Bind Them (A Thranduil fan-fic) - Book 2 of Mirkwood Royals

by magicbunni

(In 7 Chapters.) A solemn purpose has separated Lusis Buckmaster from her friends and chosen home in the Halls of the Elvenking. And, soon, cries of wargs split the night air, silent strangers glide into Buckmaster Keep, and the famed Messenger-Men of the North come under attack - the results of an imbroglio between Men and elves, and a contrivance to lay low an inconvenient King.

2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

As they packed up, waiting for first light, the Elfking rested. More honestly, he stood quietly by the fire and stared into space. They'd probably all seen him do this before, he was a cunning and deep thinker, Thranduil Oropherion, but Lusis was concerned about it in light of all she'd witnessed, she swore, inside his feverish, dragon-sickened mind. She carried her pack to the door to wait for first light and looked back at the King. Redd lingered around by him, feeling the same worry.

It was the first time she'd had hope of any kind of unnatural power granted to her by her Istari blood. She worried, though, that she couldn't see the fire of him. But that wasn't actually unusual. In the Halls and Lake Township there had been many days, at times, when she'd lost track of that sturdy spark buried inside him.

She exhaled a trail of vapour. She wanted to see that fierce, clean light again soon.

Redd, who had washed away the blood from as much of the King as the supply of warm water would allow, had had thick, syrupy blood all over his hands, and through the night he'd had such terrible nightmares that he'd appreciated being stirred, and that there was a time during which he'd been expected to be awake. Likewise, he was grateful for the coming of dawn. But it found him weary and pale. His great hands shook with the infirmity of illness and he asked the distracted King, "Curses. Is there no part of a dragon that is harmless?"

"No part," the Elfking's staring eyes didn't blink, but they turned to take in the Ranger beside him. The King had to look up, which was an unusual situation at his great height. "Their dark power invades all. Where this one has fallen, dark fortune will follow."

He reached up to steady Redd's shaking hands with patient fingers. Elves didn't touch much, but then, the Elfking pitied this young being for his devotion. But he took care. Dragon's blood still stained the King's travel clothes.

Redd frowned, "This is no place for one such as you, my Lord."

A small light of amusement sparked in the Elfking's silver eyes. "Is it not?" he lifted the edge of a burning branch from the fire and took a few steps toward the back of the cave. Lusis cocked her head and, like Redd, followed him.

The King raised the branch he held and the flames crawled over stone. Cirth inscriptions lined the wall, and then broke into sudden swirls as she'd seen in Mirkwood.

Redd's eyes widened. "What is this?"

"Which part?" Thranduil asked the huge Ranger.

"I've seen these many times before, in many places, and some in Mirkwood." Redd blinked and added, "Any part, my King." Behind him, Lusis recognized the jump of excitement in his voice and smiled. When you were ill, it was good to have a distraction, particularly one you loved to chase. For Redd, that was the stories of these ageless elves.

The King's fingers touched cold stone. "This is Certhas, which the Sindarin made for inscriptions and which the dwarves adopted as their alphabet, in fact. You would have seen this on their weapons and tools, on their worked stone. You would have seen it when we went into the Lonely Mountain." He turned to look at the Ranger. "And the rest is Sindarin. Tiw – or tengwar – as seen in Beleriand."

"What does it say?"

"It says, Here did Thranduil, son of Oropher, Prince of the Great Greenwood remain after the destruction of Gorgorax, she-dragon – she who proclaimed herself Queen of the North." He turned to look at the back of the cave, and upward. "The number is eighty eight. Eighty eight days. And, up there in the darkness, there is a shelf of stone which I would venture, none have disturbed."

Lusis' mouth dropped open. "You were here?"

"Yes," he said quietly. "A very long time before men came to camp on the spur of Limgoroth."

He walked down the long cavern and set the wood into the fire.

"Stars," Redd exhaled slowly. "Do you wonder if he named the mountains?"

They grinned at one another and followed the Elfking to Icar. The King glanced over the steel pegs above the door as it they had swum up at him out of long memory, and he swept aside the blanket and stepped out into the outer passage. He softly frowned, "Tighter than I remember."

Redd grinned on his way out. Icar undid the complexity of ropes, took back one length, and then threw the other long coil into the cave for the next traveler who might happen this way. It was the same reason they left a baggy of spruce and rowan, as well as a small bundle of dried meat. Outside, the pool of dragon's blood the King had dragged himself into still steamed. He looked at it in a disconnected way, and the carcass of the dragon in the rising sun. It was no longer snowing, so only the blowing white wind painted the sky. It obscured the sun, but didn't dim it. However, they were very near the summit of Bregolnag. This high above the world, the snow was perpetual, and the sun was no more than a light. It held no warmth.

Icar stretched and rubbed his flat belly. "I could really do with a pot of stew."

Everyone looked at him, seeing as the King had nothing at all to eat. The apples were with Aric, it had turned out. Icar sheepishly set to tying on for the descent. The wind lashed the rope wildly and so it proved hard to secure. In the end, the Elfking took a length of rope and wrapped it around his arm. "Go."

But Icar froze. Redd, however, had an absolute kind of faith in the King. He was the largest of them, but the King held his weight easily as he scaled down. The wind blew long blond hair in a sunlit fan around the Elvenking as he said, "Once, there was a path to this escarpment. I realize, now, it was nothing that Men could pass." The rope jerked his curled arm and he eased it back to position. Icar followed Redd downward. His descent was much easier on the King.

When Icar gave the tug that he was on the shelf below, the King pulled up the rope and wound it around his long arm.

Lusis cocked her head at him. "We need that for-"

He closed an arm around her and stepped off the edge of the snowy shelf. She curled into a ball instinctively, and they landed on the snow without incident. On it, she noticed, and not knee-deep in it. He was an incredible being. When he set her down, she sank in.

On the way down the mountain, the path became more even. This meant they were coming to The Blade, which was harrowing, but at least Lusis had enough attention to spare to ask the King. "How many dragons did you take in this attack?"

He paused in the wind, his hood down from his sunlit head. "Six of them. They were small, maybe only five decades in age. I would call them hatchlings. Do you consider them dragons?"

"Of course I do!" she chuckled at the thought.

"They are lesser dragons, I suppose it is true," his head turned in the direction of the narrow ridge now only a league on from them. "They are of the type the Witch Kings of Angmar rode through the war of the ring, and a type of lesser being that we loosely call worm-heads. They are no less deadly, but… they are an easier kill."

Icar's breath puffed on the wind as he told Redd, "He's got to be joking."

"Easier for him." Redd glanced over at the King, whose white-blond blowing hair was blinding with light in the sun overhead. "I bet Gorgorax was harder."

The King's brows went up. "One doesn't call oneself Queen of the North without attendant exploits."

"What was she like?" Lusis asked him.

"Vain, proud, and very beautiful – she was the colour of snow and shadowy drifts, and her great serpent eyes were mismatched. One was white, and the other was gold. Fangs and claws like icicles. It is fortunate for me that she was narcissistic, because she was discerning. In this chain of mountains, she was worshipped as a goddess, and Men gave to her – ah, what is the word for gweneth – virgins," he turned toward the ridge ahead and then back toward Lusis. "Gorgorax was not as talkative as one might have hoped. Besting her was a test for which I was unready."

"You still did it," Lusis said of him, and the King stepped onto the main trail and led the way down. She followed him to where the path widened and they could bunch together to protect him from any archers who might be below. It was reflex. The wind shear would have torn the arrow off course before it went ten feet.

He chuckled and actually stopped to turn and look at her. "When I came here, she had a cult of filthy and primitive Men, numbering in the hundreds to protect her – they would become the peoples of Angmar. They loved her. They had festivals for her. Their culture had been built around defeating other tribes and offering their virgin sons to the Queen of the North. It was not simply Eldar against dragon, this fight. There were sorcerers here. And then, being chaste at that time, came the immense risk of Gorgorax's appetite for beautiful and pure things to corrupt, for, once she saw me, there was no bauble that the Queen of the North desired more. You must believe me. I was unready." His hair spilled around him as he turned back toward the journey down.

Redd nudged close to her. This sort of a tale was exactly of the kind that the former librarian lived to record. "I want the fullness of that story later, if you can convince him to talk of it at length."

"Why would he tell me?" Lusis cocked her head in an almost elven motion.

Redd's thick brows rose, "Because when it's you asking, he talks."

Lusis had to admit that this was true. Something had happened the night in Erebor, when she'd run through the Counting Room – the Counting Sea – of the dwarves, and fished him out of the Lake of Light. That was the place at the foot of a staircase where the dwarves had collected white stones. She'd swatted away gems that both tempted him and hurt him in equal parts. He'd changed toward her after that. He'd seemed to abandon his hope for the power of the gems and put his faith in her instead.

They made their way to the narrow windy ridge called The Blade, and the King was halfway to the other side when he saw that the humans had to crawl across the painfully narrow way, risking drops of greater than hundreds of feet to either side. He crouched as they approached, his hair flagging out behind in the powerful wind. "I will be close."

Lusis pushed up from the stone. "My Lord, that's kind of you. But I'd settle for you being out of the way for this one."

He pushed her hair out of her eyes and walked, effortlessly, to the mountain proper.

It was dark before they reached the flatlands. The table-like shelter in which they'd left Aric, Amathon, Nimpeth, and Ewon was still far off, but the going was easy, so they could jog it. The Elfking sucked a breath through his teeth. "Foul air."

They sprinted between snow-covered mounds and Lusis exhaled a great gasp of relief, "These are dead Wargs." She nearly laughed. "He's been killing the Wargs."

Under the moonlight, she could see a roughly circular pattern of mounded animals in the snow. They'd been arrayed in great rings. Amathon, and possibly Aric and Nimpeth, at work.

She looked at the King, "We're not far now." He inhaled deeply, his eyes momentarily innocent as a child's as if he faced something that distressed him greatly, and Lusis said, "We'll be there soon."

The snow, at least, had stopped falling. The hardship was down to cold wind blowing the loose stuff around. Amathon met them shortly before they reached the fire-lit camp. He brushed by the Rangers and dropped down onto his knees on the snow before his Elvenking, his relief was so great. "My beloved King, the Yellow Istari said she would not return without you. I am so thankful."

"Get up, Amathon," the King said quietly. "You have done great things among the Wargs, I see."

"Not alone. It is an effort of two warriors at any given time." He eased up to his feet and stepped aside. "We are ahead. Let me show you."

The Elfking went quietly as they walked the rest of the way into camp.

Aric let the slack out of the bow he held as they came down the hill with Amathon. The front of the man-made cave had been transformed by Aric's Ranger know-how. Snow had been piled up to shut it off from the outside. There was a door covered in a blanket – the common method – and smoke holes drilled in the snowy wall that would also serve as arrow loops from the inside.

Icar picked up speed when he saw his brother, and the pair of them met in a rough embrace with Aric grinning, "There you are, weakling. I was starting to wonder if I'd misplaced you somewhere."

"You're thick enough to." Icar clapped his brother on the arm and turned him toward Redd, Lusis, Amathon, and the Elfking. "Look what else we found."

"Stars, Lusis. You brought him." Aric inclined his head to the Elfking clumsily. Not a noted fan of elves, or he hadn't been. But he was nearly weak with relief and then walked over to hug Lusis, herself. "What's wrong with Redd? He looks like a dead man walking."

"Dragon's blood," Lusis sighed and motioned at the Elfking. "The both of them are stricken."

The King pushed through them all, "Where is Ewon?"

"Inside, Elfking," Aric said and led the way to the blanketed door. He called out his name a few times, and then edged forward to push the flap open. "Nimpeth has a penchant for firing at anything that moves out here."

"She's protecting her father," said Amathon. "And, well, she's not known for her patience."

They filed inside, and the Elfking came in with Amathon behind him. Lusis ducked in after that.

It was certainly more comfortable now that Aric had sealed them in with snow – that was the way these places were meant to be used. It also made the place difficult to find.

Ewon sat up on a layer of cut gorse that had been covered in a pair of thick blanket rolls. His arm was carefully slung and wrapped against him. He sipped a cup of tea that Nimpeth, in her white leathers, had just poured for him. She stood on sight of the Elfking and bowed to him. "My cherished King." Her hand flew to her breastplate and opened out at the tall blond elf like a white flower blooming. She made the gesture, again, to the Rangers with him, "My thanks, friends. Deepest thanks!"

Ewon dropped the steel cup of tea he held, and it splashed against the fire. He curled in around his chest with a soft huff of air.

The Elfking moved quickly to him. "Ewon? Is it pain?"

The Elite seemed beyond speech or action for a moment. During that short interval, the Elfking sank down on his knees beside the makeshift bed, reached a careful hand, and cupped it around the elf's injured shoulder. A spark woke in the King's chest. But it was vague and blue. The Elvenking drew a soft hiss of pain and took his hand away.

Lusis glanced between them.

"My beloved King, it does my heart such good to see you," though Ewon still couldn't bring himself to actually look up yet. His relief was too powerful. "I am so grateful." His long hand came up to briefly touch the King's broad chest over where his heartbeat would throb.

"Peace, Ewon." The Elfking said softly.

"I am so thankful, so very glad, to hear your voice in this world again," Ewon's breaths were close to sobs, but he breathed deeply. After a moment, he peeked up at the Elfking, "And… ah… your hair is like that of a runaway horse, and you reek. Is that dragon's blood?"

The Elfking had to put his head down to keep from laughing. "Do not let it trouble you. I am rested and will protect you tonight." His head bent forward and to the right in a small incline.

Ewon shook his head, "No, my King." He tried to pull himself up to follow, but Nimpeth wouldn't allow it. She also kicked his steel cup free of the flames and gave him an admonishing look, father or not.

The Elfking stood and walked back to the folded blanket that served as a door. He paused by Lusis, "The presence of dragon's blood will slow Ewon's recovery. Have Nimpeth give him healing. Also, Redd, who is sick with the poison of the worm-head, and then she must rest herself."

Lusis didn't bother mentioning that he was also ill. She understood his love for them, and told him, instead, "I'm coming with you."

"By all means," he gave her a soft inclination of his head, with his eyes averted under long and thick, dark-blond lashes. "I took that man's sword. And because of it, he is badly injured. I do not deserve such constancy as he bestows on me."

Amathon stepped beside them and said, "The way he would tell it, my King, is that you took that man's sword, and because of it, you lived. In this world, you are one of the only things worthy of such constancy, of that, I am very certain." He raised the long white sword balanced on his open hands – the sword of the Elfking. "We have both. I am sorry I could not present them to you sooner. Perhaps in the Keep of the Buckmaster clan?"

"No," the Elfking shook his head. "There, I was but a traveler. There I wished only peace. I was disinclined to bring a sword into that home."

"That worked best. Too many of the Buckmasters had scant patience for elves, but, unarmed as he was, they could not be very aggressive – they'd have looked like the wrongdoers." Icar scowled from where he'd settled down by the fire. He was boiling water. His mood improved as he said, "Lusis, won't you wait a minute, please, for this to finish? Won't you fill your flasks with hot tea? Just a minute."

She nodded at this, and accepted the warm fur cloak that Redd gave to her. He was shaking badly by this time, and his eyes had grey demilunes beneath. "Be warm. Be accurate, my friend."

"Stars, lie down, Redd." She gestured and both Amathon and Aric came to get him. Nimpeth unfolded a long and thick wool cloak over the shoulders of the King. He bound it himself, and pulled up the hood of it as he waited.

Then he took out his swords beside Lusis. "Lyglim and Lossivor. My oldest friends."

"Why two?"

"My… this sword, Lyglim, was forged for me when I was a boy. But Lossivor…" he help up the silver sword whose hilt had small snowflakes impressed into the pommel, "this is my father's – forged in the heart of winter, and scored on the pommel by falling snow."

Thranduil exhaled and took the belts of his two long swords. He took out Ewon's silvery blade and passed it over to Amathon. "Clean it well. Do not let the steel touch your flesh until it is passed through fire."

Lusis took two flasks of tea, a packet of dried meat, a baggy of bilberries, and two apples before she went out into the cold after the King. Since she was partnered with the Elfking on their patrol, they went right out the door. Aric, who was often censorious of elves, seemed to be getting along with tall, deadly, but unobtrusive Amathon. They went out and left.

The King walked slowly through the night, his pace stately. He watched Lusis, mostly. She was very good at combat in snowy conditions. She took a bow and arrows with her and the many Wargs attracted to the silvery glow of the elf walking atop the drifts fell before her fleet assaults out of fissures and from behind banks of obscuring snow.

Near morning, they spotted a band of Northern men dragging their sledges of ice toward Buckmaster Keep. They came with a pair of Rangers guarding them. The ice-men stopped and held up white flags in peaceful greeting. Lusis thrust her sword up in air and turned to point it in the direction of the Keep. It was normal when meeting a Ranger in the wild that they would point you to the nearest inhabitable place. Her kind always knew their direction. The Rangers spun their swords up in salute before they jogged on with the ice-men huffing between them. Honestly, if they ran into any danger between here and the spur it would be, by this time, a miracle.

But even that little action – pointing to her home with the tip of her elven sword – was so bittersweet that she walked for miles with tears gumming her eyelashes.

