IV

The Elves go West

"How long till we come to the Forest Road?" Legolas asked.

"Three days at the most", said Beren. "We will follow the Mountain Road, so the ride will be rather easy."

Tinuhen looked at them over his shoulder. "Mountain Road! This is a path, naught more. Not even the Forest Road is a proper road. Real roads are broad and paved and straight as an arrow's flight - those in Gondor have three files, one for footmen, one for riders, and one for wagons."

"And they have Men on them, too", said Legolas. "I don't like straight and paved roads."

"You have never seen one."

"Neither have you."

Tinuhen sighed and turned forward again, muttering something about unsophisticated, or if it was uncultivated this time.

The road (or path) was water-sick and the drizzle clung to the air. It was very still. When the path narrowed, Legolas strecthed his arms wide and let his hands brush against the wet bark of the trees edging it. They did not speak to him, and he did not want them to. He could feel that they bade him farewell.

Amlûg threw his head and snorted, eager to stretch his legs and run. Legolas had never ridden him further than to Lake-town, and that was two years ago when Amlûg was still very young, but now it was as if he knew he was out on a long, long journey and wanted to get going. But Beren said that if the horses were to last the journey they must spare their strength from the beginning, so they kept a calm pace.

Amlûg wasn't the only one who was restless. Maidh suddenly spurred his horse and gallopped right through a deep puddle, splashing water all over himself and the elves around him. Tinuhen yelled at him for ten minutes straight, which gave Beren a headache, and Maidh laughed so hard he almost fell off his horse.

"We're not going to get bored as long as Maidh is with us", Hethulin said. "Furious, maybe, but not bored."

The drizzle never stopped, and it never turned into a real rain. Crows croaked in the mist. They passed Cloaked Hill, then the stream where Legolas had caught frog's eggs when he was little and the place where mother used to set her snares. Then they ate their lunch by another stream beneath a couple of telain, but the elves who used to live their had moved into the Mountain for the winter. Legolas walked around in his stiff newly-made shoes and all the travellers, expect for Beren and Tinuhen who were used to riding, complained that they were tired and sore and never wanted to sit on a horseback ever again. Laeros did not leave his cart, and no one really wanted him to. They stayed off the road for a few hours and set off when it was beginning to darken.

They had not come very far when a wheel on one of the wagon's broke and they had to wait for Naru to repair it.

"I've changed my mind", Hethulin said. "We will be both furious and bored. Maidh, do something funny."

"If Maidh does something funny again I will send him back to the Mountain if I so have to carry him", Beren said. Maidh was quiet.

Legolas jumped up and down in the moss. His feet were itching. If he didn't get to walk soon his legs would jump off and run away by themselves, but Tinuhen didn't want anyone to stray.

A few hours later, when it was almost dark, they found a place suited for a camp.

They set up tents in a circle, tethered the horses to poles they drove into the ground, and made a fire between some stones that Legolas and Hethulin found by a nearby stream. They made their dinner in the dark (but elves have always liked the dark) and sat under the stars eating bread and soup and telling stories. Only Laeros and one of his healers stayed in the wagon, and now and then they heard him sobbing, but no one mentioned it. Legolas was glad as long as Laeros stayed in there. He never wanted to see his haunted eyes again, or the scar-crossed skin stretched taunt over his bones.

The trees creaked and whispered, leaves floated down on their heads. Maidh told them the story of the Pale Child, and though everyone knew it wasn't real, they all started looking over their shoulders into the dark. Legolas huddled under his cloak between Beren and Hethulin. It was rather cold now, not that the elves minded, and the fire gleamed in ebony and hazel hair, in spear-tips and helmets. This morning, he had woken in his own bed in the mountain and everything had been as usual. He'd not wake up in that bed for a very long time now. But frightening as that thought might be, it was also exciting, like a story that's slightly too scary, but that you also really want to hear the end of.

Eitelend and Beren stayed up late, long after they had told Legolas to go to sleep. He lay alone in the tent, expect for Hethulin, who was fast asleep, and listened to the low murmur of voices outside, and the humming of tree-voices, and the crackle of the fire. Now and then one of the horses scraped with a hoof in the moss, or one of the sentinels shifted weight from one foot to the other, and Legolas twisted under his blanket and could not sleep.

Then Tinuhen said: "I cannot imagine a single person in Rivendell who would want us ill. Do you not think father is just being over-suspicious?"

"I thought so at first", came Beren's voice. Legolas lay completely still and listened hard. "But the incidents have been too many and too close... what with Tuiw and all..."

"We do not know if that has anything to do with it. We have not even found him yet!"

"All the more reason to be cautious. If he's been killed..."

