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.

7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Lusis couldn't have imagined she would ever range through dwarven tunnels, underground. She loped through the dark, mostly blind, but trusting in the sureness of the elf before her, and Telfeth's presence close behind. The dwarves cut such even floors for themselves. Where light from the main tunnel punched into this escape hatch, she saw the most beautiful and balanced ribbed archways overhead, some three stories. The walls had long, curved cuts as if the pale stone might be waves and drifts in settled snow. It was so beautiful, and just a utility tunnel. The dwarves had cut such a trail of beauty through this landscape.

They'd been running upward for a long while, making very good time. True to his word and his exemplary eyesight, Legolas had shot down every hall guard along the way. By now that was a small army of dead orcs – they'd stopped counting. Glorfindel dragged them further into darkness. Amathon or Telfeth reclaimed the elf arrow. Dorondir cleaned the arrow and handed it back to Legolas. This was as smooth a rhythm as the ticking of a clock, which soothed the metronomic mind of Glorfindel.

"Light ahead," Legolas whispered.

The cold of the mountain had been rolling down onto them for a while now.

Lusis could smell the stillness and the faint ozone of dragons ahead.

"Smaug's castle," Bess exhaled at the scent. "It does reek."

The utility tunnel ended in, of all the sane things in the world, a stone pocket door. It was ajar. It had been ajar, from the cobwebbing on it, since the days of Thrain. The elf spy dropped to his knees and his long body slinked forward enough for him to peek out.

He leaned back with his cheeks pale.

"What is it?" Glorfindel grumbled.

Dorondir's voice was thready. "Is… is it possible to have… so much gold?"

"We're above the Counting Room." Lusis noted and wished she had Redd with her. She looked at Legolas. "We are breaking all law."

"They have Lord Elrond, and my father," he told her. "If the dwarves march on the Mirkwood over such a deliverance, then so be it. I am not afraid of dwarves."

"Okay," she breathed deeply. "The Counting Room is like a sea. Get your bearings before we climb down into it."

Glorfindel shook his head a few times after he examined the gold below him. His expression had darkened with disapproval. "Avarice." The remaining elves looked shocked, though not thunderstruck, like Bess.

They made their way out and down dark and narrow steps to the golden sea. Bess Bowman walked over the coinage, dazed. "But my people… they have even gone hungry."

"The great Northern Bowmen," Glorfindel said bitterly, and his tone was laced with pity, "who brought low the dragon who commanded this cache of gold, gone hungry in the winter cold, when some large share of this wealth," his blue eyes found Bess' stunned, pale face, "is your own." On the heels of this, Legolas looked across at the girl's brown curls, curiously.

"Don't touch it. It's still covered in dragon's sickness, yet," Lusis warned.

The Elfprince bent and scooped up several coins. He held them in his softly luminous hand. Lusis watched the fire of his being travel through him. His palm lit below the gold and the bright metal was lost in the sudden gush of the neophyte King's Light inside of him. He had learned this trick at his father's knee. It seemed he didn't even know he knew it. Now that the Prince held the impure dragon's gold, the trial of his fire happened by reflex. He turned and passed the coins over to Bess. "It seems harmless to me."

"Take only what he gives you," Lusis warned the girl.

Bess held the five gold coins in her hand, stupefied.

Lusis noted, "The Elfking can also help… if he is hale."

A sing-song of pleasantry drifted down from overhead. "My, my. Of course he is hale."

Everyone froze in place, for there was no cover to rush to in the sea of gold.

Lusis turned herself to look at the tall stair to the Royal hallways above. On a landing that overlooked the sea of blinking gold, was slender Nema Aragennya. She smiled and gestured at Lusis. Her merry voice floated down, "I would never harm him, as I have said before."

Legolas' bow flickered up with an arrow knocked.

"No. Information," Lusis whispered. She had restrained his powerful elven arm. When sense returned to his pale blue eyes, Lusis stepped out and stood before their small band. "Where is he, Nema?"

"Safe," she came down a few more stairs, grand in long red velvet and layers of lace and golden silk. She opened her thin arms. "You ruined my dress… but I had one prepared for this escape. It is in the King's colours, of course. Do you like it?"

She did a little twirl. The dress was dazzling. It blinked with gemstones from the mountain.

"You look divine," Lusis exhaled. And it was as true as it was infuriating.

"Ah, yes. I should congratulate you…" she giggled. "But, of course, this calamity is your only wedding gift, as it is your only gift in life. You grew up out of it like a Bloodroot blossom. You waded to him out of strife and combat, and that is all you can bring into his life."

"We are not wedded." Lusis said calmly. "We are contracted together."

"And even that is too close." Nema opened her long, slim arms, "This is your sign. This is a vision of your future together, and the reason why you are wrong for him, Buckmaster goat. All destruction you have wrought."

Lusis' chin rose. "We. We have wrought, Nema. You are a part of this."

"Fie, it is your doing. His beauty has driven you mad," Nema snapped in retort. "And you are too late. Let me be the first to tell you that our presence in the Lonely Mountain means that we have won."

"They are departing from here," Dorondir surmised in a low voice. "This will be our last chance to stop them and deliver the King."

"Of course, if you kill me, you will never see him again. Not even to say goodbye," Nema's smile was as beautiful as ever. "I am the only thing that keeps him safe."

Lusis shut her eyes. "Where is he?"

"Would you like to know?" the woman stopped with one toe of one tiny shoe in the gold. "Would you like to see him again, Lusis… one last time? I… I would like that for you, I do admit."

Without hesitation, Lusis walked toward the woman. "Just tell me what I must do for that to happen, Nema. What must I give you?"

"The great pleasure," the flesh around the woman's eyes crinkled as her cheeks mounded with joy, "of watching your pure, perfect heart breaking." She was so pretty. And so warped.

"Her mind has failed." Legolas' aim reoriented, as did Telfeth's. There were Forces men lining along the stone railing above Nema now. Lusis never looked at them. She, frankly, didn't care that they existed. Every iota of her battle-honed attention struggled to read Nema's small, heart-shaped face. Finally, Lusis drew a deep breath. "If you are ready, Nema… you will see it."

Aragennya uttered a bell-like laugh. It was the life of the ballroom and lit in air like a trapped bird inside of the mountain. It stirred Lusis to regret. She shut her eyes because she didn't want to see this woman's fate before her. With all their conflict, it saddened her that she would likely kill this woman tonight. But of all the things that Lusis had been born to do, and among the many things at which she excelled, combat came first.

"Does it hurt?" the woman burbled.

"Yes, it does." Lusis said. She opened her dark eyes, having given up hope for the Madam at long last, and steadfast to her course.

Nema inhaled and exhaled in delight. She opened her arms in air and brought them together like a girl, so she could clasp them to her. "Ah, I know how you feel. I love him so. I am drunk on the air he breathes. It is wonderful. He is wonderful. Having him is like living in a dream."

"He will live forever, Nema." Lusis said.

"Of course," she smiled. "And I will not. But he will be mine for as long as I draw breath. You are too dim to see. I will ever be welcome in this city for securing the King for them. All the worry. All that anxiety. Wondering if we please him enough that he will retain the land, or when he will leave. He will never leave. He is in my possession now, and when I fail, his indenture will pass over to the city on the Lake. He will be their light forever, and I will be his greatest regret."

Legolas lowered his bow, "Indenture?"

"Shush, pretty one." The Madam smiled at him. "You are lovely too."

"Nema… where is he?"

The woman raised a hand. Several of the shuffling Forces on the level above moved. Their boot-heels clapped out an obscenity on dwarven marble. As they grouped around a wheel of metal and turned it, chains clanked in the darkness overhead.

Gilt cages lowered.

"What is it?" Telfeth breathed. Her arrowhead searched the towering dark.

"Hold your fire," Amathon cautioned. "The King's life depends upon it."

Now came fleeter running in the upper hall. Everyone looked sharply. "Fool woman, what are you doing?" Ellethiel Tatharion cried out. She hastened down the stairs, saw Lusis and the pod of elves with her, and halted sharply. Her expression went cold. She stilled and seemed to stop breathing.

"I understand now," Lusis laughed bitterly. "I understand why you didn't want us to ride out from your keep when the white horses of Rivendell came in your gates. I see why you were afraid of the Elfking's busy head."

The woman admitted. "In all schemes… he is the spoiler. Of all nights to arrive… the night of the Lord of Rivendell's delivery to Tatharion?"

Although Dorondir's training got him through that moment of blinding betrayal, Amathon had to restrain that other son of Rivendell, Glorfindel. In the end, only Legolas' quick, sharp command stilled the elves.

This meant that the Slaughter of orcs had been sent to do away with Lindir and his guard, Raineth, along with Glorfindel, and Dorondir. Her fists balled up. This must have been the goal, since Lusis had already gathered the Lord was for Ellethiel and Tatharion, the way the King was for Nema and Lake Township. "Ellethiel Tatharion, you have wronged the elves of Middle Earth and shamed your kin."

She sounded a small note of dark humour. "Buckmaster, they are abandoning us."

The half-elf woman's chin rose. She continued down the steps. "Tell me, what is the secret? How did your troop find our Lord so quickly?

Lusis couldn't do that, though she did know. She couldn't process the question.

The cages had touched down against the coins and ingots of gold. Inside the closest, a white-blond head tipped, the crown of Winter Deer glinting, but his intelligent silver eyes were dull and vacant. Lusis felt a blast of faintness. Her King. He sat on a beautiful wooden chair modelled to look like the elk-antler throne of Mirkwood. His hands were folded, sedately, in his lap. He looked incredibly beautiful, still dotted in the blood of fighting, still with his swords at his side. But his fire was a line of crawling blue inside of him, all but extinguished.

She knew only that she turned and ran for him. Somewhere behind her back, Nema was laughing.

Lusis' plunging body impacted the cage, and it hurt in her bones, but with her arm stretched until her shoulder popped, and her joints and tendons burned, Lusis couldn't as much as brush the silk of his clothes with the tip of a fingernail. She made a frustrated cry with the effort.

The voice from behind her stilled her. No one else would have had the power.

"Adar?"

Lusis withdrew her arm to turn to the Elfprince. His face was stark.

'Adar?" he tried sending his thoughts out. Lusis heard the call, but there was nothing at the other end but the bottomlessness of a well tunneled leagues through the world.

Legolas stabbed the treasure below him with his bow and took two quick steps to the cage. This close to him, his father had never failed to answer him. Never in life. Legolas breathlessly pressed the white-golden bars in a struggle to maintain control of his emotions. And as desperate as Lusis was for her King's freedom, she had to reach along the curving cage to shut her hand over the back of Legolas' wrist. His eyes were closed now. His forehead rested on metal. He didn't seem to breathe.

"Legolas. We will need you for this."

"But I didn't get to see him," the Elfprince was quiet, his sweetly melodic voice gone flat and numb, "I came home. I didn't see him."

She jostled him. "Your father needs your strength."

He backed away from the bars, but his eyes never strayed from his tall, pale father. Legolas' hand found the bow standing in the gold. "What have they done?"

Lusis scrubbed her cheek with the heel of her hand, "They've banked the fire in him, Legolas. Without it, he is like a dreamer, only barely aware of the world. Scarcely interacting at all." Before this, Lusis hadn't known that it was the flame – that Secret Fire – that had invested the elves with life. She blinked at the King. At one time, all elves had slept like this. It was the fire that gave them presence, gave them consciousness, in the world.

She looked to the second cage to find the Lord Elrond, in a wooden chair sculpted to mimic leaping water, as if from a waterfall. His skin seemed grey, and his long, lustrous hair limp, lifeless, and without light. In him, the fire was… different. Not a low line, but a single, fearful candle flame of violet. Lusis' head turned, quickly, back to the King.

Suffering the same fate… why were they different?

Ellethiel exhaled and crossed the gold to Legolas and Lusis. "I am sorry, Lusis Buckmaster. I truly am. But the great elves of this world are rare commodities now. Worse, Gondor's throne has its own. Soon that nation will be run by half- and part-elves who command great power. So goes the race of rivals and great houses to secure their own lines. In the high halls of power, having no such blood will be as throwing down all arms in surrender before Gondor, and, frankly, one cannot keep the blood of the Dunedain alive without elves to seed the lines. Without this, what I am will cease to exist. Our culture will be no more. Do you wish for a world without Rangers, Lusis Buckmaster? Do you wish for a world where no power can oppose the might of the elf-children of Gondor?"

The Elfprince stepped in front of the cage that held his father and waited.

Ellethiel watched him. "Ah. You will join them soon enough, Greenleaf. Don't you see?"

"Give me my father, if you wish to live."

"Of course," Nema said smilingly. She still stood on the steps with one foot planted on the first coins of gold at the stair. "Why don't I open the cage and let you go to him, little beauty?"

