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.

3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

There was driving rain along the Mirkwood.

High above the world a storm-front raced across the face of Lorien. Wind pushed through giant trees as far as the woodland's Northern edge and raced down all the way into Long Lake. The complex Forest River rushed thick and fast along its length. The water slammed against tall stone and steel ramparts that safeguarded the Halls. Its course roared against the hiss of downpour. Fast and full of fallen tree limbs.

Eithahawn watched all this from the King's Aerie, a place where he had no right to be, in fact. He was no King of Mirkwood, but… the room had many things to recommend it. It was large and round, with space to pace in, it had windows that overlooked the river, and it was stocked with items that the King considered personal. His chair at his table covered in his books. His own records of rule lined the walls. The book open on the table held the lines – Such momentous change is upon us. The Emissaries with all of their predispositions, their expectations. I can but hold to the wisdom that the Ages have brought me. I miss my son. I love my wife. I trust my foster. I lead the people. The Northern Ranger, Redd, his adulation serves a constant reminder that there is no more room in my life. 'I' can scarcely fit into it. Time and space must be made. I will stand with the young Istari.

A line below this the text said again.

I miss my son.

The wisdom of my father.

There was more raw emotion, more cold fire, in the book he should never have read, and more of his King's heart – of his father's – than he'd ever expected to see. Eithahawn glanced over it and wished that he could pen his own thoughts. At the moment the lines would have read:

Where are you?

I am your son too.

You try to forget.

You are bad at forgetting.

Where are you tonight?

Are you safe?

He continued pacing the rounded room until the bell at the base of the stairs rang up at him. All the guards and staff knew he shouldn't wander the Aerie, but it was tolerated. Eithahawn had started going there as a tiny and inconsolable child. There was nowhere else he felt closer to his King and father. Now he hurried down the curving stair to the summons and found soaking wet elves flocking there. The section head was a red-haired young woman with large grey eyes. "Come quickly."

The number of saturated elves increased as he made his way deeper into the Halls, and closer to the cavern river. This fork of fast flowing water had been cut by Silvan and Sindar elves, long before. It flowed through a tall fissure and a channel into which the clever elves had introduced an estuary. The stone room served for the loading and unloading of goods for the Kingdom. Its doors ran along a hall high in the stone wall, and all doors there locked at night and when not in use.

Two sets stood wide open now.

The piers were choked with sections of elves.

Glorfindel's bright head straightened in the confusion. Aric Awnson and Redd Ayesir sprinted away from the pair of ships at dock and went for a Silvan elf who stood beside a cabinet opened in emergencies. She handed them blankets.

The King's long body came to view. He was carried by Glorfindel, his grand autumn robes wet and dragging behind him on the stones. Eithahawn started to hurry through the Silvan guards. On the stairs he saw Nimpeth supporting Ewon, and Amathon carrying Lusis Buckmaster in his arms. Redd hurried to her. He draped a blanket over her, and then rushed to the King.

"Does he breathe?" Eithahawn called, but no one heeded.

He found his voice and shouted above the confusion. "Order in the Halls! All of you to order!"

The sound suddenly fell to nearly nothing, and Eithahawn made his hasty way to Glorfindel. "What have you done?"

"Carried him from the ship," said the Noldorian blond. "I swear to you, Kingdom's-seneschal."

Eithahawn gathered himself, "Does he breathe?"

"Oh, yes." Said Lindir of Rivendell. "He is weak, but alive. As is the Istari."

As he reached them, Eithahawn tugged the blanket aside, shoved his hand into the open throat of his father's long coat, and slid it to his sternum to feel for a heartbeat. It was there like the wings of a bird fluttering in his chest, and his pearly skin was dull to the eye. He was cold.

The healers who hurried in behind him glanced over him as Eithahawn pivoted away from the King. "It is so similar to what has befallen the Lord of Rivendell…" he raised his voice. "Quiet now. We bring him in quietly and the Istari as well, so as to not disturb our honoured guests."

A sudden hush fell.

Eithahawn turned to the healers. "Hurry. Quickly now. Bring them in."

He extended a hand at Nimpeth with Ewon. "Follow the healers with your father, Nimpeth-bess." He glanced at Aric Awnson's bloody arms and directed the human Ranger to do the same.

There would be no rest until the King woke.

"Kingdom's-seneschal," said the harried-looking valet who had followed the golden half-Sinda down to the cavern-river, "Your meeting with the Emissaries – the Council – is within the hour. They are asking after an update on the King's Tour?"

Of course they were.

Eithahawn smoothed his clothes. In fact, he smoothed his presence to the seeming of flawless elven serenity. It did not allow him to forget his father's too-pale face. How he had seemed still as the marble figure of Oropher in the grand cavern. But he sealed those memories away now, in the way of elves, deep, and, with hope, out of sight.

The bed Lusis lay in was round.

It was more of a salad bowl wooden construction than a bed. She lay on a fragrant collection of blankets and was covered over with the softest wool.

And she was clean. That was the high point. For she was also completely naked. She wrapped the sheet around her, in a terrible mood, sat up, and looked at the pinkish light streaming through arches and windows cut in stone.

A mellifluous elf healer said, "Here she is." The beautiful wood screen, engraved with birds and trees, and animals, all of whom were not naked, glided aside.

"I'm not decent," she blurted.

"Oh, awake," said the elf healer. He was a young elf, by his behavior, and as he gently smiled over her, Lusis gazed at the smoothness of his jaw and the dimple at the corner of his pale mouth.

"You are very decent." Eithahawn folded down on the broad edge of this nest-bed in which she sat. She checked the fit of the wool blanket – generous – and then tucked one end over the other, and held it fast against her chest. "Are you well enough to get up, Lusis Buckmaster?"

She looked at him after not having seen him in half a year, and he was… gloriously the same. His red-golden hair fell in waggles around him, long and lovely, and he wore the most amazing robes yet – the rosy-violet colour of sunrise at his shoulders and chest, it faded down to white, an effect achieved by expert needlework and oodles of semi-precious stone. The drape of cloak he wore with it was a beautiful, lush gold. "You… are a sight."

"And you saved my father," he told her quietly.

The flood of relief made her hide her face in her hand. She hadn't been sure. The young elf left at once, not wanting to be party to some strong outburst of emotion, lest it sweep him up too.

Eithahawn's golden brows rose. "He's gone. You can come out now."

She scoffed at the thought, "I'm not hiding from some baby elf who's probably seen me naked."

"He's two hundred."

"Anyone under a thousand seems like a teenager to me." She told him grumpily and stood up in the nest. "Where are my clothes?"

Eithahawn smiled up at her, "You are preoccupied with nudity, you humans." He stood up and brought her… an outfit that wasn't her Ranger gear.

"No, I meant, my clothes. These are elf… clothes, I mean." She knew the long overcoat design of the Mirkwood nobles by heart and rather liked those. But this was a woman's outfit, soft yellow and embroidered expertly with their sparkling threads, so that several butterflies marched around the hem. "I'm not wearing a dress."

"Curious," said Eithahawn. He looked down at the outfit in his hand. "I… I shall go to the hall of the seamstresses and tell them this garment, into which they sewed extra linings for your comfort, and onto which their careful hands fastened beads of amber and gold-rutilated quartz, is rejected." He laid a hand on it and looked up at the cavernous ceiling, patting it, lightly, as he spoke, "Though they woke in the darkness and worked to the last candle, and they set themselves apart from all who loved them, the great Istari will not wear-"

Lusis swept the dress out of his hand and vanished behind the folding screen to pull it on. But it wasn't as simple as that. There were… parts. After struggling with it for a moment she sighed heavily and spoke between her gritted teeth. "Send help."

Several healer elves – all women, thankfully – helped her to get the dress on. She was not the willowy shape of most women elves, and was gratified that the soft gold bodice was roomy. She had shoulders, a powerful torso and arms, and muscles had thickened her figure. The elf women didn't seem to notice, and didn't draw back from her many scars, or the brand she had on her hip, which was of the Buckmaster crossed antlers. She'd done that herself.

She saw the small slippers and her toes curled up. "Boots. At least give me some boots. No one can see my feet anyway."

They furnished her with soft leather boots in the same colour as the cape, which was the golden red of Mirkwood. She pulled them on while one of the girls combed her hair. With the cape on, it was almost as if she had, she realized, the small frame of any girl. It was comical to see herself in the glass the elf women brought. She wasn't sure who that girl was. Then she looked at her hip and lifted the cloak. "Sword."

There was no argument. Her sword – the elf steel sword she called hers – was handed over to her in a sheath inlaid with a panel of golden wood. It was gorgeous. She strapped it on happily and stepped out to Eithahawn.

His chin rose, his body sloped back easily. "Ah, Lusis. You look like the Yellow Istari."

She shrugged at him, "Where's the King, Eithahawn?" She pressed down the embarrassment she felt at being dressed like this – the sound of the fabric trailing behind her was unnerving – and went to join him. He laid an elegant hand in air.

"What am I supposed to do with that?" She asked pertly.

He actually made a soft huff of laughter and had to turn from her to gather himself. He looked at the wall to her right. "I missed you."

Lusis exhaled and admitted, "I missed you too, Eithahawn."

He glanced at her. "Please, Istari, if you will follow me."

He led her out of what, essentially, was an arched, petal-shaped apse in a solid stone wall. There were many of them around a central open hub where several healers inclined their heads to Eithahawn as he passed. She glanced around her as she stepped out onto a long ridge of stone, and realized she was high up, and below her, more of the Kingdom opened. She gritted her teeth, seeing as the elves didn't believe in rails, and followed behind Eithahawn, staring at his long back and waving hair.

Steed, with his elf blood, liked heights and open spaces. As for Lusis, nothing convinced her that she didn't have a speck of edhel blood like this. The Kingdom's-seneschal stopped to answer a hail from a bridge below this one and Lusis walked into his back and hid her face in his hair. He reached around behind him, highly amused. "Ah. Some humans dislike heights-"

"I'm okay with heights," she said. "I just like handrails. I like those a lot."

He caught her hands and turned to walk backwards before her, "You dislike close spaces," he nodded. "You dislike heights." He looked up and around him at the bustle of stone paths through the caverns. Mirkwood elves came and went in all directions, some of them with children racing and giggling tunefully before them. Elf children were prone to giggling.

"I don't like extremes. Too high. Too close. Extremes." She said between her teeth and held fast to his hands. "But I… I climbed mountains in the North for your father, a stretch to a summit where the stone curved out at me, and I had to rely on my hands, because my boots couldn't keep purchase. I summited the coldest mountain I've ever met to find him." She took her hands from his and noticed all the blackened bruises were gone. Her nails looked whole. "Don't fear for me. The things I am afraid of… when the time is right, I do them."

Eithahawn stopped on the stone bridge and stared at her a moment.

"What?"

He took a step back and bowed to her, the clip that ran along his hair like a half-circle of leaves glittered in the autumn light. "I owe you such a debt, my friend. Please remember me, if you have a need. I will not fail you."

She glanced around her as he straightened. In all directions, elves stopped to look on. She felt her face growing red. "Eithahawn, may you never bow to me again. Now take me to your father."

"Straightaway," he cocked his head at her and his expression was bright with genuine warmth. He brought her down the snaking path to the ground of the great cavern that was the Halls. She seemed far from the guest quarters she knew. Briefly, she wondered where the 'Inner Halls' were. The King's 'house', and whether Eithahawn still lived there with him. It would be lonely, she thought, without this little cardinal-jay of his. Eithahawn caught her gaze and said, "It is in the receiving room. It is not a place as… perhaps as humans would have. It is not a hall such as at Jan Kasia's in Lake Township. And there are guests, Lusis Buckmaster. They are elves of note through those doors. Please be warned." He told her this as they walked through rows of armoured guards in red and gold, green and gold, blue and silver. There were many before the tall doors at the end of this brief, shining hall.

Doors. Her gaze snagged on them. Doors in the Halls meant business. Unless they were for the sake of protecting their own, for securing them, Elves disliked barriers. They disliked doors between them. Even a broken line of sight could be irritating for them.

She wiped her damp palms on her velvet cloak a few times, "Right. Elves of note," she looked down at her clothes and was selfishly glad her brothers and troop hadn't seen her dressed like this. Yet. She felt anxious until she saw the light on her chest – the bright sunny star-point.

The King.

That blast furnace he kept inside. What had become of that?

She looked at the doors. There was no larger Kingdom among elfkind, and no more seasoned King in Middle-Earth. That meant he was an elf of note. He was in there.

She took off in the direction of the doors without a word to Eithahawn, her sure elven boots both quiet and fast. Two armoured elves stepped out and pulled the doors open just in time for her to charge into the room. It was full of elves. They all turned at the noise and sudden speed of her entrance, and Lusis loped through them until her eyes found a gleaming pillar, then she stopped.

He blurred with light in front of her eyes. Light shining out of him like a star.

Lusis opened her arms beside her. "Thank the gods."

His great eyes shone starlight-silver, his head tipped as he glided toward her, rich with power, backlit by a luminosity and so strangely radiant that she backed away. He halted, "Lusis?"

"My King."

"She does call you her King," said an elf woman's voice, so pure and musical, it was like a chord playing in middle register. The pacing of her words was just a touch too slow, which meant she was used to the longer and smoother glides of an elvish tongue, and her accent was so very different than the King's.

The woman emerged from behind him. They had been standing together and talking, both of them so breathtakingly radiant they had washed-out her ability to see their details.

"My… my Lady," Lusis was no fool. She knew this was someone incredible just from looking up into her foam pale skin, her horizon-blue eyes, waving pale blonde hair covered in a webbing of silver Mithril dotted with pale blue and white gemstones. That 'crown' fell all the way to the small of her back. Lusis wrung her fingers and looked at the Elfking.

His pale hand moved, rested on his ribs. It rolled so the palm faced the floor and pressed down just slightly. Be at ease. Be calm. She sucked a deep breath. No matter where she looked, she was the shortest person in the room.

She managed a subdued smile for the tall shining elf woman. "My name is Lusis Buckmaster. It's nice to meet you."

The elf woman smiled in return, as if it was habit, which was unusual and should have been reassuring in an elf. "It is also good to meet you," she drifted toward Lusis, who took an involuntary step back from this shining being. She seemed like something expertly carved out of ice: beautiful, still-faced, and too ideal. So effortless she might have been a bride to the Elvenking.

Thranduil didn't move, didn't edge toward her. She glanced back and could see Eithahawn in the room behind her – the place was aglow, and perfectly silent – he didn't come near her either, but his hands, folded together before him, pushed out a little, which was Elven for 'Go'.

