Lothíriel, the princess of Dol Amroth, struggles to find her courage in the dark days of the War of the Ring, aided by her old friend Éomer of Rohan. Though she is a mere footnote in the history of Middle-Earth, she will be enough to shift the balance of the war.
A/N: I am basing some of this chapter on the assumption that Gríma is a man of Dunland (he is dark-haired while the rest of the Rohirrim are blonde).
Thanks to all my reviewers, especially Lady Demiya, who has given some awesome feedback! Please, if you're reading this story, drop me a review and let me know what you think- if you like it, your review will make my day, and if you don't, tell me why so I fix it.
Basically: review.
I do not own anything; Lord of the Rings belongs to the genius that is J.R.R. Tolkien.
Nostos
-7-
Snakes, Ships, and Friends
"'Down, snake!' he said suddenly in a terrible voice. 'Down on your belly! How long is it since Saruman bought you? What was the promised price? When all the men were dead, you were to have your share of the treasure, and take the woman you desire? Too long have you watched her under your eyelids and haunted her steps.'
Éomer grasped his sword. 'That I knew already,' he muttered. 'For that I would have slain him before, forgetting the law of the hall. But there are other reasons.'" (The Two Towers, King of the Golden Hall)
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"'Gibbets and crows!' he hissed, and they shuddered at the hideous change. 'Dotards! What is the House of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in their reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs?'"
(The Two Towers, The Voice of Saruman)
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"Even as they spoke there came a blare of trumpets. Then there was a crash and a flash of flame and smoke." (The Two Towers, Helm's Deep)
He would always remember the little girl who sat on the steps outside Meduseld, as foreign as any he had ever seen. Her hair was dark, unlike any he'd ever seen before, but it was her woebegone face that made him slow and then settle down next to her, stretching out his long legs alongside hers.
"I'm Éomer," he said conversationally.
The girl picked up a stone and threw it. She was young, no more than ten, with long black plaits and a young girl's face face: wide set grey eyes, a delicate nose, childishly full cheeks, a small pointed chin. She was pouting.
He waited.
"Lothíriel."
"What's the matter, Lothíriel?" he asked.
Another stone rolled down the steps towards the grassy center of Edoras. The villagers directed a few curious glances towards this strange dark-haired child but otherwise ignored them.
"I want to go home."
"Where is home?"
"Dol Amroth. By the sea," she said. "The water."
"Well," he said very gravely, "we have a sea here, too."
She frowned. "Do not."
"Do too. Should I tell you?"
She folded her arms.
"It is the grass. Do you see?" The wind blew at their faces hard and the grass rolled as if it were indeed made of waves.
Finally he had provoked a reaction from her. "That's cheating!" she said, jumping to her feet. "Everyone knows that a sea must be of water."
"Maybe in Gondor, little princess," he said, laughing, "but here we are in Rohan. Tell me, do you like to ride?"
"Yes," she said, "but I had to ride with Papa here, 'cause I'm so little."
True enough, though the young princess of Dol Amroth was just beginning to grow taller and was now all long arms and legs.
"And I don't have any friends here," she added sullenly.
"No? Have you met my sister Éowyn?"
"Yes. But Éowyn says she is too old to play with me, and I don't like swordfighting. And 'Ro and 'Rion aren't here, and Elphir is in meetings with Papa and the king."
"You might just die of boredom," he said with grave concern, trying very hard to control a twitch at the corner of his mouth.
"I might," she agreed and then looked at him very slyly. "Are those the stables?"
"Yes," he said.
"Race you!" And she was off, all gangly long arms and legs and laughing, he went after her.
He understood something of being caught; he was almost but not quite old enough to ride with an éored yet, but too old to play games with Éowyn, just as she was caught between childhood and the years before adulthood, so he let her sit in front of him on his horse and woke her in the middle of the night to teach her the stars and when the delegation from Dol Amroth left- their mission failed- she told him that she wanted to write him a letter, and he promised, "I'll write back."
Imrahil did not see, preoccupied as he was with his Knights; Theoden did not see, nor did Éowyn or Háma or the other doorguards, but he knew that one man did, and that was the man Gríma Wormtongue, the man who would come to haunt his sister's steps.
But for that day he did not care and offered the princess Lothíriel his best smile. "Until we meet again, my lady. I hope I will someday see your sea."
She wrinkled her nose. "It's much better than yours, anyway."
He laughed and then Imrahil called to his daughter and they were gone, riding off to Dol Amroth, and Éomer raised a hand to the little girl who did not look back.