With Nema distracted, Ellethiel's gaze glided to Lusis. Her voice was low, "Let me take my Lord to the safety of the Northern foothills. He does not have to strength to weather this fight."

"I would say yes to you," Lusis replied, "except you cannot be negotiated with."

"Fortunately, it doesn't matter what you decide. If you defy Tatharion we shall take Inilfain, I swear you that. We have his sister. She can find him anywhere. And he would die for her."

"Are you threatening your own family? How can this be good?"

The part-elf averted her gaze in shame. "I will protect him, Buckmaster, so that when you resist, as you know you will, he will be far from danger."

Lusis stepped out of the woman's way. "Glorfindel."

The part elf glanced her way in passing. "What?"

"He will wear your skin." Lusis glanced over her shoulder at the woman.

"Let him come," the half-elf woman scoffed.

Lusis glanced over the elves behind her. They were frozen in readiness, and Bess, among them was staring at the gold with a faraway expression.

The Istari felt the room slow. She lifted her gaze to Nema, who was still smiling on the last of the steps. Her dark stare passed beyond the Madam, to the flawless stone railing, cut by dwarves, along which there lined Forces men loyal to Gurn Drivenn. She counted five bowmen, and ten swordsmen. Lusis turned her head to take in Legolas. She could see that he was watching the bows of the nearest three archers, but his quiver was over his shoulder. Telfeth's quiver was war-slung, and lay against her ribs for quicker drawing. She stared up at the line of soldiers as well.

Dorondir was relaxed and stood with one hand on Glorfindel's wrist.

Amathon was close to Lusis, just off her right shoulder, but Legolas was closer the cage on the left, which meant there was a good amount of space between her and the Elfprince. She listened to Ellethiel's light steps in the gold and turned her left foot just enough to tip her body in the proper direction. She saw Legolas' blue gaze glint. His chin fell a fraction in agreement.

In those short seconds where Lusis sized up the room, Nema stopped laughing for long enough to scoff, "I have won, oh, unspoiled princess of the North. For all your virtue, I have already-"

Under her voice, Lusis heard the jingling of keys, and the clicking of a lock.

She swiveled her body around and down. Her boots dug into gold and held fast. She threw herself out and over the downhill trend of the gold, this made no noise but a sudden jingle, which wasn't much warning.

Nema cried out. Bowstrings juddered in air. Lusis couldn't see what had become of her friends behind her, but none cried out. Ellethiel turned just in time to see the immediate problem. Lusis pulled her sword in midair, but the blade impacted, jarringly, with the silver bars of the cage and dislodged, rather than striking the head off the half-elf. They landed hard and slid on the gold a good ten to twelve feet.

"You are lucky," Lusis spat, unable to locate her elf-sword in the expanse of metal.

"Fool!" Ellethiel brought up her knee and drove the wind out of Lusis' middle. The half-elf pushed her away and scrambled up, sore, but functional. "Nema! To his cage!"

Both the Madam and the part-elf started running for the bars of Elrond of Rivendell.

Lusis dug her fingers in and scrabbled up the mounds of gold. Her hand snagged the woman's boot and made her stumble, but it didn't stop Ellethiel. She threw herself forward and snagged her other heel more solidly. Ellethiel fell and the gold under her let go. Lusis slid some two feet, but the part-elf slid more than six. Lusis got up, dug in her heels, and ran.

She had no sword. She had no way to throw off arrows that suddenly arched for her. So she braced and swerved to one side.

The gold slithered. A great red dragon's scale rose up before her and the arrow tapped on it like rain. A second of Smaug's great scales already rose to her left to intercept the arrow there.

She reheard Amathon's words from within the Halls of the Elvenking, and saw the sunny white ribcage over the Great Gallery, embedded in stone and braced to the cavern walls. 'A dragon's bones haunt the slayer. They are never far.' This was Bess Bowman. She'd felt the old bits and pieces of Smaug in this mountain, and being the direct line of Bard the Bowman, slayer of that famous last-known greater dragon, she called to the scales of the beast to do her bidding. Just as the Elfking called to Gorgorax to shore up his Kingdom.

As she broke from the row of rising dragon's scales so large they were the size of barn doors, Lusis cried out. She saw that Nema's hand reached for the keys still in the lock of Lord Elrond's cage, and surged forward with a fist falling into solid connection with the woman's white jaw. The impact made a snapping sound. Lusis rode the impact down with the reeling body of the Madam.

Then Lusis tried to rise. An arrow passed through her hair just above her ear, and blood ran down along her temple from the close call. That archer tumbled off the railing and fell into the sea of gold, dead. Legolas shouted, "Friend-Lusis, they have archers among the reinforcements!"

"Just a moment, Lady!"

Telfeth was off to Lusis' right, tucked behind a scale. She rolled around the side, and went into a tumble. At points in her roll through the gold she snapped off arrows. One passed through the eye of a Forces soldier on the landing and a second sliced through the wrist of a man reaching back to take an arrow from his quiver.

Legolas shot nearly straight up into air. It fell over the tall railing and into the line of men, slicing through an archer, downward, through the nest of his throat. The bizarre shot was so incredible, the soldiers were spooked along the rails. Lusis risked getting up. She turned the lock on Lord Elrond's cage, opened it, and kept the keys. "There's only one!" she shouted. Then she looked down at Nema.

She threw herself down and searched the Madam for the key to the King's cage. She found it in the woman's bodice on the Mithril chain with the teardrop. The chain was long enough that she could yank it off over the woman's curled head, otherwise she would have pulled Lord Elrond's blade from his still figure and struck off the Madam's head.

Relief flooded through her, followed by fear and extremity.

The chains were drawing up.

The Forces were lifting the cages again, and they would soon be hopelessly far above.

Despairingly, Lusis watched the King's cage leave the sea of gold.

She could not reach him. She did not have time.

So her cry was angry as she turned and flung herself into Elrond's cage. As quick as she was, the drop was over a storey when she threw them both out of it again. She prayed that landing on the ruthless gold wouldn't snap his bones.

She needn't have worried. Glorfindel caught the Lord of Rivendell out of the arch of their fall.

Behind him came Amathon. Lusis dropped into the big elf's arms.

"The key," Lusis barked to him.

"The King," he pushed her along the gold.

She was running as soon as her boot struck. Too slow.

Unlike Legolas.

He had backed up for a long leap through arrow-stroked air. He targeted his father's cage. She angled her path and pushed her strides to their tooth-jarring limit. There were only seconds left to intercept him, and Legolas was as fleet as a leaf on the wind.

When she saw his arm come up before her she cast the Mithril chain around it, and he was by her so fast she was pulled along by the gust of his passage. She was flung out on her side in gold. Her hand splayed for purchase. Arrows pocked the wealth before her. One buried itself in a soft ingot just between her thumb and index finger. She scowled up at the archers. "Stop it, you pillocks!" She slammed a fist into the gold and shrieked. "I will hunt you down!"

But they hadn't moved quickly enough to strike Legolas. His agile body rocketed up and struck the cage such that he upset everything inside, the cage swung so violently. The King, so temperate and serene, slammed into the bars on his side, his sunny hair suddenly flying against Legolas' cheek.

A woman's hot voice rang through the cavernous darkness. "Kill them." Which was when the werewolves vaulted the railings above them.

Bess shrieked. She tossed herself downhill and rolled through the gold with a wolf straight behind her. It snapped air above her tumbling body.

There were nearly twenty wolves. Too many.

Amathon tore past and tumbled in a spiral with a werewolf snapping at his sword arm. Telfeth shot an arrow through the jaw of a wolf only to be worried at by a second great beast. And it took an arrow from Legolas to fell that one.

The gold began to move. Lusis spilled flat down on her belly as the Counting Room shifted under her. She spun up into a tall wave of shimmering gold that smacked against the oncoming wolves, but though the deep well of gold swamped and swallowed many of the animals, she passed harmlessly out through the back. She knew of only one person's power to do such a thing, and, only then, with water. As she slid down the back of the swell, Lusis glanced up at the King's cage, which still swung widely. Legolas had his arms through the bars. He held his father close to him. The Elvenking's line of blue fire showed a sudden bubbling of white-hot flame.

She cocked her head at this as the gold laid her down flat again.

Someone charged by her. Her sword hilt impacted with the gold by her chin. She hurried to catch it before it slid away.

The werewolf that lifted off and sought to dive at her was suddenly cut into halves along the thinning of its midsection. A second fell to a bright elf travelling so fast that Lusis, trying to get to rights as she was, couldn't make their identity out. She rolled up to her feet while pulling her sword around to rights.

The woman at the top of the stairs was in the mask of the dragon rider. She drew two short blades and backed toward the railings above with a strident and inhuman hiss. Almost as soon as she did this, the spinning sunset pillar of fire struck at her. The blades and the cords of her arms barely held him at bay.

"What is she?" Lusis shouted to the elves around her. "The one in the horned mask?"

"Uncertain," Ewon snatched her up off the gold and directed someone outside of her sight, "The Elfprince and King are taking fire. To the rails!"

Redd Ayesir pounded by. A goblin tugged himself off of his fallen werewolf and made a leap at the huge librarian. The man's pumping fist quite incidentally clipped the goblin in the forehead and laid him out flat on his back. Elsenord's sword un-capped the top of the goblin's head.

"What took you so long?" Lusis shouted at them. She raised her sword and pointed it at the rails. "Rout them!"

A tremendous cry met her ears. Rangers, Forces, and a section of Elves charged past. Arrows bent at them. Icar struck them aside with a flick of his sword, as if painting a canvas. Elves answered, and Bess Bowman, her feet planted against the fallen body of a werewolf, gestured at the rails. The gold rippled. Red scales reared up out of it and wrought forward. Their motion ploughed gold at the enemy. The whole of Erebor resounded with the ring of tonnes of coins cascading up the stairs, over the rails, and rolling down the halls of the Dwarven Kings.

The Istari grinned at this, braced herself, and flashed past Bess. She ran up the burning back of one of the scales and hurtled into the enemy. She wasn't alone in this. Many elves flew with her. Graceful Dorondir was among them, two long and bloody fighting knives naked in his hands. Lusis landed, plunging a knife into the chest of a gigantic orc who hadn't had the attention to spare to avoid her arrival.

The battle for the dwarven kingdom began in earnest.

An orc snarled, "You must die, little gir-"

She chopped her way through its jaw and moved on to the goblin behind it. The thing turned just in time to see her sword-chop fall. Lusis hadn't time to concentrate on the next foe. She turned her sword, braced her hand on the wet flat of her blade, and bent her knees to take the impact of a massive werewolf paw. As it began to lift, she turned her sword and straightened into an upward stroke that shot along the inside of the wolf's leg, slid off a rib, and went home deep in the animal's chest. She pulled free, turned, and passed under its shaggy belly as it toppled.

Another wave of coins flew in. Lusis found herself side-by-side with Elrond and jolted. "My Lord, how?" she blocked and slashed a reaching hand open. "Lord Elrond, how are you doing such-?"

His eyes startled her.

They were bright with life, and his sunset flame painted the ceilings and floors, it was as bright as if he carried the setting sun in his being. She watched him spin low, undercut a charging werewolf, and straighten so quickly his turn still had time to slice through the rider with the ease of light through darkness. His cloak flared open around an inferno. She sidestepped a goblin, then stepped out to bounce it off her shoulder and into Aric's path. It fell in a bleeding heap. She threaded her fingers into the pauldron of the Elvenlord, and it was like taking hold of a scudding night wind as he turned. She swung in air, dizzy with speed, and her boot heels cracked across skulls and snapped bones.

At the end of that arc, she let go and her body slung up high in air, turning. She held her sword along the back of her shoulder and repelled blades. When she landed, she hit the back of a werewolf with such force that its spine gave way. She was able to swing her sword, behead the goblin behind her, and run down the haunches of the beast. Several enemy Forces men backed away.

An orc snarled and raised his misshapen cleaver to run at her, roaring.

A hand thrown axe appeared out of its bellowing mouth and it fell down, dead.

Close to forty dwarves came charging down the hall like an avalanche. Lusis swung up her sword and narrowly blocked an orc's stab at her belly. She felt the blade go through her clothes, the flat against her side. It began to turn so that he could chop her in half.

"Oh. No-no. Not that bright maid. Out of our way, now, Missy!" shouted a burly, red-bearded dwarf. His massive sword made a low hum through air. Her splendid elven scouting dress, long ago shredded, bloodied, and cut away, now tore as the orc's sword came out and the orc fell over dead.

She checked her side for blood, found none, and turned to charge into the fray behind the relentless hammers and swords of the dwarves.

"Lusis-Istari," Elrond grappled with her shoulder and pulled her back from the fray. His flame waned as he brought her aside. "Trust in…" he sagged and seemed to lose his place.

