk just getting to Merry's bedchamber – best not to rouse any suspicion at a time when the events happening would make any guard, honest or not, uneasy about changes in the normal routine. "If I sit down now my min will just wander to all of the awful things that have been going on around here lately. It feels off, this whole affair, if you know what I mean; it's not right."

Merry slid his second-to-last piece into its chosen square. "No one's saying that it isn't and that all of it is adding up right," he said. "But worrying about it to the point that you collapse isn't going to help anybody."

"Besides, I need a proper opponent over here," added Pippin as he jumped and claimed the checker that Merry had just moved. "My dear cousin here is about to –"

His voice died away when Merry picked up his last remaining piece and with it did a series of jumps over all of Pippin's pieces, eventually landing in the last row of the younger hobbit's side of the board. Pippin let out a brief and wordless outraged noise and gaped as Merry wiped his checkers away in one smooth motion.

"Well," Merry cleared his throat, clearly amused, "I suppose that there's no point in having you king me now that I've won the game." His face broke out in a wicked smile. "But I think that I'll have you do it anyway. It might teach you some humility; you've been lacking that recently…"

"How?" sputtered Pippin, pointing from the board to Merry's triumphant piece to the stack of checkers just like it that he'd been capturing throughout the game. He repeated that cycle a few times before he could gather enough of his wits to make more words. "I – you – how?"

"Open your eyes and ears and learn something, cousin," said Merry, mockingly sage. "You come over here too, Sam; you can take a little break from your watch and learn something very important about what it takes to win a game of checkers."

Sam actually left his doorway vigil and walked over to Merry's side. It wasn't every day that someone shocked Pippin to the point of speechlessness and he was curious to see how his friend managed to accomplish the feat. "I doubt you'd have much to teach me when it comes to besting someone at checkers," he said, conjuring up a weak smile. "Even my old gaffer said that my mind was as sharp as a tack when it came to that."

"You never know," countered Merry cheerfully. Once he was sure that both of them were paying attention he picked up a few checkers from the pile that was stacked up in front of him before snagging a few from the one in front of his cousin. "You see, Pippin here was playing pieces while I was playing the game."

"The pieces are the game," debated Pippin.

"No, your strategy is the game and you, my friend, weren't playing with one," replied Merry, using his fingers to shuffle the pieces around in his hands just to make the irritating noise that they always made when they were knocked together. "You just did everything you could to protect all of your pieces, jumped whenever the possibility presented itself and, assuming that I was doing the same things, didn't give any thought as to where they were landing. All I had to do was bide my time and give you pieces to jump. It might not have been the least messy way to win the game, I might have had to sacrifice all of my other pieces, but in the end I still won because I only cared about that and not the fate of the rest of my checkers or about how my playing might look to my opponent. All I had to do was be patient."

In that moment it was as if a light had suddenly flickered on in his mind. Merry's eyes widened and his smile faded as it finally hit him – he finally realized what he'd been missing, what all of them had been missing. He looked over at his two companions, whose faces were just as shocked and gray as he imagined his own to be.

All three hobbits stared down at the checkerboard simultaneously but it was only Sam who uttered, "Oh no…"

"Grab it," ordered Merry abruptly, gesturing with his fist – as his hands were still full of checkers – to the game board. "Grab it now and follow me. We've got to get out of here and find Aragorn and Legolas before it's too late."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Faramir, steward of Gondor, was absolutely exhausted. It felt as if he'd if he'd worked long, full day and the sun was only just rising. He and his family had stayed in the citadel that night, officially (for the guards) to lend the royal family some moral support but really to be on hand should the king and prince of Gondor require any assistance in carrying out the plan. The Man hadn't been sure how the night would play out; obviously he'd been hoping that the outcome would exonerate the guards but beyond that he had known that he needed to be prepared for anything. Still, he wouldn't have minded getting just a few more minutes of sleep while waiting for any orders; but unfortunately that wasn't to be.

