The man took a decisive step towards Legolas, whom felt half inclined to back away. But, at that very moment, something hurdled towards the elf – something that he should have heard coming. Out of the dense bushes beside him dashed what could only be several orcs. Before they could be counted in the elf's peripheral vision, before the elf could attempt to tell his battered body to dodge the attack, a twisted spear stuck him in the neck. As he died, Legolas could hear someone yelling something in disgust, some sort of reprimand.
Ithast watched in horror as the orc's spear cut through the elf's neck, splitting open its main artery and allowing several pints of blood to spill onto the grass.
"What are you doing, you fools!" He screeched at them. "I didn't order you to kill him! I was going to kill him myself, on my terms, so that I could absorb his beauty! Now look what you've done! It may be lost forever!"
The orc who had done the slaying plucked the spear out of the elf's neck and the joined the others in a small gaggle in front of the body. Looks of fake shame fluttered over their snarling faces as they turned to their master. However, had the slayer-orc been paying attention to the face of the elf while removing the spear, he would have found his eyes quite open, his expression a mixture of anger and shock. Legolas' death and rebirth had been instantaneous. No sooner had the orcs turned to face their master, than the elf behind them had stood, albeit unsteadily.
In the middle of his ranting, Ithast had caught sight of the tall blond figure getting shakily to his feet. The man's eyes widened and his words caught in his throat as he formed them. Catching sight of their master's shock, the orcs looked behind them to find a fire burning in the icy blue eyes staring down at them. They quickly moved aside, grunting and squealing their surprise before they could stop themselves. There was no trace of blood or abrasion at all. And the elf was perfectly livid.
"You're alive! I-I just saw you die. I just saw him kill you!" Ithast's mind struggled to catch up as he finally found his words. "How can you be alive?"
Legolas didn't feel much like speaking. He had almost landed on Aragorn as he died. He shuddered as he could almost hear the sizzling of the ranger's skin, had he touched the man. "You betrayed me." He growled without any air in his lungs.
Ithast thought privately that he had never seen anything as horrible as the anger clouding the usually crystal eyes of the elf. This sight made his lips bubble, suddenly letting a slew of explanations slip out of them like liquid. "You can't think that I had anything to do with this. This wasn't part of my plan! I didn't order them to kill you! It was my intention to honour our bargain, I swear to you!"
"Why should I believe you?" The elf's voice was dangerously low. He began to suspect that his own desperate frustration was coming to a head and that at any moment he might break down right in front of these enemies. It was too much. The end of his emotional strength was near.
"You must believe me. You must go ahead with our deal. You-You have no choice in the matter. If you want to save the life of your ranger…"Ithast found his confidence returning. The orcs too found their courage and laughed and snarled tauntingly.
The Prince realized that he was right. Whether Ithast was to be trusted or not was immaterial. He had no choice but to proceed with their exchange. Ithast wasn't going to save Aragorn out of pity. "I-I find that you…speak the truth."
The man's voice turned silky once more. "You see now that you have no choice. You will give me your life and your beauty and I will give you the life of your human." Ithast was suddenly struck with a thought and his face fell once more.
The elf's stomach dropped violently as he read the man's eyes.
"This…This makes so much sense." Ithast started finally. "All of the rumours… I thought that those whispers were just stories that were being passed around the forest… The uprooted grave…There was no way that I could have been mistaken about killing you in that dead marsh. I did kill you."
Legolas saw the orcs trying to subtly move away from him in the corner of his eye.
"And you came back." Ithast continued. "And then the stories about the blood by the river. The …You can't be killed! It was you who was about to violate our deal!"
Before he could say anything, one of the orcs seized Legolas' sleeved arm and clamped a leather-bound hand around the back of his neck. Legolas did nothing to prevent this. The orc bent the elf to his height and pulled him forward. "Would you like us to test him for you, my Lord?"
"Yes." Ithast said viciously, his horror-struck face quickly melding into an angry one as he settled his gaze deep inside Legolas' eyes. Legolas did not move to defend himself or try to protest, but merely turned his eyes away defiantly. Ithast read boredom on the Prince's face and became infuriated. "Yes. Kill him in the most painful way possible." The fury blinded the man and he momentarily forgot all about his pursuit of beauty.
