Arahael was merciful to the Lossoth who survived. There were not many, less than fifteen out of six score who had come down from the north at the end of winter. They were near to starving; many wounded died who might have lived had they been stronger. One who spoke the common tongue told Arahael that their autumn gathering had been poor, and winter the hardest in memory. When it became clear that the food would not last, they sent the strongest among them south to the lands of men, a last desperate chance, for if they stayed, all would starve.

The brannon taid ordered them kept under guard in a camp hastily constructed outside the gate, and it seemed to Miriel that it was as much for their safety as for the villagers'. They were pitiful, really, thin and pale and beaten down. But she had only to remember, and all pity vanished. They killed my people.

"They gambled, and they lost," growled Faelon, on the dawn-chilled practice ground the morning after the Singing. He had been with those who had questioned the Lossoth, and though he would not speak openly against the brannon taid, his opinion of Arahael's mercy was clear.

The trainees nodded and cursed in agreement, and Miriel again felt hatred flare through her. They killed Silevren.

But afterward, Hannas said softly, so that only Miriel could hear, "I would have done the same. So would we all, if it was the only way."

Miriel stared at her, drew a sharp breath, but when she opened her mouth to speak, words would not come. Mother starving. Andreth starving. Father. Meren. Darya. She shook her head to shake off terror, and shut her mouth.


They continued training after that, though slowly at first, and Calen and Lain joined them for the lessons only. But as spring grew around them, grief and shock faded, and they began to revel in their strength, in what they had shown they could do, what their bodies and minds could bear. There was much cheering and back-slapping when Calen returned from the healers one day, and Lain not long after, and said they could go into the Wild. Lain could not spar or carry a pack, but he refused to be left behind. "I told them they'd have to tie me to the bed to keep me here," he laughed, and Miriel hugged him, carefully.

Faelon must have known it was coming, for he only nodded and said, "Get your gear. All of it. Meet me at the Hall."

They found him standing in front of the great doors, packages and bundles piled at his feet. "Divide it up. And make sure you know what you have."

This was more food than they had ever taken before, and they glanced sidelong at each other, but no one asked the obvious question, for they knew they would not get an answer. But when it was done, all the food stowed away and their packs and weapons on their backs, he looked them over and smiled thinly. "We're going on patrol. North, past the end of the downs, to escort those seal-fuckers out of our land. The brannon taid is sending them with food, so they shouldn't make trouble. We're just there to be sure." He spit on the ground, and the trainees chuckled, even Hannas.

"And then to the ruins of Annuminas." His voice changed, and he lifted his chin, and they all straightened without thinking. "That you may see where our people lived and ruled before the great wars. Then back across the Baranduin, past the valley where the Last Battle was fought, and across the old road and then home. So twenty days, perhaps. Or more. Not likely less." A wry grin curved his lips, daring them to question, but they knew better. This was the most they would get on patrol: a task, and maybe a guess at time, but the Wild did not care about men's guesses, and they would return when the task was done. Miriel tried to see it in her mind, draw it out on the maps they had studied on winter days when snow howled around the eaves, but she could not make the image come clear. Doesn't matter. I'll see it soon enough.

They knew also that this was in some way the end, the last hurdle before the trials. And it was in itself a test, for there were many things the trials could not measure: skill in hunting and tracking; endurance through sun and rain, wind and cold and storm, and sheer miles of travel over rough ground; and being together in unremitting hardship, facing perils known and unknown, checks and mistakes and frustrations, and facing them with steadiness of mind and mood – this was perhaps most difficult of all.

And so they went into the Wild. The Lossoth kept to themselves and were nearly silent, and they walked ahead of the Dunedain and did not look back. But still it was an unpleasant journey, tense and cheerless in a way none of their previous forays had been. It was a cold, wet spring, and as they traveled north it seemed that they went back in time. Green faded, and by the time they released the Lossoth to go on their way alone, on the high open moors a week's journey north of Elenost, the ground was again hard and bare, and drifts of dirty snow still lay in northward hollows.

