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Your Heart Will Be True
By Sarah and Hannah (Siri)
(disclaimers, explanations, and summaries
available at the top of chapter 1)
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Chapter 24
Skeletons Escape the Closet
Year 2509 of the Third Age
Lothlorien
"Ink on your fingers, a quill in your hair, and a paleness to your cheeks — tell me, sister, have you left the scriptorium at all since I saw you last week?"
Tindu had jumped a little at the voice, having been intent upon a large tome concerning Thingol Greycloak, but now she rose and stretched her hands out to her elder brother. "Tirin! Perhaps I would not hide myself away in here if you were to be found on my doorstep more often."
He kissed her fondly on the cheek, jesting sarcastically, "Perhaps dwarves and elves would dance together upon the banks of the Nimrodel if only I wore daisies braided in my hair."
"It would make you less forbidding."
Tirin laughed. He was one of Celeborn's captains, and being several inches taller than average with dark black-green eyes, he could present — when need arose — the fearsome appearance of a dangerous fighter and unforgiving sentry. His hair was dark gold, different from his sister's brown, and held neatly back in a triple row of braids above each pointed ear. The livery he wore was silver and gray-green, with a bow strapped to his back, two knives at his side, and the handle of a third weapon protruding from his gray boots.
The imposing appearance was belied the moment he smiled. "Aye, perhaps. It comes of raising three sons — one acquires a permanent aura of menace."
"Nonsense," Tindu scolded. "I know for a fact Ilúvatar blessed you with perfect sons."
Surreptitiously Tirin drew his sister away from her books and out the door, casting a wary glance towards the archival room in passing.
"I cannot think how I failed to see it. Especially when we all share the same flet…"
"You are blind to true character, I have always said it," she laughed. She allowed herself to be drawn off among the trees towards the river, pleased to be kidnapped.
"Aye," he agreed, answering her question with more seriousness than the jest seemed to deserve. "Perhaps I am."
Tindu stopped, looking at her brother worriedly. "Something troubles you, Tirin."
"It does indeed," he nodded soberly. He guided her to a seat on a mossy stone, but did not sit down himself. "Unfortunately, I don't know how to tell you what it is…"
"Can't you simply say it?"
His eyes were shadowed. "I do not think you will believe me if I do."
The elven woman's voice was hurt and a little angry, "So you will not give me the chance to prove myself more reasonable than that? You are my brother, Tirin! I have heeded your advice for more than five thousand years — do you think that I will trample on you now? What cause—"
"No, please," he stopped her hastily. "Please, Tindu, do not speak so. I know your strength of mind and character; I beg you not to mistake me. But I know your heart as well as your head, and you do not like to think ill of people…"
Tindu straightened her skirts distractedly. "So who, then — if you will trust me to hear it?"
Her brother's face was distressed; the most it had been, almost, since his beloved wife had passed to the Havens centuries before. Whatever way he said this, he knew it would hurt the sister he loved. "I fear it is your young student," he whispered.
Green eyes went wide as the woman stared at him. "Vardnauth? What of him? What has he done?"
"It is not a hard puzzle to piece if you watch him, as I confess I have done. He has plied you with questions, Tindu. You told me of his unexpected curiosity yourself. As his instructor, you answered him — as well you might — but I'm afraid you told him things he should not have heard." He turned to look into the distance, unable to meet her eyes at the moment. "Sister, the Lady Galadriel speaks more frankly with you than with many people, especially regarding her own powers and how she and Lord Celeborn rule and keep this land. While not told strictly in confidence, I don't think you should have passed on much of what you have told Vardnauth. Such interest in the Lady's powers and in her mirror could be dangerous."
"Dangerous?" Tindu choked out. "I ask you again, what has he done? It could be dangerous, but there is no reason to suspect that it will be dangerous! Vardnauth is a pure-hearted elf, mature and eager to understand our history — what can be wrong with that?"
Tirin sighed, resting his forehead on his hands. "Valar above, I knew you would speak so. And I love you for this generous spirit that smoothes the faults of others, but you know yourself it is not a sound description! He is not merely curious, he has pressed you — aye, and too far. What did you say when you came to me—?"
"I said he would not leave me be," she stammered, "but it was nighttime then, all shadows seemed terrifying—"
"He'd bruised you, Tindu!" Tirin snapped suddenly. "That you cannot deny."
