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.

4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The 'Little Forest', as the Elfking tenderly called the river, let out into a series of broad gullies under rolling hills some leagues from Long Lake. These deep, clear gullies never dried. Several had been connected by elf-made trenches and close to seven boats bobbed here. Their ship, with its deer's head, white antlers, cabin and braziers, was the largest to put to the small jetty that had been constructed along stone boulders. The little river had overflowed the gullies so that they seemed a decently-sized lake now. From the deck, the Rangers marked where the Mirkwood trees thinned, and the river flowed on a downhill slant as it curved through grasslands.

The Elfking and Glorfindel had not rested since they'd boarded the boat. The King had been quite honest when he said the Little Forest was a tempest that needed constant management. It ran incredibly quickly in a charge downhill from the Forest, and any boat on its face required constant management to arrive safely at the chain of gullies. They stood in the sun together, having gone through the entire night and the morning hours locked in a battle with sudden snags, stones, stray fallen trees, and a massive current.

The sun-bright Noldor, Glorfindel, sighed heavily. He pushed his buttercup hair back and pulled it over one shoulder and then sank to the deck with his back against the starboard wall. The Elfking's chest rose and fell under glinting armour. They recovered their air after so long and steady an exertion.

"Something… is amiss in this land," the King told Glorfindel with some certainty.

"The air is thick," Glorfindel said in assent. "I must check the health of my Lord."

"Your Lord is well," Elrond answered from the back, "though worried for the pair of you."

The Elfking glanced to his right and nearly smiled. He saw Lusis coming toward him and contained himself. Instead, he inclined his head to the Istari and she offered him a cup of water. She said, "The long light of the sun is coming to paint your hair red and gold, like your banner, no doubt. Would you like the armour off for five minutes, Elvenking? To catch your-"

A howl sounded not far away.

Glorfindel got up as if on a hinge, the action was so sudden. His sword lashed out. Thranduil held up a hand to stay the man. "Is it simply wolves?"

"One can never tell at a distance."

Growling struck up, and it was closer still.

"We are in a bad position," said the Elvenking.

The bright elf, Glorfindel, moved noiselessly. Eager for fighting.

Behind Lusis, Steed drew back the weight of his bow on a string. Redd had out his sword. She had to turn her head to find her brothers and the Awnsons. They were already ashore and creeping with painful care around the flank of the great boulder there.

Elrond came out onto the deck with a fighting knife in each hand, and looked to the North East, much as the sharp-eared Elvenking did. He stepped onto the jetty and made his way across to a stair cut into stone. Lusis hurried after the King and could hear that Redd came close behind her. It was Steed who kept his original position. This was handy.

When the first of the great shaggy heads appeared at the top of the rock to look down at the Elfking of Mirkwood, Steed put an arrow in its mouth and out through the back of its neck.

The goblin on the animal's tall shoulders smiled, "What have we got here? I knew I smelled a Woody out-"

Steed's next arrow did the same thing for the goblin.

Lusis hurried up the steps, reached her left hand, and caught the Elfking's right. He swung her limber body in air and released her. Lusis shot up along stone and hooked her fingers atop an edge. Her weight hit her arm and tugged muscle and tendon as one. She exhaled, inhaled deeply, and glanced over. She was behind the fallen beast and goblin. She skulked up and peeked over the top of them. She sank back down and extended her hand before her. Four fingers open, then she made a fist.

"What does it mean?" the Lord, Elrond asked quietly. Quite a feat with such a resonant voice.

Steed glanced the Elflord's way. "That there are forty of them." Steed pulled a face. "If this goes badly, I'm going to need more arrows."

"Forty?" Glorfindel's white teeth flashed in clear disgust for the evil beings bleeding on the stone. "That would be enough to keep me entertained. But what will the Elfking do?" His lip curled.

Lusis began to slide back down the stone. It was her intention that they take to the boat and cross the River Running with it. It was a good distance, and put water between them and the wolves. More importantly, that would land their band downwind of the wolves' sharp noses.

About then, the Elvenking stepped right over her and onto the top of the stone. His blond hair spun up around him, carried out like an elf standard on the wind. And he stood staring down at the band of werewolves and goblins, not a half a league away.

Lusis looked up at him and gawped.

At the far side of the stone beside the gullies, Elsenord glanced from the tall and beauteous Elvenking and murmured, "Oh…. Doom's fires."

"Yeah. He likes a fight." Aric Awnson's chin went up. He was, more than anything, proud of that.

Beside him, Remee Buckmaster unfolded the chain and mace from his belt and shook his head at the big, white elf's rashness. "Likes a fight? Gods. He's mad."

"You weren't saying that," Icar's hands moved deftly, "when he was solving Buckmaster Spur's little dragon problem."

Aric chuckled. He checked his brother's position and saw Icar do up the buckle for the pocket that held his art-book. Icar gave Aric a nod of assent and drew his sword. Icar was no less an artist with a weapon than he was with a pencil or a brush. He'd simply been born into the world gifted. He was, Aric swore, the grand culmination of whatever elf blood had remained in the Awnson line. Aric, however, had been born fearless, and that made up for a lot. His sturdy heart didn't even pick up speed when wolves gave long, throaty howls, and the ground rocked with their running. He wanted them to come.

Up on the stone, Lusis turned herself to rights and hissed, "What are you doing?" It sounded like one long word.

His colourless eyes watched the wolves – werewolves really – wolf bodies with the souls of tormented Men shoved into them so that, now, they were misshapen hurricanes of wrath. They foamed and rolled along the plain. The King was unmoved.

"Thranduil," Elrond's flat-edged voice called from below. "They are coming. Was that wise?" The tone, alone, said that it very much was not.

Blue-silver eyes simply watched the trees. The enemies dotted the grasslands, most of them within a quarter of a league below him. Lusis peeked over the top of the dead werewolf and suddenly saw what he was about. "Thranduil!"

The wolves passed into the trees, and, by that, they violated the sovereign space that was the Kingdom of Mirkwood. The Elfking took two long steps and cast himself off the stone and at the werewolf in the lead. He vanished into trees. And that wasn't good for Lusis.

She swung her sword up, stuck a hand on the ribs of the dead wolf, and threw her body over it. Then she charged down the steep face of the stone – which was a lot like saying she controlled her falling by moving her feet rapidly. There came a point where she curled her legs up and fell at a leaping wolf. She kicked out her left leg, quickly, as she closed on the wolf, and threw her body right. She reversed her sword along her side, and when the werewolf went to bite her, she laid its face wide open. Her sword came free. She tucked into a ball under the swing of the goblin, and pushed out from the wolf with her arms like a woman rowing. Her sword came out and closed like a trap. The blade went in between the goblin's ribs and passed straight through.

The ground rushed up at her, boiling with teeth and fur.

Elsenord gave a huge push around the stone, stepped up onto rock for a few strides, and caught her out of air. Momentum brought her to one side of battle. The long goblin spear that clapped against stone had cut through Elsenord's clothes, found his mail, and skidded off to hit rock. The impact had hurt, and her brother gave a painful howl and let her go. He collapsed with the air driven out. Remee charged into the path of oncoming foes and swung the great spiked mace up into the jaw of the goblin trying to take new aim. The blow crushed the goblin's skull.

That left the werewolf free, but Icar leapt over the furred neck of another wolf and neatly sliced the muzzle away before it could bite down on Remee. He picked up the spear dropped by the first goblin to run through a third.

"Cover Elsenord till he recovers!" Lusis howled at her troop. "And fight! Spare none! Swing true or fall!" She stabbed the werewolf coming for her imperfectly in the mouth. They were so fast! The goblin on its back hacked at her. She ducked under the wolf and pulled her sword free by bracing a foot on its chest and pushing. This effectively cut away its jaw and carved a red line through its throat.

The werewolf dropped down and, very suddenly, the goblin had lost the advantage of height. Its eyes widened at the incoming chop from Lusis' sword. But it was Icar's quick darting motion, and his glinting blade, that dispatched it. "Lusis! Right! Low!"

She tumbled to the right, with just a glance at the black shape above her. It snarled and tried to brake fast enough to turn on her. She slammed her elf-steel up under its ribs and it stiffened and dropped down, lifeless. She barely had time to roll away from it. When she did get up, she glanced right at where Aric had stuck his foot on the boot of a goblin. He rode the stirrup up, cut the goblin's throat, and then tossed it to the ground. He turned the great werewolf, dodged a spear aimed at his head, and kicked one werewolf into the broadside of another. He launched back from the dogfight that broke out.

Lusis felt a gust of dog-breath on the right, began to turn. An arrow pinned the werewolf's head to the ground. The surprised goblin bailed from his saddle and crawled to the shelter of the stone, cowering and covering its head. Lusis heard Redd make a terrific growl. He smashed one goblin into another in air and shoved them into the yawning maws of oncoming werewolves. One of which he hammered along the spine and crushed.

He pitched a smaller werewolf up in air like a bag of potatoes.

It came back down, boneless, shot through the eye with one of Steed's arrows.

Redd sucked a deep breath and bellowed. "Who's next!?"

There didn't seem to be as much of a line all of a sudden. Lusis smiled, caught the shaft of a broken spear, and aimed. Now she had the business end acting like a javelin. She'd always been good with javelins. She half turned and launched it into the snout of a werewolf. At the same time, Steed's arrow passed over her bent back and took out the werewolf she could see rushing her flank.

She was looking up when the golden arch of Glorfindel passed over them all. He landed on the head of a wolf, scruffed it by the neck, turned his body around as it fell to all fours, and mid-spin, sliced the goblin in half.

"Thranduil!"

Lusis couldn't see him. She body-checked a fleeing goblin into Redd's and Icar's vicinity – not good for the goblin, she was dead certain – but she was going to be in a terrible mood as long as she couldn't find the King.

"Elvenking, which direction are you?!"

The Lord of Rivendell dropped to the ground beside her. He dusted off his long cloak and sighed at the coming of night. He stopped shoulder-to-shoulder with Lusis and asked, "Have you considered a string? Perhaps belling him, or finding a particularly long…" he patted away a few final specs of rock dust and glanced at the last of the fighting to his left, "…lunge line?"

Now she paused to look at the Lord, "What?"

He smiled, his brows rising on his pale peach forehead, "Merely suggestions of no particular consequence, Yellow Istari. If they were viable, I would, long ago, have listened to my own advice." He pressed a hand to his chest and gave a mild cough. It shocked him. "Ah. What is this?" He looked amazed that he had coughed.

Lusis hurried to his side and pressed her hand over his. But he stepped back. "You have an ingrained habit of mercy, young Istari. I have been assured of the same by your beloved King." He casually bent and pulled an arrow from a fallen werewolf, and then absently checked the fletching – Ranger, but with a single line of red, and a yellow nock. Steed. "The Tatharion boy, Inilfain, he shoots like an elf. And… I'm well enough."

"Well enough to stay here," she told him, "by Steed. The Tatharions are of your bloodline. He will safeguard you." She signaled Steed, since she couldn't see Glorfindel either. He was out of arrows, and raised his sword in answer before he loped in the Lord's direction.

She turned away and searched the trees. Where was he? She started to head downhill. She made it only a very few steps before the goblin who had been cowering pulled a knife and came up to his feet. She saw this out of the periphery of her vision and spun in place to leap back toward the Elflord. But the goblin was much, much closer.

For Lusis, the world slowed. She seemed to be running in thick muck, trying to reach him.

Elrond looked over his shoulder. His head cocked a fraction. He pivoted – and it was here that she saw the utility of that uniquely elven motion, for it quickly turned him in place. The only thing still moving at speed seemed to be the weapons. The knife stabbed for Lord Elrond. The arrow in Lord Elrond's hand spun through his fingers and touched the back of the goblin's hand. It made a painfully red line. The lumbering thing cried out and threw its weight back. Then the goblin knife changed course for the elf's proud head. The arrow whirled to the proper orientation in the Elflord's palm to bite deep into his attacker's wrist. The goblin looked shocked.

Now Elrond's arrow made a final flickering revolution – almost too fast to see – fatally fast. And this time it was upright in the Elflord's palm, like the hands of a clock wound too tight, running at speeds impossible to truly follow. The Elflord caught the arrow as if it were a knife, and drove it deep through the goblin's eye. He took a few steps back.

The goblin fell.

Then Lusis reached the Lord's side.

Elrond's counterattack had been that fast.

He reached a concerned hand to steady her when Lusis screeched to a stop. She caught that hand and pulled him along with her. The Elfking wasn't the only one who needed a leash. "Fine. I said it wrong. You and Steed can protect one another." He was making her feel rather grumpy.

Steed fell in beside her, panting. "Your brothers?"

She felt a cold blast of fear she dismissed. No werewolf could take out her big brothers. "What about them?"

Steed noted, "They're nice fellows. Make good soup."

She smiled tightly because she couldn't help it, "Yes."

"Unless you're a goblin." He exhaled a puff of air. "Then they appear to be possessed by really irritated avenging Ainur."

Well, at one point, her family had taught her everything she knew. And they were Buckmasters. She glanced at Steed. "I don't know what an Ainur is."

Lord Elrond gave her hand, still gripping his, a small squeeze. "Little Istari, I find you funny. In case you ever wanted to know." This time he really was smiling at her – his eyes full of fun and happiness. He looked so very warm and amused. "Let us find your beloved King so that he can explain to you that Istari are thought to be Maiar, and Maiar are thought to be Ainur, and what any of it means."

She wasn't sure she wanted to know. She turned to Lord Elrond and told him. "Stay with Steed. I trust I don't have to make him hold your hand for this to happen."

"Oh how considerate," the Lord bent back from her a little, "But I am not the wayward one. Look to your King."

"I will… when I find him." She turned in the breath of rain that came with the slowly sinking sun. She scanned the trees, fruitlessly, and her troop fell in around her. She had no target, no place to go, until a werewolf made a sharp cry of pain off to her left, and Lusis turned. She saw a glint of white-hot fire through the trees and Lusis knew only one man who burnt with that heat.

"Guard the Lord!" Lusis said as she pounded away from them, running downhill, through stands of trees, to where a second battle broke out.

Glorfindel and the Elfking had engaged with half the group of werewolves, the King fixed with that shatterproof killing-focus of his, which she found so frightful and beautiful to behold, at once. She wasn't getting his attention through that.

Lusis skidded through the leaf-litter as she braked, and was too close to a werewolf. It backhanded her, almost accidentally, as it turned. She felt an amazing flash of pain. The air went out of her. She flew backward into the lashing limbs of a big cone-bearer. The tree limbs did break some of the force of her fall.

She lay on her back, unable to do anything but suck at air she couldn't seem to coax into her lungs. Lusis rolled over on her belly and started to crawl away. Until she could breathe, she couldn't fight. Until she could breathe, she was effectively helpless. The best thing for her was to find a place to hide.

She heard crunching in the brush behind her.

A goblin cackled. "What a pretty rump you have, human girl."

Irritating goblin git. The enemy shouldn't ogle. She was nearly breathless, but managed a gasp, "Do you like my sword?" Stars shot in her head as she began to get air again.

The goblin was a hideous mass of unhealthy greenish-white tissue that swam in her star-shot vision. She could place him better by the stench of animal carcasses and sweat than she could anything else. He leaned over her. The smell increased. "No, I don't like that at all." He swung a kick at her hilt. Lusis sucked as much air as she could and rolled. She didn't have enough air to sit up, so she hauled out a knife and drove it into the goblin's instep. It was what she could reach.

He let out an earsplitting scream, raised his crude blade and brought it high above him in a huge chop. Muscles along Lusis' stomach clenched and she began to curl in around the goblin's boots. She wasn't sure she would make it in time to avoid all of the blow.

The goblin vaulted backward as if kicked by a horse. He'd gone so hard and fast his foot tore up right over the steel knife, guard, hilt, and all. He was just suddenly gone.

Lusis wasn't sure what had happened, but she struggled up and picked up her sword. She staggered back, head spinning, but air reaching her lungs at last.

The creature landed a good twenty feet away, with a splash of bright colour around its head. It was never getting up again. Through the trees, she could still see the Elfking and Glorfindel – they painted air with the blood of werewolves, almost having exhausted their supply. Lusis shook her head and looked over her shoulder.

The great Noldor Kindred, Osp, dropped the tree-like branch he held. His copper eyes were wide with revulsion. "That… is the foulest creature… I have ever seen." He backed up a step and smoothed his long, forest-coloured cloak. It shimmered softly, with the energy inside of it, an incredible match for the trees and grass hereabouts. He almost seemed an illusion while his hood was up. He extended an unsteady hand to Lusis, "Come away…. Let us not look upon… that filthy thing."

She sucked air and gazed at his long, pale fingers and exhaled. She showed him her sword-hand, which was scarred and bloody with this fight, and those small wounds melted away when his hand glided under her palm. He was quivering. "Not used to violence, are you?"