The Lossoth leader, an older man with a fresh scar across his lined cheek, bowed to Faelon when he understood that they were to be allowed to go free. He had until now said nothing to the Dunedain, allowing all speech to go through a younger man, who spoke clear if heavily accented Westron. But now the leader straightened, and looked Faelon in the eye. "You hate us. I know." He nodded. "Understand. But you not kill. You let go home." He touched his fingertips to his chest and bowed again. "Thank." And he drew over his head a leather thong, on which hung a thing smooth and white that shone in the sun. Carved bone, Miriel thought, though brighter and more lustrous than any bone she had ever seen. The Lossoth handed it to Faelon, and spoke to the young translator in their own tongue.

"He says it is a gift for you, for your people, in honor of your mercy. Our ancestors aided your people once, your king, though it did not save him. Now you aid us. It is the way of the world. We will not attack you again. This I swear, chief of the Lossoth. If we have need, we will ask. Beg. But not kill. And we will watch the north for you." Pause, and a low, hurried conversation between the translator and his chief. "All is not well in the north. In the mountains." He inclined his head to the chief. "He will say no more. But heed it. He has lived long, and sees and hears many things."

Faelon turned the token in his fingers, smoothing his fingers over its curves. At last he looked up. "I thank you for this, and for your warning. I will tell my lord." He inclined his shoulders, more a nod than a bow, but the tightness was gone from his face. "Fare you well." Then he turned away, south and west, and the trainees followed him without a word. And when Miriel looked back a while later, the Lossoth were already distant, small figures moving swiftly north, dark against the dull grass.

There was fresh snow that night, and they found it impossible to stay dry, and for day upon day they were chilled and miserable. But misery only of a sort, and though they complained loudly and colorfully, trying out words they had heard Rangers speak, reshaping them and combining them and putting them to creative and (so they thought) entirely new uses, there was underneath it a satisfied, almost cheerful grimness.

Meren, of course, was the acknowledged champion at this game, though on the rare occasions when Calen took a part, he brought the cursing to an entirely new level of inventive foulness. And through it all, Faelon watched and said very little, and behind their backs he smiled.

And he was usually behind them, for this foray, this patrol, as they took to calling it, was entirely theirs. He let them make the decisions about routes and camping places, the allocation of food and the posting of watches at night. Twice only did he intervene, correcting their course when a mistake would have led them to dangerous delay. But though none of them had ever been in that empty country before, finding their way was not hard, for the land was for the most part rolling and open, and gradually the Hills of Evendim rose before them against the western sky. And so nearly a fortnight after they left Elenost, they came to the top of a high ridge at the feet of the hills, and saw beneath them a wide valley, and a shining lake. There was a stiff, chill breeze blowing, and the afternoon sun glittered on rippling water far below. They shivered, but they were still and silent, gazing down, for on the western shore of the lake, where a river flowed out into the downs, there stood the ruins of a city.

Miriel knew it, of course. They all did, had heard of it in stories and songs since they were old enough to understand speech, knew its name and its history, the glories of its height and the anguish of its fall, in the Great War between the Witch King and the men of the North. The city had been the jewel of the northern lands, rich from trade along roads east through the hills to the sea and west to Rivendell and Wilderland, south down the river to the farmlands of Eriador, and beyond that to Dunland and even Gondor, that half-legendary kingdom far away on the shores of the southern sea. And it was renowned for its beauty: the reflection of the moon above the hills on still mornings, water clear enough to show a fish twenty feet down, the houses and towers of many-colored stone, and the songs that were sung by young and old, men and women and children, at all times on the day and on any occasion, or none at all. Many of those songs had been lost when the North Kingdom fell, but some were remembered by those who survived the long wars, and as their numbers dwindled and the glory of old became only memory, they kept the songs and passed them down. Still those songs were sung in Elenost and the other villages of the north, and by Rangers around their fires at night, when the dark and fear pressed in. Many of them told of the lake and the hills, light on clear water and bells in the morning in Annuminas as it was of old.