February 3019
She was so fair, like a queen, like molten white gold. So lovely. So very fair. He watched her and he knew she felt his eyes on her. She should be flattered, she should run to him, for he would protect her. Why would she turn to her brother when she could turn to him?
He did not like the light of the hall; he did not like the brightness that exaggerated every passing emotion on his face, so he retreated more deeply into the shadows. The lady Éowyn knelt beside her uncle, her eyes tracing his face. If she turned to Gríma, he could take away her pain-
He sought her out that evening, the fair lady Éowyn, and for a moment he thought she looked at him with something akin to welcome, and hope soared in him. They stood together in the flickering shadows of the great hall, he standing in the shadows, but she stood split in two, light gilding the one half, tracing cheek to shoulder to hem, the other half cast in darkness. He opened his mouth to speak to her.
"What do you want of me, Wormtongue?" she demanded, and there was no hiding the cold fire in her voice.
Abruptly he fell back a little. You would love me, he thought. When all are dead and lost and I am the only that remains, when I sit on this throne, you would love me. "Troubled your thoughts must be, my lady."
"Yes," she said, "indeed, they are, for a snake haunts my steps! If you touch me, I will scream."
"And who will hear you?" he asked and he saw her eyes dart about. There was no one: no guards loyal to her, no watchful brother or cousin or uncle. "You think to defend yourself, Lady, but you are weak now."
"I am not weak!" she said, but her words had lost their venom. Strong of arm she might once have been, but hopelessness had set upon her, and she could barely raise her eyes to his. She saw death all about her, he knew; death lay in her future, in her uncle's, in her cousin's, in her brother's, in her country's, and that was enough to stay her hand.
"There are none to watch you now, Lady," he said and stepped closer, but suddenly her eyes were bright and strong.
"Éomer will cut you in two," she hissed and she seemed to grow taller, this lady of the House of Eorl. "He will feed your heart to the crows! You think me weak, but my brother will not hesitate to tear you from limb to limb!" Her voice rang with absolute conviction.
"Your brother," he said, "cannot guard you always!" It was a weak response for they both knew how he feared Éomer Éomund's son.
And then she laughed. A strange laugh, it was, high and cold and almost maniacal. "You do not know my brother, then! And you do not know me!" And she was gone, sweeping away in a flash of pure white and a stream of gold, like a vanished puff of wind, leaving him cold and dark and furious.
"You, lady," he hissed, "are of a rotting lineage. What is this house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in their reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs?" But she was gone and he spoke to empty air and shadow.
Silently he walked the halls until he came to the room that lay still and empty. The lady Éowyn often came here when she missed her brother, for this had been his room as a child and was his when he came to Edoras. He held the candle to cast long, flickering shadows across the walls and told himself it was folly to fear the Third Marshal's presence, for the man was long gone, riding across the plains of the Mark on his merry chase.
The Marshal's weaknesses were few, but foremost was his temper. In that respect he was a son of Eorl, a lesser breed, for his blood ran hot and unchecked, while men such as Gríma were stronger in their caution. But how to provoke him; that, Gríma did not yet know, and so he combed the room. The Marshal's last departure had been hasty and he had left behind all that he did not need: spare riding boots, tunics- but here, in the corner, in the chest of drawers, he drew out a yellowed stack of parchment. As he gathered them delicately into his hand, something fell to the floor, gleaming silver in the faint light.
A pendant of some sort; a tiny silver swan with a diamond for an eye.
Dol Amroth.
Surely he was mistaken, for there was no reasonable explanation, and he was above all else a reasonable man. Not a bad one; he did not wish destruction for its own sake, but for his own, for he would rise strong out of the ashes, and this house must fall! No, the House of Eorl had driven his people from his lands; they would set him aside, cast him into the shadows of history if not for his own wit.
He began to skim the pages.
Letters.
I think your horses are ever so much nicer than ours, but I guess I don't really know because Papa won't let me ride anything but the pony, but he's so old that he can barely walk…
He set it aside. A little girl. And would the Marshal leave behind something he considered precious? Surely these letters were of no importance.
But still he continued to read.
My brother is newly married, you know, and my new sister is very odd and I think she is very ugly, but I heard Erchirion say that she has a very nice figure, but no one would explain it to me. What does that mean? I think men are sometimes very silly.
How strange for the Marshal to have kept letters from this little girl.
Then he saw the date. This child had been writing to him for nearly eleven years, and so he picked another, this dated January 12, 3012.
I am very sorry to have delayed so long in replying, but I am afraid that it was inevitable. I did not intend to concern you, but in truth I have not had the heart to write to you for some time, though I appreciate your kindness.