"He struck against me by accident! I know he has his flaws; all beings do. His nature is controlling, but he works until there is no light left to show him the pages. Surely good service must be rewarded by some lenience!"
"Aye, lenience, but not instant absolution. He prowls about when you are asleep, poring over the oldest books and most secret scrolls. He dogs your footsteps with his demands, he slips about and questions others in Lorien, he avoids Lord Celeborn and watches Lady Galadriel. The invisible barriers at our borders, the magic that preserves the trees and rivers here, the Lady's mirror — all have featured in his prying. Ambition you must concede him as well as willingness to work."
"Cannot those two features be equal assets?" Tindu asked. She looked desperate, her fingernails scraping the moss from the stone beneath her in claw marks that showed the damp gray beneath the living green.
Tirin rested his hands on her shoulders. "They can be. But in Vardnauth I see seething the risk of something far worse than mere ambition. There is my loyalty to Lorien and my vow to protect it, no matter who the enemy might be. More even than this, however, is the fear that… that someday you might prove less of a help and more of a hindrance to him."
It seemed Tindu could not even begin to grasp this. "You — you honestly think that he — you — how could you…! I— I cannot believe it!"
"But I do. I want to — no. No, I need to know, right now, if you can trust my belief enough to make it your own. For my peace of mind, if not your own safety." He met her eyes squarely. "Please, Tindu."
"I will tell him no more," she whispered, "but I will not send him away."
Tirin's shoulders seemed to sag. "It is not the answer I hoped to hear."
"I know. If you discover some proof of this, I will break the apprenticeship immediately. But if he is innocent, I will not be the one to make him suffer where he is guiltless. Besides, such meager skills as mine must be passed on. I will not be here to tend the books forever."
"You are immortal, remember?" Tirin asked, turning away again and failing to soften the harshness in his voice.
"Not all immortals live forever in Middle Earth."
"Yes," he agreed, his hand straying up to rub at his eyes. "I know it well."
Tindu was distressed to have upset him, but she did not take back her decision. Instead, trying to cheer her brother in spite of her thoughtless comment she said, "Wherever we go, we'll meet each other there. Agreed, Tirin?"
"Oh, agreed," he whispered, and turned and left her there. His feet, normally light enough to walk across snow without marking it, left heavy imprints in the soft ground by the river.
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The Lady Galadriel paused. Her pale hair was caught in a warm breeze as the sun began to sink. She smiled a little, her slender hand reaching up as if in salute to the wind. The mind could almost imagine a glitter at her finger, as if the pink rays of light had reflected from a gemstone, but there was no visible ornament on her hand.
She was feeling a little lonely. Her daughter had started on her return to Rivendell the day before. Granted, Celebrian had three children of her own and a husband waiting in Rivendell for her who was even more lonesome than her mother, but Galadriel could not help a passing sigh. Celeborn was busy with several of his warriors, discussing a matter of orcs patrolling outside their usual haunts, but later he would come. They would walk with feet unclad on the grass under the stars, and she would forget her sorrow for at least a while.
In the meantime… She turned quickened steps toward her glade, her pearl white skirts sailing like ripples of sea foam about her feet. Had a human beheld her she would have seemed in the dusk like a beautiful ghost, or an enchantress.
Descending the steps with the fluid ease of familiarity, she stepped towards the shallow silver basin upon its plinth. Her fingertips brushed the edges as she considered for a moment. It would ease her mind, somehow, to see her daughter safely on the road home. Perhaps to hear the echo of her sweet one's gentle laugh, or her bright eyes — eager to return home to her beloved Elrond.
Going to the spring, she took the silver ewer and filled it, her touch running a shivery hum of anticipation through the water. Raising the ewer she poured the water out, the splash tinkling and spreading and folding back on itself in ripples that slowly stilled.
With an inward smile, Galadriel stepped forward and looked into her mirror.
The images came swift and imprecise, leading nowhere until the lady bent the magic to her will, turning the view towards the road and the Misty Mountains. The peaks showed stark against the evening sky, the trees black as pitch in the shadows. The road flashed away swiftly, as if she were a runner fleeing along it. Ahead there came sight of a horse and Galadriel leaned forward eagerly… but the horse was lying slain in the road, a dark pool forming under it, muddying the ground. The body of its rider lay beyond. Orc arrows everywhere. Death.