Go where? There was too much light in the room, too much greatness. Their motions, their lack thereof, their small glances and slight leanings, their barely perceptible tilts and silent folding-in, it was overwhelming. She looked at Thranduil and shook her head. He could dress her up in gold threads and put gloss in her hair, but he couldn't change what she was. Not enough for this.

"Who are these people?"

"They are friends."

"Not my friends."

"We are ever friends of the Istari," the glowing woman said. "You did travel here with Glorfindel. He is my kin."

"That makes you a Noldor." Lusis told the lady elf, she added, "Great Lady." She had terrible luck with most Noldor. Though there was Lindir. He was so even-tempered and considerate it was probably impossible not to like him. She found him when he stepped up beside taller Eithahawn and inclined his head in greeting.

"Yes. I am Galadriel, the Lady of Lorien."

Lusis' head swiveled back around quickly enough it hurt. This was the Lady Galadriel? She'd heard the talk: Lady of the Lorien; Shining Lady of the Galadrim; Bearer of Nenya, one of the three Elven Rings of Power. She had kept Lorien and her Silvan Galadrim from seeing the darkness of Sauron, or open conflict for two Ages, the Second and Third, and during that time the Silvan across the Anduin in Mirkwood, had been under constant assault, taking bitter losses in their endless war with Darkness. So Lusis' opinion of her was… complicated.

People called Thranduil insular. Lusis had overheard it in the petition room on her first day here, and in Lake Township among gathered businessmen. But the greatest darkness of the Ages had pushed Thranduil's beleaguered people North of the Mirkwood Mountains with steady bombardment… and no Ring of Power had come for them. Insular was catching. She looked at Galadriel a bit breathlessly, caught between wonder, fear of her, and adulation of the light she emanated. "Welcome, Lady of Lorien, to Mirkwood." She added a pointed, "Have you ever been before?"

Somewhere behind her, among the tall tree-like elves, she swore, someone laughed. That was probably not a good sign.

The Lady Galadriel turned her glorious head as Thranduil stepped up beside her. It was ridiculous how perfect they looked together. And she actually smiled at him, with the flesh under her pale eyes gathering up in a way that was so wonderful it made Lusis gawp. "Thranduil-gael, I will say to you what I have said before," she turned toward him and Lusis saw she was barefoot. "Nothing you do, nothing you are, is wearying." Now Galadriel turned her head in Lusis' direction. "Do you see my light, little Istari?"

Lusis nodded immediately. "Lady… the two of you, together…" she glanced at Thranduil and wondered what she'd done to him. He was burning white-hot. "The two of you, together, smother the details of this room with your lights."

"And you see the light of the rest of us?" This was Glorfindel from close beside her. He was tall, and so expertly cleaned up he seemed almost… mysterious in his cloudy blue robes, all in the style of Mirkwood. He cocked his head, and very nearly his upper body. "It… is it possible for her to be speechless?"

Thranduil's long lashes beat in amusement as he said, "One need only wait for-"

"What are they all doing here, my King?" she looked into the blue light of Glorfindel and up at his face. "Beautiful colour, actually, warm, pale blue." She turned from him, "Please forgive any discourtesy," she inhaled deeply, "I'm a human and I don't know your ways."

"She isn't an Istari, then?" a youngish elf – which meant nothing – raised her cream-brown head in question and looked, immediately to Galadriel.

"My seneschal, Meluien." Galadriel gave a soft, graceful gesture at the Silvan beauty. Meluien, like her lady, was dressed in layers of sheer, pale material, but the fabric was soft peach in colour rather than her Lady's white and silver. Like Eithahawn, Meluien wore a 'half crown'. In this sense, it was like the Elfking's Living Crown, because it wrapped the back of their heads. Meluien's was a half-ring of morning glories in silver, and like Eithahawn's, it clipped into her fair hair.

Lusis nodded at her, "Right. Nice to meet you too, Meluien, and… everyone. Please believe me. It is with great and deep respect that I say to you, unless you fought off a filthy ball of bats, a slaughter of Orcs, a pack of Warg-riders, climbed a mountain, or fought six dragons, your questions have to wait in line." She added onto the end of that, "Behind mine."

Few moved. For her part, Galadriel looked animated, as if delighted by Lusis' candor. Her great Elfking's blue-silver gaze explored the ceiling for a moment, as if he'd left something up there, for instance, his facility at maintaining that fabricated pleasantry he wore in gatherings like these. When he looked up at Lusis, he did so by degrees: first down and to the right of her, with his eyelashes low, then he shifted and his long body leaned back at the hip as he glanced at her. He looked impressed. "Lusis, this is the Council of Departing. It is also known as the Council of the West. They witness the last great strongholds of our kind. Eithahawn has been host to them as I toured the vast holdings of Mirkwood. And now select among the remaining leaders of the elves in Middle Earth have been assembled to meet these Emissaries, our guests," he paused a heartbeat, "from the West."

Oh. She turned slowly to the tall elves behind her. Closest to her was a very tall, snowy elf. He was so colourless that it was startling. He looked like solid marble. She glanced around at the others. They were all dressed in floor-length hooded-cloaks – shirred velvet, but in a style that was not familiar to her. The man closest to her took down his hood with long fingers and he was stunning. Tallest of the Emissaries. His hair the colour of blameless lily, and eyes that were, she swore, the colour of sea ice. Behind him was an elf with thick and starkly black hair, like ink against the paper whiteness of his skin. His eyes were the bright colour of a copper coin. The final guest was a tall woman. She had rings of golden hair, a delicate, heart-shaped face, and cheeks and lips like pale peonies. But her eyes were no nonsense – a deep blue at their extremity, they grew more colourless the nearer the soft oblong of her pupil. Apart from her eyes, she might have looked sweet. But they were fierce.

These strangers all wore circlets, but they were unlike anything in Middle Earth. Metal, but filmy and gossamer, in designs that were both radiant by nature and foreign. There was one in silver, one of copper, and one of shining gold. They were incredibly refined. Before them, she felt more rough-hewn and barbaric than usual. But also more capable of brutal decision. She stepped back and eased minutely between them and the Elfking.

They inclined their heads as one.

The Elvenking's voice remained light. "There is a visitor for each among the Three Kindred."

"The Teleri," said the blond woman elf, and her voice rolled with the soft shush of waves.

"The Noldor," sparked the black-haired man. And one of his dark brows rose playfully.

The colourless one finished in a voice like spring wind itself, "The Vanyar," the great ghostly elf laid a hand full of more of that unfamiliar filmy jewelry onto his chest, "I am Loss. My Noldor friend is Osp. Our Teleri companion is Glir."

She murmured, "They have short names in the West."

"When I was born," the ghost elf's head moved slowly over to the right, and his accent was so thick that it whirred underneath like leaves gusting on a breeze, "there were not names."

For the first time in her life, Lusis managed something approaching elvish doll-face. She astonished herself by, on the same day, and the same hour, very nearly pivoting around to face her King in the way an elf would. "Well, isn't that fascinating."

The Elfking inhaled a steadying breath, and she caught a hint of something like anxiety in his eyes when he looked at her again. That was enough to mobilize her.

"It's wonderful to meet the Council of the West, my King, but we are in Middle-Earth, and there is business at hand. Pardon me for insisting on this, but does anyone else know they are here?"

Galadriel ducked close beside her, to study her serious face and large dark eyes. "Their travels are a closely kept secret, Yellow Istari. Do you fear for them?"

She looked at the Lady and inclined her head, "I protect elves."

"And what about Men?" Galadriel's beauteous expression warmed. "Dwarves? Little Hobbits?"

"If they're innocent and in my path, they have my protection," Lusis told her without hesitation, even though she didn't know what a Hobbit really was. "But when you are in Mirkwood, my Lady, you are with the ones that my heart calls my family, and my people."

Her eyes glittered with surprise, "Why is that?"

"When I came here, I was at my most desperate. My life was being strangled out of me. No one I knew, or had known, could help my sorry case, great Lady. These elves owed me nothing, and through," she glanced over her shoulder at the Kindred and said, "bravery, bloodshed, and brilliance, they won me back my life." She opened her arms and looked at Galadriel. "They saved me, and let me walk free in the world."

"There is something about him," said the shining princess of the Galadrim. She spoke from close beside Lusis and just slightly bent because, though Lusis was tall, they were not of a height. It was surprising to Lusis that the Lady Galadriel looked so interested and engaged, as if curiosity was her habit. The woman's low, soft voice said, "Learning him is a form of art. There is some stroke of discovery, of creation, about him that puts a lie to any theory of… allotments within our kind, allotments of grace, some greater, some lesser, or so I have always believed. In my first days looking upon him, he was but a heartfelt prince. He was quiet and observant in those days, and very gentle. I saw in him the beauty of the Vanyar, the intelligence esteemed of my own kind, and the freedom of the Teleri." She looked aside at the Elfking who stepped back to hear word from an Elite at the side of the room. The King turned to the Three Kindred and spoke to them in an elvish language Lusis hadn't heard before. Galadriel finished, "And I find in that, great hope, Lusis Buckmaster. What do you find in it?"

"Great change," she told the Lady and nodded.

Galadriel straightened away and her lovely head rose. She was pleased. "We must speak again when events aren't so… pressing, friend of Thranduil's, and now, friend of my own." Her pale hands and perfectly maintained nails reached out and smoothed the fallen shoulder of Lusis' cloak back into position. She leaned close, and her expression became quite serious, "Do not be afraid to speak your mind among us, different as you are. In the end, there is no other lamp for guidance in the world. Do not snuff yours for the foxfire of others, no matter how magnificent."

Lusis' eyes widened. "Lady, why can't I see their fires?"

"They lived in the light of the Two Trees for an Age. Now they must hide their merits behind their storm-cloaks, lest they overwhelm us all." Her pale brows rose.

She wasn't joking. Lusis braced herself. She whispered, "Have they come to claim you?"

Galadriel exhaled, "Perhaps. Slowly… in ways that are not forceful. Yet. They come… to size the remains of the population, to learn who will be joining them, and know the natures of those people. We go into their territories, their culture, you must remember." Her great blue eyes glanced over the unfamiliar cut of the robes these men wore, with silvery cords of metal no thicker than an eyelash patterning through their fabric and glowing softly. She took a breath that lifted her shoulders, and smoothed her glinting sleeve of dress with her flawless hands. "All elves are their elves. Except, they fear, The Last Elves. We. We hold-outs from the West. We exiles, some. They come to judge the difficulty of the task of incorporating us as we have become. We are told that many messages have travelled the water, out of concern for us – their kin. But… perhaps they also come in search of some sign of what other fires burn in this place. Fires powerful enough to keep us here." She glanced down, her blonde lashes low, "As if the beauty of this world could not, itself, hold us enthralled."

"As we have become?" Lusis felt herself frown. She tried to keep pace with the much taller woman's patrol, around and around in this far edge of the room. Gliding. Throwing her light on the walls and Lusis. "What does it mean?"

"Wild. Warlike." She laid a hand on her own chest.

"Excuse me, my Lady?" Lusis blinked at her in her cascade of silver. "They called you wild and warlike?" What must they think of humans? Lusis pointedly didn't look at them. She made for a row of shining trays in the room, laid out along the wall on a natural stone outcropping smoothed to luscious glossiness. There were no chairs, but, on looking up, she noted that one wall was carved deep with rows of benches like drawings she'd seen of 'lecture halls' in Gondor, in spite of the fact the elves she knew only ever seemed to sit about in mixed company. They preferred to stand and move around and few of them were still for long.

Galadriel's pale hands reached for a vessel of silver, and Lusis poured the grand Lady a cup of water and held the cup aloft. It was the finest cut of crystal she had ever seen. Gingerly, she handed it to the Lady of Lorien, who promptly poured her a cup as well. "No it was not me they thought warlike, young Yellow Istari." She looked aside at where the Elfking reappeared in the room and came to a stop wordlessly looking at the Council of the West.

Speaking in their minds.

"Can you hear them?"

"At some distance," said the Mithril-silver Lady. Then her eyes widened at the thought of this innocent misbehavior, "Are we eavesdropping?"

Lusis' brows drew down and she turned to the Lady Galadriel slowly. "The Elfking-"

"Thranduil," said the Lady quietly.

"Uh, yes. The Elfking-"

Her pink lips curved into a playful smile, "Goodness. He will forget his name."

The woman wasn't anything Lusis had been brought to expect, she sucked a steading breath and said, "He… told me his wife was mischievous. You strike me as the same. Is it possible you're friends?"

"Ah," now she brightened like a lamp. "Lethroneth, my spy from this place, she told me of you, and that you will protect him."

"Yes, I will. He protected me first," Lusis nodded.

"If you are his friend," the elf Lady bent over her and the smell of sweet-grass rose to untamed perfection in the room, "do not let him forget his name when I am gone."

Lusis felt a sudden gasp in her chest. "You're leaving with them?" She'd only just met this woman, and, already, the thought of her going into the West left her with an empty ache.

Galadriel saw this and her effortless expression shifted. She inhaled, her brows drew up in that way that spoke of sudden sadness. She set down her cup and Lusis reached out and folded her tanned hand around the great Lady's. Galadriel recovered. Her free hand came up to lay over the decades of scars that had just reached out to steady her. She looked at an old wound in Lusis' palm. "When I was newly married I left home, husband, and the hearths of my kind to search for your Elfking. During the time of Dragons in the North, he was feared lost – you may not know this. I learned of this. And I did remember him, that beautiful young man of quick wit, and quicker temper. I am told we were so lovely, and that was why we would be seated together at arrangements – often above his station, but the elves love beauty. His father was not a noble. No one would speak to him, but I was beside him at nearly every function. We were a pair of lilies in the same water. So I did. As I look at memory… I realize that a wildly different way of thinking is not a failing, it is not a fearsome sign, if it also does good. I believe you also understand that."

Lusis told her, "I love that about him."

"You love a lot about him," she smiled in cheerful reply. "And he trusts you. So I ask you to remember his name to him. Even one such as he is must be close to another. How will he grieve? I must go to the West. I must go ahead of my husband, and my friend."

Lusis' chin rose. He'd already lost so much. "I… I'll keep an eye on him for you. As long as I can."

Galadriel released her hand and pushed back a stray lock of Lusis' hair, "A very long time. But the favour I have come to ask is more complex than that, Yellow Istari. Will you hear me out?"