"Lord, stay with me." She dragged him behind her and pressed him into one of the many elegant notches in this huge and bowed hallway. "What's happening to you? How did you break this curse of yours, Elvenlord?"

"He… did not," crackled a low voice. The thronging of battle drew back from the dragon-rider and her horned helm. She came to stand before the pair in the hall, and hissed low in the back of her throat. "He could not, without your assistance."

"He has," Lusis snarled and dropped to fighting stance.

"Friend-Lusis," Elrond's sonorous voice ebbed. "It is not so…. Through much practice, you see… the Elvenking," he flagged, "his grace passed through…."

The dragon-rider's head cocked, and her lips, only just visible at the jagged base of the horned mask she wore, twisted into a smile. She had fangs. She lifted a hand to touch something embedded in her flesh at the base of her throat. A small, round mirror. "He," she pondered a moment. "Did he figure out the mirrorwork?"

"What mirror work?" Lusis snapped.

Elrond sounded wan, "The mirrors burnt into our very hands, friend-Lusis. Mirrors like these bounced light across the city…. But they also stole our firelight." His powerful voice petered away.

The horned woman smirked, "Stole?" She stepped forward and orcs grouped around her in an eager circle, "These mirrors and their doleful command of light… are how we made the Lord's Seal that hid the very entry of our army to infect the heart of your city. Not a one of you fools knew." She hissed a final time and gestured toward the Counting Room. "Clever elf."

"He is," Lusis watched the dragon-rider take up a huge sword whose steel blade was far too long for her willowy frame. The shining blade curved in undulations that ran almost to the tip. Lusis felt her eyes widen. "Dragon sword." Such as these had been forged in the fires of Doom and used by nobles of Angmar.

The smile was cruel. "Well spotted, little sacrifice." She slung the blade up with blurring speed and dropped it down at Lusis' hasty block. "Pity that you could not die on that mountainside! It makes me wonder, so-called-Istari, if you can die at all. But-"

Lusis threw aside the blow, well aware it was far too powerful for the foe's small frame.

Shadows danced around the dragon-rider as her summoned dragons raced through the hall and into the fray. Lusis felt herself fighting not to howl her outrage at so lopsided a stratagem.

"-this day, I will find out." The woman's deep voice throbbed.

Maybe.

"And I will damp the troublesome lights of Rivendell."

The Lord of Rivendell was in a collapse behind her. If she left him, he would fall this day.

After all he'd already endured, that simply wasn't happening without a fight.

"I will stand for him," she told the witch, who, even as Lusis spoke, was growing larger and larger. Her horned head passed Lusis' height one moment, and was soon as tall as Redd was. The woman slung her steel sword down at Lusis again. Its ripples had now extended to lay themselves straight, which made the sword longer still. With the amount of force the witch could now muster, and at the great weight of the blade, there should have been no blocking the wallop. But Lusis stepped in and raised the elf-steel above her. Her knees went loose, ready to take impact. "I will stand!"

The strike landed.

But Lusis felt nothing but the buffet of winter wind. And she could withstand that.

Bright golden light shot through the room, and the force of it tossed the now towering witch and her heavy sword back against the opposite wall like a ball of crumpled paper. When she cried out, her voice was far too deep for the woman she had been, but yet suited her newly massive body.

Lusis leapt for her. She blocked by raising her huge vambrace under the elf steel. The recoil was terrific. It wrenched muscle along Lusis' arms, and torso, and the shock of it ran into her neck and head. Eyes watering, Lusis allowed the blade to glide down and bite into the dragon-rider's forearm. That too-deep voice bellowed with pain.

The rider brought her sword arm down, and walloped the Istari. Lusis went slack for a terrifying moment, and wondered where she was. The smell of dragons snapped her mind around. She hastily turned her blade and rolled when she hit the blessedly even dwarven floor. Her head was foggy. A sure sign she'd taken the force of the collision with that steel vambrace. Her head was spinning. Lusis breathed evenly, and tapped the smooth, cool floor with her fingers in thanks to the builders. Its sane surface was the only way she could assure her senses she was yet on level ground.

The huge dragon rider was larger still as she crabbed up along the wall and seemed able to cling there in her blood-stained leathers and horn-spiked armour. "It will soon be possible for me to swat you like a bug, fool woman. Flee. Flee from my might." Around them, a filthy ring of orcs squealed and cried out in excitement.

Lusis stepped back in front of the divot in stone that now held the curled and senseless figure of the Lord of Rivendell. Elrond was, himself, so gilded and serene in slumber and none dared harry him.

And she would die or keep it that way.

Lusis stood before him. "Coward, come at me."

The woman's pointed teeth bared. She shot from the wall. Her hand balled into a fist. It made a scraping sound through air until red fire lit up around her knuckles. Lusis knew that this blow would destroy the dwarven portico and everyone sheltered in or along this expanse of wall. At one time in her life, she might have grabbed Elrond and dove for freedom, but now she could not forget the feeling of withstanding nothing more than a winter storm. And so Lusis set herself. She made a great upward circle of her arms and the sword she held, and at the apex, she let the tip find the knuckles of that incoming strike. She growled, "And I will stand."

Golden light flared.

The dragon-rider, now as large as a worm-head dragon, froze. Her red and black mottled lips parted in surprise.

A thunderclap of noise flattened all in the halls. It threw down dragons, and left only a pillar of white light standing at the rails above the Counting Room.

In the huge dragon-rider's arm, there appeared a glassy crack.

The sound of glass whining became, for an instant, the only noise in Erebor.

Then the huge arm shattered up the middle. The impact ran up further than the shoulder of the dragon-rider. It shattered much of the horned mask so that most of it fell away. Bone had shattered and many in the ring of orcs were impaled with shards of it. Blood painted surfaces in all directions, but nothing could stain where the yellow light still slowly withdrew itself down, further and further, until it retracted into the lone starpoint in the base of the throat of the Yellow Istari.

Lusis frowned at the face of Eboa, Nema's servant. "You are nothing but wind."

The dragon-rider fell over screaming. She crashed onto the orcs to her left, killing them, and writhed in pain. But the massive injury was healing, as torturous as that seemed to be.

"I can't kill her," Lusis realized in horror. She glanced to her left, at the way out, and saw that dawn was coming. And so were Eithahawn and Osp, with a number of elves – Ewon among them – and Steed, bloodied but strong, with Jan Kasia of the Council.

Eithahawn's lips parted in horror. His graceful hand swept up, and the volley of arrows directed at him from Drivenn's forces bent themselves in air. They slammed into the injury in the dragon-rider's arm, and the healing slowed.

Osp's lips moved. Lusis couldn't hear him over the screams of the dragon-rider, Eboa.

"No, Bee!" Lusis shook her head and saw that her hair was comprised of ringlets of yellow. Something in her had changed. And, Fires, it hurt, it threatened her consciousness, just bringing her sword up to ready, as nothing had ever exhausted her before. She panted, "Go, Bee. And take my good friend Eithahawn. I very much want you to run away and hide right now!"

Osp's lips made a frustrated line. He swept aside his cloak at the hip, took up a cylinder of blue, and bit away the long line of tapering cord at the top. He used this fragment of twine to bind the cylinder to an arrow. Eithahawn took down his white bow and accepted the arrow, and, as he knocked it on the white-blond arrow string, Osp snapped his fingers so that a spark lit on the cylinder.

The arrow shot through air, fierce and true.

It plunged into the healing arm of massive-Eboa.

And that arrow and arm exploded in a rain of bone, bits, and twinkly blue sparkles.

The whole of Erebor resounded as if a bell struck, with all inside.

Only Lusis' light, Eithahawn's barrier, the pillar of white at the rails, and the huge red scales of Bess Bowman withstood the blast.

When the roaring cleared, Lusis looked up again.

Eboa's arm and shoulder were gone. She lay, pumping out blood, and shrieking.

"Friend-Lusis, fireworks," Osp shouted above the tang of burning flesh and hair. "Jan Kasia's storehouse had box on box of them."

Fireworks. Lusis thought exhaustedly.

She hadn't seen fireworks in years.

They remained amazing.

Her step faltered.

Then Eboa's flesh twisted and twitched… and began to reform itself.

Lusis shut her eyes.

The light that pressed through her lids, coming from the right, made her open her eyes again. Eboa's arm was now fresh and new mottled grey and white, to the reforming elbow. The witch lay panting, and grinning. "Istari of the North, I am unstop-"

The pillar of light became a forest wind. It sprang up from the smooth dwarven floor, and arrived like a shower of weightless pollen, to Eboa's chest. That light coalesced into the Elvenking, and his long coat and white-blond hair sailed around his lissome body.

Here was everything Nema had tried to own and contain, that none could claim. One glowing hand held Lossivor, white blade down. He gracefully raised up the hilt and brought the tip of the sword to bear on the small mirror at the base of the woman's neck.

Eboa gasped in dismay, caught in disbelief.

The tiny mirror cricked. A crack sounded through it.

The light went out of the dragon-rider.

She was still.

The Elfking stepped away from the dragon-rider's grey withering. He walked backwards with Lossivor at the ready until his extended arm met the fineries of his foster-son. Eithahawn caught the clothes of his tall adar. He hid his face against the King's shoulder in relief.

Soon, there was no longer a massive woman blocking the hall, but a small one, dead, with her body in a quickly wasting ruin. She began to crumble to dirt.

Legolas stepped over her like she had never been. He opened the arm not carrying his war-bow, and looped it around his father. Legolas landed home with a thud, his forehead flat against his father. His hand made a fist in his foster brother's coat. They stood, unmoving, until the Elfking surrendered to encirclement. The tip of his sword clacked the good marble floor of Erebor.

No one dared to speak.

Or Lusis couldn't hear them. She felt wind rushing through her hair.

Argus Samas and his men flooded into the hall and chased down fleeing orcs and turncoat Forces. Several of her troop came running, only to stop when they saw the bloody mess of the passage to the royal dwarven hall.

She wasn't sure how she'd gotten to her knees.

Her sword was lying beside her and glowing at the edges, as if lit by an inner sun.

Sure hands caught her as she tipped over.

Lusis looked up into the burnished fire of Elrond of Rivendell, as bright and steady as ever a flame of an elf had been. His caring face bent over her. He whispered words to her as he turned her to fall against him. White light seemed to swallow her whole.

The King was a bright fire in the upstairs windows of Jan Kasia's main building.

He was in the formal meeting room, where business of the Lake Township Council was generally conducted. Winter sun flooded him as he paced. His body lit up, silver. He wore no crown. It sat at the head of the table, where the great wooden chair, hand-crafted by master woodworkers among the elves, was pulled back, and… all but abandoned. He was comfortable in this company. Comfortable enough to be the elf he was. On the table, above his paperwork, sat the war circlet.

He was so striking in the sunrise that a lull had broken out in the room.

Contentment stole around the table and into all the spaces where elves stood, and a brief moment of completeness. The men there watched their King and felt secure.

The King's head tipped up at the coming of dawn. Then his silver eyes averted, "Dorondir."

"Apologies, my King. I did not expect a summons to such as this," Dorondir said. His expression, when he straightened from his bow to look at his King, was as uncluttered and bright as the sunrise itself. He stepped into the room and inclined his head to Lusis. She sat opposite Eithahawn, to either side of the King's grand and empty chair. "My thanks to the Council of Lake Township, and the assembled, for your patience."

Dorondir came to a rest beside the table, in elven style, in easy view of the highest ranking individuals in the room. Save the King, who, today, couldn't seem to be still.

"Where were you?" The King asked vaguely.

"With Merilin's section, my Lord." Dorondir was equally imprecise. The spy reached up and, as surreptitiously as he could, squeezed droplets of water out of his dark hair.

The King pretended at a lack of curiosity. Lusis managed not to laugh as she shot a glance at the Awnsons and Redd. They were no less amused.

"Be aware, you will be required at many such in the future, Dorondir. You are not as remiss in knowing, as I am in telling."

Dorondir simply inclined to this.

The King turned his back and his voice was indifferent, "Let us feign that I have patience for these matters on a day such as this."

Muffled sounds of amusement filtered through the room.

The King said, "Report."

First, Inilfain Tatharion – Steed the Ranger – stood.

His Buckmaster Chief watched him carefully. He was lauded as a hero from the work he'd done in the besieged Township, and because he'd slain so many orcs and goblins on the way to open the Vaults. He'd been in the vanguard of Samas' forces in the early going, and saved many fleeing people. But Lusis knew he was deeply ashamed that the actions of some in his august family had caused death and destruction in this place. He burned with anger at their betrayal and she, perhaps better than anyone, understood how that felt.

He said, "My King, there simply is no sign of Ellethiel Tatharion. With the great skill of an experienced Ranger, and a part-elf, she has melted into the wild. She was last rumoured in the foothills of the Grey Mountains, but there are many rumours. This one states she travels with a large band of…." his voice tightened and the Elfking's head turned a fraction. "Of Tatharion traitors."