"With relish." Growled the delighted orc. Two of the orcs held him still, (though they needn't have bothered), and a third stabbed him with a hooked spear. The curved point went into his stomach on an angle and the slayer straightened it and pulled. While he knew the curved weapon was carving out his organs, the elf couldn't look. He let out the most anguished, harrowing scream that the man had ever heard as his intestines were being ripped out of him. Ithast closed his sore eyes quickly as fresh torrents of blood gushed onto the ground with each dig of the spear. The orcs were writhing with pleasure, digging, waiting for the Prince's screams to die out, but the man couldn't take anymore.
"That's enough." Ithast said in a dead voice. "Let us look now and see if he dies." The orc pulled the spear out of the dead elf's gullet. It had clearly been the only thing holding up the body and it crumpled to the grass without it. Ithast walked over to join the circle of orcs staring down at the body. His desire for beauty had, by this point, been completely consumed by his human curiosity. They watched, expecting to have to wait for something, if anything, to happen.
But there was nothing to see.
There was no sound or movement, no light or precursor of any kind to the moment that the elf's eyes snapped open. In a moment, he was on his feet. No one tried to stop him. The man and the orcs were in a state of complete disbelief. The wound in the elf's abdomen was missing. Though his strange patchwork tunic was ripped, there was no hole, no blood. Alternately, the blood that had spilled out of him littered the grass. It was everywhere, it seemed. But however much blood the elf lost in his deaths seemed unconnected to what he contained in his body when he awoke. No one spoke. Legolas was silently praying that there was something he could exchange for Aragorn's life, and fast.
Something caught Ithast's attention and he reluctantly tore his gaze from the dead elf standing in front of him.
"What are we all staring at?" Came the voice of an old woman from the other side of the clearing.
"Where have you been!" Demanded Ithast. Despite his obvious frustration, his voice shook.
"Well, I'm sorry that I'm late, but I never got a message from you."
"Your ruddy bird ate my monarch while it was trying to bring you my word!" Ithast sounded much more upset than the situation deserved.
"Oh." The old woman sounded rather sheepish. "Well, he's a scavenger, my raven. It has to be expected that he will eat whatever crosses his path."
The crowd of orcs surrounding Legolas shifted, parting a little. He finally caught sight of the old woman. He nearly fell to his knees.
Maeryn seemed to stifle a laugh. She wore a clean gray robe, and held a red drawstring bag made out of velvet. Her hair, on the other hand, was wild and frizzy, her warty face as ugly as ever. "Right. Well, I'm here now. What's all this?" She gestured towards the gaggle of orcs.
Ithast parted the orcs to reveal Legolas. "He won't die!" He sounded close to hysteria. "How shall I have his beauty if he won't die?"
"Well, well, what have we here." She murmured.
Legolas stood tall and light amidst the dark creatures, his soft eyes glistening with fear and the sort of heartbroken depth of someone betrayed. He no longer glared, but merely stood with the resignation of one who is exposed, finding it useless to try to hide. Maeryn's gaze fell on him, but she seemed to avoid his eyes as a shadow of doubt drifted across her face. Legolas thought that he could see the smallest trace of shame at the corners of her eyes. But the faltering moment had passed and a grin filled her face once more.
"Oh, that."
"Maeryn, what is he? How can he be killed for certain?" Ithast's fear seemed to have returned with the memory of his ultimate goal – the beauty of the elven Prince.
"Well, I don't know much about it. But killing him should be simple enough. You simply have to know where to strike." She smiled sideways at the elf, as though they were sharing a private joke.
"You're the associate – the other wizard he spoke of." Spat the elf quietly. "You helped me to preserve my 'beauty'."
"Smart and pretty." Maeryn said mockingly. "Well, we're going to split the beauty in half. You didn't eat my soup, which would have made separating out your parts much easier. But still I had to do my part in helping bring you here. Of course then you had to go and run into my house and ruin-"
"Don't!" Legolas put up his hand to quiet her. "Don't say anymore. I don't want to know."
Maeryn gave a short laugh. "What have you been doing out here, Ithast? He seems even more lacking in spirit than he was when he was in my home."
"Enough talk, Maeryn. Where do we strike him?"