His huge copper eyes were on the Elfking of Mirkwood, whose essence was momentarily misplaced in the hush of his warlord domain. It must have been the only place where he didn't out-think, or second-guess. Inside that bubble of serenity, he was simple. He became a creature of action and reaction – purely physical. It was tied to his earliest fires, his childhood, to the purifying blaze of his warrior's heart. Lusis saw this, too, and noiselessly sighed, because the white star-fire chased his breastplate like the tail of a shooting star. And he was so beautiful.

Osp's hand squeezed hers, but a very little, as if he was afraid he might harm her. "May I use your name? May I speak it?"

She glanced at the distress in his wide copper eyes and said, "Call me Lusis. I'll call you Osp."

He nodded and doubled his hands on hers. "Is the foul thing… all right?"

"Nope." She smiled up at him. "Congratulations. You killed it." She let go of his hands and gave his arm – she assumed his arm was in there – a stout clap. "Well done."

But Osp bent, more listed, forward and left. Lusis hurried to prop him up by the shoulders and could feel that there was no armour beneath his long and amazing cloak. He breathed words in a language she couldn't begin to understand.

"Westron," she told him, "if you want or need help. Westron, good-elf, Osp." She pitied him, but didn't let that into her voice. He'd never killed anyone before, she was sure of it. Lusis had seen many young Rangers in this condition after killing their first orc. She'd managed to kill a Warg when she'd been very young. And when she'd seen its dim light go out, she'd sobbed. It gave her hope for Men that going to war and taking a life, even a life as foul as an orc's, goblin's, or Warg's, hurt. It hurt a lot. That reassured her that killing wasn't as natural to Men as she feared. And it wasn't – she looked at the King as he lit lightly on a stone – as natural to elves. Tempering. Folding. They had to be reshaped in fire and plunged in pure water. Some part of an elf had to be heated molten and then extinguished for that elf to become a warrior. And if she caught these elves looking down on the Silvan and their King, on Lord Elrond and Glorfindel, on the sacrifices of the elves of Middle Earth who had passed through the fires and waters of battle, she would think less of them. Possibly loudly.

Osp mastered himself.

"Haven't you ever killed before?" Lusis couldn't quite wring the pity out of her voice.

"I killed… a bee once." His voice was low with disgrace and she had the idea this was the trauma of killing something speaking in him. "I'd never seen one before, and it was so beautiful that I wanted to keep it with me. I didn't understand it might not survive. I… mortal things… they are delicate. They can… suddenly die. I held it in my hands too long. Time…." He shook his head as if confused and touched the filmy filigree bee clasp at his throat. "I wish it had stung me." He didn't understand why it wouldn't.

In stinging, it would have died. But wasn't that the very crux of revenge?

Instead, it had faded away.

Looking into his face, she could but imagine the love it must have felt for him.

Elves didn't eat meat because, unless pressed by evil, they didn't kill. Lusis felt her head tilt because… this bee might have been one of the first things he saw at the Beginning of All Things. She looked down at his hands, now curled together, and realized death had taught him to be gentle. And the mighty Kindred was like a child now that he'd killed again. No matter how foul the goblin had been. She gathered herself enough to smooth his cloak along his shoulder before she remembered it was bad-manners to simply touch elves. She stood back and looked up at his stricken copper eyes, "I'm no fit judge, Osp. I am just an imperfect soul, and long have I fought and killed the forces of the Enemy. I see no end in that road. There are new enemies abroad in the land, now. And… I'm no bee, but you held my life in your hands just long enough to save it. I hope you can find some peace in that."

Lusis searched herself for blood and injury, but her spinning head seemed to be the extent of it. She glanced across at Osp and sighed. "You shouldn't be here."

His shoulders rose somewhat, and his chin dropped down toward his chest. It had the effect of making his body posture look hollowed. "I followed your man, Redd Ayesir. There was no harm meant in it… just… curiosity."

"I don't believe you." She caught hold of the edge of his cloak, which he held shut around him, and she pulled him in the direction of the pile of werewolf and goblin bodies. "I don't expect the Elvenking will believe it either. And no matter what you think, he is King here."

Osp shied from the bodies and parts littering the land, until there was nowhere to withdraw from them, and then he pulled his head to the right and back into his hood, his eyes all but shut.

The Elfking stood on a cairn of stone, his farseeing eyes golden in the decline of the sun. He stared in the direction of Long Lake. As the sun fell behind rolling hills, the naked eye could make out the fires of Lake Township. Lusis could see them too.

He turned and sank slowly, and it was one pleasing motion that folded his arms up onto his perfectly balanced legs and threw his sun-gilded hair out around him like a halo as he crouched before them. His expression was flat and calm. "Hello, Osp."

The black-haired Noldor Kindred looked at the Sinda before him, shamefaced. "Thranduil."

Lusis gave the elf a small shove and a very hard look. At that moment, surrounded in a circle of fallen goblins and werewolves, she was in no mood to put up with elven hypocrisy. The majority of elves in this land, even elves who had ideological disputes with him, saw that Thranduil Oropherion was a King. The Kindred had just witnessed the same King acting in defense of his Woodland Realm, and having benefited from the King's intervention, Osp of the West wasn't permitted to rewrite reality.

So the Noldor sucked a deep breath. "As… I am here… in the East… should I call him Elvenking, I wonder?" He looked up at the tall Sinda, who was now standing on the stones like a statue cut in silver and painted along its sculpted planes with sun.

Lusis and Glorfindel all but stepped on one another on their way to, "Yes." They looked at one another, briefly.

The Elvenking pivoted and dropped to the ground. "You have been close behind us for days, Osp. I must applaud your restraint. I very much expected you to invade the very cabin we had occupied, rather than to endure the rain."

Osp looked at the ground, and then up again, because the toes of his boots squelched in blood the earth had yet to absorb and purify. He swallowed hard. "I am a lover of wide-open spaces. Neither of Lady Glir nor Lord Loss could have followed you here."

"Which is why they brought you," the Elfking wiped his blade clean in the ragged coat of a werewolf and spoke tartly, "why you're practically a Silvan, the way you've managed the rain and flooding. Fast as a thought, you are, as they are. Except, of course, I suspect my untrained child, Eithahawn, could best you with a sword."

His voice was very faint, "I am an engineer. I am no warrior."

"A what?" Everyone looked in his direction at the unfamiliar word.

"A… a being who studies the mechanisms of the natural world… and works with them to find unconventional solutions to problems. I suppose… an inventor of new things."

"Perhaps… like the Great Doors," Glorfindel pointed out to the Elvenking. "When Lord Elrond wrote that you worked with the Builders and, thereafter, those doors could open and close with flowing water?"

"Oh. Or when you used the white stones," Lusis nodded at the King, "to protect the Kingdom?"

The Elvenking's brows went up. "Whatever he is, he is not my concern. I am content to leave him wandering these woods as he was wont."

Beside Lusis, Osp backed away and ducked his head low, even shook it a little, as he kept his eyes on the King. That was about as strong a No as Lusis had seen from an elf, somewhere between, I refuse, and oh gods no.

"As I've said to you before, Elfking, he isn't wandering. He is following us," Glorfindel said flatly, until his teeth bared, he stepped toward the tall Noldor elf, and shook his red sword, "like a spy."

The elf backed away from Glorfindel, wide-eyed, and glanced across at the King and then Lusis.

"Wandering the Greenwood has served the Silvan well for Ages." The King said coldly to Osp. "As you are new to Middle-Earth, it will be good for you. I suggest you continue to do it. Perhaps South and straight on until you reach Men."

Osp's copper eyes opened wide in dismay. "Please," he took a step forward, his hands curled into fists around his cloak, "do not leave me in this dark corner of the world, so far away from culture and progress." His voice fell away into a trickle of beautifully rolling language that made the Elfking's head slowly go to one side.

Lusis stuck her sword tip in the ground and set her hands on her hips. "He's defenseless."

The Elfking's brows rose.

"To leave him alone in the woods is to leave an elf child alone here."

Osp glanced down at her, frustrated. "Young one, I am immeasurably old-"

"In the West," she told him. "You're ancient in the West. You're a child," Lusis snatched up her sword so quickly he backed away from her, "a baby in this place."

The Elfking turned to Lusis, and, as close to her as he was, the sudden scent of damp pine needles prickled along her senses. It made the knotted bits inside of her relax. His expression was like that of a figurine fired in a kiln and glazed. "If you want him… you may keep him. There is little I deny you, Yellow Istari." His jaw clenched, and then the King's eyes flickered over Osp.

Lusis exhaled and delivered the good news. "He saved my life."

"He…" the Elvenking blinked. Something not terribly common of elves. Try as he might, the King could not imagine a situation wherein someone as endlessly creative in battle as Lusis would need the help of inept warg-fodder like this strange Western elf, and, for an illuminating instant, his expression sharpened to a passion. He was fuming. But that angry flicker of countenance was there and gone before she had time to react. For no elf could tear away his powerful emotions and fold them into swans like the Elvenking.

Instead of irate, he became mild. A superb beauty befell him. His head inclined with supine grace. "Lord Osp, fortunate being, full of the light of the Trees, Eru shines upon you. You may stay by our side, in our protection, and never pass out from our sight but by our leave or command." The Elfking pivoted, his gaze glancing coldly off of Lusis', before he went back in the direction of Lord Elrond, the great elf who slowly descended the hill.

She turned to watch the Elvenking come even with smaller Lord Elrond. As in all things, the King was restrained, but it was obvious to her that he extended a graceful hand in air between them to offer assistance to the Lord. Elrond moved one of the hands closed together on his ribs, minutely, just enough to gesture slightly outward and downward before it returned to his robes. It was a refusal. A rebuff of the most civil sort. The Elfking fell back from the Lord with a nearly invisible incline of his blond head. Long years had not made them friends, exactly. But there was a communion.

Aside from which, the Lord of Rivendell was also a proud elf, and when Glorfindel joined his Lord, his own proffer of help was also denied.

So much living done in solitude.

Lusis turned to Osp and took his rather substantial wrist in her hand. He looked down at her grip upon him.

"Listen to me," she gave his body a tug of emphasis. "You do not understand this place. You do not understand the Men to the North of us, their relationship to the Elvenking, or the desires that powered these dead things at our feet. You do not know what elves are. This is our world. And this world changed them. But that only means they are different."

His chin rose a little. She wasn't sure he was accepting her words, but Lusis released him.

She exhaled and glanced toward the sunset. They had, perhaps, a scant twenty minutes to full darkness. There was still headway to be made. "Stay close to me, Western spy."

His head turned a little to the left and downward in shame, but when she went to join her troop of men, which now officially included two of her brothers, he followed docilely behind her. It was probably true that this elf had all the pride of a Calaquendi, but what did that matter, if he hadn't the opportunity to demonstrate it?

Lusis was glad of that eventuality. They were a long way from the lawful world out here, and she had a gnawing suspicion that if Osp slipped up, someone was going to hit him. She watched her elves cluster and saw Glorfindel raise his head, his eyes and chest sparked with that lustrous fire of his. He glared at the Noldor from the West.

Strike Osp? In battle, the Elfking was many things: hot; irritated; impatient; focused; and, finally, on-point and at peace. In spite of Thranduil's temper, he wasn't terribly violent. So her money was on Glorfindel.

She stopped when her Rangers surrounded her again. The tall elf with her looked around them as if he'd never seen Men before. And that… was possible. She looked up at his eyes, which were, in colour, a nearly perfect coppery gold. His dark eyelashes flickered in quick blinks. Elves didn't blink very habitually. The particular concoctions of sentiment that led to their sustained blinks, or these small storms of eyelashes, as she called them, were still a mystery to Lusis.

Icar looked the tall elf over and glanced at Lusis. "Uh…" he pointed in Osp's direction. He glanced at his brother.

"Yeah," Aric exhaled and nudged Steed. "I see him. Can this one fight, Lusis?"

Steed chuckled, "Only you could go into battle and come out with an entirely new elf."

"Let him alone." Lusis told them. She shook her head, which was still a bit foggy with the blow she'd taken. Her men were in good shape. Aric had a bandage, as did Redd, but they looked hale.

"What's the word from the King then, Lus?" Elsenord wiped off his sword partly in a fallen werewolf and partly in Aric, who gave the Buckmaster a dark look, particularly because it made Steed grin. Elsenord ignored the Ranger – he'd known both Awnsons for years. Instead, he glanced at the Noldor. "And who is this elf? I've never seen one with eyes like that. Is that normal for elves?"

"No," said several voices, including Steed's and Lusis'.

Only Osp had said, "Quite."

Lusis glanced across to where the conversation between the King, the Lord, and the warrior, Glorfindel was breaking. There were few words involved, which meant they were probably thinking their thoughts at one another. She exhaled and glanced at the tall elf, "This is my troop. They're Northern Rangers some of them – great soldiers of the North. And some are Messenger Men. You can think of them as soldiers who specialize in moving supplies from one point to another, often over hostile territory. They are brave, dangerous, and very skilled."

"Soldiers," the tall elf shifted weight and his shimmering robe seemed to spark with patterns of twigs and leaves in fiery red. He smoothed it absently.

Lusis turned to her troop. "Rangers, this good elf is called Osp. He is from the West. We need to safeguard him. As far as I can see he has no combat skills."

"Fires," Aric pinched the bridge of his nose. "I can't take any more."

"Strictly speaking, she cannot keep the King, Aric." Steed snickered.

"Then what about Legolas?" Aric sighed, "Dorondir. Any elf with a sword-arm." He glanced across at Glorfindel and then back to Lusis. "You never bring back anything useful." He exclaimed.

Redd shook his head. "Hush." Lusis glanced at him and saw that his eyes were on Osp. She could fairly hear the chains and levers in his skull clanking.

"Oh, but you don't look like you're out of Rivendell…." Remee's brows went up at the colour of this new elf's eyes. He looked at Redd – the only one of them who had been raised in the vast book vault known as the Northern Hoard. "All the way from Grey Havens, is he?"

"The West," Osp spoke in his sparking voice, but more slowly this time, as if it should have been utterly obvious. At the same time, he tucked a stray lock of long, black, billowing hair back into his hood with a graceful hand. The filmy ring he wore caught Redd's attention. "Valinor."

"Never heard of it," Aric spit blood on the ground. "So, in Valinor, don't they teach you how to-"

Redd clapped a hand down on Aric's shoulder and silenced him. He just stared at the elf. "You were one of the ones in the cloaks when the festival opened. One of those on the balcony. I glimpsed you even if the others didn't."

"Yes."

"And the others are from Valinor?" Redd asked breathlessly.

"Lord Loss and Lady Glir." The elf's head swayed and one of his dark brows rose in curiosity. "They are from Valmar and Aqualonde, yes."

There was a moment of silence during which Steed stepped around Elsenord to get a better look at the elf, and it was clear he also understood what this elf was saying.

Redd managed to ask, "What are you doing here, great elf of the West?"

Now Lusis pulled a face and pointed out, "Redd, he followed you from-"

"Not what I mean," Redd cut her off unapologetically. "What are you doing, outside of the Undying Lands? Why would you cross the sea and come all this way?"

The elf looked away and down. "It is not for me to say," but then he did something Lusis had never seen an elf do before, not one in this attitude of disavowal. His eyes opened and those great glinting mirrors rolled under his eyelids to take in Redd. "May I walk with you, Ranger? You know of Valinor… somehow. I am curious about how. Has some elf told you? That Sinda back there couldn't have told you this. Like the rest of his ilk, he's never been."

Icar's jaws clacked together and he spoke between his teeth. "Did you mean to say 'the King'?"

Lusis changed her wager. If anyone was going to hit Osp, it was Icar.

She reached a hand out to grip his upper arm and squeezed some sense back into his eyes. Then she released the breath she'd been holding. "Clean up. I'll wager the King will have us press on to Long Lake from here, rather than risk a night outside with werewolves."

"Werewolves," Osp glanced at the large, matted body off to his left. It stank of a deep musk, overlaid with the stench of death. But there was a deeper pong on it that disturbed him even more.

"He killed these?" Osp asked no one in particular, his hands folded together.

"The King?" Icar asked for clarification. "He and Glorfindel did."

"How can he tolerate being near them?" asked the tall, slender elf.

Lusis shook her head, "He doesn't kill them because he likes them." She glanced over her troop and up to Remee and Redd, the two largest and tallest men. "Get some branches down and make them travel ready. There are fewer trees between here and Long Lake and if we need a litter for Lord Elrond, we're not going to be caught without."

"Lusis Buckmaster," said the King from behind her, "If it comes to pass that there is pressing need for Lord Elrond to be carried hence, I will do it myself, for much of the peace in this world is owed to him, the peace my elves enjoy."

She turned to him and stepped forward so that he was the only one she could see.