Settling his children down to sleep had been a more difficult task than he'd anticipated. It took a good amount of time to reassure his daughter that her frequent charges would be just fine; and an even longer time after that to convince his son that Laurelin needed to do something else right then and couldn't possibly come over to play or have a sleepover. Once they had finally drifted off Faramir had gotten caught up in discussing with Eowyn the possibility of anything amounting from the plan. By the time that they'd decided that it was best that they didn't speculate on that now, as they weren't really in a position to do anything about it, the cries of the servants and guards about Gimli's house being on fire started coming from outside and soon the corridors had been filled with the sound of pounding feet.

At that point Faramir had immediately left the bedchamber to seek out the king and prince and, after a few wrong turns, he'd fond them with Eärnil, Tanondor, and Aragorn's brothers as they were carrying the children in the direction of the door to the citadel. Shifting the unconscious Eldarion awkwardly in his arms – the boy was almost thirteen, after all, and getting too big for any adult to carry him like they used to – Aragorn had finally given him what he'd been waiting for: a command. He was to wait for twenty minutes so that the advisors could get the prince and princesses out of the city; then gather as many guards as he could find and order them to meet with the king in the corridors of the royal quarters – now. This had been a more difficult task than Faramir had originally anticipated; the shock of seeing the place where Eldarion and the girls were supposedly hiding engulfed in flames had left the guards in a less-than-alert mindset. In the end he'd had to inform them that the children were in fact safe before he could capture their attentions enough to send them on their way to the king.

So Faramir stood, exhausted, beside his king, thinking that if he was feeling that tired he couldn't imagine how worn out Aragorn was. The other Man hid it reasonably well, though, as he surveyed the distraught guards that he once trusted with the most important parts of his life with a suspicious gaze. "I suppose that many of you are wondering what's been going on here this last night," stated Aragorn, his angers mixed with authoritative smoothness.

"Yes, very much so," spoke up Beren, whose eyes were red from weeping and voice hoarse from screaming the names of his beloved crown prince and princesses. The only thing that had kept him from lunging into the flames in a desperate, suicidal attempt to save them was the Lord Faramir's orders and whispered promises that the children were safe and not trapped inside. "To see that fire and believe" – his voice broke off in a cry – "they weren't in there, right? Lord Faramir swore…"

"No, they never stepped foot in that house yesterday," Aragorn told him, resisting the urge to glance over at Faramir. He'd have to have a talk with his steward later about revealing information that he should have but in truth Aragorn really didn't blame him. The king himself hated how the plan required that they put the guards that were truly loyal through this whole trying ordeal.

"Thank the Valar," breathed Mardil in a small voice, slumping a little in relief. "May we see them?"

Aragorn shook his head. "They're not in the citadel, or anywhere else in the city," he announced, his voice stern and hard as if he were a tutor who was scolding a repeatedly violent child. "On my orders the prince and princesses have been removed from Minas Tirith."

A cry rose up from the crowd of guards, one of utter confusion and even a little outrage. "They left the city and no one bothered to tell us?" demanded Beren, all decorum forgotten under this final blow. He stepped forward and met Aragorn's stinging stare. "No, they left the city and we were told that they were somewhere that they weren't! Why, sire? Why did you put us through this nightmare?"

Aragorn opened his mouth to knock the guard back with his accusation but it was another person's voice that filled the air. "Aragorn! Legolas!" shouted Merry. "Stop! Don't do it!"

The panic in the hobbit's voice made Aragorn turn. What he saw was Merry rushing down the corridor toward them, his hands full of checkers; followed by Sam bearing a game board and Pippin, whose eyes were darting around frantically. "Where's Legolas?" Pippin demanded.

"He said something about visiting the children's chambers," answered Aragorn, bewildered and a little annoyed at their abrupt and frankly bizarre intrusion. What was wrong, why did it have to be dealt with at that very moment, and what did checkers have to do with any of it. "I believe that he was going to head to Eldarion's bedchamber first. Why –"

"Go get him, Pip," ordered Merry, apparently not caring that he cut the king of Gondor off. The younger hobbit didn't ask for permission or need to be told twice; he took off at once at a pace that was only matched by the time during the siege of Minas Tirith during the War when he was racing against the crowd to find Mithrandir while Faramir laid on the burning alter. Merry didn't even bother to watch him go before turning back to the Man. "You can't send the children off, Aragorn."