Legolas breath caught in his throat. When Tuiw did not return from Rivendell, everyone had known he might be dead - but no one had said he might have been killed.

"Hush", Tinuhen said. "Do not say that too loud, we do not want people to worry..." He lowered his voice to a whisper and all that Legolas heard was message and something about could be... accident.

Beren said that great things were happening and it is no strange that...

"But consider this", Tinuhen said, raising his voice again. "If the last message was hindered too, on purpose, who would have done that? Who would have known the time of the council had been moved? Very few expect those who will participate. And that means..."

"Yes", Beren said. "That means treachery, and from the very midst of the Wise."

The discussion died then, but it was as though all things unsaid and half-said hung in the air long afterwards. The word treachery found its way into Legolas' dreams and made them anxious and dark. It had an ominous sound to it.

"Yavanna have pity on my poor back!" Hethulin groanded on the morrow. "I am probably dying."

"Do you want me to do something funny?" Maidh asked and looked with interest at the half-full bucket of water beside her.

"Don't you dare! One step closer and I'll cut you in half."

But if the journey started with a lot of grumbling, the travellers slowly found a rythm in the steady course of the days. They got up before dawn, let the horses graze their fill, walked beside them a while to get warm themselves, then mounted and rode until the day was full. During the brightest hours they stayed off the Mountain Road, empty as it was on other travellers, but rode on from dusk until it was nearly dark. The road took them far away from places that Legolas knew. He let Beren hold Amlûg's reins and climbed into the trees to look around, straying a bit from the path, then returning, then straying again.

On the third day they ate their last fresh bread, and that night they shared camp with a couple of hunters who had had a bad luck. Beren decided to share the last of their meat with them.

"Not much game in these parts", they said and gnawed hungrily on dried mutton strips. "We wouldn't have gone so far, but we were following a boar and her cubs. Then we lost her."

"Might have been just as well", said Hethulin. "Do you really want to eat a creature that strays this far south?"

"Huh. True enough."

"Why not?" Legolas asked.

"Because normal creatures don't go this close to the shadow-wood", Hethulin said. "Those that do aren't... healthy."

"Doesn't the elves by the Forest Road hunt, then?"

"They do, but cursed if I know how they dare to."

When they broke camp the next morning, the forest felt different. The tree-voices sounded distant and the branches that wove over the pale grey sky blocked out almost all the light. They had to stop earlier than usual for lunch, because Laeros was tossing and turning in his wagon and the healers did not know how to make him stop. They lifted him down on the ground, and Laeros stumbled and fell. For a long while he just sat on the cold brown leaves and shook.

The others were making a fire, and Legolas hunkered down a little to the side and watched Laeros sideways. He had begun to sit with the others at dinner now, at least for as long as he could take it before he became anxious by so much people, and anyway he needed to leave the wagon now and then, so the others were getting used to his quiet, haunted presence. But this was different. The healers were desperate; they did not know what to do.

"You're in the way", Tinuhen grumbled and pushed past Legolas, because apparently his horse had to be tethered just there. Legolas glared at his back and decided he could just as well make himself useful, so he began to help Naru with the fire. The carpenter smiled at him and showed him how to make a platform of larger pieces of wood and build the fire on top of it, to keep it from the wet ground.

Eventually Laeros stopped shaking and they could move on.

They came to a clearing where the afternoon sun tinted the grass gold. Across it the forest rose again, but the wood-elves stopped hesitantly before it. The trees loomed high over their heads and threw shadows over the grass; barely any sunlight found its way through their naked branches, barely any wind blew through the shrunken undergrowth between their wriggling roots. The tree-voices were dark and mournful.

"Is this the shadow-wood?" Legolas asked.

"Yes and no", said Beren. "It is very close to the border, but the true Shadow is further south."

"What exactly is the border?"

"I'm not sure", Beren replied. "You might say it is magic - you could not touch it, or see it, though I suppose you can tell where it is by the look of the forest. Thranduil holds it up by his will, and the Shadow cannot pass it."

"My father does that?"

"Aye."

Tinuhen rode on inside. The shadows ate him like the night eats the moon, and Legolas wanted the warriors to follow him, but no one did. With darkness hiding his face and taking the gold out of his pale hair, Tinuhen surveyed the road ahead, then turned to the company in the sun. "It appears to be safe."

"Well and good. I will take up the rear", Beren said. "The Forest Road will be close now and if we are lucky, we will reach on of the settlements before it gets too dark. I want Hethulin and Maidh to keep an eye up front, and you, Legolas, will stay close to Tinuhen and obey everything he says. Is that understood?"

Legolas looked up at Tinuhen, who seemed unsure if he should be angry or relieved that Beren took command, and sighed. Tinuhen heard that and shot him a warning glance.

