The edge of the dark

Nothing happened.

Gimli looked around, the light of the torch flickering off the pale stone beneath his feet. Beyond the narrow circle of light the quiet darkness pressed in, heavy and featureless. There was no sign of Legolas.

'Gimli?'

'It's all right,' Gimli called back to Aragorn. 'At least, I think so. There's nothing here.'

'Right. I am coming through.'

Gimli took another step, and another, and then behind him, Aragorn followed, making his own cautious way through the doorway. He came up to Gimli and the looked at each other grimly, faces made of flickering shadows. The chamber around them was unrelentingly black but for the torch in Gimli's hand, and the burning spark of light ahead.

'Legolas?' Aragorn called. They both waited quietly, listening, but heard nothing.

They set off through the gloom aiming for the distant glimmering light of the burning wood. Gimli sensed Aragorn close at his back, felt the tug of the rope against his wrist, heard a few distant water drops, but still the silence seemed complete and unrelenting. He saw the flicker and burn of the torchlight on their clothes and their shifting shadows glimmered on the stone floor as they moved, but no other shapes could be seen in the darkness. It was like they had stepped into the Void itself.

The ember of burning wood was still smouldering as they reached it; a sullen low flame burning stubbornly on against the darkness. Looking behind them, the orange light of the burning door was a glimmer in the dark. It looked very far away. There were no other landmarks, nothing to aim towards. Just darkness, and silence.

'Legolas?' Gimli shouted when the quiet became all too oppressive. The nothingness that followed did not help.

'Well,' the Dwarf said, after a moment. 'What now?'

Aragorn looked around. 'Left,' he said, decisively, and so they set out into the darkness.

They had taken only a few steps into the formless black when both heard a sound far away to the right; a soft tap of stone on stone. Gimli whipped around. 'Legolas?' he called again, and this time, at last, he was answered.

'Gimli?'

'Legolas!' they both cried.

'Where are you?' Aragorn called back, peering vainly into the dark as they hurried in the direction of the sound. 'Keep talking so we can follow your voice.'

'No. Go back,' Legolas called, faintly.

'You are close, somewhere,' Aragorn replied. 'We are not leaving. Legolas?'

Only silence came back.

'This way,' said Aragorn, grimly, and they turned right, hurrying through the featureless dark towards their friend. Every so often, what felt like every five minutes or so, they would call again, for Legolas, for Alfy, for the farmers Holden and Rickon. Only silence ever came back.

Aragorn was debating changing their route again when they heard Legolas's voice, somehow no closer than when he had last spoken despite their aimless wandering.

'Gimli...' he said. Aragorn jumped.

'Gimli. You must leave,' said the Elf. 'Run, Gimli. You must run.'

Gimli went utterly still. The rope on his wrist pulled tort as Aragorn walked on past him, but Gimli paid it no mind, because he had been suddenly struck with a thought, a horrible and sickening realisation. A chill of fear punched into the pit of his stomach and began to freeze up his gullet.

Unaware, Aragorn was still calling out. 'Do not talk nonsense,' he was saying. 'We are not going to leave you, Legolas.'

'You must run,' Legolas said. 'I cannot move. Gimli.'

The rope tugged again, and Aragorn noticed at last that Gimli was no longer following. He stopped and looked back at the Dwarf where he was frozen in place.

'What is the matter?' Aragorn said.

'That is what Legolas said before,' Gimli replied. 'Before he was taken.' His heart was pounding in his throat.

Aragorn's face flickered in the torchlight. 'If he is injured, his mind might be confused,' he suggested. 'We must go to him.'

Gimli shook his head. He still did not move. 'That's not what I mean,' he said. 'It is not confused repetition I hear, nor something alike to what he said before. It is exactly what he said. The words, the tone...' Gimli stared up at Aragorn, filled with a dread so awful he could barely speak it.

'Aragorn,' he said, slowly. 'I don't think that is Legolas.'

Aragorn stared back.

Out in the darkness, a voice that sounded like Legolas said, 'Gimli. Gimli.'

Gimli saw the moment Aragorn realised the truth, for his shoulders went rigid and his eyes flashed in the torchlight. The man turned slowly, looking out into the dark. 'Who are you?' he called. His voice was cold and quiet. 'What are you?'