The room was silent. Noise from the building below filtered in – business as unusual down there, even with rebuilding and the Council and Elfking's expansion plans underway.

The pacing spectacle of glimmering threads and dark, floating hair stilled. "She has no people. She is no longer welcomed by her kin. The Keep and its Rangers, even now, pass to her brother, Elivor, who won it from her Men by force of battle. And we may call her Ellethiel alone, Inilfain, for she has given up the good name," said the Elflord of Rivendell. Like Thranduil. He returned to stalking the wood panel wall, his gold and russet clothes aglow with bright threads and smoky quartz. Near the center of the table, the august elf paused for a measuring look and his hands clasped behind him as he said, "She is my kin as well."

Chairs in the room creaked as the human contingent, mostly unaware of this fact, turned to look between the pair, needlessly confused on how that worked. Elves could breed with humans, their fellow Children of Eru. They just seldom did.

Steed inclined himself to the Lord. He couldn't manage anything further on the matter.

Lusis rolled her tight shoulders. It did nothing to discharge the nervous tension. She exhaled, "There is less to go on with Kirnor Buckmaster. It is almost midwinter and he has been neither seen nor reported."

The King commented. "We lack the intelligence needed to determine whether his involvement with the foul dragon-rider was a matter of agreements advocated by Kirstman Buckmaster… or not. But it is impossible to eschew the suspicion. Buckmaster Keep is proving… problematic to the Mirkwood."

Kasia frowned, "Speaking of which, your human holdings can't be considered to fall under the term the Mirkwood. For proper representation a term of consolidation should-"

And the Elfking turned his august head. "Forgive me. I was under the impression you did not want the wood to grow thick and dark in the streets and open places to the shores of Long Lake."

Jan Kasia's brows rose, "No, of course… are… are you saying you're capable of doing-?"

Redd glanced suddenly aside at Lusis, his cheeks gone pale. "Lusis, the Northern Convergence."

She glanced aside at him. "Ragnar Ayesir, Raud Fell, and my father… all members of the Northern Convergence." Lusis paled and pressed her hands to her face. "Gods."

At the window, the Elfking took a step in her direction.

Dorondir's voice was soft, "My King, the Northern Convergence is long established. Their movements are largely transparent in the North, but also not under surveillance. The group would be exceedingly difficult to reconnoiter." He turned to look at Lusis again.

"Samas?"

Samas shook his head. "Lusis is the only one who could-"

"Out of the question." Remee seconded and stood up from where he sat along the walls. Elsenord bared his teeth and tugged his brother back to his seat. Then, nervously, both young men looked to see what Lusis Buckmaster's reaction would be.

Her lips pressed together into a line. "Let the King plan. Rule nothing out until he is done," she glanced at her brothers and frowned, "And until I am decided."

On the benches along the walls, Remee made a discontented grumble and Elsenord looked up at the ceiling in silent thanks. She hadn't outright said she'd go after the Northern Convergence.

Lusis watched him do this. She saw the spirit of her father's steadfastness in him.

Jan Kasia did something unusual of humans in such a meeting. He got up from his chair, stretched himself, and started moving around the crowded room. He went to the sideboard and poured a cup of ice-water before he exhaled. "Whatever you're thinking of doing regarding this… this Northern Convergence thing, all this talk reminds me we're sorely lacking a Master of Forces yet again." He drained his cup and set it face-down on the table. "I'm not sure if that's a blessing or a curse."

Cardoc Wence, who had interviewed and selected Gurn Drivenn, said, "It should not, again, be my decision, my King." He nodded at the table and joined his hands before him.

The Elfking noted, "You will offer the post to Elsenord Buckmaster."

Elsenord and Lusis glanced at one another in surprise. Elsenord put up a fingertip, "What?"

Jan Kasia noted, "You did acquit yourself well, Buckmaster, when you marshalled the Forces who held the way to the Vaults. I cannot offer this post to Lady Helin-"

The tall, glorious elf woman who stood like a statue beside the door noted, "I am not a Lady."

Kasia did a double-take at that but quickly shook the confusion away. "And since I cannot thank… her with Mastery, I would certainly reward either yourself or Ranger Samas."

Samas shook his head, "You should accept this accolade, Elsenord. Consider the position well, friend. I am busy enough running the Shadow Men."

This was what the Forces called their new-fledged organization of spies, learning at the knee of the tall, dark elf who, currently, had made himself unnoticed while standing just off-center of the room.

"I… I will consider it," he decided, rose and then bowed to Thranduil. "Thank you, my King, and to the Master of Boats. I am humbled by this offer. I was simply doing what messenger men do. I was delivering citizens, in safety, to the Vaults."

Lusis smiled at this, and the Rangers around her made muffled sounds that build up to hands pounding on the tables in salute to Elsenord. A great cheer went up and Elsenord grinned. Remee got to his feet and nudged his brother's shoulder a few times before they both retired to their chairs.

"That's to us all," Elsenord said and then, as the Rangers quieted, "and to Lusis Buckmaster." This made the humans erupt into noise again. The Elfking faced dawn, and the rest of the elves, even Dorondir, endured. Only Elrond seemed truly charmed.

The King moved through rays of sunlight that painted him rose, lilac, and pale gold, and the room began to quiet at the sight of him. His gaze passed over the table, dismissively. "Drivenn?"

From his seat, Argus Samas pulled a face, "Elfking, the last time any of our Men engaged the soldiers of Drivenn, they were going to the South." He tapped paperwork in an envelope, "I have maps of sightings. What I don't have is any idea what might be gained for them riding in that direction, unless they have a particular desire to live in swamps and ruins and roaring volcanoes."

"What is his accent, young one," asked the King.

Samas' brows drew down, "I couldn't place it."

"Gondorion," Elrond's long coat and embroidered robe of leaves swirled around him as he came to a stop again. His smoke-coloured eyes betrayed some grudging admiration. "Ah, Thranduil, you have a point. One can speak Sindarin like an edhel of Rivendell rather than of the Greenwood."

"When one wishes to be invisible, one goes where one cannot be seen or heard." Dorondir noted with a small nod. "They will vanish into the fabric of Gondor."

The King noted. "As if I were to vanish amid a collection of Sinda." He tugged his pale hair and his eyes widened a moment, "So many long straight backs and white-blond heads." His brows rose, "One can but imagine Avonne."

Jan Kasia wasn't the only Councilor to laugh at the Elvenking's sudden aside.

"Adar, attend to the time."

The Elfking sucked a breath of air and exhaled a flood of quiet Sindarin. Then his head cocked and the King glanced at his foster as he did so. "Odd. I could have sworn I had two… of you."

"Apologies, adar." Eithahawn dissembled, with downcast red-gold eyelashes and a bow of his golden head.

"Long practice has trained you to… apologize for him. To note that it has become reflex, though. I believe Legolas would be pleased." He looked at the windows and mastered his flaring temper. "Where he here?"

Eithahawn glanced up and suppressed a smile.

The Elfking shot him a longsuffering look. He also asked Dorondir, "And the Aglareb?"

"An agent last saw Gurn Drivenn's traitors close to The Mark. He reports that they have broken their number and filtered into the lands, many of them. Some have embedded themselves in the Riddermark. Doubtless some are headed into Rhun. Their main body filters through trade routes, passes through open markets, and travels among the caravans to Gondor, my King. It is the most direct path, and one in which it is easiest to lose a man on horseback."

"Who was last to see his trail or men?"

"My King, it was Annundir." Dorondir said quietly.

Now the Elfking's head rose, "Your brother could track the passage of a moth over stone. If Drivenn stops moving, Annundir will find him."

Dorondir's head inclined gracefully, and a little further than was necessary for assent. "I shall tell him that you think so."

"He is not to engage. In fact… as there are Men of the Forces trained for surveillance, when Annundir does locate Drivenn, have him hold and observe until select among the Shadow Men can relieve him. An elf is out of place," he glanced at Samas, "but Men won't be."

"You have my word on that," said Samas.

"It has grown dangerous for elves to be abroad on the land, my Lord," Steed said with concern. "We should send the replacements quickly."

The Elfking sighed. "The evidence would argue it becomes difficult for elves to be abroad in the land unprotected. Elves like Annundir can hardly be described in such a fashion."

"Neither can you," said Steed, "Elvenking."

"The odds are low that there is an itinerant sorcerer roving the land with ampoules," he removed a dark red phial from his pocket, went to the table, and set it down on a tray, "filled with-"

"Dragon's blood." Lusis shot to her feet without thinking. She found herself pointing at it. "What are you doing with it?" She hurried around the table and snatched the flat-bottomed phial. It was hot enough, to the touch, to scorch her and smelled of that vague scent that made her hackles rise. Lusis held it out from herself by the silvery chain that connected the flask and the wax-sealed stopper. "Ugh. Doom's pits how do we get rid of this?"

The Elfking was fascinated by her behaviour. His tall body tipped a little right as if looking at her from that angle would somehow explain her reaction. "Lusis-dess, it needs proper study."

"It needs to be dumped into the deepest part of Long Lake with a rock tied on for good measure." She looked at the hated blood. "It is a curse waiting to happen!"

Quietly, he crossed to Lusis, and reached his long hand to the vial. His skin glowed with radiance when he closed his hand around the glass. He tucked it back into an inner pocket and told her, "It is less than an ounce of blood, and no more than that, Lusis. It cannot do me harm."

She couldn't quite prevent glaring at that. "You assume too much risk. There is no good to be had out of pondering dragon's blood."

A breath of winter trees passed around her when the King turned and resumed his place beside the window, "That is undecided yet, Lusis-dess."

She stared at his long, straight back, which was, in her opinion, unique, prized, and nothing at all like any other Sinda's. Lusis reminded herself that he was not frustrating her efforts to protect him on purpose, and that, while heart and mind were full of fire, the temperatures of the flames opposed one another. "I suspect you mean to hand it over to Osp so that he might pursue its components and various properties."

"That may be problematic after today." Said the Elfking, "Perhaps you will have your way."

"I doubt it. I wanted Nema Aragennya jailed, but she sits in all-too-comfortable house arrest at Buckmaster Station. Do you realize she is only leagues from this room?" Lusis pointed at the floor, "She is too close, and, I warn you, Nema is a dangerous woman."

The King stiffened, and his voice sounded dark and full of hate as he replied. "I know she is." He turned from her and looked out at the sunrise. He didn't speak about what had happened to him when he had been a thrall of Nema Aragennya. Lusis knew that he, unlike stricken Elrond, had still been aware while in captivity. She hated that worst of all.

"I pitied her," Lusis prowled along the table toward where he stood by the windows, "What a fool I was. My King, the dwarves offered to cage her in Erebor," in the very cage he'd been kept in, as a matter of fact. Lusis' teeth bared, "I think that would be very fitting."

He glanced down toward her, but without meeting her eyes, "Are you averse to information?"

"I'm averse to that woman. To anyone who would try to turn noble elves into living dolls."

For a moment, her King seemed frozen. Then his hand rose and he touched his forehead. "Lusis… thand. I cannot find fault with your animosity. Do you find fault with my love, Lusis-dess? I do not believe this is the end of our hardship. Our people suffer it, and it is for them that I… remain." He opened his graceful arms a fraction. "If Nema yet knows secrets among our foes, something valuable, for she is ever slippery, and endlessly connected, then we must keep her safe, comfortable… alive."

She hated it. Viscerally. Lusis only just stopped herself from telling him she should have killed the woman in the Counting Room. Instead, she focused on what she really feared. "And… do you mean to question her yourself? You know that you can get from her… anything you could dream to ask for." Lusis felt her displeasure surge. "Do you mean to see her face? Hear her voice? For your people?"

He looked away at the sun. "Ai, of all days… why business? Why today?" His head came up, as if astonished he'd said such a thing aloud. "If an attempt is made on her life, I will consider it a sign that our enemy is not vanquished."

Lusis' lips curled, "I'd consider it a sign that a member of the house staff has good taste. Aside from this, I urge you to remember that your wellbeing is the affair of a nation of elves, and a city of Men. Answer me-"

A pair of elves crossed the room and laid documents on the table. They minced away quietly to where Ewon stepped aside and let them out the door again. In her urgency, Lusis had nearly forgotten anyone else was there.

She breathed deeply before she continued, "Will you deal with that poison-painted maw of hers again?" If he had to, she had already decided she would be there. Her hand was already on her sword hilt as she thought about it.

The Elfking tipped his head up. He… shook out his silver cascade of hair, grown long from the tour. Lusis had never seen him do such a thing. She'd not noted the twitch of motion of any elf. Slowly, he returned to looking out the window. "With hope… I will never need to lay eyes on her again, nor shall she ever behold me or my sons, or my own in her remaining life. And if she should, by chance or accident of fate… it will be her last hour in this world." The room fell silent until the Elfking added. "However, getting her to talk has been… difficult of late, Yellow Istari. You did shatter her jaw." The King's blameless silver eyes peeked in her direction. His soft smile had returned.