Elves. Full of favours. Giving, and getting. "I will hear you out." She smiled at the Lady.

"I am grateful," the Lady inclined her head. "In truth… my love and my friend have never gotten along. The relationship is more badly fractured than I had thought. But when I leave, I will go without either. You see, they are both Sinda, and I… there are things I must do to prepare for them. This is less pressing for Celeborn, perhaps. He is a Teleri noble from a line of nobles. And he is wonderful," she smiled with her pale teeth this time, unable to contain herself, "They will hail him. But Thranduil... is not a noble. He is rarely biddable and obedient. He is not controllable."

By this time Lusis was smiling as she nodded in agreement. "He has a lot of strong points."

The Lady had to turn her slender body right and look away to keep from laughing. Lusis glanced from Eithahawn's bow toward the King and how he peeked, somewhat fretfully, at the snow-white Vanyar. The King nearly touched Eithahawn to calm him, before he stepped away. He closed his hands behind his back.

"Celeborn and Thranduil should be a comfort to each other," Galadriel said softly. Her head tipped left, and her voice sounded sad. "But neither of them have enough tempering in them. My husband is proud and strong, but he can be austere. And then there is Thranduil."

Lusis chuckled, which was a most alien voice in a room full of elves. The Elfking looked at her and some of the tension drained from his long body. His voice carried in the dome of room, when, at a distance, he summoned her. "Lusis Buckmaster, I am sorry to separate you from our guests, particularly as you've had no other chance to meet the Lady." He took a single step forward, which all in the room witnessed, and stopped himself at once. In formal proceedings a King was not moved by others, they were expected to be moved by him.

Galadriel inclined her head to him. Yes.

In answer to this, Thranduil bent his body a little to the glowing Lady. This was more than Lusis had ever seen of him.

He continued, "I have need of you. It is the business of the Kingdom." Then he turned from Lusis entirely, and took several slow steps for an intersecting hall.

Time was short. Lusis looked back at Lady Galadriel. Her voice was low and hurried, "Lady, it might be a long time before you see your husband and the Elfking again, once you leave. I'll do my best to… help them understand each other's strengths. I suspect they know all about one another's weaknesses."

Galadriel bowed her golden head in parting, and Lusis smiled. "You have my word."

How was it possible to miss someone you'd just met? But she regretted that she left the Lady of Lorien, perhaps never to see her sunny face – the picture of gladness – again.

She went to the Elfking's side and he said some sibilantly gorgeous words in a language that didn't sound like Sindarin, at least from what she'd heard of it. The Vanyar's snow-coloured eyes found her, momentarily, and he replied in a raincloud voice.

The Elfking exhaled as they turned and went through an arched tube of hall that was some six feet wide, and twenty four tall. She could feel the weight of old and rolling orogeny over her head. Where they were now was deeper in the earth than she was used to. The top of the cavern was lit by long blown glass tubes that ended in teardrops of fire light. Long fibers of pure white wick ran down into them. It was hard to see that from so far below. The walls were inlaid with blue stone butterflies and the flying red and golden leaves from which the Kingdom had taken its colours. Other halls intersected this one, but they stayed along the straightaway for a very long way. Two minutes of walking, and he paused to look down at her with his silvery eyes.

"Tell me what you think of them, Istari?"

"They are fine elves," she glanced up at him, sober, in spite of the unfamiliarity of the elven dress that she wore. "But you and yours are just as fine."

"The Vanyar, Loss…." Thranduil sucked in a deep breath and then his brows swept up. "I can feel the force of him in these halls no matter where I am. The others are little better."

"That's probably beyond his ability to control," she shrugged, "as you can't dim the splendor that lives inside of you… and so his grandeur doesn't matter to me, as long as he and the others remember whose Halls these are."

He stopped and looked at her. "Do you not understand, Lusis Buckmaster? Their purity is far in excess of my own. Their incorruptibility. They are spotless with power." He said this in a heatless way, and with a feathery, weightless voice.

She stepped up to him. "And why do you think this world has ruined something in you? I'd venture you and yours, Legolas, Eithahawn, all your elves, have stood against greater Darkness than they can imagine, and for Ages. Compared to that, what good is untested virtue?" Lusis scoffed and continued walking without him.

Behind her back, the Elvenking lowered his head and allowed the weight of his fears to prickle across his skin. Glorfindel had shaken him to his very core. He would rather die than guard a door for the remains of forever. He wasn't a compliant being. He wasn't the great and yet tractable man they sought. He was in every margin of him, a King. He loved this world. He deeply loved his home, and the ghostly memory of his wife here. This was his life because he'd chosen it after it had chosen him. This.

Was it wrong?

Lusis glanced at the many constellations of firelight above her. "Well, I disagree. Even if living in this world had marred your innocence in some way, it would have been far less virtuous to let the evils of this world rampage across all the lands, unchecked." She lashed out her sword, nearly as fast as an elf, "If you fought them, they were meant to be fought by you. If you lost something, it was meant to be lost. I do believe that Vanyar elf never set a toe on these lands to be tested until Middle-Earth was washed by the tears of Sindar, Silvan, exiles, and Men, and wiped clean again. That is, unless you've had Council of the West visitors in the past."

"We have not," he drifted along and listened to her closely, drafting on her wake.

She spun her sword in air, a graceful silver arch she passed over behind her back, "Then virtue is only part of goodness. The rest must be some other mixture of grit, suffering, determination, failure, and triumph that he may know nothing about. For everything life snatched from you, this world gave you something in exchange. Great knowledge is not considered a form of grace by your kind. Men feel the same about great ignorance."

He said from behind her, "They do not weigh what I have done here."

"That's a mistake," she put her sword away and slowed until she could walk beside him. "Each mistake is a point of exploit. It can be used to help them do the right things, Elfking."

There was a long pause before his eyes became downcast and he said, "You sound like my wife."

Lusis looked away at the intricate butterflies along the wall, each pulling nearly imperceptible bars and musical arrangements behind them, "I'm sorry… if it hurt you."

"No," he said somewhat hollowly. "I'd rather remember her. It's… better that way. It's…."

She reached back, found his fingers, and wrapped her hand around them. No one should be stranded with such desperate sadness. She released him, as was proper, when they reached the outpouring at the end of the hall. Here, there was a large cavern with growing trees inside. It was on the other side of the old stone hill under which they'd just walked. The sun streamed through bubbled and irregular glass inclusions in the stone as thick as her arm was long. In the sun, seated in a very curious chair, with his long legs curled under him, and under a blanket of red and gold, was Lord Elrond of Rivendell. He was paler than she remembered of his somewhat humanly-pink skin. His dark blue eyes were shut, as if he dozed with the great tome he wrote in open in his lap.

Raineth stood watch over him, as did several Mirkwood Elite guards that Lusis had only seen in passing and didn't know except in seeing them in contact with Ewon and the others. But they seemed to know her, by the sudden flicker of quickly suppressed smiles that passed through the Elites along the walls. Lusis felt the tightness in her chest ease. "Where is Dorondir? I would have expected him here."

"Eithahawn had put him in House Arrest."

She glanced up at the King, "What?"

"Yes," the Elfking told her, "for failing to carry me out of the slaughter of Orcs with Lord Elrond. And so, when I asked for him to report his travel to me, shortly after I arrived, he was brought in with a silver chain bound to a steel bracer."

Lusis snorted at the notion. "If I recall correctly, you were having a relaxing time. It would have been impolite for him to interrupt. Elves are not impolite as a rule."

Within that pillar of light to which her eyes were still adjusting, the Elfking's gaze brightened. He favoured her with a dimpled smile. "He has been released," the Elfking told her. "He should be here."

"He's gone," Elrond's deep eyes opened slowly, and his sonorous voice sounded a low note in the cavern, "I had a sudden craving for pine-nut flax bread with generous butter."

"That boy cannot seem to do enough for you," the Elfking walked to join the Lord of Rivendell, and lifted the book from his lap to the table. "Let's have wine."

The Lord of Rivendell's long hair was unbound, a mass of dark tresses over the top rail of the high-backed chair in which he sat. The Elfking simply eased it along the floor to a low table some feet from them, and it rolled because the legs were fitted into depressions in a small wooden platform onto which wooden wheels were fitted. It was a strange, but convenient arrangement. When they stopped, the Elfking pulled a rest from under the chair and Elrond gratefully lowered his legs onto it.

Lusis reached for the Lord of Rivendell's chest and her King intercepted her hand, folding his own around it. "Yes, this was the way it was to be. You were to heal him and use me. But that cannot happen now. We can but hope that the enemy believes I slipped their trap of my own ingenuity."

Lusis saw a flash of those eyes, again, in her mind, as she freed the fire of the King.

Lord Elrond reached out and touched the small platter of various flavours of jams and butters, "You've been known to be ingenious in the past."

"And you for being resolute." Said the Elfking, "And you will not waver in the face of this attack either, until such a time as our good Istari can do… what it is she does, to restore you."

"Does what you do hurt a great deal?" Elrond's pale face found her with some humour.

"I… I don't know," she took his hand because it was trembling.

The Elfking noted. "She is too full of mercy, Lord Elrond. It is only possible to suffer this if she is ignorant to the degree of the effect."

Sometimes he was a very annoying man, her King.

He poured two cups of wine, glanced over Lusis, and thought the better of it. "The Yellow Istari met the Lady of Lorien just now."

"Oh," Elrond's great large eyes found her, "perhaps she is in love by now?"

Lusis glanced up at the Elfking. Then her eyes slid over to Dorondir as he drifted to the table and laid a generous helping of several types of thick, cake-like, nut breads onto the cloth. The slices smelled rich and steamed, freshly made. "My thanks," murmured Lord Elrond. Lusis stepped aside, turned, and without warning, threw her arms around the barrel of the elf's chest.

Dorondir nearly backed into a planter before the King called for him to stop.

This was probably the very first elf Lusis had ever spoken to in the world, and she'd come to care about his wellbeing no differently than she did the safety of her own troop. She released him and winced up into his handsomely astonished face. "I'm sorry for the surprise, Dorondir. I had heard things that caused me to worry."

He blinked his large green eyes at her and managed to look very young. "Lusis-Istari, please save your worry for my Lord and my King."

"The King is well, and I'll be dealing with the ailing Lord," she glanced back at his low and crimson flame, "as soon as my King turns his back for a sufficiently long period of-"

The Lord Elrond chuckled as he selected two white slices of pine-nut bread and a spread of butter that was speckled with sugar. His voice rumbled, "You will not be allowed to do such a thing, Istari. Truly, you are as he espoused."

The Elfking's hand nudged her at the elbow and then curled under her arm so lightly she could scarcely feel him through the fabric, "Come, Lusis-sell. Eat something. A body cannot endure on so little nourishment." He drew her to the table and guided her to the seat across from Lord Elrond out of his reach. The smoke-coloured eyes of the Elflord saw this with amusement.

"Why can't I heal you?" She glanced back at the Elfking, who had been withdrawing, and he came back to stand just behind her. This was due to his reading the type of glance she'd given as 'Come here' or 'Follow', though it was possible he thought she would lunge across the table and simply 'fix' whatever had befallen Elrond. "And how quickly do you think I can make this change, anyway?"

"Heartbeats." The Elfking said to her then. "It was but three heartbeats before all the taint of it flowed out of my body. Then I fell, insensate, atop the Istari at my feet." He shifted weight and gave her a look.

It was embarrassing. She occupied herself by taking a pinkish slice of bread made with the juice of cherries and spooning some mixed-berry compote and cream onto it. She waggled it in air a little. The stuff was heavy and built like thick pastry. "It… it took longer… where I was."

The elves looked at one another, and even Dorondir drifted closer.

"Where were you?" asked the Lord Elrond.

"Wherever he went." She made a head gesture at the King. "And he went to a grey place."

"Twilight," Elrond said quietly. "The obsession of the Sinda, and why their eyes are so sure in the grey in-between that puzzles the rest of the world."

"Tell me. Tell me why you won't let me help you."

"Because," Elrond's brows rose, "right now, as we sit here, I can feel the pull of the East on me. It is a sure thing that the Elfking felt it too, at one time. The challenge of finding an explanation was simplified with both of us suffering the weight of it. Simple math."

"Triangulation." Said the Elfking. "Up until the point where you… did what you did." His brows drew down and he looked into his wine, unwilling to meet her gaze.

"You're angry." She guessed.

"I'm… not," the Elfking's soft bottom lip caught in his teeth and rolled out. "It's not anger. The task has become more difficult by your action… but I do not regret my restoration, Lusis Buckmaster. The Lord Elrond will not regret his own."

"But for now," the dark-haired elf's chin rose, and his deep voice rolled through the room, "for now I must remain in this affected state for long enough that we can use this pull I feel to guide us back to the wrongdoer."

"Something else happened to you on that mountain," Lusis said around cherry bread. The elves had a way of making bread taste like pound cake. If there was pound cake, she could imagine it would taste like premium sweetmeats. She glanced at the King, who was still stationed behind her and looking at her golden-threaded dark brown hair.

"I do not have a clear memory of it," the Elfking said. "We are better served trying to glean what the Lord remembers."

"Just taking messages," said Elrond quietly and then raised his right hand, "and this." On the heel of his hand, near the base of his thumb, was a small and discolored burn.

Lusis started to get up to go to the Lord, but the Elfking's irresistible mandate stayed her in her chair. Also, his long hand turned over in air before her so that she could see he had something very similar, a fading circle of burn on the pad of his pale hand, just under his index finger. "One might have been a coincidence, but a pair of these?"

"The delivery systems… would need to be very different." Lusis turned in her seat and tapped the King's hand with her fingertip. His skin was no longer angry with the burn, and there were no longer details to be seen. She looked at the anonymous and faded burn, hatefully, because she was sure what had befallen these great elves was no accident. "But they have in common, the North. Or so Lindir said. He said that, before you fell ill, my Lord, you had mail from messengers who smelled like winter. That means couriers like the people of Buckmaster Spur, or we Buckmasters ourselves." Her voice waggled a bit on that, and she looked at the King's pale, graceful hand, and thought of her father, and how livid he would be made by news like this.

"I would think so," Elrond admitted. "Thranduil, you were fighting dragons, were you not?"

"Yes, and one of the dragons carried me to the summits of Bregolnag where we began to strive against one another, mightily. She was a female of the winter breed, and bright. My thoughts are clear to the point where I cut away her head. But confusion overtook me then." He allowed his hand to be inspected by the curious Istari, and held it wordlessly still before her. "When I did come to, by then the cold was bitter. A killing cold. Night was drawing in. But I was yet adulterated on the snow, unaware of where I truly was, what Age I was in, and unable to rise. On the point of collapse, I used the dragon's blood for heat."