Sometimes she wished they could have been alone, not unlike in those few rare times in Lake Township where he was willing to interact with the girl who guarded his room. It was probably not good that she considered him a salve at the end of her days. Still.

He looked down on her, head to the right. His voice was quiet. "Can you travel, Lusis-sell? You are bruised. I did not see what befell you, but… to need intervention from another. It was serious."

She raised her chin and didn't reply when Icar said her name. She wasn't sure it was a question in any case. "I'll fare well enough. Are you unhurt?"

"Entirely." He told her and instructed, "And we must press for Long Lake. I hear distant wolves running to the smell of blood. They come to eat their own kind. The land hereabouts, once safe for Men, has fallen to forces boiling out of the foulness of Mordor."

Lusis nodded her head at the ground, which made her a little dizzy. She wavered where she stood. The blow to the back of her body and head, the battle, and the endless pressure in the air around her all summed up to an instant of sudden darkness.

The King steadied her with a nimble hand and a sudden exhalation, "Lusis?"

"Here," she said, as if sitting in the one-house classroom her father had insisted upon.

She heard Redd behind her. "Cut the branches, boys. If we need to carry her, it will be done."

The Elfking's great white stag joined them within the mile, when they were far upwind of the fallen werewolves. Then the King walked beside it on its right, and Glorfindel at its left. It was pale Elrond who sat astride its back. The elk had bourn the Lord of Rivendell once before, though he couldn't recall its having happened. It took the Elvenking speaking to the great beast for it to accept someone – even an elf – that it hadn't chosen for itself.

Within two hours, the sky opened up and drenched them in an autumnal rain. The moon lost itself behind the clouds, but, by then, Dorondir had appeared from the darkness, and he came with elf horses, the kind who needed no lead but the will of the elf guiding them in place of ropes.

Lusis lifted her head up from the cold sucking muck and shaking rain when the half-Noldor arrived. He could only have been here if he'd left very shortly after they'd last spoken. Even in the swirling state of misery she was in at that moment, she smiled when she saw him pull back his hood, and his green eyes found her plodding beside her Rangers.

Steed held out a pale hand to Remee. "Pay me now, or there will be compounding interest."

"Stars. Part-elves."

"You have elf-blood," Steed gave him an elbow in the arm. "Pay me. Let's go."

"A thimble full does not qualify as 'elf-blooded'." Grumbled Remee as he searched through his pouch for the right monies.

"It's your own fault. Never doubt him if he says horseflesh is on its way," Aric snickered up at Remee. "Pounding rain, fireside in the Grand Ballroom of Gondor, doesn't matter if you're sitting in a boat at sea. If he says there's one coming, one will swim by."

Lusis glanced over the tall elf before her. He seemed to get further and further away, Osp. Tireless in the rain. Comfortable. Warm. His strange cloak shimmering softly with tall grass.

Dorondir's great silver-dappled horse came around the flank of the Ranger band, and he leaned out of his saddle and caught her sagging body up. Lusis felt nerveless. She lacked the energy to dispute. He pulled her into his cloak, which was the only respite she had from the rain.

The King spoke her name. It came to her ear as though it fell down a snow-fogged pass, soft and muffled. In fact, it seemed more in her head than in air. She blinked heavily, and groped for that intoning, as if she could touch the shirred fur of his voice, pull it around her shoulders, and feel warm. But she could no more hold a voice in her hand than she could moonlight. She felt her head roll against the heat of Dorondir, and her eyes stared, coincidentally, into the bright fire of him, behind the grill of bone. She pulled in a breath.

Just seconds later, the Elfking turned her head to face him, his hand cupped her cheek and, for a moment it seemed that elves were the only warmth in the world. She watched the King's silver eyes. His lips moved in soft speech.

Her brain heard him as if he whispered in her ear.

There is an oppression upon her. Great… is the evil that dwells East of our gates.

She fairly saw his voice as motes in air. Sparks that spilled around her, inextinguishable by rain. Lusis looked into the pillar of light that was one with the fire of Thranduil Oropherion. She found his silver disk eyes and she told him. It reaches its fingers not for me… but for the Lord.

The Elvenking's lips moved softly and the pillar of light rose up in him. His hand, against her cheek, brightened so that she had to narrow her eyes, and that bright aura sank through her skin and into her blood. It coursed through her with a quickening beat, until it crossed the face of her star, and that bright power pulsed through the darkness. Rising up and spreading out for leagues.

Then she could hear the rain, but the weight and misery were gone.

She sat up and opened her eyes.

Dorondir still held her sitting on the withers of the silver mare he rode. He shied from her nearness, and then his long legs squeezed the barrel of the horse. "My Lord, she seems fully recovered."

She wasn't convinced of that. In fact, it seemed she'd been unaware of her situation for long time, and only coming groggily too now, but elves knew next to nothing of exhaustion.

The King opened some rein for the bull-elk, and kept easy pace with them as they flew through rain. Yes, the horses were full of fire, now that the lights of Lake Township were straight ahead.

Lusis looked upward, vaguely aware of the glow of – that would be her fire – above them against the rainclouds. Frankly… she wasn't certain what she felt about that. But it seemed something close to fear. She turned away from it and touched her heel to the horse's flanks. It shot forward.

They raced across the rolling hills to Lake Township, and bells went off as guards on new-built stone watchtowers saw their band, saturated wet, tearing into the only human habitation in all of the Elvenking's prosperities.

A new road led from the park-like field beside Lake Township. That green growth there eternally flowered. The white cobbles ran to the ring of guard houses around the great Silver Beech. It towered, faintly glowing, where the King had – at their behest – claimed this human land and expanded his territory here. At the other end of this sprawling field a large collection of aspens stood, with benches set among them. A fountain now stood where, once, there had been the body of Lammia, Lusis' first great enemy. The humans had hoped to exchange that memory for a welcoming place, it seemed, for the elf citizens of their Kingdom.

They tore around the side of that stand of aspens, charged through the field, and thundered onto the white cobbles, with the ringing of bells chasing them. Lusis glanced around her and saw that the walls at Kasia's Keep and business – the edge of town – had been reinforced. A wall-walk had been added, with arrow loops. But the men at attention there stood down.

So many forces now! So organized! And it had only been half a year.

Through the rain, she heard calls go out. "The King arrives!"

That call was repeated as they swept across the white stone and found the cobbles of Kasia's grand Keep had been replaced in the same bright stuff, and in the middle of the sea of white was the lozenge of Thranduil Oropherion's house – the same that was set in the floor of the throne room in stained wood, and with which he sealed decrees. But here it was rendered in bright stone. A silver-blue field with red, gold, and green oak leaves, white antlers that rose out of a ten pointed star in gold. The King saw this with some curiosity. He hadn't been aware the Men had known about this symbol.

"Someone is paying attention," Redd mused. As they pulled to a stop, the huge Ranger gestured at long, gold-coloured streamers, decked in the white flags of the King's seal. They flicked in the wet night wind in the light of tall lamps. They decorated the silver tree ornamented with the same lozenge.

The King's bull-elk turned side-on to Kasia's Keep, yet still moved toward it in the downpour. The local human forces had lined up along the white yard and were now before the King, nearly unflinching in their resolve. They were outfitted properly, it was clear. Well-armed. Unified. Work had been ongoing among the once dispirited and hunted human law enforcement of Lake Township. It was gratifying for the King to witness.

The double doors to the covered deck of Kasia's Keep opened, and then darkened before the onset of curious staffers. There were more inside than there had been prior.

The Elvenking pulled in rein for the Northern Ranger, Argus Samas, who crossed the cobbles. The forces Men stepped back and aside as he came. There was a kind of neophyte precision in it. As if they had learned something from the exactitude of elves. For his part, the gangly Ranger sloshed through the yard nearly up to the great elk, until the beast put its head down with great antlers coming to bear. It had decided he was close enough, and Argus agreed. He stopped and opened his empty hands.

"We had no idea you were coming, King," the Ranger squinted up into the downpour. "Is there alarm?" He rightly expected warning before the King came riding in. Kings and companions were a lot of work. Preparation time was required. Having him meant opening rooms. It required space and extra effort. As if the same thought had occurred to them, several of the staff hurried away from the tall doors of the Keep and raced back into the house. Nothing was ready for him.

The King had also noticed. He glanced at the lights in the Keep. Oil lamps coming on in the upstairs hall of windows.

"No alarm," said the King lightly. His white bull-elk glided forward on its long legs, all seven feet of elk, at the withers, passed between Forces men with only the soft tap of forked hooves. He spoke in elvish. The Forces men turned to see rows of elves in their water-resistant hooded cloaks. Standing wordlessly, noiselessly behind them. Out of nowhere. They moved aside for the passage of the King as if skating over the surface of the water in the yard.

The King gave a single backward glance and Lord Elrond started forward, followed by Glorfindel and then Dorondir. Everyone else, even the great Noldor Kindred, Osp, waited for Lusis.

She got off her elf horse and handed the reins over to the scurry of young men rushing from the warm rectangle of the stable doors. She and her Rangers went inside. Osp was last among them, and looked at the construction of the house, at its unfamiliar shapes, and confined spaces – nothing open to the wild – with an air of incredulity. His peach-golden gaze set on Lusis, and she nodded at him. All elves had some degree of difficulty adjusting to human construction. Case in point, Dorondir pulled back his hood and glanced at the narrow halls at the back of this main room with an air of suspicion. It wasn't that he deeply distrusted the staff there. He intensely doubted the safety of what, for the elves, was such a small, tunnel-like passageway.

The King went to the top of the main hall and gestured at the white hide chair that was considered to be his when he was here. The Lord Elrond unhooked the long cloak he wore. Dorondir stepped up and took it from the Lord's shoulders without any need to be asked. The Elflord looked both stern and pale now. His dark grey eyes were clouded with exhaustion. He graciously took to the white chair.

Jan Kasia, the Master of Boats, and the businessman in charge of the large warehouses, actually raced in through the opened double-doors. He carried an oil lamp on a long and hooked walking stick he set in a stand by the door. He blinked upon seeing the stern, dark-haired elf in the white chair with his circlet glinting in the firelight. Kasia's very human eyes glanced over tall, disapproving Glorfindel, and the contained uneasiness of Dorondir, who had cursory skill with humans. He stepped further into the room and found the white mane of the King at the fireside. It had never seemed likely that proud, powerful Kasia would breathe a sigh of relief on sight of the Elvenking, but he did so. He even remembered to bow, though that might have been easier than usual, as he bowed at the King's turned back.

"My Lord… what are you doing here?"

Kasia sounded shocked. All around him, in the upstairs hall, just out of sight, and all the halls leading to the main room, the staff gathered to hear.

The Elfking turned from the fire and drifted up through the middle of the room. As he went, he let the great cloak he wore slither to the floor, and from his full armour. In so much blue-shot steel, all of it covered in the impression of crow-feathers, and with his white hair drenched against him, he looked not only intimidating, but feral. His head turned, and his unblinking pupils dilated against sheerest blue. His voice was low and threatening. "Should I not be here, Jan Kasia?"

In the silence between them, the girl carrying a heated vessel of mulled wine cringed as she set it out on the sideboard. More servants came behind her, carrying trays of hot scones, tureens of cream, and bowls of compote. Osp looked in their direction, transfixed.

"Of course you should," Kasia exhaled and backed from the vision of sudden annoyance dropping down upon him like a thunderhead. He'd been told many times that the Elfking had a temper. His slow gesture seemed to push the suggestion away. But he struggled for words in the face of the sharp-eared, glowing creature that was his otherworldly King. "But… we would expect some word."

Lusis glanced across at Dorondir. His green-eyed gaze assiduously ignored her.

"Perhaps that could have been arranged," the King's voice was taciturn. "But we were interrupted by a rather large pack of werewolves on the plain between the forest's edge and the River Running. Is there something you forgot to mention in your missives, Jan Kasia?"

The man gawped. "A pack of… what my Lord?"

"King," Elrond's resonant voice said lightly. He tapped his pursed lips with one fingertip, highly entertained by the human subjects of the Elvenking, and it was less Kasia than the staff now coming into the room to make busy laying out blankets on couches, and whatever else they could dream up to do.

"A pack of what… my King," Kasia corrected with a glance at the dark-haired elf. His voice dropped low, "And who is he?" He pointed at his own head, "Why is he wearing a circlet? He's been here before…. Is he your brother?"

The Elfking shut his eyes and said, "It would serve you better to confess to me why the rolling lands between my stronghold and yours," he snagged the cup of wine offered in his peripheral vision as a matter of habit, "are so clotted with goblins and werewolves that it took part of an hour for we – we elves and Northern Rangers – to hack through a single pack of them."

The girl who had brought the wine wobbled away so quickly she nearly fell. It was Glorfindel who caught her around the elbow and kept her on her feet. His shining hair and pale blue eyes seemed to scare her and enchant her in equal parts. He released her, straightened, and looked into his hand for a moment before he beheld the girl in severe regard. She saw that he was affronted, turned, and scurried for the kitchens with a head-bow for the Elfking.

Poor thing. Lusis sucked air through her teeth, her glance at Glorfindel harsh on her way to Jan Kasia. When they'd first met, this mogul had been striding through a field full of boat wreckage just to the West of the Halls. He was impetuous, yes, but also blatantly honest. "Did you know anything about the build-up of dark forces along the River Running?"

"I have had no word." He seemed very surprised, and rubbed the stubble on his face. "It seems unlikely, Miss Istari, and my King."

The Elvenking asked quietly over the rim of his wine goblet. "Perhaps I should have brought you the head of a werewolf, Kasia, as with the Fire Salamander. You have proven to require the material evidence of an evil, the feel of it in the air around is something you do not discern."

"I had," Kasia raised both flattened hands, "no idea. And it seems unlikely that such a thing would be possible, my Lord – my… my King. We have boats that go by that way to communities on the Sea of Rhun. We do trade at the bazaars there. Gondor has many outposts there… and there is extensive discussion of a great wall being built to close in Mordor."

"And you smell profits on the wind." The Elvenking gave a soft huff of humour and almost smiled. "If, in fact, I were your enemy, Kasia, I would by no means interrupt the passage of the very ships I considered my spoils. Let them do their commerce and money exchange in the North East, yes, but let their boats be towed home to a new leader. What care businessmen if there is no murmur in their wealth? It is not the men of the boats who would go missing, but the men of the unincorporated settlements hereabouts."

"The squatters?" Jan Kasia asked. "Those criminals that Mordor soldiers let out of prisons and set to causing chaos in the land? Those reprobates and degenerates? What do I care of them?"

"Even the dwarves carry songbirds when digging deep," The Elvenking said softly. He set the nearly untouched wine aside on a passing tray and said, "This wine is insipid."

The servant, a young man who seemed very shy of the elves, nodded, wide-eyed, and carried the cup of wine away.

"Songbirds?" Kasia invited.

"If the air of the deep is poison, the bird dies first, Kasia." The King's head rose and tipped to one side. "That does not mean all the dwarves will live. But Oakenshield himself once put it to me, there is no mistaking a dead songbird. The hamlets and dells full of miscreants exist so that they may serve as a warning. Send Forces or Rangers among them, quietly, ingeniously, and find out how many are missing." The Elfking turned to Lusis, "These are figures… I will need to consider."

She nodded at him, quietly, and saw him twist his long, pale hair in one hand like it was a dishcloth. Not that she figured he would've had occasion to twist one of those. But it was so punitive, that action, that he discerned she winced, and he left his hair alone, damp as it was. Lady Galadriel might have dried it with a sunny gesture of her fingers, Lusis thought. They looked so fair together, like innate lovers. She shrugged the thought away and watched the Elvenking turn to admonish, "Never again ignore the presence of those fallen Men at your borders, Kasia. They are more than dross and inconvenience. They may rise up one day… for good or ill. You must know them, and be ready."

He pivoted and went toward the white chair, not yet looking at the Lord there. "Kasia, I do not believe you have had a formal introduction to the," the Elfking's graceful head turned and he paused. Elrond was now swaddled in warm blankets, his boots set upon a wooden rest, and his long and pale hands held a cup of tea.

"I like it here," Lord Elrond's brows rose, and his round, beauteous, elven voice riffled through the room like waves in fields of wheat. He sipped the tea and smiled after judicious elvish fashion, but his expression held a clear edge of humorousness in it, "I can see why you claimed the land."

"So you could lounge in my chair and have honeyed tea." The Elfking said pointedly, also inadvertently admitting he considered it his chair.

Lord Elrond looked up from his cup and saucer, pleased with himself, and his work here. "Ah, remunerations. Pray, do not rush me. I have years of the splendid Elvenking, Thranduil Oropherion, faithfully being exactly who he is, and behaving precisely, unabashedly, and completely… however he wants. It's a lot to make up."

The Elfking's long back stiffened. "Are you enjoying yourself, Lord Elrond?" The words were wound up in exasperation.