'I…' said the thing that sounded like Legolas but wasn't. 'I…'

'Where is he?' Aragorn demanded. But now there was no answer at all.

Aragorn stayed frozen for a second and then set his jaw, determined. 'Come,' he said to Gimli. 'Legolas has to be close. I will not be deceived.'

'That thing , whatever it is...it has Legolas' voice,' Gimli said. His hand tightened over the wood of the torch. 'It has his voice , Aragorn.'

'Come,' Aragorn jut said again, grimly. He stepped on into the dark.

They heard and saw nothing more for some long time. It was hard to determine anything in the unrelenting dark. They called for Legolas, shouted and shouted, but heard nothing. The voice did not come again.

There was no time down here, no sense of distance. All Gimli's ancient lore of deep places could tell him nothing now. The floor was flat and unchanging in slope or consistency. The cool air was still and dry; it never shifted with currents or pockets of rising heat. There were no echoes to speak to him of the nightsong of stone, the density of rock or shifting of faults within the earth, or the pulsing flow of water through seams of minerals. For all that the torch in his hand flickered and burned, Gimli had never felt so blind.

Out there in the dark was something that sounded like Legolas.

Splash!

The sensation of cold water over his iron-toed boot was as shocking as the sound; Gimli recoiled, almost falling back against Aragorn.

'It's water,' he said, raising the torch as he recovered from the surprise. 'An underground pool of some kind.'

The light still barely penetrated the darkness, but now they could both see tiny glints of red flickering along the edges of the rippling silent water where Gimli's boot had disturbed it. They stood on the shore of a deep, black pool, and neither could see how far it stretched.

'Let us follow along the shoreline,' suggested Aragorn. 'We know there is a wall to this chamber. We shall follow the lake edge until we come to it, and then we will go around the wall, keeping it on our left until we have walked the edge of the entire room. Then at least we shall know how big this chamber is.'

'Aye,' Gimli agreed, and with nothing better to propose, set off in the lead once more, keeping the water on his right side. The rope against his wrist tugged gently where it tethered the two of them together.

They walked on. And on. The black water stretched out unseen on their right and they went on and on and it never changed. Step after shuffling step in the featureless silent dark, dread building with every moment that passed. Because, though they did not speak of it, said no words to give shape to the horror, they both knew this cavern was too big. No tomb of men was so large, so dark and so unending. They had passed through that doorway into somewhere else. Into something else.

Legolas had been gone too long. And something out there had his voice.

The ripples on the surface of the water were scarcely to be seen. The tiny circle of light around their feet was fading, and the torch in Gimli's hand sputtered.

Aragorn, softly from behind him, said, 'The torch is dying, Gimli.'

Gimli, Gimli, came the echoes across the still water.

'Gimli…' whispered a voice in the dark away to their left, away from the lake. A voice that sounded like Legolas. They both spun around, peering into the blackness. Gimli drew his axe in his spare hand.

'Tell us where our friend is,' Aragorn demanded aloud.

'Gimli. You must leave,' it said. 'You must run.'

'You will speak,' Aragorn said, cold and stern. 'Your deception fools us no longer. We will not remain in this darkness, and neither shall he. Tell us who you are.'

There was another moment of quiet. Then the thing that had stolen Legolas' voice did something it had not before.

'I cannot...' it began, and then after a pause they heard the word, '...leave'.

'Legolas did not say that,' Gimli whispered to Aragorn. His voice carried in the still darkness, sounding thin and terrified even to his own ears. 'It has stopped repeating him. Now it is putting his words together to say something new.'

It is learning, neither of them wanted to say. It is intelligent.

Aragorn looked back to the darkness. 'Why can you not leave?' he said to the nothingness. 'Perhaps we can aid you. But you must first show us where our friend is.'

There was a long, long silence. Gimli thought perhaps the voice had gone again. But then, suddenly, from right behind his ear, something whispered.

'Gimli...cannot...run.'

Gimli spun on his heel with a yell, swinging his axe out wildly at the sound, a battle cry on his lips. For a moment he thought he saw something there, something pale with long limbs, but the axe blade passed straight through the form of it like it was naught but smoke. White fingers reached for him from the darkness; he stumbled back, and the fingertips were a breath from his arm...but the thing suddenly recoiled and vanished. The empty dark returned.

Aragorn and Gimli put their backs to each other and looked outwards, breathing hard.