Miriel knew some of them by heart, and some she knew enough to follow if others led. But only those that had been made into the common tongue of the West. They had all, of course, originally been in the old speech, and some had come down that way through the generations. She loved the sound of them, but she had not known enough of the old speech to learn them. But now perhaps I do, she thought, gazing down at the tumbled stone, dark in the sun.

And then a voice, and a melody she knew well, and she gasped softly, for the words were in the old speech, and the voice was Calen's. Soft and clear he sang, and by the longing in it, though she did not know the words, she could tell they were the same as the ones she knew in the common tongue. Wanderer. And as if he knew her thought, when he had done he turned to her and smiled, and without hesitation she began to sing.

In the valley my mother bore me
Soft sweet rain falling on the earth
And I ran a child in the green fields laughing
Land of my birth

Yet I was born as the summer died, born as fields turned gold
Born as the frost on the leaves lay gleaming
Born as the wild geese southward flew
And called as they came

Strong I grew with the land around me
In me deep as the fire's heart
But wanting grew too, for the hills and plains
Beneath stranger stars

Then my heart by the fireside watched by my mother's eyes
Warm in a cage was content no longer
Though bitter she cried, "Child mine, don't go"
I would not be held

South the river wide bore me swiftly
Ocean's roll on the white sand beach
In the lands of the sun where winter's fingers
Never did reach

To the east and the mountains high, dark raised against the sky
Bitter they bit but my heart withstood them
Fear in the haunted night lonely calls
But soft comes the dawn

Westward then through lands green and gentle
Forests deep and the moss-damp earth
And I ate of their fruits and I drank their waters
Rich beyond worth

But for North did my spirit long, whispered in every song
Wild on the wind came the scent of winter
Deep in the woods still it called me home
As leaves from the storm

Long lay the road in the dark before me
Weary my feet of the rock and stones
But on, ever on without friend, and still
I walked on alone

And at last, over hill and fell, clear ringing came the bells
Bright in the sun lay the land in autumn
Home from the road, from the Wild I came
To water and song

And when the singer at last came home to rest, in the hills above the shining lake, she ended. There was silence after, broken only by the whisper of wind and the high calling of mountain birds. And at last Faelon said quietly, "Let us go down to the city."

It was a beautiful place still, in spite of the ruin, and the wind that sighed through the tumbled stone. Faelon gave them no command, only led them across the Baranduin ford by the tumbled remains of a bridge, and said they would camp by the shore of the lake that night, and then left them free to seek out the ways of the ruins. Though she was not afraid, she did not want to be alone, and so she went with Meren and Lain. Together they walked the ancient streets, clambered over fallen stone, ducked through low doorways into roofless houses, puzzled over fragmentary inscriptions, the letters familiar but the words strange. Some buildings were plain, workshops perhaps, or the houses of poorer folk, though all were well-built. But others bore traces of rich decoration: stone carved in flowers or worn figures or intricate patterns, glimpses of colored floor tiles beneath centuries of dirt and debris, and even, in sheltered corners where some roof had been preserved against the elements, fragments of paint, dull now, but hinting at the color and life that had once flourished here. The paint she did not touch, for fear of damaging it, but she ran her fingers over the carved stone, imagined the long-ago craftsmen whose pride it had been, men and women who looked perhaps not so different from those she knew. She thought of her father, and fingered the letters burned into the wood of her bow.

They came at last to a strange building, circular, and with a tapered roof nearly the shape of a beehive. It was set in a broad courtyard and appeared undamaged, but there were no windows. From the outside the interior appeared gloomy and dark, and so it was with some trepidation that she stepped through the door. At first her dazzled eyes were blind, but gradually the dimness took shape into sloping walls of stone, curving up into a barely-guessed ceiling, smooth and unadorned. In the entire wall there was no break, not a niche or shelf, and the floor, though dusty, was entirely bare of debris. Her footsteps echoed as she stepped further in, and even her breath sent whispers around the empty shadows.

