Chapter Five
Celebrian picked a wafer from her mostly untouched plate and made a show of eating it for the two pairs of eyes staring at her. It had taken most of the day to bring herself to do much more than that; she was finally sitting up, but still laid on the settee in Elrond's study where she had woken late in the morning. She made every effort not to slip back into that eclipsing sleep, but still it lingered close at hand, a cliff she tiptoed along the edge of. Even as she gazed out into her own valley, she imagined the realm of dreams and what waited there. She saw glimpses of Thranduil and Aradess together, free of pain.
"Do you want me to go after him, Naneth?" Elladen asked, staring at her as if her chewing were the task upon which rested the fate the land. He had brought a chair to her bedside and finally sat after a day of pacing.
She laid her hand on his knee and looked at him, then at Arwen sitting at the end of the settee. "No, let your brother be. This house is not meant to be your gilded cage."
Arwen looked much better than she had the night before and Celebrian chastised herself for not having faith in her daughter's resilience. Now her concern shifted to her son, who seemed to have only half his usual vigor in his brother's absence. With such sudden death and tragedy brought down upon them, Celebrian understood the reflex to hold loved ones close. But she also sympathized with her younger son's impulse to run—the very same impulse that had driven Thranduil this great distance to do something, anything, in reaction to the helplessness felt in the face of mortality.
Still, her own words to her children did not stop Celebrian from listening for incoming riders on the bridge.
"How long will he sleep?" Arwen asked.
"That depends," Celebrian replied. "Thranduil may give into his exhaustion and his injuries until his body has made some recovery."
"Or?" Arwen asked when her mother failed to immediately provide the second option.
"Or Thranduil will do what he always does. He will fight and when he wakes up he will fight the pain as well."
Some of last night's greyness returned to Arwen's face as she looked out at the valley, steeped in the utter dark of the moonless night. She clutched the edge of Celebrian's blanket.
"Do you think he will die, Naneth?"
Did you have a good dream?
The sound of Aradess' voice in her head made Celebrian shiver. "Your father will try everything he can, but there will come a point when we must accept that this may be beyond our own will. Thranduil has survived many terrible things and he may yet overcome this. I'm inclined to believe that he will survive for the love of his son if nothing else, but I will not say that his pain in losing Aradess will fade. It will be a scar on his heart for as long as he lives."
"Are love and pain so intertwined?" Arwen asked, her focus far away in the dark.
I don't think so.
"I wish I could tell you they are not," Celebrian replied. She reached out her hand and Arwen took it.
Then don't tell me.
"Are you tired, Naneth?" Elladen asked. Sitting at her side, something of fatigue wearing through his Elven features, he had never looked more like his father.
"I am," she replied. "Would you go and see how your father is doing?"
Elladen nodded, but did not get up. "Rest now. We will be here if you need anything."
Celebrian felt Elladen take her hand on his knee and press it gently between his warm palms. She closed her eyes and let half her mind drift away while the other half continued to keep her balanced on the edge of that deep sleep, her children's hands like guides in the dark.
The summer air was tainted with the reek of smoke. Thranduil sat up straight at looked out at the great wood surrounding their bare hill.
"We should go," he said. He made to get up, but Aradess pinned his hand to the ground with her own.
"We can't," she said, her voice thin. She raised her green eyes to his face and where they had once glittered with life, they now shone with some fever. A violent cough tore up her throat.
"Melui-nîn." Thranduil moved to kneel in front of her while she clasped both her hands over her mouth. Her whole body wracked with the effort to breathe.
"Don't… go…" she gasped.
Thranduil laid his hands over her shoulders as she recovered. "I'm not."
Aradess looked up at him, strands of red hair stuck to the tears on her cheeks. Her lips were bright red with blood. She opened her hands to reveal the blood splattered across her palms.
"What's happening?" she whispered.
The once-clear sky clouded over with black thunderheads. All the light as far as Thranduil could see was gone. Still, the smell of smoke pervaded the air, but with no sign of fire.
"We have to go, Aradess."
"No!" she screamed, tearing herself away from him. She staggered to her feet and came to her full height without any regard for the blood seeping rapidly across her stomach. The blood on her clothes, on her hands, on her lips turned from red to black. She shrieked wildly—no sound she had ever made before—and sprang at him. Thranduil held up an arm in defense, but made no move to fight her.