'Did you see it?' Gimli whispered, holding the torch up, right hand tightening on the axe shaft.

'Nay, I saw nothing,' Aragorn said at his back. He had Andúril drawn. 'What is it?'

Gimli hesitated. 'Nothing good,' he said. 'It looked almost man-shaped, but it was no man.'

'It did not touch you?'

'Nay, something stopped it. But my axe might as well have been made of paper for all the good it did me. I fear no weapons of ours will harm it.'

'You held the torch,' Aragorn suggested. 'Wraiths cannot stand fire.'

'Perhaps,' said Gimli, uneasily. He was still thinking about how the steel of his axe had passed through the shape like mist.

They stood there, silent. Listening.

'Are you there?' Aragorn called out. No answer came.

'Now what?' Gimli said, low. He looked back. He could still see the doorway, or thought he could; a glow of dull orange far behind.

'I will not leave Legolas here,' said Aragorn, and there was steel in his voice, but something else too. A sick, mounting horror that Gimli knew too well. 'We go on. I will not leave him here, even if he-' He cut himself off.

'Then what do we do now?' said Gimli. He was afraid for Legolas too, desperate and terrified, but each moment he was growing angrier at this hopeless game of cat-and-mouse in the dark. 'We cannot just walk aimlessly after echoes until we fall across him, Aragorn. There is no direction, nothing to aim for. How I hate this darkness!' He cursed loudly, and kicked at the floor. The sound echoed once and was swallowed by the silence.

Aragorn put a hand on his shoulder. 'Courage, Gimli. We will prevail.'

He stood thinking for a moment. 'We have wandered too aimlessly in the dark,' he said at last. 'Perhaps we have walked all around this lake and even now retrace our steps. Let us return to the entrance, and then find the wall of the chamber, if there is one. We will use that as our guide.'

'All right,' said Gimli. The plan had nothing to commend it, not really. There was no reason to think Legolas was closer to the chamber wall than anywhere else, and doubling back meant covering areas where they had already searched. But a plan it was, and that was something. It was something. And though Gimli too had no intention to retreat, would never leave Legolas here in this suffocating silent darkness, he longed for a glimpse back to the chamber beyond the doorway, of a sight of the steps that led back up to freedom above. Just a hint of something real to tether him against this shapeless, consuming horror.

They turned back. The torch sputtered and spat, burning through the last of the oil, but neither suggested lighting the next torch just yet. The last torch.

'...Cannot run,' whispered a voice that sounded like Legolas from somewhere to their right.

Gimli stopped short. 'Did you hear it?' he muttered to Aragorn,

'Aye, I heard it,' said Aragorn. He turned towards the voice, and shouted aloud, ''Why do you want our friend?'

'I…' said the voice. ' I...leave...nothing.'

'I don't know what that means,' Aragorn replied. 'I command you to take us to our friend and, if he is unharmed and you are no evil thing, I shall do all I can to aid you. Of that you have my word.'

The thing in the dark whispered, 'No.'

'You cannot defy us,' said Aragorn. 'For I bear the crown of the Kingdoms Reunited, and in my veins flows the blood of ancient Numenor. I have trod the Paths of the Dead and for a time commanded the Forgotten People. I am Elessar. Any that seeks to thwart my will and endanger those in my trust so shall find my retribution swift. I fear no ghost of man.'

There was no sound, but the silence itself was mocking.

Aragorn gritted his teeth. 'We go on,' said he, and pointed towards the distant pale door.

'Who says it is a ghost of a man?' Gimli said. Aragorn looked at him.

The torch went out.

Gimli yelled in surprise; beside him he heard Aragorn do the same. There was a loud clang of metal on stone. Then; a sense of movement in the dark, a rush of air, and something knocked into Gimli, pushing him aside. He stumbled.

'Aragorn!' he cried out. 'Aragorn!'

There was no answer. Gimli saw the outline of the door, far away, and for a moment his panic brought him to the brink of betrayal. Had another heartbeat have passed, perhaps he would have indeed fled for the light, and the escape it tantalized.