Lusis pinched the bridge of her nose, and then swept back to her seat, "Blame me if you like. But it was like a teacup. I could have broken it with a hard word, I swear."

Half the table chuckled.

The King looked strangely pleased.

The door knocked, or rather, someone came to knock the doorframe. Ewon had allowed this to happen, so there was nothing to fear in it. Helin lingered, noiselessly out of sight, just inside. But there was no need for alarm – the elf could see this on the faces of the humans and elves in the room, which either smiled, or warmed.

Bess Bowman, her good black axe strapped to her back, stood in the doorway. She wore new leathers in brown and blue, a fur cloak of beaver pelts, elven boots to match, and a bright smile. "Do you know the hour, my King?"

Now the Elvenking exhaled the tension that was tightening his chest and shoulders. He started toward the door – only started – and that was enough for Amathon to come away from the wall and take up the War Circlet of the Elvenking. He held it with loving care as he approached the King. But the King merely set his fingertips against the woven Mithril, to push it gently away. "Baw. Not the crown of war, my young Elite. Not today."

Bess stepped aside from the double doors and gestured toward the hall. "Greatest Elvenking, you told the staff to summon you at dawn, and here I am."

The King paused to look at her, "You are a princess."

"I am a friend of the King," she bowed her head to him. "And I would not miss the day for the price of a Kingdom." Bess broke out in unabashed smiles and glanced to one side of him, "Lady Lusis, are you ready?"

She wasn't sure, actually. "I don't know what goes into this sort of a thing." She glanced from Lord Elrond to the King and back, and followed them. She wasn't the only one, seeing as the Council and Rangers were all invited to the occasion.

Eithahawn eased in beside her and tipped his red-golden head. "Are you anxious, Lusis-Istari?"

Truthfully she was, and so she gave a single incline of her head. She was learning to do that where, once, she might have nodded.

"I don't believe there is record… of an Agreement Celebration attended by humans in the Mirkwood." He said lightly. "Eventful." But he said it as if there were misgivings about this among the elves, and Lusis could understand why from the next question to arise from this.

Cardoc Wence, Master of Lumber, was never one to steer clear of a festival of any kind. He glanced over at her and then up at Eithahawn. "If I may ask a question, Prince Eithahawn-"

"Lord." Eithahawn's lashes lowered and his head bent in humility.

The Elfking, just steps ahead said, "Prince is what I would expect among humans, ion. You will exhaust yourself trying to apply elven corrections to their perceptions of royalty and succession."

Wence scrutinized Eithahawn. "I'm sorry, Lord. I thought you were his son."

"Forgive me for confusing you. I am his son. That is not the same as being a Prince," Eithahawn made that clear. "What is your question, Master of Lumber?"

"Are they to be married then?"

The Kingdom's-seneschal was one of the few who had been selected to speak to the humans about the matter. "The King is already married."

Jan Kasia tapped Wence's elbow and said, "Ask quietly. Be careful, Car. But ask – I've always wanted to know."

"Where is the Queen?"

Eithahawn's face averted, but not significantly. He'd dealt with human brusqueness almost daily for half a year now, in the queue of Petitioners in the Mirkwood. Experience had given him insight about when Men meant to wound, and when they did not. He had learned to watch their faces rather than to try to rifle through their unspoken thoughts. In this matter, he felt their curiosity was natural. "Queen Ithileth is in the West… without her beloved King and without her son."

"And you're not her son?"

"Indeed, I am not," he confessed. "But being in the West does not break the bond between husband and wife. It places it in a permanent state of abeyance. Adar cannot be married to Lusis-dess."

Lusis had heard this explanation only once before. This morning, fresh out of her bath, she'd had an elf standing in her doorway with her face downcast. A tall Sinda wearing a dress of pale green and two layers of winter cloaks. Mithiel, who was the royal Protocol Authority.

She nodded her head at the ground, unable to forestall the action as she could never quite submerge what was human in her. Ahead, already on the staircase, went the King. She idly wondered at his feelings. Not knowing their extent made her decide to be personally cautious. One could love a fire's heat without going up in flames. The key was loving it at a safe distance. The cooler part of her head had already mastered that art when it came to him. It was clear something had broken inside of the great Sinda elf. Perhaps it was the shocks of so many Ages. Whenever he spoke about love, it was as a utility. The word had no other sense than an apparatus. He treated it like a lever. It lifted the Kingdom so that he could inventory and tidy everything underneath, and assured he could chart his course through it. It raised the banner for his subjects. He leaned on it whenever he needed loyalty to be pledged, and things to be done according to plan. 'Do you love me and my Kingdom on the lake, Jan Kasia?'

She caught sight of Dorondir somewhere off to her left. He felt her glance, or perhaps spied it, peripherally. When he returned it, he was warm, reassuring. Lusis felt she might have closed the distance between them in a matter of minutes. But she inclined her head to him and went down the first few steps to find the King waiting for her on the landing. He offered his pale hand to help her down. Whatever else their Contract did, it was written so that casual contact was no longer taboo. She put her hand in his, gratefully. These Scout dresses were long and layered – far more ornate than a real woman Scout would ever wear. In narrow staircases, they were tricky.

"No more of these," she told him, and pointed downward.

The King's brows quirked. "Stairs?"

Lusis smothered a laugh. As if he didn't know what was making her peevish.

In the downstairs hall, Bess stepped aside and let the King into the main building. Men began to applaud as soon as he appeared with Lusis beside him. She released his hand and let him take the final few steps forward, so that the winter sun could fall upon him from the upper floors. He looked up at the humans that ringed the balconies and a hush fell around him. The King spoke formal words in Sindarin, and then gave loose translation, "I should like to see you all, as Lake Township joins its friends in the Greenwood to celebrate Agreement. Please be with us today."

Applause rolled through the floors.

Cold-eyed, Lusis searched the crowd for weapons. It had become her ingrained hobby since the Township had been betrayed, and she'd caught more than one sleeper out to injure or kill officials. Legolas had flawlessly shot down a man who had decided to put a blade into the King's back, or, more accurately, to try. Glorfindel had run-through a former Forces man who had snuck into Jan Kasia's offices to attack the Kingdom's-seneschal, for it was known that Lord Eithahawn did business from the main building. But Dorondir and the Aglareb had begun weeding through the Forces in earnest and there had been no further actions.

All she saw now was joy, gladness, and a marked politesse about this Very Elven Thing they didn't understand, to which they'd been invited. Kasia had had meetings with them, she'd heard, where he'd tried to explain. It was a marriage that wasn't a marriage at all. An agreement that wasn't anything near as ordinary as an agreement.

Lusis didn't know what it was, just that she wanted it. And she wanted it to be over. She wanted to vanish into the background again, so that she could protect him. Instead, as he turned, his hand unthinkingly reached for hers. His tapering fingers searching. She wrapped her fingers around his as if guiding him through the dark.

The Elfking glanced at her. "We must part now."

"I suppose they want to sand away my scars and varnish my hair, our elven friends." She said, but even as she turned to see him, the general pooling of elves in the main building had pushed them apart. His silver eyes glinted as he glanced over her.

Likewise, many of the women elves were pulling her away from him.

"It's all right," Nimpeth glided in beside her and favoured her with a rare, broad smile. "This is all a part of Agreement ceremonies. Melethron o melethril – they must be parted. Or friend from friend, as the contract may be, such as with Glorfindel and his Lord, Elrond."

They were contracted friends? Lusis' brows rose.

Bess Bowman, who was just ahead of Lusis, began to beam, "To be part of a hidden ceremony such as this – how thrilling!"

"What is the Sindarin for 'nerve-racking'?" Lusis muttered, and Nimpeth blurted an unthinking laugh, before she could stay herself.

So Lusis didn't resist, but she also didn't move. Not until she caught sight of Ewon and two senior Elites with the King. They had long since earned her trust. Celondir, now fully recovered, broke from the general knot of edhel to bow after Lusis and Nimpeth. He had already told Lusis, many times, that his life was in her debt. Lusis lowered her lids and inclined her head in respect – she'd just recently learned the meaning of this one, from an amazed Eithahawn, in fact, who hadn't realized such a gesture meant nothing but 'Yes' or 'Hi' to humans.

Celondir smiled at her. He was handsome and dimpled, and she felt happy every time she saw him hale.

They'd lost elves in this last battle. Losses would never cease to haunt them.

Aside from which, Lusis had the sneaking suspicion that young Telfeth was wistfully sweet on this particular elf, in spite of the fact he was far older than she was. That made the tall and private red-head even more interesting. She saw that Celondir stopped to flank Eithahawn.

A good friend.

The Kingdom's-seneschal swept his hand out from his heart at her.

Lusis felt a tugging inside, just at the welcome warmth of his action. They were not family. But she was going to be something more than a friend to him soon. She winked at him, paused long enough to watch the utter lack of comprehension cross his face, and turned from him, nearly giggling.

"Lady Lusis," Bess nudged her. "We should go." The girl's brown eyes darted from Lusis to Eithahawn and back and she smiled. "He is lovely, that elf. He seems kind."

The cobbles outside of Kasia's were dry in the winter sun. In fact, quite a change had passed over the land here. The flurries did come in fits and starts, but thawing was frequent. On the side of the white stone courtyard, snowdrops pushed through melting snow. Birds flittered by, singing in the lull of sunrise, and Lusis could look out to the field – the Flowers of the Forest – to see the tents of Bregoln now pulled along the tree-line. Horses were being walked between the forgiving stands of trees there. Fires burned. Their day was beginning, too. And the dragon she'd killed had been cut into sections and cleared away, so that the King could walk upon the scorched earth there, and help it to heal.

Lusis smiled at the clearing snow, and hopeful green grass pushing through. "I love this place."

The elves hurried in through the door before her. She'd been asked to wait with Bess. Inside, Lusis saw tall, tan, black-haired Bregoln standing in quiet observation of her. He wore fresh leather armour in brown and green, and seemed sore at her presence. Lusis touched the ring on a chain at her throat and exhaled. When Nimpeth gestured her through, she felt Breg step in beside her, and Bess thoughtfully step away.

"This is enough for you?" he asked her. "This… what is this?"

"Agreement," she saw Dorondir heading upstairs after the King's steady glow.

"Fires, Lusis, what would your father think?"

She nodded, because she thought of that often. Would he be happy for her – that she'd found someone she actually cared for? That she'd healed enough to trust him? That she was a friend among the elves, as was the dream of many a Ranger. Would he be disappointed with her decision, and feel she was being slighted? And since she had a long history of being honest with Breg, Lusis told him the answer she'd come up with. "I don't know. But I do know he'd want me to live my life." She looked across at his handsome face. "He'd want you to try to live yours too. Yours. Not mine."

His brows went up. "Okay, that is… accurate. You are the apple of his eye. Were."

"Yes," Lusis admitted. She too still spoke of her father as if he were still alive. Maybe he might have been. Without Kirnor. Without Kirstman. Without the shadow in the North. She swallowed this bitterness in a glass of wine she took from a passing tray, drained, and handed, empty to Breg.

He grinned at her. "I'm your dish-maid now?"

"You must be," she gestured at his hand. "You're holding a dirty glass. What do you intend to do about that, Breg?"

"I should set it on your head and see if I can shoot it off," he tapped his sturdy Northern bow.

Lusis chuckled at this.

"Ah, Lusis," Bregoln's voice was softer. "This is not good enough for you… not even though he is a King among elves. What a broken relationship he has built for you, and handed you now. Not his wife. What are you?"

"Something new," she shrugged in reply. "Something new to Middle Earth. I… I think I've always been so. He's changed nothing about that. And, besides," she pondered this a moment before she put it in words, "If this – all this you see – is broken, I will make no effort to correct it. I chose it. This is my place and my life. It's what I want for myself. If it's broken then the cracks of it fit my shape perfectly. It's broken-in."

"Maybe… it won't always be so," Breg looked at the floor.

Lusis exhaled noiselessly. "I love too much about this world to ever leave it. I belong among the Rangers, yes, but they have ever been tied to the elves. The Men of the Peaks long ago left that path, but…" she glanced over him, "in that, I'm glad you and yours have chosen to stay on here. The Lord, Elrond, is part of the same bloodline as the house of Fell, did you know that?"

He scoffed, "I'm not related to some elf." He glanced aside at Nimpeth's long black mane of hair, now sculpted into perfect ripples. Her eyes were locked on him. She raised her chin and swept away into the back of the building without looking at him. He was beneath her notice.

Lusis veered toward the staircase, away from him. "Breg, your own name is bastardized elvish."

"I was named after a mountain." He pointed out.