Now the Elflord slipped. He truly smiled as he put his head down. When he glanced up again, he was still bright with amusement. He told the King, "I plan to be highly inconvenient." He inclined his head and then paused for thought, and added another, "Highly."

The Elvenking exhaled, gathered calm to him, and let his lids lower on his silver eyes. Somehow, he inclined in answering acceptance. "Lord Elrond, I do not pretend at… being agreeable."

"Ever." Lord Elrond gave a huff of humour, "In the way you 'do not pretend' at anything."

The Elfking's head tipped, "Perhaps. But, in any case, it is right that the Men of this place are gentle to you – you were once such as they are." He ignored Lusis' startled glance. "Rest here, Lord of Rivendell, for the long work is only beginning. Let the Men of Kasia see to a room for you, and Glorfindel shall help you into it."

"With tea," said the Lord in a somewhat drained intonation. He looked into his cup gratefully, "Good Men of Kasia. Tea."

Kasia was taken aback, "Well… of course. It will be done for you, Lord." This was an interesting about-face. He'd feared the grand, severe, and reverberant Elflord when he'd laid eyes on him in their meeting prior. Now he seemed shamed by Lord Elrond's seeming-humanity.

Lusis left the side of the King as the great Sinda got into conversations about business. Rangers gathered at the sideboard, eating. Osp studied the room in fine detail – the wood-grain; the buttresses; the bare, stained rafters; the white plaster walls; the rugs and tapestries; the hide chairs. He was not in his world. This was not an elven space in the slightest. And so he drifted through it, disconnected except for the curiosity of Icar following behind him.

When she reached the green-eyed spy and warrior, he tried to pass her by in favour of going to the Lord in the white hide chair, but Lusis reached out and snagged his vambrace. "Dorondir."

He leaned over her a fraction. "Lusis."

"You were here half a day ahead, and you didn't warn Men that the King was coming?" she said softly to him. "Why not?"

Now Dorondir's lips curved softly at her. One of his dark brows rose up, "I only do as instructed, Lusis-gwend. And… it is not me you ask."

She shook her head at him, "Of course it is."

"No," he smiled softly and then his green eyes found the King. "It is him. I am incidental."

They both straightened then. The activity in the upper level had woken the youngest resident of the Kasia house, and now she stood in a pretty patchwork dressing gown, thick with ruffles. She saw the Elvenking and made a strangled peep. Even he looked up at this, and, mid-sentence, inclined his blond head to Kasia's young daughter.

Avonne Kasia pulled free of her Nanny and charged down the stairs.

"Careful!" Kasia scolded her, but the girl was too excited to pay him heed. She crossed the intervening space in the downstairs with her slippered feet hardly touching the floor. She reached out her thin arms and crashed into the King's ribs with a clang.

The Elfking sucked a breath in dismay. "Avonne-sell, have you hurt yourself?" He glanced down at the top of her curling head. "You will be soaked through – I have ridden in a driving rain, little one."

Kasia set a hand on his little girl's shoulder. "Ave, my love, have you knocked out what sense you have on that armour? You mustn't cling to the King of the Great Greenwood. Go back upstairs."

But the King backed away and the girl went with him, "Glorfindel."

The butter-blond strode over to the King and extended a blade-like hand to the human child, but without touching her. As if that should have been enough. "No sell. One must withdraw." He said by rote. It sounded very much like something that adult elves told little elf gwinig – babies – as they began to grow to older children. Withdraw. Avoid contact. Eschew powerful emotions. Powerful emotions can damage and kill.

Avonne peeked out from where she'd wrapped her arms around the King's waist, but she spared no more than a single glance for Glorfindel. She did say, "Go away." to him.

"Leave her," Thranduil said quietly. "The armour."

But Redd had already stepped up, sodden as they all were, and he intervened. Between the two of them, they got the King's breastplate quickly away. Then the Elfking dropped to a knee before the crying girl. He sighed, and his head tipped right and forward of its own bidding. "Ai. What is all this, Avonne-sell?" That voice, so gentle and yielding, was reserved for small and fragile things.

Avonne managed to tell him, "I didn't think… you would come back. It's been a… long time."

The King's silver eyes narrowed and he repeated the quiet words, slowly, "A long time."

She nodded and wiped her eyes in her sleeve. "I missed you."

This required the Elfking to pull himself under wraps. For his pale, inexpressive face had reacted with hints of surprise and pain. Glorfindel fell back and walked to the fireplace, he put his back to the King rather than witness, even though the King smoothed himself quickly. He looked at the human child and said, "You… you've changed."

"They grow up quickly," Kasia watched the King with wonder.

The seven-year-old reached out and patted his sodden hair as carefully as a child could touch a thing. She smoothed water out of it, and it ran down his white steel pauldron. Then she reached up to reveal the curve of his elven ear. Like most humans, she found the shape curious and lovely. She smiled at him. "Will you be staying, Thranduil-ada?"

"For a time, yes. Shall you?"

She laughed through her tears. It was a silly question and meant to be.

"I will introduce you to the Lord of Rivendell," the King straightened and took her hand in his.

Kasia said, "There's no need, King…" but he spoke quietly, and in a cursory way. It occurred to him that the Elfking had great affection for Avonne, and his handling of her was not a matter of elven etiquette. He had not thought it possible for an elf to truly care for the plight of a human child.

The Elfking was not aware of this realization. He was looking down at Avonne, "He is a great Elflord with a glowing elven stronghold built on cliffs between waterfalls."

Avonne looked up at him and shook her head, "It must be so damp."

The King immediately looked away. His lovely face had dimpled with humour and he'd almost laughed. "He will tell you all about it, I am certain. And he also has a daughter – Arwen, who is so fair she is called the Evenstar by all elves – and you may pet his hair as you please." He steered her to the Elflord. Lord Elrond set aside his tea and his dark grey eyes darted up to Thranduil.

"Thranduil." He said quickly, "I am in no way familiar with human chil-"

Thranduil lifted Avonne into Elrond's lap and she reached up and gave his hair a gentle tug. "I'm Avonne. Your hair is the colour of hot cocoa. It's soft and pretty. But Thranduil-ada's is even prettier." She paused for breath and asked a very serious, "When you live between two waterfalls, is it damp?"

Foreseeing that he might be drawn into this, Glorfindel edged away from the pair of them.

The Elvenking's expression smoothed, and he returned to the cold, difficult being that Jan Kasia and Lake Township both needed and prized, and feared and revered. His silver disk eyes and slow, feral motions returned to the fore at once.

"Jan Kasia. Rouse the Council." He took the new goblet of wine offered him – this time the best in the house, and, likely, in the city. He turned to glance at one of the local section heads of his elves where he waited politely just outside the open double doors. "Report."

It felt strange, coming back to the well-ordered life of Lake Township.

On the first night, Lusis had gone up into the long hall at the front of Kasia's house. She hadn't realized the King had come out of the room he traditionally occupied to watch her. In fact, she had fixed on the bench she'd slept on the first time she'd been here. It had been set back to the far end of the hall, where it had originally stood. She'd also touched her throat, which had once been in a state of slowly increasing constriction, as if in the coils of a snake, when Lammia had been trying to harvest the power of an Istari.

The Elfking had restrained her by the wrist when she'd taken a step in the wood bench's direction and he'd insisted on her taking a room, which she occupied with her brothers, given the numbers they'd arrived in.

Still, she had woken up that first morning, leaned in the doorframe of the King's room. That was how she had learned that she was too anxious for his safekeeping in any habitation of Men to leave him alone, without Elites on guard, in a room whose door he wouldn't even shut. Likewise, she'd learned he was unwilling to have her sleep on a slab of unrelieved wood. The next night, an elven cot had appeared beside the King's door. It was a leaf-shaped web of ropes, and naturally cupped, which stood on small wood stands that folded into staves – she found it ingenious. When she'd arrived and spread out thick down blankets on the cot, she'd spared a glance in at the Elfking. He'd been curled on the large bed, clad in a silky crimson robe, reading paperwork. Seemingly oblivious to her appreciation.

The very face of innocence. But it could only have been brought there because of his orders.

It felt strange to be back to Lusis. It was at once, welcome, peculiar, and painful.

Some part of her had begun to think of Kasia's as home.

But this was the house of a business associate, and she had no home of her own.

And then it had been a week.

She had no idea what operations happened with Lord Elrond. To her eye, it seemed the King went about the business of getting things on track, as was required when he was here. She had gotten a little better acquainted with the Lord, mostly enough to notice his sense of humour was something refined, but had a curiously human edge to it. Something about him was slightly closer to what she was than it was to the Elfking. It was also likely, or so the Elfking had told her in passing, seeing as they spent less time together when they were in this place, that the remaining Three Kindred knew he was here by this time.

But they wouldn't come into a city of Men.

Lord Elrond also preferred to keep away from the humans.

This new city of the Elvenking's holding, it isolated him perfectly.

And that's what Lake Township was becoming. A city, rather than a town.

She felt that these bastions of humanity had an inherent arrangement to them, a… pattern that elf life did not possess. At night it was dark, and the people slept. Elves did not. They were awake at all hours – reading, thinking, drawing, or playing. In a human town, when it was day the shops and carts and businesses opened and the streets and markets and all other places were packed with people. There were no shops among the elves. There was no paying. Elves bought and sold, used money and knew its relative value, only in the outside world. Even something that basic wasn't the same.

Humans went along the streets below laughing, smiling, whistling, singing, heckling, carrying on, some sorrowful, some limping, begging, suffering, hungering, forgotten, angry, bleeding, beaten, and shouting. She remembered the King enumerating core values of elven life: fortitude, serenity, restraint, nonexistence of interpersonal violence, and the habit of peace. When she stood back and looked at the street – at the circus of it – she began to understand, dimly, what it was the elves saw here. No tranquility. No discretion. Avarice. Disorderliness. And a fearsome lack of self-control.

She stood on the uppermost deck of Kasia's shipping business, looked down at the market on Water Street, and at the craftsman's shops on Main, and she felt almost dazed. A butcher snapped the neck of a bird by whirling it in air. Crowds bellowed over themselves at shop-keeps. A girl pulled a man into an alleyway, money changed hands, and he scooped her against the bricks for sport. It was all visible from above. Off to her left, a boy stole pulled-toffee and the man behind the counter snapped his shop-cloth against a child. Old friends met and made great show of embracing. In her mind, in the back of it, Lusis stood on Buckmaster Spur and looked at the ice on the Northern-most trees of the Great Greenwood. The quiet muffler of snow. In the back of her mind, she heard the cold, hollow wind stroke the emptiness around her. In her father's world. Not here. But here. Lake Township was swollen with newcomers. It was busy. It was growing rapidly. And there was chaos, and racket.

The Forces and Rangers would be essential.

By all accounts, criminal activity was booming, so much so that she'd spoken with Ranger Chief Argus Samas, and elven spy Dorondir, about how Rangers and Forces could safely infiltrate the criminal underworld… just to keep an eye on them. Not a pair she'd ever dreamt would work as a team. And speaking of elves….

Osp fairly panted from where he leaned on the wooden wall behind her. He was off to her left, and on one side of an open door, struggling with what was, to his sharper senses, an indescribable commotion. He bowed his head with his shoulders heaving. His black hair freed itself from the sheerest of clips – they looked like gauzy pussy willow seeds rendered in filaments – and tangled in the breeze.

On her right beside the door, and likewise against the wall, was Dorondir. His head was tipped back against the wood. He leaned against his hands, behind him, and his chest rose and fell steadily. His eyes, the green colour of crabapples, now looked at the sky, now looked at the human crowds, and looked at the sky again.

Glorfindel leaned in the doorway in his great, golden grandeur. And his lips curled. "They bark and bite and breed in the streets like feral dogs." His head tipped so that long locks of hair billowed around the doorframe into the wind. His blue eyes, the colour of the aquamarines of Erebor, swept to Lusis, "This is what Thranduil claimed as his own?"

Dorondir put his head down. "Forgive me, Istari. There is much feeling in them. It moves me." His voice was little better than a whisper as he said it.

Lusis felt great sympathy for him. He had been ordered to do this, daily, by the Elvenking, who felt that it was important he learn to adjust.

Glorfindel gave a huff. "It is an insult to the good Silvan of Mirkwood that he claims this place and its Men. Loud, ponging, shouting-"

"Full of life," Dorondir put in. "Teeming with it."

"Perhaps he means full of lice?" Glorfindel chucked toward Osp.

The Kindred slowly raised his head. He schooled himself and blinked at the crowd before him. "No, look…" his voice died away in the sudden bawling of a kid-goat going to slaughter. All the elves, even the tough and cynical warrior, Glorfindel, looked away from it. Osp's long arms wrapped around himself, around his ribs in the long, shimmering cloak he wore.

Then the cries cut off and Glorfindel's voice was hard, "You were saying?"

Dorondir reached across the doorway to lay a hand on Osp's arm. "Speak, good Osp. Speak on, please, and tell me what thing you saw."

Osp pulled a breath, "In the window, several houses away, there is a woman singing." He turned his overwhelmed face toward Dorondir, and the elf's long and graceful hand fell away from the Kindred. "It is hard to hear. And in her hands she holds… little windmills made of paper. Brightly coloured and spinning… pinwheels. Perhaps she entertains a child. Or perhaps she is simply… creative."

"Noldor elves," Lusis felt herself smile as she looked down on the thronging crowd. "They are attracted to any spark of creativity, like a moth to the moon. You must love the Elfking." She turned toward him and saw his copper eyes open upon her. He was so breathtaking.

But elves were, so she simply accepted this and smiled at him softly, so it wouldn't push him further than he could endure.

Dorondir glanced over the humans a final time. "I pity the sections here." He glided by Glorfindel and escaped inside. Shortly after, Osp followed.

Lusis stepped toward the door and Glorfindel shifted weight to fill it. He looked down at her with his pale blue eyes. He wasn't prone to playing games, so Lusis knew to ask about this.

"What is it?"

"I cannot see it."

Her eyes widened. Elves were notorious for their farseeing vision, "What can't you see?"

His shoulder rose. His chin tipped toward his long pale arch of collar bone. The proud elf's voice was a burning whisper. "I cannot see the reason for these people to be among elves. To be at all." His eyelids flickered, blonde lashes fluttering like moth wings. Glorfindel's hands on the doorframe tightened so that the wood dimpled.

Lusis glanced at them and recognized, dimly, the signs of elven panic. "No, Glorfindel. Be calm. Easy. You just love order, and they're disorderly. And you don't know them, yet. It is something to attend to. You will see their divine sparks of life." She could see them, quite literally, when she glanced. "It will be all right, Glorfindel. It will be-"

The Elfking appeared in the door behind him, extended a hand, and cupped the back of the warrior's bowed head. He pulled his pale hand along the golden strands in a long stroke. "Do not fear," the King's voice was as mild as spring air, "You have seen and done much that has injured your ability to feel, Glorfindel. You are not beyond hope, not beyond saving. You have not slipped from the light." The Elvenking's expression, at that moment, was a work of compassion.

The golden elf took his hands from the doorframe, and left marks. He turned to look at the King, and then strode by him on his way to the so called 'Quiet Room' that Kasia had designated on the side of the building furthest the crowd, and overlooking the King's Silver Beech. That was where even section elves withdrew when the press of Men became too much.

"They're off to the Quiet Room," Lusis said testily. "All of them."

The Elfking mused, "You are angry because I force them to look on the sprawl of Men?" He laid both pale hands on the doorframe, too tall to go through without ducking, if that was what was in his mind. But he stayed there, in her way.

"Because this is what you let them experience, and it's too much at once." She told him hotly.

"This is what Men are," the King told her lightly. His head tipped back a fraction, so that his silver eyes looked down across his high cheekbones. Then his chin sank, "You do not mean to suggest I should let them talk to humans. Do you expect that Glorfindel would survive it?"

She sighed at him, "I mean to suggest you're pushing them too far. And Osp? Why Osp?"

He made a small huff of amusement. "Why not?" He was not special to the Elvenking.

"What are they learning by watching the prostitutes operate in the Market alleys, and Men butchering animals?" she glanced down the long hall. "Hiding in that room, trying to regroup."

"That life is not simple. And that they must not dismiss that which they cannot understand." His silver eyes found her dark brown ones. "And that they are not gods."

"Oh, is that in order?" Lusis asked him sharply. "Dorondir. Glorfindel. And Osp?"

His silver eyes narrowed. "You feel for him."

"He's like a child." Lusis set a fist against her side of the doorframe without striking it. "Frightened like a child here. I swear, if you're doing this out of some warped sense of humour-"

"I went through this myself. I know its value. I know the madding and passion of humans. I know the wonder of their variableness. Their wildness. Their rebellion." The King swept her words aside, "And you know of whom I speak…. You feel for him. There is… some feeling." He looked displeased.

"Stop speaking in puzzles." She told him, shortly. "Let me through."