The sun began to paint the sky as they turned back for their little camp.

Aric and Amathon were already back, and they were prepping packs for the trip.

Ewon stepped out, pale-faced, but hale enough for travel. He saw the King and his nose wrinkled. "Lewegdol," he said the Sindarin for worm-head. "We will burn those clothes."

The King chuckled at him. "The one thing about smelling like a serpent, Ewon. The serpents do not take you for an elf. There have been none further."

"Wargs will feed on a downed and wounded dragon," said Ewon. "Are you all right?"

The Elfking's head tipped, "Are you?"

Ewon took his arm out of his sling and flexed his fingers. "I am supposed to rest it, but it is feeling very good, at the moment."

Nimpeth stopped beside him, and Ewon studiously set to putting his arm back into the elf-fabric sling. She didn't leave, or leave-off glaring, until he had set himself to the task. Amathon, who was close by, began to softly smile at the snowpack.

"Here, adar. Let me." He intervened to help Ewon.

The Elfking watched this with an aspect of remove, as if it were coincidental to the direction he was facing, which was how Lusis knew that he longed for the thing he witnessed. What kind of son had Thranduil Oropherion been? Attentive, like Amathon? Peregrine, like Legolas? Unyielding, like Nimpeth? Or adoring like Eithahawn. Maybe all?

"We'll make decent time down the mountain," Redd said as he came out from the man-made cave. He was drawn, but had some colour in his cheeks this morning. He winked at Lusis as she came to check on him. He was quiet when he told her, "We can't linger. There's nothing green and growing for them to eat up here. They won't take dried meat. We're out of apples."

They set out.

The trip down from the spur was mercifully smooth. Rangers could run for hours on end, and elves could run for days. They passed out of the part of the mountain covered in perpetual snow, and Rangers took off their winter layers and tied the gear to their packs. Then they made for the timberline they could see below. As the gorse grew to shrubs, the shrubs to brush, and the brush to trees, the elves lost more and more of their tension. They were not far from the Great Greenwood now, and unlike most travelers in the world, the sight of that massive ocean of ancient trees whose towering giants were taller than castles, which ran from the foothills at the top of the world, unbroken, to thin in the Brown Lands and halt a stretch before Mordor, did not inspire the elves with a feeling of fear at all.

They were happy. But it was well into autumn here, and the cold came down with the sunset, and covered the world in slippery rime. The Rangers had grown exhausted.

Lusis felt dead on her feet. Her legs burned. Her lungs burned. She was not some indefatigable Elfprince rushing to the warm arms of his forest. And no matter how Radagast might handle such a long run – for they'd made very good time through the day, as only Rangers and elves could make – she was close to depletion when they stopped to refill their water at a hidden spring the elves had made in the lowland trees. It was ringed in thick blue spruce. None of the Rangers had ever seen it, in spite of the fact the well was comprised of a beautiful stone basin, amazingly round, and not unlike a large, smooth stone bath. The water was crystalline, and a beautiful marble elf girl sat on the edge of it with her legs curled under her, washing her long and sheer stone hair.

"Too bad she's not a real elf girl," Aric sighed when he looked at the beautiful figure.

Beside him, Amathon failed to suppress his smile in time. He was often taken off-guard by what the Rangers said. He smoothed his expression and glanced across at his wife, following this with a courteous little bow. Nimpeth helped lower her father to the stone benches that ran around the lip of the spring. She drew water into the white water skins the elves carried. Ewon bent forward to lean against the lip of the pool, wearied.

Redd stepped in close to Lusis, "He can't go much further, I don't think. The King is hale. He appears hale, but… he hasn't had but morsels for three days now… and the dragon's blood too. They're battered, worn… can you make them see sense, Lusis?"

"I don't know what is most sensible," she confessed to him. "But I do know we need to get Steed back from his family."

Icar joined in with, "Then we make a right here, and if we have to press on to Mirkwood, then Aric and I can go get Steed, or you can, Lusis, but we should try to convince the elves to stay put until we can, at least, get something they can eat from the Tatharion family."

They were, as yet, too far to the North for the elves of Mirkwood's storehouses. They were deeper in the woods, and unlocked, for the rescue of desperate winter travelers.

No one spoke for a moment. It was a different thing, the way they were Rangers and the way the man they called 'Steed' was. It was a world apart. For example, there had been an injection of elf blood in Steed's family four generations back, blood straight out of Rivendell. It wasn't uncommon of them. Two Tatharion children had been sired by an elf there. Steed was directly from the line of the half-elf woman of the pair. Her name was Ellethiel Tatharion to some. She knew her father's name, and often opted for the elven patronymic instead. She was still in residence at the Tatharion keep.

"You don't just stroll into Tatharion Keep and walk out with an elf-kin." Lusis sighed. "I wonder if they'll insist Steed stay with the family?"

"Well, we do have a rather big stick," Redd tipped his head in the direction of the King. He was watching them with his colourlessly blue eyes. "I think he'd manage it."

Off to one side, Aric glanced at Amathon. "Ah. Hear that, friend-Amathon? Unless you want to run your wife's-sire into the ground you'd better decide to go right from here."

Amathon's dark auburn head cocked, "The decision is in the proper hands, friend-Aric."

Aric muttered, "Then tell those hands we need to go to Tatharion House. You are all worn."

"Hm. The daughters and sons of the willow-tree." Amathon straightened and looked in the direction of rolling hills dotted with wintery spruce. "You fail to grasp that they are bosom friends of Elrond in Rivendell. Mirkwood elves have no place abiding with them." And his deep auburn hair, longer than the hair of most elves, fluttered around his steel as he looked at Ewon. "And yet…."

"Friend-Ewon would have a hot meal and a safe place to sleep." Aric noted. "The thing about the Tatharions that you should know is that they are very friendly to Eldar. And look at the Elfking, Amathon. He wears no sign of his station. Let's use this to our advantage."

"It is not my call to make."

Now Aric smiled at the tall, wine-haired elf. "I have seen you nudge the King before, always in the right direction, if you ask me. Besides we need to go to Tatharion Keep, Amathon. Steed is there."

The Elfking sipped water from his palm, he blinked his great long eyes slowly in the moonlight. The weight of so much dragon's blood, now soaked into the very fiber of his clothing still played on his consciousness. He fought to control the disturbance it caused in his nature, but it was coming time that he divest himself of everything dragon or consequences could be expected.

Lusis stepped up to him, "We need to get Steed Roanhead… as you know him. Will you allow for a slight divergence from your way back to The Halls?"

"No," he said. "The Halls await us. The Halls are safe." He shook his head a fraction. His thinking was unclear. Blood-clouded.

"Then I have to leave you with your Elites," she bowed to him.

"You may not," the King said loftily.

She glanced up at his large silver eyes and spoke slowly, "Of course I may."

They stood at this stalemate for a number of minutes, with the Elfking still and staring at her, and Lusis standing before him, very possibly as stubborn as he was. Then he reached out and folded her smaller hand in both of his own. She marveled at the suppleness of his skin, and the light in it. His clean flesh and well-kept nails. He was a beauty. And she made a sudden look up from his white fingers, because he was shaking.

She stepped closer to him, stared at his immaculate skin, his hair so smooth and polished that it resembled web-thin filaments of silver under moonlight, and the silvery disks of his eyes that were so pale and serene and commanding. She barely spoke above a whisper. "Let me take care of you."

He looked momentarily pained. His head dropped forward so that she could not see. It turned to the side in a combination of denial and consent, for he had oriented toward the way she'd wanted to go. Having revealed the extent of his weakness, he released her hand. She stepped back from him and looked at the grubby Rangers and drained elves around her. "I have spoken to the King. We will go to Tatharion from here." She glanced at Ewon. "It is to be kind to the injured."

If the King decided it, then there was no argument.

She looked back at him – at his thick travel clothes now stained dark red in blood – and wondered if he could make it home with them slowly cutting away at his ability to reason.

The band of them turned right under the moon, and didn't stop pressing ahead until they came to the tall cedar wood ramparts of Tatharion Keep. The walls were very tall and stout. It turned out the outer round cedar logs were packed with six feet of crushed stone and earth between yet another cedar layer, and this formed a wall walk. Inside, the wall was braced with oaken trunks, and segments of wall were riveted to one another. Lusis would later walk backwards to take this engineering in.

Armoured guards along the wall-walk called out to hail them before they came onto the gate-road. "You are at Tatharion. May the gods help you if you mean to cause trouble in this Keep. What is your purpose this late night?"

"Shelter, Rangers." Lusis told them. "There are Rangers down from Buckmaster Keep. Elves."

Heads popped over the top of the wood wall. "Elves?"

"Of Mirkwood," said the King, coldly. "Do not question us. Open your gates. One edhel among us is lately injured by the thoughtless and negligent arrows of Men. Will you stand on the walls of your Keep and do insult as well?" He pushed back his hood and his long, silvery hair billowed in the autumn breeze. His skin fairly gleamed against the moonlit night.

It was possible to hear the gasp from the road below, as one guard exclaimed. "Open the gates." The hinges groaned wide enough for them to come in, three abreast. The guards stared down at the Elfking as he went in. Even under his hood, his hair and skin shone with the light of the moon. He was flanked by cloaked Ewon, Amathon, and Nimpeth, and they drew all attention from the Rangers who went before and behind them.

The gates shut with a metallic clang. Ahead of them was a long stretch of flat, green land, dotted in oak trees. At some distance sat a large hall whose doors were yawning light and heat into the air, even this late. The King glanced aside at Lusis and lifted his hood up to cover his hair again. He stepped back a fraction and she knew this meant she should go into the lead. The Elfking, Thranduil, was a friend to Men. He considered them all his kindred. But he was not always so good at handling them directly. Aside from which, this was a realm of Dunedain.

Lusis brought them past Dunedain guards on the steps and led the phalanx of elves into the Keep. She stepped aside once she was inside the door.

Her King went up tiers of steps toward the firelight.

The table wrapped the top of the large room, a square with the bottom cut from it.

Travelers sat along the lower end of the wings.

The greater table at the front was reserved for the Tatharions and their guests.

All three fires in the Keep leapt up in their grates when the Elfking went in.

Wind circled the room like a great bird.

At the uppermost table a young woman stood. She had long, dark brown rings of hair, and pale skin and eyes. Her motions were… confusing. She was human in her basic appearance, but her motions and her features looked elven. Silence fell in the room. "Who are you, traveler? That you make our fires dance? That you sweep the room with the wings of a dragon? You carry darkness about your shoulders."

Lusis bared her teeth at the word and muttered to Redd, "I don't want to take issue with this woman, but if she says that again…."

The Elfking took down his hood and moved deeper into the room. "You have the look of a Noldorian. Are you peredhel, young lady?"

"I am." She began to walk down along the table. Men got up from their meals, pulled swords, and walked with her. "Who are you, dark one?"

The Elfking's chin rose a fraction. "Of late, I have slain dragons. It is their blood and beguilement you sense. That is the scent like lightning in air. It is a darkness not of my making." He opened his long arms and bowed between them, his fine, long hair spilling around him, and his eyes hidden away under dark eyelashes. He straightened slowly.

The woman's eyes narrowed, "I am… unconvinced of that." As she drew closer it was possible to see that she had round ears, but that her pupils were just slightly oblong. Lusis found her utterly unsettling.

And threatening. She glanced aside at Redd, took out her sword, and stepped in front of the King. She sank down with her knees unlocked and ready for a charge. Redd mimicked her on the Elfking's other flank.

"Peace," said the Elfking.

"No. I'll take her if she-"

"Lusis. Peace." His quivering fingertips brushed her stooped shoulder. It made her worry for him all the greater, but Lusis knew better than to disobey him when it came to matters like this. So she came up from her crouch and let her elf-steel sword dangle beside her. Redd did as she did.

The girl's head came up, "You are full of ill portent, strange elf. And gloom. One might expect as much from a Moriquendi."

The Elfking's head rose again. His white teeth were bared. "Am I to be called such, by a half-elf?"

Her head tipped and she smiled tightly, not elven enough. Definitely inhuman. "We have late slain a ring-lord who was an evil beauty. He was an elf, was he not? Am I to let one such as yourself into my hall?"

The Elfking's hair glimmered, "Do not mistake the dragon-slayer for the dragon." He lowered his voice and spoke to Redd and Lusis, "Wargs have more sense than this child. And, Rangers, put up your swords and do not dignify her puerile threats, we are elves of the Great Greenwood."

The half-elf laughed, which was too human a thing for her features. And not. She stepped around the table and toward him, and the Elfking went to meet her with elves and Rangers flanking him.

"You smell like a monster pretending at an elf." Her sword came out. It was a long curve of elf-steel. "I see no need to invite you in." She lashed it at him.

The Elfking's pale hand moved in a blur. It struck the flat of the blade and held fast. She tried to yank it free of him, but it would not come. In fact, it did not budge even to shake or bend in his grip. She released it and backed away into her Dunedain kin. The Elfking turned the blade and took the hilt of it. "Rivendell. Two thousand years ago. Made at Elrond's forges. Its stamp marks it – crossed leaves and the star of his metal makers, but without the intertwined bows." He tossed the sword onto the floor where it landed with a terrific clatter. His eyes had found Steed, pale-faced, hurrying down the room toward the Elfking.

"Beware, Inilfain!" the half-elf made a grab for him. But Steed, who was cleaner than Lusis had ever seen him, clean-shaven, and looked more like an Eldar than she would have thought possible for him, stopped in front of the King and bowed.

He straightened and turned to incline his head at the half-elf, "My lady, this is the – I know this elf. He is a great slayer of dragons. He is no monster."

Lusis glanced between them at this. Had Steed told her the story of Lammia's look-alike second-skin, and the might of her beguilement? Or… where was this concern coming from? Had they also seen the likes of Lammia here – a being she'd never even heard-tell of from Redd?

Ellethiel's voice became harsh, "What is his name?"

The Elfking said, "Thranduil."

She spun toward the tall Elfking and backed away. "The Shrewd One? The Doom of Dragons? Despised of the Lonely Mountain? Scourge at Dol Guldur? Friend of Men, and Elfking… of the Woodland Realm." A stir passed through the room. Men and women at the tables rose to see the elf that Ellethiel spoke about as she came to a stop beside her men, one of whom had fetched her sword from the flagstones. The beautiful half-elf's head tilted. "And, Moriquendi, this is still my hall."

Steed glanced from Ellethiel over to Lusis with his upswept eyes widening in surprise. He hadn't expected this reaction from his aged relative.

The half-elf turned and pulled her cloak around her, "You may have the night in the open hall, King of Mirkwood. But your ever-busy head is a labyrinthine maze, and the sound of your step upon the stone is the thunder of trouble coming. Do not… linger." She walked away and her men went with her. They all were of some elf blood, and so they looked back at their elven 'guests' with an air of curiosity and, some, regret.

Thranduil turned to Ewon. "I smell like a monster," he said lightly. "Would you like to discuss?"

Inside his hood, Ewon began to smile. "At least, my Greatest Moriquendi King, you have a lovely peredhel woman, here, capable of comprehending that you are full of convolutions. I like ever-busy-head. I shall use that. For a few centuries."

Aric glanced over the collected and told Steed. "I take it he has a reputation?"

"He does here," Steed said quietly. "These elves all came of Rivendell's bloodlines, and, through them, they feel closer to Lorien. They have… opinions about Mirkwood elves. And the Sinda King among them, so powerful and so crafty," he bowed to the King and left off there.

Now the white-blond elf exhaled, "This suspicion is something they learned at Lord Elrond's knee. In him… it has become a pliant kind of vigilance. In them, it has hardened to mistrust."

The Elfking tipped backward and shut his eyes. "Powers." He sighed and turned toward Lusis. "Little galad, please decide me on one thing."

Lusis absorbed yet another epithet of his for her with as much grace as she could muster – little light made her sound like a child – and patiently asked him, "What would that be, my King?"

His snake's tongue of sword, actually named Lyglim, Serpent's Tongue, flashed out and pointed directly into the face of an approaching man. The King said, "Whether I should cut these saplings of yours down. Or not."

"Fires, call him off, Lusis!"

She turned to see Remee at the end of the Elfking's sword. Elsenord looked on, distressed. Of all the boys in the family, Else had been the one Lusis had thought would one day run off to the Northern Hoard, possibly in trade for Redd. She hadn't imagined him betraying a Buckmaster Chieftain to chase down the mountain after her.

She winced and hurriedly told the King. "No. This pair did nothing to betray us."

He lowered his sword and tipped his head as he drew in on them. His expression became all but glassine with the seeming of welcome and warmth. His voice was slow, controlled, and deeply musical. "If you can be trusted, as Lusis-sell yet believes, you shall dwell safely amongst us. But trouble my elves, or my Rangers of the North, and I will allow to pass whatever fate they choose for you. Harass this young woman such as I witnessed of that martinet you call brother and leader, and she shall see a great increase in her bloodline, for I will slice each one of you into three. Is that clear?"

Lusis ducked her head, "They didn't do anything-"

"They didn't look for friend-Lusis to help her, either," Nimpeth said coldly. She glanced across at Lusis. "The King has been informed of this."