The mirror sped from under her control, taking her now around the curve of trees faster than she wanted to see — no, she didn't want to see — no, she had to see — no… NO! Orcs pouring from the trees, red blood on their hands… horses rearing in terror… elves fighting… dying… black arrows… blood… Celebrian, spinning with the dagger from her belt, driving it into the orc holding her wrist… clawed hands catching at her skirt, her hair… blue eyes… dawning comprehension… terror… screaming—
"CELEBRIAN!"
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Tirin's instructions to his sons were unusually distracted that evening. His mind was still turning over how he might have better presented his case to Tindu, but he— wait. Haldir was looking at him as though he expected an answer to something.
"I'm sorry, ion-nin," Tirin sighed, "my mind was elsewhere."
"So I surmised," Haldir agreed. His hands finished with his quiver straps and one moved to touch his father's shoulder sympathetically. "Is it about Aunt Tindu and Vardnauth?"
"She didn't listen to you," Orophin said briskly, grinning a little. "Aye, that is Aunt Tindu — trust a dwarf until he takes your purse."
"I think," said Rúmil in his perpetual undertone, "Adar instead fears this to be a case of 'trust a warg until he devours you'."
"You three know me too well," Tirin retorted, affectionate in spite of his worry. "Never mind, we can discuss it later. Haldir, Rúmil, I need you to each take an additional detachment towards the western border. Lord Celeborn does not like the excess orc activity there and I agree with him. On no account are a single one of the creatures to set foot beneath our trees, much less muddy the banks of the Nimrodel. Haldir, take the northern reaches; Rúmil, turn south. You are in sole command of your companies. So say I at the behest of the Lord and Lady of this wood, and such orders are not to be rescinded by any but myself or the Lord Celeborn. Do you accept your charges?"
"We accept, and full willing," the two brothers replied, finishing the formalities. Rúmil took up his weapons and started off on silent feet. Haldir paused only a moment to exchange a few more words with Tirin before he followed.
"She will come around, Adar," Haldir murmured. "Do not worry so much."
"I would say the same for you," Tirin said. "You have other concerns, please do not let this burden you for my sake. I trust you to watch out for your brother."
"Oh, aye," his son snorted, "Rúmil needs such looking after."
Tirin smiled, knowing Haldir well. His son had long since taken up the responsibility.
When they had gone, Orophin turned to his father, unconsciously shifting a bit on the balls of his feet. Tirin had never managed to discover where his youngest stored up such energy…
"What are my orders?"
"I need you here," Tirin told him. "My sentries need to be deployed and I have some specific business I would attend to immediately."
"I will deploy the sentries for you, if you need assistance," Orophin volunteered — brightly, if such a word could apply to any soldier of Lorien.
"Good. I'll see you in a few hours at most. Oh, and Orophin?"
Orophin looked back.
"Be alert. The trees are disquieted, and I would trust their eyes better than my own."
Tirin set off from the meeting with his sons to try and find Celeborn. He still had not made up his mind whether or not to exert his authority, in spite of his sister's feelings, and have Vardnauth removed from his position. Perhaps Celeborn would have some advice… More than mere lord and captain, they had been friends for many years, and Tirin valued Celeborn as a keen judge of character.
It seemed oddly providential that the figure walking a short ways ahead of him was familiar. There was no mistaking the thin back and dark hair.
"Vardnauth?" Tirin called, more sharply than was usual from him.
The other elf, who was only about the age of Orophin, turned. "Yes, Captain Tirin?"
Was it Tirin's own suspicion that colored the reply with scorn?
"You are a long way from the archives. What takes you from your studies?"
Pale lips under limpid gray eyes curled a little. "Why, study, of course."
"Perhaps you would do better to study further away from the Lady's glade."
Suddenly there was no mistaking the glint in the historian's apprentice. "Threats, Captain? Surely not. You could not be so blatant to one who grows daily in favor with Celeborn and his wife."
"Lord Celeborn," Tirin said sternly. "You forget yourself, Vardnauth. And this is no mere threat. Come near this hollow again, or lay hand on my sister, and I—"
"CELEBRIAN!"
The scream seared the twilight, curtailing further speech. Without another thought for the sneering Vardnauth, Tirin caught out his knives and plunged through the ferns and mellyrn and down the steps into Galadriel's glade.
Even stripped of its usual gentle royalty, anguished as a wounded swan, he could recognize his lady's voice.
He found her beside her mirror, which was still swirling in a maelstrom of silver flashes and pale smoke. Her hands were clenched, her face ghost-white and her whole body trembling like a willow in the wind. Lips moved, but no words came. Something terrible had happened.