"It's too late," Aragorn informed him, uncomfortable with the way that the hobbit was ordering him around in front of the guards. While he had no problem being a king of the people, not too haughty to mingle and be friendly with the common people, he still needed to maintain an image of authority. "They've already left."

Merry hung his head momentarily. "Oh no," he moaned, temporarily defeated. Then a surge of stubbornness swelled within him – he might not have been able to keep them from departing but maybe he could stop them from going too far! He looked back up at Aragorn with a determined gleam in his eyes. "Sam, help me set up the board. Aragorn, please; for the sake of your children, watch this. The three of us think we've finally figured out why things haven't been adding up right when it comes to this stalker."

"That's been going around a lot lately," commented Faramir with no real humor.

"And all of that before had been wrong," Merry told them, mournful rather than triumphant as he put the checkers into place. "We haven't been understanding it – understanding him – properly. Think about it: the stalker has made it very clear that he can get any one of us whenever he wanted to. He could have easily done something to Laurelin before all of the extra security. He had a knife when he attacked Eldarion but instead of stabbing him he just hit him with the handle. Why is that?"

"To taunt us," replied Aragorn tersely. "To let us know that he can hurt any of us at any time and there's nothing that we could do to stop him."

"That's just it," said Merry. "He doesn't want to hurt just any old one of us. All of the attacks – not the inane deeds and random present and flowers – were aimed at your children. They were his targets all along."

"Well then he failed utterly," said Faramir. "Everything he did just drove them farther and farther from his reach."

Merry looked ready to vomit as he settled down next to the board to illustrate his point. "Or so we thought," he said. "But we weren't thinking about his overall strategy – we were just countering his latest move. First he leaves Laurelin a ghastly present, forcing him to sacrifice some poor soul's finger, and security tightens." He jumped a black checker with a white checker. "Then he spends weeks doing all these helpful creepy little things and we all get more and more paranoid about safety, tightening security even further." Another black checker was jumped by a white one. "Then he goes and attacks Eldarion; a guard actually catches a glimpse of him but he vanishes and security is at an all-time high." He jumped yet another black checker. "Then you start to wonder who can be trusted and come up with a plan to set a trap for him."

His face grew grim as he jumped another black checker with a white one. "You think you've got him cornered now, don't you?" he asked in a tight voice. "He's on the run, the fact that you don't know who he is yet the only piece that he has left, but" – he took the last black checker and jumped all four white checkers, moved into perfect jumping position by their last moves, in one play – "but really he's been waiting for you to move your pieces into place so that he could take them all at once."

Aragorn stared down at the four white pieces ('Eldarion, Laurelin, Gilraen, Meren…') in Merry's hand with horror as realization set in. His children were outside of the city with naught but two older Men to protect them and that might very well have been the stalker's plan the entire time. Had he really been foolish enough to play into the madman's hands like that? If so…

A piercing scream rattled them all out of their musings. "Guards!" Pippin's voice had never been louder and more horrified in his life. "Guards!"

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

"You have fifteen seconds to explain why you're in my son's wardrobe and how you got in there," snarled Legolas. "Go."

Lord Malvegil, advisor to the king of Gondor and, at the moment, one frightened Man, swallowed nervously as he felt the cool steel of the prince's knife against his throat. "I'm not doing anything," he gasped out. "I'm only trying to help."

"By lurking in Eldarion's wardrobe?" asked Legolas incredulously. The Man flushed in the face of his fury. "Funny sort of help."

In all his years on the Advisor's Council Malvegil had never once seen Legolas so enraged. Oh, he might have felt angry but he never once knowingly lost control of any emotions in the presence of another advisor until that moment. It suddenly occurred to the lord that the prince was entirely capable of killing him. "Please, I beg you –"

At that moment Pippin burst into the chamber and goggled at the sight he found there. Nice, calm Legolas was holding a deadly-looking knife to a nobleman's throat, looking worn-down and enraged enough to put it to proper use. "Legolas!" he cried, but his friend appeared to be too focused on Malvegil to hear him. He supposed that he should have wondered why the lord was in Eldarion's bedchamber in the first place but at the moment he only knew that, according to the way that he and the other two had figured things out, the stalker would be outside of the city and anywhere near the royal quarters. Dear Shire, Legolas was about to do something that he would probably regret for the rest of his life and the hobbit didn't know how to stop him. "Guards! Guards!"