"The mountain was named by the elves," she said between her teeth. Lusis made it halfway up the stairs in a few hops and pointed at him, "Stop trying my patience with your ignorance, and we might stand a chance of getting along. Another thing. Until we find out what's happened among the Northern Convergence, I advise you to make your peace with the people of Lake Township and Mirkwood. Because you're not going anywhere." He'd been told that the 'Elder Fells' had been mentioned by name by certain of the enemies who'd attacked this place. He simply didn't know which among them would dare betray the North.

From the sun-striped room below, which snapped with firelight, Bregoln Fell frowned up at her. "What's to hold me here, Lus?"

Her lip curled, "Hopefully, common sense. But I'm not entirely sold on the idea you have any of that at the moment."

The edge of his mouth quirked into a smile he'd rather not have felt. She was sure he'd rather have felt sullen today. But they'd always shared the effect of raising one another's spirits. Her lips compressed into a triumphant smirk as she jogged upstairs.

Into a wall of elven men.

"No, no, no, Lady." An elf with sandy brown braids held his hands before her in air, and then broke into Silvan to the edhel men around him.

"What's the problem?" Bess called from below.

"No problem," Lusis said lightly and glanced through the numbers of debating Silvan men, none of whom spoke Westron now, until she found Dorondir coming toward her. He made his way through them, and his expression was clearly amused.

"You realize," he was unable to suppress his delight, "you're not supposed to be together before the procession and signing? It is so that one may have time to think on the decision." He actually had to look away, he was so pleased. "You are full of surprises, Yellow Istari."

"Lady, you cannot come through. I deeply regret the saying of this," the sandy-haired Silvan bowed. "The ladies are preparing a room for your dressing in the downstairs."

"Of course she can," Dorondir extended a hand to her, and she took it and passed through the screen of edhel men. He looked down into her eyes and said, "The Lady is an arbiter of change. And she is never better than when acting according to her true nature, I find."

She took her hands out of his, and glanced down the hall. "Can I get to my room, Dorondir?"

"I will take you there." He assured her. The end of the hall was a bustling of male elves, all of whom bundled around the doorway to the King's rooms and carried fineries with them. They were quite distracted, and very used to her helpful presence upstairs, so it didn't register with them. She'd made it to her open door before Elrond stepped out of the King's room. His hair was dressed with loops in the forelocks that ran in front of his elven ears. In the loops dangled emeralds to match his shining white diadem, covered in green buds.

He saw her and brightened in that fashion that seemed unique of Elrond. "Lusis Buckmaster… you have the most astonishing skill for being precisely where you shouldn't be."

She grinned at him before she bowed. "I try to make it work, my Lord."

The warrior, Glorfindel, leaned through the King's doorway and his crystalline blue eyes softened when he took her in. Then he turned to his Lord, "The King has need of you, my Lord."

Elrond pressed a hand to his temples and huffed with laughter. He followed Glorfindel into the room, and Lusis could hear him say. "I doubt she has a preference, Elvenking."

They had looked at her as if she was one of them. Family. It was humbling. Lusis swerved and went into her rooms. She glanced over her shoulder and Dorondir read this as a command to follow. He stepped in and made his uncertain course to her, to where she was fussing with the package on her bed. It had been delivered upstairs by Remee, which was... oddly befitting of a Messenger man.

"What is it?" Dorondir asked idly.

"A gift for the King." Lusis lifted the silver and pearl necklace from the package. Where it had been broken, she had paid for a single stone to join the ends together – a pale and raw piece of green jasper worked into the shape of a green leaf. It hadn't been inexpensive, but then, it had been important to her. She'd tried, in her way, to put some of her feeling into it. Some of her power, she hoped. It had been in her pocket for days before she'd had Jan Kasia's smiths work it into the necklace. But it didn't glow with suffused light, as she'd imagined it would. With her means, it was the best she could do.

Dorondir's head tipped. "You love him."

She glanced aside at him, apologetically.

The spy reached out and smoothed her golden hair back from her face. He tucked it behind one of her ears. Lusis caught and squeezed his hand. "He doesn't feel the same."

He stroked her hair again and Dorondir's voice dropped. "He does not know how he feels, Lusis. For him, love is a lonely crusade. Love is grief. And he can scarcely remember a time when thoughts of it gave him anything but pain." His fingertips stroked her cheek. "You… are two amongst the most precious lights in the world… to my reckoning. Do you know that?"

She set a hand over his steady flame and felt the sudden rally of his fire lean into her.

"If you can teach him a love free of anguish, you will have lifted the hearts of all his people, and me among them, my star."

Her fingers passed through the warmth of his light and pulled the flames higher. He was the only cloud in the sky of her uneasy elation. The light of the King also cast this green-eyed elf's beautiful silhouette over the landscape of Lusis' future. Lusis looked up into his pale gaze. "May you never find trouble, my shadow. Please be safe and well."

"I will. And waiting," he told her softly. "As yet… I do not know what is meant to be. This contract you will sign, I do not know what it contains. I do not know if you do."

It had been written in Sindarin, which she'd not had time to have translated to her. But one thing was for sure, "It says what I want it to say, Dorondir. He will be sure of that." The elves were fair, and the King was no fool. The contract would allow much, but only at her will.

He nipped his bottom lip and managed the words, "But there is no contract for a soul. You have not pledged your heart away," his head tipped, and his brows pulled over his lowered lids. "Have you, Lusis?" His eyes shut.

She didn't know how to answer. Out of caring, she cupped his cheek. His skin was soft and smooth under her palm and he was full of light. "Dorondir, you precious… you dark jewel. Please don't suffer." It was a hard thing for her to know how he felt.

He pulled himself under wraps.

Lusis pushed back a lock of his dark brown hair. "Fires. I need to be ready before midday, and you don't know the grisly enthusiasm of these elf dressers. They will scrub me until I change colour."

He blinked and then chuckled. His gaze met hers, "You sound like him."

She released him again, glad to see him smile. "Can you find my ladies?"

"Are you certain you want me to?" Dorondir stepped away and became, again, the honed and well-trained man that, at center, he factually was.

Lusis nodded ruefully. "They mean well."

His brows went up. "I will bring them to this room, whether or not you are in it, or have fled this madness." His gesture, on that last word, also included himself, something she appreciated. He brought doubt and disorder into her heart. And he regretted it.

When he'd gone, Lusis wiped at her eyelashes and gathered herself. Only one light could warm her, now that she'd turned her shadow away. She went out of her room and, a few steps on, she ducked into the King's. She needed to be by him.

It was flooded with winter sunlight. The lithe King stood on a small dais, his figure glowing. His back was to her, and his silver-blond hair was longer than she remembered. It fell in a cascade down from his broad shoulders to his narrow waist. His legs were so long in the pale fitted trousers he wore. The soft and silken material that was so like leather, which elves could produce. She was transfixed. He raised his excellently formed arms out beside him. His dressers slipped fitted silk over his hands. They buttoned him in the front, so preoccupied that none of them had yet noticed that she was in the room.

Elrond, who was reading resonant elvish aloud from a book, paced into view. He stopped, midsentence and clapped a hand over his heart, "Lusis-Istari, now this is too far. Even for you." But she could see that he was wickedly amused by this.

The King's long hair swirled weightlessly as he turned and saw her. His eyelids fluttered. "Lusis?" He was surprised and, for some reason, seemed a little dismayed.

She inhaled the perfumed air of the room – so many elves, and above them, the smell of the forest. His pine needled splendor was now invaded with the scent of sweet grass. She wondered if it had to do with the repeated thaws. He turned all the way about and stepped off the dais. "Lusis-dess, what is it?"

When he crossed the room, elves found things to concern themselves with, and, from the tone alone, she could tell that the Elvenking thought she might not go through with this. She looked up at him, took the silver and pearl chain out of her pocket, and lifted it in air. He saw it and bent so that she could set it on his shoulders. He lifted it up with the pale jasper leaf in his palm. "This… is new. Tell me… what does it mean?"

"A green leaf." She told him. She watched the excess of caution in his lovely face. "I thought it might keep something of Legolas close to your heart when he's away." And she laid a hand on his silken chest. It gave her pause that no one stopped her. "You need your family. You need them to ground you, Elvenking. And I wanted to give you a gift today. This is the finest thing… I have. That's all, my King."

He had been holding his breath, but now exhaled. "Thranduil," he prompted, gently. But she didn't say his name.

Lusis patted his chest, incredulous that it was permitted. And fortunate. "Stars…. Back on the dais, light. I'll begin and you can pick up where I left off." She caught his hand and led him to the center of the room, and the circle of greatly relieved elves.

"Begin?" He released her as he stepped up to tower over the room. His hands smoothed the chain of silver and pearls against him, and his fingertips rested upon the jasper leaf.

"In the great heights of Buckmaster Spur, the Elvenking of Mirkwood appears in secret to retrieve the missing Yellow Istari. The Keep is attacked by wargs… and dragons."

"I should have taken a spy," the King looked down into the great dark eyes staring up at him. His shoulder rose slightly and his head tipped toward it. "Overconfidence."

Lusis agreed, "Someone knew exactly who you were."

"Perhaps they knew my face," his brows rose in speculation.

"It is quite a face," she admitted contentedly.

He brightened, his eyes downcast, "My thanks."

Lusis set in pacing. "Their Greatest King is a famed warrior of Eru, and so he laid low the dragon at Buckmaster Keep and… and vanished into the wild." She looked up at him. "Your turn."

"I did not vanish. I engaged a very large female dragon." The elves around him paused to glance at one another, as the King continued, "She launched straight up into the sky and quickly out over a deep mountain pass. At such times, the best an elf can do is avoid being thrown off. When we landed, such a fight struck up on the confines of the mountaintop that snow coursed down from the summit. There, a dragon knows she has the advantage. I used a slide of snow to trap her. I occupied her and it clipped her wing. When she struck the ledge, I slew her. But… I was badly affected by then. Her blood had been upon me for four hours of battle. Those are difficult conditions to fight in, Lusis-dess. Indeed, they say 'Should the dragon have but a single advantage, one fights only to retreat'."

"Well," she began to circle his long figure. "You showed them."

"And they showed me," he opened his long arms for the first, nearly transparent, layer of long coat. It was a film of thready gold over the white shirt he wore. It looked like supple, hand-pressed paper. She caught a fine edge of the material and felt it between thumb and fingers. "I… was afflicted. My mind was in the chains of dragon's blood. I did not know if I saw the Angmar witch, or dreamed her into being. I had thought… she was you. But her touch upon my reaching hand felt like a knife. I expended the last of my energy dispatching this, and many, shades."

"It couldn't have gotten better after you crawled into the dragon's blood to survive." She noted.

"Even concluding I should do so was arduous. Determining that the pool of blood was real… was more than I could manage at that time." His hands closed over his sternum at the memory. Now his voice dropped, "I had hoped you would come for me."

"Always," she told him stalwartly. "I will always. Do not doubt me."

His hands slipped away from the protective position to dangle beside him. "I… believe."

"So we came out of the hills to Tatharion… and you were suspicious," she paced around his narrow side and looked up at his silver profile.

"Ellethiel Tatharion wanted us to be anywhere but in her house at the same time she wanted us not to venture outside." The King turned on the dais, with his fair fanning hair a white light around him. "How could one not be suspicious?"

Lusis knew he'd read the white mare's journey quickly and accurately, before Ellethiel could have worked her way to Elrond and the orcs who had been sent to collect him. She exhaled. "You found the Lord, and the Lord's condition was highly similar to yours as it turned out." She circled to the front of him, reached out, and caught up his hand. She turned it over and passed her fingertips across his palm.

His skin was silky. She checked again, but there was no sign of the circle of elevated skin, that same circle that matched the mirror the enemy orc had carried, and the one he'd broken in the chest of the dragon-rider witch who'd fought Lusis. After a final time she muttered, "Gone."

When she went to release him and back away, his hand followed her. Lusis glanced up at him. His silver disk eyes were on their hands alone. She shut her fingers around the warmth of his skin again and watched his silvery face. His eyelids lowered. Something in him seemed to loosen. She felt much the same, she realized, a lonely vessel in the world, suddenly welcomed to safe harbor.

"My King… forgive us… we are not finished yet." one of the King's dressers said gently from where he stood aside. Lusis glanced in time to see the quiet joy on the man's face.

The King dutifully released her and straightened for his next layer. "Eboa," his elven accent drew out the name. "She gave us the gift of time by being… unready for our hasty return to Long Lake. I suppose I owe the elves of the West for that. We almost certainly interrupted a troop movement along the River Running. I encountered a cold that was not fitting for claimed lands here. There were men going missing, a mix of feed for the dragons and soldiers that Drivenn had seeded in the area, going to Erebor, and you already know how we sorted out the inexplicable lights flashing over the city."