"Calm down, Ithast. I have extracted a promise from him long ago. He has sworn to help me as I helped him and this will more than cover his debt. Now, let's see. When I first met him, I thought he was the exception of exceptions. I thought that he was much more powerful than the others that I have met who have been stuck in such a cycle, orbiting between life and death and that he might never be killed. I see now that he is merely the extension of these types. He has been able to remain this way for so long that he has now perfected being reborn. Usually those who fall into these patterns are put to death much quicker, their people finding them unnatural and all. Of course, they usually aren't wandering, crashing around, lost in the woods. But he shouldn't be any harder to put into final death. It should be a simple regression. If you bind his wrists with whatever was the instrument of his original death, the spell that will drain his life truly away should be simple enough to cast."
Legolas felt as if a blade had struck his wrists. He tried to keep his body even, his eyes unreadable, despite that his lungs were filling with a heavy fear.
"That's so simple."
"I know."
"Well, we'll need my sword," Ithast unsheathed his long sword, which Legolas finally recognized, it having once been imbedded in his torso. "And some scantalois. That shouldn't be too difficult. It's scattered all over the place." Ithast moved as though to begin searching along the ground for a patch of the mushrooms.
"And how about your music?" Maeryn asked.
"Well, my music and the mushrooms aided in his capture. It was the sword that 'killed' him."
"We will need all of them, if you want to increase the chances of the spell's success."
"I demand that you uphold our bargain!" Legolas spluttered suddenly. "Restore my friend's life and you can have anything of mine that you want, including my final death."
Ithast seemed surprised to hear the elf speak. He smiled wickedly. "You know, young Prince, your position doesn't seem so strong any more. Now that I know how to kill you, bartering with you seems less and less important."
"You were going to uphold our bargain before you knew that I couldn't die!" Legolas yelled, outrage and desperation augmenting his voice.
"True, but the fact is that we outnumber you now. And I don't much feel like being kind anymore, especially knowing that you were planning on going through with our deal without fulfilling your end of the bargain – dying! In short, you are no longer in the position to be making demands, Thranduilion."
Desperation welled up in the elf as he realized that it was true - he had few cards left to play. He had to suggest something – anything – that would keep him on top, or both he and Aragorn were going to die, and neither of them was going to be able to help his father or prevent the potential onslaught of war. "You restore my friend or I will kill all of you with my skin!"
Ithast began to laugh, half confused, half bemused by the feeble threat. But then he caught sight of the seriousness of Maeryn's expression. She shook her head at him.
"His skin? Your note." A look of realization came over the man.
She nodded. "He kills whatever touches his bare skin. Look. Look at the grass." She pointed out various small patches of dead grass where Legolas' skin had come in contact with it during his two deaths. "Ithast, just give him his damn ranger friend. It can't really do any harm. He falls easily enough and if he wants to fight us, you can just blind him with your music and I'll make sure he's good and lost in my forest. We can easily escape."
Legolas' heart rose. Any solution was a good solution, so long as it involved Estel being brought back to life. He looked over to his left where the man still lay. The green of his life was still running out like sand in an hourglass – in fact, it was almost out! "Is it a deal?" He said sharply.
Ithast looked at Maeryn who nodded. "Very well." He said. "We will not cheat you. And we know you will not cheat us."
Maeryn went to look for the scantalois while Ithast began setting about restoring Aragorn's life to him. Legolas watched Ithast intently while the orcs watched him, making sure that he didn't try to make a break for it. Ithast knelt before Aragorn's white twisted body. He began muttering words that Legolas was quite sure he had made up and whistled a few familiar notes in a minor key.
I can't believe I'm at the mercy of a couple of second-rate tricksters. Legolas thought miserably.
But true to Ithast's word, Legolas could see green flowing back into the ranger's body. A pink was slowly returning to his lips and his usual sun-weathered colour was coming back to the surface of his skin. Legolas was leaning forward and holding his breath, impatiently waiting for his friend's eyes to open when Maeryn's voice found them.
"I've found them. Let's get started."
Legolas reluctantly tore his eyes from Estel to peer over at Maeryn, whose hands were full of the deadly gray mushrooms that had aided in his original death. She dropped them on a small patch of dead grass near Ithast, Legolas and Aragorn. She pulled open her little red drawstring bag and threw a pair of leather gloves to Ithast.