My mother is dead.
I would ask a favor of you. My father gave me this necklace of hers; it was the pendant he gave her when they were married. She wore it everyday, but whenever I see it now I think of her, and that is something I cannot do. Yesterday I took it, intending to throw it into the sea, but as soon as it left my hand I jumped in after in, for I realized I could bear a complete parting. There will come a day when I may wear it again, but for now I do not want to see it, yet I will not rid myself of it forever. You told me once that death, though painful, is just the next adventure, but I cannot understand it now, so f I ask you to keep this necklace for me so that I may live without her ghost.
L.
L?
Lothíriel of Dol Amroth.
Surely she was still very young.
That year that the prince of Dol Amroth came for negotiations with the king, though they all knew any hopes of furthering trade were fruitless, sunk as the Steward was in madness. A fool's errand. The prince had brought his daughter; the Marshal had bid her goodbye.
To think their correspondence had begun then.
He began to page through the letters again. There was a sharp divide, as though split into two stages, and following the news of her mother's death, gone was the childishly innocent young princess who babbled to her friend of horses and dolphins and her brothers and the sea, replaced by a strangely reserved writer. Gríma would have dearly liked to have seen what the Marshal had written to his young friend, if his interest was platonically brotherly or something more.
Either way, this was a suitable chink in the young man's armor.
She dreamt of Tolfalas, of the lonely rocky island fortress that stood against the crashing waves. It was as she remembered, tall and formidable and silent, the guards patrolling the outer curtain wall. The afternoon sunlight softened the coldness of the stone, though, and her mind was already dancing down the corridors and stairs to the bottom levels of the fortress, her breath coming fast in her throat.
Not the armory; they would find her there.
What of the store-rooms? Would they think to look among the potatoes and turnips and barrels of ale?
Most likely. Her cousin Galador was nothing if not a patient hunter.
It was a summer tradition, these visits to Tolfalas, for every June her father rode to the fortress to inspect the defenses- it was one of the most important fortresses guarding the passage to the Anduin and all of Gondor- and for as long as she could remember, he had taken his children with him, and often his older sister's children, too, Lothíriel's cousins. This was a special summer, for her oldest cousin Boromir was commanding Tolfalas and though he could spare little time for them, he was the biggest, strongest warrior she knew.
She hurried down farther, candle in her hand held high to light the way, for the corridors of the keep were dark. She came to a dead end and nearly slid on a rug laying on the floor, but she steadied herself.
How strange. The rug shifted aside, she saw faint cracks in the floor. She wedged her fingers into them and tugged. With a strange, pained groan, the floor came free and she saw it was a trapdoor leading to... something. It was a dark tunnel or room of some sort and for a moment she hesitated. Her fingers brushed against the wood of a ladder, and she saw that it stood as though awaiting someone. There could be monsters down there. Huge spiders. Dragons.
But she was an intrepid child and so she carefully set one foot on the uppermost rung of the ladder, her left hand steadying herself, her right holding the candle aloft. How strange. It was a storeroom of sorts, nearly empty, but against one wall stood a shelf with stoppered glass jars full of something dark. She set the candle down on the floor and clambered back up the ladder to close the trapdoor over her head, then set out to explore the jars. They were filled with some sort of strange dark powder. Holding the candle very close so as to examine the powder, she scooped some up in her hand and sniffed it gingerly.
How very boring, she thought, and set off to explore the remainder of the room. There was another door, but it was locked. She tugged at it but nothing happened.
She settled down to wait for her cousin, though she doubted he would find her. She had found the best hiding place in all the keep! So well was it hidden, though, that she couldn't hear him calling out his surrender, for he had dismissed the corridor as a dead end and not thought to venture further and examine the floor. So she sat there for some time, waiting for him to call out, but heard nothing.
And then the floor above her creaked and she heard someone calling her name.
Not her eleven-year-old cousin Galador, but rather a deeper voice. "Lothíriel?"
"Boromir?" Indignantly she scrambled to her feet. "That's cheating! You can't help him!"
Her oldest cousin scrambled down the ladder with unusual haste and he lunged for the candle immediately, blowing it out. "What were you thinking?"
"I was hiding!"
He grasped her arm. "Go."
She began to realize that she must have done something wrong, for she rarely saw him angry. She climbed up the ladder and through the open trapdoor, followed closely by Boromir. He set the now-darkened candle on the floor and rubbed a hand over his jaw.
"Lothíriel," he said, "you are never to go down there."