Elrond's mouth opened, and then eased shut around an exhalation. "You survived by way of setting one certainty of death against the other, old friend. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Thranduil's fingers moved. He squeezed Lusis' hand in his own. "And no. I had a strong prospect of rescue." His glance in Lusis' direction was thankful.

She turned his hand over again. "I can feel something there." Lusis pushed aside her little wood platter and extended her arm across the table to Elrond. "I won't break the spell. I swear, but…"

Elrond shook his head. "Istari, I am well warned. As the King has many times discussed with me, I am also our last lead. If we are truly serious about tracking this thing back to its place of origin, it falls to me to endure this a-"

The King snatched up Lord Elrond's hand and inspected it. He slid his fingertips along the burn, which caused Rivendell's Lord to press his lips in a line against pain.

"I can, indeed, feel an impression in your flesh. A mark, Lord Elrond." The King muttered. "An unstructured mark with raised edges."

Lusis stood at her seat, "Yes, and I was in a strong Northern gale with you, my King. I saw that it suppressed your fire. That light inside of you is held back by force. I saw it when I delivered you from it. But the effort must be colossal. The force, itself, tore at my touch. I protected the flame, and when it grew, it burst through the wind. Even I had to flee from it. It proved to me that it's not a natural thing that has befallen you. Your fires are meant to burn. What I don't understand is how the marks are still on you?"

"Like scars." The King released Lord Elrond's hand at last.

"Like a waxen seal," she looked up at Lord Elrond, suddenly. "Wait. With what do you open the mail?"

"A steel opener. Elven paper can produce a cut." The Lord shrugged slightly, and it was the most human motion that she'd ever seen in an elf. It was… strange. Elrond seemed, in a distant way, like Men. It was faint, but… she could see it.

The Elfking asked. "What was in the letter?"

Lord Elrond suddenly seemed startled. His brows rose and he prepared to set in with an explanation, and realized he had none. "Why," he glanced from his memory and looked up at the blond Sindar, "there was none. Just… just the envelope, empty. I remember looking at it after my head cleared, and feeling that I should not touch it."

"There is little enough in common between a dragon and a letter," said the Elfking. He nipped his bottom lip and then turned to Dorondir, to whom he extended a graceful hand.

Dorondir was Elrond's spy in Mirkwood, but elves were good, and spies selected for their ability to endure an inevitable crisis of loves – loyalty to two masters, two elf cities. Dorondir bowed to the Lord, Elrond, and then to the Elfking. Then he took a flat leather packet from the inside of the cloak he wore. Wordlessly, he set it on the table.

The Elfking took Lusis' hand back from touching the paper.

Dorondir undid the white ribbon that closed the packet and took out an envelope and a thin sliver of silvery metal whose handle was shaped like a crow feather. He set both on the white cloth and backed away with his eyes on Lord Elrond.

"You took these from my office?" the Lord's powerful voice had quelled. He was taken aback.

Dorondir bowed low, "Lord's-seneschal Lindir stepped over these when he took you out, but… in the room this seemed the last thing you touched, along with the opener," he turned his head. "I took them because I so strongly believed that my King could figure this thing out, whether you woke or not." He straightened, set a hand on his chest, and swung it out to open to the Lord. His head remained bowed in surrender. That was part of what the gesture was. Helplessness to do anything but love and respect another.

He gave the same gesture to the Elvenking of the Halls and the King's head tipped softly. "Elrond, the true reason for a spy… is to see in him or her… the esteem for another power, another place. If the love is strong-"

"The house is worthy," Elrond sipped his wine and looked at the letter. "Good Thranduil… I'm not touching that thing again. I also advise you against it."

"But you forget that I have," he took and raised Lusis' unresisting hand. She managed her embarrassment. Truthfully, she didn't want it to mar the simple pleasure of holding the hand of the Elvenking, even though he meant the gesture as one-part for her restraint, and one-part for the protection she proffered. She would protect him. In the world, he was one of the very few who could hope to restrain her.

The Lord held his breath when the Elvenking's pale hand reached to the envelope. He set his fingertips on the roughness of the paper.

"Lusis?"

"Next to nothing," she shrugged. "You're safe."

He released her hand and lifted the thing. After a moment of staring at it in their expectant silence, he turned it over. "Such yellow and coarse paper. No watermark to it. It is not elven. We produce our paper from mulches of wood dust and it is pressed differently. Each land has a mark."

"Mirkwood has several." Mused Lord Elrond.

"Yes. There are many communities outside my Halls," said the Elfking distractedly. "I rule them. I don't tell them where they must reside." His pale eyes were fixed as he looked into the envelope. "No address. No name. No writing whatsoever. Just a seal…."

"As happens more than you would think when dealing with the Northern Dunedain." Elrond made a graceful gesture at the blank condition of the envelope. "I thought it no more than a letter from them. Even Tatharion will send missives in this state, and many there can write in tengwar. They believe any letters intercepted in this state will tell the interceptor very little."

"And here we are," the Elvenking said dryly. He set the letter on the table before him and leaned over it. "Did you feel or hear anything within it before you opened it? Coins would make sound, and the weight of the envelope would be irregular. It would no longer be completely flat." His head tipped and his eyes narrowed. He pulled the envelope closer.

"I felt nothing of the sort, and heard nothing. It could only have been a slip of paper," Elrond's head slowly tipped forward and he asked, "Do… my old friend, do you honestly believe you will learn something about the identity of our attacker from as common an object as an envelope?"

The Elfking's pale grey eyes widened. He snuffled the red seal, which had a simple impression upon it – a gull. His eyes narrowed, "Lightning."

Lusis gawped and knocked the thing out of his hand. It fluttered to the floor where she stood over it. Dorondir looked at her oddly and she told him, "Know what smells like lightning?"

"Dragon's blood." The Elfking looked across at Elrond. "That is the spell, Lord of Rivendell. That is what laid you low. Enchantments created by someone resourceful enough that the seal has mint oil mixed in its wax, lest you detect the smell of the dragon's blood that makes it dark red. And the gull is a symbol… of what? The sea? The West? A gull may travel back and forth freely."

His white-blond head cocked mildly left and a faraway look crossed his lowered lids. He was a sea elf, after all. She wondered that he wore no crown in the presence of the Council of the West. He was, before anything else, a King. He needed to remind them of that.

The Elfking's eyes rose, "When you opened the seal, it was little different than when I opened the dragon. Steel to blood." He eyed the little crow's feather of steel that the Lord used on letters. Its make was incredibly refined. The forges at Rivendell were Noldorian and second to none.

"Would that your dragon had been the author of this. You've taken her head," Elrond sighed and eased back in his chair. "If this had been her cleverness, I could heal of this and walk free of this place. As it is, Loss of the Vanyar is saying he should bear me West at once. He is one of Those Who Woke. They have no father but Eru."

Lusis found it terribly hard to believe, "He's that old?" she added, "Really?"

"Most Vanyar should be," the Elfking drained his wine and set the cup on the table. "It is simplicity itself to deal with someone who is as old as time, I assure you. And you, Lord, will pay for abandoning the field during their visit."

Elrond held up a flattened hand and said, "Paying. Right now." He gave a mildly satisfied smile.

Lusis glanced over at the Elflord, "To confirm… we're using Lord Elrond to find the enemy?"

"That is the only plan you left to us," the Elfking told her. "You healed me."

"If you had any sense, you'd let me heal you both," she sighed at him and then pressed her palm to her forehead. "But you're so full of schemes and plans."

His head raised. "I am."

She couldn't help the smile that crossed her face. He was inveterate. She glanced over her shoulder at Dorondir who still looked at her. She picked up the envelope and put it back in the parcel he'd carried. "We need to seal it away."

"Fire will seal it," said the glowing King beside her. "I will see to it."

"Dorondir, I haven't seen my troop, or my brothers, since waking, or my elf-friends, and Ewon was hurt. Can you take me to them?" She looked down at herself, "Right after you take me to a change of clothes. To my Ranger clothes, I mean. Wherever they are."

"Of course, friend-Lusis," he said quietly. "Please pardon me, great ones."

The Elfking stood aside and watched Lusis closely with his silver eyes as she passed from him and went to stand with Dorondir. "Please call for me if you discover more," she asked uselessly, for the shining Elfking had already averted his long eyes to the right. She soaked in the sight of him, glowing like some celestial arm curled in him and a star lodged in his heart. He was breathtaking.

Lusis hurried to turn from him.

Dorondir gave a departing bow and closed his hands behind him as he walked with her.

They went out by way of a hall that sloped upward, and they were entering the main body of the guest halls before she spoke to him again.

"I hear they threw you in jail." She said quietly. "I'm sorry about that."

"Thank you, friend-Lusis," his chin dropped, which was as close to a nod as his kind came. "I am grateful it was house-arrest. I was kept in the upper caverns by the offices of the King's Elites. They… they made sure I was comfortable and cared for."

She glanced over at him, "Still. You obeyed your King, and were punished for it."

"I forsook my King for the sake of my Lord, and I am a spy, friend-Lusis. I believe Eithahawn did the right thing by his King and his father. I believe he feared he might do me violence if he did not put me out of his sight."

"You strike me as being quite a bit more dangerous than Eithahawn."

"When his King is outside of the Halls, the power he wields is the power of a King. And when he is inside of them, he is as a Prince. Only Legolas could outrank him, and that only because he was born of the union of King and Queen. He could easily have banished me. It would have gone that way, I believe, but that the Elfking put Eithahawn in my charge often after he figured out I was a spy out of Rivendell – Lord Elrond's." Dorondir's head dropped and he couldn't find words for a moment. He finished. "My thanks for your concern."

He was a Noldor, she bet, just like Lindir was. "Well, if he banished you, with hope you would have come back to the King, and I'd have asked you to join my troop. You're a good warrior, strong, and tireless. We don't have to live here, Dorondir, and I don't forget my friends, particularly not when they've been laid low."

The elf exhaled, "He needs you. You know of whom I speak."

"And, at that point, you would have needed me more. Trust me, the Elfking is capable of making decisions quickly to get what he wants and needs." She pushed on the long fabric that tried to tangle up her lengthy steps. Elves glided. It was humans who stomped around. This was no worry for them.

He inhaled and glanced over her. "You look beautiful. I am curious. Why would you want to change out of such lovely clothes?"

She exhaled, "Because my brothers and my troop have never seen me in a dress."

There was a long pause before his green eyes slid toward a tall open room to the left. "Then hide, while I fetch your clothes. It would not do for you to be taunted by your brothers."

She scowled at the fact he was trying, very hard, not to laugh on the end of that.

"You do look beautiful." He told her before she stepped into an empty guest room and, seeing as there was no door – this being an elf room – she slogged over to hide behind the wardrobe. Nothing embarrassing about a grown woman doing that.

He was as good as his word, and brought her washed and patched clothes to her, but with new pants of elven make, new underclothes, and a new leather vest as well. She dressed quickly, and kept her leather boots and the cloak. She needed a couple more pairs of these elf boots made, she decided.

Dorondir smoothed her dress over one arm and nodded at her. "They are straight down the hall, and through the gathering-room, friend-Lusis. You will see them."

Of course she would. There were no doors. But he pointed at her hair as she started by. "You may think to muss your hair. It is so smooth, right now, with such lovely waves."

"Got it," she nodded at Dorondir. "If you see Eithahawn, I'm looking for him."

"Yes, Yellow Istari."

"Burn that." She pointed at the dress.

"No, Yellow Istari." He chuckled and turned from her. "I will bring it to your rooms."

"My what?"

"It is for later. Much later. You may now face your friends and brothers without the shame, and the power, I might note, of this elf dress of yours," he bowed to her.

"You're making me grumpy," she stopped trying to mess up her hair and just bound it up with a cord from her pocket. When she turned to look for him he was in the hall. He walked backward a few steps, his green eyes sparkling in the sunlight, before he vanished up one of the nearby passages.

Lusis hadn't had any downtime since she'd left her former home in the North.

Her first stop was to round up her troop and her wide-eyed brothers. She was determined to show them around this place.

"I thought the elves were leaving the land." Elsenord pointed around at the stream of elves on the walkways overhead. One of whom loped along after a small Silvan elf child running at her top speed.

"No one tells the Elfking what to do…" Lusis grinned and side-hugged her brother. "Except for the elves of Mirkwood. They'll go when they're ready to go. The King makes an effort to get along with the other children of Eru – Men. Us. He doesn't seem inclined to leave us in a lurch, considering his actions saved Long Lake from an invasion of snakes larger than the worm-head you saw him kill."

"That," Remee spread his hands in air, "was amazing. He moved so… slowly. Not what you'd think. He didn't move quickly until the killing stroke."

"The King knows how to kill dragons." Lusis pointed up into the hundred-foot dome of the Halls above and showed them where great white walkways ran wall-to-wall. "Those things that brace the old stone of these hills, you can see them to either end of the great cavern? Those are dragon's ribs. The Kingdom's-seneschal remembers when he came home and they appeared in the earth hereabouts. They're part of a dragon the Elfking brought down."

"There is a Kingdom's-seneschal?" Elsenord turned to walk backwards and found that a young and curious elf glided behind them. He couldn't have been – by his appearance – more than twelve or fourteen, and looked like a girl with a slender body, slightly broadened shoulders, and long chestnut rings of hair, but there he was with daggers, a very real bow, and arrows, and when he saw he had a Ranger's attention, his round cheeks reddened, and he stepped off the side of the bridge. He dropped onto another and shot through the elves there. "What a place. I… I think we had a tail."

Now Steed's brows rose, "Ah, at that age a human can hardly look them in the eye, Elsenord. They're little more than children, and spook easily. I know this."

"Because you are thick with elf-blood?" Redd patted Steed on the head with a hand so large it covered the other man's entire crown. "So much so it will take you years to grow back all that facial hair they had you shave off?"

Steed chuckled and shoved at Redd's hand. He even sounded more like an elf, actually. The more time he spent among them, the more he answered that part of his blood. When Redd let him alone, Steed added. "Because of how elves speak to one another. And I know the story of my great-grandmother, in fact. When she was a child, she refused to speak before the age of ten. Later, she explained she spent the time hearing some of our thoughts and trying, striving very hard, to have the family hear hers. Some are blooded enough to do this. Some are not. But imagine a young elf faced with Men. They can hear nothing from Men – it is our nature. They have spent their young lives surrounded by the thoughts and intentions of elves, as if swimming in a warm pool. And we are dry land. Silent as the grave. We're frightening. And, as with my kin, it takes time for them to build trust."