Remee said nothing. He'd hardly moved a muscle since the Elfking had drawn in on him. Elsenord nodded carefully, "My, uh," he wasn't sure of the address for a moment, until Redd helped him with a mutter, "Oh, Elfking, your words are clear."

"Be aware of them," the Elfking said to her, and then turned to Steed. "Baths."

Lusis brightened immediately. It didn't matter that she wasn't technically invited, or that no one immediately thought of her when the Elfking suggested it. If there was a bath, she was going.

"Of course. Let me prepare the bathhouse," Steed, who looked far too elven now that he wasn't filthy and covered in hair, turned toward Lusis. "This house will feed you, Lusis, and the elves. Settle by the fire. I'll see to the rest."

The King began his stately pacing. It was his default when waiting or thinking.

She glanced over the room, none of whom were terribly interested in a band of Messenger Men, and then turned to her trio of brothers, "Where are Lonnan, Tira, and Irin?"

"They've remained at Buckmaster Keep." Said Elsenord. "They'll be feeding us information, I can promise you that. We rode hard for Tatharion when we lost you in the wilds. Kirstman may not have known who 'Steed Roanhead' really is, but I certainly did."

"It won't take him long to learn either," said Remee. "We can't remain here long. That half-elf was almost right when she said that she could hear the thunder of trouble coming on the flags of this house. But it's your boot-heels she should've worried for."

"Why is that?" she started after the Elfking.

Elsenord nodded at his big brother. "I'll walk her down and explain."

They followed Steed, the Elfking, Redd, and the Elites on the way down a closed-in hall. At the end, they turned and started down a stone spiral of stairs into a basement steaming with bathwaters. Rather than tubs like one would find in the Buckmaster Keep, there were long slats cut in the stone floor and hot water bubbled through pipes laid into them. Lusis smiled and opened her arms in greeting. Hail to you, clean!

"Oh, you're in your element," Elsenord laughed at her, he settled on the warm stone with his back to the pool she selected, though it was so foggy with heat in here that he might have sat and kicked his feet in the water without knowing if he was talking to Lusis or the King.

Lusis stripped off her boots and clothes quickly and sank into the bath with a sigh. "So tell me. What is it?"

"We ran down here as quickly as we could. I'm not sure how we passed you-"

"I went to find the King." She leaned back in the tub and let the hot water get at her scalp. "Six worm-heads, he killed. That's a type of dragon, Elsenord. He slew the last – it must have carried him off," she sat up when she realized she didn't know how he'd come to climb so high with the dragon. "He was nearly on the summit of Bregolnag when he took the last. Rather than die of exhaustion in the cold, he crawled into a pool of dragon's blood to keep from freezing."

"I imagine that sort of thing is why Miss Ellethiel called him crafty."

"I suppose so," she sank back again. "Believe me, it's not the cleverest thing I've seen him do. He is wickedly smart, brother. Kirstman's cunning and intrigues are no match." She looked into the fog and glimpsed the motion of the elves. They helped peel away the blood-soaked clothes the King wore. It sounded uncomfortable judging by the soft, heated, elvish from that way. But the hazy figure of the Elfking began to light that corner. He was a soft, foggy radiance that descended into baths. Lusis turned away at once, and sank down in her pool with her face hot. Well, yes. Just… let him luxuriate. Her lips flattened to a line. Let him wash away the last of that worm-head's foulness.

She inhaled through her nose and blew bubbles from her mouth.

Her brother made no bones of looking into the thick fog at the light of the King. He blinked and nearly turned toward Lusis, but caught himself. "What? Is he glowing?"

"He… he's an Elfking, Else. He's full of bright power. In Westron, it's called King's Light, or King's Fire." She longed to see the fullness of that flame turning inside his torso again, to see the light leap up from his chest and shine at the base of his throat.

He stared out over the intervening steaming pools. Lusis did too. She could make out that the King put his head back on the lip of black stone. Fingers of faintly glowing mist rose above him. Then he sank downward until even his hair vanished into the water. Elsenord blinked, "I've never seen it before. The light… it's wholesome."

"I'm not sure you should be staring at it right now," she pointed out. His head whipped around and he looked at the floor.

"Ah, but maybe if Ellethiel herself could see it, she would change her opinions." His brows went up. "Tell me, one day, how you managed to meet a great Elfking?"

She was a year younger than he was, but he often treated her like a big sister. Lusis smiled in the heat of the pool and nodded. "So I shall."

"Okay…. So you need to know that Kirstman is working to secure power on the mountain, power in the North, right now. You weren't out of the Keep for thirty minutes before we had a dispatch from the Garrison clan," he suppressed the urge to look at her expression. For one, he couldn't see it, for another, she was his sister and he was sitting by her bathtub. Which was awkward to begin with.

Lusis had visions of Lindy telling her mother and father she'd nearly frozen by hounding Lusis like a forlorn puppy. "What about?"

"It was Koil Garrison. Eldest son of the Garrisons. They've got men under steel at Garrison fort, he said, and the message he sent was that he and the Spayard clan would not recognize Kirstman. The message said that if you set foot back on Buckmaster Spur they would pledge blood and sword to you."

The water sloshed when she sat up. "What?" She leaned back in the water, but said nothing for a moment. "Koil Garrison is throwing the Garrisons and Spayards behind me? Me… surely not as the leader of the Buckmasters?" That role had come out of long history as the province of men.

"Kirstman needs to control the threat you pose, Lusis. And, let me tell you, he's in shock, right now. He didn't expect this – for people to decide you were fit to lead us all. It's… it's embarrassing for him. You're not our blood. Not a Buckmaster. Not a man." Elsenord took a deep breath.

She turned her head fractionally, afraid to look at him. "Else… I won't take anything from this family. I may not be one of you by birth, but… but I am by pride. I am by dignity."

"Can you be a Dunedain by dignity?" he asked with a bleat of forlorn mirth.

"He was my father too." She navigated that last statement a bit tightly. "He said-"

"Lusis, you probably have no edhel blood. No… no elf blood." Elsenord told her.

She stopped breathing for a moment. "No elf blood." She repeated dully.

Elsenord put his head down. "Kirstman is talking about this. That counts to him. It counts. It does. To too many people of the North, with the elves leaving."

"I don't want to lead you," she blinked in the blanketing mist, glad for its opacity.

"That's the irony," he said. "To some of the people on that spur, you are the truest Northern Ranger they've known. You've been years in running skirmishes. You've-"

"That's a little much, Else." She scoffed and paddled hot water around. She mimicked Kirstman's too-proper voice, "And what are her qualifications? She can run for miles. Has been in rolling battles her adult life." Lusis laughed, "That sort of thing doesn't prepare you to lead."

"You lead a troop."

She suddenly grinned, "But they're odd." The Hoard librarian, the budding artist, the loudmouth gambler, and the elf-blooded, rich-boy Tatharion. She fit right in. It made her warm. She looked across at the tall elves moving in the mist. They made her feel warm too.

Else almost turned to look at her. "Lusis, quite seriously now… there are bar songs about you, and not the naughty kind – I'd kill them. Oh, and I, myself, once saw you slap an Orc – just ride in and slap him right off his Warg like it was too much bother to kill him." Else started to laugh. He had to wipe his eyes when he remembered the looks on the Rangers' faces. And the Orcs'.

"That was different. That was a dare." She kicked water at him. "Tiranord's fault."

"Yes well, no one would actually do it." He got up and shook water off his oiled leather overcoat. "People remember these things, Lusis. You're strong. They can see you're strong. That strength has the power to split the stone of Buckmaster Spur in half."

"You're telling me…" she looked at him, suddenly seeing. "You're telling me not to go back. That I can't be there anymore. Ever."

"I'm not telling you anything of the sort," he exhaled and paced beside the tub. He looked at the toes of his shabby boots. "I… I'm telling you the truth. That's all."

She picked up her hair, which was becoming distressingly lighter, and rung it out. She thought of Young Thranduil lying across the mangled body of Oropher, unable to hold in the proud blood. Truth was a hard thing. It was a yoke to bear. She inhaled deeply and said, "I won't split our family in the middle, or cause infighting at our Keep. I'm not that singular a person, Else."

"Oh, yes you are." He stood up and stretched in the mist. "And no matter what they used to say about you, no matter what Kirstman has to say about men and women, blood and clay. I know I would follow you." He moved. Tall, strong, and in rugged clothes in silhouette. She could see his sturdy profile in the fog. His head bent. He touched his chest, and his hand swung out and didn't stop until it very nearly pointed at her.

The Dunedain had adopted that warm and welcoming gesture from the elves, and they saved it up for those they greatly honoured. Now, off to her right, the soft, sibilant elf chatter had died. When she turned her head, the Elites were all looking their way. She sank down in her tub as her brother left, not at all eager to be seen, altogether, by Amathon or Ewon. She would never survive it if she happened to be glimpsed by the Elvenking. So, of course, she'd taken the pool nearest the exit.

The voice close to her was Nimpeth, but it still made her jolt. "Lusis-sell." She laid down bath sheets. "You have a moment before we take him out." She withdrew.

"Take him out? He's like pot-roast," Lusis said to herself, she blinked in the direction of his pool. She got up into the sheets and watched Nimpeth turn away from the King as he emerged. This seemed to be something she did more out of a sense of needing to guard the door than modesty. Lusis could scarcely see him from where she stood. Then lamplight flashed off the sculpted divot in his shoulder and his pale head came up. Ewon swept back his hair and squeezed it.

For her, watching him begin to rise from the bath was like watching the sun come up.

Lusis caught up her clothes and rushed into one of the rooms off to the side, which were used for dressing. She pulled on her clothes hastily. She had soaked and scrubbed the dirt and blood from some of them, and was quite used to allowing them to dry on her skin in front of a fire. She didn't look into the baths again as she exited. The Elfking would be dressing, and, unlike her, not very overly worried who might see him. It was a strange thing. Elves were private. Elves were pure. Profoundly so. Their apparent lack of modesty about their bodies extended only to a small collection of trusted humans, and their own kind. The concept of nakedness being shameful had largely missed them.

She hurried up to sit on the hearth beside one of the fires, and, after several minutes, she sank down to the stone floor and put her head onto the edge of Aric's lap. He stroked her wet hair.

Lusis went straight to sleep.

It had been a hard few days.

Aric nudged her. She came blurrily, quietly awake. She glanced at the room and immediately saw a cluster of Rangers around the King.

"What do they want?" she yawned and sat up to lean on Aric's arm. "He's so tall. He makes them look like finger-food and they're his own blood." She pushed her hair back. It wasn't yet dry. She'd been asleep – or whatever it was she did now – for less than two hours.

"No they're not. Well… not his bloodline, anyway," Icar leaned over her. He was sketching the scene. He waved Redd's approach out of the way. He had a new sketchbook and a decent set of pencils now. They seemed to be eating holes in his travel bag. He went back to his quick circling. In the hour, those circles would turn into the King and several Dunedain. "I figured that was why that pretty half-elf called him a name."

Rangers didn't generally walk from place to place, they ran. So when Amathon followed Redd through the echoic wood room and Lusis saw he carried a pitcher in his graceful hands, she hoped it was water and not wine. A long day of ranging around depleted the body in ways that wine couldn't put back. Steed came behind Amathon. He carried a stack of wooden cups.

"Water?" Lusis asked the tall elf.

"Water." Aric looked excited, "Ask if it's beer."

Amathon looked confused and entertained. "I am carrying it, friends. I did not press the grapes."

Lusis wasn't the only one to laugh. Amathon folded down among them, and was lost in a veil of his dark red hair, itself the colour of red wine. "Ai. So long," he caught it up and executed a thick braid just beneath his ear. His fingers moved so fast it was stunning.

"I could cut it for you," Aric took out a knife.

"Thank you for that offer," Amathon gave a small incline. His expression shifted softly as he poured and a stream of fresh water tumbled out. He was pleased. "But you would become injured."

Icar smiled and chuckled, "Oh, you can trust him with a knife, friend-Amathon."

Now Amathon's bright pleasant face turned up toward Icar. "Someone else you can trust with a knife? Nimpeth-bess."

"Ouch," Aric put the blade away. "That kind of trouble I do not need." He chuckled and nodded his head. "But well done, Amathon."

Amathon's brows went up. There was much about human communications he didn't understand, and it would never have occurred to him that Aric was congratulating him for pleasing his own wife. Amathon poured another cup full of water, and this one he handed over to Aric with a little head-bow. "Water, friend-Aric."

"And good company," Aric nodded in reply.

"Le fael." Said the red-haired elf. He glanced at his tall, black-haired wife. She stood like a marble figurehead just within reach of the approaching King.

Redd ate a rolled piece of goat and asked, "Moriquendi – that name Ellethiel called him – it isn't an insult, is it?" To his mind it was unlikely because no one would dare.

Amathon's head turned slowly away and downward. The action was subtle, and disguised in his filling the next cup. "It is a system… and we are within that system." He gave a deliberate little nod and began to hand a cup to Icar, but diverted and set it beside him instead. Amathon did not like to disturb the young Ranger when he was drawing, and was endlessly curious about human arts. His head tipped a little, impatient to see.

Lusis shifted to watch him. She had never seen an elf nod. What did it mean? She looked to Redd next, as he was about to continue.

"It's hard to understand for me. When I was young, I thought there were three types of elf. The Vanyar, the Noldor, and the Teleri. But there are more. There are Sindar and Silvan… what about that?" Redd laid down a platter full of goat meat. "And how does this tie into the ancient stories I've read about two trees so tall that they held the sun and moon in their branches? It appears to be important."

The Elfking arrived in a sweep of long, autumn-gold clothes. It was not for travelling, not for charging around the woods, this grand outfit, the cape and coat train were so long they pooled behind him, and the stitching of leaves along the hem and chest of the coat was excellent – looking like the real thing in bright red and gold colours. He appeared to be walking in a cloud of sailing leaves. "Amathon, you may leave."

The guard got up, bowed, and went immediately. The King folded down beside Lusis' legs, where the Elite had been, except, scrubbed, shining in gold thread, and dressed in fineries most would never, in their lifetimes, behold, he looked unearthly. He bent toward the plate, his actions precise and delicate, his white-golden head swaying to one side from the other, both supple and strange. "Men… and meat."

Redd was appalled. "I'm so sorry, my King," he sputtered. "I assumed they would have insisted you break your fast with the high-heads of Tatharion."

"That would be a likely assumption," the King sat back on his heels, "anywhere else." Then his silver eyes narrowed. "I am overestimating the forbearance of others."

"This slight is their fault," Lusis scoffed at the notion.

His long hands folded. "There is much activity here, Lusis-sell."

She shrugged in his direction. "Respectfully, my King, you might have noticed there is much activity anywhere there are many Rangers."

"Does… does it not seem odd to you, Lusis-sell? Your house is thrown into turmoil." He stuck a fingertip onto the plate of meat and looked at the juice. "This house has so lately barred its gates, and it takes its meals deep in the quiet hours, when the roads are abandoned by Men, and all nearby travelers who might need their help are encamped inside its walls. Do you know the hour? A Goblin King might rest its eyes: It is very late." He touched his fingertip to his tongue and his pale lips pressed together. He shook his head out in a most extemporaneous motion – his hair fluttering like silk – the action of an insulted cat. The Kings' brows drew down. "Ai. Do you like this for eating, Lusis Buckmaster? Can it be so?"

She smothered a smile and handed him a cup of water. His brow arched at it. "There is wine at the upper table." He glanced up at the head table full of Rangers. Many of them were watching him closely too. He raised his glass to them, returned his attention to the Rangers, and let his eyes widen a little. "Reprobates." He sipped the water.

Aric couldn't contain the scoff. "The undue opinions of elves."

"Mm," purred the Elfking's voice. It sounded like agreement, as if he knew full-well that he was taxing and frequently a trial to the patience of Men. He just didn't care. They vexed him, mightily, and he hadn't an apology from the King of Men yet, after all. He was the only Elfking left in Middle Earth, and that was what it would take, Lusis bet.

She shook her head at him, and swallowed her smile. The elf was shameless.

Then the King turned to Redd, and his voice became thoughtful and patient, like that of a father, "On the subject of which… we must not speak in terms of Calaquendi and Moriquendi to the people of the Great Greenwood. I know you have learned these words from the Great Hoard. You do not fully understand their weight."

Redd set down his glass, "I don't understand."

"The words, they are meant as…." His Weston failed him at that moment. There was no word or description he easily called to mind for it that wasn't Sindarin or Quenya. The Elfking's golden head tipped toward the Elites who now spoke together in a tight ring so that hair spilled around him in a fan. His silver eyes watched the Silvan. Then he restarted along a path that he hoped would be simpler.

"In the West… there live elves that are known as the Three Kindred. They are called the fair-ones, Vanyar, the wise-ones, Noldor, and the last-ones, Teleri. They all woke, as all of the very first elves did, upon this middle-land. But many of their kind soon set off for a light they could see across the open water. Now, the Teleri were the largest group and some of them left, as made sense, since the Teleri are sea elves, but they were so very many that a great number of them also remained behind. We waited for our High King, in fact. And we became known as the Sindar – the grey-ones, the elves at twilight. We waited on a broad plain full of forests… the place where I was born. It was a garden of sunrise far to the West, full of art, and songs, elves, all manner of things. It was later sundered in war, and is now sunken under the sea forever, where one may glimpse the ruins of the First Age."

