Part of this chapter is rather gory and a bit graphic. Be careful if you're sensitive!

VI

Come What May

When the guards carried her father into the Hall of Trees, Merilin knew that nothing would ever be the same.

She flew up from her chair and did not even notice that her embroidery fell from her lap. The floor was all wet from the snow that people had been dragging in from the courtyard - heaps of new-fallen snow, white and pure and quick to melt - the embroidery would be ruined. Merilin did not think about it, not for a moment.

"Make way!" the guards cried, and people turned and stared at them and the elf on the stretcher they carried. "Somebody alert the healers - get people down on the courtyard - we've got more wounded, get stretchers down there!"

"What happened?" Merilin asked hoarsely. "Where's my mother?"

"There was an attack, my lady", the guards said. "The Elvenqueen is still at the courtyard."

Merilin looked down at the elf on the stretcher. Blood stained his grey riding garb and the cloth of the makeshift stretcher. Sweat beaded his pale face. His hands were clenched into fists. His lips were bitten bloody.

It could not be her father. But when they carried him away, Merilin's stomach wrenched as if it was.

Elves milled into the Hall of Trees. Nibennel, who led the guard in Beren's abscense, shouted at them to return to whatever they had been doing or make themselves useful. Someone ran upstairs to the mending wing. Two more guards walked inside, supporting a third, who was bleeding badly from the shoulder. To the women at the high table, no one paid any attention.

Taith bent down and picked up the embroidery. Nelladell laid her hands on Merilin's shoulders and pressed her down in the chair.

"Worry not, Merilin, I am sure he will be all right."

"Did you not see him?"

"Merilin", said Taith calmly. "What was it we talked about again? Ah, yes, that fabric from Lothlorien. I wish we had more of the blue one."

"Fabric", said Merilin.

"Yes, the one with feathers."

"Taith, did you see my father? Did you see him? And he is the Elvenking! Yavanna watch over us - and where are his other guards? - how could anything - "

"Where are you going?"

"Stay here", Merilin said and stumbled down the dais.

They had chosen to sit in the Hall of Trees because it was pleasant to be around people, even if most people here at this time where those who tended the hall - no bold hunters or gallant palace guards - but now Merilin wished it had been all empty. The elves stared and whispered and she had to shove her way past them, down the stair.

Mother stood in the snowfall at the foot of the stair. She had blood down the side of her dress, and in her long unruly braids, and her leather jerkin was torn, though she had not taken it off. Galion stood with her, pale but calm, and held her weapons. Around them the courtyard was a mess of frightened horses, wounded guards and elves who tried to help them. People came down the stair with stretchers; someone was crying out a name, again and again, over a body that lay still on the ground.

"I saw father", Merilin said weakly. "What happened? Mother, what happened?"

"Go inside, Merilin."

"I want to know!"

Mother sighed. Galion walked up the stair and took Merilin by the arm.

"Easy now, my lady", Galion said, and only then did Merilin realize that she was shaking. She willed herself to stop, but her body did not obey.

"It was orcs", mother said. "From straight out of nowhere. It was by sheer luck we escaped, and the Elvenking - "

"But the trees! Why did the trees not warn you?"

"They couldn't. Something stopped them. Something..."

"What about father? He's wounded."

"He is, but not so badly."

"I saw him!"

"Merilin", Galion said. "Do not upset yourself. Thranduil was awake and conscious when we came through the Doors. We escaped narrowly, but we are all here now, and your father is up in the mending hall, and all will be fine. Let me take you inside.

Merilin was not strong enough to protest. She felt like she might go sick, but at the same time she felt like she was not there at all; like she was only watching another Merilin, who stumbled up the stairs with Galion took her hand.

Taith met them halfway, and took over.

"Just stay calm now, Merilin", she said and gathered her silk skirts as they walked over the snowy threshold. "Let us go to my chambers. Nelladell will be there in a minute. She will bring out embroideries-"

"I need to see father."

"Not now, Merilin, the menders must see to him first."

"I am not going to talk about fabrics", Merilin said. "I'm not."

"Then we won't talk about fabrics", said Taith and pulled Merilin through the Hall of Trees. They took the right tunnel, even though it was further away from Taith's chambers, because the left one led to the mending wing and was crowded with elves, wounded or helping wounded. The smell of blood seemed to seep through all the corridors. There was no escaping it.