"My lady?" Tirin ventured, seeing no immediate danger.
Soft, disjointed phrases came then, stumbling over her daughter, the road to Rivendell, death, and something she should have prevented. Tirin could barely make sense of it, but one thing at last became clear. Lady Celebrian had been captured.
"Celeborn," Galadriel said suddenly and clearly. "Celeborn, he does not know! I must — LET GO OF ME!"
Tirin stumbled back in unsteady surprise. He had only touched her shoulder briefly to try and calm her, but now she pressed past him and up the steps, heedless of everything but the need to save her daughter.
With his own heart pounding horribly at the unthinkable occurrence, Tirin raced after her.
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Vardnauth had sharp ears. Hidden among the ferns, it did not take him long to construct what had happened. It was almost too perfect to be true… It was most certainly too perfect to ignore.
When Galadriel and the meddlesome captain had passed him by, he slipped like a cat down the steps and walked towards the swirling mirror. For a moment he gazed at it, wondering again at the thing he had never managed to discover from Tindu's information: whence came the magic that fueled the mirror? One thing he did know was that for all his studying, he did not have the skill to bend the mirror to his will.
Or at least… not while its power remained in mirror form…
He took the silver ewer from beside the spring, his ink-stained fingers tarnishing the handle. Approaching the plinth cautiously, he dipped the ewer slowly back into the mirror.
The mirror began to hiss and steam, but the pitcher did not seem affected and Vardnauth grew ever more excited… Drawing the lip of silver to his mouth, he tipped the pitcher like a goblet and drank.
Pain raked his throat, tearing and clawing to his stomach, eating its way throughout his entire body, running like fire through his blood and up his spine and filling the space behind his eyes. The ewer fell to the ground with a clatter like glass, the remaining water steaming where it spattered across the stones and withered the grass.
Vardnauth spread his length on the floor of the glade, his body convulsing, his fingernails clawing at his throat as agony spread in waves all through him.
He had not expected this…
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Tirin had never seen Galadriel weep, and now it was the most heartbreaking thing he could have imagined. Her fingers were tangled in the front of her husband's blue robes as he clutched her to his chest, each trying to keep a tight hold on the one thing in Middle Earth that was still unchanged.
Only they were not unchanged. The mirror had shown her things — horrible images of torment, of screaming, of her twin grandsons coming too late… That Celebrian was dead, or would be long before help could be sent to her, seemed inevitable.
In spite of that Orophin had been dispatched to bring Rúmil and Haldir back and give them Celeborn's new orders to go and search for his child. They could not concede defeat so easily.
Tirin felt like an intruder upon such grief, but he feared to leave lest Celeborn should need him.
The decision was taken out of his hands as Galadriel suddenly stumbled back away from her husband. For a moment she looked at him helplessly, her hands opening and clenching, and then in despair she took flight into the trees, her white skirts following her like the tail of a dying comet. Crying her name, Celeborn pursued her, and within seconds Tirin was alone.
The elven lamps hanging above the flets in the trees glowed silver and gave off a deceptive sense of calm.
With his mind suddenly attentive, Tirin's eyes widened. Vardnauth! It seemed such a secondary concern at a moment like this, but he had left the elf right outside the glade. He would not put it past Vardnauth to try some devilry in such a place and with such distractions to cover him.
Swift feet carried him back the way he had come, his mind growing more anxious as he went. The trees were crying warnings, whispering like so many sentinels alerted. Their message was too jumbled, though — he could not tell what troubled them.
Coming over the lip of the green hollow, he was met by a sight that he could not understand at first. Vardnauth was there, but he was lying still as a corpse on the ground. There was no mark upon him.
His inner warnings still clawing at him, Tirin stepped cautiously down the stairs and looked for a long moment at the fallen elf. Carefully, he crouched and reached to check for a pulse…
He did not feel the silent hand that drew the hidden knife from his own boot.
Just as his hand almost touched the other elf's neck, Vardnauth's eyes flew open like windows into death.