He paused for a breath and looked, momentarily, unhappy. It was gone when his moonlight eyes rose up again. "But elves are not of a like mind, Redd. They also have their opinions. And there were those who did not even progress as far as that plane of perpetual twilight. They set out, as they all set out, I am told, this being before my time, but when some came to the Misty Mountains, which had no name at that time, they feared its cold heights. They turned back or refused the call of the Two Trees. They went into the great forest, lost in the shadows of the mountains, and there was little light for them there, but for the stars. There, I assure you, they made their own arts, their own music, and they loved the starlight and were good. They were beneath the consideration of the Kindred. They came by the names Avari. Or Nandor. The unwilling. The refusers. In the system, they are not considered Eldar. The Three Kindred call them dark-elves. The Sinda people, we grey-elves who, in the end, did not cross, are sometimes counted among them. That is what Moriquendi is. Do you understand?"

Redd blinked at him, stunned. "Silvan elves. Are not considered Eldar?"

"Isn't not-Eldar the same as not being an elf?" Icar asked curiously. "Because look at them… they sure as the Fires aren't humans. What do these Three Kindred think they are?"

"One does not know. One… does not speculate." Thranduil set down his empty cup, and his long lashes fluttered in sudden discomfiture. "One shall stand firm in the woodlands unto the End of All Things if it is required. For they are not some nameless life. They are the children of the stars. They are good Erusen and smitten with the lights of Elbereth. They are elves and shall not be forsaken."

For a moment there was quiet, and then Redd said, "That's… a mammoth fight to face alone."

"It is just time," he said quietly. His golden head tipped back in their direction. He sounded endlessly tolerant, and endlessly frustrated. "Just time."

Lusis' head rose. "And he won't face it alone, Redd. What's more, the only alternative would be to give up the struggle. That is unthinkable."

Beside her, the Elfking took in her profile and his chin came down in soft assent.

"They chose a warrior for their King. The great Elfking, Oropher," his head inclined, "was once merely a great general of Elwe. Silvan walked past Lords and Ladies to ask him to lead them, and they crowned me after. They did this, they keep me, as I am, so they can be lifted up. So that they can be counted among their own kind. But I know them. They do not need lifting. I do not believe they are any less good." He rose from his crouch, in a tall, radiant wash of forest scent. He looked down at them. "I do not believe they are less authentic. It is a law of writ within the trees of my Kingdom that the system handed down to us by the Kindred is not to be used against, or among, my people. My son is, in half, exactly what they are. As is Eithahawn. And Moriquendi is a term of opprobrium." His noble head turned to take in the Noldorian half-elf who stared at him from the high table. "Alae. We find no comfort, no welcome, among people who believe in such an antiquation."

"Also no wine," Aric scoffed.

The King looked at him, his eyes momentarily surprised, and his cheek dimpled just slightly around a more genuine than average elven smile.

"Which brings me to the question," Lusis stretched her legs and licked meaty juice and flecks of peppery salt off her fingers. "What are you up to, my King?"

His expression transformed to its glass doll facade of virtuousness, as unsophisticated as a newly budded flower. His head tipped a fraction. His voice was very soft. "Could it be… that you are learning?"

The Rangers stopped eating, stopped drinking, they glanced between Lusis to the King and she got to her feet and dusted off. "Is… is there anything you can share?"

He gazed at her a moment, and his glassine surface – that serene disguise – diminished. His pale eyes narrowed a fraction, and the pupils in those great silver disks of his, dilated. He tugged his bottom lip at one corner in his teeth and his upper body tilted back a fraction. She couldn't look away from this beautiful foreigner with her King's face. It was like the opening of a steel lily. She could fairly see the system of weights, wheels, and counterweights, like the machinery that drove the great gates, doors, and barriers of Mirkwood, but small enough to live in his thoughts.

All of this broke when his expression closed. He listed right, and his great eyes averted down. No. He couldn't share. He turned and started away.

Lusis felt her hands fist up. She gritted her teeth and advanced on him, her voice low. "That's your answer to every appeal, you realize. Thousands of years of refusal. Stars, will you put your faith in someone? Or do you not ever risk it anymore?" She caught control of herself before she could truly wind up into an argument. She'd had shouting matches with him before. At him. The great King of Mirkwood did not raise his voice.

No sound emerged from the men around her.

The King froze where he stood.

Steed quietly hinged his jaw shut.

When the King began to walk away again, Lusis opened her arms and exhaled. "What good am I to you?" She was widely thought to be his Istari – though he was too careful to make that assessment. An Istari he didn't trust.

He pivoted and stalked back to her, his head tilting over in sudden anger and he bent to her face. "You are a child, and you do not understand what it is I am and do." For his part, the King seemed shocked. His eyes widened, he sucked in a deep breath and backed away from her as if she'd struck him. His chest worked at air.

Ewon went to him, "My King, a moment?"

He smoothed immediately. "Yes, of course." His long eyes averted as he turned into the company of his Elites and they went for the doors. Elsenord rose from where he'd been sitting a little apart from them. Remee climbed to his feet and nodded, amiably, to the high table. They seemed quite interested in the King's outburst. Even with all the activity in the room, all of it louder than anything that had transpired here, they hadn't missed that.

"Lusis," he nodded in the direction of the King. "There are travelers of every imaginable stripe out there. We should follow him."

"He doesn't want us to follow him. When he wants me to follow him, he-"

"Lass," Remee shook his head, "To the guard, it doesn't matter what the King wants, only what he needs. And, did you hear him? That big, silver elf of yours, he is – without a single doubt – a King."

She shook herself. Remee – the voice of sanity. She could not allow herself to get caught in the vortex that whirled around the king, the one that kept him at the storm's eye, in seclusion. There were decisions he would make for himself out of habit, out of care. Mistakes he preferred to make so that he could maintain the protection, the comfort, of long isolation. And she couldn't allow it. Lusis nodded at her big brother and the Buckmasters turned, as one, and walked for the door. She glanced back and found her Ranger troop coming behind her.

"Which way?" she huffed in the crisp autumn night air. She couldn't see them in the moonlit, blue darkness striped by the shadows of trees.

"That one is easy," Redd chuckled and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Any way. It's you he will safeguard. It's you he'll come to, Lusis."

Remee glanced down at his smaller sister. "I… I confess I don't understand. Does… is there something between the pair of you?"

She exhaled slowly. "Something." She agreed to this even though it embarrassed her, and turned decisively. "I'm not ready to talk about it yet, Remee. You'll have to trust me," she looked aside at Elsenord, "it is not a small thing, and – as far as this is possible for someone like him – he's made his feelings perfectly clear."

Elsenord's hazel eyes widened. "Oh, has he?"

"Whatever you're imagining… it's not that simple." Aric chuckled at that. "No method of his is perfectly clear."

"I see him," Steed said into the middle of this.

"No you don't." Lusis turned to him waspishly.

He smiled at her. "Sorry, Lusis. My eyes are better than average in low light so… yes I do."

She trudged along beside Steed's light step. Could she see in the dark? Could she walk across falling leaves without telling the world she was coming? Was she able to calm wild horses and bring them to serve her? No. She could turn her dark hair two different colours. Istari.

There was no way the Elfking could have missed their arrival.

She stopped perhaps twenty feet from his position with the Elites, and then opened her arms and pointed in either direction. Her Rangers, and her brothers walked along an arc and made a wide ring around the elves. Each second man faced outwards, the rest minded the elves. All the Rangers kept naked blades in hand.

The Elfking largely ignored her, and the collective presence of her troop. He spoke to Ewon as Nimpeth and Amathon stood opposite one another, about five feet away from them. Lusis stared at him and did not relent. She watched his lips moving and wished she could hear them.

The crackling of passage alerted them all, but Ellethiel and her Tatharions were closer than any of Lusis' troop had been able to reckon, save Steed.

"What's this?" Steed called out to his kin. "You do know this elf you harass?" He was furious.

Ellethiel Tatharion was taller than Lusis, and quiet like a fawn. She aimed her steel at Thranduil. "Did we not put you by our hearth, King of craftiness? What cause have you to leave?"

Thranduil turned from Ewon. "I am an elf. I like the woods and growing things."

"You want your privacy, busy-head," she told him. "But you are a dangerous man to have abroad, a dangerous one to leave unaccompanied and to his own devices."

Steed shook his head, "Ellethiel, he is hardly alone. He is ringed by Rangers."

Her head swung to the right as she came to him, so that she could look him in the pale eyes. "Yes, and this one is fully supported by these Men, Inilfain. And you now number among them, sadly. But all are party to whatever madness he concocts, for you know little enough what the mind of an ancient elf is like. And he, among ancient elves, is considered sharp."

The Elfking stepped up to the tip of her sword, his hands behind his long back. He bent over her a little. "Are you suggesting I should return inside, young one?"

Her teeth bared. "Return to the hearth where we can mind you, now. If you try to evade our-"

A cry came from the wood ramparts, "Open the gates!" One of the Rangers ran along the walk in the dark. "Get them open, lads!"

The half-elf woman looked suddenly vexed. "No."

But the Elfking brushed the tip of Ellethiel's blade aside and went in the direction of the gates as if he had dismissed a child with a wood sword. Lusis jogged beside his long strides. The great wood gates of Tatharion were arched layers of oak and cedar bound together with riveted bands of steel. They groaned in the night, and travelers in from the road rabbited toward the Keep. Unlike their human brethren, Rangers spread out at the ready, bristling with weaponry, Lusis glanced to her left and right to get the context of her neighbors – four Ranger women braced themselves close by her. Half a dozen more scattered through the crowd. The Tatharions lived by elven rules. If a woman's skills led her to the sword, then she was trained into a fighter in earnest. She relaxed into a ready fighting posture.

"Take the King inside," Ellethiel commanded.

Amathon stepped in the way of the Tatharion advance, and Nimpeth pulled an arrow to knock. It was the elf-woman who replied. "No."

The King, meanwhile, stood beside her without even his sword in his hand, one of Ewon's long arms pressed across his ribs, ready to pull him away.

In position, they waited. Night sounds stopped.

A low rolling of noise – impossible to distinguish – began to rise beyond the gates.

"Horses," the King whispered in the dark. He turned his head and gave Steed a slow nod.

Steed had never been given a direct command by the King before. He stepped forward uncertainly, and Lusis walked away from the line of Rangers with him. She didn't know that the King had joined them until the horses thundered in. they were all greys, some of them nearly white, and some thickly dappled, and their eyes rolled to show the whites. The mare in the lead reared and whistled. She took a sudden step toward Lusis before she set her hooves down in the churned soil and torn grass of the herd's pawing and restiveness. Lusis had counted the nails in the crease of that horse's left shoe.

The Elfking snapped Lusis back to him so quickly she bounced off his chest and came to a rest beside him. His pale eyes were wide as he glanced aside at her; it was a look that said everything. She winced and gestured at the horse's head. "Bridle. Saddle. No rider. No blood. It's possible they bolted."

The horses milled and panted for air, their flanks steamed with sweat, and their arched necks dripped foam in the crisp night air. Steed stepped in and the mare's head came down low. Her grey ears swung back. She might have bitten anyone else. But she stopped in front of Steed, and slowed. He opened his arms and inclined his head to her. The other horses grouped around the mare, aware of her in that way of horses. Steed stepped back from the horse.

She eased a step forward toward him. Then Steed simply turned to the gathering of Rangers and elves on the lawn. He walked to the Elfking and the dappled mare followed. Her long ears flickered. Behind her, several of the horses sorted themselves out. One nipped a white horse aside to follow and Steed glanced back empathetically. Calm descended over shuddering, steaming horseflesh, like pasture-blankets. The dappled mare set her chin on Steed's shoulder as she looked at the Elfking.

"How are they?" The Elfking asked Steed.

The horse-whisperer nodded at the King and glanced at the pale horse beside him. "She likes you – the light of you, Elfking. It's like the face of the moon. They find it soothing, and a calm family is easier on her. She's in charge."

The Elfking's head tipped at the odd-eyed grey mare. One of her eyes was black and the other ice-blue. "Do you know what happened to them, Steed? Does she tell you?"

"I'm not certain how the great deer speak to you, Elfking, but the thoughts of horses are impressions and associations for the most part." He glanced back at her. "She can't tell me what she saw. She can't show it very well either."

But he turned to her and tried. Steed's brows drew down over his eyes. "They came along water. There was no need to search it out. The forest was on their shoulder… forests are worrisome to her. Full of bears, cats, and wolves."

The Elfking glided between Steed and Lusis and his blue-silver eye met the pale and slotted gaze of the horse's eye. She didn't shift when he set his fingertips on her rein. The height of the Elfking made most horses seem rather small. The elves of Mirkwood had founded a tall, hale breed that could carry him or Amathon – big male elves – fully armoured. This horse had the height if not the sturdiness. He turned her reins over in his hands and then glanced at the saddle. His lips pressed into a line. He passed by her and went to the long-legged white mare. She was young and new to saddle.

Steed continued to relate what he got from the horses. "She worried about the woods. I see the image of a grey foal there." He looked at Lusis, "One of them had a foal and lost it in the Mirkwood. This is an old memory she's never forgotten. Not recent."

Lusis hadn't taken her eyes off the King. "Keep going." She felt Redd come to rest behind one shoulder, and Elsenord on her right, curious about what was taking place.

"There was something strange in the air." Steed told them.

"Like the smell of fire?" Redd reached a careful hand and got the big mare's forelock out of her blinking eyes. She seemed to appreciate that.

"I can't tell if it was a scent or a thing." Steed smoothed the white blaze along her head. "She's tired. They need to be walked before they have water…. They were so glad to see the gates open. They don't," he looked aside at Redd and then Lusis, "they don't know this place."

"What kind of a horse runs to a strange barn?" Elsenord shook his head at them. "I've never known it to happen like that – how would they know there was something here for them? These are beasts."

The Elfking murmured, "The same kind who require neither bit nor proper bridle."

Lusis looked aside at him. Everyone in earshot did the same. Steed kept his voice low as he related to them, "It's true. She's wearing a headstall, nothing more."

"The leather will be dark green," said the Elfking. He drifted to a stop beside Elsenord and tipped his head at Lusis. "For when there is light enough… for your eyes."

She marked that one out on her list. Istari eyes couldn't see colour in the dark either. Lovely.

Redd glanced down at the Elfking, "How do you know, my King?"

"Because the line of Asfaloth often has mismatched eyes." He told the huge Ranger. "Glorfindel has never needed to put a bit and bridle to a horse to ride it in his life. This is Glorfindel's mount." He lifted the horse's forelock and exposed a pattern of bells and flowers along her headstall's leather. "He is kind to them, that elf."

Steed looked aside at the sudden rush of murmurs through his kin. His own bloodline came out of Rivendell. He'd had misgivings about the King of Mirkwood for that reason, and felt the temptation to do the great elf disrespect. That impetus was gone now. These people had to hear the King out.

Ellethiel's chin rose. "You can take all of that from a green rein and a headstall, King of Mirkwood? I have had many warnings against you, and your intricacies, and your busy-head."

"Lord Elrond," sighed the Elfking in response. He set a pale hand on the saddle of the grey mare and stood all but luminous under the moon. "He is the force of order to my relative chaos, it is true. I do… value his orderly mind, his ways and laws, his sticking points and forbearances. He is a wise elf, but in counselling you against me he creates an impasse that cannot abide."

She waved the gates shut. "Against you? Why, not at all, Elfking." The half-elf turned to Thranduil. "It is not that my wise Lord counselled me to disbelieve you, it is that he warned me your words serve the truth… and many other masters, all unseen. You are clever." She turned from him.

Thranduil's teeth clenched, "I shall thank him for that as I pass his resting place on the morrow."

"You cannot know it." She glanced over the horse. "You cannot know it from the coincidence of a horse with two different coloured eyes. They are out there in the wider world. You cannot know it from a headstall rather than a bridle. We shall safeguard you in this Keep, and you shall not go recklessly out into the night, supposing I have to lock you in the pantry."

Aric's lip curled at her, "Maybe the wine-cellar. Then, at least, the act could take the place of your notion of generosity."

The Elfking shut his eyes, and his head tilted upward in the silvery light, as if he might have been looking for something – like patience. When he gazed down at her, again, he spoke in a voice of slow calm, "I ask you, Ellethiel, how sound is Lord Elrond's logic if he dies because of it?"

She stopped walking away and glanced back at him. "Nothing has been made as can kill him. He defied Sauron, yet he lives. But we will ride out in search, trust in that. This is our land. It is our charge."

"That is a very dangerous estimation to hold the Lord to."

"Escort the King inside," she instructed her men.

The Elites, in flawless unison, went for weapons. Lusis and her troop of Rangers took one step outward from them and sunk down into battle-position. There was no clearer indication they were very serious. He was the King, and he was not to be held against his will.