"Orcs", Merilin said weakly. "But if the trees were silent - no, Taith, it must have been something more, something more than orcs. What if father..."

"Mind the steps there, Merilin, that's a good girl."

"Taith", Merilin said and leaned so heavily on her friend she was afraid that she would fall; but Taith was stronger than she looked. "I want to talk about fabrics."

"All right", Taith said. "That blue one from Lothlorien, remember? With feathers."

It was dark by the time Merilin was allowed to see father. Taith and Nelladell followed her to the mending wing, but it was so crowded in there they had to turn on the doorstep. Out of twenty-five guards no one was completely unharmed, though only seven were badly wounded. Two had not made it through the Doors. One they had lost in the afternoon.

"Your father's state is... stabile, at the moment", the mender said when he led her to her father's room. "He has not lost very much blood, and the wound should heal quickly enough. We found no signs of poison."

"Do you think I am blind?" Merilin snapped. "I saw him when they carried inside. That was not stabile."

The mender wrung his hands.

Merilin stopped dead, outside a room where a young warrior gritted her teeth as the menders set the bones in her broken leg.

"What is it you're not telling me?"

"No signs of poison", said the mender quietly, as if he was afraid to be overheard, "but something... something else. I cannot explain. Please come, my lady."

Father lay atop a large ash-wood bed - ash for strength, and swift recovery - under three thick wool blankets, and a fire roared and made the room so hot the windows glazed over. His eyes were closed. Merilin thought he looked old.

"Why is it so hot?" she asked. "Father is already sweating."

At that, mother lifted her head. She sat in a chair by father's side, still in her blood-stained riding dress. Her right hand was bandaged and she had a cut over her nose, but other than that she was unharmed.

"There you are. What took you so long?"

"The heat", Merilin said. "Is it really good?"

Mother lowered her gaze. She laid her good hand on top of father's, then looked up at Merilin. "The menders does not know what is wrong, Merilin, but father is not... not well."

Confusedly, Merilin walked over to the bed and moved to touch her father's hand; but she did not even need to touch him to feel the cold. Father was freezing. Sweat beaded his face, but he was so cold she shivered.

"What is this?"

"Sorcery", mother said. The mender began to protest, but mother shot him a dark look and said: "And what else would it be? Not poison, you say. Not fever. Not shock. So, sorcery."

"Sorcery", Merilin replied. "Can orcs..."

"Not as far as I know", mother said, and what she did not know about orcs, no one knew. "He was struck by an orc, but that, we believe, is the weapon it used. At least part of it."

She pointed to something on the bedside table. It was a sword-hilt - a fair piece, truly, with a black gem inlaid in silver vines at the pommel; but the silver was splotched black with age, and the gem shone dully in the glow of the oil-lamp. The blade was cut clean off, and nowhere to be seen.

"Do not touch it", mother said. "We do not know what it is."

"What happened to it?"

"I know not. I found it whole after the attack, but when I picked it up it simply drifted from her hand - like it was made of dust. This is all that is left."

Merilin shivered and turned her back on the sword-hilt; but even so she felt it watching her.

The mender left them, and Merilin sank down in an empty chair and felt like all her strength had left her. Mother twisted her bracelet around her wrist, round and round, and her eyes were as cold and sharp as arrowtips. Suddenly Merilin feared that she would do something dangerous, that she would ride for revenge, and it filled her with such terror she forgot how to breath. She forced herself to calm down. Mother was wiser than that.

"What are - what will - where are the orcs now?"

"I sent out elves to scout", mother replied wearily, "but I doubt they'll dare to come closer to the Mountain."

"Are there any elves still out there?"

"Only hunters, and I think they'll be fine. Then there are the elves by the Forest Road."

Merilin went cold. "And Tinuhen, mother. Tinuhen and Legolas!"

"Yes. We cannot do anything for them."

"They must be warned!"

"I have sent a message to Radagast. Hopefully it will reach him, but if we cannot trust the trees - "

"Ai Elbereth! What if..."

"Merilin", mother said. "What if is the last thing I want to hear."

They fell silent. The oil lamps glowed softly; the snow whirled past the window outside, slowly and quietly. Now and then father stirred, but he never once opened his eyes.