"Yes."

"Good. Let us move on."

They rode in silence now. With Maidh surveying the road ahead, and Beren at the rear keeping an eye on the forest, there was no one to lighten the mood. On Beren's orders, the warriors had strung their bows and made sure their spears or swords were close at hand.

When Hethulin gave a shout, they all tensed, the warriors gripped their spears tighter, and Legolas listened for any warning from the trees. Then Maidh returned.

"We've found the Forest Road", he said, and with a smile, the first since they entered the almost-shadow-wood, he added: "Hethulin was so shocked when she found cobbles in the forest she almost fell off her horse. I swear if she was any more silvan, she would be a tree."

"Excellent", Tinuhen said and seemed to relax a bit. "Now then, Legolas, I bet you do not remember the Forest Road."

"Is it different from this one?"

Tinuhen smiled in a way that made Legolas think of files for footmen and wagons and riders, but it was not quite so.

The Forest Road had been paved once by skilled hands, but the forest had long since taken over. Moss grew between the cobbles, and the milestones were overturned; slick plants filled the dikes. Dappled by sunlight where the trees stood scarcer on each side, it was broad enough for three to ride easily beside each other.

"It used to be finer", Tinuhen said, disappointed. "When we lived in Eden Bar there was not so much moss on it."

Legolas looked up and down the road as far as he could see in the dark. "Is Eden Bar the old hall?"

"Which of them?" Tinuhen asked. "There are many old halls."

"I mean the one where I was born."

Tinuhen gave him a faint smile. "Yes, that was Eden Bar."

"So is that near?"

Tinuhen nodded. It was the longest conversation Legolas had had with him without any of them starting a fight.

"It is close to the settlement where we will sleep tonight", Tinuhen said. "The elves there lived in the hall before, but they refused to leave when the King and Queen did."

"Can't we go and look at it?"

"There's nothing left to look at. The Shadow took it long ago. And we must stay on the Road."

Legolas was disappointed, but Tinuhen did not sound like he wanted to discuss it. After a while Legolas asked: "Why did we leave the tree-hall? Why didn't we stay and fight the Shadow?"

Tinuhen only looked at him, and suddenly he seemed older than ever; and sad, sad as father. He looked at Legolas as if he wanted to say, you don't know, you don't understand, you have not seen what I have seen.

"Because we did not want to die", he said coolly, and turned away.

It grew dark quickly. They lit torches, and the shadows leapt and danced in a frenzy around them. Legolas kept as close to Tinuhen as the horses would allow.

Finally Tinuhen said: "We must stop for the night. This is too dangerous. We can go on to the settlement tomorrow."

"Agreed, my prince", Beren said. "We need to set up the tents while - "

"Look out!" Hethulin cried. Everyone jumped, and the warriors pulled their swords halfway out of their sheaths.

"Peace", a voice said from the shadows. Then all of a sudden there were elves around them - foreign, dark-eyed elves clad in fur and leather, with pale stern faces like they never saw the sun and seldom laughed. Other elves would have laughed and mocked the travellers for being jumpy, but these ones simply looked on with eyes as black as the forest.

One of them stepped into the torchlight. She had copper-red hair kept in many small braids, bow in hand and quiver over her shoulder, and a white fur flung over her shoulders.

"Prince Tinuhen", she said and bowed her head lightly. "We are honoured to have you here. Has the journey been well?"

"Ah, uh - " Tinuhen blinked, caught of guard. "Yes. Though it saddens us greatly to see the forest in this state."

"What state? Oh - you mean the Shadow." She smiled briefly, a stern non-smile that struggled against the stiff, red-gleaming scars trailing down the corner of her mouth. "I forget it is not like this everywhere."

"Pardon me, my lady, but I must have forgotten your name."

"It's Ninniach, and I am no lady, my prince. I was a maid of your mother's."

Legolas' eyes widened. "I remember you! You used to sew a lot... and you had a dog that followed you everywhere! And you told stories..."

"Ah, prince Legolas", Ninniach said and this time she smiled wider. The left side of her face held the marks of old flames, and her eyes were sharp as steel blades, but apart from that she looked like the kindly maid he vaguely remembered. "I am glad to have you here again in the shadow-wood. It is not a bad place to live, once you get used to it, though dangerous to travel through. Especially at night, of course, which reminds me. We must go on towards the settlement. You may follow me. There is a shorter route through the trees."

"Broad enough for a wagon?" Tinuhen asked.

Ninniach looked confused. "Why do you bring a wagon?"

"That can wait. Let us take the road. We cannot leave it behind."