Tirin grunted breathlessly as the knife plunged into his stomach. He was warrior enough to bring up his arms and defend himself, but Vardnauth was already rolling away, and somehow… there came a scorching touch against his mind. For a moment he could not tell whence it came or what it was doing — until there came a flash of memory so overwhelming in its intensity that he cried out! His wife, weak and crying, turning wet eyes on him one last time, leaving him—
"No!" Tirin shouted, closing his eyes to wash away the image. He jumped to his feet, ignoring the pain in his gut and turning to attack where Vardnauth had been. Too late. At the crucial moment his mind had been elsewhere and his knives were now gone. Too late. From behind he heard a rasping like an old door hinge and knew it was laughter. Too late. And then the pain began again, slicing into his back over and over and over again, drowning out all else in a sea of agony and all consuming dimness that was darker than the night.
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Orophin could not find his father. He had given Haldir and Rúmil their orders as quickly as his swift legs could carry him. Haldir's reaction of horror had been almost identical to Tirin's — his native sense of accountability making him feel, like his father, that he ought to have prevented this. Rúmil did not say much, but his words had been to the point and included an unexpected amount of dwarvish invective against the thrice-cursed orcs. If Celebrian was in reach, they would retrieve her.
Now Orophin needed orders for himself — he could not just stand about idle; no, not he. When he did not find his father in Celeborn's audience chamber, where he'd left him, he started back towards the Lady's hollow, thinking maybe Galadriel had taken Celeborn and Tirin back there to show them what she had seen.
He almost collided with a figure coming up the steps.
For a spine chilling moment the pair just stared at each other. Orophin, his blue eyes wide with dawning understanding, and Vardnauth, a feral smile curling across his face, his pale hands and clothes red with blood.
Looking beyond Vardnauth, Orophin saw a heap lying curled below, and when the murderer pushed past him he was too numbed to notice. Adar. No, it could not be… not lying in the dirt… not defeated… not ever…
Falling down the steps in his haste, his eyes blinded by tears, Orophin caught his father's still shoulders and turned him over. His sobs grew at the sight of the blood and Tirin's own knives protruding from his back and chest.
And the eyes… his father's eyes were closed…
"Ada?" Orophin wept, his voice broken and child-like. "Ada…?"
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It was not as Vardnauth had planned. He had never meant anyone to know of his betrayal — and now he was revealed almost before the first step was completed. Ultimate victory might have been his — these woods had been inches beyond his grasp — had only that Morgoth-spawned captain not come spying. His full plan was a subtle masterpiece, built over the years in the dark corners of his mind, but now it was in pieces.
Or was it…?
Somehow the water had not served to let him draw on the future, but he had been able to draw on something else… At the moment when he had most needed a weapon, he had reached as if to turn Tirin's mind away from him, and he had seen things. Those thoughts had not been his own…
Perhaps the gift he had found was even greater than the one he had sought.
And as he crouched against a tree, he saw something a short ways off that seemed to be the final answer. He crept closer, silent, trying to hold his breath so that it would not rasp against his scorched throat. A woman was half lying amid the ferns, her silent anguish all the more pronounced because it was mute. Her face was hidden in her arms and her golden hair glimmered faintly in the starlight, flickering as her shoulders shook. White skirts were spread like dew on the green sward.
Silent as he was, it was as though she sensed his presence. Galadriel's head came up, her silver blue eyes wide as she beheld his crouching form, still red from his treachery.
For a moment he could see that she did not even recognize him. "What?" he whispered, not wholly surprised when his formerly suave voice came cracked and guttural. "All alone, Lady?"
Then he reached, as if with clawed fingers, and felt the blood in his veins boil afresh with renewed power. Her mind, unwary in her grief, was open before him, leading him unerringly to all that was most painful and dark.
…Mandos himself stood upon the shore and his words came dark and terrible… "…shall grow weary of the world as with a great burden, and shall wane, and become as shadows of regret…" …in the distance ships were burning, sending up billows of foul smoke… Feanor had betrayed his own kinsman… ice bit and crashed… elves grew blue with cold and perished… Her hands grew blistered and bled as she tried to hold on to a friend's hand… the hand slipped… the ice closed over, cutting off the drowning scream…
Knowing what might be most excruciating, Vardnauth prized his way further, dimly seeing Galadriel as she hunched in agony, her hands at her temples. Untried as he was at this, he could feel his skill growing—
It was when the vision turned to Celebrian, carried away by orcs, that the Lady Galadriel's heart at last awoke. Until that moment her overwhelming grief had carried away her senses, but at this — as if she had been prodded by a lancet — her eyes snapped open.
How dare he?