But then something pulled tight on his wrist. The rope was still attached! He planted his feet, yanked hard on the rope, and suddenly Aragorn was there, crashing back into Gimli and gasping as if he had just been yanked up from the deep depths of a lake. They both went sprawling to the ground. Gimli heard the man groaning; he scrabbled around for the spare torch and fumbled in his pocket for flint and fire-steel, expecting at any moment for cold, white fingers to touch his face, his neck…

The flint sparked off the steel, and the oil-soaked torch crackled into life. The light flared out, almost blinding him for a moment but Gimli blinked the after-images away and fell at Aragorn's side. The man was on his hands and knees, gasping. When Gimli shook his shoulder, Aragorn seemed unable to speak, though he did at last sit back on his heels, wiping a shaking hand across his forehead. Andúril lay on the stone floor some distance away, its steel glinting pale in the firelight.

'Are you alright, laddie?'

Aragorn coughed again, then nodded. He looked pale and shocked, though he was recovering rapidly. Gimli kept glancing behind them, feeling the skin on the back of his neck prickle and crawl.

'Aragorn!' He said again, insistent.

'Spirit,' said Aragorn at last, as if the word was hard to find, or his mouth would not work correctly. 'Monster.'

'What do you mean?' Gimli demanded, impatient, terrified. 'What on all Arda just happened?'

'Hand,' Aragorn managed after a struggle. 'Fingers went in…' he jabbed clumsily towards his own forehead. 'Couldn't move.'

'Why are you speaking like that?' Gimli demanded, shaking Aragorn's shoulders again. 'Are you hurt, what is wrong?'

'Words,' Aragorn slurred out. 'Speech…'

Then, far more easily, he said, 'I fear no ghost of man.' Except now his voice came out of the dark, far away on their right. And Aragorn had not opened his mouth.

Gimli spun around, and stared out into the blackness. There was nothing to see. He glanced back at Aragorn. 'Now it has your words, your voice,' Gimli said. 'How is that possible? Aragorn, how is that possible? '

'Words,' said Aragorn again, and then he stopped. His mouth moved for a moment but no sound came out. He struggled, then managed, 'Everything...said…'

It—this spirit, this monster—it had taken Aragorn's words. Everything he had spoken since they had come into this tomb. Aragorn the diplomat, Aragorn the wordsmith, Aragorn the King. Left with nothing but broken words and ransacked speech.

'Will it come back?' Gimli asked. Aragorn just glared at him.

Gimli thought of the pale hand he had seen reaching for him through the dark by the lake. 'It touched you?' he said. 'The...thing? The wraith?'

Aragorn nodded. He was shivering hard.

'Did you see it?'

Aragorn hesitated. 'Barely,' he said. 'White hand came out towards…came closer. An Elf.' Almost unconsciously, his hand scrabbled on the stone floor for Andúril.

'An Elf ? It is the...the spirit, the ghost of an Elf? Is such a thing even possible?'

Aragorn just gave him a dark look, and said nothing.

'Did you manage to strike it?'

The man shook his head. 'Sword, flame. Both... useless! Rope pulled...fell back... '

The torch was useless? 'But Aragorn,' Gimli said, alarmed. 'You said it would be afraid of fire!'

'Seems...was wrong...' Aragorn said. He sheathed Andúril with hands that still shook.

'But if neither steel nor flame will harm it, then we have nothing with which we can fight it off!' Gimli said. His own fear was high in his throat. The thing out there, this Elf wraith, had touched Aragorn; bold, strong, unassailable Aragorn, and in one moment had left him cast to the floor with stunted words, barely able to articulate the simplest sentence.

Was that what it had done to Legolas? They had been calling him. Maybe he couldn't answer.

'We have to get you out of here,' Gimli said, moving over to haul Aragorn up to his feet. 'I'll come back for Legolas.' Aragorn shook his head, but allowed himself to be pulled up.

'With L...' he said, and Gimli knew Aragorn was trying to say Legolas' name even though he could not seem to form the sound. 'With L... Greenleaf .'

'Aragorn. I do not know how we will find him.'

'With,' said Aragorn again, immovable. 'Together.' The horror in the dark might have stolen Aragorn's words, but it had done nothing to curb his fire.

Gimli sighed. 'Very well,' he said. He got Aragorn's arm over his shoulders, and hauled the tall man up to his feet. Aragorn swayed a little, and stumbled, as if his feet and legs had gone numb with cold. But he could walk, more or less.

'I could carry your pack,' Gimli offered. Aragorn just glared at him.