Even in whatever form she had taken, the impact was too great to have been Aradess. Thranduil hit the ground and glared up at the knife hovering over his face, up at the hideous orc wielding it. He wrapped both hands around the orc's wrist, grappling to keep the blade from piercing his eye. The orc leaned in closer, laid all of its weight into the thrust of its arms. Twisting his face away, Thranduil let the knife plunge into the ground, let the orc overbalance itself. He drove one knee up through the space between the orc's legs and kicked it off of him.
"Thranduil!"
He pulled the knife out of the ground and in one great arc brought it down in the orc's throat beside him. Ripping it free, he got to his feet. Thranduil expected battle and carnage around him, but there was nothing. The dream hill was gone, the muddy field was gone. He stood on a plane of darkness while screams and cries echoed around him.
Some invisible force slammed against him and his back hit something solid. One hand closed around his throat, another beat his right hand against the wall until he dropped the knife. Thranduil threw his free arm out though there was nothing to hit.
"Thranduil!"
An orb of light spun slowly in the darkness and unfolded into a tall, cloaked figure, an insubstantial thing of smoke and shadow. It drifted toward him and Thranduil could hear its guttural breaths. Though the invisible forces lifted off him, he could not move.
It drew a blade from within its cloak. "Gu kibum kelkum-ishi, burzum-ishi."
The voice froze Thranduil's blood in his veins. Without touch, the figure raised Thranduil's left arm over his head. It was so close now, its cloak brushed against him, a cold breath of death. It raised its head, a black chasm where its face should have been.
"Akha-gum-ishi ashi gurum." It thrust its knife through Thranduil's hand and Thranduil screamed.
"I'll go," Arwen said once her mother's grip on her hand went slack. "Stay here in case Elrohir comes back."
Elladen looked up at her and gave a grateful nod. With his free hand, he took a date from his mother's plate and popped it into his mouth. He tried to smile and though it was small, it relieved some of the stress from his face.
"Come back with something warm to drink?" he asked.
"Of course," she said. Arwen left the study in which she and her brother had nested all day and walked out into the cold night. The wind picked up her hem and the ends of her hair, blew down her neck in what had become too familiar a sensation this past day. It had been only one day…
Arwen was certain she had never been so exhausted in her life, though almost all she had done for most of the day was sit and wait. Sit with her mother, wait for Elrohir to return, wait for her father to come to them and announce his success and Thranduil's recovery. And though it was not something she should expect for several days, she was impatient for word from Lorien that Legolas was on his way.
Without knocking or announcing herself, Arwen stepped into the sickroom. The air was heavy with steam and the cloying smell of valerian. Her father sat in a chair next to the bed, bent over his work. All she could see was Thranduil's face, utterly still, but covered in burns—old scars, but Arwen had never seen them before.
"Arwen," Elrond said, his voice low and strained.
"I came to see how you're doing," she said too loudly in her own defense. She regretted coming in without permission, for intruding on whatever secret of Thranduil's this was.
"I need your help."
Though Arwen had every intention of retreating back to the study with some vague description of her father's efforts, she could not run now from his request. She stepped up to the bed, to the full sight of Thranduil's devastated body. She had never seen such brutality.
"Hold this down tight to staunch the bleeding." Elrond stood and made way for Arwen to take his place holding the cloth to the crook of Thranduil's elbow.
She took her post and pressed both hands around Thranduil's arm. She did not want to know what course of treatment led to more bleeding, but the fear of that small amount of gore became immaterial when she saw his blackened hand. His veins ran like dark roots up his arm, a growing shadow that had stalled with whatever it was Arwen now assisted with.
Jars clinked and rattled in the storeroom at her father's uncommonly frantic rummaging. He whispered names to himself, some herbs Arwen had heard of, many she had not. A rare cure for an extraordinary injury.
Had Thranduil not laid so lifelessly still, Arwen may never have noticed the small twitch in his brow. No further reaction followed, but it was still a mark of Celebrian's prediction that he would fight through the spell of deep sleep. Arwen could not say which might be worse: Thranduil waking up in whatever state of wounded or poisoned he was in, or her mother risking her strength by casting him under again.
A warm spot of blood began to seep through the cloth Arwen held to Thranduil's arm. She watched the bright red mark spread and she pressed down even harder, glancing up at his face for any signs of waking.
Elrond came out of the storeroom carrying a book, flipping back and forth between pages. "Hmm… athelas."
"What are we doing, Ada?" Arwen asked.
"Bloodletting. Barbaric," he replied without looking up from his reading. "But it was all—"
Thranduil's whole body arched like a bow and he screamed.