"You want to go check on them." The Elfking didn't move a muscle. "Do you believe they cannot make it to isolation on their own?"

"What is wrong with you?" she asked him coldly.

He eased back from the door by degrees. Shapely, beautiful, and pale as the throat of a dove. He was dressed in long and scintillating pale green. The gold threads warmed it. She couldn't, not by force of will, not distraction, not under threat, remove from her mind's eye that vision of him in white with the red berries in his crown. Sometimes, now, when she looked at him, she also had to look away.

The silvery stone in his circlet winked in the sun. She'd thought he hadn't brought it with him. He'd carried it instead of wearing it on the way here, just as he had not worn outward signs of his Kingship in the North.

When she passed him, she did head toward the Quiet Room. There were several elves inside. Two read in one corner. Osp stood at a window alone. Dorondir and Glorfindel spoke quiet elvish to one another and did not notice her glancing in. They seemed all right.

Lusis backed away and went down a parallel hall beside crates and objects roped off into longer-term storage. The owner's names, written on sheets, were pasted to the ropes around her. "Do you know, one of the men who works up her told me that they – the Men – tried to move chairs in, but the elves had moved them out?"

"We are not like them. Our rooms are long, for walking. Tall for standing." He followed her, though she didn't know why. "They are consoled by the windows overlooking the field and the trees. Likewise, you saw, they took the door off the hinges and removed it from the area. They can see who is coming, who is going. Comforting to elves. Things confusing to Men."

She exhaled as she turned to walk down the stairs. Lusis was sure it wasn't terribly convenient for him to come this way, tall as he was. He'd have to bend, and his outfit was quite a production, with its long coat and layered, cold-weather cloak out behind him on the wood floor. Beautiful thing. She glanced back at him, unable to prevent herself, even though she knew he would read it as 'Come with me', which she thought was a waste of his very important time at the moment.

Lusis arrived down at the shop-floor with him.

The first man who saw them arrive called out to the room, "King on the main floor." On the main floor all the men stood. They looked at him as he glided through row on row of desks – such a human place for him. His head turned slightly, but his eyes remained fixed. He lifted his head to look at the balconies above him. Lusis did too, and found they were lined with Men curious about the beautiful elf. They knew from accountings that he had used his fierce white sword in battle with Lammia and the Great Snakes of the Mountain. The skull of the Fire Salamander he had beheaded had been hung on the front of the building. But nearly none of them had witnessed his prowess in battle. And when they looked at him, he was so graceful in mien and flawless in motion – so refined – that they had a hard time contemplating his drawing blood. They feared him. And they were in love.

Now the Elvenking turned in place to look around him and his eyes fell on the lone, green-clad figure coming toward him in the room. He straightened. "Ewon."

Ewon stopped, inclined his head, and put a hand over his heart. He swept that glad hand outward at the King. "Joyfully, I return to your service, King of the Great Greenwood."

A bold young human chimed in to add, "And of Long Lake."

Ewon gave a huff of humour and looked in the direction the call had come from. He turned back to the King. "And of Long Lake, my King." There was a swell of approval from the balconies.

For a moment, the King said nothing at all. Then he asked, "Are you healed?"

"I am."

"My friend," the Elvenking said softly. He looked at Ewon for a moment more before he turned in the direction of the Counting room.

Lusis let him go without her. She waited for Nimpeth and Amathon to come through and join her. Nimpeth was all business now, but it was impossible to forget the ebullient elf girl who had shown her around part of the Halls. "I could hug the pair of you."

"And yet you do not," Nimpeth said quietly. She set a light hand on Lusis' shoulder and inclined her head. "I am happy that you are well. Very relieved that you were with him. He trusts you."

"He can trust you." Amathon laid his hand over his wife's. He stepped away to follow the King.

"I brought you sweets," Nimpeth said quietly. "We elves do not fancy them. The kitchen made them for the humans in the guest halls. And for you and your troop."

"I'm sorry we left so suddenly." Lusis told her. "It was a long, wet journey." She stopped short of adding, 'And there were werewolves'.

Nimpeth's eyes widened. "We had no idea. And I looked for you as well, friend-Lusis. I wanted to take you to the dragon pool. It was quite a party."

"And the Kindred?"

Now Nimpeth's smile wilted. Her head began to tip. "They want him back in the Halls, friend-Lusis. There is… contention. They want him back and with them, badly, as an elf wants for her sword, or a King for his heir – to feel secure."

"Secure in what?"

"I do not know their plans." Nimpeth nipped the corner of her bottom lip, a motion that Lusis had seen the King do in the past. She read it as unsettled. "The Lady Galadriel is with them almost constantly. They grow accustomed to her, and her wisdom, in the place of their Noldor, Osp. It is an interesting thing that they transfer to her, or seem to, some of the laud they must normally reserve for him. She is… perceptive, Lady Galadriel. She is bright in many senses."

"You do know Osp is here with us."

"I do. Lord Elrond drafted a missive that came from the aerie here to Lord Eithahawn."

Lusis blinked at her, "Lord?"

"He cannot, by the edicts of elven reckoning, be called 'Prince'. But since the night of the announcement, the elves of Mirkwood have been calling him Lord." She nearly smiled as she gestured at her black hair. "He now has a vine circlet in silver. It is made to look like wild strawberry runners complete with jewels for the berries. A lozenge flag of his own is under composition to include ten pointed antlers, which is only allowed of the royal line."

"He does look amazing in red." Lusis felt her brows rise. So did the King. She considered the hardworking Kingdom's-seneschal to be her friend. "How is he handling it?"

"By all accounts, he is very embarrassed." Nimpeth's chin rose proudly. She felt gratified that the attentions of her proud people had the power to humble such a great elf.

Lusis was smiling because she felt pleased for the deserving Kingdom. She added, "If your kitchens almost never make them, I'll most definitely take the sweets." Who knew what they would be like? It might be comical. Lusis glanced ahead at a sudden motion and she, like Nimpeth, loped into the room ahead of her. The King bent to sweep up Kasia's daughter, Avonne. She was the apple of Jan Kasia's eye, and the King tended to treat her like an elf child. She petted his long, white-blond hair and kissed his cheek.

"Just Avonne," said Amathon as they passed his position at the door of the Counting room and went inside. It was down a narrow hall that intersected a closed-in space with Forces guards posted inside of it. And Elow, one of the young Rangers that her troop-members had brought here. Elow bounced on his toes when he saw her, excited to have more Northern Rangers in their number. Excited that the King had returned to Lake Township.

"You should have seen what happened when she woke up and found the King here at the top of the week. Avonne cried." Lusis said lowly. "I think… he may be… good with children."

"It is so," murmured Nimpeth. "He took over care of an orphaned child of similar age, near death from great sorrow. Eithahawn. Though it is hard to tell that now."

Lusis felt the steel inside of her relax. It was in moments like these that she was utterly decided about her loyalties. If she loved Eithahawn, then she must love the King who – centuries before her birth in this world – had decided to save the life of an elf-child abandoned by war.

The Elfking held the girl on one hip, and spoke with Jan Kasia. Beside the Master of Boats stood patient, quiet Kuril Farna, the young and bright Trader's Guild member who also held a spot in the exclusive Council of Lake Township. As much as possible, Kuril tried not to speak to the King. Many on the Council felt that way, and they were gathering, now, coming through the side-door of the Counting Room.

The Lake Township Council arrived the way the King had come.

Cardoc Wence, who dealt in lumber, saw the King with a careful smile of greeting. He did speak to the King, quite commonly, in fact. Long before the land had been claimed, Wence had obeyed the Elfking's tithes and laws. They had a good relationship, mostly because Cardoc moved cautiously whenever doing any dealing that involved Mirkwood forest, the elves, Forest River, and tithes.

They all arrived to stand in a circle at the center of the Counting room. There was ample space for a large round table between the workers here, and perhaps once there had been one. But elves preferred to stand and walk about when possible. The lozenge of the King dangled from the rafters, painted on silk and absolutely startling in its beauty.

"That's lovely," Lusis told Kasia when she arrived before him.

He noted, "I… I asked for a symbol of the Kingdom. Two elves came in with a silk flag and they painted this right onto the silk. To see it was…" and he shook his head.

"Elves," said Nema as she folded her fur cloak over a nearby chair, "they are a wonder, are they not?" She glanced over the Elfking. He alone hadn't turned toward the flag. His eyes were combing over the long benches of counters writing numbers on legers. One man checking. The man beside him double checking, all under the observation of forces who walked along a balcony on the next floor.

The Counting room was an addition to the warehouse. And was much more stoutly built. Its walls were stone fronted with wood on the inside, and plaster on the outside. The vaults were underneath, dug deep into the ground in thick stone cellars. It was said they had been designed to flood with river water, if breeched.

Jan Kasia – Master of Boats – stood beside tall and sleekly beautiful Nema – Madam and Master of the Flesh-Trade hereabouts. Her business was one that the elves didn't grasp, or yet understand. She threw a sour look at Lusis, and then went to stand and stare at her North Star, the Elfking. Murric Vant was the Fishing magnate in Long Lake, and he didn't speak in front of the King. Ever. He had pale, wan and equally quiet Killan Wye by him, and the Master of Textiles stared covetously at the glittering threads in the clothes the King wore, for, no matter what he did, he couldn't get bolts of elf fabrics for himself. For certain he could get no elf-made coat for his possession, and nothing of the quality he saw in the King's clothes had ever passed through his hands. Until the arrival of Queen Arwen, even Gondor would've been hard pressed to lay eyes on work of its like.

The last to enter was Gurn Drivenn who was the Master of Forces hired by Cardoc Wence only four months ago. He had come in from Gondor's outpost at the Sea of Rhun, where he was a ranking officer and, according to the updates Lusis had overheard earlier in the week, had led an entire Battalion of Men – a number that fell somewhere between a Spark and a Hunt of elves.

He looked over the Elvenking and his brows bounced upward. "Pretty. But is he any good with the swords he carries?"

Jan Kasia glanced over at Drivenn and said an unequivocal, "Yes," then he opened his hands to the Council. "If you have a list of grievances, I would save it for the meeting later tonight. We'll have a scribe on hand for that one. There isn't one cleared for here."

Cardoc exhaled. "This is to be about the problem of the counters."

"Bah – counters. You turned up, beautiful one," Nema interrupted and she smiled at the Elfking. As ever, she looked beautiful and so slender that it seemed she maintained a very strict diet. But some things had changed about her. She now wore long, floating dresses. Her dark curls of hair were out loose around her bare collarbones, and she wore a small chain with a Mithril teardrop on it. An almost unheard of extravagance. Lusis watched the Madam's brown eyes brush over the same true-silver which made up the Elfking's leaf-patterned pauldrons. He wore an incomprehensible fortune on him, but then, nothing was tougher than Mithril. The matching breastplate would probably be strapped across his chest by nightfall. Nema looked back into the Elfking's silver eyes, "And unannounced. What a pleasant surprise, this is."

Cardoc Wence interjected on the heels of that. "Good timing, Elfking. Apologies for my absence. We were not informed of your arrival, and I was at trade with the dwarves."

But Cardoc was the Master of the Lumber trade.

The Elfking's brows drew up. "What do dwarves want with wood? Among them, everything is stone. Every cold table, every uncomfortable chair, every slab to rest upon. I swear, it's what's inside half of their heads." He sighed lightly and glanced over the paperwork that one of the human staff brought to him. His long eyes flicked aside and beheld the cowed young man shaking behind the missive. "Take it to the Aerie and send it to the Halls, care of-" and he glanced at Ewon, "What does he go by, now?"

Ewon inclined his head, "His name, my King, and – to we others – by Lord."

"Ah. Send it from the Aerie care of Lord Eithahawn of the Great Greenwood." The Elfking finished. "And courage, child."

"Yes, m-my Lord," the young man minced back.

"My King," Nema corrected the boy, gently.

Wence carried on, "They seem set on building structures for elven guests."

The Elfking turned his body, entirely, to face the man. "Say again, young one?"

Cardoc, who was in his forties in age, was often taken aback by the King's habit of calling all humans young ones at a point. Lusis, however, was enough in the know to realize it had less to do with the age of a person than the young and naïve words they'd often just spoken to him. "I said it is as if they wish to build something for elves, my Lord… or perhaps they have a client doing the same."

Lusis tried to puzzle that one out. "What elves are this way that don't fall under your purview in the Halls, Elvenking?"

"There are some…." the King said mysteriously. "But none that fall in with dwarves. Dwarves cut the throat of a High King, and there are, alive, elves who were there to see it. That enmity is old." He paused to take a question from a girl in a simple shift, who held a tray in her hand.

"King of elves… the staff wants to know… would you like wine?"

"Tisane." He set down Avonne, and she ran to the guard room to talk to Elow.

"Yes, of course." The young server drew away with a hasty bow. She couldn't seem to believe that such a radiant thing as the King could exist in Lake Township. The sun flooded through barred windows, overhead, and the King shone.

"They do brisk business in fabric too," Kasia cleared his throat, and he glanced over at Killian Wye, who dealt in Textiles, to confirm this.

"At least that makes sense," said the Elfking. "It wounds me to think that these dwarves, with their stores of coal, may be burning the deadfall of the Great Greenwood." His fingertips stroked the grain of the desk beside him, which was doubtless made of the exact same thing. Kasia looked between Wence and Wye because he felt the King had a good point.

"If they tell you a reason, record it." Kasia rubbed his face with a scarred hand, "We supplied fish to Mordor during the war, unawares. Let's not be blind to our role in the world again."

The King's voice was dry as he said, "In fairness, if you hadn't sold to them, they would have marched on to Long Lake and eaten you." His brows went up, and he entirely missed the horrified looks on the faces of the men around him.

Nema closed a hand over her middle in quiet distress.

Silence fell because the staff had returned.

When he looked up, the Elfking accepted a cup of tisane and sipped it. Blackberry. It was so delicious his eyelids shut a little. "Ma," he drew out the 'm' like a human would when something tasted really good, "This is well done."

The girl lit up. She nearly bounced in place with happiness. "I will return with a refill, my King."

The King chuckled and then blew on his tea. He addressed the Council, "Do try to relax. You have larger and more immediate problems."

"Larger… and more immediate problems," Kasia spoke slowly in the hopes that the emphasis would cross species lines and make it to the King, "in comparison to being eaten by orcs?"

"Yes, Kasia. You could be eaten by werewolves. They are considerably more likely to eat you alive than an orc would be. Or so I have seen of Men and orcs." He drank more tisane. His eyes shutting at the pleasant, lightly honeyed taste.

None of the Councilors spoke. In fact, very many men among the counters had marked ledgers and looked up at the King. It was no different among the Forces men listening overhead.

Cardoc Wence stepped in with a quiet, "There are… there are werewolves?"

"I counted forty," the King handed his empty cup over to Ewon. "Speaking of which, why do the lights of the Counting Room glow through the night?"

Kasia exhaled and fought to stay on track. He'd had the benefit of knowing about the many werewolves along the River Running for much longer than most of the Council here. Thus he could bring himself around to business quickly as a result. "Uh, yes, lights do burn here at night. Part of our problem, King. We are growing fast. And have had such an uptick in business that our accountants can't keep on top of it unless they work in shifts through the night. At the same time it is very difficult to find additional accountants who can be vetted to come work inside the building," he gestured at the metal-barred doorway and the bars on the windows, "getting security clearance to enter this room is difficult. We've had a message go out as far as Gondor, and interviewed several people. We will fix this issue, but it will take time."

The Elfking shut his eyes and exhaled. He pressed his fingertips to his forehead.

The bubbling pour of blackberry tisane, this time along a rolling tray for the Council as well, interrupted the sudden silence. The King looked pained as he stared up from the desks at his lozenge hanging overhead. Then he turned and lifted a cup of tisane from a saucer. He took a sip and set it back down, then his gaze fixed on the young serving girl. "What is your name, little one?"

"Shira." The girl blushed and put her hands on her cheeks. "Shira Webb, Elvenking. Have I angered you in some way?" She hunched as he took a gliding step toward her, magnificent in his long and voluminous robes, and shining with or without the intermittent sunlight through windows.

"Come with me, Shira-sell. All of you." In fact, he raised an eloquent hand as he turned, and that gesture took in all three young women. Lusis smiled, because the young women followed his broad shoulders and white blond hair as if drawn by magnets. His circlet winked in the sun.

His beauty was and always would be an intoxicant.

At an empty row of desks he opened a ledger. "Sit."

The girls sat along the desk curiously.

The King looked down at them. "As you are cleared to be inside of this room," he bent over the edge of the desk and his long, white blond hair spilled onto the ledger and into the sun, thus the room lit white-gold in that corner. "This column is tens, this hundreds, this thousands. Sign your names at the top." The King glanced across at one of the nearby men counters. "Sit with them. Teach them."