"You know Rivendell. Arwen Elrondien does adore horses of misty grey and white – they put her in mind of an ocean she has never seen," the Elfking glanced in the direction of the youngest white mare and the pale dappled greys around her. "You, Ellethiel, know there are many greys in Rivendell and all here are of that ilk. Anything… for his daughter." The Elfking's head tipped.

She gritted her teeth. "If it comes to blows, take him inside! And I want as many riders as we can spare out and searching in the next ten – do not come to me with empty hands!"

"A stag incoming!" the wall cried. The gates began to crank back.

Ellethiel called out, "No, you fools!"

The great white elk's massive horns threw the doors wide as it breezed in. Many arrows came to level on it as it made for the King.

Now Steed shouted, "Do it no harm! Do it none! Lower your bows!" His voice rang between the wooden walls of the Keep. "No man shall shoot down an elk such as this!"

"My thanks," said the Elfking. He swung up onto its back and was through the gates just seconds later. It was almost the one motion. Lusis had known it was coming. She'd stepped into his right stirrup and linked her elbow around the King's as he'd come to rest on the elk's back. She trusted that her troop and brothers were of no interest to Ellethiel Tatharion, and that the Elites were probably already over the wall.

They flashed out through the gates. Lusis took the jarring jolts of the elk vaulting over the land. It was incredible how long its stride was when it was leaping. They passed over a tongue of river in a deep divot, some fifteen feet aloft. It was a tooth-jarring landing. She nearly lost the stirrup.

"Where are we going?" She pulled in closer to ask him, then shook her head. "You have no armour, my King. If you think I'm letting you go into battle."

"Might I remind you that you never wear armour?"

"I wear chain."

"Granted – though it is a strange place to argue," he glanced at her, his hair floating above her in the moonlight, silver, gleaming, like his blue-silver eyes. "The horses' pasterns were wet. The white mare had a smear of pink below the knees. Lover's lily pollen means slow, deep water. A white horse is like an open page."

Lusis unhooked her elbow from his and fell outward until her hand wrapped his forearm. "Fast ahead! Keep him on the ground, my King!"

The band of orcs on the land were worrying something on the ground. She'd glimpsed the sour light of them, but she could also smell them. The elk crested a rolling hillock in the moonlight, and rode down on them so quickly there was little warning. The elk put its head down. Lusis took aim and swung her elven steel. A head flew off, and then a second.

Arrows began to rip through the autumn sky. The Elfking released the reins, took out his sword, and cut them out of the sky. Lusis took the bowman across the forehead with the tip of her sword. An imperfect hit, given the jolting of the elk, but one that, with momentum, both slashed and caved in his forehead. He fell down in the next world, if there was such for him.

They passed out of sight into trees with the screeching of Orcs behind them.

"They've driven an elf to water, among the rushes." The Elfking pulled the elk around, dappled by moonlight up on the rolling hills. "We must deliver him before all hope is lost." He scooped her up in front of him, Lusis got a leg under her, curled against the elk's powerful neck.

"Keep the reins low," she told him as the creature began to pick up speed through the trees. "I'll need to vault off. If I tangle up you'll drag me."

The King released the reins and took out both swords. "Arashir needs no rein to hunt Orcs." The King's jaw clenched, and he leaned into the charge, "He finds them loathsome."

The marshy land around the distributary of the Anduin was difficult going for heavily armoured Orcs. They boiled along the shore trying to get weapons on the elves in the water. The massive elk broke bone as he slammed along the shoreline. Lusis felt the King lean back as she braced to vault. She kept her eyes on water. It was mere seconds before she was soaring through air. The momentum of the charging elk made her leap frighteningly fast. She spotted a trio of Orcs who were edging into the churning stream that Anduin fed to Forest, and she creased the back of the head of the one in the lead. Water fanned up around her as she landed. The stream bed was mucky, and she skidded a distance before she could turn around and lash out to parry the blade of a bleeding Orc she'd struck.

His face screwed up in rage. He was strong, and his dark blade, though bereft of all refinement, easily hammered her boots deep into mud as she made an overhead block. It was getting hard to move. She pulled out a knife from her belt and lashed it across his middle, and she cut him, but he had filthy chain mail on him. Lusis took the knife back quickly and swiveled down and around. All she had on this beast was speed and momentum, if she could build enough up. Possibly, size. She turned the sword and heaved her weight upward with everything she had, it was difficult to stab a girl when your sword arm and sword were a good eight feet down-river.

The next Orc was on her before she even exhaled.

She ducked the axe-like blow, stepped aside, and reversed her sword into the third Orc. The cut was too shallow, because she couldn't get leverage in the mud. The problem with Orcs is that they would continue to fight, practically until you cut them into bits. Even bleeding and injured, Orcs were tirelessly evil. A headshot was always best. She was trapped between them, and they caught on to this quickly.

Lusis shoved her sword into its sheath, moving as quickly as ever she had in the Northern battlefield, and she did that thing she was loath to do. She touched something of theirs. She grabbed hold of the shoulder gear of one of them, stuck her feet up on the other, and flipped herself over the first Orc's head. They weren't quick. Or bright. She threw the one she held off balance and took him out with the same knife she tossed into the eye of the stunned Orc who charged her.

It wasn't possible to miss the tall, blond elf in the water with her. His wet mane had such a buttery resemblance to Legolas' hair that, for a moment, panic made her mouth bitter with bile. She surged through water at him. Orcs were coming, eight of them, and four more floated face-down in the water by the blond elf. She'd managed three in this muck. She wasn't going to let him try to take eight alone. "On your left flank, good-elf!" Lusis skidded in beside him.

They didn't even get the opportunity to look at one another before the assault began. The elf was terrifyingly fast. She couldn't see all his motions, so she steered clear of him and trusted to his good sense not to strike her.

She blocked the Orc that angled in on her, brought up her muddy boot, braced on the back of the elf, and shoved the heavy beast into deep water. He sank down at once, and came up clawing for air. She put a stop to that with a quick stab in the throat.

"Come around!" The elf barked at her. "Block!"

She blocked the blow, but it drove her entire body under water. The current took her. She had to catch hold of the elf's long legs and come to her feet on his other side, which left his flank open. She swore, ducked into the water and only just managed to block a blow aimed at the elf's head. The Orc fell over dead, but it was nothing she'd done. He had a beautiful green elf hilt sticking out of his eye. Lusis caught it as the Orc fell over backward, stepped up onto the Orc's body, and launched at another with her sword lashing down. It landed on his rickety helmet and split his head open.

Once she had leverage, she was a terror.

More Orcs came to take the place of those they'd felled.

An arrow passed through one of their necks. It was deep red and rich gold fletching. Amathon. The next arrow drove deep into the shoulder of an Orc and his sword arm dropped, useless. The blond elf opened him up along his sternum and threw him aside. That arrow was a Ranger black and blue. That was Steed's sure aim, she thought with a nasty smile. "Terror is riding down on you," she bellowed at the uncertain Orc who was now before her. "Run or die, beast!"

This one ran. Thranduil cut it in half. He was on the shore amid a cluster of Orcs, his motions too fast for human kenning, and his face so quiet and beauteous she thought he might be dreaming, or dancing. But he wasn't. His gleaming body passed peacefully under arches of blood, gore splashed onto the ground around him. He was untouched.

"Beautiful," she whispered. It was very-much lost, she thought, in the gasps of the elf beside her. She shook herself and turned to him. "Are you hurt?"

He glanced down at her and they recognized one another. She'd seen him once before. His deep voice thrummed, "Istari?" He was in sudden astonishment, for all Istari could fight, but there were none who could perform abreast of an elf, and she'd done well. "You must be of the blood."

"Probably not," she let the water wash her sword and sucked air. "Should we help the Elfking?"

"I would not interfere with Thranduil, child. He is too deep in the pleasure of what it is he does. He has no need of others," The blond glanced down at her in his practiced manner, as if all motions were planned for maximum efficiency. He lacked the nearly serpentine beauty of the Elfking's motion. Lusis had never noticed the difference between elves and her King before. She blinked and almost missed his question to her. "You are a friend of elves, are you not?"

"Most certainly, I am." She swore to him. "Are you hurt?"

His expression remained detached. "Istari… you must help me."

"I will. I would like nothing more. What do you need?" now she put her sword aside. He backed up, water soaking into his clothes so that the midline of his back and the muscles of his shoulder blades stood out in definition. He was picturesque, but that part of her being that could not pull its attention from the Elfking did not long to thread itself into the might of this elf. It was a strange thing to realize.

He led her into deep water. She had to hold on to one of his broad shoulders, kick away from the mud, and swim to the brief little island in the middle of the river. It was a little nodule of land, driven here by the turn of this stream, and it was covered in tall grass and rushes.

She pulled herself up onto it.

"Who comes!?"

Her heart sped up because she felt she knew that voice, "Lusis Buckmaster, Elite of the Elfking of Mirkwood." She pushed through the grass and Dorondir's pale, heart-shaped face turned toward her. His eyes narrowed, and a look almost like pain passed his expression.

Relief.

"Oh, I know your face, bright one."

She laid a hand over her heart and extended it to touch his shoulder. "Stars, you are a welcome sight, you wonderful elf. Are you all right? Who is that with you?"

"Lindir of Rivendell and Raineth, his guard." Dorondir told her.

"Your horses ran into Tatharion House, and the Elfking recognized them and where they had been. He came down the river to the nearest marshy land-" she stopped short. Laying in the grass, his skin a pale greyish, was the Lord of Rivendell. She fell back a step. "Oh gods."

Dorondir snatched her hand, "He's alive, but… unwell, Lusis. We set out for Mirkwood and were attacked. We… we let go the horses out of pity. There was no escape but through them."

Lusis bent over Elrond and set a hand on his chest. He didn't open his eyes or stir. His deep burnished fire was low, gone nearly purplish. She straightened and looked to Glorfindel. "We need to warm him up – get him into the Halls."

She leapt back into the water and kicked across to the opposite side of the stream. Having mowed down dozens, the Elfking stood waiting for her. He backed up a few steps as she walked up the bank, this was to give her room to pass. He sounded like he pressed composure onto the words he spoke like a seal into hot wax, "Lusis Buckmaster, there is such fear in your face."

"I need the elk," she saw the great thing pulling up grass near the trees. It raised its head and loped down to the King, clearly at his summons.

One of the best things about Thranduil Oropherion. When all was anarchy, no questions. Just action. "Go with her, my friend."

She brought him through the stream, and held on to him when it was too deep for her. The elk, at seven feet, was quite safe from the powerful current in the water that rushed down from the Anduin. She got him to shore and he plucked the virgin shrubbery, very pleased with her.

"Dorondir. Wrap him up. You're taking him across the water." Lusis told him.

He glanced up at the King's elk uncertainly. "Lusis, are you aware that beast is the Elfking's-"

She bent over the elf and directed, "Get on… the deer."

This shook him from his shock at the suggestion.

The elf named Lindir, who had a very sweet face and large sea foam green eyes, set to wrapping the Lord of Rivendell in the cloak he wore. He pulled the hood up around Elrond's quiet face. He looked so young. She stepped aside to the elk's head, to hold his headstall.

"You have to see these men safe to the Elfking, Arashir." She felt foolish talking to a deer and added an awkward, "Good boy."

Glorfindel lifted the Lord up to Dorondir and nodded. "Carefully."

Dorondir inclined his head to the great elf somewhat unsteadily.

Cold and shivery as she was, Lusis went back into the stream to cross with Dorondir and the Lord of Rivendell. When they were on the other side, the Elfking stepped up to the elk, and eased the hood of Dorondir's passenger aside somewhat.

Lusis saw the Elfking's back stiffen. He took off the long drape of his own cloak and laid it over the still figure Dorondir held in his arms. Then he stared up into Dorondir's face and seemed to consider him for a few heartbeats. Whatever deliberations he made, they were dispensed with, quickly. The Elfking set his head against the bow of the elk's neck and spoke to it in quiet and earnest gravity. The King stepped back, "Go, Arashir. Bring him safe through the Gates."

"My Lord," Dorondir looked openly distressed, wet through, and pale with concern. He turned the great elk around the Elfking and his chest rose and fell as if it was a struggle to inhale enough air to satisfy him. "Wait! No, my Lord, look at the Orcs strewn around you. You have need of this beast for your safekeeping! Come now, you must ride for-"

"Peace, child." Thranduil laid a hand on the reins and told him, "Dorondir, I am your King, not your Lord. You hold your Lord, helpless, in your arms. You are beyond yourself. Do as I say."

"You must be safe," his head cocked. "You must both be safe."

"And so we shall be." The Elfking indicated the many elves and Rangers he now had around him. "And you will carry him to the Halls." He took the water skin that Steed handed him, and fastened it to the ties on the saddle as he told the elk. "Stop for nothing. Take them, Arashir!" He clapped the stag on the shoulder and backed away. The huge beast took off.

The wind picked up Thranduil's colourless hair. He studied the fleet creature's gait as the bull-elk vanished into trees. He turned when its hoof beats faded from his ears, he made a slow pivot toward Lindir. "You… Lindir, I confess I do not know your station in Rivendell."

"I lately am the seneschal." He glanced aside at Lusis, in her wet, muddy condition.

"Kingdom's-seneschal?"

"Rivendell is not a kingdom," Lindir told her. "We have no King, just our Lord Elrond. This is perhaps because there were always fewer of us."

The Elfking blinked, "It is because no one ever extended Lord Elrond the crown."

Glorfindel scoffed at the Elfking of Mirkwood, "He lacked the pretensions to demand one."

Lusis felt herself snap at the golden vision beside her. "Do you think they asked my King before they had the circlet on his head? His father's blood still pooled around him and wasn't even dry. Have some respect in this company, or travel alone."

Ewon sucked a breath beside her, and when she checked, the Elfking's silver eyes were on her. He stared at her a long moment, turned his head, in fact, before his pale eyes flicked aside. "I will have no arguing here. There are greater worries for us than moments of a past that none can change."

Now Ewon bowed before his King, "Simply direct us."

"Pile the bodies." The Elfking looked into the trees. "They foul the air, but it is rainy season. We may burn them. In my experience they reek less when they are charcoal and that will that serve as a warning to any others heading down the Forest River. But… find the commander of their foul slaughter. I need to see that one." He glanced at Glorfindel and Raineth. "Now."

Lindir's eyes found her. "You are the woman the Lord rode to Mirkwood land to see seasons ago. The Istari of Mirkwood."

"Of Mirkwood?" she gave a soft huff, discovering that, inwardly, she was delighted.

"I am sorry," he inclined his head. "I meant only to know you on sight, and to… to thank you for what you did. For the risk you took, for my good Lord and friend." He touched his chest and swept his hand outward to her. "Thank you for your help."

"The only way you survive a slaughter of orcs," she clapped him on the shoulder, "is together." She passed him by and glanced to find the King. He'd walked away to glance down, one-by-one, at the Orcs he'd killed – a great circle of stinking, oozing bits and pieces around him. He'd swept up the tail of his cloak and long coat to keep it from the muck of gore. She smiled at the shape of his long legs. It was such fun to look at him. She feared she might look at him all day.

"What's a slaughter?" Elsenord walked away with Lusis. He led her to Remee, who immediately took his fur cloak off and put it around her, fur-side-in.

She noted, "Elves in the Great Greenwood travel in sections. I imagine there are as many Orcs dead here as in a section. I suppose that's what." She pulled a face. "By the gods, they reek." She blinked an eyelid struck by a stray spot of rain. It was a halfhearted downpour at best.

It was close to daylight before they finished dragging bodies and piling them. The elves lit them on fire. This was complex, Lusis knew, and not just because it was raining, because some ichor in their brackish blood burned like quicklime once they started decomposing. She would let the fresh elves handle it. She watched Redd and Aric tossing the Elfking's rejects into a steadily growing pyre. The King worked with Icar beside him.

Many of the Rangers were so worn they went to the cold stream, took off their clothes, and stepped in. It served the purpose of washing away the stink of Orc, the sweat of work, and the haze of exhaustion.

Once they were all dressed and shivering in the redoubled efforts of the autumn rain, Remee pulled a deep breath and faced her, "Did… did uncle Lengrmar pluck an Istari from the wild?" Beside him, Elsenord wordlessly stared at her, eyes wide, breath held. He seemed almost to fear her answer.

She wrung out her hair. "Okay, boys. Here is the truth. We are not going to leave until the King of the Great Greenwood finishes searching for the orc carcass in charge of this particular slaughter. And don't ask him why. Don't bother. Believe me he will not tell. Just go and spell Redd and Aric so they can wash up before we leave. If they come with us stinking of Orc, it's on the both of you."

Remee exchanged a glance with his brother and then grinned, "We are your family, Lusis. We will talk about this."

She took the wool blanket she'd dried in and submerged it in water. "Move, brothers."

It took them another fifteen minutes in the intermittent rain.

The Elfking glanced at Icar. "Not this one."

"Throw him, Redd." Icar said quietly. He turned and walked downhill to drag part of a carcass along to the King. He was used to this kind of mayhem, or he might have gotten sick at the globs and bits pulled out along the grass. He dropped the thing before the impassive Elfking. Redd and Aric had tossed the other bits onto the fire already.