"Very well then", Ninniach said. She raised her hand and made some kind of sign. Without a word, the rest of her elves spread out around the riders, some between the trees, some in their branches, and Ninniach herself set off at a brisk pace. Tinuhen urged his horse after her, and Legolas after him. He felt a bit safer, because Ninniach seemed able to handle these woods.

No one spoke a word until the glow of a fire became visible in the dark. Then one of the elves of the shadow-wood called out, and far away by the fire he was answered by clear voices. The trees opened into a clearing, and tents emerged from the dark, big hide tents surrounded a palissade made of sharpened poles. Through the wooden gate they rode.

The elves of the shadow-wood - Legolas thought about them as such, even though he knew the real Shadow was still far away - all had those dark eyes and pale faces, and their furs and skins were many times mended, their tents old and weather-worn. But they greeted the riders warmly, if not as merrily as they would have done elsewhere in Greenwood. They made them sit down on long hewn logs around the fire, and bowls of steaming pheasant-and-cabbage soup were passed around - though the settlement did not have enough bowls, so the riders had to fetch some of their own.

"So you are the leader?" Beren asked Ninniach while they ate.

She chewed down a piece of stringy meat and shook her head. "We have no leaders."

"Ninniach is the most capable of leading hunts, and such things", another elf added. "She often leads when we need a leader."

"At other times, I do not", Ninniach said.

Judging by the eagerness with which the elves of the shadow-wood had eyed the weapons and armour from the mountain, and that they seemed to have more bows than bowls in their settlement, Legolas supposed that 'such things' meant fighting.

The elves explained they always kept an eye out on the Forest Road. It was still passable, but mostly thanks to them, because they escorted travellers through all the dangerous parts - sometimes on the ground, taking the chance to gather news and to trade, and sometimes when the travellers were unfriendly (or dwarves) from the trees, never coming down to talk.

"We have never left anyone on their own", said an elf with golden-brown eyes like late-summer honey. Like all the others he spoke very quietly, as if he was afraid to give himself away. "Unless, of course, they're downright hostile, which happens sometimes. A settlement to the east met a couple of men who must have been outlaws or the like. They didn't want any help and didn't get any. They were killed the next day."

"By what?" Legolas asked.

"No", Tinuhen said, before the elf could reply. "We won't talk about that now. It's not important. It's late, isn't it?"

Ninniach slowly shook her head. "No, it isn't very late. Why do you say that?"

"Because it is dark", Tinuhen said.

"But it is always dark."

"Oh", Tinuhen said, and his face fell. "Well, it does not darken this early further from the shadow-wood, but I suppose it is different here."

"Does it not? Then I beg your pardon, my Prince. I had forgotten that."

"Forgotten?!

"It was long since I saw it."

"That long? Why, you should travel more, see the real Greenwood! It's not far, not even a day's ride. I do not see why you stay here all the time?"

"No, you don't", Ninniach said and fixed her gaze on the leaping flames of the log-fire. "If I saw the forest as if once was, it would only make me sad. Perhaps I would not want to return to the shadow-wood - much like none of you mountain-elves do not return to it. Your hunters do not come here, not that there is much to find for a hunter who does not know where to look. No one wants to come into the shadow-wood. No one wants to know."

Tinuhen unconsciously began to chew at his thumbnail.

"But I must stay", Ninniach said. "I cannot tempt myself to leave. I will not abandon the forest. The real Greenwood, as you call it, does not need my help; this Greenwood does. Is it truly the real Greenwood? I used to call it so, used to say that this, this is not it's true face, this is a sickness and it will soon pass. But it has been like this a long time now. Perhaps this has become the real Greenwood, and yours is only waiting to turn the same?"

Legolas looked into his empty bowl of stew and did not dare to say what he thought. But then Ninniach sighed and she sounded so sad he said it anyway.

"I don't think Greenwood has changed in heart. The tree-voices aren't different from outside the Shadow, only more sad. The earth is the same, only colder. And as long as it has the same heart, isn't it the same?"

"Little one", Ninniach said, and the scar across the corner of her mouth curved into a stiff smile. "You remind me of your mother."

"I do?"

"I knew her before she became the Elvenqueen", Ninniach said. "I followed her into the war, tended her wounds when she fell, and when she married the new King, I became her maid. Much we saw together, and never once did she forget Greenwood, nor did she lose hope for it. Gwiwileth may have left it now to be with her people, but I see much of her in you."

"We're going to save it", Legolas said. "There's a cure in Rivendell."

Ninniach smiled at that, but did not answer. She didn't look like she believed it.

Thank you all for reading, and please leave a review! Any input, question or suggestion is appreciated, or just tell me what you think :)

Huge thanks to tumblr user miss-elessar for proof-reading.