The worker's face went red with outrage, and he looked at Kasia, furious.

"Uh," Kasia exhaled, "Women are not… counters, my Lord."

"And whose fault is that?" The King's voice was mere millimeters short of acid.

"I doubt those useless heads can even count to ten!" sputtered the grey-haired man that the King had selected to teach the girls. "And they are unstable by their natures, weak-willed, they are untrustworthy. What will happen to them should they – gods forgive me – begin their cycles here? Weeping. Whining. Bleeding. And counting."

Nimpeth gave a soft hiss between her teeth, and Lusis said, "Keep it up and you'll be the one weeping, whining, bleeding and counting."

"Yes, it can be arranged," Ewon gave her his assurance. For no man was a bigger proponent of women than Ewon, who had so desperately wanted a daughter of his own.

"You have many problems, here," the Elfking's long body glided away from the desk and he told Kasia. "You have a problem of number, Kasia, and one of bias. You need able-bodied and sharp-minded humans in the midst of this expansion. You require these people to be trustworthy and to wish to see the good of these monies go to Lake Township – a goal easier to meet if Lake Township is also home, I assure you. And yet you have written off your ledger fully half of your possible candidates? Master of Boats, your weak-willed, untrustworthy, and unstable offspring stands beyond the door. If you do not teach her this business of yours then it can only be through a lack of love. You neither love her, nor her future here. If you hate half your own population, you do not love the future of my Kingdom on the lake. So, tell me, do you, or do you not love me?"

Silence.

Jan Kasia looked from Avonne in the outer room, to the King, and seemed suddenly ill.

The Elfking swept in above him, and his head leaned to the left, his silver eyes nearly swallowed by whites in the strong sunlight. "Do you love me and my Kingdom on the lake, Jan Kasia?"

"I… I do, Great King."

"Hire women." The Elfking said coldly. "Teach them. Train them. Retain them. So help me, you had best be schooling girl-children. If I must have this conversation again, I will begin it by instructing the sections whom amongst these backward men of yours to cart away to jail for slander, lest you forget that all on the Lake are mine. All. Do not waste the lives of my people."

He turned to the girls. "That will be all."

Two of the girls got up and returned to the service, but one of them, a small, dark girl with bright black eyes, remained. She pulled the ledger her way, picked up the stub of pencil, and printed her name at the top of the page. Then she waited.

The King swung slowly around and looked at the room.

A second counter, this one even older than the first, got to his feet and walked around his desk. He sat down with the girl. "I will count into a pile. And you will double-check me. It will be hard at first. You'll get faster with time." He patted her small hand. "Don't you fear about that, miss."

The King lifted his cup of tisane and swept out of the room.

Avonne hurried after him. She was very fond of ada-Thranduil.

He was a hero to her.

The town was constantly in motion. Even at night, work was being done.

And the Elfking was among the many moving around long into the moonlight hours. Lusis had let this pass by on the first night. She had soon taken up napping during part of the day so that she could follow him on the ground, just as the Elites skated across the rooftops of Lake Township. That was the problem of not trusting others. You didn't trust them, either, to protect the things most prized.

But there were some in her world that she could depend upon. She had her troop sleeping in shifts. Her Rangers had come to take protecting the King with mortal seriousness. That mood had readily infected both of Lusis' brothers. There was no surer cure for the doubt that afflicted their minds than seeing the clever and powerful Elfking set himself to the betterment of Men. In fact, it was everything that Kirstman Buckmaster said it couldn't be. It was the opposite of their gravest fears.

Tonight, the full moon skated high in the sunset sky, a white fingerprint in the blue, and it was clear the Elvenking was weary of being indoors. So it was they toured some of the waterfront businesses.

"Ice wine." Kasia told him.

The King's body shifted left to right. His silver eyes looked on the goblet, for once, both curious and innocent, in full view of the men who worked stacking barrels, and – for the very rich – crates of bottles. Kasia glanced over the Elfking's face and suppressed a smile. It was inexplicable that a creature so ancient could so suddenly remind him of a child. The paradox made him want to laugh and make the glass jump to see if the King would dart away like a cat.

Of course, that was insane.

And the Elvenking was wearing a ransom in silken clothes.

The King straightened. "It seems to be sweet."

"Not to elf tastes?"

Lusis glanced up from where she touched the King's hair back into place. "They aren't much for sweets." She caught herself and stepped back. The one thing she didn't want to do was fuss about him as if invisible, as she'd seen of his dressers before.

He glanced down at her and his tone changed to the one he reserved for his intimates, "Ai, is it passing inspection now, Lusis-sell?"

She turned her head away and laughed at herself, but then pulled herself under control. "Yes, my King." She started to bow to him, but he made a soft hiss.

"The day is too long, Lusis Buckmaster. Would you like to try some wine?" His pale hand made a graceful gesture that ended in him taking the goblet from Kasia, though it didn't look as if he would.

Like the Elfking, Lusis politely ignored that Kasia jumped when the King nearly touched him. But she held up a hand to forestall the goblet. "You can't dismiss it until you try it."

His brows went up. "Oh, can I not?"

"I'm sorry," she said without bowing.

"Perhaps you would like my circlet to wear along with that?" But he lifted the cup and gave it a sip. His eyelids did that brief fluttering she could not quite place – maybe it was surprise? He held out the glass, wide eyed, and said, "Oh."

A sudden, boisterous cheer sounded in the warehouse. The smiles of the workers delivering the wine for the shipping positively lit the structure, though the King, who had been prepared, and who had rehearsed among the Rangers, paid the surge of strong emotion no heed. They were proud of what they produced and he would not allow anyone to interfere with that. Men tried to offer Lusis a cup, but she waved it away. "I'm working, thank you."

"Send a bottle," Kasia laughed at the young men trying to press in around her. "Stop that, you little fools. Send bottles. Red and white, to the Keep, for the Elfking."

As the Elvenking turned, he spoke a stream of beautiful elvish to Nimpeth, just beyond him. The lights seemed to dim. He'd been pulled away to attend to a large and dauntingly official-looking stack of paperwork.

"What did the King say, Miss Elf?" asked one of the young men, eagerly.

Her pale eyes lit with humour, "Have them send a few." She added. "Please do. It will be recompensed."

Laughs rang out. They were clearly happy, and the King sipped the fresh, sweet wine as he glanced over documents, and, ultimately, rejected the lot of them. "Where do you find time for such long paperwork in such short lives? Shorten it. No more than five pages. Send it to Lord Eithahawn in the Halls." He set down the cup and made for the broad and wide open doors of the warehouse.

"He's immortal," Lusis told the Council scribes in passing, "not bored."

Half a section seemed to suddenly leap into the doorway. Ewon's body twisted on the way down from the rafters so that he faced the King. "Not this way. Strange riders are coming."

"Number them."

"Twenty."

The King's sword came out in a blur. "Hostile?"

"It is not known. They are armed, my King, significantly so." Ewon set a hand on the King's breastplate and pushed. "They are close."

The wind lifted his pale-as-paper hair from his breastplate and its lengths caressed air under the crisp moon. There were still many citizens abroad. They lit lamps and sold wares, still. The King looked down at the hand on his breastplate and conceded. He backed up before the light pressure of that palm until such a time as he could pivot himself and follow Ewon to Amathon, who was coming in from the side facing the docks.

Nimpeth glanced at Lusis. "Go, friend-Lusis. Stay with him."

She looked at the elves around her. "They probably want nothing to do with us, friends. Let them pass if you can." She started in the direction of the King. His tall head, encircled in Mithril, ducked through a doorway and she could hear horses approaching. She paused – the clopping of hooves came to sudden order. She turned and went back to Nimpeth. "I was wrong. If they reach for weapons, cut them down."

She turned to find the humans scurrying behind boxes and the Elfking coming back her way.

Then the horses arrived. Through the great double-doors of the warehouse, it was a sight to see. They rode until they were side-on to the large doors, with their horses staggered. Then they turned them. They might have charged in. There was little to stop them.

As they looked in on her, Lusis' elf-steel sword lashed out of its sheath. "This is King's land. Explain yourselves."

The horses in the fore shifted at the spur of her voice.

One of the men on a forward horse snickered, "Buckmaster women."

Argus Samas' voice rose up from their flanks. "You'd best not make her angry, lads."

Forces started to edge in around them. Like the remaining section of elves outside the building, but out of sight, the Forces had their bows leveled at these newcomers.

"On your left and right," Steed came in from the docks. She glanced at Aric's grunt of agreement. Whatever they'd been busy doing, they'd left it behind to run to the aid of the King. They both had swords out naked in their hands.

Lusis felt her breathing level out. She flexed her knees enough to feel they were ready and asked. "Why are you here?"

One of the men in front folded his hood back from his handsome head. He was ragged, with his thick hair as long as any elf's might be, and his light blue eyes wily. He had a long, vicious scar on his forehead. It ran down through his eyebrow and ended just above his eyelid. "You do know me… don't you Lusis?"

"You should listen to Ranger Samas when he says," she brought her sword around, "You do not want to make me vexed."

"Of course I don't." He released the reins he held, and raised his tanned hands before him. "That is not my purpose in coming here, Lusis."

"This boar's-bollock thinks he knows you," Icar grumbled as he arrived on Steed's right. "And he's making me angry."

"Ah. The Awnson boys. Sons of an absent father and a drunken mother," he smiled in an unfriendly way. "She tried to drown the eldest boy. Too many mouths to feed and… she disliked him. They say he was never quite right again… after that."

"Lusis," Icar, the youngest of the pair of brothers in her troop, now spoke through his teeth. "Do something about him, or I'm going to start doing something about him."

Aric snapped, "How do you know us?"

Lusis sucked a deep breath, "Bregoln Fell… master of Dagnir-Rim, the Blockade at Angmar."

"Oh, very good." Said the man. "Kirstman told me you'd ridden South with elves. I thought Rivendell… but when I reached the foothills from the mountains Tatharion House had the most astonishing tale for me. You… travelling with a tall, silver elf identified," he glanced at Nimpeth beside Lusis, as if she might betray the truth, "as the Elvenking of the Halls. Is this true?"

"I owe no explanations to you," she told him. "Why have you come all this way, Bregoln. We-"

"And then I heard amazing tales at Inns along the way to the forest. A growing city of Men… led by a King who was also elf-blooded. Like in Gondor, they said. Like Elessar – a Dunedain. 'Surely Lake Township will prosper'. But they do not understand. This is no man of elf-blood leading Men. It is nothing that wholesome. This being is from the beginning of time. Ancient. He has breathed since before daylight came to this land. He has lived in perpetual half-light, like animals live. He's an old elf, Lusis, as cunning as a labyrinth. But he is primordial. And I came to understand he had ridden away with you, like a dragon does a virgin."

"Oh, you are… really misguided." Aric patted air with his free hand and a knowing nod.

"Shut up," Lusis said to Aric in an urgent aside, and then exhaled. "Bregoln, what are you doing here? I have no intention of marrying you."

Kasia, who was still beside the crates, now sputtered, "Marry? Are you…? Wait, man. Do you not understand that this is the woman of the Elfking? The Elfking of Mirkwood?"

Lusis felt herself frowning, "No. No, I'm free… and I'm not-"

"Indeed, she's not at all," said Bregoln. "She is my betrothed, promised to me when she was ten years old."

Now Kasia's incredulous smile failed him, and he looked across at Lusis. He had come to a great affection for the Buckmaster girl. She had some appallingly brutal behaviours… and some parts of her he greatly hoped to one day see reflected in his own daughter.

He didn't like, suddenly, the idea of Lusis, as just a gangly, thin-armed girl, traded away.

The light rising behind Kasia was the Elvenking. He glided from the back and passed elf and Man alike, until he reached Lusis' side. "Why do you delay?"

She started to look in Bregoln's direction, but the King shifted his weight and his chin rose. Lusis stopped moving, stepped back, and inclined her head to him. When she looked up she said, "There… there is no reason."

Though she didn't give him attention, Bregoln of Dagnir-Rim grimaced when she said as much. His horse shifted under the change in his demeanor.

"It is forgiven," said the Elfking.

"You are promised to me, Lusis Buckmaster." Said the warrior. He spurred his horse ahead, but it refused to go. In fact, Steed stepped up, opened his arms out before him, and the horses peeled off in either direction, heedless to the efforts of their riders to control them.

The King took Lusis into the back. They went across the dock, escorted not just by forces, but by the other half of a section – led by Amathon. Her Rangers didn't follow her, being occupied, like half the section of elves, with defending both the door and a small fortune in wine, against a potential charge of warhorses.

When they reached Kasia's properties, the King stopped. But Lusis kept walking. This thing her well-meaning father had done for her – for an outcast girl – when she'd been a child, had been meant to bring two powerful warrior clans together, for the purpose of assuring there would always be a place for Lusis in the world. Even if many of her 'brothers' could not accept her. Through the blood of the Fell clan, she would finally be counted as one among the Dunedain. She'd never thought about it. Her life had become this other thing. She looked at her hands, and wondered if she was finally up against a truss that she couldn't escape.

She passed the King's Tree, going into the green field.

Lusis was not surprised that, when she turned, the Elfking was only steps behind her, his arms crossed at his back. She walked away from the Elfking, stuck her hands on her hips, and kicked a length of fallen tree before her.

"He wants power over the Keep." The Elfking was still and calm.

But Lusis was busy rendering the fallen tree to kindling and thought she might have misheard him, so she hissed, "What did you say?" It came out sharper than she had intended. And rudely.

It was a rare thing for the King of Mirkwood to repeat himself. "The man wants power over Buckmaster Keep."

She turned to him and spoke between her teeth. "Then he should marry Kirstman."

His head tipped right. "Ah. Shrewd. Do humans allow such in contract or in oath?"

Now Lusis brushed away seeds from the tall grass from her leather, and just looked at him, gormless to his meaning. He took that as No. She watched the King's head bow in thought. His moonlight fingers joined behind his long back, "Options…." and he glanced up at her, "Can you not… tell him No?"

She actually laughed. "He'd go to war with my Keep and all of Buckmaster Spur."

The King's chin rose, "Eithahawn can draw the paperwork to file an indefinite abeyance."

"Do a what?" Lusis cocked her head and it was the decidedly quick human motion, devoid of hypnotic elven meaning.

He took from that the idea humans could not suspend or nullify their coupling-contracts. The King moved on to the next logical suggestion. "Void the contract on the grounds… there is another mate, or contract-holder before-"

"Do elves… contract marriage?"

"Sometimes, something like," he withdrew from her marginally. This was clearly one of those topics that elves did not discuss with outsiders. She could tell this easily. His voice became quiet. "Friend-Lusis, one… one will always love a child. Always. Ewon drew up a contract with Nimpeth's emel, her mother, to bring him a daughter of his own. He is also the father of Merilin, but their agreement said that the child's mother could keep a son. There are many reasons." He bowed his head and was quiet. When he looked at her again, his eyes flashed with pride. "Ewon is but steps away, by the silver branches of the tree. Do not repeat this confidence lightly. Children are a serious thing – nearly everything – to elves."

She exhaled, suddenly growing calm. "Of course. Of course they are." She thought about it a moment. "I'm a human. It's very unlikely anyone would contract with me."

"I would order it be done." The King said. "You could pair with Eithahawn. He would do this for love of your safety. I am sure. I will allow you to choose whomever makes you most comfortable, in fact. It is not… sound to force a woman. It is atrocity. I will not stand by and allow this."

She exhaled. "We could try this thing. I don't… know that it would matter to Dagnir-Rim. I think they would go to war. What else do you have in that handsome head of yours?" She caught what she'd said to him and stared fixedly at the ground, apparently having lost control of her inner filters. He wasn't a man in her troop.

But the King was accustomed to praise. He gave it no notice as his silver eyes swept the growing night and stars studding above. "You could renounce the family name."

She looked up at him, "Would you renounce your father?"

He reacted as if slapped – his head went quickly left and down. He shut his eyes. The King's recovery was just as swift when his head tipped slowly up from his shoulder to take her in. "I would not." He said each word distinctly. "But… there is one last ploy, Yellow Istari."

"Which is?"

"War."

She shut her eyes. "I told you-" but then she stopped. Slowly, Lusis raised her head to take him in. The Elfking was unsmiling, but his head was up and his expression was unyielding.

"It…" she refused to speak.

"Think, Lusis. Kirstman Buckmaster foments dissent and disorder in the North. There is another leader for the Men of Buckmaster Spur. Kirstman Buckmaster need only be refuted."

"Which could only happen… if the elves came to fight beside us."

"We need no alliance with Buckmaster Keep." The King's hair shifted in the rising bite of wind. Even this far into autumn, seeds spilled out into the breeze, for the land that the King had claimed teemed with life. Even now, bees strafed toward their heavy hive, and blue Morning Glories turned their faces to the moon. "But out of alliance with you – an alliance already forged – we would repel this man and his brutes from the Spur."