Lusis remembered hearing about this. "Oh – yes! Eboa used the seal of the Enemy to pass troops under Lake Township. Day and night, its dark power kept her movements completely undetected as they deployed to overrun this city." It was why she'd run into so many skirmishes erupting in the streets on her way to the amphitheater.

"It is how they welled up and attacked through town," agreed the Elfking. "Dwarf tunnels." He shut his eyes and sighed, "Of course. I cannot believe there was a time that anyone alleged this mountain utterly sealed, entirely impregnable. I long suspected that no clever dwarf would amass such wealth only to lock himself out of his own house quite by accident."

His beautiful house, Lusis thought as she circled the Elvenking.

"Over the passage of many days, the Lord and I traveled Lake Township and we were able to narrow the location to the center of this growing community," the King took a second layer of long coat, this one threaded in gold and a burnished red in colour. "We were never able to capture the caster of the lights – Eboa's mirror and… someone else's. They worked in tandem, and slowly, cautiously. However clever and careful her deliberation, I began to realize something." He raised his hand and looked into his pale palm. "The mirrors of flesh in our hands, the Lord's and my own, were connected. As the light of the sun reflects mirror-to-mirror, so I soon found it possible to… to help the ailing Lord by reflecting my own strength into him." The Elfking laid a hand over his chest.

It might have been an unconscious gesture, but Lusis could see how it was done from that one motion. His hand made a silhouette now, but when it had had the ghostly mirror his fire would have cast the light straight through his skin. If he'd lined up with Elrond, and the Lord had caught the light against his own hand, the Secret Fire of the King would have fed the failing fire in Lord Elrond. Her eyes widened. "Your flame was different when I came upon you in Erebor's sea of gold because… because you…." He'd somehow figured out how to suppress it to fool Nema and Eboa, and the only way he could have learned to perform such a trick on a fire he could not see with his own eyes was through the feel of his fire's manipulation.

Enemy spells had unsuspectingly taught him the feeling of the banked fire, and Lusis had inadvertently taught him how to stir back to a blast of light again. She shut her eyes. "You let her take you. Took a calculated risk. You sent Lord Elrond ahead of you with Glorfindel to watch over him."

"They wanted us alive," said the King. "Clearly."

"She's astute," Elrond shut the book he read and set it on a side-table. "Bright Istari, are you sure you want to contract with this great, tall, blond-haired brute, who-"

The King made a low hiss as he swung toward Elrond. Glorfindel's muffled laugh surprised her, and, apparently, the Lord of Rivendell, who had to turn his face away to hide his mirth.

"Yes," she said, even if it was rhetorical. She looked up at her King, "I'm sure."

He'd followed captured Elrond into Eboa's lair. He'd transferred his power to the Lord as soon as he'd been able… or seen Lusis… or when Legolas had jolted him back to reality – one of those. She headed for the door, astonished by his boldness. He was too arrogant for his own safety, and yet he had a long history of thinking himself through these things. She didn't want to leave him alone through such misadventures. Then something occurred to her, "You began to wear the Crown of Rhiwaras that day because you wanted to leave the Circlet of War behind, just in case, for Legolas."

"It was simply luck that it came to me when it did, or I would have gone without, as I have these latest seasons," he told her. "I want to leave something of… of my father's… for my son, and I was sure to take Lossivor with me. But, yes. You are correct. I believe the most difficult part was convincing Ewon, Dorondir, and the other good elves who knew my schemes, to let me walk, freely, into danger. But I knew Legolas would not hinder me. I… I knew he would likely not be there until the deed was done."

"He came through for you, my King. He loves you." Lusis said as she reached the door, and waiting Nimpeth, who, dauntingly, looked none-too-amused with Lusis' flouting of elven tradition.

"Yes. He is a servant of the Kingdom in the end, my son." The King inclined his glowing head.

But that wasn't what Lusis had meant. She let it go for the moment. Not only did Lusis have worries of her own, judging solely by the grinding of Nimpeth's elven teeth, she had time, yet, to teach her golden King differently.

The sun had progressed through the sky. Ewon stood outside the door to her room.

Lusis grumbled, "Where's the King? Has he left?" He'd gotten her into this. Not the dress, but-

"Waiting." Said the Elite.

The Yellow Istari glanced down at the three elven girls, tiny and slender in build, as if only young teens, who were arranging her sword belt. They looked so small and innocent, but they had pin-tucked, altered, and tightened the sensation out of her limbs. Likewise, she hadn't been allowed to refuse the circlet this time, but it was small and delicate – silver and seed pearls – like snowfall.

Her dress was another point on which she'd conceded to the will of Mirkwood. For it was their will that enacted this. The dress was white. It had a scooped neck, and it was shape hugging. Crystals and seed pearls dangled from it. On small strings. But they had done one thing for her. They'd built in a sword belt, likewise white and encrusted in fineries. Her curved elven sword had been polished and its pommel changed out for something in mother-of-pearl for the occasion.

White as it was, Mallencalar is what elves called it now. The Golden Lamp.

Because of the brilliant light that lit Erebor golden in the moment you protected the Elvenlord, Glorfindel had told her. He'd been the one who had taken apart and then cleaned her sword so expertly. May the gods bless you for that.

As soon as the dressers stepped back, Lusis lashed out the sword and dropped into a crouch. The slit in the side of her dress gave her legs motility, the fabric stretched with her. It would have to do. Lusis put the sword away in its ornate scabbard and stepped down from the dais.

"Shoes." Smiled Nimpeth.

"Boots." Lusis shook her ringlet-covered head.

"Shoes." Ewon hastily advised from outside the door.

Lusis stared at the tall Elite woman, until Nimpeth said, "There are no boots."

"Hardly. Someone here can find some white ones to fit me."

Nimpeth's brows drew down. "I will burn all the white boots in Long Lake, myself."

And, for a bizarre moment, she could see Nimpeth calmly making a pile of them, covering them with lamp oil, and setting them alight, all while the young women of Long Lake ringed around the blaze and held one another. And wept.

"Shoes," Lusis said brightly, the heart of compromise. Honestly!

"Good," Ewon added, immediately.

Happy Nimpeth, who was just beginning to show, was back in a flickering, and she went to a small paper box and lifted out crystal-studded slippers. They had no heels, at the very least. Lusis stepped into them and found they fit her no differently than her elven boots always did. She looked up at the elves. "You realize there is a melt outside. If we're really to do this in the wild, like you say, these shoes will be sucked right off my feet and lost forever in mud."

Nimpeth told her, slowly, unequivocally, "That will not happen, my Lady."

Lusis quailed and wondered, idly, if all pregnant elf-women were so scary. Ewon had two children, and he certainly acted like they were. Next, she stepped in front of the mirror and looked at the deeply tanned stranger whose black eyes glimmered and whose hair had gone golden. Elves laid a silken wrap around her shoulders. She touched her Silvan braids adoringly. Those, she loved.

"I'm ready," Lusis said after a moment. And she realized that she actually… was.

Nimpeth, who was in a dress of blue and silver, and whose black hair rippled like a river under the moon, hurried excitedly into the low rumble of elven conversation in the hallway.

Lusis turned toward the doorway and called out. "I hope you're happy, Elvenking. This dress is so ornate it is blinding, and it is very fitted. I'll have to peel it off like an orange rind tonight."

The noise in the hallway increased, at once. Which was followed by an immediate thud as Nimpeth elbowed her husband's ribs. "Say nothing!"

"I'm sure you look lovely," Amathon wheezed.

The windowed hall erupted in a great swell of good humour and good nature.

"You shall have to assist her, Greatest King."

"Surely this thing is not beyond your abilities to do."

"Of course not! He has brought peace to this harrowed Kingdom," Amathon recovered. "Surely he can peel an orange!"

"Scamp!" Nimpeth exclaimed, but it was impossible for her to hide how she felt about her husband. She smiled on the end of that, at his irreverence.

Lusis was grinning too. This informality she'd noticed just before the sealing of highly personal contracts was as close as she'd ever seen elves come to the behaviour of Rangers. It was working magic against her nervousness. It took a lot of anxious time, it turned out, to put on such fineries.

When she stepped out, the Elites fell into lines along the hall. Amathon, at the left of the door, turned his head and his expression softened. "Ah, friend-Lusis, you look like you belong in that dress."

She met his eyes and said a heartfelt, "That's probably because the only thing I own that is tighter is my actual skin."

He turned away and laughed. Amathon looked so lovely that Lusis shot a glance toward the windows, just to be sure that Nimpeth wasn't missing it. The Elite stepped up to her husband and took his hand. Ewon quickly crossed the doorway and smoothed his daughter's hair. "My children, I must go. I have been asked to walk with the Lady on her way to the King."

Lusis followed the Elite elf down the stairs. The hall was packed so that there was only a small span through the press of people. The double-doors were open. The courtyard outside was filled.

"Peace, Lady. You will be fine." Ewon's voice was a low coo.

Remee fell in beside her on her right, and he said, "I almost didn't recognize you." He looked around then both, nervously. "Lusis, there are elves here – many elves. Some of them are such as I have never before witnessed."

They passed through the doors and Lusis saw her Western friend for the first time in days. "Hello Osp." Her hand curled around his pale fingers. She glanced aside at Loss and Glir, both of whom seemed uncomfortably aware of the hundreds of humans who choked the yard beyond. Their unblinking gazes were unreadable now.

"Friend-Lusis," Osp pressed a small frothy bee into her palm. "For you." She smiled at it and then fastened it to her sleeve, careful that it was properly anchored. It honestly did remind her of him.

Remee stared at colourlessly white Loss – his entire being bleached by the light of the Trees. She passed him by. She continued down the stairs and muttered to Ewon. "No one told me they would be here." She noticed that the thickness of elves and people was clearing away.

Ewon glanced down at her, "They insisted and Lord Eithahawn had to submit. There is only so long that such powerful elves can be waylaid." Remee glanced aside at this.

Her brows rose. "They aren't going to like me much, then." Ewon seemed to agree.

"Ready, Lus?" Remee asked her.

"I am." She nudged her anxious brother. "This is only an event because he is a King. Relax."

"You haven't seen her. It's… impossible. You don't yet know…." Remee babbled, and, at Lusis' other side, Ewon smothered a broad smile in the gravity of the moment.

Lusis didn't follow this reasoning until, ahead, the crowd cleared back around the glow of Lady Galadriel of Lorien. Oh. Remee stood stock still, in awe. Lady Galadriel came forward on pale, bare feet. She opened her silvery arms and smiled gently. Then she drifted aside in a rush of crystalline noise, "Istari-Lusis, my eyes are glad to see you again. I have brought to you my childhood companion. He is my heart's good friend, Thranduil. I give his care to you, and I thank you for protecting him."

Behind her, the King raised his head, his silver-blond hair gleaming. Even for him, the outfit was extravagant. He had a cloak of silver, glistening with palest green stones, and his silver long-coat was threaded with soft green stitch-work patterned as leaves; the long-coat directly underneath was a more intense green and gold, and followed by a single papery thin tier of red-gold. He had the appearance of a vigorous spring which had, at its center, the colours of his Kingdom. The Elvenking was aglow.

Remee cleared his throat and said, "This is my sister. She is the princess of our family," Lusis looked at him crossly, but he carried on, "a great Ranger Chief, and bane of evils of the North. She is my father's greatest pride. His only daughter. To her we owe our lives, so many of us. I do, personally. There is no truer soul." Lusis stared at her big brother, full of gratitude. There was a moment of silence after this, during which many elves inclined their heads in respect. Remee finished, "I give her into your care. May the gods save you."

Remee nodded at the King, quite serious. Unable to suppress her grin, Lusis stepped away from her older brother and went to the King. She murmured a low, exigent, "The Council of the West is here, just behind."

He bent over her shoulder, his voice hushed, "They are very interested in this contract," he whispered. "The Lady Galadriel told me in confidence that they do not consider the Silvan ritual to be legitimate… but then Osp wasted no time in supplying us with the details of an old Vanyar equivalent. We will not be tricked into parting. We are combining the two traditions here today."

She made a sound of soft entertainment. Osp had helped the King? "Won't they be surprised."

They had to make their way through the crowd to the Elvenking's tree along new and scrubbed cobbles. The closer to the Silver Beech they went, the warmer the air was and, under its spreading branches, it was already spring. Lusis simply walked side-by-side with Thranduil. They circled the tree thrice before they came to a stop and faced glorious Eithahawn, who was clad in unrelieved red and holding a book. Beside him was Legolas in silvery green. The Elvenprince raised a red silk cord.

The King saw them and his head tilted. "Legolas… why are you wet?"

The thronging elves both around the beech and the protective station, and up in the tree itself, huffed with suppressed enjoyment.

The Elvenprince stepped forward and looped one end of the red cord around his father's hand, and one around Lusis'. He was careful not to drip on either of them. "I was a little far afield, ada. We can talk later." He stepped back, large-eyed, and nodded quietly. "My best to you, Lady Lusis. My… father to you."