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know I wasn't supposed to."
"You could gotten yourself killed!"
"I'm sorry." To her eternal shame, she felt tears quivering on her lashes.
Boromir reached out to grasp her shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze. "Don't cry, Thiri. Let's go. I think," he said very wryly, "that this is the end of the cousins' visit to Tolfaras!"
"You mean I ruined it?" she cried. "You can't do that!"
"This is a fortress, not a playground," he said very firmly.
"But we come here every summer," she said. "Ada says we can!"
"Yes, well, I'll have a word with Uncle Imrahil. Let's go, little cousin."
"They'll be so mad at me!"
"If I were Uncle Imrahil, I would tan your hide," he said very grimly. "You have no idea how lucky you are."
"Why?"
His grip on her shoulder tightened. "Don't worry yourself." He turned her to face him and said, his face softening, "Look, Thiri, you know I'm mad because I care."
"I think you're being mean."
He laughed at her. "Probably."
She could not help a reluctant smile, for she loved her cousin Boromir, and she all but forgot the strange storeroom and the jars full of black powder.
"You look as though you saw a ghost."
"I did not," she said, thinking briefly of her uncle. "It was a dream. My cousin told me to go to Tolfalas."
"Tolfalas," he said.
"The island that guards the Ethir Anduin," she said. "I used to go there often. When we were little, Boromir commanded the fortress and we children would play hide-and-seek and distract him."
It took very little time to change and pack her saddlebags for the journey; Dánaron readied the horses in the stables and they guided them down through the levels of the city, out the great gates, and across the plains. She thought briefly and guiltily of Amrothos, to whom she had not said goodbye.
They rode across the great broad fields to the Rammas Enchor, the wind whipping at their faces, and she could feel the promise of rain in the air. It was cold; her hands on the reins were already numbing.
"Does it hurt your back to ride?"
"No," he said, "you worry too much, Princess."
The guards let them through when she announced herself very haughtily, and then they were gone, sweeping across the plains to follow the curve of the Anduin through Gondor. They pushed the horses hard, for it was a long ride to the mouth of the river and the Bay of Belfalas, and they rode until dark when Dánaron said, "We must rest the horses."
"Yes," she said, and stumbled upon dismounting. "But time is fleeting and we have not long."
She gathered wood for a fire while he tethered the horses and rubbed them down; through the trees that hid them she could just barely see the waters of the Anduin. It was strangely empty, for in times of peace the merchant ships sailed from the Bay of Belfalas to Minas Tirith, bringing their wares to sell in the White City. When the fire was crackling and hissing, he came to sit beside her and they ate the hard, salty bread he had brought with him.
"Tell me of your dream," he said, and she did. "I knew the lord Boromir," he said when she had finished, "though not well. He was a good captain. A good man. I would have followed him to the ends of the earth. As most would have."
"I did not know him as well as I would have liked. I cannot believe he is gone- it seems that a man like him could not disappear."
"He was larger than life."
"Yes." She held her hands to the fire.
"The captain of the Ithilien Rangers came to see you while you slept. Your cousin."
"Faramir!" she exclaimed. "I wish I had seen him."
"He was recently returned from Osgiliath, though we did not speak to each other. He was on an errand of some sort from the Steward."
"He has always been my favorite cousin, even more than Boromir. Boromir was very kind to me, but I was just a little girl and he was already a great captain of men."
"They were both good men, your cousins."
"Faramir still lives," she said, and clasped her knees to her chest in a shiver. "He would be a good Steward of Gondor."
Unspoken was Denethor's madness.
"He will not send them to war, though the shadow rises in the East," said Dánaron, but he spoke not of Faramir.
"I know." She looked out to the faint line of the Anduin. "He would have done nothing. He knew the Corsairs were coming and still he said nothing."
"I thought you feared them," he said.
"I do," she said, feeling very cold all of a sudden. "But I need to go. We need to warn them."
Silence, but for the crackling of the fire.
Then he said, "You have never asked me of my wife."
"I did not wish to offend. Or cause pain."
"It was the Corsairs that brought about her death," he said. He stared into the fire, his eyes seeing beyond the shadow of the woods and the hills and the river. "She was a very proud woman. Very beautiful. And very strong. As a sword."
She nodded, picturing a tall, slim woman with eyes of steel.
"I loved her very much. But when the Corsairs came, I rode to defend the castle."
"All the villagers were supposed to draw back into the castle- why did she not go as well?"