"Ah. Poor child," Elsenord said. "It was not my intention to scare her."

"Him." Steed corrected and noted, "I imagine that the King had the same difficulty as a youth. The Tatharion say 'If you do not underestimate a child, there will be fewer surprises later'."

"Here's my saying: Slow down," Icar muttered from the back of the line. "Hard to walk and draw. Yes."

"You are doing well, friend-Icar," Amathon said from over the Ranger's shoulder.

Icar jolted, half turned, and elbowed the big Elite. Amathon smothered a smile and tapped the book deftly. "Keep going, friend-Icar, or why do you think I was quiet back here?"

It didn't take much prompting for Icar to return to drawing. The cross-breeze lifted Amathon's thick, wine-red hair and riffled it in air around him. "Lusis-sell, you are right about the bones bracing the hills. A dragon's bones haunt the slayer. They are never far. All the Halls are shored up so. And, without, there is the head of a very old dragon, long since having fallen into the King's power and been purified. Her skull is closed in earth, and so her great eye-socket is a pool for the King to swim in. Ask him. He may show you, given time."

"And how many are you in census?" Elsenord asked.

Amathon glanced up at the Ranger. "Some things you cannot ask of me, Elsenord Buckmaster."

He cocked his head, "Are… are you not permitted to say?"

"I have only an estimate," the Elite told him, "and I am not permitted to relate it. If you wish to know, that is the business of the King, the Prince, or the Kingdom's-seneschal."

"It's only that… we were told we would be alone in this world and that your kind were abandoning-" Elsenord caught himself and said, "leaving us to our own devices."

A gloriously-dressed elf woman, not two feet behind, pushed her black waves over her bare shoulder and said, "The day is still young, Rangers, and we have but tasted the fruits of this beautiful forest – our world, long fought for – this Age. There is no hurry."

"Nimpeth?" Lusis glanced over the woman in an attitude of disbelief. The Elite looked so soft and lovely in her pale lilac dress. Her blue eyes glittered as she smiled at Lusis.

"Are you going to see father?" the elf asked.

"Yes. He wasn't in the," she glanced up at the levels where she'd come awake, "the same place where I recovered. The, uh, nestasad. Where is he?"

She wove through the men and stood with Lusis. "Are you trying to learn Sindarin? All Elites must learn the King's language. I should not be surprised, given you guard him as we do. If you want, I will help you."

"Ai. Teach her Silvan. The King knows it as well." Amathon pushed his wine-dark hair over his shoulder. "It's from Nandorian, and easier than learning Sindarin. Such a language is fine if you're born to it and your parents are whispering it in your head for years, but it is complex to speak."

"Any of us can teach you Silvan. You only need ask." she pointed out and waved Lusis and her Rangers along with her. "We'll take you to adar, but we must hurry. There are festivities to see to."

"Some kind of festival?" Remee asked excitedly.

"I suppose so," Lusis could only agree. If she looked down she could see carts of flowers coming in from the grounds-keepers. The people of the Halls were clearly happy, and she could definitely live with that. In fact, it made her happy too.

Amathon caught up with his wife before them, and she linked her arm around his. It was unprecedented to see their kind being so comfortably warm.

Someone laughed in the buzzing of moving and working people. This was about the only place that elf laughter, and all that it meant, could be heard ringing freely. Beside her, Elsenord gawped. "Was that… one of them?"

"This is their home," Lusis passed through sunbeams and opened her arms. "If you can't laugh in your own home-"

"It's Buckmaster Keep," Aric finished with a growl. "You think the big-guy is okay? I expected him to be around more."

Lusis cocked her head, "The Elfking?"

"I meant Ewon," he sighed and wiped his palms in his leathers, "but… yeah, now that you mention it. He was spent. I imagine that fighting so many dragons takes the pluck out of you."

"The King is fine," she told him. "I saw him earlier with Lord Elrond. He's recovering."

"This way," Nimpeth said and came back to Lusis' side. She motioned up at thick domes of glass beside which they were about to pass. This glass was multicolored and many feet deep. Easily as deep as Redd was tall. It had been included when it had been made, with the colored images of white, roan, and grey horses with riders in cloaks of many sheer colours. Some few rode tall white elk just as King Thranduil now did. "The glass you're seeing in this section came from Doriath. You'd be surprised how much has been salvaged from those ruins by Sinda who yet reside here, and, of course, through the strength and wisdom of Silvan elves. We have eight or nine breeds of flowers from those shores, and almost a dozen fruits. We rescued seeds and cuttings from the sea."

"It's beautiful," Lusis marveled at it, not sure how they'd managed to make the coloured glass stay in its intended shape.

"Doriath was full of marvels." Nimpeth nodded. "We are all taught that."

Remee asked her, "Fair-elf, were you there?"

"Not me. Not any of mine. I am Silvan through to the end of our line. Amathon's family has four Sindar in it… so far. Tall thing." She glanced up at him, fondly. "His fifth-emel – fifth-mother – is Sinda. She is one of the curators in the book rooms. She remembered where these glass domes were in Doriath, and was able to help in their recovery. They bring light to the Halls, yes, but more than that to our friends, the Sindar." She led them off the main thoroughfare and onto another winding bridge.

Redd made a peep of disbelief. "There is a book-room here, and no one… told me?"

"I will take you, after, friend-Redd." Amathon tipped forward and acceded. His starlight eyes shut under red-black lashes. He glanced up, "But you must do all you can: breathe deeply, count-backwards, pray to Eru, anything to restrain yourself, Hoard Librarian, for you cannot remove the books from the actual physical enclosure called the Book-Room."

He laughed and opened his arms to Amathon. "Not a problem. You'll hold me back."

"Teams of oxen couldn't hold you back." Amathon dodged him. "Ai! Keep off, giant Ranger."

They wound up walking quite happily with the two Elites giving a short guided tour. Amathon acted as a counterpoint to Nimpeth's glowing revelations about the surroundings. At one point, Nimpeth brought them down a hall full of glass vessels of all kinds, suspended on long, thin tubes, and lit, inside, with wicks. This was the installation of a famed Sinda artist from the second Age, now in the West. There could have been over 1000 of them in a web of white ropes above. Some vessels came from Doriath, some from Rivendell, Lorien, the faraway Grey Havens, and some from settlements whose names had all but passed from memory, and the rest were from the Halls. Up above, in the dark of this section, Nimpeth explained, they came together to mimic one of the Great Arms of Elbereth as it reached across the Western sky. Amathon leaned in to tell the Rangers, "Terribly difficult to clean."

Up ahead, his wife actually laughed.

Ewon was in a bright room by the surface. It was full of elf men and women with the most intricately rendered wooden swords – they were inlaid with stone that glinted in the light, to increase their weight.

The Rangers went in by way of a walk along the wall of the cavern. It broadened to a living rock balcony that overlooked the huge room below. She thought it might be glassed in. But it was a cave, in its own right, that opened to air on the side of the Halls that faced unbroken green. Along the lip of the deck on which she stood, swirled ornate elvish.

"The writing is so beautiful…. What does it say?" Icar sighed aloud. He glanced at Redd, but it was Amathon who answered him.

"It says," his head bowed as if standing before the throne, "I am a weapon of the King."

"It is part of the Oath of Elites," Nimpeth said, and her voice was proud.

Icar crouched to study the words and Redd stood over one. "King. This one is King. I… I know it from the books."

"Well done, Redd," Amathon smiled softly.

Lusis watched the broad, padded floor below, Ewon extended the arm that had been good. He cocked it in air and flattened his hand, just as soon as that had happened, his once injured arm swung up the sword around it, in a block. He sped this move up to frightening speed and ended in a sudden crossing of swords with a red-haired Silvan man who stood before him.

The sparring was terrific and ended when Ewon's sword-hilt spun in his palm to turn the blade, most unexpectedly. He gritted his teeth. Muscles along his torso swelled. He fought the momentum to swing the sword up the arc it had been falling down. "Dol." He said.

The red-haired elf stepped back and bowed to Ewon.

Ewon bowed to him, rose, and said, "Next."

"Hey!" Lusis called from above him.

He looked up and his deadly demeanor changed to one of open delight. "Hello, friend-Lusis. You are three days dreaming. I am glad to see you."

She nodded at him, "Can anyone play?"

Below them, the room-full of elves smiled and invited the Northern Rangers down among them. Word of their worthiness had already passed through the legendary Elite guard.

They spent most of the day sparring with the Elites, learning what they could of elven swordsmanship, and showing some of their tricks, certain of which were pretty extreme. Lusis was the only human warrioress they'd ever had in their training room. Several Elites were eager to fight her, and then they set in exchanging sword skills with her. Somewhere in the mix, they exchanged wood for steel.

Icar sat and drew the practice sessions with elves grouping around to see his progress.

Clouds streamed over the sky, fast in the blue.

Icar and Steed demonstrated some of the best Ranger swordsmanship Lusis could remember of either of them, and this caused great stir among the Elves. Icar stumbled before Steed and Lusis rushed in to protect him, this was common behavior of Rangers. Like wolves took turns chasing goats and musk oxen, when one Ranger was spent, the other came. Behind her, and to her left, Redd took out his massive, cleaver-like sword and stood waiting.

Lusis stepped out just to give them a chance to see the huge man in action. Redd jogged up and swung his four and a half foot blade. The report when it struck elf-steel was terrific. The elf staggered to the left and a cry rose up at once in the room because this was an Elite and many had never seen him knocked to one side. For several minutes, it seemed there was nothing the elf could do but block and retreat from the sheer size and power of the massive Northern Ranger.

Suddenly, the Elite threw sword to sheath and had his fighting knives out in an eye blink. He dodged under Redd's next swing, stepped in, and Redd jolted back, just out of reach of reversed blades. But that had been pure feign. The elf stepped back with him and crossed the knives in scissor-like fashion, far below Redd's throat. He kept the blades low to prevent accident, but the message was clear. Redd stopped moving. The elf panted, "Dol."

All around her, a cry went up. "Ai!"

The darkness was drawing down, and it was chilly before they damped the fires and left the training room. Once they reached the bridges, the Elites shot away from path to path as if they had wings on their feet.

That left the Rangers to find their way back to the guestrooms. They did this through a combined effort. The Halls were expansive. Remee dropped down onto a bed in one of the doorless, fern-patterned guest halls. He covered his face with his hands and came out again, astonished, "Did that just happen? Did… did elves just spar with us?"

"It's true," Elsenord laughed aloud. He paced the central hall all but hugging himself. "Good gods, what would Kirstman make of this? How… how very little he knows and understands about these people."

Lusis set her swords on the bed and looked across the hall at the steaming brass tubs there. She walked over to an empty hall, stepped before the tall brass heater that protruded from the stone ceiling, and started peeling out of her clothes. Brass tubs were built into each spoke of hallway that hosted the guest rooms. They were gravity fed from above, and heated in tall brass kettles like the one that came from the ceiling. "What do you mean, Else?" she called across the hall.

"Many speeches were made before your return, Lusis, about the elves and their infidelity to Men of their own blood." He saw the other Rangers picking tubs to soak in. Steed was already curled up in one, blowing bubbles as he listened, and Elsenord got out of his coat. "But these elves are Northern. No, they aren't the blood we know, but they are good to Men. We can be good to them. Good friends."

"They will leave eventually," Lusis said from across the hall. "They will have no choice. Will you curse them for it then?"

Silence came on the heels of that, broken only by Icar sliding into a pool of hot water with a sigh. Swordplay of the type he'd demonstrated with Steed was hard on the muscles. They'd all had a workout today, and though none had bested the Elites, they were wiser for it.

Remee got up from where he'd collapsed on the bed and set his hands on his thighs. "What you're saying, Lusis, is that we still have time to do this right."

"This…" she looked around her and swallowed unbearable sadness before she could speak again, "This will probably be the last Age for elves in Middle-Earth, boys."

"We have time." Remee stood to say. "We have time to part from them… properly."

Properly? Lusis sank down below the water. She didn't know how one parted from them at all.

The Rangers slept because Lusis did.

They were, primarily, her men, so when they went across the hall and found her wrapped in a mix of towels and blankets, they let her rest, and took rest of their own.

She woke to warm dry clothes, having hung them on the steel cage around the great boiler. She dressed and found Aric taking money from her brothers at cards. "I might have warned you," she smiled at them. The Rangers got to their feet as she approached.

Redd opened his hands, "We should talk about their book-room." His eyes glimmered with excitement as he nodded at her.

"Gods, Redd, I just woke up." She rubbed her face. In her trance-like sleep she'd been soaring over Buckmaster Spur and watching men on horseback gather. "Let me get my bearings."

"There's a lot of noise in the outer halls." Elsenord said eagerly.

"I'm sure there is," she did a headcount and frowned. "Where's Steed?"

"Well, we sent him to, you know…" Remee opened his hands, "check it out."

Lusis set her hands on her hips and bent over her older brother, "And he listened to you?"

"Well… I'm a Buckmaster, so…."

She gathered her patience. "I hope Icar is asleep on one of the beds back there where I can't see him, and he's not running off and interfering in whatever festivities the elves are having."

"He… he was doing that," Remee used his best and most handsome grin at her – so persuasive. "But he woke up a little before you did… and he didn't want to play cards so…."

Redd nodded in agreement, "What he did want to do was draw."

"Redd," she stared at him. "You sent him up there? We should not interfere with the elves during times like these. They should be free to be… elven without having to worry about humans running around among them. This is less a problem for Steed."

"They probably won't notice him. He's just one little Ranger," Aric said, unhelpfully. "Not like we sent Redd up there."

At the sound of those words, Elsenord stepped back and looked up along the huge Ranger, "Someone might hang a flag off you, friend."

"Why thank you," Redd patted the top of Elsenord's head, genially.

The shadow through the hall was covered in heaps of red satin embroidered with gold thread around the chest and shoulders so that a great collection of leaves appeared to be falling from his red-golden hair. Eithahawn, in the clip of his station, that glowing half-circlet of silver leaves and gems. He glided up the steps to her and glanced over the Rangers with an incline of his head.