Mother picked up a damp cloth and pressed it gently to father's forehead, sucking up the beads of sweat that shimmered in his eyebrows. He was so pale. One could almost see right through him.

"We will hold a council", mother said. "We must know how those orcs could come so close to us, and what exactly this wound is. Merilin, now that both father and Tinuhen is gone, you need to take more responsibility. You must be brave now, for Greenwood."

"I am not brave."

"You must be", mother said. "We all must." She laid the cloth aside and fixed her gaze on Merilin. "Greenwood needs our strength. These are dark times. I want you to be prepared, for there will be no room for hesitation once the council is due. This may be over quickly, or it may be the start of a war. You must be prepared for either."

"Uh..."

"Come now. You're more than half a millennia old. Did you expect you'd never go to war?"

"Is that so much to ask for?"

Mother softened. She must be half-mad with worry, Merilin thought; mother never was stern.

"We're in Greenwood", she said, "in the Wild. There is no room for fear here. We're fighters, hey? So are you, deep down. I'm sure of it."

"I don't want to be one."

Mother sighed and turned away. Father moaned in his sleep, drew his eyebrows together in pain or fear.

Nothing would ever be the same. Or maybe it had always been like this, cruel and dark and frightening, and the world were fabrics and ribbons and shoes mattered had never truly existed.

The snowfall thickened, though down in the shadow-wood only a little part of it found its way to the ground. At first, they rode on like there was no snow, all anxious and tense, but after a while they started to find joy in it. When they stopped to pitch a camp, Beren had to roar at some of the guards to stop them from shoving snow down each other's collars. Legolas wished they could have went on, because he preferred watching them to thinking about father, wounded and maybe poisoned, or something else.

The message from Radagast did not arrive that night, nor the day after.

"It takes time to get to the Mountain", Beren said. "Remember we've been travelling for eleven days now. Radagast won't even be halfway yet."

"He's a wizard!"

"So he is, but can he fly for that? No. You wait and see, little leaf. We will hear from Radagast in time."

The next night they slept in another elven settlement, and the elves there told them some about the shadow-wood. Before it breached the border, they had sometimes ventured into the Shadow to hunt or gather wood.

"Trust nothing", they said, "not your eyes, not your ears, not even your fingers. And don't stray from the road. You may think you'll find it again, but you take five steps away from it, and you could as well have walked for half a mile."

"What is that?" Hethulin asked suddenly and pointed into the dark.

"Ghost!" Legolas said, and it truly looked like one. It was white and gauzy, shimmering in the torch-light, and as broad as Legolas' arms outstretched. The travellers stared at it wide-eyed.

The elves of the shadow-wood bared their teeth. Then one took an arrow from his belt, bound a bundle of hay and cloth around it that he'd had ready in his belt pouch, and lit it on his torch. The fire arrow hit the white veil, and it blazed up and was gone in the blink of an eye.

"Spider web", the elves of the shadow-wood said.

"No way!" said Maidh. "It was too large!"

The elves of the shadow-wood curled their lips in eerie non-smiles.

"Spider webs. You believe it, or you let them kill you."

The settlement had a lot of supplies, and gladly shared it with the travellers - at least they seemed to do it gladly, though it was hard to tell, because they were very sparse with words and smiles.

The next night the travellers camped by a stream that babbled eerily beside them all night as if it laughed at some secret of its own, and it made them so uneasy they drank up half their mead before they went to sleep. Sometime after midnight, Legolas woke because his bladder told him that ai elbereth it's an emergency hurry up! and he could didn't dare to ignore it.

He sat up, quiet as quiet, in the light of the small lantern they kept burning through the nights - it would have been too dark to see anything at all otherwise. But Hethulin slept very lightly.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"I just need to, uh..."

"I told you not to drink so much mead", Hethulin whispered. "It's not safe out there. Let one of the sentinels follow you."

Legolas groaned.

"Come now, it's not like they're going to look."

"Then it doesn't matter if they follow me, does it? Please, Hethulin, I won't go far. I'll stay in sight of the camp. We've been here for days and nothing's happened!"

"Your brother gave severe orders..."

Legolas sighed. Hethulin rarely took Tinuhen's orders very seriously, but this time she seemed to agree with them.

"Fine. I'll tell one of the sentinels exactly where I'm going, and I'll stay in sight of the camp, and if I'm not back in five minutes you can all go and search for me. Please? I just need to be one my own for a moment. Tinuhen's been on me all the time."