"Ah." The Elfking said of one of this particular orc's hands. The other was somewhere in the field behind them. He looked at the hand, and turned it over with the blade of his sword.

Icar looked on, curiously. "What is it?"

"He has all five. And he's not as filthy as the others." The Elvenking's blade flickered in air and cut open the throat of this orc's blood-soaked shirt. Next he took off his head with a sword lop and removed the bloody chain at his throat.

Icar jolted back from this and swallowed thickly. "Are… are you content, my King?"

"Incinerate the remains," he nodded coldly.

"Come and get him." Icar said to gaping Aric who was only steps behind him. But it was Elsenord who swept in and took the head. "Go wash up Awnson."

"Close your jaw, lad," Remee chuckled darkly as he passed with the upper body.

"The rest can go straight into the flames." The Elfking walked to the river with the chain on the tip of his sword. Icar hurried after him, curious and tired of the oily stink of himself. He plunged into the river with all his clothes on and scrubbed his leather and chain mail. But he looked up at the King lowering the sword into the shallows. He dunked the chain until the steel of his sword and the chain on it ran clear.

He raised it up a final time and stared at the item.

"Mithril," said the King. "Dwarven make. Third Age and in the style of… a group of gifted smiths of Thrain who were known as the Sounding Forge. They operated out of Erebor and then the Blue Mountains. Their particular stamp was the Cirth letter F, with an alto clef – Sindarin musical notation." He took the chain in his hand and turned it so that the stamp on the clasp was visible to Icar. "The Cirth M laid on its side is not a symbol for mountains, as many believe. It's a stamp that specific group put on all their Mithril… if I recall correctly."

"You do," said Redd quietly. He was on the bank behind the King.

"My thanks, Redd." The Elfking said in a distracted fashion. He turned the thing over in his hands and looked at the small blackish disc hanging on the silver.

"Doubtless stolen." Icar glanced at Lusis and Redd on the bank close behind the King.

"We should be going," Lusis told the Elvenking. "Icar go with Redd. Go stand by the fire. Hurry." They hurried out of the water, shivering in the cold. The key to surviving wet was a lot of movement to keep the body temperature up, that and heat.

The King wrapped the chain in a cloth that Nimpeth handed over to him and then tucked it away inside his long coat's pockets. Lusis fell in beside him as the King followed Nimpeth toward the horses Steed worked with. Lusis glanced over him, "Are you yet sick with dragon's blood, my King?"

"We do not fall sick," his white-golden head bent as he told her. "We are not enough a part of this world, and so no sickness knows us." His brow wrinkled, just slightly, as if in exhaustion or pain, and his long eyes shut for an extended moment. "But dragon's blood can cause trauma and… a kind of waking nightmare among my people."

Lusis stared into the deep blue flame inside his chest. "I see it in the flame of you."

His head began to tip right. His great eyes remained closed. "That taint is passing."

"What happened to you on Bregolnag?" she felt, keenly, she needed his counsel. "Please. What happened to Lord Elrond? His fire is usually such a deep and burnished bronze – burning red and gold together." She gave a little chuckle. "Almost Mirkwood colours. But now… now it sits low in his chest, just as your fire sits so deep in yours." She looked at the base of his sternum. "And his fire's colour is just as wrong as yours."

The Elfking did nothing but look at her for a series of his gliding and her bounding steps. His bright eyes seemed horrorstruck at this news. But that slipped away and his chin rose, proudly, "Glorfindel keeps his silence. We will not know until we find time to speak to the Lord."

"If he wakes again." She remembered his greyish skin and felt a sudden dread for him.

"He will wake," said the Elfking firmly.

"Lindir is the seneschal of Rivendell," she redirected him. "He shouldn't have travelled from Rivendell with his Lord already away. Maybe he's here because he knows something."

"I suspect that what he knows," the Elfking shut his pale eyes. "Is that he loves his Lord. And that something overcame Elrond suddenly. What I fear is that they know nothing more."

"Then let me help you. Somehow. I should be able to help you, my King. Look at what I am." She opened her hands at him. Whatever she was.

"Of course," his head inclined at the memory of the turmoil in her house after the death of her father, of the torpid being the Yellow Istari had become – unable to move, to hear, to react to his voice. He had been afraid she would fade from the world and leave him without options. Then he would be alone with so many things, so many responsibilities, with thousands of elves and a massive forest to protect, and, due to his Kingdom's population the only one still striving to live in the world. He felt, oftentimes, to be the only one still looking for dangers. The thought of it made him cup a hand over his beating heart. He didn't look at the young Istari so critical to his people's safekeeping.

She laid her hand on top of his and felt the unfamiliar vibration of his flesh quaking. "I can help you. I can… find a way."

"Lusis," he stared down at her kind, tanned hand, scarred with battle, and creased with the silt of the river. And he decided to risk something of the truth he carried with her, "You cannot help me now. As I am… I am evidence of a wrong that, by your admission, has brought low two elven nobles now. I may be some of the only evidence we have. We go to the Halls to study this thing that has befallen us. This thing that has happened to me and the great Lord of Rivendell… Lusis." His free hand laid upon the river-dirt of hers to warm it.

Her eyes widened. Her fingertips could feel the banked heat of his fire, thwarted within him.

Glorfindel met the King on his way to the horses. "You hold the Istari close to you, do you not, King of Mirkwood? I wonder if it is care for her, or if you would strangle the freedom from her."

"No, Glorfindel. I did leave her to her own devices these two seasons. At most, I sent her to Radagast. But her freedom took its course." His temperate head tipped. His fingers opened and he released her hand. She laid it over her own heartbeat.

The little star in her chest flared. She had a sudden vision of tearing Northern winds and shook her head against the oddity of it. She smelled lightning and stared up at the raining sky, mistrusting.

Amathon stepped around Glorfindel as if the other elf were no more substantial than a tree shadow, "The boats, my King?"

"Make haste to them, and to a storehouse," he told the young Elite. "Take Nimpeth."

Lusis followed him to the small fire where Lindir paced and Raineth made tea out of autumn berries. Again, the elves had little to eat, but the tea seemed to fortify them.

The Rangers came to stand in the shelter of a lone redwood tree here. There were many of these giants deeper in the Greenwood. The Men devoured stolen food from Tatharion house, the majority of which was dried meat that came out of Steed's pack. Lusis fairly drooled at the spiced smell of it. She was presented with rolls of meat that had been shoved in a leather butcher's bag, but shared it out among them all. "Save some for the road, gulls."

But Steed also took out a round cake of candied fruit and nuts. He unfolded it from waxed kitchen parchment and set it before the elves. He drizzled honey from a flask over it. The Elites, in particular, watched his every move.

Amathon's dark red brows drew up. He had been packing to travel, but now he cut a slice of this cake for his wife, and another for his father, because the King refused to be served. The last cut, he took for himself.

Steed shook his head at this, and gave them half the cake. "There is another, friends."

Amathon and his wife jogged out of camp just moments after packing the food into their bags.

The King, it turned out, wasn't even vaguely interested in food. Redd had tried.

"He's sick, I tell you," Remee looked down from the tall elf on the hill and shook his head at Redd. "Wherever that bright being's Keep is, we need to get him back there, little sister. In a hurry."

Lusis silently agreed.

The Elvenking stood at the curve of the hill, just inside the ring of ground protected from rain by the tree. He stared along the land between these small fingers of incoming water, and the far more tempestuous Forest River that he could hear in the distance. "We leave in the hour."

"The Old Road," Lindir said as he walked along the banks of the Forest River. It was after midday and they'd made it to the outpost along the swift-coursing silted water. The dark haired elf pushed his hair back over his shoulder and smiled at the orange ladybird beetle that briefly lighted on his fingertip. "This late in the year. Your forest is full of life, King Thranduil."

The Elfking's head rose a fraction and tipped as the little creature bumbled by him in air. "Ah, yes. The ladybirds overwinter near here." His hair billowed as he watched the beetle vanish into trees.

Lindir made a good-natured nod at the King, "The Old Forest Road – that way made by the Dwarves of the Iron Hills to reach their fair-weather homes, I suppose – would have put us behind the mountains of Mirkwood and I feared that the Lord would not weather them well. We elected to take this route because we would need only encounter a section to be conveyed to the Halls."

"It is far from where the sections run on frequent schedule," said the King. "Particularly with harvest coming in and Autumn Festivities under preparation in the Halls."

Glorfindel's tall head tipped upward, "Lindir, you need not tell him anything. He has no claim to you. You will never serve such as him. You are a Noldor out of Rivendell, my friend."

"Yes. I'm aware." Said the Lord's-seneschal, and then he told the King. "He was as he always is. But without warning, he became infirm. Our healers could not effect lasting change in him. He sought Mirkwood then. On the way here, he took a turn for the worse. But there was no change in his habits and routines before this issue came to be. It is true that he has had no reply to several missives to Arwen in Gondor, and that did depress his mood, but… she is young and newly married." He made a minor motion with his hand, a bit like a bird wing. Lusis had no idea what that meant and imitated it, as did smiling Icar, beside her.

"There is much commotion in marriage," the Elfking sounded like it was sorely missed.

"I can but agree, having no wife of my own," said the seneschal. "But with no change and the Lord growing more restive… I began to fear for him."

"And you did not go to Lorien?"

"Lorien does not come with an Istari," Lindir swept tendrils of the tall King's white-blond hair out of his face with an air of amused familiarity – as if he frequently had to do this around his Lord too. He glanced back at Lusis who tried to make herself smaller, in fact.

The Elfking's long serpent-tongue of sword wheeled in air, effortlessly. He often played with the thing when he was deep in thought. "Something changed, Lindir. You failed to notice it because it did not want to be seen. But something changed around him. He has been compromised."

"You are disrespectful to the Lord's-seneschal." Glorfindel said under his breath.

Lindir sighed heavily, reached up, and tapped the silver circlet on his head. "The office does not gift one with prescience. But… let us remember we are all elves here," Lindir turned to walk backward a few steps. He spoke patiently. "I believe these Rangers have edhel blood – though some more than others. Exempting the Istari, who is a thing apart from all others. But we have come for help, Glorfindel. We have come to be questioned by him. The King cannot help us if we withhold things from him. There is no other way to discover the truth of this." He turned back to look at the long back of the Elfking of Mirkwood, who was very different from his Lord.

"Lindir of Rivendell, you are practical," the Elfking exhaled gratefully.

He stepped down an incline, along a sudden notch in the right bank of the Forest River. This small hollow led through a screen of trees where a curl of the river was visible beyond. A deep pool, in fact. In the lively waters, there sat several wooden boats of excellent make – trim, sleek, and stained white and daubed in soft yellow as if the petals of a buttercup dotted them. The prows were tipped in tall bowsprits etched with curlicues of foaming water and carved into a fork of antlers. Most of these beautiful boats were covered in oiled elf cloth, and tied down by the slender and disproportionately strong elven rope that the Rangers adored. Only two of such were uncovered, prepped, and occupied.

Nimpeth and Amathon stood one to a vessel. Nimpeth darted down by the white stone flags beside the pool first. "Adar?"

"Here," Ewon said to her somewhat airlessly. "See to the King."

The Elfking stepped up a plank to one of the gold-coloured boats and moved to the back. Lusis followed him without questioning. She saw how the benches on this ship ran along the sides, with room to walk in the middle, and were padded and covered in dark red leather. At the very back, there was a larger such bench onto which the Elfking now curled.

A drawer underneath caught her attention. She opened it and found a wool blanket, elven weave. She drew it over the Elfking. "You're exhausted." She told him. "I'll stay by you. The seneschal and Glorfindel should ride in the second boat. Your troop will surround you here. And your Elites." She smoothed his hair back from his pale cheek. It had been such a long way down the mountain, and so many leagues since he'd eaten or rested.

He might have argued with her logic, but he was already curling on one side, warmed by the sun and the wool, and with his fire low and blue in his chest. She folded a fur cloak that Redd handed her and tucked it close by him, in case the wind became cold or it began to rain. He was insensate before Amathon and Nimpeth got to the poles and pushed the boats out into the Forest River. Lusis sat on the flat bottom of the boat in the sun. She set her back against the drawer, and was gone.

The expansion into Long Lake had not gone unnoticed.

These days, Eithahawn Auronion had to have armed guards in a line along each great pillar into the petitioning room in the Halls of the Elvenking. Gone were the days that a section – a group of armed elves thirty warriors strong – came in here mostly to grow somewhat accustomed to the smells, appearances, and the noise of humans, otherwise, they had very little direct interplay with mortals in the Kingdom. Increasingly, the Halls received Men from growing communities in the Long Lake area, some of whom were furious at the encroachment of elves into the lands of Men, some of whom were jealous of it. One poor human had come to stab him with a knife he'd hidden in a scroll, and died before Eithahawn had risen to greet his party.

A section was a terrible thing to cross.

Eithahawn, for his own part, was a peaceful man, and Kingdom's-seneschal in the absence of his great Elfking, Thranduil Oropherion. Out there somewhere. Being irresponsible. Eithahawn exhaled slowly and turned the page of the docket before him. He rolled his bottom lip into his teeth, reached up, and moved a braid of orange-gold hair over his shoulder. His head tilted. His aqua blue eyes glanced up at the human girl before him. She was tall, this girl, and really eye-catching actually. He could almost believe some young, wild, section elf had strayed in the woods and had some part in the creation of this one. These things happened. Infrequently. But they happened.

He shut the ornate book she'd handed him. Its leather was soft, white, and impressed with doves carrying ribbons covered in bells. Very odd. Doves were excellent for sending short messages between Lake Township and what they called 'The Capital', but sections of elves couldn't convince them to carry anything with a clapper in it. Then he touched seed pearls on the cover. Pretty. "I… fail to understand this."

She stomped her foot. "I don't want to marry him. Can you understand that?"

"I can." Eithahawn got up. He instantly towered over the girl, even when he came down the steps in his long red robes, his elegant hands joined behind his back. "What has this to do with us?"

"My father stands to gain many acres of arable land by this union," she said to him. "The agreement was made before I was three years of age."

It made Eithahawn's head flick. "Say again?" He'd learned this simple command from Jan Kasia in Lake Township – now claimed by the Elfking of Mirkwood, by the behest of the Men therein. 'Say again' was a simple way of confirming, as far as he could tell, that one couldn't process anything one had heard.

She sighed and pressed her fingertips to her brow. "It pains me that you are the only hope I have." She told him with a sigh. His head tipped a little at this, because she had, for a moment, sounded so much like Thranduil in her word-choice that he was charmed, and half-convinced that Legolas had made this girl.

Behind her back, he smiled. "Very well… though I see no problem here-"

"I don't want to do it!" she turned to exclaim.

"Be at ease," he laid a hand in air between them, tipped up. Eithahawn remained calm. "You need nothing more to nullify this… contract than a lack of will to commit yourself to the enterprise."

She blinked her pale blue eyes at him. "So if I don't want to marry him… I don't have to?"

"Such a union is only possible between the willing," he cocked his head at a random thought, closed his eyes, and added a slow stipulation, "among elves." Dear gods. He looked at her. Could Men be backward enough to give away their children to marriages like household objects? Hail, friend. Merry morning. Take this colander. And my daughter. He stepped in close to her, and bent to look into her face. "Tell me… without me… would you have a choice?"

He was horrified at the sudden build-up of tears against her eyelids, and looked down, and then away at the line of people staring at them. It seemed less court of law some days, and more theatre. There were still eight groups to see.

The girl was experienced enough with elves, or had heard enough of them, that she knew tears could be counterproductive. She dabbed her face with her sleeve and steeled herself. All she could do was make that too-fleet human motion of the head that meant No.

Horrifying.

Eithahawn looked at the white book on the table. That was their contract. It might as well have been a box full of shackles. Inside it, on the first page, was a drawing of this girl as a small child, and one of each birthday afterward. It was stunning – how fast they grew. They raced through life like water down from the mountains coursed through the Forest River during spring melt. Terrible. Shocking. Marvelous. Nothing excused the treatment she was seeing. She was still just a girl. Still an Erusen – a being cut from the music of the gods. She should still choose. But he knew he couldn't make a ruling on this matter without the Lake Township Council. That was per their agreement.

He shut his long eyes, horrified by this.

Eithahawn knew he would press them.

He would press them for her freedom.

His blue-green eyes opened on her. If he were the Elfking he would be the final authority on all things in the Kingdom, but – happily – he was not. But King Thranduil would not stand by, surely? Still, when his King was not around… sometimes it fell to Eithahawn to be creative.

He spoke quietly. "If I burn this hideous book of theirs, girl," he rested his long hand on the white dove-cover, "would you then be free?"

'Lord Eithahawn', came a voice in his thoughts, and he straightened and turned to the sudden approach of Farathel, one of the older elves of the Court Guard. She loped into the room, and, from behind her came an overflow of armed elves, glinting with steel. The section on the walls spilled forward like a single thought and circled around him.

Eithahawn glanced at them, "Farathel, what is this? Is… has this to do with Our Guests?" He was the sort who resorted to euphemism rather than be impolite about an event, particularly before the Long Lake humans, who might not understand. Was this because of the Emissaries? He also turned to the human girl who was swept aside by the rush of armour, "She does not leave!" The girl looked panicked.