He stopped before Lusis and exhaled softly. He stood for a long moment, with his robes settling around him, magnificent with his long eyes cast at the floor on his right. Then he said, "Friend-Lusis, you must try to understand-"

"I don't." She told him unequivocally, "And Dorondir already tried that tactic. The one where he explains you made the right decision about his being chained to a wall under Elite guard, afraid he might be jettisoned from his home."

"His home is Rivendell, because he is a spy," said the tall elf. He didn't see the Rangers look from him to Lusis, some of them slack-jawed.

"He is your friend and guardian."

Eithahawn's eyes narrowed a little, "And if he is not capable of choosing my King before his Lord, it may be better for him to return to Rivendell and make ready to cross into the West. There is only so much tearing asunder a heart can take, Lusis."

"Yours or his?"

The tall elf stiffened. He smoothed himself at once, and said to her, "Yellow Istari, it is the King's wish that you join him as soon as is convenient. I trust you know the way to the upper Halls." He inclined his head to her and turned to leave, his great red clothes trailing the floor behind his long steps.

She blinked at him, "Eithahawn?"

He stood and did not look at her. His voice was calm, but chill. "You are not seneschal in these Halls, Lusis Buckmaster. There are those who would have banished him for leaving the King among Orcs. I make decisions for reasons that make sense to elves, and inside the context of the Kingdom, and for the safety of all involved. I don't expect you to understand." He paused, "You should join the Elvenking."

He drew down the hall and vanished.

Lusis exhaled and shook her head. "We're going to get the King."

Aric's eyes were large as he contemplated her words. "And then we should consider hiding for a while. I didn't think that elf could get angry."

"There are strange elves here," she turned to Redd, "old, old elves. Older than the oldest records, I think, Redd. And they're not from Middle Earth… they claim to be… Western. You'll know them when you see them."

"Are they bad news?"

"I don't know yet," she confessed to him, "but this Kingdom has come under pressure in the absence of the King. He came for me." She glanced at her brothers, "He divested himself of crowns and swords, and any sign of his Kingship and came to the North to get me. Things are changing here, and… the Elfking is beginning to move his pieces around the board."

"Is that what you are?" Elsenord asked darkly.

"Relax," she said around the thumbnail she tucked in her teeth as she thought. "That's what you are too. What we all are. In fact, that's how he sees himself. It may be the secret to his success. He's as much cold fire as hot. And he would die for these elves."

Aric dropped his cards and abandoned the little table they'd been playing at. He picked up his sheathed sword and pulled the belts on. "What do you think he's doing?"

She looked at him, and up the hall and then Lusis tore away at a run after Eithahawn. She would not have caught up with him if he hadn't been standing at the front of the Guest Halls, caught in an attitude of indecision.

"Eithahawn," she skidded on the polished floor and came to a stop beside him. "We should be friends, you and I. We shouldn't fight. I do enough of that with your father."

He turned his downcast head in her direction without looking at her. "In the past eight weeks, he has let it be known that he summons Legolas back to the Kingdom. He has moved Arasell Mundiel to Head of All Sections, and Merilin Ewonion to Warrior-seneschal, who is second only to me. He has made a special detachment within the Elite guard – the Aglareb – and he no longer wears the crowns outside of service to the Kingdom." He turned to look at her now. "Has he told you anything?"

"You don't know?" She asked.

Eithahawn's teeth flashed as he paced. "He's in and out – away finding you – off with the Council of the West doing business, and no one ever knows the full extent of what he's doing! If we did there might be some threat that we might undo it."

"What does it look like?" she asked him. She could hear her troop rolling up behind her. "What does it look like to you?"

"Like he's getting ready to go with them."

Lusis agreed with this assessment. "Which means there's a very good chance he's doing nothing of the sort. We need to relax and not get paranoid." She pointed at him, a very human gesture. "And not chain our friends and allies to walls."

"I couldn't let Elrond's spy undermine my father's authority in this Kingdom in front of the Council of the West, no matter that we have been friends for years." Eithahawn paced tightly, his long arms wrapped across his chest. "The value of my King is too great for that."

"And he told you that he left at the King's order."

Eithahawn turned slowly and looked at her.

Lusis brows went up. "No?"

"Yes... in fact. Dorondir would have proposed that the King take the Lord. And your Rangers arrived with horses of Rivendell. Along with the King, they carried you here."

Lusis' tanned lids fluttered. Carried. She was a grown woman and a Ranger. It was mortifying. But there went Eithahawn, in his very inhuman way, utterly ignorant of this, and immune to her distress. She couldn't tell if he – like many Men would – expected a woman to be feeble, or if he simply assumed that everyone, at one time or other, succumbed. With so many women scouts, guards, and elites among the elves, the latter was likely. And, not being feeble, she feared the former.

The grand, golden elf remained unaware of her unspoken question.

"If he'd carried the Lord … he would have been accompanied by way of that choice."

Redd shook his head, "He… he wasn't doing as well as you think, lad. Still, with the horses we had… yes it could easily have been done that way. It is strange he didn't come to that conclusion."

Eithahawn's long, orange-blond hair slid over his shoulder as he looked at the night sky overhead, the guest rooms being close to the surface and capped in several places with thick glass. The windswept moon painted a long splash of blue onto the tiles, just as it probably had for nearly all generations of Men. The light made the Kingdom's-seneschal's aqua-blue eyes seemed cyan. Their dark pupils shrank from round to slightly oblong in the moonlight, and silence was observed before Eithahawn decided, "He didn't want to be here."

He turned and headed down the hall, the peridot in his clip glittering against hair his hands reached up and stroked into three thick strands right behind his ear. He absently drew a loose braid of them, paused, and threw the glance that invited her to follow from over his shoulder.

"That's all of us, troop," Lusis exhaled through her teeth. "The King's been stalling for time. You can bet that's not because he doesn't like the company."

"And just when we were getting flattered by the fact he came to get you in person," Remee chuckled. "I could scarcely believe he was a King. Even after we arrived."

"Yes, in fact. He did go to retrieve friend-Lusis in person. Do not mistake his purpose…. Purposes. Aside from which, you have clearly never seen my King's impatience," The Kingdom's-seneschal sighed softly on the end of that, "or you would never have mistaken him for a normal elf."

They followed through the pattern of staggered blue lights – the moon-glow through glass inclusions in the cavern above – as it fell on the living-stone floors.

He led them out of the shallow area of the guest halls, and deeper into the rising stone, and as they went the halls became more crowded with elves on their way to the resounding space known as the Grand Gallery.

The Gallery was a massive stretch of hollowed stone at the highest point of the Halls. The cavern was, in the day, golden with glowing stone and sunlight; green with the nut trees that reached up from the cavern's broad, sunny patches; fragrant with the bumble of flowering vines and strawberry runners that draped them from above. It was colossal. There were many small stone bridges for strolling upon, which crossed a pair of chattering rivers through the uneven floor. Under the moon, velvety moss looked like glimmering woolen cozies on the stones that sat in perpetual darkness, softly luminescent. The underground rivers were crystal clear, and ran deep, in places, from springs within the mountain. The Rangers and Kingdom's-seneschal had come in by a path usually used by the King. This afforded them the luxury of space and relative privacy, because there was a large round room connected to the upstairs King's Sanctuary, called an Aerie – a room off the throne hall to which she'd never been – which was closed in except for one door, now under Elite guard.

Eithahawn paced the round confines of this room and looked up the curving wood stairs toward the King's Sanctuary. He expected that his King, the man who so frustrated him, and whom he loved like a father, would possibly emerge from there.

Like the rest of the Rangers, Lusis looked around the room. Its roof was a filigree steel and crystal that the moon flooded with nearly effervescent light.

Beyond the door, a natural outcropping stood. On it a dais had been carved and planed into glass-like flatness. It was used by officials when they came to view this natural marvel, possibly from the throne hall, which was upstairs from here, but very near. The Istari marveled as she stared out of the stone door at it. If only the petitioners upstairs could lay eyes on this wonder. Predictably, this being an elven gathering, there were no chairs to be seen. There was a lustrous wedge of crystal near the front of the dais nearly six feet tall. The moon had turned it into a blue and white fire. A book sat open upon it.

That mass of quartz was astounding. When she stepped outside the door, the Elite there moved his chin down, fractionally. In this case, it was assent. She was allowed. But Lusis hardly cared. She felt drawn to the light of that great mass of crystal like the head of a flower, and in it, she thought… she could hear centuries. She stared at its light. Whispers echoed in her mind. As she stared, so rose the sound of them. Elvish ran from her thoughts and into her ears – many elves speaking many elven tongues. She thought she heard the still, deep, supremacy of one elf melt away into the rumbling roar of Thranduil calling his people to war. A woman's voice rose from it in high, sweet threnody, nearly as clear to her as if the elf had stepped onto the dais beside her.

Lusis shook herself and stepped away, cold. It had frightened her in the part of her mind comfortable with pain, blisters, running all day, sleeping on the ground, and hunting for her supper in a brook. The practical humanity in her that could neither see nor hear time. Just now.

She backed up a few steps and looked down from the edge of the platform on which she stood, her eyes largely unseeing. Except that there was a deep pool below, now blue in the moonlight. A small troop of red-gold mottled fish bobbed in that deep stretch. The elves threw bits of nut-bread to them. She glanced up at the cavern again, and the world rushed in. The sound of elves was a dull roar. Among people who were, naturally, quiet. It reached into her consciousness: a lot of elves gathering. More than she'd ever seen. More than her Keep. More than the Town. More than a city. Her breathing quickened to the point of suffocation. Gods. How many lives was he responsible for? Yet they kept arriving.

She was still standing on the edge of the stage, frozen to one side of the large door, when the Elfking descended the stair. He came down from the Sanctuary clad in unblemished white, threaded with whorls of seed-crystal snow. His hoarfrost cloak shone behind him. The red foliage and berries of his living-crown were his only deep colour. He was a portrait in red and white, painfully beautiful. Lusis could see only the pillar of star-fire for an airless moment; her brothers fell back as he crossed the room and drifted toward the dais. He paused so that Eithahawn could step forward and, in full view from the broad doorway, bow so that one knee touched the floor. The Kingdom's-seneschal rose, effortlessly.

When he passed her, she smelled snow and red berries and the slumber of life. Winter.

The elves beyond her gave a great thunderclap of welcome. They broke apart into booming chants of elven that built up to a tidal ambiance of sound that shook the crystal at the head of the dais. She felt Eithahawn pass through the door to flank the Elfking – far back, and on his right. The King had come to the middle of the long stone platform and had stopped there, buffeted, she imagined, as she was nearly pressed flat to the wall by the most beauteous sound.

And yet, for all of that, they submerged into ringing echo as one.

The echoes died. It was possible to hear her own heartbeat.

The King breathed, "Le suilannad."

The elves, by number, drowned the room in the response. "Suilannad Taur."

His voice came direct on the heels of the last echo. "And welcome to our new friends from the West." He turned in the glow of the crystal, his profile flooded with light, his eyelashes white, as he shut his eyes and bowed to the balcony on his left. Lusis saw Eithahawn also turn and bow, and when he straightened, his blue-green eyes darted to her briefly. His face was more set and cold than it was doll-like. The Elfking's expression could best be described as beautiful and closed. He had straightened slowly, and in time with Eithahawn. That, she'd learned by now, was the true measure of elven respect.

The cavern was utterly silent. The King glided slowly left, "I have been abroad on tour of the holdings of late. I have been to the Southern Brown Lands, and as far as the Northern Mountains in our forest this autumn." There were several heartbeats before he said to them. "The forest is vast. The forest is… healing. This Age. Men are rising, but these Men do no harm to the Greenwood. Their wish very much appears to be as ours is – to live within the arms of this marvel, or at least as close by it as they are comfortable. I have, of late, travelled with Northern Rangers in our number. I have learned what is comfortable about a forest for an elf, is not necessarily ideal for Men. In this I find hope. Our demands of the living canopy will be different. Complementary. I work toward this goal. This is the forest of forests. It can protect many. It can support many. And so we protect and support it. I have seen its increase. Fingers of green climbing the foothills far North of us, and sweeping aside the dust and mold of the Brown Lands far South. The forest is returning to places once cut clear, once poisoned, once claimed by the Enemy. The great lungs of them breathe life into the lands."

The crowd made no whisper while the King spoke. Lusis put a hand over her heart to hush it, and watched his tall, white figure from behind, as his head tipped gently forward and down to the right. Affection. Affection for them that he couldn't quite contain.

"I must, this Lasbelin – this Autumn – remind you that our work is not yet done in this land… in this world."

Eithahawn's head turned a fraction toward the left. Lusis edged out to see Loss, Glir, and Osp standing at the balcony closest the dais. Among the Silvan elves they were taller, and they were clearly not of that bloodline. She watched Loss' chin rise as if in response to the King's words. His head turned minutely, and his eyes looked toward Glir without her seeing. No one seemed to notice that Osp, the Noldorian with copper eyes, was immersed.

The King moved. Slight tip toward the right and his head turned. She knew his blue-silver eyes were hidden under low lids. "There is much darkness still. Great, dark mouths seeking the shelter of our Greenwood. Swarms of blood-hungry bats... of late. Slaughters of Orcs abroad. There is unrest among Men. And I have slain dragons."

Now some of the elves reacted. She could hear them inhale. They were stunned.

His voice was suddenly crisp with temper, "I have burned with the scourge of dragon's blood, confined in red halls close to undoing. That atrocity of the North rears, again, and our green stronghold lays at its feet. Our work is not done here. Our work is not done."

Lusis checked Eithahawn's blue-green gaze. It was ignored by those he'd fixed it upon: the Council of the West. Glir's lips moved in the exhalation of a word. Loss' brows rose. Osp leaned slightly to the right and listened. Lusis saw light between him and the others, even if they didn't notice it.

The Elfking walked toward the front of the stage. "The Fourth Age is like all others – not to be feared, but to be faced. It will be navigated like a passage of river. We will know it well. We will love it well. We will change, gracefully, inside its rhythm. I have summoned to these Halls, my own, Legolas Thranduilion, and I bring before you Eithahawn Auronion." He set a pale hand on the book beside him. "Into the pages of record I have recognized my foster, as is… long overdue."

Eithahawn's eyes snapped forward. He stiffened, wide-eyed, for a moment and then bowed toward his King's long back, unable to contain the surge of revelation. Lusis felt for him then, so publically tumbled by such private emotions. He seemed stranded, just feet away from her.

The King's hand turned a page in the book before him. He took up the reed of pen from the small tray beside it, and dipped the tip in crimson ink. Elves rose. They pushed forward in a scramble and she had a sense something terribly momentous was happening to them. The Elfking first lovingly touched the page before him. Then he wrote in the book. A soft burble, like a hum, had started.