For a little time she stood as if within a visible wall of illusion, letting the pain travel through her and yet heeding it not. Vardnauth was too intent upon his deception to notice her actions. Slowly her pale hand came up, palm towards her attacker in a gesture of cessation. And with a flash, as if her very soul had ignited with the light of the Silmarils, the Lady of the Wood uncloaked. Fire like ice, lightening in the darkness, violent joy and deadly peril vibrating the very air until the trees leaned back in stark silhouette. Her hair shone like gold in the sun, her dress like steel and diamonds, and all blew about her as if she stood in the center of a whirlwind.
From her upraised hand there came a rolling wave of light and a sound like a thousand panes of shattering glass. Vardnauth's eyes, now opened as he realized what folly he had attempted, grew wide with terror as the blast threw him away from her, casting him back in a flying arc against the bole of a great mallorn.
Then the woods went abruptly dark. The whirlwind inverted and died. Galadriel staggered back, exhausted after such a display, but the armor around her ancient heart had held good and she was still furious.
As Vardnauth staggered to his feet, his entire body alive with pain, he could feel the steel in her blue eyes aiming for his heart, and he fled. Mortal terror in an immortal is a rare thing, but Vardnauth's only thought now was to escape — to get beyond her reach — and to hope he never found such unexpected power in a victim again.
He would grow stronger and more skilled, but never more would he cross paths with Galadriel.
Never.
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Not even the comfort of her beloved books seemed able to quiet Tindu that night. Something was amiss in the Golden Wood, but she could not tell what.
Perhaps it was the disagreement between herself and Tirin that was still bothering her. In her heart she truly trusted his judgment, but she also simply did not want to believe him. One way or another, she made up her mind to apologize to him when next they met. If he felt so strongly about Vardnauth… He had never been wrong on such counts before. If he felt that strongly, she would adjust.
The decision did little to make her feel better, for some reason. With a sudden desire that startled her, she wanted Tirin to come through the door. She wanted to know he understood that it was not lack of love for him that had made her demur at first.
A step came outside the scriptorium and with wild relief she turned, the greeting out of her mouth before she really saw who had come. "Oh, Tirin, I—" she broke off.
In the doorway stood her apprentice, but his looks were much altered. Tindu stared in horror. His hair was matted with sweat and blood, his clothes scorched and torn, and his face was twisted in a grotesque mask of insane mirth.
"Not Tirin," he croaked, a laugh shaking him like a cough for a moment. "I think he will be a little while in coming home."
The historian's fingers clenched the table behind her for support. "What have you done?" she whispered.
Jerking his satchel from beside the entrance, Vardnauth sneered, "I? What have I done? Oh, Tindu, you ask the wrong questions. You always ask the wrong questions. Not, 'What have you learned?', but 'What have you studied?'. Had you asked I might have told you, 'I have learned that those who see the future will always manage it to their own ends, and such gifts ought not to be confined the "wise" or the royal.' Perhaps I would have told you, 'I have learned that nine tenths of control is protecting the underlings who keep you in power, and that nine-tenths of protection is prevention, and prevention needs foresight.'" He paused in the middle of stuffing a cask of wine into his satchel, meeting her eyes with scorn. "But you did not ask, did you? You asked, 'What have you studied today, Vardnauth?' and I answered in all truth, 'The Fall of Doriath, and the history you wrote for me of the Lady Galadriel's mirror'. Always the wrong questions."
"You…" she whispered, her green eyes dark and frightened. "You planned…?"
Vardnauth laughed again, like granite rubbing against granite. He took his extra tunic from the other room, medicines from the chest, and food. "Staggering in the dark, Tinduválorien? Perhaps the student has outstripped the teacher? You remember my own questions — you recall I asked the correct ones. Not 'What was Galadriel's friendship with Melian?' but 'What did the Maiar teach her?'. Not 'Who were Celeborn's ancestors?' but 'How did he gain his lordship amongst his fellow elves?' Questions worth asking — answers worth their weight in gold — and you had the answers, despite possessing a mind few insects would claim as their own."
"What are you saying?" she demanded, trembling almost too much to stand.
He stalked toward her, his feet leaving red prints of blood and earth, his ragged breath hot on her face. "At last. A query worth an answer. I say your first question was pointless. It is not what I have done — it is what you have done." Pressing a filthy palm against her white forehead, he leered at her for a moment. "I bid you wither, and may the dust take you." He thrust inward with his mind, for the first and only time pressing his own memories upon another, drawing out each act of naiveté to give her pause, each dark scheme to give her fear, and at last the death of her brother to give her nightmares.