The great blue-stone gates, inlaid with a pattern of Mother of Pearl on the inside, eased shut. Likewise bars cranked up from the floors and threaded together with bars from apses along the walls. All of this was driven by water-pressure. Much of the inner-workings of the Halls were based on natural forces and the Elfking's creativity, giving a lie to the idea that invention was the province of the Noldor. It seemed to be more likely training, practice, and the preoccupation of a restless mind always striving for better. And it could again be because of the Emissaries that the Great Gates were shut now.

"Give me answer," he told Farathel and her green eyes glanced over the humans pressing to the wall in an atmosphere of panic.

The slender elf-woman was grave, "Kingdom's-seneschal, it must be shown."

His brain leapt from Thranduil to Legolas in a sudden chain of worries. "Lead on."

"Do not fear!" she announced to them. "Men of Long Lake, you will shelter in the Guest Halls."

"Put them under guard, for their safety," Eithahawn directed. He had a vague sense that the few unaccompanied women here might feel somewhat exposed in close quarters with grown men, some of whom were not of the best quality – he could lately attest to that. But it wasn't something he could put into words. Just a feeling.

Farathel fell in line with the humans. "Follow me, Men of Lake Township."

It was frustrating, the barriers in the language. The few women of the Township seemed at a loss as to what to do, but that was all Eithahawn had time to see before he was swept into the inner Halls, and the doors that parted him from the throne of his King shut tight behind him. He went down the stairs in the center of a section, and was ushered into his King's War Room.

Dorondir, soaking from the evening rain, stood panting in the middle of the great wood and stone room. He was smeared with blood and stank of Orc. At his feet he had laid a bundled man – that much was clear from the figure of him – wrapped in one of Thranduil's new travel cloaks.

It was at moments like this that Eithahawn misplaced the fact he was the son of Auron, Sindar general and friend of Thranduil, and Sileth, a fearsome Silvan archer. He had known them only up until his seventh year. When they'd died in succession, and his brothers with them, he'd been raised in what was known as the Inner Halls – the home of the King. So when he saw Dorondir with his grave face, and the man prone on the floor, in all honesty, the moan that came out of his throat wasn't quite elvish. It sounded like the injury of a beast. He took two quick steps and flung himself down by the body on the floor, then threw back the cloak and… he found hair so dark that it was almost black.

Was this a Noldor?

"But this… this is Lord Elrond, gods," he panted, caught between relief and abject horror. "Dorondir, what has befallen the Lord of Rivendell?"

He dropped to Westron, "Sick."

"Have shadows found him?" Eithahawn touched the man's throat for a pulse, and found one there, though it seemed fast, for an elf. He half turned, "Call the healers. Take him to the Healing Hall – Mirkwood shall attend the Lord of Rivendell!"

"Carefully. Lift him up carefully!" Dorondir directed the rush of Silvan elves who gathered the Lord of Rivendell and lifted him across to a long drape of silk, which was how afflicted elves were often carried.

Eithahawn impacted with Dorondir and caught the front of his travel clothes in his hands, "Where is he!?"

Dorondir's pale green eyes were huge with amazement.

"This is his cloak. Where is he?" Eithahawn backed them up several steps. He was just enough taller than the Silvan that it made Dorondir look outmatched, which the warrior, spy, and sometime guard of the same Kingdom's-seneschal very much was not.

"My Lord?"

Eithahawn was not shouting, he was earnest. That was all. "Where is Adar?"

Something twigged in the astonished elf. He was, essentially, a spy from Rivendell, even if one agreed upon by the rulers of each great collective of Middle-Earth elves. But Dorondir had been so many hours trapped in this nightmare of his fallen Lord of Rivendell he had forgotten all other feeling. The mention of 'father' jogged him. He suddenly remembered not just his Rivendell Lord, but his Mirkwood King. He folded forward, agonized. "We were attacked by Orcs, and I left him."

"What?" Eithahawn felt something in his brain break. He shook the man, "Say again?"

"Attacked by a slaughter of Orcs, and I took the Lord of Rivendell… and left the King there." Dorondir's forehead bowed almost onto Eithahawn's shoulder.

The Kingdom's seneschal was dazed. He could hardly breathe, "Tell me you did not do this thing." He shook Dorondir, roughly this time. "Tell me so."

"He sent me with the Lord, and is with the Istari and her men. He stood tall on the banks of the Anduin's streams to Forest." Dorondir told his beloved friend. "Eithahawn."

Eithahawn shoved his friend away from him and the War Room rang with his shout. "You useless man!" The glassware on the sideboard crackled. Wine seeped from the vessel and dribbled to the cut stones in this circular room whose floor was a map of the known world. The wine pooled in Ered Mithrim and began to flow down the Anduin. "Hold him!" Eithahawn snapped at the section. "And all available sections, under steel to the assembly halls! We clean this forest from the Halls to the fingers of the Anduin. Find the King!"

Where was Legolas when he was sorely needed? Fires!

A response rang in the room, "Harthon." As much to say 'We shall'.

"Guard him!" Dorondir demanded of the elves who now circled around him to lead him to a sealed room. He was under house arrest in the Halls, now, but ignored this. He had guarded the Kingdom's-seneschal many times in the past, and for many years, and knew the elf well. "Guard him and do not allow him to ride out!"

Eithahawn's aqua eyes were on the stone floor. They stared at the point where the small river fingerlings of the Anduin reached for the Forest. "Find my King." He yanked the white-gold and peridot clip of his station out of his hair and squeezed it in his shivering fist. This wasn't a matter of station. It was a thing between sons and fathers. And if A Certain King strolled in here in a couple of hours, easy as you please, Eithahawn would throttle him. He swore it.

Within a handful of minutes he began to hear the footfalls of sections in the long rooms to either side of him, and section heads began to show up in their light armour and helmets to line the War Room. They didn't speak to him until all those war-girded leaders ringed the room. The highest ranking among them would have been Legolas if he hadn't gone off to be 'abroad in the world', and leave all this panic and responsibility to his not-quite-brother.

Now the highest rank belonged to Merilin, and that man stepped forward. "We are assembled." He bowed to the Kingdom's-seneschal, utterly in the dark about why they were all collected.

"The King was attacked by a slaughter of Orcs somewhere between the Anduin's tributaries and the Forest." A great stir passed through the elves in the room, for which Eithahawn felt great patience, "I do know he survived it. I do not know if he is under pressure from yet another assault. He is with the Istari and her Rangers." He said above the numb buzzing inside his skull.

"We are yours. Command us," Merilin said breathlessly.

"One-third of you into the immediate orbit of the Halls, out of sight. One-third mobile and visible on the land. Arasell's section goes to Lake Township and brings all local sections, the Rangers and forces to alert. Everyone else sweep up-river and clean this forest. Bring me the Elvenking."

Merilin waved the section heads around him. He divided the responsibilities.

Elves were underway in minutes.

They left the Kingdom's-seneschal standing in the War-Room, cold.

There was no way that he would be able to hide this event from the Emissaries.

They had opinions on everything. Such as a Kingdom being entrusted to a half-Silvan.

He shivered in his sleep, tossed through battles.

Blood, screams, foes, weapons, and openings.

The little fractures between life and death on the battlefield – openings. He saw them almost as if they were outlined in sunny yellow. The battlefield, the orcs, and goblins, the blood, and Angmar Men all around him – shades of steel and grey, but with crystal clear flashes of sunlight yellow.

Goblin. Sword-forms too vertical. Bait. Stoop under. Turn. Opening between breastplate and shoulder. Reverse blade. Turn blade. Stab inward. Step around to extract. Block incoming with second sword. Next. He flowed like water through the lights in this fatal world, pulled along with reckless haste because of his great skill, and because he was a messenger from the Halls of Mandos, a Prince of death.

Just watching him, Lusis was terrified for his safety. Blades coasted by him, so close they glided over the gloss of his breastplate, shivered past the end of his eyelashes. He was as close to the bleeding edge as a body could come without taking injury from it.

Case in point – Elves did fall around him. He didn't see them yet. He couldn't. He was lost in the cool silent world of his work. He shut his long eyes in a slow blink as he spun in air. He split open the head of a troll and drifted down like snow.

This Thranduil was a great roaring engine. To her eyes his body a cylinder of white-hot star fire. He was a machine of war. She watched him, both mesmerized and horrorstruck by him. She looked for a way to stop him, or pull him away from this terrible plain of bodies and blood, but he didn't care to hear her. For ahead of them, rose a radiance in answer.

His father.

Oropher stood straight from atop a tumble of Orc bodies, his white-gold hair rippling, and his body drenched in the rose golden light of morning. They briefly saw each other. Oropher's pale grey eyes witnessed the artistry of his most beautiful son, and adored it. His favourite. His darling. Thranduil, the lithe shape that rushed over him, twin swords sunk deep in the craw of a worm-head.

Lusis caught him, steered him. She raised him up out of the heart-pounding rhythm of combat, the one place where he most pleased adar, and best expunged himself. It was dark and cool where they surfaced. She could scarcely see a thing with her Istari eyes, but… the room was wide. It echoed. And the air was soothing. It smelt of rain, grass, and trees, and Lusis felt a simple smile at that. She heard a silky voice.

Le melin, my coming of spring. Can nothing quell that racing mind of yours?

Lusis froze. That would be his wife, she assumed.

His wife who'd vanished in war and met a terrible fate.

Bringing him along to her, to hear her voice was simply not safe.

She struggled with him, pulled hard on that powerful, thoughtless, feverish brain. Follow me.

Flickers of her earnest face before him. Her Rangers of the North. As filthy at the gates of the Halls as beasts, and threatening to the mathematical order of the elves. Her large, dark brown eyes – alien eyes – as she'd looked down at him in his borrowed bed in Lake Township because she could see fire in him. And he'd felt a rush of cold recognition. And the gulf between what they both were, had reversed itself in one disorienting rush.

Fire. The Secret Fire given to all living things by Eru Iluvatar. Human and elf eyes could not see it. Not in themselves. Not in others.

Unlike Istari eyes.

Even in this dreaming-place, Lusis straightened up – straightened up in the real world, the one outside of her Elfking's fever dream. She was suddenly… content. Leave it to his circuitous mind to see even this little shadow inside of her, and shore her up.

Here. Here is what your fire is like.

She pressed that image against him, that golden tongue of flame rising into a tornado of white fire, because it wasn't possible that he'd ever seen his own divine spark – and the Elfking's eyes opened in the real world. He gasped in the boat on Forest River.

He shivered and moved under the blankets and furs. His long hands came out first, and pushed at the many layers. He swept the warm shell back from his head and shoulders. His mussed blond hair tumbled out and bounced against her wrists. It was always going to be a pleasure, a pure tactile pleasure, to be in his company.

"What was that?" he gasped. His eyes were large.

Lusis exhaled and touched his hair to rights before his pointed ears. She kept her voice low as she said, "Something isn't right with you. When you go into… those places where elves rest. It is increasingly hard to get you back again."

The King went still and watched her hands dart around his face to fix his hair. He was calm again by the time he asked, "And did you do that, Lusis Buckmaster? Is it so? Can you now pass through the barred gates into my thoughts and find me buried there, under so much time? Can you do this thing?"

She told him, "I…" she steeled herself, "I do what is necessary to protect the ones I love."

Nimpeth glanced up from where she moved the boat tirelessly ahead in the turgid river. Redd's head turned away from the small steel vessel on the brass brazier suspended above the water to one side of the boat. "Is he awake?"

Lusis leaned in to look at the King's large blue-silver eyes. "I think so."

"I'll fix him tea. There were supplies with the boats. Honey and wafers. Try him?" Redd nudged Icar awake, and the young man took over tending the fire while Redd went into the steel tin of supplies. It was well into the night now, and the fires suspended beside the boats were their only light and heat.

The King pulled her attention around, "What did I see?"

She tucked his fur around him because the wind had risen and rain was in the night sky. And she didn't know what to tell him. For her part, Lusis wasn't sure why it was she was passing in and out of elves' waking dreams. But it was useful. When she was near him, Ewon dreamed of fear and pain, of seeing his King with no steel to gird him, and the arrows of Men falling like rain – it was every single fear he had for this new Age. That the good in Men was thin and could not be trusted. They would turn on him. When Ewon was in the grey clouds between the sleep of Men and the reverie of Elves, the wound that slanted through his back and ended in his chest also plunged him into nightmares.

She'd spent some brief time in Glorfindel's abstracted mind. She'd seen the great siren of his being – that Lord of Order, Elrond, for whom Glorfindel would die. Glorfindel walked those grey places, between, earnestly sending his Lord strength. He saw this in terms of a journey through the unruly woodland realm of the equally anarchic and insular Elvenking, and that was what she had seen in her mind. The golden Noldor was a creature of caesuras, rests, sets. Inside his mind there rocked a slow and inevitable metronome. Regulation, principle, and a commitment to righteousness had made him beautiful, strong, cloudless, and, in some ways, almost implacable.

In the same way, forces across Thranduil's entire existence had made him wily, surreptitious, and calculating. The intelligence that was part of his allure was also part of what made him impossible.

The air seemed to shift. Lusis got to her feet at a whisper of sound. Just as quickly, Redd rose and came around low with his sword lopping air. Even half-awake, Icar skittered up to catch the pole Nimpeth had abandoned. Because the tall elf-woman had noiselessly leapt to the stern. Her bow was up and knocked. Her limber body blocked access to the King. Ewon, at the bow of the boat, slung low around the tall wooden bowsprit and braced, now using his injured arm. A few invisible shapes seemed to tumble by in the dark. Lusis' teeth bared. "Cover the fire," she hissed.

Redd hurried to deposit the steel lid over it. He pulled a handle that closed vents to the coals. For a moment, there was nothing but Redd carefully bracing the little pot of tea to the side of the boat, and the sound of Icar moving the boat ahead.

Behind her, she could see Elsenord at the bow of their boat, his sword out, and his face turned to the night sky. He held a small oil lamp up in air.

Everyone was ready. Steed and the girl, Raineth, had bows out. Aric stood before Lindir, who sat at the stern of the boat. Glorfindel couldn't guard the Lord's-seneschal, being as he was pushing the boat forward. And then the King made a soft hiss of sound. The moon blotted out above them. Then it was like being pelted with small stones. Lusis slashed because it was habit to do so, but she couldn't exactly collect up and stab these things in air – they were fleet. Though she did hit enough that several rained down on the deck.

Aric made a long, drawn out cry of irritation at them from the boat behind. "Stupid rats!"

Lusis understood. She made a sharp hiss as a trio of bats shot along her sword arm and drew blood. "Filthy, stupid rats!" A flare of golden popping lights brightened the water beside the King's boat. The bats who had bitten her had exploded.

In the boat behind the King's, Elsenord gave a laugh. Glorfindel pulled the second boat close beside with a few skillful pushes.

"Enough!" The King's voice tore through the dark with a sudden blue radiance. Fire rose to a nearly crystalline blue-silver inside of him, and in the sudden flare of light, Lusis could see streams of bats tearing by. They made high-pitched squeals as his light touched them. Those too close to him snuffed out, and were flying dust. The rest shot off into the night.

Glorfindel landed on the King's boat with Lindir close behind him. He anchored the second boat with a rope to the first. "What obscenity have your elves allowed into this so-called Kingdom?" He scoffed. He rose and turned toward the Elfking. Nimpeth's back straightened. She stepped in the way.

Thranduil stood with a quivering hand closed over his chest, "Find no fault with them." He didn't open his eyes, having expended so much energy.

But now that Glorfindel had reached Nimpeth, he swept a powerful arm as if to brush her aside. She was an afterthought between two influential nobles – and in a verifiable sense, such as on paper, she was no more than that. In every sense that mattered, however, she could not be brushed off. Red-haired Amathon touched down on the deck, far too close to Glorfindel. The golden-Noldor was forced to divert his course.

"Don't trouble me, Silvan. I must speak to the King. Begone." the great elf told the Elite.

The small, dark-haired, Noldor archer, Raineth, pulled up short on her way to the boat. She glanced at Glorfindel and gasped, "My Lord."

Glorfindel made a soft hiss at her, "Quiet, child. Don't you see that I have entrusted my Great Lord to this edhel who the Silvan crowned, and his woods are full of the foul spies of the Enemy?"

Thranduil's graceful head tipped. "Which Enemy would that be?"

Now Glorfindel caught himself and blinked.

"The One Ring and its Dark Lord are no more." The King stepped forward. "Is there something you are failing to tell me, Glorfindel? Something the Lord meant to pen, perhaps?" His long arms closed behind his back, expectantly.

The elf was stunned. "What? Do you believe he would keep such a thing from you?"

"We are not the same," the Sindar King stepped toward him. The wind billowed the clothes he wore around him, and he shone in the baleful light from the sky. But Lusis could see that the fire inside him had fallen back to a dangerously low blue flame.

"Protect him, Nimpeth," she whispered. Lusis moved into position at the King's side just scant feet away from the elf woman. She glanced at Amathon and he pulled in close.