He set the pen aside. She could hear the wood clink on the silver, it was so still in the cavern. "My final words to you, before the Autumn Festival begins," there was a stir in the crowd again, "are simple. You are my elves. You are my own." He turned his head graciously left, but his eyes were downcast. He wasn't looking at the Council of the West. Quite. "Now I must secure a future for you."

Heartfelt elves stared at him. He looked only at the stone.

The Elfking's hand pressed to his chest, protectively. "I offer to you my blood, and my life, joined together in succession. My sons. Co-rulers of the Great Greenwood. A son to each. One to suffer the thorns of the Warrior's Circlet, and the other to bear the weight of the Living Crown."

The hum burst into a roar of chants that became all but earsplitting.

"The forest is wide. The forest is healing." He breezed past Lusis, "And so are we."

Inside the circular room, several of his Elite lined the far wall. They bowed as one. Ewon arrived by the wide door. He was in the most formal gear that Lusis had ever seen of him – the hem of the elven coat he wore touched the floor, and it was a beautiful deep brown shot through with red and gold thread. Amathon and Nimpeth followed him in, but were clearly on duty. "My Lord, all is ready for you."

"Thank you, Ewon." He pivoted toward the sudden approach of Remee Buckmaster. It had distracted him. He laid a hand on the white hilt of Lossivor, his sword.

"We are sorry," Remee edged under the King's notice and nodded at the wintery vision before him. "We… we are deeply ashamed of our brother, and of ourselves."

Elsenord joined him, "We didn't know who you were, Great Elf. We doubted any King would attempt the mountain and venture into Buckmaster Keep. It has been long since that fine old hall saw as much as Strider, he who, it is rumoured, is Elessar of Gondor-"

"That is no rumour. Elessar is King, and has spirited Arwen Elrondiel from her father – very good for his continued health, I am sure," said the Elfking in a low, lingering voice. He was distracted and spoke in Sindarin cadence and with heavier accent when he was thinking in Elvish. His chin rose, "Aside from which, I wintered near the summits of Bregolnag hunting dragons when the Men thereabouts were but learning to build fires. Buckmaster Keep was, at least, more comfortable than that. Unfortunately," he glanced at them and added a sharp, "that is not saying much." He hadn't forgotten what had befallen him and his Elites there, or how Lusis had been defamed. He turned away to a scroll that his Court Scribe held before him. He scanned it and took the pen she handed to him. He passed all back again, "Not yet. Add lines and bring it back. You must make mention that the Kingdom's friends, the Northern Rangers of Lusis, some of them Buckmasters who still count elves as friends, and our good and wise ally, the Yellow Istari, were all present for this."

She bowed and took the scroll and pen away.

A second elf brought him a list that he glanced over quickly. "Ma. You are done. Deliver it downstairs, go and celebrate with your wife and daughter."

"Hail to my King," The young elf bowed and hurried away.

The King waved away an offer of red wine and gestured at the long, spotless white clothes he wore. It was then that he glanced over the Buckmasters once more. The two brothers were in earnest.

At his right the latter of the two men, Remee Buckmaster, bowed to Ewon. "We offer our deepest apologies, Lord Elf-"

"Oh my," Ewon's dark head tipped left in amusement. He glanced at Nimpeth. "Lord, now."

"-you were sorely injured by our weapons. You might have died. We are at fault." He hung his head in shame. Behind her father's back, Nimpeth's chin dropped slowly in agreement. As much as she was Lusis' friend, she was furious with the Buckmasters as an organization. She loved her father, and was gratified to see an admission of their guilt.

Though he didn't know how to read the subtly, Elsenord joined in, "The debt we owe to you is great, and our swords and shields are in the King's service until such a time as that debt is cleared. He need only tell us what he would have us do, and that will be our command."

"Lusis-sell," the King summoned her forward. "Collect your brothers. Have them enter into your troop more properly, into the service of the Yellow Istari."

She nodded at Elsenord and Remee, "I could hardly ask for two tougher and more battle-seasoned men." She herded them back from the King and said a quiet. "We shouldn't trouble him, now, none of us."

Eithahawn swept in, having officially started the festivities. He brushed through the room with his red robes floating and stopped several feet short of the King. He waited there, mindful of the bustle of Silvan staff. For his part, the Elvenking signed a series of documents. He gave directions in Elvish. He called down the hall for his Clothier – quite a tall woman – whom he talked to in a burst of Sindarin.

In the orbit of the King, this night, all was hectic. But he turned to Eithahawn, once, and then twice. On the third time he took a step toward the Kingdom's-seneschal and said, "The guest halls must remain under watch tonight, but see to the comfort of the Men there. This is the feast of plenty. See that they are given wine and meat – if there are children, sweetbreads, since I recall they approve of such things – and all should be encouraged to relax themselves as there is no line of petition for the next three days." The King signed a smaller document, glanced over it, and handed the pen to Eithahawn. "In case of sudden and unforeseen succession."

The Kingdom's-seneschal, sucked a breath at this. He blinked at the text and paled, "There is one pressing docket before us. The particulars are in your offices – a human girl bound in marriage as a child, seeking to undo the contract?" He took a deep breath and then signed his name under the name of the man who had chosen to raise him.

He glanced over his son, "I do not follow. Tell her to undo it."

"She is not permitted to undo it."

The King stilled, "She may choose to go with him, with another, or no one at all. She is a woman in my Kingdom, not a toy on a string. Tell the families I am responsible for the dissolution." He signed off on the rewrites he'd ordered as he said, "And get a writ into law declaring that agreement from both parties must be freely expressed for a contract of coupling or marriage to be held as legitimate. All else is unlawful. This is something we must do." The formal document declaring co-rule was carried away. That it had been composed on velum, richly illuminated, and written in flawless red-silver calligraphy meant it had been ready for some time. The Elfking answered a question, aside, and then glanced up at his Kingdom's-seneschal, "Eithahawn… are you all right?"

The Kingdom's-seneschal hesitated a moment too long before he replied, "All is well."

The King's head tipped to the right, forward, and he went still. He considered the younger elf.

Eithahawn bowed his head, set a quivering hand on his chest, and swept it out toward the King.

The King was more firm this time, "Are you… all right?"

Eithahawn simply said. "Yes, adar."

"Pity your brother can't keep a schedule… but this will assure him some portion of his freedom, and it gives to you…," the Elfking looked at the large, earnest eyes of the child he'd saved from death, and was suddenly flooded with feeling. He looked down and away.

The Kingdom's-seneschal hadn't moved a whisper. He continued to stare at his long-wished for father, almost in a shocked state. His voice was a whisper. "Of course."

"Get him wine," said the King of his newly acknowledged son and co-heir. A pair of the staff in the room broke away to do just that.

On his way for the door, his step paused and as the Elfking's head rose, he glanced at Lusis.

She nodded at her troop, which had grown by two men, and said, "Let's go. We're with him."

The King swept through halls that bowed as he passed.

He wafted the rowan-berry-winter scent everywhere he went, and they hurried, with him gliding through passages and upstairs until it seemed they were in a maze and Lusis had long ago forgotten all the turns.

"How big is this place?" Remee puffed as he ran up steps behind the King.

"The hills are covered in chambers," Aric looked up and slowed his chase. "Never seen this one before. It's… nice."

"It'd be nicer with a chair," Elsenord grumbled.

"I didn't expect Buckmasters to be so pampered." Aric casually extended a foot to try to trip Steed, which didn't work, though Steed was amused. Instead, he nearly spilled his distracted little brother on the painted floor.

Redd scruffed the brothers and pulled them apart shortly after.

For her part, Lusis ignored them. The night glowed above her head and it was full of stars. She had no idea why they made her feel the way they did, like separated brethren. And then they were in a wide room whose roof was glassed over. There were elves there – Elites – and Thranduil went into a second room with them. He passed out of sight among them, Lusis was content to follow until she saw the long layers of white coat come out, folded over the Clothier's long arms. The elf woman's blond brows went up as she glided past Lusis. "Perhaps a moment? Unless you are intimates, and I overstep, Yellow Istari."

"No," Lusis couldn't fight down the blush. "No, you don't."

Merilin came to glance into the domed room at her. He was braiding his dark brown hair out of his face. "Istari," he gave a head bow.

"Merilin, what's happening?"

"We're leaving for Lake Township."

"Now?"

"Very soon. Your packs are ready for travel." He finished the plait and wove it into a second braid at the back of his head.

"Why are we sneaking out?"

"He will tell you."

She exhaled and turned to Redd, "I very much doubt it."

It was seconds before the Elfking appeared. They were still strapping on his left vambrace when Thranduil came back through the door. He took over the job with a deft hand, "There is work to be done in this land, as you know. Aside from which… they are beginning to ask certain questions, Yellow Istari – the Council of the West. There is no such thing as an omission, or half a truth. They see through any machination we may use to protect ourselves and others. Lord Loss… he can oblige a mind to complete accuracy. Only his love of good keeps him from forcing such matters."

Lusis opened her mouth and shut it again.

"Oh," she couldn't imagine the depth and complexity of the King's secrets, "He needs to stay away from you." she told him.

"One does not tell a Vanyar Lord his business. Not when one is a-" he didn't say the word 'Moriquendi' but he did add, "Elf of the Grey Twilight."

Lusis glanced over the thronging of Elites who laid his cloak on his shoulder and proceeded to lift his fine, long hair into place. Merilin stepped aside for the Clothier, who folded his robes and pushed the King's hands out of his way whenever he tried to interfere. He seemed used to this, as he allowed it without complaint.

He drew in on Lusis as the Clothier pulled the hood of his deep crimson robe up around him, "It is of no true consequence whether they return to the Undying Lands with yet another Sinda soldier, Lusis Buckmaster. I will be another of legions of such – tall, blond, grey-eyed. Sinda tend to be of a type. And to ferry back a soldier who has been called a King? The only value there is that he can serve to show the Moriquendi that they must be meek." He stepped aside as the elf, Merilin, caught hold of the filigree of one of the glass panes above and rolled the glass down into what had appeared to be solid stone.

Elven hands reached to gently touch the King's clothes into arrangement, when they were already impeccable. Lusis understood it. She wanted to be close to him too. To offer his heart, which could no longer bleed for its own despair, some warm spark of comfort.

He gestured at Lusis and the Clothier set a long woolen coat over her shoulders.

"Protect him," breathed the – yes – blonde and grey-eyed Sinda woman. She handed cloaks among them and said a quiet. "Safeguard him." Lusis stared at the beautiful elf as she withdrew. It reminded her that other Sindar, and Noldor like Dorondir, had accepted Thranduil as a King. She gritted her teeth and looked out in the chill drafts of autumn air from above them.

He was a King in many minds. For many reasons.

The King strapped on extra weapons. "Everything I am presents, to them, a challenge. There are better things to collect from among us."

She felt her head rise. Did it have something to do with her? It couldn't have. Though… perhaps the Council held a dim opinion of him. He was a Grey Elf. He had become more than a friend. He was her true North. Likewise, Lusis knew she'd have crossed an ocean if Legolas Thranduilion had sworn it was essential to Silvan survival. She would fight to the bitter end to safeguard Eithahawn. And here she was fleeing the Halls to escape the Council of the West. It should have said everything to him, and maybe it did. When the Elfking shot out into the night through the window, Lusis followed on his heels without question. She didn't believe he was less than worthy.

"And Lord Elrond?" she braced a foot, reached down, and got Elsenord out. They both helped bigger Remee. Rangers worked together as a matter of habit.

"There is still the pressing need to find the enemy in the lands to the East." The King glanced over Lusis' Rangers.

"Redd," Lusis gave up trying to pull him out and exhaled slowly. "I don't know if you're going to fit. Maybe," she set her hands on her hips, "they should push from the other side?"

Redd, this close to the dome window, had his head poking out, he was so tall. So it was not difficult to see him flush and look uncomfortable. His voice was low and pleading. "Don't ask that, Lusis."

The King's head did a quick glide, right to left, though his eyes didn't stray. He exhaled in the chilly air. "Redd Ayesir… I can fit through that window in armour… how can it be you cannot fit through it, at all?"

When Redd gave a helpless shrug, the windows to either side of him bounced. The Elfking gave a sudden and mellifluous huff of humour. He had to walk away to contain himself. He travelled down the sheer granite edge of this stone outcrop above the Halls. He came back again only after distracting himself smoothing his dark crimson cloak – which needed no smoothing – against his long thighs.

"Redd… dear child… it would take days to dismantle the iron frames of those windows, for they were forged in my father's time, against the ingress of dragons. As you cannot fit, you will have to leave by way of the stables. Take pains not to be seen."

"Yes, my King," he gave a little bow through the window, which nearly dissolved the Rangers, and left Lusis looking at her boots.

"See you soon, Redd," she said brightly.

"Yes, Captain." He ducked back in through the thick and heavy glass, which Merilin rolled into place and sealed again. Aric sagged to his brother, his age and occupation wiped away by the sudden blast of laughter.

"Shush, you witless child," Lusis grinned as Remee clapped a hand over his mouth and tried not to find this hysterical. Elsenord was trying to walk it off.

Maybe the brisk night air could cool their humour? It smelled of winter cold, and the distinctive sparking that the air made on skin when snow was close. They were higher up in the old mountain orogeny than Lusis had expected. It was uncomfortably cold. She looked left, to where the King had been, and saw his cloak billowing away from his long legs. He glanced back at her, went to the edge of the windy escarpment, and simply stepped off. He fell out of sight at once.

She tore away from Remee, who had been leaning on her shoulder, so fast that he nearly toppled over. She ran to the edge of the outcropping and braked. The King was fine. In her heart, she knew he would be, but… she'd seen him insensate with dragon's blood a handful of nights ago. She could be forgiven for worrying, probably more easily than she could be for wanting to aim a smack at the back of his inconsiderate head, dropping out of sight that way.

He paused where he was heading down a set of steps carved deep in the rock face. The stair was covered along its stretch by the granite of the eroded mountain, and so he was sheltered from view. Lusis hopped down to the stone landing and followed him.

They emerged through an iron gate and walked out of the fissure via a not so accidental rock-cairn. Lusis admired the ingenuity involved in this trickery. She'd been out on the land many times in this stone, and even scaled and crossed over these hills to keep her climbing sharp. She hadn't realized this passage was here. The Rangers made it into the woods below in under twenty minutes. It would have taken much longer – she knew from experience – without the hidden stair.