What sounded like a stampede responded immediately to his screams. In no time flat a crowd led by Aragorn and Faramir, and consisting of what looked like every guard in the citadel came charging in. Merry and Sam, lagging because of their shorter legs, soon moved through the throng to stand with the king and steward. "My love!" shouted Aragorn, lunging forward and grabbing the hand that held the knife. Legolas was so stiff that he Man found that he couldn't make him move. "Lower your knife, my love. We need answers from him before we decide what to do with him."

Slowly Legolas registered what his husband said and lowered the knife. Two guards were already grabbing the lord even before the blade left the skin of his throat. "He was in Eldarion's wardrobe, Aragorn," Legolas stated furiously, gesturing with the weapon. "I came in here and there he was, just like the stalker!"

"I was checking to see if all of the doors were truly being guarded," spoke up Malvegil, desperately pleading his case to Aragorn since he could tell that the prince wasn't very interested in excuses and reason at the moment. "They weren't; only the visible ones were. There are more doors to these chambers than just the ones that you can see."

"Explain," ordered Aragorn sharply.

"I'll do better than that – I'll show you," he offered, wincing a little when one of the guards tightened his grip. "I'll need to move around a little more freely to do so, though."

The Man hesitated, but only momentarily. "Guards, let him go but don't leave him out of grabbing distance," glowered Aragorn. The two guards didn't look entirely happy but they obeyed. "Now show us and be quick about it."

Malvegil walked cautiously over to the wardrobe and flung it wide open so that everyone in there could see inside. "This has a false back," he announced, reaching in to touch the wooden back. Everyone stared in shock when he slid it aside in one smooth motion to reveal the wall that it was pressed up against. "It, like various other pieces of furniture, has been nailed to the floor to discourage moving others from moving it so that this remains both hidden and accessible."

He pushed against the center of the exposed wall; the seemingly solid rock easily gave way to reveal what looked to be a dark tunnel. "What is this?" wondered Legolas.

"Insurance," replied Malvegil grimly. "In the old days of the king these tunnels were to be used for the king's family to escape as a last resort in case the royal quarters were overrun, ensuring that his line would continue. These were kept an absolute secret even from the guards – as one never knew if they'd remain loyal in the end, if they ever were at all – and only referenced once, in a document hidden deep in the library. That paper and the tunnels were forgotten when the king went away; as it was, we only found the reference after Lord Denethor discovered the tunnels."

"Why wasn't I told about these?" demanded Aragorn as he imagined all the times that anyone could have attacked any one of his children. To think that he'd let them be this vulnerable, this exposed…

"We thought that you knew," replied Malvegil. "It's not something that's spoken about in front of others who don't and shouldn't know; and there was so much bad blood between you and the Council during the first years of your reign that none of us tried to tell you in private. We just assumed that Lord Faramir would let you know."

"I didn't know about these," said Faramir, sounding a little dazed and sad.

"But surely Lord Denethor –"

"No son of my father's runs in the face of danger."

Malvegil shook his head. "You were but a child when he found them," he told him.

Faramir gave him a painful smile. "No son of my father's runs in the face of danger," he repeated in a melancholy tone.

"Wait one minute," spoke up Legolas, his nerves frayed. "Are you telling me that every advisor save me and Faramir knew about these?"

"No! Goodness, no," said Malvegil tautly, the knife not forgotten. "The Lord Denethor would have never shared knowledge of these with anyone willingly. The only reason why I know about them at all is because we were speaking to him after a Council meeting when he stumbled upon one of the doors, the one in the meeting hall's wall."

"And who makes up this 'we' that you keep mentioning?" pressed Aragorn. "Who else knows?"

"There were four; I assume that the secret stayed between us," recounted Malvegil. "Me, Cirion, Tanondor, and Eärnil. I know no more," he added quickly when he saw the king and prince's eyes widen. "May I suggest finding Eärnil and Tanondor now? Perhaps they know something that I don't,"

To be continued…