It was eerie, but then a thought came into her mind, a wondering. And she sang.

Low at first, a single note, no words but only voice. One note, and then another, slow and tentative, testing the sound, feeling it around her and within her. She closed her eyes, and the notes came more smoothly, so that one still echoed when another began, a fading harmony, and she moved faster to grasp it, but it slipped away even as its beauty caught her breathless. Then she tried songs. Wanderer first, for it was already in her mind, but the series of notes was not right, made not harmony but dissonance with their echoes. And so she tried others, found that if she slowed them down the notes rang and did not clash, and so she sang Lady of the North, Home the Hunters, Return of the Sun. She smiled at that last, though still her eyes were closed, for it had always been her favorite. And then she thought of another singing, by a cold river at dawn. And though she did not now sing the words, for they were sacred and could be sung only in the appointed place and time, wordless came the melody. It hung in the air, echoed in the stone, and she felt it within her, as though she were not really singing at all, but only feeling a song that was in the fabric of the place itself.

And then before her closed eyes there was light, and an image came into her mind. Two men, both in gray cloaks and stars that glittered in the sun, one tall and lean, angular face young but marked by grief, the other shorter and broader, older and rougher, but a light seemed to be around him, and she would almost have said he smiled at her. Yet there was a powerful loneliness about the younger man, so strong she nearly reached out to him, to comfort his grief, for there was something familiar about his face. But she could not reach him, and the melody ended, and the vision was gone.

She opened her eyes, seemed almost surprised to find herself still in the bare stone vault. She blinked, breathed in the dry, dusty air, shifted her weight, for now that she was again conscious of her body, she found that her feet hurt and her knees were stiff from standing so long in one place. Steps behind her then in the stillness, and she turned, blinded by the glare of light from the door. Too tall for Meren—and then Calen's voice, and he stepped out of the light into the shadows of the room.

"That was beautiful," he said softly, and his voice ran in echoes up the walls.

"You—I—I didn't know anyone was listening."

"I didn't mean to intrude," apologetic now, "but I saw Meren in the courtyard, and he said you were in here, and….well, I've never heard anything like it."

"Neither have I," she said, with a small smile. "It's a wonder. What do you suppose it was? I mean, what was it made for?"

Calen shrugged. "Giant beehive?"

She laughed aloud, and startled as the sound echoed off the smooth stone. In a much softer voice then, "I wouldn't want to meet the bees."

Calen grinned, and she realized this was the most she had ever seen him smile.

And then it was gone, his face once again sober, and he asked quietly, almost tentatively, "Will you sing with me?"

She was surprised, for though she had thought of it when she first heard him sing, many months ago, she had not dared to ask, and she was certain he would have refused if she had. "Of course," she said at once, and then smiled a little. "What song?"

Calen was quiet a moment, as if considering, and then, "I….it seems strange, but the linnaidh….it is the right thing, somehow. It felt right, when you were singing. I can't explain…." he trailed off.

But slowly she nodded, and though she said nothing of what she had seen, something in it gave her surety. And without another word, she began again to sing the melody without words. She kept her eyes open this time, though she did not look at him, did not really see the shadowy room at all, but instead Silevren, and Gallach, and the stars. Calen took the harmony, deep and clear, and the skin prickled on her arms. When it was done, they looked at each other but said nothing, and then together they went back out into the light.


Notes:

"Wanderer" is my own, both melody and words. If you'd like to hear/read the melody, send me a PM.

The magic of harmonizing echoes that Miriel discovers in a bare stone chamber will be familiar to anyone who has sung in a concrete stairwell or tunnel. Okay, come on, I can't be the only one who's done this... :) This particular structure was inspired by the Abbot's Kitchen at Glastonbury Abbey, which is where (to my memory) I first discovered it.