"Put these on." She told him. She put on a pair herself and, before Legolas could say anything, she walked behind him and kicked the backs of his legs in. Legolas fell to his knees. She took some old rope from her bag, (which was really a strangely strong sort of vine), and, taking Legolas' hands into her own gloved ones, began to bind them together behind his back. She took one of the lengths of rope, and, through winding it around his ankles, managed to bind the elf's hands in a cupped position. She asked him to test it, and sure enough, he could not straighten his hands flat. "Good." Maeryn grunted to herself.
"Spread and move outward." Ithast told the orcs to move out into the forest and stand guard.
"Sword." Maeryn commanded. Ithast carelessly handed over his incredibly long sword. Maeryn jammed it downward quickly behind Legolas' back. For one horrible moment, he thought that she was cutting off his hands, but no pain came. Instead, he felt cold steel between his hands. Maeryn has stabbed the sword into the ground between the backs of his hands so that the sword itself was part of the binding. The sword took up the extra slack, and the cord rubbed the elf's wrists painfully raw. But this was the last thing on his mind. He returned his eyes to Aragorn, whose body was almost full of its own natural green light. Maeryn took out more vines and tied him around the chest to the sword as though it were a stake. The Prince then felt Maeryn fill his cupped hands with the cold, slimy mushrooms, which, as instruments of his original death, failed to turn to dust. "He's ready." She said to Ithast.
"So is he." Ithast said about Aragorn. And true to his previous word, Ithast dropped a long curved blade next to Aragorn. Legolas watched as Ithast had second thoughts and bent and put the blade, which the elf recognized as the one that he had been carrying - the one that Maeryn had given him - into the ranger's sleeping hand. He turned and muttered in Legolas' ear, "Still don't think we're wizards, Prince?"
"I suppose there are good kinds and bad kinds. But wizards-" Legolas stopped himself. He wanted to tell Ithast that he didn't think that either of them was anything more than a common trickster who dappled in mediocre magic. But he didn't dare say anything that would anger them and make them take Aragorn's life away again, especially now that he was firmly tied up, a sword anchoring him in the ground, Ithast and Maeryn both safely gloved.
"Go on." Ithast taunted.
But Legolas closed his lips tightly. Maeryn came and knelt next to Ithast in front of Legolas. They were clearly about to begin the rite.
"I want to see that he is ok, just like you promised. I want to see that he can defend himself." Legolas insisted.
"Ah. Your rights have expired somewhat since our original bargain, Prince. I've given him a sword. That should be enough. He's quite fine, be assured."
"Just until his eyes open?" The elf tried.
The two 'wizards' looked at each other. Maeryn sighed. They scooted back a little, to clear Legolas' view of the ranger.
According to the green in his body, Aragorn was now as alive as either of the humans. The elf momentarily wondered what he would see if he looked at his own body. Would it be green like the living, or would it be as gray as the things he saw that were dead? He guessed he would now never know.
He watched his friend's face, trying to will him awake. Aragorn's eyes moved under their lids slowly. The elf's voice caught in his throat as the human's eyes fluttered open. Aragorn blinked several times. He moved the hand with the sword in it and, finding it holding a hilt, moved his other hand and rubbed his eyes. Slowly the sky registered in his eyes. Legolas wanted to speak, but no words were coming to him.
And before he could protest, Maeryn said, "Good enough. Let's get after it."
"Agreed." Said Ithast. They both moved in front of him, blocking all of his view of Aragorn, save the ranger's eyes, which remained confused. Perhaps, thought Legolas, he heard the voices, but his eyes were not yet ready to give him images.
"Give me your hand, Ithast." Maeryn said.
So, this is it. The elf thought. The true end.
"Music." She prompted. Legolas' ears filled with the same eerie, skin-tingling sound he had heard the day he had gotten lost in the woods and fallen to the music - the day that he had fallen prey to Ithast's eye for beauty . . . Legolas was trying to judge whether or not this music was affecting him the same way it had that day, when a scratchy voice interrupted his thoughts.
"Legolas?" Came Aragorn's question. "Legolas! W-what is this? What is happening to you?" His friend's voice broke.
TBC
Thranduilion: Son of Thranduil