"I don't want… to cause losses among the people I love. Man or elf."

"Yes, you are good," said the Elfking's steely voice. "But I am practical… and in my mind, the decision is already made." He gave a soft incline of his slim and powerful body. "Istari, we will try a contract, and, in secret, we will brace for war. You are no man's thrall."

She walked up to him, arms crossed, unsure what she would do next.

She looked at him a moment. Then Lusis slung her arms around his breastplate so that her hands collected in his long hair at his back. She went in so hard that she hurt her chin against elf-steel, then turned her cheek and laid it against the fire only her eyes could see. The white light curled up around her jaw, and flickered against her eyelids.

The King's hand rose to rest, lightly on her shoulder and she stepped away.

"Maybe we shouldn't speak about it," she told him and then looked away and down. "For now, I don't want to speak about it."

"You are worn and this news is unwelcome, Yellow Istari." He turned his body toward Kasia's house and glanced back over his shoulder. "There are other pursuits."

She followed him and spared a glance for Ewon's trim shape as his shadow parted from the Silver Beech. He followed the King. She could not see Nimpeth or Amathon. Generally speaking, this meant they were closer still.

They arrived at the white courtyard – a stroke of genius really, as the moon lit it up so that any approach was patently evident – and Dorondir waited just inside the shadow of the main building of Kasia's business.

The Elfking saw him long before Lusis had.

"There was some disruption at the sixth pier?" the elf-spy asked. "Are… are you both well?"

The King ignored this outburst of curiosity, "Tell me how the Lord fares."

Dorondir bowed, "Ready, my King. Glorfindel is girding him against the weather."

"Excellent news."

The city was more clotted with people than ever before. Lusis noted this when she went inside with him, and he went up to his room. She paced in the hallway and watched elves glide after the King.

Redd came out, groggy. He spent most of the early morning and daylight hours on patrol, and liked to fall into bed after supper. The coming and going of elves – though quiet – had been enough to wake him up. He blinked at Lusis. "Is the King all right?" His face changed as he looked her over. "Are you all right?"

She pulled him aside. "Do you remember Bregoln Fell of Dagnir-Rim?"

"The name is… familiar," he rubbed an eye. "The surname is, of course, legend. The Fell Family. The Chiefs among the kinsfolk known as the Men of the Peaks. They cover the terrain at the border with Angmar's traditional territory. Pitiless warriors. They're sometimes called The Living Wall? Did you know they picked up the name 'Fell' during the Second Age? During the Midwinter Assault, Angmar felled every wall between their Kings and Dagnir-Rim in one night?"

"And the first family of Fell rallied all, and were undefeated," Lusis nodded up at Redd. "I know."

He yawned into a cupped hand, "Why are you speaking of them now?"

"Twenty of their number rode into Lake Township earlier today, on the lowlands warhorses they use for troop movements."

"Those beasts are amazing!" Redd brightened at their mention, and stuck up a fingertip, "It is said that the horses of the Men of the Peaks can count."

"Maybe they can, they listened to Steed, I swear, like a troop of eight year olds." She glanced up the hall and nodded at Dorondir's return before she glanced up at Redd. "More importantly, Bregoln is under the impression – a not misguided impression – I'm his betrothed. And he's come to get me and bring me back to the North with him. Very possibly to Dagnir-Rim."

Redd's eyes opened in surprise for a moment. But he said nothing and heard her out. Finally, he set a hand on her shoulder and said, "Poor lad."

"You're certainly calm," she said uncomfortably.

"There are Forces of Lake Township, four troops of Rangers, un-numbered sections of elves, a Kingdom, and a King, between Bregoln Fell and your hand, Lusis Buckmaster. That's without mentioning that two of your brothers are with you, and, most seriously of all, you don't want him." He rustled her hair. "If one pup from the Fells has enough pluck to overthrow you, Lusis-Istari, I'll eat my axe."

She gave him a crooked smile. "Might want to strap that on, Redd. I have a bad feeling about events in this place."

"Duly noted, Chief." He glanced up at Dorondir's approach. "Lemme get that axe right now."

Now Lusis turned to face the tall, dark-haired Noldor. His bright green eyes never wavered from her. She exhaled, "I really don't agree with taking the Elflord out there, Dorondir. It's dark, chilly, it's been damp at night, and he's unwell."

"It is not for us to say," he told her patiently.

"You're quick to accept the danger of it," she squeezed her hands on her hips, unsure how she felt about this. "Is it years of spying, or having no single master that makes you so at peace with this?"

He laid a hand over his heart and said, "It is trust."

Lusis turned away with her brows drawing up. She hadn't seen that coming. When she glanced out of the upper windows she could see two men shoulder-to-shoulder crossing the white stones below. They walked with long, ground-eating surety, and looked powerful. The darkness had obscured them, but as they came into the light of the Keep she could see they were Aric and Icar, and she smiled, buoyed by the men they had become. Steed came with Elsenord and Remee beside him. He was far more slender than either of her huge brothers. They seemed to be involved in some serious discussion.

No question that she knew what the conversation was about.

They picked up speed and trotted toward the steps and into the house.

"Oh, I really don't want to do this," Lusis exhaled.

Dorondir glanced down at her, beside him, and his brow wrinkled. It was probably true that he couldn't follow the human sentiment behind her words. This was because elves had prescribed public interactions with their family members, in much the same way that they carefully contained their emotions. But then said to her. "Friend-Lusis, come with me. We shall see to the Lord of Rivendell."

She glanced up at him and could already hear her brothers coming in the large open hall below.

Dorondir's long eyes narrowed, his apple green gaze gliding toward the staircase.

She nodded at him. "You win this time, Dorondir."

Predictably, the door to the Elflord's chambers was wide open. The inside had been rearranged completely. It looked nothing like it had when she'd last been in here. The bed was pushed to a corner. All the drapes were drawn around it like a cube. The chairs had been removed. The bath had been pulled to angle on a corner that would catch the light from the door – elven modesty was not always as critical as elven comfort, it seemed. Books. There were stacks of books everywhere. And Lusis had known the Elvenking to have books around him, and to write something at the end of every day, but there were towers of them in here. Easy to see that Lord Elrond was housebound. The rest of the space was open for standing and pacing. The Lord was demonstrating the pacing in earnest as she walked into this very different room to what it had been.

His dark grey eyes found her. He looked so stern that she cringed. If the Elfking had appraised her that way, she would have found a task that would take her out on the land for a few days. Glorfindel glanced up from folding a green cloak, noticed Lusis, and gave his Lord what passed for an elven nudge.

The Elflord glanced aside at Glorfindel and the tall golden elf gave him that beauteous and pristine doll-face of their kind at the same time he inhaled and slowly straightened.

Only then did the Lord of Rivendell realize how grim his countenance had become. He lightened somewhat and inclined his head at the Istari. "It is… interesting to have you join me. I am accustomed to Mithrandir." He pivoted in his coat of dark violet and headed back toward the opposite wall. She watched his more moderated profile and tried to imagine what his daughter looked like.

Lusis shook her head, "No fireworks here, my Lord. I'm no true wizard."

He stopped and turned toward her as if she'd raised an alarm. "There is no doubt what you are, Istari. You are a wizard, your King can attest. My words have no bearing on it." He paused, his long eyes averting downward as he caught the edge of his dark robe. "Though I am glad of the lack of fireworks."

Of a sudden Lusis could imagine Mithrandir setting them off in Rivendell. She smiled. She swallowed back her smile.

Waspish Glorfindel took that moment to weigh in, "Understand that whenever Mithrandir comes to visit he brings appalling news – disastrous – so that the only countenance possible is one so serious that Lindir starts to fret it might shatter the stoneware." The blond glanced at Lusis favorably.

The Elflord couldn't contain his elven smile. His expression lightened to one of great roguishness as he walked to Lusis. "Yellow Istari, as wizards go, you're rather welcome."

"But I've brought dire news to the Elvenking before."

At this, Lord Elrond was forced to put his head down. When he did look at her, he was fighting very hard not to smile. "You give me reasons to like you better and better by the minute, friend-Lusis. Please come visit us in Rivendell. It is a place built in the open air near many beautiful waterfalls."

"It is lovely," Dorondir assured her from where he leaned against the wall a step or two behind her back. "You would like it there, I assure you."

Glorfindel glanced over her. "You are coming with us tonight?"

She nodded by way of answer and stepped up to the Elflord, "I'm worried about your wellbeing going abroad like this," her eyes diverted to the sudden flickering of low red-violet flame within him. "I will guard you, and be close, Lord of Rivendell. Is there anything you need before we go?"

"Maybe a favourite book?" Glorfindel teased.

Lord Elrond threw him a look that was both appreciative and self-satisfied. They were clearly very good friends, and had been for some time.

"Lusis," tall, blond Remee appeared in the doorway and strode straight in. Doors were left open among elves, certainly, but such an unbidden and uninvited approach was unheard of.

Dorondir had come off the wall to extend a delaying hand. "No, good-Buckmaster, this is the room of a Rivendell-"

"I don't care if it's the bedchamber of Elessar himself," said Remee and he made to push Dorondir aside. Lusis could have told him this wouldn't work. She expected the training that spies received would be little shy of the kind Elites endured. Dorondir moved quickly, and Remee found himself pressed to the narrow boards of the hall.

"You must care, friend-Buckmaster." Dorondir said this very calmly. "Inside is the Lord of Rivendell. That same who fought for the good of Middle-Earth, and whose actions brought the Fellowship together for the good of all."

The Lord Elrond exhaled. "Dorondir, let the human come to me."

The elf eased away and stopped beside Lusis.

Remee straightened his leather overcoat with a deft tug and a huff. He shot a hot look at the unhurried face of his youngest sibling.

Lusis' shoulders rose and fell, "I think I told you to keep a steady head in the presence of the elves, Remee?"

"Sister, I-"

"She's the Chief of your troop," Aric shoved Remee aside and strode in, "don't forget it." He made a wide gesture at the elves, "Uh, apologies, great elves of the waterfalls, or whatever you like to call yourselves, and wherever you hail from-"

"Oh," Elrond was roundly amused. "Well, thank you, young Ranger."

"Welcome," Aric exhaled and turned to Lusis. "Your boyfriend has withdrawn to the Flowers of the Forest to set up billet. Know where that is?"

"Where the aspens reach the wildflowers – the field," she turned toward the wall of Jan Kasia's property that represented the edge of town. "It's just next door." She set a hand over her middle.

Icar leaned on the doorway. "He seems serious, Chief. As it is, with twenty Men of the Peaks here, I'm not sure we could take him on our own."

Now Lord Elrond's head rose, "Men of the Peaks? Here?"

"You know who they are?" Icar asked, a little amazed that such a lofty elf would know anything about the Northern strongholds, and the warriors there. Redd, behind him, and blocking the light, gave Icar a smack in the back of the head. He gestured at the towers of books arrayed in the Elflord's accommodations and shook his head in disapproval.

"Easy on him," said Aric. "He's the good brother, for one thing, and, for another, I need all the scraps he keeps inside of his head."

Glorfindel stepped deeper into the room with a fighting knife spinning in one hand. "Then I invite you to take your brother and get out. We are busy."

Aric rocked back on his heels smilingly, and turned to Lusis, "Is he being serious?"

Given what she'd known of him so far, Lusis felt justified in saying, "I don't believe Glorfindel knows how to make a joke."

Redd moved aside and the Elfking swept in. He was covered, head-to-toe, in dark green cloak, and, with the hood up, only the lower half of his face and the trailing white-blond hair gave away his identity. Though his great height also helped. His voice purred with the shadows of irritation. "Glorfindel, put your fighting knives away. Do not be ill-mannered… unless you would prefer for the Rangers to be indecorous with you."

Aric actually grinned as the King swept by. Elsenord strode behind and nodded at Remee and Lusis in turn. He'd bypassed the room with Lusis in it, perhaps knowing he'd get nowhere with her. He'd gone to ask for the help and intervention of the King of Mirkwood. Now that great King took down his hood and his circlet blinked in the failing light.

"There has been a complication," the Elfking opened one book at the top of a pile and flipped through the text there. His brows went up. "Lusis Buckmaster – Istari – has been betrothed to a warrior of the North. The contract was drawn when she was ten years of age. She is bound by human law to uphold this agreement, and has no opportunity, again, by human law, to suspend or dismiss it."

Lord Elrond frowned. "This… would mean forcing her into congress with a male not of her choosing. That is a violation of the Natural Order."

Dryly, the Elfking shut the book. "I don't think Men care about that. I have seen enough to suggest that much. For the most part the laws and rules are different between men and women among these other Children of Eru."

The Elflord pinched the bridge of his nose and said, "Two sets of rules?"

"So it seems to my eye. She must enter into congress with this stranger, or, she assures me, it will be war." The Elfking replied.

"It will be war," Remee said hotly. "War before-"

"Silence," Glorfindel snapped at the Ranger.

Elrond set his hands on his hips and pivoted, as the King did, to look at Lusis. She was, for her part, trying not to sink into the floor. Was, in fact, trying to stand tall in spite of this embarrassing and ridiculous situation in which she'd found herself.

"I used to wonder, taur-Thranduil," the Lord spoke softly, and his eloquent hands joined behind his back, "why the Istari all came to Middle Earth in the forms of old men."

The Elfking's chin sank down toward the antler clasp of the long and dark green cloak he wore. "Wonder no more."

"Which leaves us with a problem," said the Lord. "She is hardly a piece on auction. The Lady Galadriel ventured to say this new creation is beyond the estimation of the elves. She must be free to choose her own fate and her own path – that is the way, and the privilege, of Istari." His dark grey eyes narrowed. "Tell me your plan."

"Plans." Dorondir inclined his head to his Lord. "My Lord, the Elfking never has but a plan."

"Oh, of course not," Lord Elrond exhaled slowly, and tried to hold his temper. "Why simply be straightforward, when one can seem to be straightforward, instead."

Dorondir added a quiet and rather admiring, "A few times. It encourages interpretation."

The Elfking shut his pale eyes and inhaled slowly. When he faced the world again, he said, "The night closes upon us, Lord Elrond."

Now Elrond made a nearly pained huff of amusement and pivoted to face Lusis. "You realize he is saying it would take too long to explain." The Elflord touched his forehead as if some great pain was building up between his brows, as he turned to face the Elfking again. "What are you doing?"

The Elfking's gaze averted with marvelous grace, down and left, "Perhaps be specific?"

"What are you doing for Lusis Buckmaster?" Elrond waited a heartbeat, and when the King did not stir, he added, "About this betrothal?"

The King's head rose, his face innocent, "Oh. Oh, that."

Lusis had to look at the floor for a moment. It was a mystery to her why she was so often torn between laughing out loud at his particular genius, and the feeling she ought to shake sense into him. She looked up to find all the elves in the room staring at her.

Slowly, all their heads swiveled to take in the Elvenking.

"I checked the extant laws – or Eithahawn did for a case he has in the Halls. Lusis Buckmaster must be seen to be in breach of contract due to a secondary claimant."

Remee and Aric nearly spoke at the same time, though to different Rangers. "What's that mean?"

The Elflord ignored them. "That would require she have a contract that either predated the one made when she was a child, or have a current mate."

"I agree," said the Elfking. His long, elegant fingers picked at the unraveled edge of a binding, "I believe that Eithahawn is discovering such a document in our holdings right about now."

The Elflord's brows rose. "Going upon the premise that you knew about her Istari nature at a much earlier date."

"Quite," said the Elfking. "I have it from Elsenord Buckmaster that she did not come into her family until her seventh year. Any number of contracts might have been created," his brows rose and he looked aside at Lusis, ruefully. "Any number before she was passed to her family. It is not simply theory. It is the… reality of her origins."

Lusis backed up a number of steps, her intention, at that moment, to get to the door and head outside. Winter. She estimated that would take the edge off her boiling hot humiliation. Instead, she backed into Dorondir and his hands caught her upper arms to steady her. She smelled night rain when he leaned over her shoulder, "You are blameless in this, Yellow Istari."

Right. She grounded herself. He was right. She'd been an infant and a little child. She stood her ground and said to them, "Not that I don't appreciate this, but whatever your plan, we need to head out while the night favours us, Elfking."

He stepped back and pulled up his hood. "Very well, Lusis Buckmaster. Follow me."

It took her no time to determine that the King, with his hair tucked back into the hood, and moving around in the drizzly rain as he was, had rendered himself invisible. Well, to anyone to whom he couldn't appear as a living pillar of fire. He was dressed like any elf in any Mirkwood section, complete with the quiver and bow he carried. Lord Elrond, like the other elves, was now draped in a cloak of the same make. He wore the thick blue cloak underneath, for warmth.

The King led them all into the streets. He looked up at the rain, and it redoubled its efforts.