Glorfindel's hand swung through air, "There is no threat left in Middle Earth that is worth the attention of the elves."

"You should better hope that is the case," Thranduil's calm voice held the presence to fix the golden elf in place, "because you have already given up looking for it, even if it is my suspicion that this threat has afflicted your very Lord."

Now Glorfindel's brows drew down in anger. "As usual, you have no proof for us."

"Because a foe is elusive, does not render it harmless." The Elfking said. "The evidence is around us to be perceived, but you cannot credit it, because it is less than obvious. But you must understand, Glorfindel, that this is the Age of Men, and the enemy is adapting. We must also adapt."

"It is for Men to face them." The Elf told him. "They must grow accustomed to a world without us in it. They must-"

"You have no stake in this place," the Elfking said sharply. "I have thousands of elves, yet. I am in this world until the last of them boards a ship for the West and they pull me by the hand behind them."

"Because you'll be nothing but a Regular in the West – a soldier," Glorfindel's chin rose. "You are aware your father was a soldier, and that, at heart, is what you are."

The Elfking's eyes flashed, his chest rose with sudden quick breaths. There was no shame in opposing evil. And Thranduil's father had done so as a King. Lusis watched the sudden sputtering of white flame amid blue, and how it was pressed down, as if by force of will. Curious. Effort had been necessary to contain that detonation.

Glorfindel was succinct and pitiless, like clock hands. "Only the fondness of the Silvan saw more in you. And when you set foot in the West with your thousands of subjects, then a great Vanyar, or Noldor Family, or a powerful Teleri will call you to court to take up a position among the house staff, beside your father's brothers. You will belong to them, as we will all have a place or position waiting among our kin. You will end your days in some trifle. Mighty Thranduil, guarding a door, cleverly, ravishingly, for the rest of your existence."

All the elves reacted to this, except, curiously, for the Elfking himself. His brows rose a fraction, and his expression smoothed. That was all. It did not become glassy, or pleasantly enraged. He wasn't even mildly surprised by this judgment. Which meant he had suffered this thought before. Often. It was Raineth who stepped back from Glorfindel and turned her head away. She looked at the water, as if she could not bear his presence, she had been had so disgraced.

Nimpeth made a sudden stride for the grand, great elf of Rivendell. When she spoke, it was through her teeth, and her voice was harsh. "If you think we will get on a boat, cross that forsaken ocean, and arrive in the West to hand you our King – that we are not preparing the way for his arrival – you have lost your senses! If the Three Kindred have so desperate a desire for a block of wood to pin their castle doors open and shut, I suggest they take you!" She stepped free and took her place between the Noldor and her Sinda King again.

Amathon exhaled slowly and stepped to his wife's side.

Glorfindel's face flashed a sudden spasm of irritation he quickly smoothed over. This was only just notable, forgettable, in fact, beside the open shock of the Elfking. He backed up. His smooth face appeared as it must have when he'd been a child. His pale pink lips pursed under wide, silvery eyes. He stared at Nimpeth in undisguised astonishment, whose long eyes blinked rapidly. He was so luminously transformed.

"My King, please ask adar," she bowed to him and glanced at her father on the end of that. Ewon was a pair of bright eyes in the dark, distressingly close behind Glorfindel. With him stood deeply glowering Redd. The massive Ranger looked as if he would have preferred Glorfindel if he'd been a bit shorter, and was willing to make the necessary adjustments himself.

But now Nimpeth's father, the Elite Silvan, Ewon, stepped forward to bow. "I make no apology, my King," he said. "You have given us your entire life. In the West, your people will give it back to you." He straightened, his ageless Silvan face suddenly immodestly proud.

The Elfking's hands closed over his chest. The banked fire in that furnace spat white sparks wildly against his mother-of-pearl flesh. It was fascinating to witness. Something stood in the way of its natural behavior. Lusis glanced aside at the dampener on the brass fire bowl suspended over the side of the boat. Something kept the King's fire from exploding into the throat of him as it should have done upon learning something like this. The Elfking began to incline his head to Ewon, but the Elite stepped back and bowed, because he was unable to endure the obeisance of his King.

"You can accomplish nothing before the Three Kindred." Glorfindel breathed at the King. "Surely you know."

Lusis felt her lip curl, "Clearly, you don't know them – how they operate." She glanced aside at the dark-haired seneschal who seemed content to look on. "You're so enamored of rules? Laws here do not allow for dismissal of the Silvan."

"Ah," Glorfindel's brows arched, "The infamous ava-Moriquendi of Thranduil Oropherion – gods, the arrogance of this elf. We are all subject to the system. It cannot be helped. It will not be."

Lindir spoke up then, his voice low with quiet power. "It can be helped. It is helped within this land, Glorfindel. I am directing you now, not to trouble these good elves with things that may never come to pass."

A few heartbeats of silence endured.

The Elfking's melodic voice spoke, "Glorfindel…. They do not have you at heel yet. There is yet time to mark this world, and let it mark you in ways that matter. Profoundly." He turned his white-golden head to consider Glorfindel and as he eased forward a fraction, his chin dropped slowly. It was an appeal to the golden Noldor to try to understand.

Glorfindel stared at the Sinda Elfking for a long moment, and then suddenly inclined his head.

The disagreement was settled, yes, but Thranduil looked sapped. His blue fire shrunken down so low it glowed below the muscle of his chest. He glanced as Aric poled the second boat to a proper distance alongside, it was thick with the small black bodies of bats. "Ah. Bats in the Great Greenwood. We have a few natural kinds. Even a large dog-faced sort of creature in the South, who will eat only fruit. Competition." He said lightly. "But these are blood-drinkers."

Aric pointed meaningfully at the blood dotting his bare arms and Lusis huffed with amusement.

Glorfindel stepped between the boats and prodded one with his longsword, "Orc's blood, from the smell of them. They would never feed on Orcs naturally."

"Only if there was no other source to be found." Lindir said softly.

"Very possible, if you are a bat in a cavern thick with Orcs," said Thranduil. "I am glad we go into the Greenwood. It is difficult for dark beasts here. Few would survive. None, thrive."

"Spies?" Lindir asked the Elfking.

"It depends." The Elfking's shrewd head sank to one side, "Tell me what you know."

"He had mail." Lindir said suddenly. "Elrond. Carried in by messenger men. I'm sure it's nothing… just that they smelled not of autumn, but of winter itself."

Northern men. Lusis shook her head and looked at Elsenord and Remee, who stopped kicking bats into a pile on the floor of Aric's boat to hear this. She glanced between the King and Lindir. "Messenger men? Like Buckmasters?"

"I did not know them," Lindir admitted with a small incline of his head to her.

Aric shook bits of leathery wings out of his overgrown hair, which did nothing but make Steed laugh. This could only stymie Aric Awnson even more. He slammed down the boat's long pole, which had the effect of stopping the gold-wood boat beside them very sharply in the eddy pool in which they'd come to rest. He said, "Accuse the Buckmasters of what you will – well, excepting the ones with us, that is. They're all right."

"My thanks," Lusis told him.

"Don't be finicky, Lusis Buckmaster," his tone was cranky. Then he pointed at the deck behind him, where Remee and Elsenord, even now, were completing an orderly, fetid pile of furry bodies. "And don't take it in your head that I'm going to be riding on the… the boat full of flying vermin. You can forget it. I'd rather swim behind you." He shuddered and then showed her his arms, in case she needed more convincing. Icar couldn't help grinning.

The King's cheek began to show the shadow of a dimple, but he caught himself and kept his serene expression in place. He swept his hair into one hand and wrung it out from the drizzle settling upon them. "Tie up the other boat, and let them come aboard. We are close to the markers now, Lusis. Then I will tell them I am home."

She had no idea how.

As they regrouped, Redd quickly rescued the teapot. There was enough for the King, Lindir, and the great Noldor warrior, Glorfindel, who refused his cup in favour of giving it to Ewon.

Forest rolled violently over undulations in the river along this stretch. Amathon took over the pole of their vessel, and Nimpeth threw a three-pronged hook ashore. Its points were not sharp, but Lusis watched the line wrap a tree and the hooks fold down along the elven rope. She started to pull, and Raineth got up from her spell of resting on the deck to help bring them to shore. Redd dusted-off his hands and nudged Aric. "Get up you clod. We should spell the elves."

The younger Ranger groused, "They don't get tired."

"Then try another tact," Redd told the young man. "Be a gentleman."

Icar was already on his feet, "There's no hope of that." He shoved his brother with the toe of his boot and then glanced aside to where Remee climbed to his feet. Elsenord was sleeping, but the larger of the Buckmaster men was nothing if not willing to lend a hand.

"Sit, humans," said Raineth. "We have this in hand."

Redd extended a hand to the rope and pulled it so that the boat skipped through the prevailing current and Raineth's great, blue eyes looked at him in astonishment. Nimpeth managed to swallow her amusement as she said, "It is best to let the big one help." She clapped Redd on the ribs and he laughed at her.

"The rest of us are just pretty faces," Icar jabbed a thumb at himself.

Upon hearing this, Raineth raised a dark eyebrow at him. She stepped back and let Redd and Remee take the rope. When Nimpeth stood aside, Icar joined in. The Silvan talked them through steering the boat through stones to touch shore. Then she opened her hand at the white, graven tree-stump some distance uphill. "This is our mark. You have brought us to shore aright. Well done."

The young elf woman, Raineth, hopped from the boat to shore, and took the rope that Amathon tossed from the aft. The elven boat tied up on the bow and stern and the Elfking stood smoothly from where he had been sitting with Lindir. They were mid-conversation, both of them speaking Sindarin, it sounded like. As a Noldor, he knew Quenya, of course, but it seemed appropriate that he'd chosen to speak the King's own native tongue with him in private. Not many of the Silvan knew it well enough to understand it fluently, though it was clear that nearby Ewon did. That argued for Nimpeth, though not necessarily Amathon, understanding it.

But the King switched to Westron. "So the contents of the message are a mystery. But it may be more important that the messenger came from the North."

"Not so unusual," Lindir's Westron was unaccented and properly paced for a human's ear, unlike the Elfking's. "There are ties between Imladris and the Northern Rangers, as you know."

"Imladris' Rangers of the North are a little closer to home, these days," Lusis interjected from her position beside the plank that Amathon folded out to shore.

"Of course they are," Lindir paused beside her. "When we leave, they are the natural heirs to Rivendell. The Tatharion are so much our blood," he gestured at Steed, where he stood guard at the bow of the boat, his body fitted against the bowsprit in an irritatingly elvish fashion. "I suspect we shall not head for the boats before we've made sure that Ellethiel and Elivor have brought their families to take residence in our abode."

"Well, they have a lot to gain by you leaving." She said. "Practically a Kingdom."

"Nothing can take the place of the elves," Redd said softly, which was a tone that was somehow impressive coming from such a large man.

"Something can if you are greedy," Lusis told him bluntly. "Their lands… and I imagine a place like Rivendell amasses a huge amount of wealth across the Ages." She glanced at the Elfking, who almost imperceptibly nodded in reply. "Elf blood inclines one to the good, I believe – it's tied to Eru. It is human blood that is really free to choose."

Lindir cocked his head, "What do you suspect?"

"Panic," Lusis shrugged and reached out a foot to test the ramp to shore before the King stepped on it. "Elves are so important in this world, you have no idea. You couldn't know. You are elves." She looked up at Lindir's curious blueberry eyes. "If you leave they gain Rivendell. If you stay on… that would be better. That would be safer. The King and Gondor are far away, so a great weight is about to fall upon a small number of Men of the North. They will be called in your place, and there are very few of us. I don't think you understand the politics, and I don't mean to elves tying up at dock in the Undying Lands. You… for better or worse, you understand that," she inclined her head in Glorfindel's direction and his pale blue eyes followed her, "but to Men, here. Men left behind with the light going out of the world."

Lindir made a small, fond, moue. "We are not the Two Trees."

"No man ever saw the light Eru allowed them," Lusis said to him patiently. "We see you. Don't underestimate the disturbance among my kind."

"Istari?"

"Human." Her chin rose, "The Northern Rangers whose blood is thinner in what qualities elves add, they are in a kind of turmoil right now." She went down the ramp and pressed the edge of it firmly to the grass with her boot. "Elsenord, can you-"

His eyes widened at the thought of talking to Lindir, and he bowed tentatively. "Lord seneschal… those with more elf-blood in them draw down from the heights and wait in places like Tatharion House. There is a steady flow out of the North. Some love you and wait to go with you, I suspect. They pray for your invite. Some wait for what is yours to become their own. I don't know the full extent of the rest." He glanced to the Elfking.

The King stepped to shore with Lusis following him out of habit. A shared habit. She could feel Ewon just steps behind her, in fact. He exhaled slowly, and went several yards into the clearing to stand beside the tree stump marker. He turned toward the Halls, and a sudden breath of damp wind caught up his hair and clothes in a gentle riffling.

She saw light go out from him, seeming to glare, momentarily white, in the low part of his chest, such that one star-like ray touched the ground. A pinprick in the earth glowed. Light shot across pinpricks in the forest floor of Mirkwood, and the light shot into the throne room in seconds. It came along one spoke in the great wheel of white stones the King had had buried, long ago, in trenches in the forest. The Kingdom's-seneschal could scarcely contain himself to the antlered throne as he felt the spark shoot up through his body and into his chest.

He inhaled and rose up from the antlered seat, and then turned Westward. He knew, by this system, exactly where his King was. A section was within minutes of him.

But, leagues away, the Elfking sagged to rest against the white marker. For a moment, he had felt Eithahawn's heart race with relief. He smiled softly. When he opened his eyes again, he was, strangely enough, pressed to Ewon. The Elite's arm was around him, and pinned him to the tree. His forehead had dropped to the man's injured shoulder. But Ewon's hurt was still too fresh to weather this kind of handling. The Elite was pale and strained, he panted for air. He might have cried out if Lusis hadn't been there to add her support.

Amathon reached them, directly, with Glorfindel and Nimpeth close behind.

Glorfindel's deep voice thrummed a quiet, "What happened?"

"Adar, let me," Amathon stepped in for his wife's injured father.

Nimpeth pulled Ewon aside to her, out of Lusis' line of sight. "Nimpeth. He's hurting."

"I… I'll look at this injury of the King's." Lusis' lips pulled tight and she pressed the flat of her hand against the center of the King's chest. His pale hands reached for hers and she shook her head. "Don't try to distract me with those lovely things, my King. I know how you work a little too well for that now." She inhaled deeply, her eyes on the lowest, bluest flame she'd ever seen in him. It was the same sort of sooty version of its nadir-colour that Lord Elrond's fire of burnished red had been reduced to. Someone was doing this. She was sure of it. But no one knew her Istari eyes could see it. She believed her Istari will could also change it. Her fingertips flexed on the silk and muscle.

He said vaguely. "You must let me be. My sections will close… on us, soon." He faded in and out.

"You look, to my eyes, as Lord Elrond did when he could no longer wake. The time is too late for whatever game you hoped to play." She shut her eyes and felt the fire of him as if she'd put her hand up to his chest. She jumped, because it felt cold. How faint he had become. Almost spent. She shut her eyes and focused on the trace-work of blue flame.

She could snuff it out by closing her fist over it. She could close it in her palm, with just enough air to scarcely exist, forever. Such power… Lusis gasped. Her blood went cold. Fires. Stars and gods. As her fingers reached for the Secret Fire of him, she could hear the attention of them all turn to the miracle they had created. She could feel vibrations in his bones and being, like from some magnificent concerto. Her own mind told her calmly: He is meant to be. She started to quake, because she didn't know where the words had come from.

She was alone. Unreservedly without guidance, particularly since she'd been too much a fool to try this when he'd been stronger. When he could have – would have – tried to be there for her. When he would have helped her face this terrible risk. There was no one else in the dark waters through which they plunged. And he was little more than a glass vessel she carried in her hand, with a fading spark in its center.

That's how alone she was.

Then she plumbed her mind for anything that Radagast had told her about using her own forces. Her 'magic'. But nothing came. She was falling down through a void, and dragging him with her. She soon realized she could be the cause of his death. The thought ripped a sob of breath out behind it. Dear gods, don't let me harm this thing I love out of artlessness.

A voice spoke beside her ear. An old voice, grizzled with the tone, she thought, of comfort and good humour. My-my. Young one. Little firefly. When you know the terrible force of what you are… you are charged with the gentleness of what you, in an ideal world, could be. All you have to do… is choose. She felt herself steady at these words. She could choose to hurt him. She wasn't going to choose that. Her fingers opened instinctively, so as not to smother the flame she held. She didn't touch the fire, she breathed on it.

It remained low, at first. Deep blue. But then, almost as if she could stand before it in a hearth, she saw it begin to lighten. It grew. She sheltered it from the tossing winter wind trying to extinguish it, the wind now doubling its efforts. She nursed the flame, and when the wind drew down onto her, she extended her hand into it and yanked it aside like a curtain. For a moment, she saw eyes.

When the fire in Thranduil Oropherion came on again, she was jettisoned out of him by the eruption. A conflagration in white hot flame consumed the wind, the grey where she had been resting. She felt the heat of it on her heels.