Hethulin sighed. She gave him a glance that very clearly said he had himself to blame, but at the same time she seemed to take pity on him. It was not like Tinuhen was ever in a good mood around Legolas, whether his little brother had done anything or not.

"Very well", she said finally. "Five minutes and no more. I will know it if you don't obey."

Legolas swept himself in his cloak and crawled out of the tent. The stream babbled on somewhere in the dark. When he looked up he could see no difference between branches and sky above his head, expect where the sparks from the fire rose towards it, born on a harsh north wind.

"To that tree and no further", one of the sentinels said and pointed into the dark.

"I promise", Legolas said, having no idea of what tree it was.

He felt a slight tinge of fear when the fire was behind him and darkness wrapped its arms around him, and he hesitated, thinking that maybe he should ask someone to follow him anyway, or perhaps he should just go back into the tent and try to sleep. But pride and his bladder won over his fear of the dark. He walked into the forest like an adventurer into a dragon's lair.

It was when he was on the way back he saw it.

First he thought it was a ghost, or one of those giant spider webs, and he pressed his back to the tree and dared not breath. But it was not a ghost. It was a stag, a small stag whiter than the snow.

Legolas inhaled slowly.

The stag had been as frightened of him as he had been of it. It stood wide-eyed and statue-still with one slender foot in the air and the others lightly touching the moss. Then it set the foot down. A dry leaf shifted under it. The stag blinked once and inclined his head, as if it wanted to say something.

"What do you want?"

The stag turned and walked through a stand of bushes, very slowly. It stopped on the other side and looked back at him.

"Do you want me to follow?"

Legolas glanced towards the camp. Five minutes could not have passed yet. He looked at the trees; they swayed peacefully in a breeze, as if there was nothing dangerous to be found for miles. When he looked at the deer, Legolas felt that it was not evil.

"I'm coming", he whispered and went after it.

They moved soundlessly over leaves and snow, in and out of the trees. Frost-tinted ferns stroke against Legolas' bare legs, and wet leaves clung to the soles of his feet. A thorny branch caught his cloak. The stag waited patiently a few paces away while he freed it.

Another stream came floating through the ferns, carrying a sick smell like water that has been still for long. The stag jumped; Legolas hesitated by the brink before he dared to leap after it. His left foot sank into wet mud with a gurgling splash that rang loud and sharp through the forest.

He stopped in his tracks and looked over his shoulder to see if anyone seemed to have heard. There was only darkness. The camp-fire was long gone behind him.

He suddenly felt very small.

"Is it far now?" he asked the stag, and even his voice sounded tiny in the great silence of the forest night. In answer, the stag inclined its graceful head towards the bushes on top of the brink. Glad he would be able to go back soon, Legolas hurried towards it.

He staggered back with a cry.

Something lay dead behind the thorny bushes. Long dead.

It had once been a horse.

Legolas felt his stomach turn, but nothing came up. Flies lifted in a buzzing swarm from the dead horse and under them, white and glistening, worms crawled on top of each other through the rotting flesh and over white bones. The horse's tangled mane was spread out like a fan over the leaves. It seemed to look at him with one worm-eaten eye.

Legolas swallowed. He shut his eyes tight.

Then he opened them again and warily looked around. Bodies attracted predators. Mother had told him countless times never to approach without being prepared. But he heard and saw nothing, and the trees were still calm.

The stag walked around the dead horse, looked at something on the ground behind it, and looked back up at Legolas.

Legolas wanted to run back to the camp and never think of this again, but he could not do that, not if the stag had brought him here for a reason. Without looking at the horse, without wondering what its name was or where it came from or it it had other horse friends somewhere that missed it now, Legolas walked after the stag.

Something lay on the ground partly under the horse, and this time Legolas did vomit.

The elf lay on its belly, with his head turned to the side, and his arms brought up as if to ease a hard landing. Legolas saw empty eye sockets and a half-eaten jaw; eggs about to hatch in the side of the face that rested on the ground. He saw snowy white tresses glowing almost as white as the stag, and a leather strap painstakingly embroidered with red and blue thread about to slip off the rotting brow. The elf's legs were stuck beneath the horse. Two arrows potruded from his back.

And Legolas knew who it was. That snowy hair could not be mistaken.