Lusis had to look away.

As he peered down at the book he held, Eithahawn seemed grave, but when his blue-green eyes found her, Lusis could see that he was excited. "Do you enter this contract freely?"

They both said 'Yes', as instructed.

The humans of Lake Township erupted into a terrific volley of cheering. It was deafening.

"Do you both agree to break the contract in grace and goodwill when either or both feel the time has come to part?"

They both answered 'Yes'.

"I am Kingdom's-seneschal of the Great Greenwood, and the power is invested in me to sanction this Agreement." He stepped forward with the book open before him. Legolas offered a pen. "Please sign the Legend."

The King took the pen and signed his swirling name on the white page in burnished red ink. Legolas had prepared a second pen for her and his brows drew up. "Your ink is gold. How fitting!"

The tree above rustled as she took up the pen. Merilin dropped out of the rustling and bowed deeply. "Forgive me, Greatest King. Men are coming from the North East. They have come out from behind Erebor just now. They will be at the edge of Lake Township in a very short time."

"Many?" asked the King.

Merilin nodded. "Enough that it would be remiss if we did not alert you, even now."

"Legolas, a section," the King turned to his son.

The Elvenprince shut his hand around Lusis' on the pen. "Please write your name, Istari. I have been monitoring their advance. I will lead a force to meet them." He glanced up at his father before he stepped away.

Lusis scribbled her name into the book with one hand, and pulled her ringing sword with the other, ready to defend the King.

He laid a hand over hers on the hilt as soon as she finished signing. The humans cheered loudly, not having understood that the interruption was not a part of the normal progression of the Contract. Which wasn't to be blamed on them. The Elvenprince was soaking wet, and they hadn't let that throw them. Lusis let the tip of her blade tap the roots of the King's Tree, unaware of the sudden flickering of yellow along the wood that caused the tree to suddenly flower and the King to sigh. She knew only that the cheering was loud and she wanted to know her King's mind.

He spoke into her thoughts. 'I must postpone celebration, Lusis-Istari. To wait on this.'

'Then let's go.' She hoped she replied correctly. Mental chatter was a bit beyond her. She was never sure she was doing it properly.

Eithahawn stepped aside and shut the book, 'Be careful, ada, and elvellon.'

It took several minutes to get clear of the celebrations. The Elfking spoke to Ewon, and he guided them into Kasia's main building. Argus Samas was stunned to see them come through. "Aren't you two supposed to be headed to the rather massive party in Kasia's hall?"

"Merilin spotted approach from the North-East." Lusis said.

"And that's what we're here for," Samas got to his feet. "With all due respect, shouldn't you go to the elf-room and spend some time away from the noise? It is deafening out there, and a security nightmare." He glanced at Ewon, "I mean to take Rangers and Forces. Would you quietly rally some Elites to travel with us?"

"Ma," Thranduil exhaled on the end of this. "Send me an elf who has seen them, as Legolas has already flown this place."

"I should go." Lusis told the King.

He caught her hand, "You should send Remee and trust. They will bring us news soon enough."

Outside the festivities had already begun. In the streets, treats were handed out, wine flowed freely, meat sizzled, and clay vessels roasted vegetables. Avonne ran through the courtyard with streamers of children by her. Men spoke to nimble elves, and a knife throwing contest struck up between Men of the Peaks and pregnant Nimpeth, of all beings. Telfeth waited her turn, which weighted the odds heavily, though Breg's men couldn't know it. Lusis could see and hear this from the upstairs windows of the Main building, just as she could see how Icar, Aric, Steed, and Redd were trying to teach Osp and the Lady Galadriel to properly hold and toss a throwing knife.

Lady Galadriel. "Fires," Lusis exhaled. She clapped a hand to her forehead, finally knowing how Jan Kasia must feel when Avonne climbed on the Elvenking. Though, for once, the building was empty, a cloak dropped over her shoulders. It smelt of soothing forest.

The Elfking stepped beside her. His head tipped. "And… what are they doing to Galadriel."

"Teaching her knife handling." Lusis nodded.

He sounded baffled, "She... has Nenya, her Ring of Power, and so she has enough magic for a country. Which means she is fully capable of throwing down the buildings of all of Lake Township, and vaporizing her enemies."

He'd actually slowed on the word 'vaporizing'. Lusis blinked at him. "Oh… of course. Of course she can level a city with a wiggle of her pinkie. Which would make my guys think she's totally defenseless." She laughed because of the nerves, and because she couldn't help it. She glanced at the King worriedly, but he seemed pleased.

"I do not wish for you to forget what you are. You are not one of us. You do not have to be. For all your much appreciated sensitivity." He told her.

Lusis bowed to him. She stared at him, aglow in the rising sun, and then said, "This gambit of your sons'... has been sudden. Are you okay?"

"Ai. Come away," The King exhaled. He reached up to the Living Crown he wore and took it off of his head. She wasn't nearly as adept, and so it took the King to get hers out without turning her hair into a nest. They went into the elven room and he surprised her by going right to the back, to wood benches the elves had built along the wall, for sleeping. Someone had set out fruit and wine there. All around them, there were gifts in silken bags and ribbons. It was stunning. Lusis didn't touch any.

She picked up the bottle as he curled his long legs under him on the shelf-like cot. "Ah. This is the sweet wine, remember?" Her nerves felt like bowstrings released. It was exhausting.

"Yes," the King inhaled to still his spirit. He'd been restless all morning. Almost anxious. "Did you know… one of Drivenn's forces intercepted the bottles sent to me and put drops of dragon's blood into the wine? The sweetness nearly drowned out the scent of lightning that dragons emit. It happened the night I opened the contract my sons sent to us."

Lusis lifted the bottle and sniffed it, "You didn't drink any." She set it aside and looked at him.

"No, I did not." he smiled without warmth. "But Eboa had gone to such lengths… though I didn't yet know she was at the bottom of this debacle. There was so little to distract me at the time that I detected the scent of it, and I had time to think of why… yes, she didn't need to know that I'd found it out. I made up my mind to go to her as if I had drunk it all." He took the bottle she'd abandoned on the sill. "But this one is safe… another good sign." He poured them drinks and, lacking anything else to do, she sat down on the bench with him. He handed her a cup of wine, uncertainly. "Will you try it?"

She felt like she could use a glass. Maybe a bottle. She held it up in the sun first, and marveled at its secret role in this. She couldn't even remember when he'd had the tainted bottle. Fires.

Lusis found the wine light and very good. Eventually, she leaned against the King and watched the hypnotic advancement of the sun across the polished wood, and across his white-blond hair. Everything about her slowed to a drift. Neither of them had rested in days. His white-golden head soon sank against her shoulder. "Are you okay?" she murmured. But… it was unfair of her to ask him so soon. He couldn't know the answer to that question. He hadn't caught his breath until just now. Neither had she, but that didn't stop her worrying about what his answer would be. She needed a distraction, and cast about her, quietly. And, of course, since he was asleep, her long-curious fingers reached out and touched the Living Crown's pine needles. The wood of it was warm and bright, it made her fingertips smell like pine cones.

Then the wood shuddered away all its greenery and Lusis grimaced and yanked back her hand. One could not simply hide the Living Crown under a pillow. As if she were locked in a nightmare, the Elfking stirred suddenly. Lusis quickly folded her hands in her lap and smiled. She willed him not to look at the crown. No-no-no.

But the King was not bothered by its condition. Slowly, green buds grew out. Several opened into bright green shoots.

Lusis marveled quietly, "Is... is it spring?"

The King glanced from her to the crown and back, "Perhaps..." he said slowly, "for me." Otherwise, he waited.

It turned out that he had heard something she could not. The arrival of the elf he'd asked for. One who had seen the incoming Men.

"My King and Lady Lusis," Ewon entered the room and bowed.

The King rose to his feet and crossed through panels of gleaming sunlight. His clothes gleamed as towering and broad Lonnan Buckmaster walked into the room between Amathon and Dorondir. He saw his sister and his eyes beaded with tears almost immediately. He glanced over her clothes and said, "What dream is this? Little Lusis, you look like a queen."

The King's head cocked and he pivoted toward Lusis. "This is one of yours, which you identified as among the good of your kin?"

"I… I am sorry to interrupt," Lonnan bowed to the King. He'd been briefed on precisely who the elven traveler to his autumnal Keep had been. His eyes were large as he added, "Elfking."

Lusis leapt to her feet. "Lonn? What are you doing here?" She smiled, ran through the room to him, and fell into his hug.

"Tira and Irin are with mother, Lusis, and much of the family with them. They are yet a league or two behind with the sleighs. They have come to a place where even the rime is thawing – very odd!" He lifted her off of her feet. "What is the celebration outside?"

"I'll explain later," she caught his hand and hurried out of the door with him. She dragged him along to the brief little balcony that overlooked the city.

The King came out behind them and laid a hand on the rail. "Ah. My eyes see my son charging through rivers on horseback." The King sighed, but then added, "And many Northern sleighs. Ai, and families carrying children in their arms through rough terrain."

Lonnan blinked at Lusis, "Can he… truly make that out?"

She smiled up at him, "Oh yes, big-brother. You aren't accustomed to elves. Yet." But even she could see that the line of misery coming through the midwinter wilds to Lake Township was expansive and flew the Buckmaster standard.

The King turned his head to Ewon. "Prepare two sections for riding out, and a horse for Lusis. We will go out to meet them and bring supplies, for they fly the banners of Buckmaster Keep in the North." The Elite left at once, and Dorondir and Amathon remained to safeguard them.

This made Lusis jolt and turn to Dorondir. "But, if that's true, then over half the people on the Spur have come down from the North… the long way." The dark-haired spy, Dorondir glanced over her sympathetically.

Lonnan's exhausted head nodded, wordlessly in response. He found the energy to tell her the sordid truth. "Lusis, more alliances in the brothers have changed than you are guessing, little one. For Kirstman took a wife who is known as Redrine. She came to Keep with her Northern kin just weeks ago, and these are not good men. Fighting has been almost constant, and… the woman has seven dragons. They obey her. Even the brothers who stood behind Kirstman as next-in-line, as the natural heir, even they have been shaken at their foundations. But Kirstman's opinion is that the dragon-tamer's power will protect the Keep and the North when the elves are gone… that Lady Redrine of the Spur will help to clear every warg from every crag. But we know better. No dragon ever darkened the Men of the North that didn't mean harm to all."

"True." The Istari shut her eyes. In this place, so crowded and unruly, they would need to feed and house her proud Northern people – now exiles. She pushed through. "Mother. Her people were from this region long ago. She had such stories of Dale and Esragoth for us, passed down her line."

"Yes," Lonnan's face flinched with pain. "So she has brought us home. Homeless."

The King scrutinized the human expression on Lonnan's scraggly face, "Do not fear." He took the hand of his contracted companion and looked at her, "Do not fear, Lusis-dess. I will not turn my back on your people, for they are my own. The needed lands will be claimed, and lodgings shall be erected. Your Keep still lives. Your way of life. Your people, so long of the mountains." He glanced into her deep black eyes, "Your army of Rangers against Kirstman the Deserter. They come to you across the plains behind the Lonely Mountain."

He shone. It seemed momentarily impossible for her to look away.

"It's true, we stand with you. We understand your heart, or try." Lonnan told her, and, like her father might, said. "Courage, little Buckmaster. We found our way here on Mellona Buckmaster's memory. She is a true Ranger. And we have fought our way to you. All is not lost."

Lusis inhaled deeply, looked down at her attire, and shook out her coiling hair. She felt confident that she could ride in the dress. It might take a few hasty... alterations... with her sword. But her mother and brothers, their families, were out there yet. With her people. She would not delay in bringing supplies and rescue. Nevrman's daughter was a Messenger-woman. She carried relief with her.

The King cast a final glance at the stream of incoming Northern Men under the glint of melt and rising sun. He laid a hand on Lyglim on one side, and then tightened the belt on Lossivor.

Already at the sunny doorframe, Lusis remembered herself, paused, and turned to wait for him.

The Elvenking fell in beside the sure strides of his Istari, his light a blinding pillar of blue-silver flames that leaned into the aura of her golden starpoint. She set a hand at the base of her throat and wondered at the contract, for her star no longer concealed that it favoured his fire. She looked up at his timely glance and wondered how he felt. She yearned to know his mind, even while she was aware they were bound together in a greater communion.

His hand closed over her own on the stairs, to steady her step in the dress.

A bond no eyes could see, she suspected.

Save her own.

~*~ End ~*~

Thank you for reading!

Special thanks to tumblr's evil-bones-mccoy and doomedredshirt for advice on Elven heraldry. Thank you to the awesome people encouraging me, and to alliwantismoorethranduil, particularly! I appreciate your support through writing these books!

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