Aric fell in beside her. She was cloaked in the black leather of Rangers, as was he. "Who is the big guy going to contract you to?"

"I don't know."

"How can you not know?"

The Elfking brought them deeper into the heart of a downpour that was clearing the streets around them, "She will choose."

"I'd do it," said Icar.

"Unacceptable," said the Elflord quietly.

Icar shot a sharp look at the man.

"Forgive me, friend-Ranger." The Elflord said in explanation. "I meant to say there would be no document in the Elfking's holdings if she had been betrothed to a Ranger of the North. She must be intended to an elf."

"A Mirkwood elf," said the Elfking. "Perhaps, given that she is an Istari, my son."

"Which one?" Glorfindel asked.

"Not necessarily so," said the Lord Elrond, "And Men of the Peaks have no knowledge of which among us is Mirkwood and which not. We may as well say Glorfindel. He is a good match for her."

"I refuse to entertain-"

"I thought she would be the one to choose," said Glorfindel pointedly. "Is there some doubt that I can safeguard her?"

"None at all," said the Elvenking, "my doubts arise from the reasons the Elflord may have offered you to begin with."

Lord Elrond's lips pursed, "Lindir." His chin dropped toward his chest.

"No. She doesn't even know him," said the Elfking. "I might as well pair her with Merilin Ewonion. She knows his face, but that is the extent of her familiarity with him." He exhaled mistily, "Lindir…. You must really want to secure her for your own."

"The way you want to keep her," Lord Elrond actually smiled. "This is entertaining, oh rebellious King who pays heed to none. Shall I propose that you pair her with Eithahawn? He is kind. She knows him." The Elflord fell in, shoulder-to-shoulder, with the taller Elfking.

"Not Legolas," Glorfindel said. "You couldn't find him for one thing."

"That makes it an easier pairing, in fact." The Elfking said sharply.

"Easier to contest," Elsenord sighed on the end of that. "He would not be present to make a claim on her – foolish as this sounds to me now – and so his claim would be considered defunct." Elsenord set a hand on the back of his neck. "Fires. This is barbaric."

Lusis, on the edge of these machinations by choice, looked at Dorondir, beside her. "Don't you want to throw your own name into this fray, spy of Rivendell?"

His glance found her in the gaslight above them, and glinted peridot. "Ah, yes. I cannot offer myself to you for your succor. I am of no importance, Lusis Buckmaster." His chin dropped in quiet acceptance of this. His pale eyes averted at the stone of the roadway a moment, but then returned to her again.

She walked, fixed on their particular warm green for several steps.

"Such a mysterious gaze," his lashes did sudden elven staccato as he turned away. "Your eyes are a boundless darkness, Istari."

She had large, black eyes. Check. Every elf mentioned it after a while.

And then he added, "Perhaps it is from witnessing endless traverses. But even stars are satisfied in their reflection." His voice was wistful.

Other elves had pointed out how fascinating black eyes were to their kind, but after a few more steps, Lusis pulled her cloak more tightly around her and stepped deeper into the Noldor spy's rain-shadow. Somehow he said it differently.

The large group of them – Rangers and elves – broke apart as they left the waterfront. The King and the Elflord went along the main street with Glorfindel, Dorondir, and Ewon, the last of whom had just arrived among them. The Rangers did as the Forces did, and spread out across the city. Lusis paused in the street with her troop before they all took separate courses.

"Doing what?" Aric spat into the rain.

"Looking for the fount of the evil that marked them both," she said just above the hiss of the rain. She opened her hand between them all. "They discovered they both bear a small rounded burn mark on their hands. Raised at the edges." She pointed at her palm below her index finger, "The King had a burn here – now healing." She slid her finger to the pad at the base of her thumb. "The Lord's burn is here, and is much more pronounced."

"And you said it has to do with dragon's blood?" Elsenord's head tipped to one side.

"Apparently so. The King was burned after killing six such," Lusis' head rose because she was unaccountably proud of him. She reined the emotion in and her chin slowly dropped, nearly in elf fashion, toward the nest of her throat. "The Elflord, though, had no contact with dragons, and there seems to be a much more treacherous means behind his poisoning."

"And you say that a Northern man delivered that missive?" Remee pulled a face and leaned in among them. "I wonder about the arrival of the Men of the Peaks."

"You aren't alone in that," muttered Redd.

"Really. And here I believed they came to return their library books," Aric exhaled heavily at the pair of them. "Halfwits. We're going to need to keep an eye on the movements of that band. Even if they're wholly innocent, they're too dangerous to be left without men around them."

"Forces can do that, lad," said Redd quietly. "The King is abroad in the middle of the night."

Lusis looked at the pillar of light in the middle of the street. "Do you think he needs us to protect him?" She chuckled at that. "I think he forgets every living thing when he's in the midst of a fray. What isn't a blur of steel and mayhem looks glorious, but it's terrifying."

There was silent assent among them, even from Aric, who was most likely to make light of things. However, his only comment was a hushed, "Four Ages, he's been killing like that." His voice held a note of awe.

"And what are they doing to find it?" Elsenord asked. "Why are we in the middle of a human town? Doesn't this seem an unlikely place?"

"Evil hides in many places," Redd exhaled a puff of mist with his head turned to take in the King and small number of elves around him. "It was a worm in the heart of the Mark once, and took a seat beside the throne of Edoras. This is one of the fastest-growing towns of Men in the North, or, I'd venture, anywhere. And why not? It sits at the feet of one of the greatest gold mines in this world. Why wouldn't the enemy live here?"

"There's certainly been a change in mood in this place," Icar told his brother. "Don't tell me you haven't noticed how much wilder, how much darker, this place has grown."

"Well he is a bit empty-headed," Remee said affectionately.

Aric frowned, "Stick to abusing your little brother, you."

Lusis snickered, "It's a dark day when you can't get a rise out of an Awnson." She reached out and clapped a hand to Aric's shoulder and then smoothed her cloak in the rain. "I'm with the King. Please keep a perimeter. I'm not sure what they've been-" a thought struck her. "He pulled a Mithril chain from among the orcs who attacked us. It has the stamp of one of Thrain's forges – the Sounding Forge."

Redd's eyes widened. "Yes. They operated out of the Blue Mountains after," he looked North East, "after they were driven out of Erebor." Now the great Ranger looked down at Lusis. "I bet there are heaps of Mithril in that mountain with the stamp of the Sounding Forge."

She exhaled. "I bet you're right. And where else would an Orc get a chain like that one?"

Everyone looked North East at the great Lonely Mountain. From where they stood, the large gaslight at the gate glowed through the rain like a beacon, its flame a sign that the mountain was now protected from raiders by armies of Men and… and whom? Elves? Unlikely.

Redd said, "Did… did you know The Final Treaty of Erebor specified that the mountain fall under the joint protection of Men and Dwarves. Unlike the Second to Final Treaty of Erebor that, in fact, did specify that Hobbits and-"

Remee nodded at Redd, "My feet are getting wet. Come to a point, librarian." He smiled.

"Right," Redd pushed out a breath and looked at the King, "The Elves wanted no part of it. Which is to say, the Elvenking of Mirkwood, and our King, wanted to wash his hands of the Lonely Mountain and its riches. The mountain was neglected for part of an Age, it was so poisoned by Dragon Sickness and despair. So it is the property of Men and Dwarves."

"I don't think Orcs made the list," said Elsenord quietly.

"Yeah?" Aric looked into the rain, "I doubt a nest of giant snakes would make the list either. Didn't slow them down any."

Lusis remembered creeping into that place with the King and Redd… the stillness, the greatness, of the mountain's bones around her, and she felt its deeps in her nerve-endings for a moment. Smaug had been great and terrible, yes, but the mountain was greater and most terrifying of all. Its hollows, uncounted and unsounded, rang in the human imagination. "There are halls in that place, I swear to you, so deep, so far, no Man has seen them. No Man could understand them. At the bottom of that well, in the lowest, darkest rooms and crevasses, are places that can only be comprehended by the minds of Dwarves. Their different minds. The Elfking knows this. He recognized it, as he recognized the taint on the place when he first went in, Ages ago. But those deep, dark spaces are more numerous than a number of Men or Dwarves could ever plumb."

Elsenord's eyes widened. "You sound like you've been inside."

The rain thickened, rippling over rooftops, and Lusis nodded dully. "It is not for the meek."

"And those deep places are inaccessible," Redd shifted the axe across his chest, under his oiled leather cloak, and looked at Lusis, "if the Men and Dwarves can't look past the Counting Room. Even the King struggled to keep focus. The gemstones… they lit with white fire and listened to him breathing."

Remee's eyes widened in dismay. "Fires." His lips curled. "It's full of ghosts then. A cursed place." He could see Lusis' agreement on her solemn face.

But now Redd added, "And, Lusis, if that elf you told me of – Lethroneth – found another way into that mountain, there may be other passages. Maybe… fissures in stone."

"There is a way," Lusis said. "Snakes could fit through it."

The King's voice floated over her shoulder, "Istari."

She turned to look at him, and her breath caught. He was a tall, slender pillar of starlight against the dark and distant titan, Erebor. Lusis pulled air, slowly, to steady herself. She so often saw him like this, now: fixed within a soaring span of his personal light whose shimmering brightness stretched into the heavens. Ever since she'd breathed life into his flame.

Her eyes widened a little, and she looked first at the puddled stone, and then at her troop. "I'm with the King. Be sharp tonight. Protect him. Protect us."

Aric nodded at her, "You never have to ask, Chief." Beside him, Icar took out his blade in a swift lash of baleful light, to answer her question, and inclined his head to her. Redd did nothing but straighten, but that was more than enough at his size. Likewise, both tall and sturdy Buckmaster boys were suddenly solemn.

The King began to turn away from them, but he paused to say, "You do us honour, Rangers of the North. Among the edhel, nothing is forgotten." He passed out from under the gaslight in a riffle of dark green cloak, almost invisible before he drifted into silhouette under another. The gliding shadow of Ewon pulled to a halt beside her.

He glanced over the Rangers genially, and then asked, "Friend-Lusis, will you accompany me?"

Lusis turned and loped after the King, side-by-side with the Silvan Elite.

"What is the method?" she asked Ewon.

"By which the King tracks the taint?" Ewon asked her.

She nodded and dropped her head against waves of rain. "Yes, just so." She was increasingly worried for Elrond, whose fire was a mere ember-glow in the cold downpour. If she'd had it her way, he would be tucked in front of a fire right now. No. She realized as she drew up on him, he'd be in the Halls of the Elvenking, warm, safe, and healing – standing somewhere and reading amid his own sunset-coloured pillar of light. That was where he'd be.

"I haven't worked out how it is done," said the Elite. "There is some sense they share, friend-Lusis. And this is the main reason why there must be so many elves on this foray."

She felt her dissatisfaction on her face, and smoothed her profile studiously, lest she insult or distract the elf. "Is there anything you can tell me?"

"We are aware of strange and flickering lights across the sky in the night." He said softly. "The Men hereabouts are said to believe they are haunted by the spirits of elves lost at Erebor. But that is not possible for the spirit of an elf, which is quick to the shores of Valinor." His sleek head turned fractionally. "The King collects such reports."

She was mollified by this. Having been freely handed the information, she had no idea where it fit, or what to do with it. Instead, she stared at the bright King before her. She would have bet against her father's Keep that he already had a theory.

The tall King and the much-diminished Lord stood speaking. She thought this was, perhaps, because it was clear that the Lord was flagging – his dark head was down and he pressed one pale hand to his chest. Glorfindel stood close, his attention set on Elrond as if no one else was remotely present, such was his great loyalty. Dorondir glanced between Lord and King, assiduous and prepared. But all the elves were greatly disturbed by the weakness of the Lord. They revealed it in small ways that Lusis was only just learning to see.

The Elfking extended a graceful hand, the gesture slow and gorgeous. He laid his palm against the Lord's bent shoulder and Lusis watched the behavior of the fires within the pair of them change. The pillar-like aura around the Elvenking intensified. For a moment, the flames inside Elrond bucked and sputtered from low violet to a glorious flare of burnished red-gold – a sunrise of fire. Lusis' bright yellow starpoint flared in time with them and she gasped.

Dorondir half-turned her way at the sound of her sudden inhalation. "Friend-Lusis?"

"I'm well," she covered the light at the base of her throat and looked up at the long hand he extended to her. Ewon stepped between them and he nearly touched her arm out of concern. But she stepped aside, busy watching what passed between Lord and King, and neither acknowledged a weakness of her own, nor revealed how very grateful she was for Ewon's fatherly concern. It was something she'd feared she'd never see in any man, again.

Then the wind came up. It was blind, angry, and abrupt. The fire of the King withstood it easily, but Lord Elrond crumpled. His fire of sunrise flagged, the skies in him dimmed. This happened with an unnatural motion she'd never witnessed of elf's fire. It blew toward the front of his limber body, where it waggled as it tried to maintain contact with Thranduil's furnace-chest, and he sagged.

Glorfindel had him immediately. His dark grey eyes blinked, dull, nearly insensible.

Lusis bared her teeth and stomped forward through the puddles and pouring rain.

The Elfking glanced toward her and straightened, his eyes widening. "Ewon. Dorondir. The Istari."

"No, friend-Lusis," Ewon hurried into her path. "The Lord Elrond is ceaselessly brave. He must endure-" she went around him.

Dorondir took one look at her and sort of tackled her. He, at least, saw that she wouldn't be reasoned with. "Friend, if we do not catch this foe now and by this means, the Lord will not suffer, he will perish. Listen to me. Lusis, listen."

She pulled herself together and stopped taking a position that would more easily allow her to fight the elf. Instead, she looked up at his great, unblinking green eyes. "I hear you. Forgive me. Let me go." His arms loosed her slowly, and he eased away.

"Well done," the King said. His silver eyes swept from their measure of Lord Elrond, down to the stone road, and then rose up to take Lusis in. She saw, in his gaze, many complex things. His head bent back, and that trained motion sealed everything away. "What did you see? Tell me."

Lord Elrond had recovered himself and now turned to look at her. She saw that his dark brows were pressed upward in the middle of his brow-line, which was telling. His elven discipline barely able to conceal his fatigue and distress. To her eye, he appeared so young that way. She could see how he might've looked as a child. Lusis wouldn't see him laid low by an enemy.

She turned to the King, "The fire of him grew to where it should always be. That was when you laid a hand on him." Seeing that, Lusis thought touch couldn't be a bad thing among the elves, as she had assumed. A rare thing wasn't necessarily also a bad thing. She wiped rain from her face, "But that hated wind struck him and so went the progress you'd made."

His head cocked. All feeling and expression was lost in the dark fold of his hood.

"I… I mean that your white fire reached to him," Lusis spoke privately, but in case it needed explanation. After all, these fires were something elf eyes couldn't see. "It reached like a friend. That's how his flame climbed up again. Maybe it's a matter of long comradery between you. Maybe it is the same force by which elves heal others – I'm not aware. You helped and the winter wind wiped that away." She turned her head to the South East and bared her teeth. "Thief."

She missed that the direction of the King's gaze followed hers. He paused to watch the sky, even though Lord Elrond made a sudden puff of amusement. "Oh, is this what it is like to have, ever beside you, an Istari so young and so green, Elfking of Mirkwood? Her small observations are little miracles."

Lusis watched the Elfking's hooded head avert to wet stone. The line of his cherry petal lips was grim. She sucked a deep breath and crossed to stand before him, but the Elfking ignored her. His voice rumbled, "What direction, Lord Elrond?"

"Just as she turned," said the Elflord, and some of the resonant beauty had returned to round out his voice. "South and still further East."

Lusis looked into his chest and saw that not all progress had been lost. But she had to close her hands together behind her back to resist touching that valiant tongue of flame.

They went South East, away from the mountain that both fascinated and frightened her. They repeated this test three more times, but at irregular intervals. The Elvenking and Elflord were being careful to conceal their activity. The tests were, for that reason, random. But by the last, it was clear the Lord Elrond could weather no more. He sank to his knees in the small and nameless avenue, pounded by descending arrowheads of rain. Glorfindel immediately folded down over his Lord. Lusis struggled with the blazing yellow starpoint at the base of her throat. Her blood whispered to help the Lordly elf, pulled like the tides by the moon. In the deep parts of her mind, she knew how. But Ewon held her hand on one side, and Dorondir held the other.

"We passed it," the Lord panted. "It is South… and West."

Glorfindel took off his cloak and covered his Lord with it.

True to his word, when Lord Elrond could struggle no more, he toppled into unconsciousness. It was then that the Elfking intervened to carry him.

Lusis squeezed elven hands and averted her gaze as the Lord passed. They waited until the King was nearly out of sight. Her sight. She had no doubt they could still easily see him. They released her and Lusis set off walking between them. After a moment, she glanced over her shoulder South and West.

The flickering light didn't tremble to life in the high darkness until her head had turned away.