Then Gimli looked up to check their direction and he noticed all of a sudden that the doorway he had aimed for was nowhere to be seen. At some point, he could not even say when, but the beacon of fire still burning in the first chamber beyond the doorway had gone out. The dark around them was utterly featureless. They were lost.

Oh, Legolas. Legolas, my friend. I fear...

'Which way?' said Gimli, his voice rough in his throat. Aragorn pointed into the dark, and they set off in a direction that to Gimli was meaningless. He did not ask if Aragorn knew to where he directed them, or if he was not just as lost in this cursed darkness. He did not want to know. And so they walked.

After a while, Gimli heard Aragorn murmuring to himself in Elvish.

'What say you?' he asked aloud, and only after wondered if the man was praying.

'Test,' replied the man after a moment. 'Determine whether words spake thus…free from curse. Alas,' Aragorn continued with a shrug and a sigh. 'Sindarin also... compromised.'

He was attempting to find out if only his words in the Common Tongue were stolen by the dark magic of the thing that resided here. Gimli huffed. How typical of Aragorn, pupil of both Gandalf and Elrond, to be testing an academic theory now.

The dwarf took another step, and stumbled over something.

It was a body. Crumpled on its side, face turned away. Green cloth, narrow shoulders...Gimli's heart was in his mouth; he thought he would be sick. Aragorn knelt beside the body and turned it gently onto its back. The torchlight pooled over red hair and dark beard, simple clothes, and skin roughened by wind, plough and sun. The brown eyes were open and still. A green cloak pooled beneath him.

'Rickon,' Aragorn said. He too recognised the man from the description his wife had given. Aragorn knelt down to put his ear beside the farmer's slack mouth, listening for breath.

'Does he live?' Gimli asked.

Aragorn sat back. He shook his head, slowly. Gimli clenched a fist.

'What killed him?'

'Terror,' said Aragorn, darkly.

'We must leave him here,' Gimli said, though the very suggestion made him furious and guilty and stricken with grief. But Aragorn was still unsteady on his feet, and Gimli could not carry them both. Not if they were to bring Legolas too. But this thing, this spectre, could kill and they had no weapons to fight it. Legolas had had no weapons.

Aragorn closed Rickon's eyes, folded his arms across his breast, and then they laid the green cloak over him. There was nothing else to be done. With Gimli's help, Aragorn stood and they left the dead man behind them, and went on.

'Do you think they are both dead, then?' Gimli asked, low. 'The famers. The boy too?'

Aragorn looked a little helpless. 'Alfy shouted,' he said, and that was true. They had heard the boy's voice when they had first entered this blasted place. Did that mean anything?

'Deceived,' said the thing with Aragorn's voice from out of the dark. They stopped. Though the intonation was no different than when Aragorn had spoken the word—determination and strength—there was still something in it which said the thing was amused.

Aragorn turned towards the voice. 'Yes,' he replied. They had all been deceived. The villagers who had been lured here, drawn into the dark by the voice of a lost child, only to be consumed by this creature in turn. Legolas, who had stepped willingly after and been lost, his friends when they had followed the sound of his voice and had then come after.

'What are you?' cried Gimli, grief and fear turning to anger again.

'I am...Legolas,' said the thing in the dark, and now its voice was flickering between those of Legolas and Aragorn as it used the stolen words of each in turn. ' I am Aragorn. I am Gimli, Holden, Rickon, Alfy Tanner…'

'Have you no name of your own that you must steal those of others?'

'I am Evil.' said the voice. 'Evil thing. Ghost. Dead. Forgotten. Blood. Wraith.'

'Curse you,' Gimli muttered.

'Gimli…' the thing whispered. ' Gimli, run...leave...Legolas here.'

'Go to the Void!' he yelled back.

'You can...follow me...there...'

'Peace, Gloinsson,' muttered Aragorn, a tone of warning. Gimli subsided into silence, fuming and afraid.

They walked on, step by step by step.

'We're lost,' said Gimli.

Aragorn said nothing.

'Courage, Gimli,' mocked another in his voice.

Time went on.

'Elves do not build tombs of stone. How came the spirit of so evil an Elf to lurk here?'

Aragorn said nothing. The torch flickered. Had not Gimli only just lit it? How long had they been walking?

'The torch is dying,' said the ghost in the dark.