The whole plot was laid bare. Every action and conversation vision-bright in the darkness. To match it came her own memories… her last argument with Tirin… her last teaching session with Vardnauth… the last thing she had told him — concerning the enchanted ewer and the spring in Galadriel's glade.
"Keep it," he hissed over her sobs as she sank to the ground. Her tears fell between her ink stained fingers and spattered the floor. "Study it. Mayhap you'll fade faster than the memories."
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Dawn was unfurling, bathing the leaves of a certain tree in golden light. From beside the tree's trunk Celeborn watched it filter through the familiar leaves, but his face bore an expression of mingled grimness, wrath, and grief. In one night the disasters had multiplied themselves into infinity. He could not believe such evil could exist in the world, much less hidden in his own land. More still he could not believe his vigilance had lapsed.
His wife was resting in their chambers still. She had evaded him in the woods and thus met the traitor Vardnauth. Her tale of the meeting had been fragmented, but from weariness and not hysteria. Celeborn would have had no doubts about who would have been the victor in such a combat of wills, had he known of it, but he was relieved all the same to have her safely back with him. Against Vardnauth he held the bitterest hatred any elf could hold for another. That any elf would make so bold as to level an attack at his wife was past all usual expressions of anger known to elf, man, or even Maiar. And an immortal life had been taken — moreover one of his friends.
Celeborn could not honestly tell where anger for Galadriel's sake ended and sorrow for his daughter and for Tirin began. For now it was all too confused. He wished for someone with whom he could keep council, and as his slender hand caressed the warm side of the tree, his thoughts moved to the one who had helped him plant it. But Thranduil was too far away.
Behind him he heard a light footstep and turned to find Haldir coming down the path. To say the other elf looked as awful as Celeborn felt would have been an understatement.
"My lord?" Haldir asked mechanically. "My second patrol found nothing. My brother Rúmil is still searching along the east road, but has found no trace of orcs thus far, nor of Lady Celebrian's entourage. Shall we set out again, or do you have need of me at the border?"
For the moment Celeborn passed over the young captain's question with a question of his own, "What of the search for Vardnauth?"
"No trace." Haldir's brown eyes were flat and emotionless. "In all the confusion over Lady Celebrian's disappearance, it seems he stole a boat and damaged the others to prevent pursuit. Naturally he is being pursued regardless."
"And you do not wish to be among those chasing him?" Celeborn's gray eyes were hooded, but probing all the same.
For a moment Haldir seemed to lose his composure, his hand gesturing sharply towards the woods around them. His voice broke with strain. "Vardnauth murdered my father in cold blood! He betrayed all of us. He attacked those I have sworn most in my life to protect — leaving Tindu so stricken by grief and terror she cannot sleep for fear of nightmares and will not speak to us for guilt. Orophin is so changed, I almost do not know him; he alternately talks of revenge, weeps for Adar, and begs that no one leave him alone. Rúmil is nearly worse, for he will not speak at all anymore… I begin to fear I shall lose them all to Valinor, as we lost Naneth… How can such a night ever be left behind?"
The elven soldier stopped, knowing he had said too much.
"And with all that you still do not want to bring him to justice?"
Haldir's voice was quiet. "Aye. For with all that, what I would mete out to him would be vengeance, not justice. If he stood in front of me at this moment, I would gladly cut him into pieces for the carrion birds— Thus I cannot trust myself on such a hunt." He looked sadly up at his lord. "There are already too many actions in this family that have been wished undone."
"I understand. And I thank you for your candor, Captain Haldir," Celeborn said deliberately.
Haldir did little more than bow his head in half-hearted acknowledgement. It was clear he understood that it was his father's role he was being offered, and it was equally clear his mind was busy warring over whether he wished to continue his parent's legacy, or whether it was arrogance to accept such a position at all.
"Go see to Tindu and your brother," Celeborn told him gently. "We cannot risk adding more losses to this nightmare. Send me word if you need any extra medicines or help."
Haldir bowed. "My thanks. But I think only time will help us now…"
"Perhaps," Celeborn agreed, and his hand strayed to a silver chain about his neck. At the end of it dangled a hollow pendant which housed two locks of golden hair. One matched his wife's tresses, and the other…
"Are you sure —" Haldir started, and hesitated, knowing it was not his place to ask. "Are you sure you need nothing more, sire?"
The Sindarin lord smiled an empty smile. "As you said, Haldir Tirinion — only time."
TBC…