He smiled bitterly. "Aye, they were. But my youngest was ill and could not travel well." Silence. "I should have seen it. I should have taken them with me, but there were preparations to be made at the castle and I could not wait. I told her I would meet her there, once the battle was done, and did not consider that they could not move fast enough. You understand, Princess, that if a sword is too strong it will not bend. My wife could not bend. She shattered."
Lothíriel held in her breath.
"They moved too slowly, and when the Corsairs came, she would not let them touch her. We knew the tales of course, that they raped the women and killed the children. She died by her own hand. Killed our children."
There was nothing to be said. "You needn't tell me this."
"No," he said, "I want you to understand that I will fight those men until the end. I will not stop until they or I am killed. But for you, Princess- you have yet much to live for and I will see you turn your face to the sun. But for me-," he smiled at her, very gently. "Do not worry yourself. You are strong, and you will take what comes to pass in stride."
Ivorel was one of the few permitted to remain in the city, for she had been a healer since she was a very young woman, and besides, Ioreth would not let her go.
"Now, you look here," she said to the young soldier who had not had the wits to avoid a confrontation, "I won't have you taking my best healers from me! What do you think you'll do, then, when they bring all the wounded here? I'll bet then you'll be wishing you had listened to old Ioreth, and when you're in here screaming like a stuck pig, you'll want young Ivorel here to help you, d'you hear me? There isn't no one in the city better than her, besides me, of course, and I won't have her going off to who-knows-where. Evacuation! Hmph!"
"I will stay," she said very firmly, and that had settled the matter just as much as Ioreth's grumblings. Lalaith, too, refused to go, and one look in her strange blue-purple eyes had convinced the young man not to argue. So it was a few dozen of the healers, old women, most of them, and Lalaith and Ivorel who stayed behind, though the lady Kallista had wished to stay as well.
"I won't leave!" she had cried, her curls shaking in indignation. The girl did not lack in spirit or courage or skill, but she was yet young and had not the experience of the older healers. It had been the lord Amrothos who told her very ruthlessly to go away, that she was not needed. The girl's eyes had flashed but she had gone; Ivorel had seen her leaving with the rest of the noble ladies, in carriages, carrying all their silks.
"I'm looking for my sister," said the lord Amrothos. "Surely she must have recovered by now."
Ivorel opened her mouth to tell the young man that his sister must have left some time ago now, for she had not seen the princess in the Houses within the last days. Lalaith was quicker, though, and she said, "Oh, yes, she has. Mistress Ioreth sent her off already; I imagine she is long gone. Do not be afraid, milord. She is quite safe." This punctuated with one of the young child's eeriest smiles would have sent many a man running, but the lord Amrothos was persistant.
"Gone?" he said.
"Oh, yes. She is evacuated already." Lalaith treated him another of her smiles.
Once the lord was gone, Ivorel rounded on her young charge. "What have you been doing, Lalaith? Why does he think the princess is still here?"
Ivorel was not intimidated by Lalaith's smiles, and the girl knew as much. "I told him so, of course. The princess is long gone."
"Where is she?"
"Oh, by the sea," she said airly.
"The sea! Why the sea?"
"That is where she must go," said Lalaith.
"Is she safe?"
"Oh, no, not at all. In fact, I would be very much surprised if she lived."
"Lalaith!"
The girl shrugged, her face unshadowed, by Ivorel's heart was heavy. How strange was this child, that her visions did not affect her, that the death and despair she dreamt of did not weigh on her shoulders. She supposed that was a blessing, for else Lalaith could not live her life, but still it was chilling to see her so unaffected. For her part, Ivorel remembered the princess's strangely childlike and yet very ancient face.
"Oh, Lalaith," she said very quietly, "what a dark world we face now."
"You are not frightened, are you, Ivorel?" asked Lalaith.
"No," she said. "Death does not frighten me." It was the truth.
White teeth, small and pointed, like a cat's. "No, it does not." Humming, the child twisted a silver bracelet about her arm. A gift from the young captain of Gondor, no doubt, who had found the little girl years ago, an orphan scrabbling for food in the midden. She had uttered her first prophesy, then, or at least the first one that any chose to heed, but it was not the prophesy but the child's dirty, starved state that prompted young Faramir to bring Lalaith to Ioreth at the Houses of Healing. Since then Lalaith had lived there, a strange, ghostlike creature that floated through the Houses. She knew a little of herbs and leechcraft, but she came to only those she chose.
Ivorel shivered a little. No, she did not fear death for herself, but she could already feel the raw pain of those families torn asunder as hers had been. Dark times were coming.
A/N: Reviews! Please! I hope you enjoyed it :)