'It did not touch me,' said Gimli, after a while. 'Why did it not grab me by the lake if it was not afeared of the fire, like we thought?'

And, more importantly, why had it released Aragorn just now, leaving the task half finished?

'Unclear,' said Aragorn. He did not know either.

They went on. The darkness, the silence - they crawled beneath Gimli's skin like burrowing insects beneath dead flesh. He thought he should go mad with it. This thing had killed the farmer, Rickon. It had stolen Aragorn's words. It perhaps had stolen Legolas' life.

Aragorn was speaking again, in Common this time. He muttered low, shaking his head. The words were barely articulate, stilted and strangled.

'What is it?' Gimli said.

Aragorn coughed and then said, 'Thinking... about echoes,' Aragorn said. 'Speech.'

'Yes, yes,' said Gimli, wearily. 'What of it?'

'Speech...words…' the man said, his frustration evident, but he carried on, doggedly. 'Greenleaf, me...both. Alfy also. Although none from Rickon or Holden.'

Gimli thought, carefully. 'We have heard it speak as you and Legolas, but not the farmers?'

'Yes,' Aragorn nodded.

'Why is that significant?'

Aragorn tapped his own chest, ruefully. 'Alive,' he said.

Gimli missed a step. 'You think it can only steal the voices of those who still live? But Aragorn...that means Legolas is alive yet!'

Aragorn nodded. 'Maybe,' he said. 'Hope!'

It was indeed hope. Gimli felt his own crushed spirit, beaten down by this immense darkness and the cold reality of his helplessness in the face of it, begin to rally.

'He is alive,' Gimli said. 'Legolas is alive. We will find him.' He raised his voice. 'You hear me, Legolas? We will find you! Your friends will not give up!'

'Legolas...is dying,' gloated the voice. 'You can...do...nothing.'

'We'll see about that,' muttered Gimli, though his heart still felt lighter than it had in hours—or was it days? The thing's words had all but supported Aragorn's conclusion. Legolas was still alive, and probably the boy too. They could still be saved.

'Come on,' he said to Aragorn, hauling the man's arm further across his shoulders. Aragorn pointed to the right.

'Way,' he said, and they went on.

The thing spoke as they walked. Again and again it called, and it became harder to ignore. The spirit called Gimli's name in Legolas' voice, begged him to run, to turn back. It mocked Aragorn with his own words, whispering hollow declarations of strength and retribution. Sometimes it wept like a child, crying for help, for anyone to come. Gimli tried to turn towards the voice several times, but Aragorn dragged him away from its creeping tones and on in to the ceaseless dark

'You think it leads us astray?' Gimli muttered low, while on his left Legolas whispered, with terror on his voice, that he could not move.

Aragorn nodded. 'Always,' he said.

'Where do you take us then?'

'Away,' Aragorn answered. 'Water…yonder.'

Of course. Until now they had followed the voice each time they had heard it, turning away to in pursuit of the truths it tantalized, even when they knew it was not Legolas they heard. And it had first attacked them when they had drawn near the lake, driving them away from it. Could that be significant? Gimli hoped so. There was nowhere else to go.

Aragorn was clearly weakening. He was sagging in Gimli's grip and seemed ready to fall. Gimli could not fathom how long they had been in this place, all sense of time long since gone. But it felt like days . Perhaps it was the hopelessness of their predicament, his weariness, or the pressing malevolent dark, but memories of the Ring quest rose up in his mind. It was chilling to think that the strengths that had carried them through those darkest of times could not save them now, indeed they had almost seemed to speed their fall. Legolas' keen eye, curiosity and gentle compassion had ensnared him in seconds; Aragorn's speechcraft and leadership had not availed them, nor had Gimli's axe, or his knowledge of dark places beneath the ground. What were they now, without those skills? What hope had they? But hope or not, they went on.

Either through miraculous intervention, or through some supernatural skill of navigation possessed by the Dúnedain, Aragorn somehow led them to the lake, although they only realised they had reached its shoreline when their boots splashed into unseen water. Aragorn stumbled and almost fell.

Now they should rest, at least for a while, for they were both close to spent. Gimil helped Aragorn sit, then eased the small but heavy pack from the man's shoulders. Aragorn sighed and slumped forward. Gimli turned away to set the pack beside his own.

When he looked up, Aragorn was gone.

tbc