He looked at the stag.

"Take me back to the camp. My brother must see this. Hurry!"

It set off, Legolas dashing after it through the dark. He wanted to wake up and see it was all a dream, or to crawl back into the tent and pretrend it had never happened, but he knew what he had to do. When the fire emerged from the dark the stag stood to the side and Legolas went on without it. People were calling over at the camp. Tinuhen was just coming out of his tent.

"Tinuhen! There's something you must - "

Beren grabbed him by the elbow. "Yavanna have pity on you, child, where have you been? Did you not promise - "

"I know", Legolas tried, "but there's something - "

"I thought you had more sense", Beren said and shook him. "After everything you have heard, everything you have seen, everything you have been taught - "

"I know!" Legolas said. "I didn't mean to make anyone worried! Look, I've found something, something very important and you have to come with me..."

"The only thing I have to do is make sure you get into your tent and stay there", Beren hissed. "To think that you..."

"I've found Tuiw!"

Beren went quiet. Everybody did.

"I've found Tuiw", Legolas said again. "He's dead."

It took all of Beren's authority to keep the camp calm after that. Everyone wanted to see for themselves, but Beren decided that only him, Tinuhen, and four warriors would follow Legolas back to the body, and the rest would stay in camp, ready to depart or fight or whatever orders they might recieve.

They brought several torches, and the stag kept well away from them, weaving in and out of the trees. Now and then its eyes glinted in the light. Mists rose from the stream and hid the shape of the dead horse even from the torch-light.

"There", Legolas said and pointed. He did not want see it again.

Hethulin squeezed his shoulder before she left him to look at the body. He heard her gasp. He sank down in the damp grass, pulled his knees up to his chest and tried to stop shivering.

"This is the proof", he heard Tinuhen say, though even his brother sounded smaller than usual. "It's the proof, Beren! The arrows! Tuiw was murdered - someone knew Tuiw was taking Mithrandir's message to the Elven King and Queen, and -"

"My prince", Beren said hastily. "Not here."

The elves talked a while in low voices, and at last Tinuhen and Beren agreed to send two riders back to the nearest settlement, and from there send a message with a bird, since the birds of the shadow-wood were friends with the elves there. One of the warriors wanted Tuiw to be sent back to the Mountain, because he and Tuiw had known each other, and he didn't want to leave him here, but Beren said they could not spare enough warriors for a safe journey back. He would not let the elf cover Tuiw with his cloak either. They'd need the cloaks, he said, but they could spare a blanket. Then he ordered them all to go back.

Legolas wanted to ask what the arrows were proof for and what they meant, and he was thinking that maybe he could say that since he had found Tuiw he had a right to know - but when they got back to camp Tinuhen gave him a glance that very clearly said he should ask absolutely nothing at all for the whole night, and maybe not for the rest of the week, and preferably not ever in his life either.

"You", he said, "will go straight to your tent and stay there until I say you can leave, and if I hear anything more of you sneaking away - "

"It was the stag! If I had not followed it - "

"You could have been killed!" Tinuhen burst out. "You could have ended up like Tuiw! Or you could have got lost, and have all of us risk our lives searching for you in the dark. I have told you since we started this journey - mother and father has told you to do as I say and never ever stray from the camp! Don't you care what they say? Do you think you know better?"

"But the stag..."

Tinuhen slapped him.

Then he seemed shocked he had done it. He stood with his hand in the air as if it stung, and Legolas hoped it did.

"This isn't the Greenwood you're used to", he said. "You knew nothing about that deer. There are dark things in this forest and they're not always literary dark, do you understand? It could have been something evil..."

Legolas rubbed his cheek and glared at Tinuhen. "It wasn't. I knew it wasn't, I could sense it!"

"And of course your senses cannot be wrong? If you sense anything it must be right, must it?"

"I'm a wood-elf..."

"I'll tell you what you are", Tinuhen said. "You're a foolish, spoilt child and you think you know everything about Greenwood because Ninniach thought you were like mother, but you know nothing - nothing of the Shadow, nothing of the trees, nothing of the world. If you don't learn that soon, this journey will be the end of you."

Tinuhen u meanie D:

Thank you all for reading - I know you're there even if you don't say it! If you like the story or have any ideas as to how I could improve it, or if you just want to say hi, please review :)