The troop and King went South and deeper into the woods, and not along the Forest River, in fact. That was how they encountered Redd. He had come from the stone stables built where part of the great rock that housed the elves had formed an outcropping that was not flush with the ground. The stone was now braced on pillars. Lusis could hear horses whickering from within.

Redd was standing beside the rock face, his hood up to cover his namesake hair, and his earnest dark eyes scanning the wood. She saw him, gave the nearby branch a shake, and his eyes found the motion. After it had stilled she stepped just into sight of him. He made an indirect path to join them. "Why is this so clandestine? Do we believe they have spies everywhere in a world as close as this?"

"Every mind is a spy if you can force its secrets like forcing a lock," Lusis looked at the gathering clouds that began to cluster around the moon, and told him. "It may be that we are his only guards tonight, though, almost certainly, Merilin is making himself scarce."

"He'll be leading his section to relieve Arasell's in Lake Township within the hour," the King said quietly. "She arrives from along the river, without knowing we are abroad." He led them onward. "Other incidental members of my staff know well enough to stay clear of them."

"Will they interfere with us?" Lusis fell in at the King's broad shoulder as they passed more even ground. "We are fighting an evil in the land."

"They have no interest in this land but our removal from it, Lusis." He paused, mid-step, at a soft woodland noise, but then turned, his blue-silver eyes gliding across to the open green, and down, before he kept going. "Essentially, they are from the West and they have never been here, except to wake in all their glory, under the stars, and to leave. Do you believe that breeds a desire for involvement?"

She was too surprised to simply accept this news. "But this force is attacking the elves."

He inhaled deeply. "The problems of this land, Lusis, are the problems of Men. We make them our own only by disobedience to the Three Kindred." And he was mindful of the Buckmaster Rangers behind him. "In your Keep, I did hear protests made by the people of the North against the elves, your brother, Kirstman Buckmaster, spoke them. It is felt that we abandon the humans in a world where much chaos foments, and Gondor is far in the South."

"I didn't realize," she admitted to him. "I was too wrapped in my own misery." She still couldn't recall the featureless days directly following the death of her father.

"Understandably." His silver-blond hair billowed against her shoulder as he ducked under tree limbs too high to give her worry. The King murmured, "But we are all Erusen of the North, both the elves of Mirkwood and the Men of Northern expanses. Our wide spaces and icy reaches are burdened by the hordes fleeing Mordor, those that find strength in the worm-heads of the cold regions, and those who crave the bottomless gold of Erebor for their funding. Evil is a business among them. The industry of it is their unifier. The man now leading your Keep does not appreciate that we of Mirkwood are no less abandoned by the emptying of Rivendell and Lorien than they are."

She noted, "Because even before I arrived, the Buckmasters thought you were all leaving. I failed to recognize this sentiment. I was-"

"In mourning," he stopped beside her and the great aura that he now occupied, shifted weight. "Your father died, Lusis-sell. That is a time when there is nothing else that one can see. The world is as invisible as air. Aside from this… my people have known no peace in their own land, this beautiful place so full of woe, for several Ages. They are unready to leave. And they have won this forest in blood. I will not allow them to be forced."

Redd glanced up at the first pecks of rain to make it through the heavy branches above. "Elvenking, you say the elves of the West gain little by you. But… I cannot believe that. Tonight, your own words to your elven people held clues. It seems that you prepare for succession in the Halls… in case they take you. So will you allow them to force you to leave?" He stepped over a downed tree whose rotted bark the King had adroitly darted onto, and by. Everyone else in their number picked up their pace to circumnavigate the deadfall. On the other side of the deer-path, the King waited.

He stopped along a stretch of trees made blue-green by the full moon, and he turned so that the wide, dark ovals of his pupils beheld Lusis from nearby. "It is you they want. I am just your vehicle." His head bent slowly, and his great eyes closed. "It has been asked. They do not believe we can be separated."

Heat flashed over Lusis so that even her shoulders and arms felt warm. Her fingers tingled with shame that her constancy had somehow done this to him.

She felt cold inside, and the unease of it lasted for the remainder of the night.

They jogged through most of the night and next day. It was well into dark the day after, when they made their way to a clutch of elven houses, built amid truly massive trees. They stood suspended on elf steel brackets from the great red trunks. Wooden stairs led to the forest floor. The King looked suddenly less abstracted and more pleased. He took three steps into the relative clearing at the frosted feet of such giants, and the white elk loped out of ferns and stopped before him. Thranduil extended a pale hand and the elk put its muzzle under it.

An elf came out of the trees. An Elite. She bowed to the King and indicated the house. "There is a Patrol of elves in the trees around us, my King, and the Lord is resting."

The Elvenking didn't miss a beat, "As we have need of rest."

She told him, "It shall be done."

Elrond was in the larger of the several buildings. Inside, there was a circular central fire, and a cooking fire along the back wall. Lusis came through the front door, bleary and sore, and saw three more Elites bustling inside. One of them lifted a hatch in the floor, walked down, and returned with an armful of dried wood from there. They'd built in a storage room underneath the suspended building. Another carried mulled wine from the fire to set beside a stack of flat breads that steamed in the gust from the door. The Lord sat covered in a blanket, happily spreading a mix of nut butter and diced candied cherry onto bread. He glanced to the left and saw Thranduil.

"Your Men are exhausted, Elvenking."

Then Thranduil paused and looked at the Lord before him. "Have I done you some wrong?"

Elrond laid down the knife, his deep grey eyes widened curiously, and he very nearly looked innocent. He puzzled this reaction out and concluded, "Perhaps… I should call you friend."

The great white-golden elf turned away, "Perhaps you should."

Lusis got her exhausted troop inside. "Is there water, good Elf?" she asked the nearby Elite, and the woman gestured at a pot near the back of the room. Lusis considered it and then the long row of rounded beds along the walls. They ran from the ground floor along rows of pillars, to about six feet from the peaked roof. The place was designed to sleep two sections with ample room on the floors. In spite of that, the building was not terribly large. Lusis exhaled. "Do not let the King or Lord from this room without us. We need water. And sleep." Water, they hadn't had in over an hour, sleep they hadn't had in a day and a half.

At the end of the room, she drew up water for her tired men. She brought some to where Remee had already fallen on an oval cot, asleep. Waking up dehydrated was hard on the body. She let her troop lie along the wall. Icar was already sound asleep as she passed him.

When she reached him, the King stood beside Elrond. He was speaking, "And you're well."

She scanned the reddish-blue flame inside of the Lord and decided he was better off than when it had been low and violet. She would feel better when it was back to its normal tall arch of ruddy gold. He was unusual among elves. Or his fire was.

The Lord Elrond sipped his mulled wine. "Yes. I do feel I slowly recover. Perhaps this spell cannot do harm over the long term…. Is this what it feels like, I wonder, to fall ill as a human does?" He glanced over the elf before him and said, "It is rare… to see you in such extremity, Thranduil. What news have you?"

"You were on your way here and did not observe this. I have declared Eithahawn Auronion and Legolas, should he ever appear to sign his lovely name, to be co-rulers at succession, as of the opening of this Lasbelin festival."

The Lord Elrond fumbled his buttering knife. His great eyes peered up. "You did what?"

The Elfking's chin rose, "This sentiment is hardly a secret."

"He is not your son." Elrond pointed out. "His father was your squire and carried armour for-"

"He is my son."

There was a long silence during which these two men stared at one another.

"Legolas will not agree to it," Elrond exhaled and motioned at the King. "Though it is reassuring to see that it is not solely for the rest of us that you make trouble, Thranduil."

"Legolas will agree to it," said the King. "You do not know his love of family." Elrond began to inhale to speak, but the King quickly added, "Of which Eithahawn has always been one."

Elrond leaned back in his seat and accepted this. "Very well."

"The festival will run for three days," said the Elvenking. "It is a time of great distraction, and our best cover. However, we shall be missed before it ends. We cannot rest here long. It is known by my Elites, and Lord Loss will easily be able to find that out."

Lusis felt herself scowl. When you were a Ranger, there was never enough sleep. "How long do we have here to rest?"

"Four to six hours," said the Elfking softly, "At most." He pushed back the screen of limpid silvery blond that fell across his bowed face.

Now Lusis sipped the water she'd carried with her. "You need to rest too, my King." She had no idea how they were going to bring Elrond along, but she was determined he would travel well, and remain healthy, even if the Rangers had to carry him on a litter. Though she suspected the method was much more likely to involve the white stag.

The Elfking's chin sank down in agreement. He was too worn by these last weeks to even bother with comment. Within minutes, the Elfking was out of his armour and curled on one of the pallet-like oval beds. Lusis, having judged that the stout door was more of a risk than the thick and enclosed walls and ceilings of the rest of this space, lay out on the bed beside him, but closer to the door. She didn't know a thing about the outside world before she became aware again, five hours later. Her head had been full of whispers.

Elsenord was ladling out water to her cup. "You feeling okay, sister?"

She sat up slowly. "Weird dreams," she told him and rubbed her eyes. "Whispers and a deep haze to the East. When I close my eyes, I can see it."

"You should get up, little one." Elsenord handed her the cup he'd filled. "Time to get up and be dangerous."

"Is something wrong?"

"I can't guess at that," Elsenord straightened, "The elves have been hurrying around, speaking elf languages. They have no time for explaining to us."

She tossed back her drink and set her boots on the floor. "Where's the King?" Lusis was already across the room, washing her face and hands in one of the several bowls for the purpose. She swept her wetted hair back into a tail and hurried out through the open door and into a downpour. "Tell me he didn't take Lord Elrond out in this."

The King, in full armour, came in from the brief little porch. He shook his colourless hair before he stepped in, pulled it over his shoulder, and wrung it mercilessly. "Come." He looked past Lusis and noted of the other Rangers, "The rain is on time. We must depart."

Lusis was ready, with all her armament strapped to her. She went out on the porch and jolted with surprise. There was a boat below her. Everything that had been forest floor just hours ago, was now flooded with water that had to be close to six or eight feet deep. Glorfindel stood in the boat below her. He extended a pale hand, "Do you need help aboard, Miss-"

She swung out from the newel post of the porch and dropped to the deck of the boat before him. Lusis turned from her crouch to look into the covered section at the back of the golden boat. Elrond sat on a raised bench, wrapped in wool. The little cabin had a brazier supported on an X of gold-coloured chain. She rose up and asked Elrond, "Are you warm enough, my Lord?"

He blinked his deep grey eyes at her. "I am very well," he inclined his head. "Thank you."

Rangers came aboard. Oiled leather bags of supplies where passed to the boat. A moment later, the Elvenking dropped down at the bow. He set one hand on the golden-wood stag's head at the prow, and looked up past its white antlers into the rain. "Glorfindel."

The elf gave a massive heave on the pole he held. Thranduil went to the opposite pole and the boat glided forward through the rising water. They headed away from the Forest River. Lusis had no idea where they were going.

"This is where the river floods in spring and in autumn, before the snow." The King told her as he tweaked the course of the boat. "It freezes solid in winter – beautiful. It has been flooding for many weeks. And so, the Little Forest courses along to the Celduin – the River Running – from this place." He turned from Lusis and the great muscles in his shoulders and arms bulged as he caught the force of the boat's current-ward wandering along the pole he held, and kept them from snagging in a cairn of stones.

It was silent as the King expertly maneuvered the boat around the rocky face of a rise on their immediate right. Glorfindel countered with his work. He kept up the steady pressure that would snag the bow and pull them into the flow of this smaller river. When they cleared the stone rise, the Elfking gave tremendous heaves against the forest floor below them. His wet clothes clung to the definition along his arms.

"Less," Glorfindel said quietly. "Ease up – Elfking – now less." He set into work as the King let up.

The Elvenking had lessened his efforts considerably, slowly, he stopped facilitating any motion whatsoever. He stepped back and let the boat feel the current. His gaze caught Lusis Buckmaster, lurking close by him, and he glanced at her. "Cover up from the rain, Yellow Istari. Take to the benches and warm. This little river is fast-flowing and ephemeral. A tumult. I cannot manage it and you at once."

"I'm nearby if you need help," she told him, and she withdrew under the awning, just past the midsection of the boat, it was warm and hospitable there. Elsenord drew the thin curtain across, and the King and Glorfindel became shadow shapes on oiled fabric. With two braziers at work, it was dry, warm, and hospitable inside.

She glanced at Elrond and found him leaning on the high back of the bench built into the stern. His eyes were nearly shut, but she knew he stared at the book open in his lap. She knew it because she did, by now, recognize the estranged gaze of elven sleep. More and more, she did the same thing herself. Like her strangely bi-coloured hair, she was changing.

Icar nudged her. He picked up her hair and set a blanket over her shoulders. "Try to dry off."

She slumped against the wall of the little cabin and missed it when Remee tucked his own cloak in to pillow her head. He sat down with Icar and Elsenord on the deck. "Let's not be useless, boys," he rubbed an eye. "Let's check the bag, ladle in some water, and get a pot of soup going."

"He's right," Steed had been studying the closest of the braziers. "They… I think they move up and down on the chains. The shape of them makes for a shelf we could try to boil something on."

"Like a tisane," Redd stretched himself and jabbed a thumb at the rainy forward deck. "Anyone ever think they'd sit in the back of a warm boat while a King's manpower got them where they were going to?"

Aric frowned and chucked the knife he'd been sharpening into the bench beside him. "Fires already – fine. I'll cut up some vegetables. Damned elves. The thing they're best at is making a man feel guilty as Doom."

"One of you should help Steed with the braziers before he sets the boat on fire." Icar grinned up at Elsenord, indicated Aric, and mouthed, "Well done."

"I suppose you sort of impel him toward his better nature?" Remee chuckled quietly. "I'll help the part-elf lad. I noticed he's prone to getting into mischief when The Other Awnson is involved." And Remee Buckmaster glanced aside at sour-faced Aric, pillaging his way through a bag of root vegetables.

Lusis was unaware of anything but the pull of the water, the fires of Glorfindel and the King before her, the low burn of Lord Elrond behind her, and her own grape seed of star as it grew in her chest, for the air around them had begun to weigh down with a dark oppression, and her soul flickered back and forth above the Mirkwood ship and employed the Imperishable Flame inside of her, and that of the powerful elves, to push back the darkness that sought to subdue the Lord of Rivendell.

For his part, the Elflord opened his storm-cloud eyes. Something had changed.

For the first time in hours, in the downpour, he felt well.

He was able to breathe freely.